SCH endgame/gear/stat cap Qs

[Swear_Bear]

Hey guys.

Finally got my 1st Lv.50 last night. (yay me.)

Anyway, I'm working on finishing the main story and unlocking all the dungeons. Just a few endgame questions.

1. In what order should I be getting my endgame gear?
2. Is there a cap on certain stats?
3. Is it advisable to level another job to Lv.50 to progress in endgame and for versatility?
4. Is SCH capable of soloing healing in all endgame content, or is WHM preferred in some?

Thanks.

[harkinate]

If you don't have Swiftcast, get it (26 THM). That's all you really need for alt class skills as SCH that you won't get from leveling naturally (You get Protect on the way to 15 CNJ). Stoneskin is good but you'll usually be paired with a WHM in 8-mans and their version is better, so it's not nearly as required as Swiftcast. Get Swiftcast. Just get it. No excuses.

The only cap I'm aware of in the game for Stats is Accuracy, and that doesn't matter for us. Stat priority for SCH is Weapon dmg -> MND -> Crit.


SCH and WHM are both capable of solo healing content. Both have advantages in certain situations but overall they are equal.

[NRhodes]

Here is to answer your questions:

1. Order truly doesn't matter besides the linear progression of gear WP gear > AK gear > Darklight > Myth/Allagan.
2. There aren't any "caps" per say, but there are for like Coil, certain stats you must have, especially as Tanks and DPS. And to counter harkinate - why would weapon dmg be a priority for a healer? It doesn't effect heals. I get what you mean, but if you don't have your Relic/+1 before entering Coil, you're wrong. Also, all your Mind stats will come from your gear, even if you craft it, you can't meld with main stat.

Stat Priority should be - Crit -> Det (only see DR with DPS, not heals) -> Spell Speed

3. Yes it's nice to level another class or all the classes to Lv. 50. One, you'll get the Cross Class abilities (which you only need THM (26) and CNJ (34). But just so you have utility. THOUGH! If you are not a hardcore type of player I would stick to a single class for end game.
4. You can solo heal up to Titan HM.

[harkinate]

Here is to answer your questions:
And to counter harkinate - why would weapon dmg be a priority for a healer? It doesn't effect heals. I get what you mean, but if you don't have your Relic/+1 before entering Coil, you're wrong.

Weapon damage absolutely affects heals (to be more specific, Magic Damage). Each Magic Damage stat is roughly equivalent to 9 MND in terms of the healing boost. What are you even talking about? You say that then go on to say that if you don't have Relic before entering Coil you're wrong? What do you think is the primary reason for getting Relic+1? MND?

Also, regardless of where MND comes from it should have the highest priority on any gear choices you make, outside of the weapon. I never mentioned melds.

[Kyana]

{Congratulations!}

While I'm not joining all endgame content as WHM or SCH I think there are some basic tips.


1. I'd say it's pretty much personal preference what you get first.
You will have to run dungeons for marks to get darklight or AF2 anyways, so you can replace most of your gear with the dropped ilvl55 (Wanderers Palace) or ilvl60 (Amdapor Keep) equipment.
Once you have enough marks to get a piece of darklight, just replace gear you couldn't replace with dungeon drops yet.
You should save 300 tomestones of mythology and 900 tomestones of philosophy for the relic quest.
You could also buy the crafted ilvl70 gear or let someone craft it for you. Some of the pieces will serve you well for a long time.

2. There are no caps as far as I know, just caps for melds on equipment. But there is a point where putting more points into a stat doesn't make much sense anymore.
For a healer mind, vitality and piety are the 3 most important stats. You should try to get a good ammount of vitality to have enough life for endgame content and make your life a bit easier. A dead healer has 0 healing potential ^^
For Titan hard mode for example it's good to be around 3500HP with group buff and food.
Secondary stats are a bit tricky. Most say put everything in crit, others go for more determination. My opinion is, that at a certain point adding more crit will have little to no effect, making other secondary stats more important.

3. You should level all the classes which offer you cross class abilities. That would be Conjurer for Stoneskin and Cleric Stance or Thaumaturge for Swiftcast for example.

4. I look at Schoolar more as a supporter than a main healer. It lacks the healing potential for that job. But that is ok.
Endgame content requires 8 players in general and the best setup for healing, in my opinion, is a WHM+SCH.
WHM does the big heals and group heals while SCH makes the life of the WHM easier and less MP intensive. Your pet is pretty decent as healer too and can be even more effective if you micromanage its abilities in certain situations.
Solo healing 4-man dungeons is no problem for a SCH.
Also don't forget that as SCH you will not run out of MP as easy as a WHM.

[Darksword]

As a SCH who has recently done this same road myself, this was what I did, starting with full AF and the level 44 GC weapon.

>DF runs for Wanderer's Palace. You can't speedrun it, so just take your time and have fun.

You goals in WP are:

Darklight Grimoire to replace your weapon (drops off the Tonberry King)
Warlock gear to replace your AF.
Philosophy Tomes to purchase, first and foremost, the Darklight Cowl of Healing and the Darklight Breeches of Healing. Those two will give you an enormous stat boost.

Once you have those two pieces, the weapon, and Warlock gear everywhere else, that is a reasonable point to start your Relic quest. Once you unlock and clear Amdapor Keep, you should run it several times for the Strategos gear to replace your WP gear and get some of the Darklight Accessories. At that point you're geared enough to finish the Relic quest.

[HiliteOrin]

Grats on 50! To answer your questions:

1) Others have answered this in-depth, but in general try and get some sort of weapon upgrade (i.e. Ifrit book, Garuda book, etc.) so you'll have a decent weapon to use for Titan HM. Save up tomestones and get some Darklight gear (or get HQ Vanya made and melded if you are in a position to do so).

2) As others said, no caps really though there are apparently some diminishing returns...but I don't know if it's that significant. You'll be mostly aiming for Crit gear as a SCH (as opposed to spell speed and determination).

3) If you're looking to play SCH, I don't see why it's necessary to level another job to 50. Though as an Arcanist base class, you can also work on gearing up your SMN after your SCH gear is in place. This will give you an extremely viable DPS option for running content as SMN is highly desirable in endgame including Coil. As others mentioned, get cross-class abilities but prioritize Swiftcast as it's the most important. The only other cross-class that SCH can really make use of is stoneskin, but I would do that only if you have finished other things. Stoneskin is mostly useless for SCH, and even the situations in which you can use it it is not actually a requirement.

4) Both healers are essentially equally viable for all endgame content, at least in any sense that is worth talking about. The best healing duo is SCH+WHM by far, and both bring their own strengths to the table and synergize very well in 8-man content. SCH and WHM heal in different ways, but neither is truly better than the other for all situations, and both are required to perform equally-demanding healing roles in Coil.

Have fun!

[Asdamine]

I took the liberty of checking your gear on lodestone. My immediate advice would be to update all your accessories and belt from the market board to lv50 as soon as you read this. It doesn't matter which ones as long as you focus on healing items. It will only cost you a few thousand gil but you can easily recover them after you convert those items to materia upon gear replacement at a later stage. Your weapon as well, just to last a couple of rounds in WP for your WP gear and initial darklight farming.

Other than that, follow darksword's advice from above.

[YuiSasaki]

1. You could build yourself a Vanya Robe / Helm (via Weaver - totals for about 400k) and buy the rest of Tomestones of Philosophy
2. Crit has no cap as far as i know.
3. WHM to lv 34 (for Stoneskin) & THM to lv 26 (for Swiftcast)
4. Not sure about Coil (most difficult raid out atm), but i've seen a SCH solo healing Titan which is quite hard - in other words: Yes, SCH is a full-fledged healer.

[Exstal]

Here is to answer your questions:

1. Order truly doesn't matter besides the linear progression of gear WP gear > AK gear > Darklight > Myth/Allagan.
2. There aren't any "caps" per say, but there are for like Coil, certain stats you must have, especially as Tanks and DPS. And to counter harkinate - why would weapon dmg be a priority for a healer? It doesn't effect heals. I get what you mean, but if you don't have your Relic/+1 before entering Coil, you're wrong. Also, all your Mind stats will come from your gear, even if you craft it, you can't meld with main stat.

Stat Priority should be - Crit -> Det (only see DR with DPS, not heals) -> Spell Speed

3. Yes it's nice to level another class or all the classes to Lv. 50. One, you'll get the Cross Class abilities (which you only need THM (26) and CNJ (34). But just so you have utility. THOUGH! If you are not a hardcore type of player I would stick to a single class for end game.
4. You can solo heal up to Titan HM.

Up to and including Titan HM. (obviously not your first time)