Scholar Healing Guide

[Dijana]

Update: 17-July 2014

Hello again folks! Im doing a bit of an update here as it's been a while. This guide was originally written shortly after the launch of 2.0 when the general consensus was that WHM was better than SCH simply because so many people were trying (and failing) to play SCH just like WHM, and we've all come a long way since then. I've mained SCH since the launch of 2.0, and have since branched out to tanks and dps to get a better idea of how each role affects the others. I've kept up with the game in a casual sense but I don't consider myself a hardcore player, so I won't be attempting to give any particularly advanced advice in this guide, I'm simply going to state that this is more of a beginners guide to Scholar. Some parts may be outdated (either from lack of interest in updating or just accidental missing it), as usual feel free to share any input.



SCH vs. WHM: Advantages and Disadvantages

Both jobs are viable healers in endgame, with the exception of a few situations neither is much better than the other if played correctly.

SCH pros: Good for high movement fights, good for extended fights where MP might become an issue

WHM pros: (I do not play WHM, I am basing this off what I have seen when playing with WHM friends): Better for spike damage, good for a lot of AOE healing.

Differences between SCH and WHM playstyle: SCH excels at preventing damage with a lot of shields, WHM excels at patching people up with stronger direct heals and better aoe heals/regen.

Which do you want?: In an 8-person group, having a SCH and a WHM is ideal over having 2 of one of the jobs as the two jobs compliment each other very well. In 4 person, with some rare exceptions, it won't matter too much. In my opinion, SCH+WHM is the best combination, followed by WHM+WHM. SCH+SCH is less than ideal as it's shields don't stack, however if you find yourself in this situation each sch can use a different fairy to get both buffs at once.



Preparation: Your time as Arcanist

Arcanist is a DPS/DD class and relies on the INT stat. Pre-30, it can heal groups with physick in dungeons (though it cannot queue in DF as such), but if you know you want to go SCH you should be putting your bonus stats into MND. Pre-30, mage gear will generally have both INT and MND on it, but when you get to higher lvls, there will be a distinct difference with gear for DD mages, and gear for Healing Mages. If you have already put your points into INT, you can buy a stat reset from your Grand Company for 10,000 company seals. All of your bonus stats should go to MND if you want to main SCH. It doesn't need any PIE, if you are making use of Aetherflow and Energy Drain, you should never run out of MP.

The Fairies: She's half your Job

The fairy can have some wonky AI at times, but for the most part you can leave her to her own devices and, thanks to 2.1 changes, you don't need to micro manage so much. She will prioritize healing whoever currently has the lowest % HP, which is handy as it quite often allows you to focus on the tank while your fairy patches up anyone who gets caught in AOE. She makes up a substantial amount of your healing so you always want to have her out. She takes less aoe damage than yourself, and can be buffed with stoneskin and adloquium, so it is usually safe to place her in aoe range if necessary to be sure she reaches everyone.

***There is a bug with the AI where she will sometimes fly off and aggro. Sometimes this is caused by being in an instance where you have placed her in a spot and leaving without telling her to follow again, such as primal battles. Othertimes it seems to happen randomly in specific areas***

Eos: Eos is your healing fairy. In dungeons she is generally who you will want to use unless you are confident in your own ability to heal.

Lvl1: Embrace- Single target heal that she will cast on anyone under 70% HP. It has a decent range, but it is not as far as your own. If you are standing out of range of AOE, place her somewhere in the middle of you and your tank
Lvl1: Whispering Dawn- This is an AOE regen that she will cast on the start of a fight unless you have her set to steady. It lasts for 21 seconds, with a 60 second cooldown. If you want to control this, set her to steady, position her near the tank, and tell her to use the ability.
Lvl20: Fey Covenant- an AOE magic defense bonus
Lvl40: Fey Illumination- an AOE buff to healing magic potency. This is very useful for when you need to do a lot of healing. I am unsure if this stacks with Rouse, any input would be appreciated.

Afaik, Rouse and Fey Illumination do not affect each other (Rouse does not boost the healing % of Illumination), but they do 'stack' if the fairy uses Whispering Dawn afterwards (both boost the healing output into a hyper AoE HoT)

Selene: Selene is your buffing fairy. Like Eos, she also has a single target heal, but her other abilities are more focused on buffing the offensive power of the party over the defensive.

Lvl1: Embrace- same as Eos
Lvl1: Silent Dusk- This silences the target for 1 second. I'm unsure on the AI for this as I haven't played with it much, she does cast it automatically but not on cooldown. Any input on the AI for what will trigger her casting of this is appreciated.
Lvl20: Fey Glow- Aoe buff to Spell Speed. It has a 30 second duration but a 60 second cooldown.** See below
Lvl40: Fey Light- this works the same way as Fey Glow but is a buff to Skill Speed. ** See Below

**Fey Glow and Fey Light will overwrite one another. Since 2.1 Selene will now use them both on cooldown, and won't automatically overwrite the other, which means you no longer have to micro manage these skills.

Which fairy should you use?
For the most part, I prefer Selene at high levels. Her speed buffs are substantial and Eos's healing abilities are often overkill for what you need, as well as the fact that if you are doing speedruns in dungeons such as WP or AK, her regen ability can cause mobs to aggro her on the pull. If you are just starting out, use Eos until you are confident in your abilities. If you are very well geared or synced down, you can get away with using Selene just fine. However, in pre-30 dungeons, Eos can pretty much solo heal the entire group, only occasionally would you need to heal in bosses, allowing you to be free to DPS.

I have had no problems using Selene even in Coil, and the only times I use Eos is in Crystal Tower. Selene is fine for here as well, but unfortunately, I've had many runs where the other healer is afking, or dpsing and only on healer for the faster queue, causing me to have to be single healing the whole party.

Do I need to micromanage my fairy?
I've always maintained that for the most part, no, you can just let your fairy buff and heal as she pleases. I recommend that if you're starting out, you do just that and don't try to micromanage as you're lvling up, for starters it's pretty unnecessary and secondly, it can make the job much more confusing than it needs to be. It isnt until much harder endgame or when you are solo healing 8-man content that you really need to bother with it. In these situations, you want to set your fairy to only cast embrace so that you can control her buffs when you need them. I've managed to solo heal HM and EX primals with minimal micro managing, but that was mostly laziness on my part (and perhaps some overconfidence), it is better in some of these more stressful fights to have a tight control on what she is doing. I'll share a couple of my macros below.


Gear and Stats

FFXIV's gearing and stats are fairly linear. As SCH, your first priority should be MND, you want as much as you can get. After that, you want crit for the chance of your adloquium and succors critting for much higher shields. Update 17/7/14: At the time of writing this, crit was generally accepted as second best. Since I have terrible luck with drops I tend to take whatever I can get with the highest ilvl usually, so if you want up-to-date BiS gear advice, it's not here.



LEVEL 30: You've just unlocked SCH

When you first unlock SCH, you will only have 2 native healing abilities- Physick and Adloquium. Adloquium costs nearly 3x as much MP to cast, so it isn't really ideal to spam it during fights. The best time to use Adloquium is before a pull, to cast a shield on your tank, and to top the tank off during battle, as overhealing with Adloquium doesn't matter. The best thing about Adloquium is if you crit on it, it will double the shield's potency. At this lvl, healing can and likely will be more difficult than as a WHM. You may want to take the time to experiment with your fairy before diving into a dungeon.


LEVEL 35: Succor

You finally get an AOE heal. It isn't as strong as Medica, but it gives everyone a shield just like with adloquium, only weaker. If you know there is going to be AOE damage coming up, you can cast it to give everyone a shield, even if nobody is hurt yet.


LEVEL 40: Leeches

This is the same as WHM's Esuna, but much later. Up until now you've been unable to remove status effects, and it is very useful. Always keep an eye out on your party members, including your fairy, to remove any status effects.


LEVEL 45: Sacred Soil

Sacred Soil costs one aetherflow charge. This is a 10% damage reduction on anyone standing inside of it. It is incredibly useful, and you should use it on cooldown on your tank, or when you know there's going to be AOE coming. It has a 30 second cooldown and 15 second duration, so you can get 2 out of each Aetherflow. Sometimes when you use Sacred Soil, your next succor will be free for a short time, so it's a good opportunity to get a free shield on everyone.


LEVEL 50: Lustrate

Lustrate costs one aetherflow charge. It is an INSTANT heal for 25% of the target's max HP. It is incredibly useful if used correctly- due to the fact it does a % heal rather than a fixed amount, it's far more beneficial to use it on the tank over a mage or DD, generally a single physick will cure for more on them. However, if someone is a sliver away from dying, it can prove a lifesaver if the cast time on physick would be too long to save them. You should use it when the tank is under 50% HP.



Arcanist Abilities: You still need some of them!

You're a healer now, it's not your job to be DDing. Some of the abilities are still very useful though. I'll go through in what I feel to be an order of importance.

Aetherflow: At lvl 50, you will have a maximum of 3 charges every time you use it, so you should use all the charges up before you use Aetherflow again. This can be Sacred Soil, Lustrate, or if these aren't needed, use the remaining on Energy Drain before using Aetherflow again. When the cooldown on aetherflow is nearly up, I like to expend the rest of my charges on energy drain or sacred soil so I can immediately use it again, this way I never run out of MP. If I have less than 3 charges between pulls, I'll use it then to get 3 back as well. Aetherflow should ALMOST always be on cooldown to keep your MP as high as possible, of course use your best judgement on when you want to sit on your CD or not.

Rouse: Rouse is a 20second duration, 90 second (60 seconds at lvl 50) cooldown to your fairy's healing potency. You should use it either on cooldown or when there is a lot of damage incoming, in whatever situation you feel more appropriate.

Eye for an Eye: It isn't really game changing, but it's nice to give your tank a chance at some extra damage during boss fights.

DoTs: Damage over Time. Thanks to sch's shields and the fairy, you're usually plenty capable of keeping your DoTs up even while healing. Idealy you should cast stoneskin, adloquium, and sacred soil over the tank at the start of a fight, then use your DoTs since between those buffs, the tank shouldn't be taking any damage for at least a few seconds.

Resurrection: Obviously important when someone dies. You can cast it during battle, preferably only if you have Swiftcast crossclassed, or if your fairy is capable of healing while you are casting.



Cross Class Skill: Some a more useful than others

At level 50, you can have a total of 5 skills equipped from other classes. SCH can cross class skills from CNJ and THM. In order of importance, I'll list what I feel you should have

Protect: This is a bread and butter spell, if you are a healer, you should equip it. It comes from CNJ at lvl 8, so it isn't hard to get.

Swiftcast: THM lvl 26 gets you swiftcast. This is an incredibly useful, and in some situations, essential ability to have. It allows you to cast your next spell with no cast time- it's best used for mid battle raises and to resummon your fairy if she dies mid fight. Unless you have another healer to cover you, you probably don't want to try casting resurrection mid battle without this up.

Stoneskin: CNJ lvl 34. You can make do without this ability, particularly if you have a WHM in your group, but it is a very useful ability to have. It's like a stronger version of adloquium's shield, and lasts for 30 minutes. Cast this on everyone before fights if you get the chance, that way it can soak up a lot of stray aggro or aoe damage on any dps. On your way to getting this skill, you can get a CNJ specific quest for the unicorn mount.

Cleric's stance: CNJ lvl 6. Previously, I didn't feel this worth it, until someone in this thread brought it up. Using cleric's stance will make your dot's comparable to a SMN, and contribute some nice damage. I like to toggle it on and off to throw out my dot's, as the shields and fairy can handle you not healing in that time. So long as your fairy was already summoned before you use it, she won't be affected by the stat change. Quite often I find myself with it on more often than off, but remember, you're a healer first and foremost, so if you have to heal, dont prioritize your dps over keeping other people healthy and alive.

For the last slot, I would suggest either aero (CNJ) or Blizzard II (THM). I feel aero is the better choice as another dot, but blizzard II finally gives you an aoe damaging spell. The problem with Blizzard II, however, is that it is not a targetted spell, meaning you have to be in the middle of mobs, and unlike THM you wont restore MP while using it. It does bind what it hits though, so if you're soloing, or your tank isnt good at holding aggro, it can give you time to run away if your heals pull aggro.


Endgame Play: What should you be doing? (Potentially out of date- this applies to the easier endgame aka lvl 50 dungeons, HM primals, etc)

There is never really a rotation for a healer in a game, as what you need to do will depend on the situation and what is happening that instant. I'll try to give a rundown of the general idea.

Before each pull, make sure you have protect and stoneskin on everyone, and 3 aetherflow charges. Cast Succor if you like to give everyone a shield, followed by adloquium on the tank (you might ask the tank to wait an extra moment each pull so you dont cast as they aggro, otherwise everything will run at you, but it's good to learn the timing so that you can cast your buffs just as one mob dies, with your tank ready for the next pull). Once your tank is in place, put Sacred Soil down and position your fairy nearby if necessary (usually you can let your fairy follow you). Use cleric stance and put your dot's on the current target and bane to spread them if necessary. Use physick to heal, and adloquium to top them off above 80% hp. During any healing downtime (right after you've cast adloquium/succor) recast your dot's that you want and Eye for an Eye. Unless there's sustained aoe damage, you can usually focus your own healing on the tank and let your fairy heal the DD's. You should always save at least one Aetherflow charge incase you need an emergency Lustrate, and use Aetherflow again as soon as you run out of charges even if you don't need the MP. If you get low on MP and aetherflow is still on cooldown, you can use Energy Drain once or twice.

If you have a WHM in your group, you should let them cast Medica after AoE, and use one Succor to give everyone a shield then focus your own healing on the tank again while WHM patches everyone up with aoe heals, along with the fairy's inevitable help on lowest HP person.

In 8 person groups, find out if your other healer has swiftcast. If only one of you does, they should be first priority to raise people.

If you know there is high aoe damage at specific points in the fight (such as Titan jumping up, King Mog after he's summoned) use sacred soil and succor when everyone is gathered to minimize the damage done


Macros (NEW)
I don't use a lot of macros, though I've been making them more often lately. There are two I really enjoy having when I am solo healing and having to micro manage my fairy

/pac "Place" <me>
/wait 1
/ac "Rouse" <me>
/pac "Fey Illumination" <me>
/wait 1
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>
/wait 1
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>
/wait 1
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>
/wait 1
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>
/wait 1
/pac "Heel" <me>

I've copied this one straight off reddit that I found some time ago. I dont actually keep the whispering dawn lines in my version because of my latency, it quite often glitches out for me and sets off the 60 second cooldown without using the ability, so I split it into 2 macros.

/micon "Physick"
/ac "Physick <t>
/pac "Embrace" <f>

This is my favourite macro. Basically, I set the tank as my focus target (which I also have a macro for), and when I cast physick on someone, the fairy casts embrace on the focus- in this case the tank (or offtank). This isn't my default physick, I use this one when I'm forced to heal someone else for a bit (I usually let the fairy heal the dps) or in situations where Im split healing 2 tanks at once, such as solo garuda EX, or Levi EX when you want to avoid healing the offtank yourself to avoid getting stacks.

I have a suggestion for your macro section. I have found it very helpful to create macros for all my enemy targeting abilities (attacks, virus, bane, etc) to do target or target's target. That way, you can keep the tank targeted and have your attacks hit whoever he is hitting without having to switch targets, and you can also target enemies normally. It's a great setup for beginners.

Example:
/macroicon "Ruin"
/ac "Ruin" <t>
/ac "Ruin" <tt>

Unfortunately, similar macros do not work as intended for healing. If you are on console like me, you gotta target your healing the old fashioned way. For PC, there are mouse over macros that sound very useful.

I personally prefer to have a separate macro for embrace, but keying embrace to everything is fairly popular. If you do it, know that it will not queue up embrace. If the 3 second cool down is not up, then embrace will not go off. To create a ghetto way of queuing, I put a couple more casts with 1 second waits on my embrace macro, so that part of the macro would look like:

/pac "Embrace"
/wait
/pac "Embrace"
/wait
/pac "Embrace"

Please feel free to share your own macros and I'll include them here.


Player-vs-Player

Coming soon! I am having a lot of fun as SCH in frontlines and I can tell you its a very powerful job.


Final Thoughts
Scholar is a unique, fun job to play as that is also rather versatile, so long as you keep in mind it's differences with White Mage. It is a healing class, but is capable of doing decent dps as well.


Bonus Notes

This is a section for stuff I can't really think where to fit anywhere else, and for any notes/tips others want to throw in.

* Between Adloquium and Stoneskin, your tank can potentially take no damage if you alternate them. Of course, this is more taxing on MP so there are only specific times this is worth it. Trash that doesnt do a lot of damage is a good time, as it will allow you to spend most of your time DPSing and not have to worry about healing your tank. On the other end of the spectrum, there is the enrage strat in T2 coil, which in my groups has been one tank and 3 healers- 2 whms have spammed cures, while me as sch has constantly alternated stoneskin and adlo, being that we dont have a second tank for tank swaps. Of course, you also need a bard for this, and really have to be on the ball with aetherflow and energy drain, otherwise you will run out of MP.

That's it for now. If anyone has any information to add, or anything they want added to this, please say so. Maybe I will add a portion for information on specific fights.

[kro]

I would drop Surecast in favor of Cleric Stance and Aero. If you fully spec MND, all of that goes to INT with Cleric Stance and your DoTs will pretty much be on par with a Summoner. Energy Drain also gets a nice damage boost that allows you to recover more MP and put out a good chunk of burst.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the fairy suffers any penalty to healing potency while you are under Cleric Stance. So if the fairy is enough to keep people alive for ~10 seconds, spending some time to help DD with Cleric Stance > BioII/Miasma/Bio > Bane > Shadow Flare can speed up dungeon runs by quite a bit.

[Dijana]

I would drop Surecast in favor of Cleric Stance and Aero. If you fully spec MND, all of that goes to INT with Cleric Stance and your DoTs will pretty much be on par with a Summoner. Energy Drain also gets a nice damage boost that allows you to recover more MP and put out a good chunk of burst.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the fairy suffers any penalty to healing potency while you are under Cleric Stance. So if the fairy is enough to keep people alive for ~10 seconds, spending some time to help DD with Cleric Stance > BioII/Miasma/Bio > Bane > Shadow Flare can speed up dungeon runs by quite a bit.

Good points, I'll add this in later.

I believe the fairy's stats depend on your's when you summon her, so if she's already out and you use cleric stance her potency won't suffer. At least that's what I've heard, I haven't tested that much

[Vhayne]

I believe the fairy's stats depend on your's when you summon her, so if she's already out and you use cleric stance her potency won't suffer. At least that's what I've heard, I haven't tested that much

This is correct. Pet stats are 'generated' upon summoning and won't be affected afterwards by your own (buffed or debuffed).

Nice guide Dijana, very informative.

Afaik, Rouse and Fey Illumination do not affect each other (Rouse does not boost the healing % of Illumination), but they do 'stack' if the fairy uses Whispering Dawn afterwards (both boost the healing output into a hyper AoE HoT)

Quick question to the other Scholars out there though. I have noticed that my Fairy heals more and more consistently of I 'place' her instead of having her follow me. Anyone else notice something similar, or am I just imagining things?

[Dijana]

This is correct. Pet stats are 'generated' upon summoning and won't be affected afterwards by your own (buffed or debuffed).

Nice guide Dijana, very informative.

Afaik, Rouse and Fey Illumination do not affect each other (Rouse does not boost the healing % of Illumination), but they do 'stack' if the fairy uses Whispering Dawn afterwards (both boost the healing output into a hyper AoE HoT)

Quick question to the other Scholars out there though. I have noticed that my Fairy heals more and more consistently of I 'place' her instead of having her follow me. Anyone else notice something similar, or am I just imagining things?

Thanks, I'll add this in

[sharazisspecial]

Switch to whm for coil. They outclass sch in high damage taken situations due to their much higher numbers and reliable heals.

Your heals as sch lack regeneration effects which means they have alot less hate. So use them more.
Physick is also very spammable. So spam it .
Spamming Adlo is a bad idea. It is a better idea to use physick>adlo>physick>adlo in high tank damage situation to prevent your shield from being wasted and thus your mana. Otherwise if you can get by on physick spam do so because Adlo will eat threw your mana.
Keybind your embrace spell. Press it before each heal and hopefully it will cause your fairy to heal the target as you do (unreliable atm due to several factors such as pet gcd being longer then yours, pet ai auto-healing lower hp members/you, not being to control while casting )
e.g press embrace >physick>press embrace>physick>press embrace>physick>press embrace>physick.
Lustrate is a god send save your aetherflows for it.
The faerie embrace does not benefit from maim and mend (bug most likely) so its a lower heal then adlo by 33% it potency is more like 250. Otherwise it scales with your gear.
You should preemptively cast succor before impending aoe damage.

[Will01]

Thanks for this, i've never healed before in a game so i'm green as they come, I'll take all the help I can get, i'm finding it tough going at mo tbh.

Do you guys keep adlo on the tank at all times or only when you want to apply dot's or perhaps heal a DD for a while?

[sharazisspecial]

Thanks for this, i've never healed before in a game so i'm green as they come, I'll take all the help I can get, i'm finding it tough going at mo tbh.

Do you guys keep adlo on the tank at all times or only when you want to apply dot's or perhaps heal a DD for a while?

adlo is very mana costly compared to physick. I would use in situations where need a little time to dot or heal. Or in situation where healing output is the limiting factor such as coil/titan. Also it is good for casting on other healer if they are getting pounded on because the shield will help prevent them being interupted. Enabling them to get another cast off.

[HerpnDerpidus]

i just want the pet to not break out of steady when i tell her to cast embrace, and also i want to be able to actualy hit obey on a target (friendly target) and make her spam embrace anytime that specific target is no longer at 100% hp, that is all i want in terms of fairy control

[Vhayne]

If the tank is taking excessive damage due to adds or not avoiding a heavy boss hit, i'll alternate Adloquium - Physick - Adlo - Physick to bring him up again. But this is rare and not always necessary. Most of the time I'll pop Adlo and spam embrace to let the fairy top him up again, throwing in another Physick if needed. For big AoEs (like Titan), I try to pre-cast Succor to take the brunt of the initial hit, put Adlo on tank and then top everyone off asap, again using Embrace where/when possible. If I notice the entire party is losing health again, I'll throw another Succor on everyone.

For standard dungeon trash mobs, Physick and Embrace suffices nicely, rarely do I need to even cast Adlo or Succor (unless we get a bunch of unforeseen adds or a pull goes bad). It's a matter of reading the encounter and putting up shields to prevent the damage from happening in the first place. Or to create a bit of breathing room when health bars start dropping too fast for your own comfort. Imho.