How To Train Your Faerie: A Comprehensive Guide

[Tranquil]

The problem with Stay is if you forget to switch her back to heel. I know people get used to it, but I prefer not to have to remember in the first place. There are also fights where I want Eos to follow me.

Just curious, in which fights would you prefer to have Eos (or any fairy) on Heel?

Also, having macros is fine and I am not calling out macro-users in any way, I have some too. (Though TT-Embrace is the only healing related one I use apart from /Stay interrupts). The side-remark I made in my previous post was mainly me voicing my opinion concerning macros and that the more macros you have, the clunkier the result will likely be, with less control and precision available to the SCH (this mainly applies to stuff like macroing your dots etc., or macroing things together with heals and the like, instead of just having a TT-Embrace spam macro and calling it a day, or manually spam targeted Embrace with a keybind).

But as mentioned, each to his own, and being on a console/controller, some macros can help achieving a more dexterous playstyle.

[giantslayer]

Just curious, in which fights would you prefer to have Eos (or any fairy) on Heel?

1. Fights with frequent knock back.
2. One specific part of T5. After divebombs, my group runs from that ditch to almost the other end of the battlefield for the snakes.

It is a small percentage of fights. Most it just doesn't make a lot of difference either way.

As far as use of macros goes, I use few or no macros for most classes. I'm usually looking to do one of three things with a macro:
1. Save hotbar space.
2. Improve efficiency with no or negligible trade offs (such as having rouse in my whispering dawn macro).
3. Fix things to operate the way I feel they should.

Most of my scholar macros fall under #3. Faeries don't queue your commands, which necessitates macros to ensure consistent execution of cooldown abilities. Faerie also waits until 80% to start healing the tank, which isn't as fast as I want. In order to manually command the faerie to start casting while the tank is above 80%, you have to have the tank targeted. If you want to DPS while the faerie heals, you have to target an enemy, which basically means a scholar has to have two separate targets at once, which is impossible. Then there is the whole thing where targeting an enemy triggers a self heal, which applies for faeries as well. Other classes don't need to have a healing target and an attack target simultaneously. These are all problems unique to the scholar class.

Then there is the issue of auto heal range only being 25y, so if you are healing someone towards your max range, your faerie will just stand there and watch you. That is the only reason I use heal+embrace macros. It could be useful as a space saver to avoid a dedicated embrace command or macro, which I might end up needing after the expansion.

[Lovemonster]

1. Fights with frequent knock back.
2. One specific part of T5. After divebombs, my group runs from that ditch to almost the other end of the battlefield for the snakes.

It is a small percentage of fights. Most it just doesn't make a lot of difference either way.

As far as use of macros goes, I use few or no macros for most classes. I'm usually looking to do one of three things with a macro:
1. Save hotbar space.
2. Improve efficiency with no or negligible trade offs (such as having rouse in my whispering dawn macro).
3. Fix things to operate the way I feel they should.

Most of my scholar macros fall under #3. Faeries don't queue your commands, which necessitates macros to ensure consistent execution of cooldown abilities. Faerie also waits until 80% to start healing the tank, which isn't as fast as I want. In order to manually command the faerie to start casting while the tank is above 80%, you have to have the tank targeted. If you want to DPS while the faerie heals, you have to target an enemy, which basically means a scholar has to have two separate targets at once, which is impossible. Then there is the whole thing where targeting an enemy triggers a self heal, which applies for faeries as well. Other classes don't need to have a healing target and an attack target simultaneously. These are all problems unique to the scholar class.

Then there is the issue of auto heal range only being 25y, so if you are healing someone towards your max range, your faerie will just stand there and watch you. That is the only reason I use heal+embrace macros. It could be useful as a space saver to avoid a dedicated embrace command or macro, which I might end up needing after the expansion.

So basically, you're trying to reduce the amount of effort you have to put in while sacrificing versatility. I think this is the wrong way to approach scholar. If you play on a PC you can have so many keybinds and there are more than enough hotbars for them. If you do to shiva ex you'll see how often pets die because they are given no attention probably because they are placed in the middle and forgotten or given the heel command and so lag behind you and eat the aoe.

Using target of target and focus target macros reduce your versatility. For example in t7, how would you actually target the archer adds? You'd have to individually target them either by clicking/tabbing or using the enemy list. This trains your ability to quickly change targets and improves your reactive healing, reduces downtime searching for targets and raid awareness. I think it only brings more trouble to people who use these macros, especially when they use their skills and don't notice that nothing is being done because of an incorrect target (tanks don't always target the boss, for example).

I think macros decrease versatility and improvement and this overweighs the increased effort you have to put in.
1. you can achieve everything that a macro does by simply being a quickthinking player who has practiced healing enough to switch between targets rapidly and control both self and pet simultaneously
2. you have to compensate for macros failing or not applying to the situation at hand -> you have to do it manually
3. you start to think that anything that your macro cannot do is too much effort and not worth it

I'm not saying the being efficient is wrong or anything but it definitely isn't optimal and the difference really does show between the good and great scholars. I think that learning scholar by doing everything manually from the start is a better training approach than using macros that other people have made.

[giantslayer]

So basically, you're trying to reduce the amount of effort you have to put in while sacrificing versatility. I think this is the wrong way to approach scholar. If you play on a PC you can have so many keybinds and there are more than enough hotbars for them.

You misunderstand me. I agree with your philosophy. I use macros to reduce the amount of effort without sacrificing versatility.

I play on PS4. I do not have an infinite amount of keybinds available. I have 32 without having to switch hotbars. I have to be very selective about what gets into my 32 (protect and summons, for example, go on a separate hotbar) to use macros to save spaces. I very carefully chose macros that would not sacrifice versatility in battle or box me in. Examples of my space saving macros are:
Place/heel
Swiftcast/res
Aetherflow/energy drain

Using target of target and focus target macros reduce your versatility.

You are correct. This is why my macro has <t> as the first line. That way I can always target the old fashioned way, and have the convenience of <f> and <tt> when I want it. I am in complete control and sacrificing no versatility.

1. you can achieve everything that a macro does by simply being a quickthinking player who has practiced healing enough to switch between targets rapidly and control both self and pet simultaneously

We will have to agree to disagree on that point. As a PS4 player, I cannot simply click to target, so switching is a much more cumbersome and time consuming process. I also see value in using macros to improve efficiency and allow me to focus more attention on other things, so long as they don't box me in. Besides that, interrupt macros do bring some value to the table beyond just efficiency.

All things considered, our philosophies are similar. My macros are efficient, but not lazy. If I were on PC, I would probably do more things the way you do them.