New SCH questions (Please help)

[giantslayer]

2. It sounds like you have already had a look at my faerie guide. There is a lot there to take in, but many of your questions are discussed in there. It may be worth going over it again later.

Specific to your question #2, they heal party members automatically within a range of 20y if below 80% health.

It is optimal to use manual commands to have her start casting embrace on the tank before his health drops to 80% to keep him topped off and/or buy a little more time before you have to heal him yourself.

Switching targets back and forth constantly to alternate between spamming Embrace and DPSing is an enormous pain in the butt, at least on PS3/4. I use macros for my attacks to make the process infinitely easier. I explained my macros for that purpose at the end of the guide.


3. I use targeting macros for my attacks for the reasons I outlined above. I also use several space saving macros.

Faeries still auto-heal on Steady mode. Faerie macros make it easier to control the faerie or make her more responsive to commands. Macros for faerie commands are not as necessary now as they were before 2.5. Pre-2.5, if you commanded your faerie to use an ability while she was casting embrace, she would simply ignore you. Since 2.5, faeries can queue a cooldown ability to use after embrace, but only if embrace was auto-cast, not manually cast. So macros used to be pretty necessary just for basic cooldowns to work but now are only sometimes needed.

5. Raminax nailed it with the picture. Figuring out which debuffs leeches actually works on, however, is not so easy.

6. Sacred soil is only good for group damage. That same aetherflow stack could have been used on lustrate for 25% of the tank's hp. In order for Sacred Soil to mitigate an equal amount of damage, the tank would have to take 250% of his health in damage over that 15 seconds.

[PetiteMalFleur]

Switching targets back and forth constantly to alternate between spamming Embrace and DPSing is an enormous pain in the butt, at least on PS3/4.

3. I use targeting macros for my attacks for the reasons I outlined above.

Faeries still auto-heal on Steady mode. Faerie macros make it easier to control the faerie or make her more responsive to commands.

Just use target assist on you controller. Then you can bypass any dps macros.

The fairy has her own target so once the MT is below 80% she will deselect her target and heal herself or the scholar instead when tt and t macros are used. Check parses for overheal while doing content and you'll see this. In most content it doesn't matter but when doing heal intensive fights you are wasting fairy global cooldowns where she embraces herself instead of a low hp raid member increasing the need for aoe heals the fairy could otherwise manage on her own by single targeting.

[giantslayer]

Just use target assist on you controller. Then you can bypass any dps macros.

1. As a PS4 player, my 32 crossbar slots are too precious to use one on a command like this when I can get equal or better results through attack macros.

2. This is functionally no better than doing attack macros with <t> and <tt>. What happens if your tank is rotating targets? You can't reliably place all 3 dots and bane on the same guy with assist. That is why I have <f> built into my attack macros.

The fairy has her own target so once the MT is below 80% she will deselect her target and heal herself or the scholar instead when tt and t macros are used. Check parses for overheal while doing content and you'll see this. In most content it doesn't matter but when doing heal intensive fights you are wasting fairy global cooldowns where she embraces herself instead of a low hp raid member increasing the need for aoe heals the fairy could otherwise manage on her own by single targeting.

The idea of the faerie having her own target is intriguing, but probably too unpredictable to work with as she will switch whenever she auto-heals someone.

I agree with you 100% that faerie self-heals should be avoided and that using <t> and <tt> on healing macros is a horrible idea. That is why I don't use <tt> on any of my healing macros. Every healing ability I have is set up to target on my main target so there is never any confusion or errors. I have t, f, and tt on my attacks so I can use those without switching off the tank.

[PetiteMalFleur]

1. As a PS4 player, my 32 crossbar slots are too precious to use one on a command like this when I can get equal or better results through attack macros.

2. This is functionally no better than doing attack macros with <t> and <tt>. What happens if your tank is rotating targets? You can't reliably place all 3 dots and bane on the same guy with assist. That is why I have <f> built into my attack macros.

I think you misunderstand how target assist works. You bind it to R3/L3 so it doesn't take up space on your hotbar at all. You press it to switch between the mob's target and the tank's target. This is a hard targeting function and is not a macro. It functions similar to how tab target works.

[giantslayer]

I think you misunderstand how target assist works. You bind it to R3/L3 so it doesn't take up space on your hotbar at all. You press it to switch between the mob's target and the tank's target. This is a hard targeting function and is not a macro. It functions similar to how tab target works.

You are right. I did not know you can do that. The default L3 and R3 functions are both pretty useless in combat and this would be much more useful. I've only seen people talk about using assist on a macro. I will have to check out those settings next time I get on. Thanks for the tip.

I am still keeping my attack macros. The tank rotating targets still would still mess everything up if you are using assist and going for Bane. That assist function will have a lot of other uses, though.

[PetiteMalFleur]

I am still keeping my attack macros. The tank rotating targets still would still mess everything up if you are using assist and going for Bane. That assist function will have a lot of other uses, though.

Target assist is a direct target function. Once I target assist off MT I am direct targeting their mob so it doesn't matter what the tank is targeting while I put up my dots. I can dot up and bane my dots directly off the mob then use target assist to hard target the tank again. Try it out. =)

Couple of examples of how I use it: If I have to heal that melee sitting in aoe I scroll through the party list to hard target and heal them. I then target assist back to the boss they are targeting, then target assist again to direct target the tank to avoid any more party scrolling. It also works great in 24 man raids, FATES and hunts when trying to heal the MT (or that white mage who is getting chased down by adds). You just tab target enemies then target assist the person tanking the mob to heal them. No more sorting through a gazillion people moving all over your screen and no need to use targeting macros to help heal people outside your own party.

[Spoekes]

Target assist is a direct target function. Once I target assist off MT I am direct targeting their mob so it doesn't matter what the tank is targeting while I put up my dots. I can dot up and bane my dots directly off the mob then use target assist to hard target the tank again. Try it out. =)

It's definitely a good approach, but it requires the tank to not switch targets, or your assist may target an enemy without dots and you cannot bane.
Most times, if I know I will be bane'ing and for the case I have to heal someone during the process of dotting, I focus target the enemy I throw dots on.

[Cynfael]

I don't use a controller, but if I'm reading Fleur's suggestion correctly, the idea is that you don't continually switch targets while applying DoTs, and neither do you use assist macros that would depend on the friendly target staying on one mob.

It sounds like the way I do it with a keyboard: assist the MT for its initial target; switch to that target and DoT+Bane (while forcing Embraces on the MT); can now assist the mob to retarget a tank if you desire, or continue DPSing if direct healing not required. The tank can target whatever it likes at any point since you aren't depending on an assist macro to apply DoTs to enemies while hard-targeting the tank.

[Spoekes]

OK, think I understand that.
However it does not fix the problem that you might want to heal the tank after you applied your first of three dots.
So you switch to tank by assisting the mob (that sound strange haha) to heal him, if the tank switched his target by now, your next assist will not be on the mob you cast you first dot on.

[raela]

OK, think I understand that.
However it does not fix the problem that you might want to heal the tank after you applied your first of three dots.
So you switch to tank by assisting the mob (that sound strange haha) to heal him, if the tank switched his target by now, your next assist will not be on the mob you cast you first dot on.

You're not going to want to switch to heal him normally due to cleric cool down, but you can always press down 2/3 times and soft target to throw a lustrate (and return to your dot target). Manual embrace does not revert your target, but you can still soft target them use your "back" button to cancel and return to hard target. I try not to dot unless I can reliably get 3+bane before needing to heal anyway, because of stance CD.