Returning Scholar - What did I miss?Follow

Hello fellow Scholars!

Once again, Vana'diel seems to have lured me back - the fact I have a computer capable of playing it again does help :) So again, I'm back playing my favourite job, Scholar. However the last time I left was right after Kaustra and Embrava were added into the game, so I suspect I've missed a bit.

So what have I missed over the last 8 months or so? Did Klimaform become usable by other jobs once the level cap went to 95+? Has the fact our helix spells now become usable at a lower level (and therefore available to a sub job) made us redundant? Did the Tupsimati ever become worth getting over a Magian Staff (and did SE ever reduce the 30k Alexandrite requirement?)

If you happen to be on Asura and see me in game, please say hi, I'll probably be the one casting random spells for a few days whilst I get all my macros set up again - coming from a background in computers, one of the biggest things I always liked about Scholar was 'programming' the job - i.e., getting all sorts of macro combinations set up to handle gear swaps, arts switching, stratagem usage, etc. I took a lot of inspiration from Kaeko both in terms of setup and in terms of what the job was capable of.

Good to be back :)

-- Dru

I think the job forums in general are less active these days, certain job forums more-so than others.

I don't play much of the larger scale events, but from what I've read, SCH has a similar niche to what SMN has had in the past: awesome 2 hour for specific events. SE also buffed healing for jobs that have native healing skill, but I don't know if that has changed SCH's role much.

I have personally enjoyed the carnage that can be wrought with Kaustra. Having duo'ed Apollyon NW in the past when the level cap was still 75, I find it amazing how quickly I can kill Kaiser Behemoth as SCH thanks to Kaustra.

No, we really didn't. C rank skill in staff says otherwise, and Shattersoul while strong isn't going to outparse anyone other than a weak melee. Spells, even with Alacrity, don't deal enough DPS to match melee fighters either. You might feel omnipotent with your awesome 378 staff skill (394 w/ merits) but you're not fooling anyone into believing you're a 'heavy' DD. Proper melee fighters get 417 basic weapon skill to 433 if merited, raising their attack power and accuracy. Couple that with melee atmas or atmacites and your damage contributions will be shrugged off like a drop in the ocean.


Try this out. Blizzard V. That is all. If you're getting XP in Abyssea, which is where the majority of people do, you can 1-shot most targets with a single spell. The need to self SC with staff or otherwise is pointless. Also, using Stone 1 creates a weak skillchain, since SC damage is based on the last spell. Stone IV can be cast without the need for alacrity and still chain. I realise you're trying to get most of the damage on your staff, but considering that involves building TP in the first place or ticking it up with Embrava / Adloquium (the former of which needing you to switch Arts) it's not really a strong option for 'quick' kills.


Helix spells can be very powerful in the right circumstances, XP is rarely one of them though. The problem is they only hit for around 500 damage initially, with the majority of their damage being a slow DoT. This adds up wonderfully on NMs, but unless you're slowing your kills to maximise helix tics, it's a wasted tactic to use it on XP targets. It's main use outside of NMs is for self-skillchaining, which can be a cheaper alternative to using Blizzard V if MP concerns are an issue.

We have a lot of potential, and Kimjongil isn't completely wrong in saying we can deal moderate damage with Staff and Shattersoul (only when maxed on merits, mind you). Our nuke damage can actually exceed that of your average BLM with Ebullience and we can heal party members considerbly well with a mixture of Regens and Cure IVs.

The only caveat to all of this is that the majority of players will prefer to recruit BLM for nuking roles, WHM for healing roles, and obviously melee for DPS. Embrava is the one spell we have which makes us useful in the eyes of the masses, so don't be too surprised if you're invited solely for your 2 hour.

If you can do the same amount of damage outside Abyssea that you do inside of Abyssea, then there is something horribly, horribly wrong with your atma setup.

They commented that Embrava and the more potent nuking abilities are what's changed since he was gone because Scholar melee is generally inferior to their nuking abilities unless it happens to be a mob that is highly resistant to magic damage.



Actually it'd be very easy to break the skillchain, and if a melee were to weaponskill in between, it would still break it. If someone used a weaponskill after an Immanenced Luminohelix, it'd be no different than if someone used a weaponskill right after I used something like Double Thrust to open Distortion. You have the opening act and the closing act of the skillchain, and no matter what, if someone performs a weaponskill in between the opening and closing act, barring some that have no properties such as Spirits Within, it's going to disrupt the skillchain you're trying to make. This is how skillchains have always worked since they were first added, and an Immanenced spell to open doesn't have any unique properties to ignore that effect.

You'd be better off using your stratagems to prepare for a quick Magic Burst if you see one coming up, because the two stratagems you used for Immanence could have easily been used for Alacrity and Ebullience so you could pop off a quick casting Tier V nuke to magic burst off a skillchain that the melees are going to be using, and do far more damage than your self-made skillchain would.



If the only "mage" Atma you're using inside Abyssea is Minikin Monstrosity, then that explains a good deal as to why you don't find your nukes that high damage wise. Throwing legitimately strong nuking atmas on like Beyond, Ultimate, or Hell's Guardian will see your nuking power skyrocket.



The stun off Weapon Bash doesn't necessarily have a longer duration on it than the normal cast spell, since both can be cut down due to partial resists. Weapon Bash is one you can rely on as being another stun if Stun is down or if there's a Magic Barrier up, but you shouldn't rely on it to always last longer than the spell's duration. As for Absorb-TP, that's only potentially reliable if the mob is under 25%, because it is well known that if their HP is above 25%, they may hold on to their TP for long periods of time (well above 100 TP), so absorbing 80 TP while the mob has 210 TP will still leave it perfectly capable of performing a TP move. Below 25% they'll use TP as soon as they get 100 TP, which is where something like that might be useful, but above 25% it shouldn't be used with the intent of keeping the mob from using a TP move.

I'd also say that Blue Mage is still a far more reliable stunner than Sch/Drk would be, as they have a number of very short casting and recast stuns (Head Butt and Sudden Lunge just to name a few) and Sudden Lunge has, when unresisted, arguably the longest duration stun in the game available to players. Lastly, unlike with your combo, you don't need a particular subjob for Blue Mage to have those options available.



While I can believe 300 or so, I find 2k to be a rather unbelievable amount on any normal mob. Maybe on a mob that takes extra damage on top of your existing magic burst, gear bonuses, etc, but on a normal mob, given Drain's base damage, I find that a rather hard number to believe, since that's roughly a 400% increase from the base damage value at best.



You gain Refresh, Haste, Phalanx, Enspells, and Bar-spells which, when coupled with as high Enhancing as Scholar can get, their own native buff spells, and the fact that they can Accession most of them, makes you arguably the most efficient buffers in the game. Sure there are things like Refresh II that Scholar doesn't get, but as a whole you're still gaining so much from /Rdm just by spells alone that it's hard to recommend anything else. Then you also have Fast Cast II, which is a 15% reduction to the cast time of all your spells, and that stacks with the cast time reduction for spells with the appropriate Arts up as well as Alacrity/Celerity.



Monks should be reaching the enmity cap fast enough on their own to where they wouldn't need you to toss out a skillchain to build up that much hate. Although, I assume given that you mentioned them closing Darkness, that they're using Asuran Fists, which sadly says a bit about the Monks you're dealing with. A good Mnk inside Abyssea is going to be using either Victory Smite or Ascetic's Fury, and outside, if they don't have Victory Smite, they're going to want to have Shijin Spiral (if they're legitimately trying to be the main DD/tank). A Mnk that only has Asuran Fists and is trying to do any real sort of DD/tanking outside of Abyssea is going to have a hard time against War, Drk, Drg, Sam, and just about every other heavy hitting DDer out there nowadays.

Lastly, a good Sch, just like a good Blm, should be swapping staves on a regular basis depending on what spells they're casting. You're losing out on a lot of damage in your nukes if you're not casting in the proper elemental stave (Magian or otherwise) and if you're doing any curing you should be swapping into a Cure Potency staff routinely from there. A good Scholar should be rotating through spells at a fast enough rate that they wouldn't be able to build TP through Occult Acumen/Adloquium/etc to even get off a weaponskill, let alone do it frequently enough to contribute regularly to skillchains. Black Mage gets Occult Acumen, but you don't see them building up their TP and then going in to weaponskill. Why? Because a good Black Mage will be alternating staves often enough to where they couldn't get enough TP to weaponskill, which is the exact same way it should be with a good Scholar.

There's a reason that Scholars play more towards the style of Red Mages and Black Mages rather than melee. It's just more efficient as a whole to play that way than it is to be up there, attacking with weaponskills and the like. Just because you may have some traits that suggest you can play a certain way doesn't make it the best way to do it, and given how people play this game, they use jobs the best way that those jobs allow.

Dear lord, please do, we could use some comedy up ins~