Looking for SCH macros, key layout, and misc advice.

[Hivernica]

I've been maining scholar since around December and I'm currently on T9 and there's a few things I can tell you.

- First, know the mechanics of the white mage and know how a white mage heals. Know what their forces and weaknesses are and try to make up for it. By that I don’t mean the players’ weaknesses, but the white mage job’s. If they’re any good they should know yours (as a scholar) too. For example, leave raid wide healing to the white mage. I’m not saying we can’t do it, but their spells are more suitable to that kind of situation. We have 2 AOE heals: succor and whispering dawn. Scholars work with shields; know the fights and when to shield a certain person or the whole raid for incoming damage. It comes with practice and experience.

- Try to time yourself to work on a 60 seconds “clock” to use your Aetherflow stacks wisely. In fights you don’t know you’d want to keep them for emergencies, and in fights you know, you’ll be able to use them for certain things. Many times a lustrate will be better than a sacred soil. I never found sacred soil to be super useful on a single target. When people are all stacked (Titan ex, T8…) it comes in handy. Using sacred soil can proc a free succor, it’s pretty cool when it happens. Only use energy drain if you have stacks left AND everyone is topped off. Don’t use it to recover mp, because it doesn’t give you enough to heal more than a lustrate would. You never want to sit on stacks when Aetherflow is off cool-down. Don’t forget to use it as soon as it comes off cool-down. It happened to me a few times. I forgot to reuse it and had no stacks in critical moments. Derp.

- Place your fairy. A moving fairy does not heal. There are often a few good spots to place her. You can experience with that. If you’re in a dungeon and place her somewhere, she’ll stay there. If you move out of her range, she withdraws and you’ll have to re-summon her again, so don’t forget to use heel too. Or you know, you can just re-summon I guess.
- Put Embrace on a key to use it separately. I also macro’ed embrace to my main heals (physick, lustrate, adloquium and leeches) but put it on the first “action” line of the macro; that means I can use Embrace first with the keybind to heal, say, target 1 and then cast a physick on target 2, healing two targets at the same time. If I don’t use embrace on its own before using physick, the fairy is going to heal the same target as me.

- Don’t macro rouse and whispering dawn together. Sometimes you’ll want to rouse your fairy without the aoe regen. Just put them close to each other on your keys just in case.
- There is no best fairy. It just depends on the situation. Progress content: play it safe with Eos. Stupid easy content (roulettes and stuff): you can use Selene on sic. Doesn’t really matter. You don’t know your co-healer: use Eos just in case. If you’re farming content and think you can trust the other healer after a few runs you can switch to Selene. Using her on obey or sic is up to you. You might want to keep her on obey to keep her cooldowns for things like dps checks and being able to control her embrace. Just never, ever use Eos on sic, always obey.

- If you’re using Eos, try to remember which attacks are dealing magical damage. For raid-wide magic damage, Fey Covenant is your friend.

- Fey illumination also affects the other healer. Try to use it when you’re both in range of Eos.

- If you command Eos to use either of her cooldowns while she is casting embrace, she won’t stop casting. She’ll finish her embrace and then begin to cast what you asked her. That’s why I have macros for her cooldowns that INTERRUPT her casts and tell her to cast what I’m asking. I don’t have access to my game right now, if you’re interested in those macros just tell me and I’ll post them.

- My summons are macroed to put Eos on obey automatically and Selene on sic. If I want Selene on obey I just click on obey, but since most of the time I’ll use her on sic, that’s what it’s macroed to. Same as above, just ask and I’ll post them.

-Your build is kinda up to you up to a certain point. It goes like this: mind (always put mind first) -> critical hit rate (adloquium’s shield DOUBLES on crit, and if your fairy crits, you have a 20% chance to get a buff that increases your casting speed for like 5 or 10 seconds, I don’t remember. Not really noticeable, but it’s there) -> either determination or piety (I’ll explain myself) -> spell speed. Determination affects how much you heal for and the amount of damage you do. It’s not as powerful as mind though. If I remember correctly, 1 point of mind equals around 4 points of determination, but don’t quote me on that. Most people say piety is garbage for scholar because if you’re playing correctly and don’t have complete idiot as a co-healer, (and don’t raise 2-3 persons in a row) you won’t need mage’s ballad or anything to get your mp back (this redirects to using Aetherflow correctly). The thing is, if you both dps (and keep all of your 5 DoTs up, meaning Bio II, Bio, Miasma, Shadowflare and Aero) and heal, you can get low on mp quickly. Piety affects the total of mp you have, but also the amount of mp you get back from Aetherflow, which can be a life saver in tight spots or when you dps and heal heavily. In the end it’s up to you, I guess.

- If you wanna dps, do it correctly. This means using Cleric stance. If you dps without cleric stance, it’s as if you did nothing. The more mind points you have, the more dps. Cleric stance switches your mind and intelligence points and gives you a damage buff. It also reduces your healing though. Lustrate, stoneskin and your fairy’s embrace are not affected by it, so use it them accordingly. Don’t bother with Miasma 2 unless it’s on multiple targets. On single target, it’s actually a dps loss. You want to use Bio II -> Miasma -> Bio (weave something in, like energy drain, virus, rouse, a potion, eye for an eye, Aetherflow…) -> Aero from white mage. Don’t bother with Blizzard II. Don’t forget about Shadowflare! Tip: you can use Ruin II to trigger your gcd and weave more stuff in. Not more than one thing per gcd though. It’s important to not let your DoTs fall off. If you’re ruin spamming and need to move, ruin II is your friend.

- You cannot use both Shadowflare and sacred soil at the same time; one cancels the other.

- Some people give summoners the priority to raise. I don’t quite agree with that. Summoners have less mp than scholars and are going to need it especially if there are tight dps checks. I prefer to give the priority to scholar, then summoner, then white mage. I guess it depends on the fight and your party composition and gear though.

- You can heal your fairy yourself and she can heal herself as well. I’m not too fond of sustain. It costs mp and is over time (it ticks 3 times before falling off). I often make my fairy use embrace on herself instead. I miss the time when it used hp instead of mp.

- For food, I like to use buttons in a blanket or black truffle risotto. Black truffle risotto is more expensive and isn’t that much better. If you’re the kind of person who wants the most out of things, feel free to spend gil on the risotto. I myself don’t care because I craft my own HQ 2 star food with a single click. I prefer to use accuracy food if I’m feeling fancy for leviathan ex or ramuh to dps. I rarely do it but thought I’d mention it. Since we’re healers our accuracy is MUCH lower, so we miss a lot on harder content. I’ll probably do a dps novus with accuracy on it just for that.

- Again, if you’re feeling fancy, you can use a mind potion while in cleric stance to boost your dps. Do it if they’re cheap or if you can make them yourself.

- Don’t forget that our versions of protect and stoneskin are weaker than a white mage’s. Our protect only gives physical protection (we have fey covenant for magical protection) and our stoneskin shields for 10% of the total hp instead of 18%, just like paladins.

- My cross class skills are as follows: protect, stoneskin, cleric stance, aero and swiftcast. Swiftcast is nice for raises, but it can save you in tight spots when you’re in need for a quick heal, or just to cast shadowflare instantly.

- Don’t underestimate Eye for an Eye and Virus. They’re awesome. There’s no use in using Eye for an Eye on someone who doesn’t get hit because it procs when the target gets hit. It cool on bosses but really cool when a tank is aoe tanking. Virus is a huge help when big hits are incoming, or when a tank has to tank two things that hit like trucks (T4 and T8 dreadnoughts). I macroed Virus and Eye for an Eye to give a warning in party chat qith a sound effect so the summoner/white mage/black mage doesn’t use it at the same time and waste theirs. As a cross-class skill Virus loses a part of its mitigation, so yours will be stronger than a black or white mage’s. The only difference with your E4E and the cross-class one is the shorter cooldown.

- A roused fairy is like a fairy on coke. I know a lot of scholars who forget about Rouse. It’s actually really useful.

- Double scholar healing is possible, it just requires a bit more communication. The big inconvenience is that your shields don’t stack with another scholar’s. You also can’t use the same fairies because their buffs will overwrites each other. The only exception is whispering dawn. So two Selene is a nono, two Eos isn’t as bad but Selen and Eos together are the best.

If there’s any stupid mistake blame my French. I know I started this post with “there’s a few things I can tell you”, but I ended up getting too…passionate.