WHM or SCH - Which is easier for a newbie?

[Estellios]

WHM is easier since it's more straightforward. Your just worry about MP and Enmity which are mechanics that carry over from other games so they are easier to understand. SCH has to worry about Aetherflow stacks, pet control, and pet position. The fairies are probably easier to control than the attacking pets since you don't have to worry about them attacking wrong targets and junk.

As far as pet settings go there are two conflicting pairs of commands: Sic vs. Obey and Guard vs. Steady.

Sic and Obey determine what actions your pet will take in battle. With Sic they will use most skills immediately when they get off cooldown or when they deem them "appropriate". In Obey, they will use their regular auto-attack skills (or the basic heal in the Fairies' case) but will not use any other skills until you tell them to. Ideally it is important to practice Obey as soon as possible as many pet skills are much stronger and much less problematic when you use them at specific times.

To give an example, Emerald Carbuncle (and later Garuda-Egi) will be very annoying to melee DPS and tanks when not under Obey because it will regularly do its knockback move if it is near enemies. Also, at higher levels they will get a skill that will extend the duration of most of your DoT spells. Obviously it's way more beneficial to do this after all your DoTs are applied, but they will use it immediately after you put just one DoT on severely hurting your potential damage.

As far as fairies go, if not under obey Eos will blow Whispering Dawn, her AOE regen spell, when someone takes even a tiny amount of damage. Since this tends to happen right at the start of a pull she will get large amounts of hate from this and generally will make pulls a pain in the ass because of it. If you control her manually with Obey, not only will you be able to use it when it is necessary, you can also buff it up with Rouse and Eos's healing buff to turn whispering dawn into a very powerful AoE regen which can't happen if she uses it whenever she feels like it.


Guard vs. Steady just determines when your pet will initiate combat, and I believe is only applicable to attacking pets. With Guard they will attack enemies if you get aggro, whereas with Steady they will wait for you to command them to take an action before attacking something. They both have their uses but you should be fine having them in Guard pretty much all the time.