Any Tips or Advice for a SCHOLAR about to hit TURN 5?!?!

[Forever_Learning]

Hello More Advanced Scholars,

After a couple weeks with turn 4 on Farm, my coil group has decided to put in some serious time on Turn 5 this week.

In addition to guides and videos, which of course I am reading and watching, I wanted to know if anyone had any scholar-specific advice that you think would be good? Things not automatically obvious?

[Ashira]

It sort of goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Twintania hits harder than anything else and her Death Sentence lives up to it's name. You'll be introduced to this shortly after your first pull and you won't miss it. Since mitigation is key here and Scholars are the kings and queens of mitigation, you'll have your work cut out for you. Eye for an Eye, Virus, Adloquium and Sacred Soil are your best friends here. I think the most important thing here is that you're healing along side someone you work well with; healing synergy is important here more than ever.

If you're up to Turn 5, nobody here needs to tell you how to play your class, you know that by now. As for Scholar only advice; during the second phase, you can collect both rear groups and the main tank in a single Sacred Soil, which will take the edge off Fireballs and Death Sentence. Hold onto your Lustrate stacks and waste them on nobody, but the tank, as RNG can really screw you during this fight.

Good-luck!

[ArcaneNova621]

Death Sentence is one of the biggest killers during this fight. Because of the various DPS checks it's likely you'll have to be using Selene during your attempts. Every time Death Sentence goes off, hit one of Selene's DPS buffs, when the timer for it runs out, another Death Sentence is incoming, and you want to pre-cast Adlo/Sacred Soil. You can focustarget Twintania to tell when Death Sentence is incoming, but a better solution is to use FFXIV APP.Depending on the gear of your group, you may need to cast Succor to live through Fireballs, be aware that you have to do this early, casting when you see Fireball come out is generally too late as there is some lag after the effect is applied before it can actually mitigate damage.

If you haven't thought about macros before, now is a good time, you'll need to be able to place your pet, heel your pet, and micromanaging embrace is going to become very important, you want to maximize your healing.

This fight is all about visual cues, the healer who spends 90% of his/her time staring at the HP bars is going to be in for a rough time, tune down battle effects for your allies, turn off nameplates, remove general clutter on your screen, make sure system sounds and sound effects are turned on so that you have every opportunity to notice the 3 key visual cues of the fight, red, green and blue.

Your mana is really important, and your BRD, presuming you have one or more should be doing everything they can to keep your mana up whenever there are phases where DPS isn't important.

Twintania is a 13-minute plus string of fairly straightforward mechanics that thrives off the fact that people can rarely pay attention for that amount of time.

[SeraviEdalborez]

Strive to have, at bare minimum, Adlo on tank before Death Sentence. From phase 2 (conflags) onward, always have a Lustrate ready to go the moment you see the hit visually connect (precasting Adlo or Physick also helps). You'll only be able to have Virus on every 2nd or 3rd one, so chances are your tank will have to eat a few with only their own mitigation, Adlo, and maybe Stoneskin.

Have Succor on the party before each fireball.

Your strategy for tanking snakes will probably vary, but it's pretty vital to be able to get off at least 1 heal at your start and endpoints while you're dodging divebombs, and not succumb to panic/nerves by not healing tank at all. IE, moving just before your casts finish and still having it go off. You'll know what I mean when you get there.

I would recommend Eos for the fight; I used Selene for my group's first 4 kills, but starting with Twister phase everyone is too spread out to really receive her buffs, so I found Eos to be slightly better. You can of course fairy swap at that point if you really want to, but I'd rather just have the MP saved. You shouldn't "need" Selene's slight DPS boost to clear anything before that point.

[Vrmillion]

The single most important thing for a Scholar to do in T5 is to have an adloquium up before every Death Sentence.

People are suggesting Selene, but I think that if you need Selene to meet DPS checks then you probably won't have the DPS to beat the enrage timer anyway unless you make accommodations for time elsewhere.

And usually your WHM will be busy keeping the party alive after fireballs and won't be able to heal the tank all the time, so it falls on you to keep the tank alive, which makes Embrace micro very important.

[Sinaloa]

Same game. - Play like anywhere else. - The ppl above stated that allready.

The only Thing you might want to change is to save your aetherstacks to a maximum of 6 if you can afford it. If you dont need mana don´t use them. Lustrate is even more powerfull in this encounter than in others. You can top of the tank fast after he entered a conflag at a bad time or to top him after a DS. Do not waste it for fireballs. They wont get damage for some time. Just Keep an eye open for your mana. Saving too many aetherstacks may cripple that.

[YuriRamona]

... healing synergy is important here more than ever.

As for Scholar only advice; during the second phase, you can collect both rear groups and the main tank in a single Sacred Soil, which will take the edge off Fireballs and Death Sentence. Hold onto your Lustrate stacks and waste them on nobody, but the tank, as RNG can really screw you during this fight.

It's important for you and your co-healer to know your tasks. During each phase, you need to delegate who will be healing the tank, offtank, and party. WHM is obviously superior for post-Fireball heals, so if you're paired with a SCH, you should designate specific people to heal.

If you coordinate well, your co-healer can effectively solo-heal during the Fireball/Conflag phase. You should be able to step in to Cleric Stance for 15-20 seconds after every Death Sentence (cast Lustrate, cure once. Then step out of Cleric Stance to pre-shield and overheal before the next Death Sentence). That's more than enough time for a full complement of DoTs; it's really in your interest to make this phase as short as possible due to the MP crunch on the healers and risk of death.

You should average 1.5 Lustrates per Death Sentence. It's unaffected by the Infirmity healing debuff, so it's a lifeline for surviving those post-Death Sentence attacks and Plummets. Sacred Soil is fairly MP-inefficient, but is tremendously useful for preventing bad luck due to huge one-shot Death Sentences. It's best to communicate with voice with your tank on when they are about to eat a Death Sentence without a damage-mitigating cooldown active.

I wouldn't recommend using Sacred Soil for Fireballs; if your party needs to take 3-stack Fireballs, you probably don't have the DPS needed to clear the fight anyway. It can be difficult to maintain Stoneskin on the party and have the necessary reaction time to Adloquium the party member marked for Fireball in time. (The tank and fairy will survive 3-stack Fireballs unbuffed, generally) My advice: stick with 4-stack Fireballs and put less pressure on the healers.

You can focustarget Twintania to tell when Death Sentence is incoming, but a better solution is to use FFXIV APP.

FFXIV-APP is highly recommended. Alternatively, you can ask your tank to keep time manually or use a macro with an internal timer. You will need at least 5 seconds warning to overheal the tank and put up Adloquium.

I would recommend Eos for the fight; I used Selene for my group's first 4 kills, but starting with Twister phase everyone is too spread out to really receive her buffs, so I found Eos to be slightly better. You can of course fairy swap at that point if you really want to, but I'd rather just have the MP saved. You shouldn't "need" Selene's slight DPS boost to clear anything before that point.

Eos' Fey Illumination is definitely useful for the final phase Death Sentences, which deal considerably more damage. Due to the timing, though, you'll probably only get to use it once, so I'm unsure if it's worth it. Whispering Dawn can also stand in for heals following Liquid Hell. Selene is definitely better during the first half, and you don't want to use a Swiftcast to re-summon Eos, so I don't think her benefits are worth the cast time.

[Ashira]

I wouldn't recommend using Sacred Soil for Fireballs; if your party needs to take 3-stack Fireballs, you probably don't have the DPS needed to clear the fight anyway. It can be difficult to maintain Stoneskin on the party and have the necessary reaction time to Adloquium the party member marked for Fireball in time. (The tank and fairy will survive 3-stack Fireballs unbuffed, generally) My advice: stick with 4-stack Fireballs and put less pressure on the healers.

I wouldn't recommend wasting Sacred Soil on Fireballs alone. I would however recommend using Sacred Soil to soak some of that Death Sentence damage; it just so happens that you can also soak pre and post damage from Twintania, aswel as Fireballs, all within one Sacred Soil. It will save you and the other healer a lot of heart attacks, certainly if RNG screws you with multiple crits. If you're not mitigating damage, you might aswel be a White Mage.

[Wolf_Gang]

Some tips that helped me get through t5:

• Lustrate for every single Death Sentence - You want that lustrate right after death sentence but before the oncoming plummet. Don't use Sacred Soil..at all.
• Shift+F twintania for focus target and set your Virus macro to <f>
• LogRep2 Alarms - Highly Recommended! it sounds an alarm when a certain chat enters your log. Knowing when "Twintania readies Death Sentence" happens keeps you on top. There's also FFXIV-APP with a twintania plugin
• Make sure the tank for Asclepius has Eye for and Eye after 2nd Dive Bombs.
• Pop Fey Illumination at very start of twister phase.
• Immediately cast Whispering Dawn/covenent (if its up) whenever you see someone with fireball symbol.

[Forever_Learning]

Thanks for all the help thus far.

Group is learning and we're almost on phase 3 now.

Wow, this is MUCH harder than anything before, and those first few 10 seconds are INTENSE.

The margin of error seems very small between survival and wipe. I feel such relief once those adds are dead.

Question: I downloaded FFXIV-APP, but didn't see a twintania pulgin. Just a parser one.