Possibly raiding on SCH now...

AST has been my main since I started playing at HW launch, and I've been raiding on it all tiers until (possibly) just now: I have a potential new static, and they want me to raid on SCH. Which is fine, because I consider it my secondary job. :P

My question is: how should I meld for Savage raiding? I know crit is the major stat for SCHs, but to hit the accuracy cap (or get anywhere near it) I'll have to meld full accuracy (aside from my accs which I have melded with vit). Should I go full accuracy with vit on my accessories and only prioritize crit on gear? Should I only socket to a certain amount of acc then do the rest as crit, and if so, how much acc should I have?

Any other tips for raiding on SCH would be much appreciated, too!

Well, you have the right idea with melding. Acc to cap at all costs, Crit if you're a fast learner of mechanics, Vit if you feel that you need to have a buffer for any random mistakes. Food like Grilled Sweetfish will help you get to the Accuracy cap (592).

You'll want to meld your left side with accuracy since those pieces will be capped with vit already. If you have any 250 hq crafted jewelry you can pentameld to meet your accuracy needs while you're upgrading to 270 bis , hq pentamelded is better then 260 shire, since you can use the first slot for a vit V then have four slots for heavens' eye.

Like said, meld accuracy until cap, then crit for the rest. Choose gear with crit for every slot if you can (if you can't go with spellspeed instead). In raids, use Eos' Whispering Dawn combo, Deployment Tactics adlo and Indominability to your advantage. Emergency Tactics is also great for situations in which you need to quickly fill the group or tank's HP. Don't forget to utilise Eos' magic damage decreasing ability. Enjoy! :)

Just want to mention how it's working for me: I will be placing a lot of accuracy in my relic (121 points all in all) and then meld the rest into my left pieces, except the boots.
Because with relic + melds + buff-food I will hit exactly 600 Acc. I will meld Crit and Spellspeed in the rest of the pieces ^^ (Spellspeed in those where crit is already capped.)

As far as I discoverd it's not necessary to meld any VIT, except you are really really undergeared!

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Originally Posted by AmeliaVerves

Just want to mention how it's working for me: I will be placing a lot of accuracy in my relic (121 points all in all) and then meld the rest into my left pieces, except the boots.
Because with relic + melds + buff-food I will hit exactly 600 Acc. I will meld Crit and Spellspeed in the rest of the pieces ^^ (Spellspeed in those where crit is already capped.)

As far as I discoverd it's not necessary to meld any VIT, except you are really really undergeared!

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Personally I do not recommend building your relic to be Accuracy based.
Relics are always 10~15 ilevels behind the current Patch (Example: in 3.4, relic is i240, Sophia Weapon is i255).

If you were to go the route of having an accuracy relic and meld other stuff for your equipment, you are basically locked into your relic weapon, unable to use higher ilevel weapons unless you remeld all your other equipment.

Of course this advice is sorta moot now, as the next relic step is within sight now, but this is something to consider for the future :).

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Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

Personally I do not recommend building your relic to be Accuracy based.
Relics are always 10~15 ilevels behind the current Patch (Example: in 3.4, relic is i240, Sophia Weapon is i255).

If you were to go the route of having an accuracy relic and meld other stuff for your equipment, you are basically locked into your relic weapon, unable to use higher ilevel weapons unless you remeld all your other equipment.

Of course this advice is sorta moot now, as the next relic step is within sight now, but this is something to consider for the future :).

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3951931

The relic will be stronger than the alex one after the next Upgrade. So it's totally fine on focusing on the Relic by now. Christmas and New Years Eve will (most likely) cut some raiding time. 3.5 will also most likely hit before the Scholar book drops.
In the future you wont be able to focus on that, since there is no relic weapon with the normal raid cycle. (Especially with the first tier in 4.0)

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Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

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Well, I can see your point but I have been raiding with the Sophia book so far (because of lazyness and not finishing relic by now x'D), which is 5 ilvl below current relic and I did totally fine.
Of course you should always watch out for the best weapon you could have, but I decided that I neither want the Alex nor the Shire weapon. (Yes, they are stronger in the first place, but a little bit of theory crafting and comparing stat weights, showed me the relic is totally fine for me raiding.)
When it comes to Acc, sure, as off heal you should always hit the cap, or at least get as close as possible, but (and again that is a very personal point of view so please just see it as an opinion/ possible way to handle things!) I pick the other stats first, such as crit/det/spellspeed. I am a healer in the first place and I want my adlo to crit and my heals to be in place more than anything else. ^^ Damage and 100% hit rate is just an addition to it.

Just to mention: The current relic is 5 ilvl above what is needed for A12s, so everyone should be fine to at least get the kill with it. After that it's up to everyones preferences to either take the alex/upgraded shire weapon and maybe have not so great stats, or, and that's what I'd (me, myself, personally!) always prefer, stay with the "weaker" weapon but have your stats well balanced. :)

Well its all a matter of opinion, just want to let people know the limitations of having an Accuracy healer weapon during progression :).

Yeah, I understand what you mean, but you don't usually change your weapon every 2 weeks, right? :o At least I am not doing it.

And for me, I just want to let people know you can raid and beat A12s even without having an ilvl 275 weapon (well, of course, because you only get it from there x'D) and that it's totally fine to stay with your ilvl260 in order to not screw up your stats, even though you may already own the 275. ^^ (Not to mention that I literally can't imagine any BiS with the 275 Alex weapon for SCH that wants to focus on DPS :o )

Putting too much acc on a relic should be avoided if you play any of the other healers, because you will have a huge discrepancy when you play the other classes. If you have some on the relic it should only be enough so you can still hit 592 on the other classes with accuracy food. That means melding the majority of it on your gear, if you have to make changes to the relic you can with crystal sands. Ultimately you should be planning your acc around the bis 275 weapon if you raid, and that's just two heavens' eye V.

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Originally Posted by ChiiSoSeriouz

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Is it usual to swap classes during raid progress? I mean, I never planned playing something else but SCH in raids, because that is my main. And if you play different content than Alex savage the Acc doesn't matter at all, so no problem with other classes in there. :o

And as i mentioned before, the 275 Alex weapon is not always BiS. :/

As i said, if you play other healer classes it's not advised. It can be typical for healers to switch whm or ast depending on the fight, and there is other content like ex primals where acc matters. If you only main sch then why do you have all that spell speed melded and also some det melds? Your're allocating points where they shouldn't be.

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Originally Posted by ChiiSoSeriouz

If you only main sch then why do you have all that spell speed melded and also some det melds? Your're allocating points where they shouldn't be.

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I hate to repeat myself.... but obviously you haven't read what I said before... so I am going to quote myself here...

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Originally Posted by AmeliaVerves

When it comes to Acc, sure, as off heal you should always hit the cap, or at least get as close as possible, but (and again that is a very personal point of view so please just see it as an opinion/ possible way to handle things!) I pick the other stats first, such as crit/det/spellspeed. I am a healer in the first place and I want my adlo to crit and my heals to be in place more than anything else. ^^ Damage and 100% hit rate is just an addition to it.

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There you go.

Furtheremore my BiS is (obviously...) not finished yet, so I made the best (for myself only) out of the pieces I have and the stats I can get out of there.

Just throwing my two cents in here but based on the opening post you have a good idea in what direction to go and you'll have some more feed back from the other comments to reinforce one decision or another.

Melding is a personal preference and in the grand scheme of things I don't feel it's as important for healer's as it is for Tanks and DPS. Not to say use crap melds as there are some general guidelines that are good (as outlined earlier by others) and you should pick the ones you like.

My own thoughts and opinions on potential selections:


Accuracy is the bread and butter of healer DPS in EX Primal / savage tier content. The magic number to achieve is 592 for the current raid tier. 100% accuracy allows for maximum efficiency for your DPS spells though a miss in the healer kit isn't as detrimental to your DPS as it would be for a DPS / Tank missing their combo attacks and thus having to restart their combo chain. In order to achieve 592 you'll need to meld everything with Accuracy T5s and still eat food. While 592 is highly recommended I don't feel is an absolute necessity for SCH since you have 3 DoTs that require no accuracy to land. If you're passing the DPS responsibility to and from yourself and your co-healer it'll mean you'll get slightly less mileage out of accuracy versus being the "defacto off healer". If you don't cap you WILL get irked at the misses when they do occur but it's not the end of the world either.

Piety assist with the SCH longevity. Sir Rwar I believe has a rule of thumb of getting enough piety for 13.5K (correct me I'm wrong please) and I tend to agree with this number. It feels like a nice round number to work with though you can definitely work with less - especially when you consider the SCH kit revolves less around MP and more around Aetherflow. Higher MP also means able to maintain DPS for longer and of course the MP restored from Aetherflow works directly with your maximum MP.

Vitality is important to progression raiding. You'll want enough HP to survive mechanical derps because a healer with 500 HP remaining is infinitely better than a dead healer. I'm actually not sure what a good amount of HP is and the amount of VIT you'll need to meld in accessories is dependent on the ilvl of your left side gear too. You'll probably want to start swapping out VIT melds for other melds once you start to get comfortable / have higher HP due to ilvl.

Critical Hit Rate is the go to secondary for SCH. It provides both a benefit to healing and a benefit to your DPS and generally is considered the most bang for your buck in overall effectiveness. I personally am a huge crit fan and have been running crit on all my healers since 2.0 so please be advised that my opinion on Crit is definitely biased as well :)

Spell Speed has recently been theorized to be the highest DPS increasing stat for SCH. This stems from the fact that more than 50% of the SCH DPS kit revolves around DoTs so it's easy to double dip in both the cast time for more broil and higher DoT potencies. Take into account that this stat is assumed a 100% uptime in DPS with ZERO healing so take with a grain of salt. Spell Speed as a whole offers extremely little to zero benefit to your healing kit as a SCH.

Your materia selection will also depend if you want to try to gear each healer equally. SpS has a bit more benefit to Diurnal AST and WHM due to the number of HoTs they have in their kit and Piety provides more longevity for WHM if you choose to go that route too. Pick what you feel is suitable best for yourself and your group and happy raiding~!

[EDIT] In terms of actual tips for raiding, it goes without saying but understanding the fight allows you to optimize your toolkit. You want to co-operate with your healer to maximize your CD usages for both because that'll allow both of you to maximize your DPS uptime. For more SCH specific tips, look when it would be a good time to use Deployment Tactics and Fairy CDs and coordinate that information with your co-healer so they'll know when they need to heal harder, put out a minor heal, or just not heal at all.

Having not healed very much of the latest raid tier (Yay for being a DPS! *Coughs*), my fight specific thoughts would be saving Deployment Tactics in A9S for the time when Faust comes down and deploy it after Scrapline goes out. That way you'll have deployed Adlo for Acid Rain into Panzershrecht (or however Full Metal Faust's AoE is spelt). There's not a lot of AoE damage going in A9S so deployment time is limited but work with your healer to see when Roused Whispering Dawn is enough to fix party health.

A10S starts with two fairly significant raid buster hits (spread and stack) so you can get away with a deployed adlo in the beginning when everyone is stacked. Otherwise, without looking into my logs deeper, I'm not sure what to advise ^^; Sorry~

Chii has it right though, so if you ever want to play another healer you should ultimately have ACC on left side gear and go in with the thought you can max two ACC V melds on a weapon. I removed most of the ACC on the anima down to just over equal to 3 melds at the time to have more SpS in-addition to the max Crit.

As for VIT requirements, I like to recommend getting to 21k HP for healers in A11S-A12S.

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Originally Posted by AmeliaVerves

And as i mentioned before, the 275 Alex weapon is not always BiS. :/

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It is for every job this tier except Dark Knight.

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Originally Posted by technole

Chii has it right though, so if you ever want to play another healer you should ultimately have ACC on left side gear and go in with the thought you can max two ACC V melds on a weapon. I removed most of the ACC on the anima down to just over equal to 3 melds at the time to have more SpS in-addition to the max Crit.

As for VIT requirements, I like to recommend getting to 21k HP for healers in A11S-A12S.



It is for every job this tier except Dark Knight.

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And Scholar :V. you don't need det/pie...

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Originally Posted by Amaret

And Scholar :V. you don't need det/pie...

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Lets tell the entire story though. I take it you are talking the full 1k SpS-build with the Anima, so from a DPS-build perspective:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/X61G

But from an overall healing+damage it would the Alex book because of the weapon damage. I do agree the PIE isn't really all that needed this tier. Now if they just went with SpS instead of PIE on the Alex book.

The only reason the Alex DRK sword is de-facto punched out of BiS because parry isn't a damage increasing stat making the Shire Crit/Det substats come ahead of the weapon damage.

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/XT5D

This is the build I'm using right now for progression until I get the healer body and the 275 Book.

While SS is the best SCH DPS stat, of which I discussed back in June. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...es-for-SCH-DPS

What I try to do is stack as much CRT as I can while limiting the amount of Piety I trade for other secondaries. For anyone who has tried a SS Build will notice is that even on SCH you really start to burn through MP with high SS values due to the MP/Potency ratio of Broil to other spells. No MP = no DPS. Which mean you may end up needing to trade other secondaries for Piety to not go OOM which in turn lowers the effectiveness of SS.

Also the pet doesn't scale off SS anyway so you are lowering your effective HPS of the pet which could lower the potential DPS of your co-healer.

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But for any aspiring SCH this tier, the Crafted i250 healer body and Ring, Pentamelded with Acc is such a strong combo I would recommend grabbing that at the very least until BiS is possible.

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Originally Posted by technole

Lets tell the entire story though. I take it you are talking the full 1k SpS-build with the Anima, so from a DPS-build perspective:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/X61G

But from an overall healing+damage it would the Alex book because of the weapon damage. I do agree the PIE isn't really all that needed this tier. Now if they just went with SpS instead of PIE on the Alex book.

The only reason the Alex DRK sword is de-facto punched out of BiS because parry isn't a damage increasing stat making the Shire Crit/Det substats come ahead of the weapon damage.

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The gain through accuracy and extra Spellspeed is outdoing the extra WD (which is "only" a difference by 2) by a small margin right now. But will increase with the next upgrades.
And who cares about overall healing? That 50 hp more healing won't help you in any way.

Basically, its the same as with the DRK Sword its just one weapon "tier" lower. Which will change mid June anyway.

I started healing this raid tier on SCH too. I had been playing BRD/MCH in 3.0 raids.

VIT is okay to meld for learning and early progression. If you can be around 21k HP in party with food, that should be comfortable enough. You can go higher VIT, but it is kinda unnecessary unless you want to for fun! :p

Stat wise, just get enough Piety and meet Accuracy cap. Then focus on Crit and Spell Speed since SCH is mostly a damage class. You still heal at times, but not that much unless you have to. DPS is important for SCH, but trying to help your team win is more important! I put Crit and Spell speed on my SCH relic weapon several way back in Midas. I rather put Accuracy on gear, but putting Accuracy on the weapon is okay too. I already have the Alexander weapon so the Relic weapon is kinda of whatever to me.

As long as you Energy Drain enough, keep Aetherflow on CD, and reduce unneeded Succors, you should be okay on MP. You only really run out of MP this raid tier if you have really high Spell Speed, damage-deal and Broil a lot, and have really low Piety (below 550 piety).

Try to always cast something on SCH since the job always allows you to do something. SCH is a very flexible job, so always try to figure out ways to help out your team.

Yep. ~13k MP is pretty comfy this tier (even for AST/WHM) Early progression when we were using almost all-crafted it was a bit tighter on PIE but with gear available now and BiS any SCH should be fine as long as Aetherflow is on CD.

I can probably thank at-least one VIT meld in my first A11S and A12S clears. All it takes is surviving a mechanic and feeling like you walked-on water to make the investment worth it. That breathing room in progression can be very nice. It's always when you don't expect it. As you get closer to i270 you can and likely will shed it off for more ACC melds.

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Originally Posted by Amaret

The gain through accuracy and extra Spellspeed is outdoing the extra WD (which is "only" a difference by 2) by a small margin right now. But will increase with the next upgrades.
And who cares about overall healing? That 50 hp more healing won't help you in any way.

Basically, its the same as with the DRK Sword its just one weapon "tier" lower. Which will change mid June anyway.

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All Alex weapons are +2 WD from their 260 Anima counterparts, as +1 is a heck lot of stat weight (9.128). However I do agree when having A12S on-farm and then basically not seeing the Summon Alexander phase anymore it can be moot point on having "max" healing potential. The Anima is enough for all of Savage.


But we are basically saying the same thing. Just i'm explaining the full story why the Anima can be DPS leader as long as you stat correctly with ACC+SpS. One issue with this build is what most of us have been saying earlier. Having to go all-in with SS melds as well, and are using the anima for bulk of the ACC. So if you want to play other healers in Savage traps you have to compensate.

Then the last point, we don't even know if there will be a 275 Anima step. There never was a i245 step to match the Midas weapon. After Gordias he pretty much said the raid weapon should be the capstone from now on so we can't exactly compare to how things were done in ARR. But who knows, when content drought happens post 3.55 there could be a chance.