New SCH questions (Please help)

[h0tNstilettos]

I recently decided to start playing SCH as I was tired of SMN after maining it since it came out, plus I dislike SMN as an endgame job. I just got DRG to 50 and plan on having that as my other main. I want to use healer or tank for building up poetics and soldiery to gear my other jobs geared due to quick queue times, so I chose SCH over my level 37 WHM since it's already at 50. I still need to do my level 45 and 50 job quests.

My questions are...

1. How exactly is SCH played? Do I just do it the same as WHM and heal with Cleric Stance off and DPS with it on? Rotations? I already have the cross class skills such as Cleric Stance. I saw a video that said something about if the party member's health is above 80% you use a certain healing spell, but if below 80% you use a different one of the multiple healing spells.

2. How exactly are the pets used? In a video I saw that Selene is preferred for 4p dungeons, and Eos or Selene for the easier raids (CT), and Eos for harder raids (Coil Turns). I know there's a fairy thread here on the forums, but it assumes you already know the basics, so a lot of the stuff in it was confusing me. Do the pets heal automatically or do I have to target party member and manually use a pet's ability? I know they heal me automatically.

3. Why are macros a must for SCH? I heard one needed for cancelling pet's abilities. Why can't I just heel or steady like with SMN pet? I would hate to do my first party duty as a SCH and have it go disastrous because of me. I do have multiple macros on my SMN, but these are more for saving space on the hotbars and convenience.

4. I have never healed endgame before. One thing I always wondered is how does a healer keep party members healed during raids when everyone is spread out so far apart? I ask this due to my experience as a SMN when I would try to Swift Res a fallen party member, but they aren't in reach, so I have to look around for them. I imagined this same scenario if I was a healer trying to heal someone.

5. For Leeches and removing debuffs, how do I know what's a debuff and what isn't? I use PS4 controller and no mouse, so I can't mouse over a status effect to see what it does. I recognize some status effects by their symbol, but others I wouldn't know if buff or debuff. I know what poison, slow, and heavy look like.

6. Should Sacred Soil only be used on mobs and certain boss abilities where you know big damage is incoming, or every time available?

[Cassandaria]

scholar is a complicated and fun job. You cannot think of playing scholar like playing white mage at all. Scholar is heavy on prehealing because of shields. Shields are a big part of the scholar toolkit. as for the fairies? which one you use depends on the competency of your party, your own confidence and your ability to adapt. Scholar can be easily more dps focus in content than white mage (minus places where holy spam can happen) because of abilities that allow you to dps without losing healing ability.
the most important thing for scholar is to use your astral flow stacks, use them, love them, learn them. All of the abilities that rely on them are handy in different situations and even include a heal that ignores cool down timers and your stats (healing 25% of the targets maxium is AWESOME!).
As for macros, there is a simple reason why they are handy. Combining your fairy abilities into your own makes your heals that much more powerful. A macroed physicks ability with embrace tied to it? That's a cure II from a white mage, all for one ability without interrupting much. You can also add in embrace with leeches to heal a target with a debuff and because the fairy did the heal, you aren't going to get your face eaten by a monster with a bad tank (though your fairy may wind up lunch dependent on how bad the tank is :P).
I wont claim to be a fantastic scholar, but at the very least I hope this advice gives you the right start. There are players FAR better at scholar than I am (I am more of a white mage to be honest) and I hope they also will chime in. The healer forum tends to be pretty awesome with support! good luck in your healing ventures!

[ZhycranaDranix]

SCH 101 break down really quick

Selene - for farming/turns known
Eos- For learning or hardcore DPSing as a end game SCH's Eos can heal up to 1400-1800 with Fey and Rouse coming off a 30 sec GcD

Macros- You want to apply Fey illumination , Rouse and whispering dawn every min then 1 min later you tie Rouse X Whispering Dawn , its a great cycle buffing Eos and keeping party up pretty much all the time

Dont heal like a WHM , mages see damage and patch it , SCH anticipates damage

Sacred Soil should be used on raid wide high damage moves i.e Flare T9, Spit T6 , T8 , Tera Flare , Giga Flare etc I mean you could use it randomly on the tank but mitigating 130 for a 1300 hit isnt really worth the stack

[Ramien]

4. (Large arenas)
5. (Leeches)
6. (Sacred Soil)

4: Yes, you're going to end up chasing people around to heal them if they end up too far away from you. You can also tell your fairy to heal them, and they'll run over for you. (Your fairy will always auto-heal nearby party members if they start to get low on hit points, but she's slow to react.)

5: It's mostly a matter of practice and recognition, since even PC users don't always have time to mouse over and see what each effect is.

6: Since Sacred Soil uses one of your stacks of Aetherflow, save it for when it's needed. A good thing to try and do is lay down SS, then cast Succor to help cut down on damage even more.

[Raminax]

I'm not a Scholar expert by any means, but I could attempt to answer a few of your questions.

1. How exactly is SCH played? Do I just do it the same as WHM and heal with Cleric Stance off and DPS with it on? Rotations? I already have the cross class skills such as Cleric Stance. I saw a video that said something about if the party member's health is above 80% you use a certain healing spell, but if below 80% you use a different one of the multiple healing spells.

For DPS, it's a matter of keeping your DoTs and Shadowflare up, throwing in Ruin while they're ticking, and refreshing your DoTs and Shadowflare when appropriate. If you want to really tryhard, you could spam Ruin II as filler instead and stand in melee range, auto-attacking with your book between GCDs. That said, Ruin II might likely affect your MP reserves harder than you like, and sometimes standing in melee range is impractical for you. Evaluate the situation and adjust. Physick is your bread and butter heal, Adloquium is used to mitigate heavy single-target hits and Succor is obviously used to mitigate multi-target damage. Succor could also work for picking the group up in dire situations, but in most cases, it's enough to let your faerie slowly top the group up, or using Whispering Dawn if you're using Eos, because unavoidable raid damage usually isn't frequent enough to require you to top everything off immediately.

2. How exactly are the pets used? In a video I saw that Selene is preferred for 4p dungeons, and Eos or Selene for the easier raids (CT), and Eos for harder raids (Coil Turns). I know there's a fairy thread here on the forums, but it assumes you already know the basics, so a lot of the stuff in it was confusing me. Do the pets heal automatically or do I have to target party member and manually use a pet's ability? I know they heal me automatically.

As far as I know, faeries will automatically heal everything within 20 yards of the faerie that's at least below 80% of their maximum health with Embrace, prioritizing you, the Scholar. If your faerie is on Sic, it will use abilities automatically. On Obey, it will still use Embrace automatically, but it won't use the other three skills at its own. Selene is generally used for easier content, or when you need additional DPS to get through an encounter. Eos is used for times when you need to mitigate and heal constant, heavy raid damage.

3. Why are macros a must for SCH? I heard one needed for cancelling pet's abilities. Why can't I just heel or steady like with SMN pet? I would hate to do my first party duty as a SCH and have it go disastrous because of me. I do have multiple macros on my SMN, but these are more for saving space on the hotbars and convenience.

Sometimes, letting the faerie heal on her own accord might not be enough, requiring you to use macros. The basis of your macros should look something like:

/pac "Embrace"

Followed by some kind of target designation. A few examples:

/pac "Embrace" <t> will cause the faerie to cast Embrace on your current target.
/pac "Embrace" <tt> will cause the faerie to cast Embrace on the target's current target. Useful for when you're spending lots of time DPSing, as you will essentially keep spamming the tank, because they're (hopefully) the boss' target most of the time.
/pac "Embrace" <f> will cause the faerie to cast Embrace on your currently set Focus target. Might be useful if you Focus the tank and want to keep the tank topped off at all times, because it's entirely possible that bosses or adds will sometimes switch targets suddenly.

Similarly, you can macro the other skills if you wish, working with things such as /pac "Whispering Dawn" and /pac "Fey Light" and so on.

4. I have never healed endgame before. One thing I always wondered is how does a healer keep party members healed during raids when everyone is spread out so far apart? I ask this due to my experience as a SMN when I would try to Swift Res a fallen party member, but they aren't in reach, so I have to look around for them. I imagined this same scenario if I was a healer trying to heal someone.

Everyone is responsible to be within healing range if you need to setup AoE heals. Depending on how merciful you are, you could let the rebel die and hopefully teach them a lesson... or you can just throw them a Physick or two if you can spare the GCDs. If they do need to run away with some kind of debuff from the group, you could Adloquium them before they get out of range. Regardless, if they persist in running away from you, I'd just relegate them to the naughty list for Santa this year. No point in chasing someone who wants to die that badly.

5. For Leeches and removing debuffs, how do I know what's a debuff and what isn't? I use PS4 controller and no mouse, so I can't mouse over a status effect to see what it does. I recognize some status effects by their symbol, but others I wouldn't know if buff or debuff. I know what poison, slow, and heavy look like.

Buffs are usually indicated by pointing up; debuffs are usually indicated by pointing down. Example screenie:



If you pay attention, you can see that Adloquium is a square, with a pointed edge pointing upwards at the top. Meanwhile, Poison is a square with a pointed edge pointing downwards. Most buffs and debuffs have similar structure, with only the icon varying most of the times. That said, do keep in mind that you can't Leeches/Esuna every single debuff, though it doesn't hurt trying at least once to see what's removable and what isn't.

6. Should Sacred Soil only be used on mobs and certain boss abilities where you know big damage is incoming, or every time available?

Generally speaking, the first scenario. However, if Sacred Soil really isn't needed (i.e. doing content that you're overgearing, or a simple Succor/Virus is enough to mitigate most of the damage), it might be wise to save your Aetherflow stack for things like Lustrate and Energy Drain. Using it all the time is impractical, because you can't maintain Shadowflare and Sacred Soil at the same time, and generally speaking, the Slow from Shadowflare will outweigh the damage mitigation of Sacred Soil.

[DarkerOrange]

^ A good post

One small point, Embrace is currently bugged and the fairy will only auto-heal with it at a range of 20y, not 30. Manual casts have the correct range of 30y.

Since I main SCH for most content, I will add a few things:

1. Never EVER create macros for your dps skills. It is just bad.
2. Never use your fairy in Sic.
3. Do not macro Embrace to Adlo/Physick etc. The fairy is far more efficient operating off of our GCD (for auto-casts and manual Embrace spam).
4. Learn about all of your skills, know when to use them and practice using them. So many SCH I see don't use Virus, Eye for Eye, Shadowflare etc.
5. If you play on PC, try out the <mo> (mouse over) command, I find it very useful for split healing. An example of a macro for <mo> would be:

/ac "Physick" <mo>
/ac "Physick" <t>
This will heal the mouse over target first, but if you don't have your mouse over anyone, it will heal your hard target.

6. Due to a ninja change in the pet AI in 2.5, cancel commands for your fairy no longer function correctly. The most effective way to get your fairy to use her skills now is having multiple lines of the same command.
7. In 8-man content, you are generally not a party healer, leave that to the WHM. SCH is an amazing single target healer, so you should focus on making sure the MT stays up while the WHM heals the rest of the group. (Ofcourse, if you have time, Succor is a great spell to throw out, but prioritising single target is more important.)

I have more macros for my SCH than all my other classes combined, lol, I just find them so helpful, so I'm happy to help with macros if you (or anyone else) needs.

As always, all of the above is IME and IMO. Feel free to question/disagree with any of my points it's always good to hear other people's views.

[DarkmoonVael]

So this will be answered from the perspective of end game healing on SCH i.e. Final Coils of Bahamut.

1) SCH is primarily a very powerful single target healer and specialises in mitigation as well. End game, you will be playing it as tank healer and group mitigation (example sacred soil and succor being used in t13 mega/giga/terra flares on group to mitigate raid wide damage.....also Fey Covenant for same thing if you are using eos at the time). In regards to dps on SCH, you use cleric stance and basic rotation is Bio II > Miasma (endgame this may miss, if time is a pressure skip this) > Bio > Aero (same as Miasma, may miss, and if time is a pressure skip this) > Shadow Flare (endgame, this has to be used skilfully as a Sacred Soil will overwrite this, as they both share the same self-buff slot). Ruin and Ruin II where appropriate. Some notes on SCH and cleric stance: Lustrate is not effected by cleric stance (nor is it effected by Silence) and neither is the fairy, this means you can heal very effectively as a SCH whilst in clerics, which is why its usually the SCH who DPS' in Coils rather than the WHM.

2). Pets are used where you can judge ones use is greater than the other. Eos is incredibly powerful as a healer and healer support pet. A skilled SCH can dig the raid group out of all sorts of bad situation using Eos whilst learning raid content. Selene is a very powerful party DPS buffer, and also makes your WHM co-healer cast an aweful lot faster. Selene is preferable to use in situations where there is a hard DPS check. Other than that its a judgement call for you.

3) I raid on SCH, full end game, and only use one macro, which is virus for <tt>. Other than that i have a ressurection announcement macro for party chat. Macros are entirely down to personal playstyle.

4) you have several choices here: send fairy to move and heal person, move yourself to heal person, shout at person who is standing outside of healing range to move closer. Usually most people will have the sense to stand in healing range, if not it is usually their problem they are not. However, there are a few cases in raids where people will have to stand out of healing range for mechanics, in that case it is your responsibility to move and get them healed.

5) its the case of getting used to what is a debuff and what isnt. Also need to get used to the debuffs that can not be leeched off i.e. T10 prey, doom etc.

6) Sacred Soil is usually a go to ability in raids due to very high damaging mechanics. In t10 when you go in for the first time you will want to Soil wild charge, t11 the crit nerve cloud usually has to have a Soil down, t12 the flames of rebirth likewise, t13 mega/giga/terra flares need soil. Its the case of getting used to what moves need that extra mitigation. In terms of dungeons, Soil is rarely used.

Hope this helps .

[raela]

1. Single target has been mentioned (I use ruin 2 as I only run out of mp with succor/res spam). In large pulls, shadow flare>miasma 2>cleric off. Healing, adlo>physick>adlo on tank for heavy damage and let the fairy heal the dps. Light damage is 100% fairy.

2. No coil/ex primals, but right now I use Selene in 8 mans if there is another scholar with eos. I use CDs/whispering dawn while in cleric, and manual heals if I want to heal someone up who is above 80% HP, to prioritize another target, or when healing an out of party tank in fates.

3. Must? None. I have one to swap hotbars for cleric and one to summon fairy in obey with their skills on my hotbars.

4. If I'm feeling nice, I will move closer. If they are really far off, I will ignore them and run out to res later if needed. If your HP drops as a dps, you should run to your healer.

5. It takes me awhile to learn things, so in a battle, I'll just try to leech it off then remember if it actually worked or not.

[raela]

Since word counts are a pain and there is no edit on phone.. IMO, for ps4, as long as you can maintain your mp, ruin 2 is much nicer to have in an easy to use place. Make sure the fairy is in stay/place and it's sooo east to kite. I've pulled through some nasty near-wipes by dragging mobs around while using bio/energy drain/ruin 2 to finish them off. Also good for running in to help kill adds when your dots won't have long enough to tick.

[h0tNstilettos]

Thanks for all of the helpful replies! ^_^ If I have any more questions I'll probably post back here.