Tips for a Levelling Scholar?

Howdy! As you can pro from the title, I'm levelling Scholar - just recently got it to 50, actually. However, as I usually main a DPS Class (I'm most comfortable playing as a Bard but I'm fairly adaptable) and I know nothing about healing in Heavensward, I thought I'd ask for help. That, and all of the guides I've found only go over pre-HW, or else they just tell me what skills to look for.

Is there anything you lovely forum folks might know that could help me heal more effectively in 3.x content?

Hotkey physick to slot 1
Press 1 to heal
???
Profit

Honestly, the act of healing itself isn't hard regardless of level. You can get away with most content just spamming physick and /follow the tank.

However, if you want to explore the limits of your own ability, make use of the whole kit. This isn't limited to just healing spells, but damage as well. To do so, you'll need two things: Knowledge and experience. So the best advice I can offer you here is to just play the job and read up what your spells/abilities do and put them to the test in dungeons

I would level as a SMN personally. However, feel free to swap to SCH for dungeons to practice your healing. It's difficult to know how to heal more effectively when I don't know how you are now.

But here is my 2 cents
- Set your pet to Obey, ensure embrace and your 3 skills are on your hotbar and avoid macroing them in
- Try to throw an Adlo between each pull at the least, stoneskin if you can too
- Save your swiftcast for Shadowflare - putting slow on all the enemies attacking your tank will drastically reduce the incoming damage
- Use Fey Illumination (if using Eos) and Rouse near the beginning of fights, this will give your pet a 1.68 modifer on their heals and pretty much let you go in DPS stance
- Make good use of E4E, it's great for trash pulls

Personally, i set a macro for E4E to do /ac "Eye for an Eye" <t> /ac "Eye for an Eye" <f> /ac "Eye for an Eye" <tt>. This works so that if you are taretting a mob, it will eye for an eye your tank. You could also focus target your tank and e4e will go on it even if you are healing a DPS etc. I also make this same macro for Virus, so that if I can virus a boss even if targeting someone else for healing.

Let Eos handle healing for you
/sarcasm

If you have the basics of healing down with SCH. You're fine. Use Deployment Tactics whenever E4E is up (they both have a 2 min CD). Remember to cast Adlo first.
Indomnitability to save your ass instead of Succor (Succor is still a good skill though). Broil to add some super pewpew. Replaces Ruin 2/Ruin. Emergency tactics is for when you need big healing power and not necessarily a shield. It turns the Adlo shield into pure healing. Dissipation LOL (it's actually good when you need to do fast healing and powerful healing...just remember to have Swiftcast up to resummon your fairy).

If you have no idea how to heal at all, go back through the dungeons starting with....Brayflox NM and heal them. It's honestly not much different.

Skills You will need to learn and will learn for 3.x Dungeons
-MP management will be much more present during your time dungeoning.
-Always do Job quests...I'm not kidding, while during 3.x SCH core gameplay style dose not change much, but the ability's will enhance your kit very nicely.
--Fairy management
-Eos Will be your go to fairy while your learning the ropes and getting the hang of healing, her buffs are very useful for keeping the tank/party alive. (Healing buff, Regen, M.def buff)
-Selene Will be for the speed buff for when you want extra damage and the AoE Erase.
--Sic Vs. Obey
Leaving them on Sic, You can set it and forget and let the fariy do its thing or if you leave em on obey you can control there buffs (aka Keeps Eos from using regen at the end of a pull >.>; )
--DPSing
Bring out Selene Use the speed buff on CD, Cleric Stance, DoTs+Bane.....profit?

Hope this helps in some way.

Good luck out there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AskaRay

Use Deployment Tactics whenever E4E is up if going into a pull where the tank may lose aggro to multiple mobs or if large aoe damage is upcoming and the target is galvanized

---

Changed what you said a little.

Using your fairy to control how your shield is distributed with deployment is also nice, especially since she is typically unaffected by noncleave aoes in 60 content.
You should get used to placing/calling your fairy back as you level.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rawrz

Changed what you said a little.

Using your fairy to control how your shield is distributed with deployment is also nice, especially since she is typically unaffected by noncleave aoes in 60 content.
You should get used to placing/calling your fairy back as you level.

---

I did actually have some trouble with this when getting to 50. I would constantly forget that Eos was set to place. :'D Here's a question though: Is it advisable during, say, a Primal fight, to place my faerie somewhere and not move them for the entire fight? Or should I be hitting Heel every so often to bring my faerie back to me?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MusicGamer

I did actually have some trouble with this when getting to 50. I would constantly forget that Eos was set to place. :'D Here's a question though: Is it advisable during, say, a Primal fight, to place my faerie somewhere and not move them for the entire fight? Or should I be hitting Heel every so often to bring my faerie back to me?

---

I would say it is fight dependent. Sometimes during Primals, I set my fairy to place in the center of the arena, so that they are always in range of everyone and that Whispering Dawn always hits everyone.

One note on Selene's attack speed buff, this is group dependent on how helpful it is. It's not very helpful for your own DPS or SMN. It's very helpful for BLM. It's moderately helpful for melee (but may just result in TP problems).

EDIT: just wanted to elaborate on why placing is useful. Eos/Selene won't heal when they are moving, so if you are moving out of AoE's or for a mechanic, your pet will just follow and not heal during that time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MusicGamer

I did actually have some trouble with this when getting to 50. I would constantly forget that Eos was set to place. :'D Here's a question though: Is it advisable during, say, a Primal fight, to place my faerie somewhere and not move them for the entire fight? Or should I be hitting Heel every so often to bring my faerie back to me?

---

It depends on which primal. Most often I find it very useful to place her close to the tank and melee, since she's much faster to autocast her embrace when she's closer to them and not chasing after me. But there are bosses that use knockbacks that will throw her out of position. Other bosses use AEs or cleaves that she isn't actually immune to and will kill her. So either bringing her to Heel or resetting her position becomes necessary several times mid-fight. It's not a one-and-done action, and the reliability depends on you learning which is better for which fight/phase.

And to add to what Kaurie says, the fairies seem to have a detection range that is shorter than their spell range. If you're sitting at max spell range (35m) from the tank, the fairy won't cast until you specifically command them to. If you place them closer, say behind the boss with the melee dps, she'll cast without you needing to tell her to every time. This always applies to Embrace, regardless of if you have them on Obey or Sic. For Sic, it applies to their other spells as well. I find I prefer having her autocast embrace like this, as it's fairly reliable and leaves me freer to do whatever else might need doing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MusicGamer

I did actually have some trouble with this when getting to 50. I would constantly forget that Eos was set to place. :'D Here's a question though: Is it advisable during, say, a Primal fight, to place my faerie somewhere and not move them for the entire fight? Or should I be hitting Heel every so often to bring my faerie back to me?

---

People are gonna call me newb but I have heel attached to my sprint macro, that way when its time to move to the next set of mobs or a boss mechanic, she will return to me so long as im not targeting anything. If im targeting something as i sprint shell sit still. :)

I actually have a macro for place/heeling my fairy.
I can't remember it exactly but I have
/heel, then
/place

So if I hit it once the placing circle appears, and Eos returns to me. I can then press B to cancel placement or press A to place her again. I tend to place my fairy in most boss battles...there's maybe, a few I think, where it's just not worth it.

Well,

Learning when to use what kind of just comes with experience with the class, and only after you're comfortable with that should you ever attempt at dpsing as a sch.

Don't forget about Energy drain. It's sorta a no brainer, but pre-HW I never really had to use it, I always had phat stacks~ AND lots of MP. But now, lowmanning primal ex's, large pulls with poor dps ect, You're going to want to keep in mind it might be best to just keep using physick with Energy drain, especially if Aetherflow is about to be back up.

Also, set your Fairy to Obey, it'll still Cast Embrace it's baseline heal, But it prevents it from spamming needlessly it's 3 other really valuable abilities. It's best that you take control of when they use those, otherwise they basically just get thrown away.

Minor, but when a tank is taking a lot of incoming damage, Adlo before spamming Physick always helps me get them up faster. Having your fairy on obey, I'm sure, makes a difference to really playing the job at maximum potential, however, if it's overwhelming, I find that I am playing all the way up through Void Ark currently on this role and never once have managed mine. I find that standing closer to the action helps position me better in range for Selene to be able to do her thing, and it has me in range to for Miasma 2.

As was said, really there aren't a lot of tricks, more learning fights and knowing when you need to Adlo/Stoneskin/Sacred Soil for incoming damage. Typically if I have a good tank, I can start off every pull by shielding them up in advance, throwing my Miasma, Bio, and Bio II on a mob, using Bane, and then switching to healing before things go bad, it's all about feeling out the tank and learning the flow of an instance.

One thing that is debatable but I think makes a lot of sense is that you should always have Aetherflow on cooldown. Scholar has a lot of very MP intensive abilities on Succor and Adloquium, and their DPS also burns MP kinda fast, so usage of Energy Drain is really useful to always keep your MP reserves up. So, always keep an eye on your Aetherflow cooldown. If you see it's about to fill-up, use those stacks on Energy Drain. It was something I didn't realize when I first went from WHM to SCH, but a very useful tip. Scholar is more strategical with its cooldowns, so, for example, if you need there's gonna be a lot of damage soon, you can keep your current AF stacks while Aetherflow stays ready to enter cooldown. That way you have 6 stacks available for a phase with a lot of heavy healing. In lower level stuff you won't ever run into fights that need such levels of preparation, though.

Also, remember that what makes your class unique ain't the barriers, but the fairy! Learn everything she can do and the power of her abilities! You can really go entire dungeons without directly healing your tank or partywide damage thanks to the abilities Eos has at her disposal. Rouse+Fey Illumination give her a massive boost to healing, and even if it's party wide damage, you can just use those two and then Whispering Dawn to give everyone a regen that will last for a while, and you can keep on damaging enemies. This might not be adviceable when there's continuous party damage, though, like some bosses in Aurum Vale. But anyways, trust your fairy, she's very competent!