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The way of the Scholar. An Extensive guide on Healers.

By Video Games of Insomnia on Phoenix.

This guide will be mainly touching on the Scholar class, while also incorporating information as to how Scholar synergizes with other Healers, and how to become a better Healer overall.

I apologize for any typos made in this guide. English isn’t my native language.

The goal of this guide is as following.

1. Explain how Scholar works in it’s basic solo play habitat and in group synergy.
2. How to optimize Healing between two Healers for maximum uptime and raid DPS.
3. How Scholar’s buffs and debuffs work and how pets work in general.
4. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Scholars compared to White Mage and Astrologian.
5. How to become a GREAT Scholar instead of a GOOD Scholar.

This guide is going to be long. Very long. A table of contents will be listed below so that you can easily find what you’re looking for. I will also make some TL;DR sections in the guide for a quick oversight of a section.

If you have any questions, you can either ask me on Discord, Ingame or send me a message over Reddit. I will always respond to Discord messages and ingame messages. Suggestions are also always welcome.

Discord: @DickTornado#6317

Reddit: /u/Razgri

Ingame: Video Games – Phoenix Server.

Twitch: www.twitch.tv/videosch

Thank you for your time, and i hope you enjoy this guide.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Title Page 1

Table of Contents 2

What does a scholar do?           3

Why should i play Scholar instead of the other Healers? 5

Pros and Cons compared to the other Healers. 6

Fairies and how to deal with them. 9

Healers and DPS. 16

1. How do DoT’s work? 16
2. The rotation and oGCD weaving 18
3. DPS skills and utility. 21

Scholars and Healing 29

1. How do i heal as a Scholar? 29
2. Healing skills and Utility. 31

Mana management and how Mana recovery works. 37

Mana regeneration 37

Role Skills 39

Credits 44

Changelog 45

Previous Versions 45

Last updated on 23-5-2018, (Patch 4.3)

What does a Scholar do?

A Scholar heals. That’s it right? They’re a Healer after all.  

WRONG.

I will mention Healer DPS a lot in this guide and why it’s vital to deal damage as a Healer.

Scholars and Healers in general do have the role of Healing and keeping the party alive. But this isn’t everything they do. Healers also have the opportunity to buff allies and debuff enemies. Using these skills is vital in becoming a GOOD player. A GREAT  player however, will use these skills at key times to maximize their effectiveness and in turn increase the damage output of the group while reducing incoming damage, allowing them to use more of their GCDs to dish out damage.

Every GCD you spend Healing is a GCD you lose DPSing, which may seem insignificant at first, but can affect your DPS greatly over the course of a long fight. Most heals will also eat a considerable amount of MP. Learning how to heal effectively will save you quite some mana over the span of a fight. This guide will teach you all the ins and outs of Scholar and their skills and how to use these skills effectively.

Once you know the basics of these skills and how to use them effectively, you can start combining them with utilities from other classes. A good example of this would be having a caster use Addle on the boss, while you have Fey Covenant up to minimize the damage taken by the group. Of course, this can also lead into Overkill mitigation which i’ll touch on at a later point in this guide. Mitigation is good, as long as you don’t go overboard with it. You should see your mitigation skills as tank cooldowns, except for the whole party. If you use all your cooldowns for one big raid hit and have nothing for the next big raid hit then you’re essentially shafted. Planning your cooldowns around a raid fight with teammates is vital for high level play and early progression.

Last but not least. ALWAYS KEEP CASTING. A lost GCD is a waste. You could’ve done something in that timeframe. This is arguably even worse than ineffective Healing because you straight up do nothing and might aswell not exist for that GCD. Thankfully, your fairy is there to pick up the slack for you.

The only time where you can get away with not casting if there is extensive downtime in a fight, such as A12 Savage when Alexander decides to use his ultimate move. If you can hit the boss and nobody needs to be healed, then you should hit the boss. While a Scholar, or any Healer in that regard does not do as much damage as DPS players or Tank players, they’re still vital in helping to skip phases.

A good example for this would be A11 Savage. The Lapis Lazuli phase can be skipped entirely provided you have good raid DPS, which requires everyone to pull their weight including the Healers. Balancing your Healing and damage output is where the true skill of a Healer lies and separates the BAD players from the GOOD players.

To recap this in a TL;DR version.

1. Excessive and Inefficient Healing kills your damage over time. You should always attempt to heal raid damage with HoT’s and oGCD Healing. Inefficient Healing also kills your mana and might get you in trouble later down the road.
2. Mitigation is good, but too much mitigation leads into overkill and potentially not having mitigation for the next raid wide damage going out. Always try to plan your mitigation with the group (Caster Addle/Apocatastasis, Tank Reprisal, Ranged Palisade)
3. ALWAYS KEEP CASTING. I can’t stress this enough. A lost cast is a wasted cast. You might aswell not be present in the fight if you’re not casting. In addition, good Healer DPS contributes to phase skips, which leads to less mechanics overall and allowing you to have an easier time through the content.

Why should i play Scholar instead of the other Healers?

Scholar provides an unique playstyle when it comes to Healing. Not only do you have your own heals, but you also get your very own pocket fairy. The fairy is Scholar’s strongest tool by far and is greatly underappreciated by the more casual playerbase. A BAD Scholar will leave their fairy on sic and lets her do her thing independently of the Scholar. A GOOD Scholar will use the fairy as an extension of their own toolkit, complementing some of the glaring weaknesses Scholars have compared to the other Healers without their fairy.

Scholar has two pets to choose from. Eos and Selene. Both of the fairies do vastly different things, and have their own uses.

Eos is a Healer type fairy that mainly focuses on supplementing the Scholar’s AoE Healing and AoE raid mitigation. While also providing a 10% Heal up boost for the entire party with one of her skills.

Selene is a Buffer/Cleansing type of fairy that buffs allies and removes debuffs, ontop of silencing the enemy with one of her skills. (Who am i kidding, that skill is unreliable and almost never gets used.)

Both of the fairies also have an ability called Embrace. This skill acts as their main heal which they will use on ANY Allied target that is below 80% HP. The skill has a potency of 250 and can be seen as a passive regen of some sorts. This makes Scholar a versatile Healer that can utilize the fairies passive heal while they put out more DPS. In turn, the other Healer will also benefit from this since both of you will have to heal less, indirectly this leads to an increase in Healer DPS. Try Healing a party using an Astrologian and a White mage, and then replace one of those Healers with a Scholar. You will notice the difference that one of the fairies will make.

If you like a flexible Healer that is capable of having a lot of DPS uptime while still being able to heal, then you should definitely give Scholar a shot. If you however do not like pet management, then try one of the other Healers.

Pros and Cons compared to other Healers.

Of course, while Scholar excels in some parts of Healing, they also lack in some ways when compared to a White Mage or an Astrologian. Below you’ll find a quick rundown of each Healer’s strengths and weaknesses.

Scholar Pros and Cons:

Scholars are capable of having a higher DPS uptime than other Healers thanks to their fairy. This makes them highly flexible when it comes to both Healing and DPS. They have a glaring issue with sustained Healing once they expended their cooldowns though. They also provide reliable utility to the group, making them a good pick for progression. They also have the best AoE mitigation out of all the Healers, though this comes on a 120 second cooldown.

Pros:

1. Ability to both heal and DPS at the same time thanks to the fairy.
2. Good on demand burst Healing thanks to Lustrate, Embrace Excogitation and Indomitability.
3. Reliably capable of providing utility to a group thanks to their fairies and skills.
4. Decent on demand burst at the cost of Aetherflow stacks.
5. Good, reliable MP recovery thanks to Aetherflow and Energy Drain
6. More mobile than the other healers thanks to Miasma 2 and Ruin 2
7. The most versatile class when compared to AST and WHM

Cons:

1. With a dead fairy, you’re a gimped version of the other Healers.
2. Sustained AoE Healing is A LOT weaker once your cooldowns are expended.
3. Extremely expensive MP costs compared to other classes when it comes to healing.
4. Sustained AoE DPS is weaker than the other healers.

White Mage Pros and Cons:

White Mages excel at both dealing damage and Healing at the same time. They have an incredibly high raw Healing output and the potency on Stone IV puts the other Healers to shame. On top of that, they’re also the king of AoE with Thin Air and Holy spam.Their glaring weakness compared to both Scholar and Astrologian is that they do not provide nearly as much party utility compared to the other two Healers.

Pros:

1. Highest DPS by far out of any of the Healers thanks to Stone IV
2. Highest Healing output out of any of the Healers thanks to Medica 2 and Cure 3.
3. Amazing AoE potential thanks to Thin Air, Aero 3, Holy and Assize.
4. By far the cheapest HoT on demand.
5. Thin Air provides great MP conservation if paired with expensive heals
6. Has benediction, which is the best ‘’Oh shit’’ Healing button in the game or can be used as an extremely powerful heal.

Cons:

1. White Mage provides no Offensive buffs to the party.
2. White Mage provides no Active mitigation to the party, only single target mitigation.
3. The Lily mechanic does not bring anything special for White Mage.
4. Did i mention White Mages bring no utility to the group?

Astrologian Pros and Cons.

Astrologian is the jack of all trades when it comes to Healers. Thanks to their sect mechanic they are capable of either shielding the party like a Scholar, or pumping out raw heals with regens like White Mage. Astrologian also provides some amazing offensive utility with The Balance, which is the strongest and arguably most overpowered skill in the game. An Astrologian’s weakness is their personal DPS. They have the lowest damage in the game but more than make up for it with their utility.

Pros:

1. Balance, Spear and Arrow provide good buffs.
2. Bole is an excellent mitigation tool.
3. Extremely strong shields when in Nocturnal stance. Good heals with strong HoT’s when in Diurnal Stance.
4. Good burst AoE Healing thanks to Earthly Star, and decent sustained Healing afterwards.
5. Good single target burst Healing thanks to Essential Dignity and Benefic 2.
6. The ability to be insanely broken if you win the RNG lottery.
7. Good burst damage if you have a Lord Card held.
8. Best sustained AoE mitigation.

Cons:

1. Buffs are not reliable. You could only draw ewers and spires the entire fight.
2. Worst MP sustain/recovery out of the 3 healers.

In Conclusion:

White Mage

If you like having a lot of personal DPS and very strong heals while not having to think about utility too much, then white mage is the class for you. They excel in raw upfront Healing moreso than the other Healers and also deal more damage than both Scholar and Astrologian. The downside is that they do not nearly provide the amount of utility that the other Healers have. This makes them strong in solo content and dungeons, but makes them feel weaker in Raid scenarios where utility is important.

Astrologian

If you’d rather have a chance of really strong utility and like some RNG to that, then Astrologian is your go to class. The Balance is an extremely strong buff which makes everyone jealous. A 5% AoE Damage buff that lasts for 30 seconds and can be extendable is just too good to pass up. Ninja’s Trick Attack pales in comparison. Astrologian is the Utility king. Their personal DPS may be low, but if they happen to draw a lord card they’ll be able to unload a quick burst of Damage. This is especially helpful if you need to burn an add down fast.

Scholar

If you’d rather spend most of your time slinging out DPS spells, and want a pet to do the brunt of the Healing then Scholar is going to be a great pick for you. On top of having good burst Healing and the ability to heal while DPSing thanks to their fairies  they also get some great Utility in the form of Chain Strategem, Fey Wind, Fey Covenant and Fey Illumination. This gives Scholar Utility in both a Defensive form and Offensive form and makes them a highly versatile class to have around.

TL;DR.

1. Astrologian is the king of offensive utility if they play their cards right, but their personal DPS is the lowest.
2. White Mage is the king of Healer DPS and raw Healing while providing next to no group utility. Thin Air and Holy spam also makes them great for AoE nuking.
3. Scholar provides reliable burst AoE Healing thanks to Aetherflow stacks, while doing decent single target DPS. Their MP Costs are incredibly high however, and their AoE damage is weaker. If their fairy dies, they become the laughing stock of the three Healers.

Fairies and how to deal with them.

Earlier on in the guide i touched quickly on the subject of fairies, though this wouldn’t be a real Scholar guide if i didn’t go into full detail on how our lovely little companions work.

Fairies are the most important part of your toolkit. Without your fairy you are the laughing stock of the 3 Healers. This means you will need to manage your fairy properly if you want to be a GOOD Scholar. As i wrote earlier, a BAD Scholar will let their fairy do whatever they want, while a GOOD Scholar will use them as an extension of their toolkit. Below is a summary of the fairies and their associated skills. However, there are also some oddities about fairies that you wouldn’t notice until you play the class. One of these things is Pet Scaling

What is Pet Scaling?

Pets from both SMN and SCH scale off their owner’s current stats. This includes their Weapon Damage, Mind values and substats such as critical hit rate. Pets scale to ROUGHLY 70% of their owner. We don’t know the actual math behind this yet, but this is a good number to start with. This also means that pet potency is slightly misleading, and the 250 potency from embrace isn’t actually 250 but closer to 170. This applies to all the Healing your Pet does. Pets are also affected from Food and Mind potions and any stat changing buffs when summoned.

Summon / Summon II  – Summons a Healer/Support pet to your side.

MP Cost: 1200 GCD: Yes. Instant Cast: No.  Cast: 3 seconds.

To make use of your fairies, you’ll have to Summon them first. Once summoned, your fairy will remain with you until one of the following actions happens.

1. You are out of range of your fairy (Almost impossible to happen in raid scenarios)
2. Your fairy dies and reaches 0 HP
3. You command it to go away
4. You used Dissipation.

As long as these criteria are not met, your fairy will stay with you and heal any allies that are below 80% of their maximum HP.  In the following sections i’ll explain everything you need to know regarding how fairies work and how to optimize them properly.

Lv. 42 Rouse – Increases pet healing and damage by 40%, while making them immune to most status effects.

Cooldown: 60s

Rouse increases your pet’s Healing abilities by 40%. Taking embrace as an example you’ll end up with the following math. 250 * 140% = 350 potency. Rouse is only used for embrace and does not affect any other pet skills such as Whispering Dawn or Fey Union. To get the most out of Rouse, you should use it in your “Union downtime” windows. This means you are still capable of providing strong single target healing even when union isn’t up.

Eos :

Lv. 1 Whispering Dawn. – Applies a regen to anyone in range with a potency of 120.

60s Cooldown, 21s duration. 15y Radius

This is your version of Medica 2/Aspected benefic. Whispering dawn is an extremely strong HoT on it’s own and is one of strongest AoE regens in the game. It gets even better though, since Whispering Dawn is NOT affected by any healing buffs since it is an Ability. This has been changed in 4.3. Whispering Dawn ticks 7 times, providing a total potency of 840. Keep in mind that Whispering dawn is subject to Pet Scaling and doesn’t actually heal for it’s advertised potency the actual potency is about 588, or 84 potency per tick, which still makes it a very strong “Free” AoE regen.

Lv. 20 Fey Covenant. –  Increases Magic Defense  by 20%

120s Cooldown, 20s Duration. Cast time 3s.  15y Radius

This skill increases your magic resistance by 20%. On paper this might sound amazing, but it’s the same as foresight. It’s still a very good skill but nowhere near the advertised 20%. The actual resistance is closer to  Approximately 6-7% for DPS, 9-10% for Healers and Casters and about 17% for Tanks due to their different Magic Resist values. The higher your magic resist, the more effect this skill has on you. You should still actively use this to mitigate raid wide damage, or perhaps even magical tank busters to help out your tank. This value constantly changes due to the fact that it scales off your magic resist.

Lv. 40 Fey Illumination. – Healing Magic is increased by 10%

120s Cooldown.  20s Duration. 15y Radius

As if Eos didn’t provide enough support already. Fey Illumination provides anyone in range of the spell with 10% Increased Healing. This stacks multiplicatively with Largesse. If both are combined you gain a total of 132% Healing. (120+10%) Scholar is the only Healer that is capable of providing their Co Healers with a beefy heal up buff. This makes it an extremely versatile skill to use. whether it is to shave off a few Healer GCD’s or to survive a big heal check, this skill is going to help you a lot.

Selene :

Lv. 1 Silent Dusk. – Applies a silence to the target and interrupts the current cast.

40s Cooldown.  1s Duration 25y Range

On paper it’s an useful skill, though it’s rarely if ever actually used in a raid. The issue with Silent Dusk is that you need to wait for selene to either finish her embrace cast, or interrupt her cast and lose useful Healing potency. In my personal opinion, this skill is worthless as it is and thus doesn’t sit on my hotbar. Silent Dusk is good for canceling out Fey Union though, as it is on the pet GCD cycle and not your own, meaning you can use it while you are in the middle of a GCD and free up an oGCD slot

Lv. 20 Fey Caress. – Removes one debuff from all party members in range.

60s Cooldown. 20y Radius

Pretty much an AoE Esuna. Extremely useful if needed, though there aren’t many places where you need Esuna right now. This might change with stormblood raids. However, if debuff cleansing is not needed then this skill is completely useless. Fey Caress is good for canceling out Fey Union though, as it is on the pet GCD cycle and not your own, meaning you can use it while you are in the middle of a GCD and free up an oGCD slot

Lv. 40 Fey Wind.  – Increases Spell speed and Attack speed by 3%.

60s Cooldown. 30s Duration 20y Radius

This is pretty much the reason why you bring Selene. It’s a speed buff that lasts for 30 seconds and is extremely useful in a raid scenario. Selene is best used in fights where Healing output matters less. And this is the sole reason why you’d bring her into a raid fight. Fey wind also lines up really nice with other utility skills from other classes, which i’ll go into detail on later in this guide.

Both :

Embrace. – Heals the target with a potency of 250.
Cooldown 3s.  Cast time 2s. 30y Range

Both of the fairies also have an ability called Embrace. This skill acts as their main heal which they will use on ANY Party Member that is below 80% HP. The skill has a potency of 250 and can be seen as a passive regen of some sorts. Eos and Selene will also heal themselves with Embrace if nobody is below 80% and if they have taken damage. Embrace is the most important skill your fairy has, and could be seen as a mini physick.

Embrace is also the reason why Scholars have such an easy time dishing out damage. While the Scholar is casting Broil II, the fairy will be casting Embrace. This allows tanks to survive more damage due to the passive Healing from a fairy. A GOOD Scholar will be able to judge whether a tank will be able to be sustained with Embrace, or if they need to step in. A BAD Scholar steps in too early and wastes GCDs on Healing which in turn costs MP and precious DPS.

Never ever use Embrace on a Macro tied to Physick, Adloquium or any DPS related spell. If you absolutely feel the need to Macro Embrace, make a <mo> Macro for it. But for the love of god, don’t Macro this to your actual skills. It makes skill queueing impossible and makes the class feel sluggish. On top of that you’ll lose time casting your next spell.

Dissipation. – Discard your fairy and gain 3 aetherflow stacks and the Dissipation buff. Dissipation lasts for 30 seconds and increases your Healing output by 20%. You will be unable to summon a fairy while under the effect of Dissipation.

Cooldown 180s.  Duration 30s.

Dissipation is a double edged sword. The Aetherflow stacks you gain and the heal up buff you receive are very nice, but losing your fairy is a tremendous drawback. It wouldn’t be nearly as much of a drawback if you could just resummon it, but being locked out of your fairy for 30 seconds means you’ll have to try and use this skill with some planning. Dissipation also synergizes with the new faster Aetherflow trait Scholars get, Reducing their Aetherflow recast by 5 seconds per skill used. This means you could potentially get another Aetherflow off in a fight. Dissipation is a good skill for whenever one of the following situations occur.

1. There’s going to be a lot of downtime soon and your fairy won’t be needed. Dissipation can be used in these situations for free Aetherflow stacks to pump out that little bit of additional damage. The following situations are a good example of downtime. A12S Ultimate and Inceptions, A11S Active Time Manoeuvre, Zurvan’s ultimate attack, Sephirot’s ultimate attack, Nidhogg’s ultimate attack
2. You’re in a pinch. You do not have any aetherflow stacks, your co Healer is dead and you need some burst Healing NOW

Dissipation is an excellent tool for both of those situations. At the cost of losing your fairy and resummoning it which costs around 1200 mana, it’s not a cheap skill. The mana cost can be negated though if you decide to use all your newfound aetherflow stacks on Energy Drain, which restores a total of 1200 MP per drain, and 3600 MP in total while also providing 450 potency in raw damage should you decide to use dissipation like that. This could also turn dissipation into a MP positive skill if desired.

However, Dissipation can also be used for a more defensive and supportive approach. Your party could be on the brink of wiping, Indomitability is off cool down, your co Healer is dead but you have no Aetherflow stacks. If only there was something to give you those stacks! That’s where Dissipation comes in. It allows you to get your most important Healing skills out if you really need them. A good timed Dissipation can turn an ugly situation into a salvageable situation.

Fey Union/Aetherpact. – Restores HP with a potency of 480 to the targeted member. Fairy cannot execute other actions while Fey Union is active. Party member must be within 15 yalms

Effect: 480 potency 15y Range

Fey Union is a great single target skill that provides a decent regen that makes sure that whoever is tethered by it is topped off quite quickly. Fey Union drains 10 Fairy gauge per regen tick/every 3 seconds and requires 10 fairy gauge upon execution. Microing Fey union properly will cut down on Healer GCDs and allow you to DPS more. Fey union is subject to pet scaling, meaning it will not do as much healing as the potency advertises.

The drawback with Fey union however is that if a party member moves out of range that The fairy will do nothing until the link is restored. It also takes around 5 seconds to set up due to the fact that it’s treated like enkindle. You cast Aetherpact, and the fairy moves towards the target. She then sets up the tether and starts Healing. This gives the skill a very clunky feeling which could have been executed better.

The Faerie Gauge

The Faerie gauge is our new mechanic. It gives us a bar with fairy energy. This shows us how much energy the fairy has for Fey union. We can fill the gauge by using Aetherflow skills. Each Aetherflow skill fills the gauge by 10 points. Note that if we dissipated the fairy or if the fairy is currently not present on the battlefield that the Fairy gauge will NOT increase if we use Aetherflow skills. Roughly every 2:30 minutes we will fill the gauge completely. Balancing your Fairy gauge will be helping you in pushing out more DPS GCDs and using less healer GCDs by using Fey union on points where single target healing is of utmost importance.

Which fairy do you use, and why do you use it?

In most fights Scholars tend to prefer Eos over Selene. This is due to the fact that Eos provides a tremendous amount of support for both Healers and is easily capable of shaving off those vital Healing GCDs with her utility, allowing both of the Healers to DPS more. Selene however shines if there is only one player taking damage all the time. Things such as the early stages in Zurvan Extreme, A9 Savage and the beginning of Ravana Extreme are all good spots to use Selene. Selene is also useful to have prepull. You can start summoning Eos right before the pull starts and use fey wind right before the cast completes. Selene will use her Fey wind ability to buff the party before being sent away to allow Eos to come into the fight. This means your opener will have the best of both worlds. The utility of Eos and the buffs from Selene.

Fairies, however do share cooldowns with each other and the cooldown timer for the other skill will be exactly the same. This is tied to the level at which the skill gets unlocked. For example, if you use Whispering Dawn, both Whispering Dawn and Silent Dusk will be on cooldown. Silent Dusk however will also be on a 60 second cooldown as opposed to 40 seconds due to the fact that Whispering Dawn has a 60 second cooldown.

How do you maximize your fairy’s efficiency?

Managing your fairy’s skills is just as important as managing your own skills. As i said earlier into this guide, a fairy is an extension of your own skillset. NOT an independant pet that you should ignore and let it run free. Sure, it’ll get some stuff done but it won’t be nearly as efficient as if you were trying to manage her skills yourself.

Take the following situations for both Eos and Selene as example.

Eos :

Eos is extremely basic when it comes to her AI. If left on sic she will pretty much do her own thing and use skills as they come off cooldown. This means whispering dawn when there is no AoE damage going out, Fey Covenant when nobody is taking magic damage of any sorts, or Fey illumination when you’re not even Healing in the first place.

For example, at the start of A12 Savage there will be a Healing check approximately 30 seconds in the fight. Consisting of 2 preys that deal high single target damage, an AoE that needs to be shared and deals around 80.000 / Amount of people stacked in magical damage, and two Mega Holies dealing approximately 20.000 Magical Damage each unmitigated. Eos her skillset is extremely useful here and essential for saving GCDs instead of wasting them on Healing which costs you both valueable mana and time spent DPSing.

If i were to leave Eos on Sic, all these skills would have expired by the time we even get to this mechanic. However, if we use Eos on obey we can command her to use these skills right as we need them. And to top it off we can also use Rouse to amplify her skills like this as opposed to when leaving her on sic. A well timed Fey Illumination makes the Healer check easier by giving BOTH Healers a Healing boost of 10%. Fey Covenant in turn can be used to reduce the incoming damage from all of these skills, allowing you to use less GCDs spent Healing, and more GCDs spent DPSing. This all translates to a higher effective raid DPS and a faster, smoother clear.

Selene :

Selene performs a lot better while under the effect of Sic, even though it is far from optimal. Selene uses Fey Wind as soon as it comes off cooldown, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing about this is that you will get a high uptime on Fey Wind, and the fact that Fey Wind synergizes really well with other 60 seconds cooldowns such as Ninja’s trick attack. The BAD thing about Fey wind being mashed off cooldown by Selene is that she’ll also do this right before hitting a huge spot of downtime, potentially wasting a lot of your valuebale buff and utility.

Fey Cleanse is almost always wasted if you put Selene on sic. Selene will try to cleanse ANY debuff with Fey Cleanse, even debuffs that can’t be removed in the first place. This is especially bad if you actually need Fey Cleanse later on but then notice that she already used it on some uncleansable debuff. (As of 4.1, Selene will only use Fey Cleanse on debuffs that can be dispelled. Still, it’s better to do it manually if multiple debuffs come out in rapid succession.)

Fairy Placement :

Another important part of managing your fairy is fairy placement. By default Eos or Selene will follow you wherever you go. If you decide to move, they move. Not only is this annoying if you have to spread out for a mechanic, and have the fairy follow you to the edge of the arena instead of staying put in the middle and Healing people, but it’s also extremely inefficient for fairy Healing in general. Each time your fairy moves, she isn’t Healing. If she isn’t Healing you’ll  be forced to heal more. In a way you could say that bad fairy management lowers both your own DPS and your Co Healer’s DPS, even though you won’t notice it at a first glance. Fairy placement is a vital part of playing Scholar and is something you should really pay attention to. If you happen to resummon a fairy mid fight, they will automatically follow you again, so don’t forget to reassign their position!

Healers and DPS.

B-But i’m a Healer!

While Scholars are classified as Healers, i feel that i should touch on this subject for the sole reason that Healer DPS is overlooked upon. A lot of Healers that i see in PF often refrain from dealing any damage at all, saying that it is not their job to do so. Why wouldn’t it be your job to contribute as much as possible to the group? Would you rather twiddle your thumbs and throw out a Physick every 10 seconds? I don’t think you do. Besides, everyone expects Tanks to deal damage and they technically aren’t a DPS role either. So without further ado, let’s delve into how Scholar deals damage, how their buffs synergize with the group and how Scholars synergize with other Healers.

With the introduction of Stormblood, our rotation has become a lot simpler. Back in Heavensward we had 5 DoT’s to keep up. (Shadow Flare, Bio 2, Bio, Miasma, Aero) With Stormblood this changes to only 2! (Bio 2 and Miasma) Shadow Flare technically still exists but has been reworked completely and thus can’t be considered as a DoT that you need to keep up.

How do DoT’s work?

Before i go into the finer parts of Scholar, i first have to explain how DoT’s work in this game. Every DoT you apply is applied on a server time. A DoT ticks once every 3 seconds and all DoT’s share the same timer. This means that the server will check if the DoTs are on the boss every 3 seconds. If it is, it deals damage. If it isn’t then there will be no damage applied to the boss. Below is a simple visual explaination of how Miasma works.

23

20

17

14

11

8

5

2

-1

-4

In this situation when i apply Miasma the first DoT tick will happen at 23 seconds left on the DoT, the next one at 20 and so on. however, if we look further into the graph you’ll see that after we hit two seconds, the next tick will be at -1. What this means is that the last tick this Miasma does is at 2 seconds, and the next tick will be one second after Miasma falls off. As losing DoT uptime is bad, we can choose to Clip the DoT.

Clipping essentially means overwriting your DoT with a new one while it’s still up. In this scenario it would be safe to Clip the DoT while it has 2 seconds remaining, or let it fall off and reapply the DoT before the next tick happens, which occurs at -1. This means the sweetspot for applying Miasma would be between 2 and -1. Assuming we apply our new Miasma at 1, the next Miasma will tick as following.

22

19

16

13

10

7

4

1

-2

-5

Since we applied Miasma at 1 on our last DoT cycle, and the next tick was happening at -1 this means we’ll have to wait two seconds for the next DoT tick to appear. Starting at 22, then 19 and ticking up all the way until 1. At 1 the last tick happens, and the next tick afterwards will be -2. If you would want to not lose a DoT tick in this situation you would need to reapply your Miasma between 1 and -2. You could choose to either let your DoT fall off for a second and then reapply it, or to reapply it as the timer hits 0. Since both of these situations fall between the 1 and – 2 timer as seen above, you will not lose a DoT tick in either situation.

Judging DoT ticks however is fairly hard, and to be honest i generally do not bother with it. If you want a safe bet that you’re not dropping DoT’s though, you can use the following ruleset. Try to refresh as close as possible to 0. For example, if you refreshed at 2 seconds left on the last Miasma, you would’ve lost a tick. However if you refreshed at -1, you would have kept all DoT ticks. As a general rule though, i recommend that you do not let your DoT’s fall off and instead try to keep them rolling.

This isn’t however the whole story about DoT’s. DoTs also have a mechanic called ‘’snapshotting’’ Snapshotting is that when you apply a DoT under the effect of a buff that the DoT will tick for it’s full duration with said buff. An Example would be Chain Strategem.

Chain Strategem has a duration of 15 seconds, while bio 2 has a duration of 30 seconds. If we apply Bio 2 while Chain Strategem is active on the enemy then the DoT will have the Chain Strategem buff for the entire duration, even after Chain Strategem falls off. This also is the case if we decide to use Bane. Bane ‘’Copies’’ all your DoTs to the new target, including any buffs you had when you applied them and any debuffs that were present on the enemy. If RNG shines on you and you get a DoT refresh proc from Bane, you could DoT back from the add to the boss and get another set of buffed DoT’s out. I will explain this in a greater amount of detail in the skills section.

The Rotation and oGCD weaving.

Since we’ve lost most of our DoT’s in Stormblood our rotation has become far easier. No longer will you have to juggle 5 DoT’s and attach a priority system to them to ensure you were able to weave your oGCDs.

The issue that arises however is the fact that we both lost Bio 1 and Aero. These skills were crucial for weaving oGCDs. The only instant cast we have right now is Bio 2, which lasts for 30 seconds. This means we will be clipping a lot of our oGCD skills. Clipping in this sense means that you are using an oGCD skill while the global cooldown is available. You want to avoid this as much as possible to maximize cast times and spell output.

Clipping an oGCD takes approximately 1/3rd of your GCD. This may be longer on certain skills if they have punishing animation locks.

The opener in itself is fairly simple. As mentioned above we only have two DoT’s to track instead of five, which makes judgement calls a lot easier.

This opener assumes you have Selene summoned prepull and have 3 stacks of Aetherflow along with Aetherflow being off cooldown.

SOLO OPENER.

PREPULL STUFF.

-7.5s Summon Eos

-3s Fey Wind (Cleric Stance if crossclassed)

-2.5s Broil 2

PULL.

0s Swiftcast

0.5s Broil 2 + Mind Pot + Chain strategem

Bio 2 + Energy Drain + Shadow Flare

Miasma

Miasma 2 + Energy drain

Broil 2

Broil 2 + Energy Drain

Broil 2

Miasma 2 + Aetherflow + Energy Drain

Broil 2

Broil 2

Broil 2

Broil 2

Miasma

Bio 2 + Energy Drain + Lucid Dream

This is the best opener for your personal DPS. But of course, most content won’t be done solo and we’ll need to orientate ourselves on a more group focused scenario.

GROUP OPENER

PREPULL STUFF.

-6.5s Summon Eos

-5s Fey Wind + Mind Pot + (Cleric if Crossclassed)

-2.5s Miasma

PULL.

Bio 2 + Shadow Flare + Energy Drain

Broil 2

Miasma 2 + Chain Strategem + Energy Drain

Broil 2

Broil 2 + Swiftcast

Broil 2  + Energy drain + Aetherflow

Broil 2

Broil 2

Miasma

Broil 2

Broil 2

Bio 2 + Energy Drain + {oGCD}

This opener is better for group content. Chain Strategem gets delayed a few GCDs and goes out on the third GCD, right before everyone hits their third GCD. The Ruin 2 + Chain Strategem can be freely moved up and down in the rotation, though if you want to use Strategem earlier than this i would advise using the Solo opener. This gives you far more worth for Strategem, allowing you to unleash your full burst inside it. If a ninja is present, do Chain Strategem on the 4th GCD so that it falls off as Trick expires.

NOTE: These openers are subject to change.

Once the opener is done, Scholar turns into an extremely simple class to maximize DPS. Just reapply Miasma and Bio 2 when needed, Use Energy Drain right after Bio 2. Shadow Flare should be applied every other Bio 2 since it’s oGCD and on a 60s cooldown.

Your rotation should look as following after the opener. Energy Drain and Aetherflow can be fit in where you feel it’d work best. Make sure there’s atleast a GCD between two energy drains due to the fact it has a 3 second recast.

Broil 2 > Broil 2 > Broil 2 > Broil 2  > Miasma > Broil 2 > Broil 2 > Broil 2 > Broil 2 > Bio 2 > Shadow Flare + Energy Drain

It literally b(r)oils down to keeping your DoT’s up, and making use of the fact that Bio 2 is instant cast. It’s almost impossible to make this any simpler. The exception to this is if a boss is about to disappear. If that is the case then it’s time to count DoT ticks to see if it’s worth it to reapply DoT’s or to just spam broil and let DoT’s fall off. Miasma needs 18 seconds/6 ticks to even out with Broil 2 thanks to it’s 20 potency damage on application. If this is the case then Miasma is preferred due to the lower MP cost. Bio 2 needs 21 seconds to pull ahead of Broil 2 and is weaker than Broil 2 if it’s not up for 21 seconds. However, Bio 2 allows you to use oGCDs since it’s an insta cast. This raises the debate whether to use it or not to use it if it’s not able to reach the full 21 seconds. Personally, i would apply Bio 2 if it ticks for 15 seconds or more and if i have an oGCD to use. If not, i’d wait for it to tick atleast 21 seconds. If i i have two oGCDs to use, i would use Bio 2 if it ticks for atleast 12 seconds or more.

Aetherflow Stacks can be expended on Energy Drain every other Broil 2, if you decide to use them for that. Always make sure you’re capable of refreshing Aetherflow when it comes off cooldown. If Aetherflow is off cooldown and you still have a stack left, burn the stack and refresh Aetherflow. You should try to burn your last Aetherflow stack at around 5 seconds before the refresh happens at the latest for the trait. using it any later will result in missing your cooldown timer.

DPS Skills and Utility.

Scholar has a core set of Skills used for dealing damage. We may be a Healer at heart but we still have some tricks up our sleeve. Here i will explain each skill and it’s particular use. Note that these skills are for level 70 characters only. Lower leveled characters may have different skills due to the changes to the skill acquisition system/traits.

Broil 2. – Deals unaspected magic damage with a potency of 230.

Effect: 230 Potency. MP Cost: 720 GCD: Yes. Instant Cast: No

Does what it says on the tin. Deals damage and nothing more. This is what we call your ‘’Filler’’ spell. Once both your DoT’s are up, you can use Broil 2 to continue dealing damage. Broil 2 is also your hardest hitting direct hit and can be used on targets that are about to die instead of refreshing your DoTs on them.

Ruin 2. – Deals unaspected magic damage with a potency of 100.

Effect: 100 Potency.  MP cost: 480 GCD: Yes.  Instant Cast: Yes.

Ruin 2 is your second filler spell. It is far weaker than Broil but costs less MP and has no cast time. This allows you to weave your oGCDs and move while casting Ruin 2 and makes it a versatile tool to be used in those situations. If you are using Ruin 2 to weave skills, make sure you are weaving 2 oGCDs. It is not worth it using Ruin 2 to weave just one oGCD. Ruin 2 should only be used if you cannot afford Miasma 2’s high MP cost or if you happen to be far away from the boss.

Bio 2. – Deals Unaspected magic damage with a potency of 35 for 30 seconds.

Duration 30s.  Effect: 35 potency. MP Cost: 720 GCD: Yes. Instant Cast: Yes

Bio 2 is your ‘’strongest’’ attack. It deals unaspeced magic damage with a potency of 35 for 30 seconds. This means it will tick 10 times for a total damage of 350 potency. Bio 2 however only starts exceeding Broil 2 past 21 seconds of uptime, however it might be worth it to reapply Bio 2 even if it only lasts for 18 or 15 seconds due to the fact it is instant cast and allows you to weave oGCDs. You should try to weave in two oGCDs per Bio 2, since it is our only hard hitting instant cast.

Miasma. – Deals unaspected magic damage with a potency 20 and deals unaspected magic damage with a potency of 35 for 24 seconds.

Duration: 24s. Effect: 35 Potency. MP Cost: 600 GCD: Yes. Instant Cast: No

Miasma is your second DoT, which is just as important to keep up as Bio 2. It has the same potency per tick but doesn’t last as long. However, unlike Bio 2 miasma also gets an initial potency of 20. This means Miasma  will be doing the same potency as Broil 2 at 18 seconds. (20 + 35 * 6 = 230) It also costs less MP and thus is a valueable tool if it’s allowed to tick for 18 seconds or longer. Unlike Bio 2 however it is not an instant cast DoT and thus does not benefit from being applied even if it deals less potency than Broil 2. When spread with Bane it does NOT reapply it’s initial 20 potency.

Shadow Flare. – Deals magic AoE damage with a potency of 50 for 15 seconds

Duration 15s. Effect: 50 potency.  MP cost: 0 GCD: No Instant Cast: Yes Cooldown: 60s Radius: 5y

Shadow Flare is an oGCD skill that synergizes really nice with Bio 2. Since Shadow Flare has a 60 second cooldown and Bio 2 is instant cast it allows you to reapply a Shadow Flare every other Bio 2 without clipping your GCD. In some cases it’s worth it to hold Shadow Flare if adds are going to spawn a bit later than when it comes up, but most of the time you should pair it with your Bio 2. Shadow Flare, is just like your other DoT’s subject to the DoT timer. Shadow Flare’s total potency is 250. (50*5)

Miasma 2 – Deals unaspected magic AoE damage with a potency of 100, and applies a 25 potency DoT for 12 seconds.

Duration 12s. Effect: 100 + 25 DoT potency.  MP cost: 1680 GCD: Yes Instant Cast: Yes Radius: 5y

Miasma 2 is our AoE ‘’Filler’’ skill. With a total potency of 200 and a initial potency of 100 it’s a fairly strong skill. When used on a single target it’s weaker than broil, but when used on two targets it starts to pull ahead, assuming that both targets take atleast one tick of damage. It’s biggest drawback is the MP cost which comes at a hefty 1680 mana. This means you won’t be able to freely spam it thanks to it’s high cost. Spamming Miasma 2 is discouraged anyways since half of the damage is gated behind the DoT damage. Miasma 2 however isn’t just an excellent AoE tool, it’s also great for single target damage if you need to push out oGCDs. Since Miasma 2 does 200 potency over 12 seconds it’s only barely behind Broil 2. This makes it worthwhile to even use Miasma 2 if you only need to push out one oGCD, assuming you can afford the crippling MP cost.

Energy Drain. – Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 150. Restores HP and MP upon use. Consumes 1 Aetherflow Stack on use.

Effect: 150 potency. MP cost: 0 GCD: No. Instant Cast: Yes. Cooldown: 3s.

Energy Drain is your main oGCD DPS skill. It is gated behind Aetherflow which means that you can’t spam it. Energy Drain doesn’t only see use in dealing damage though, it’s also an extremely useful tool in recovering MP. Energy Drain restores 1200 MP when used and restores 50% of the damage dealt as HP. The HP part will rarely ever save you as it is fairly insignificant. Energy Drain should be used on an oGCD skill such as Bio 2 if possible. You can reliably use one Energy Drain each time you apply Bio 2 and still have Aetherflow stacks remaining for other Aetherflow skills.

The 1200 MP restoration translates directly to a MP refresh potency of 100. You’ll read more about MP refresh potency and how it works in the MP management section.

Bane. – Spreads your current Bio 2 and Miasma to targets around it. DoT potencies decrease as amount of targets increases. Starting at 80% for the second target and dropping 20% for every additional target, all the way down to 20% for the 5th target and beyond. Consumes 1 Aetherflow Stack on use. Has a 15% chance of resetting the timer of DoT’s and setting them at their starting values.

Effect: Spreads DoT’s. MP cost: 0 GCD: No. Instant Cast: Yes. Cooldown: 10s.

Bane is your AoE skill. It copies the DoT’s including any and all buffs/debuffs from your current target and spreads them to targets around them. This means if you hit an enemy with trick attack applied on it and Bane off them it’ll hit all the targets with your buffed DoTs. On top of that there is also a 15% chance that the DoT’s have a chance of reapplying their original timer. This brings us to the ‘’Chain Bane’’ theory.

A Chain Bane is generally only done on two and sometimes three targets because of the DoT dropoff on multiple targets. Essentially what you are doing is the following. An add spawns and you press Bane to spread your DoTs. This means your DoTs get copied to the next target. If your Bane procs then your new target will have a fresh set of DoTs on them again. From here on there’s a simple priority system to see if it’s worth it to bane back on the original target with your DoTs. I am going to exclude the 15% chance of resetting your DoT’s again because this rarely occurs.

To see if Chain Baneing is worth it we’ll have to look at 3 skills. Broil 2, Energy Drain and Ruin 2. The reason for this is that Bane costs 1 Aetherflow stack which you could have used on Energy Drain to deal damage and recover some lost MP. It also cuts into your GCD due to the fact that you will do less Bio 2 casts thanks to Chain Baneing. Which forces you to either use Ruin 2 over Broil 2, or to cut your losses and Clip your GCD.

The first thing that needs to be done is calculating the difference in DoT ticks. Let’s say that we bane with 12 seconds left on both DoT’s. This means Miasma has already ticked for 12 seconds which is 4 ticks and leads to 140 potency (35 * 4) and Bio 2 has already ticked for 18 seconds which is 6 ticks and leads to 210 potency (35 * 6) Adding these values brings us to a grand total of 350 potency if we decide to Chain bane back from the target to the boss. Note that this is a baseline number and does not include any buffs such as Trick Attack or Chain Strategem. You will gain more potency if your original DoT’s were under these effects.

Assuming we use Ruin 2 to weave in an oGCD and sacrifice one energy drain we’ll lose 130 potency from using Ruin 2 over Broil 2 and 150 potency and 1200 MP for not using energy drain. We however spare 360 MP by using Ruin 2 over broil This brings us to a net potency gain of 70 (350 – 130 – 150) with an MP cost of 960(1200-240)  Since Ruin 2 also allows us to use another oGCD skill, we could fill that in with a Rouse or different skill.

Assuming we use Miasma 2 to weave in an oGCD and sacrifice one energy drain we’ll lose 30 potency at the minimum and gain 170 potency at the maximum from using Miasma 2 over Broil 2 and lose 150 potency and 1200 MP for not using energy drain. We however also lose 960 MP by using Miasma 2 over Broil 2 This brings us to a net potency gain of anywhere between 370 (350 + 170 – 150) to (350 – 30 – 150) 170 with an MP cost of 2160 (1200 + 960)  Since Miasma 2 also allows us to use another oGCD skill, we could fill that in with a Rouse or different skill.

Assuming we use Broil 2 instead of Ruin 2, we’ll clip our GCD by about 1/3rd of the timer. This means we’ll have to subtract 33% from Broil 2’s potency which is 76. Along with sacrificing Energy Drain we’ll lose a total of 226 potency and 1200 MP but do not get the ability to double weave oGCDs. This brings us to a total potency gain of 124 (350-150-76) at the cost of 1200 MP.

This also assumes that the DoT’s that we Chain Bane back onto the boss have not dropped off initially. This won’t be the case since we Chain Bane’d at 12 seconds remaining and Bane has a cooldown of 10 seconds.

To clear up confusion, this is how Bane works.

Amount of Targets	DoT potency
Original Target (Bane used on this)	100%
Add 1	100%
Add 2	80%
Add 3	60%
Add 4	40%
Add 5 to 15	20%

Chain Strategem: – Increase the critical hit rate on the target by 15%.

Effect: Increases critical chance.. MP cost: 0 GCD: No. Instant Cast: Yes. Cooldown: 120s

Chain Strategem is your offensive raid wide utility spell which provides a significant DPS boost for both you and your group. Chain Strategem should be used right before your party members start their burst. If a ninja with Trick Attack is present it should be paired with every other trick attack to maximize both buffs and increase their efficiency. As Chain Strategem scales off the Critical Hit skill and Critical Damage also scales off Chain Strategem the actual damage increase wildly varies. Chain Strategem will become stronger the more Crit you have.

Down below is a graph that shows the effective DPS gain from Chain Strategem as your crit scales up. This is the effective DPS increase Chain Strategem will do. Battle Litany is also included in the list for a comparison.

Blue Line: The blue line represents the base bonus damage you receive from crit. At 3000 crit (Which we won’t be able to attain until way later) this translates to roughly a 18% DPS increase (1.18 eDMG)  compared to somebody who doesn’t crit at all.

Red Line: The red line represents Battle Litany and Chain Strategem paired with the base crit. As you can see the curve is slightly steeper than the blue line due to taking the base crit in account and then adding the 15% from litany/strategem on top. At 3000 crit Battle Litany/Strategem is roughly a 10% DPS increase. (1.28 eDMG – 1.18 eDMG)

Orange Line: This is what happens when you combine both Battle Litany and Chain Strategem. This line is the steepest because it takes in the base crit chance, the 15% from Strategem and the 15% from litany. Combining both buffs puts you roughly at a 20% DPS increase. (1.38 eDMG – 1.18 eDMG)

Every third Strategem will be lined up with Litany and Trick Attack. Communicating with your Ninja and Dragoon will be essential to optimalize the usefulness of this skill. Below is a chart of how Strategem, Litany and Trick attack will handle and synergize in a fight assuming all skills get used on cooldown.

Time	Buff 1	Buff 2	Buff 3
0	Chain Strategem	Trick Attack	Battle Litany
30
60		Trick Attack
90
120	Chain Strategem	Trick Attack
150
180		Trick Attack	Battle Litany
210
240	Chain Strategem	Trick Attack
270
300		Trick Attack
330
360	Chain Strategem	Trick Attack	Battle Litany

Aetherflow. – Recover 10% of your maximum MP and gain 3 Aetherflow stacks.

Effect: 3 Aetherflow stacks  MP cost: 0 GCD: No Instant Cast: Yes. Cooldown: 60s

Aetherflow is one of the main mechanics of Scholars, the other mechanic being the fairy which we’ve been over earlier in this guide. Aetherflow is your most important skill in the entire skillset and allows you to use your extremely powerful Aetherflow skills. Balancing your Aetherflow usage is the most important thing to do as a Scholar. You will always want to run out of Aetherflow stacks just as Aetherflow comes off cooldown again so that you can keep Aetherflow rolling. Aetherflow is also vital for managing your Mana since it restores 10% of your Maximum MP. This means if you decided to stack on piety, you’ll see greater returns from Aetherflow. On top of that, Aetherflow is also used for your Job gauge and Fey union, which we’ve described earlier. This means that it might not always be effective to straight up use your Aetherflow skills if the gauge is maxed out. There is also a trait that reduces your Aetherflow cooldown by 5 seconds for each Aetherflow skill used. Since you get 3 Aetherflow stacks this means you’ll have a reduction of 15 seconds on each Aetherflow cycle, effectively bringing the cooldown of Aetherflow down to only 45 seconds. If you happen to dissipate and fire off six Aetherflow skills in rapid succession, you can drop the cooldown down to a measely 30 seconds. This allows for a very versatile playstyle with plenty of Aetherflow stacks at your disposal.

Which skills are considered Aetherflow skills?

The following skills are affected by Aetherflow and need one Aetherflow stack to be used.

Healing Aetherflow abilities are NOT affected by buffs/debuffs because they are listed as abilities and NOT as spells.

Damage :  Energy Drain, Bane.

Healing : Lustrate, Excogitation, Indomitability

Support / Mitigation : Sacred soil.

While these skills may seem not extremely impressive at a first glance it’s actually quite the opposite. Aetherflow skills are by far the most powerful skills Scholar has access to thanks to their low cooldowns and INSTANT cast times. On top of that all Aetherflow skills are off the global cooldown and can be used in rapid succession. A Scholar could use Indomitability, Excogitation and Lustrate all in one GCD if they want to, providing an insane burst in Healing but expending all of their Aetherflow stacks. This is a bad idea however since this means you won’t have any Aetherflow stacks available for other skills when you might need them.

A BAD Scholar will rarely use their Aetherflow skills or use them at the wrong time while a GOOD Scholar will use Aetherflow skills when they’re needed, supplementing the party. A GREAT Scholar however will also keep the job gauge in mind, plan ahead in the fight and use stacks in preparation for that. along with communicating with the other Healer to communicate to heal the group with as few Healing GCDs as possible, giving both Healers more uptime and more DPS.

TL;DR on Aetherflow:

1. Restores 10% your maximum MP and grants you 3 Aetherflow stacks.
2. Grants acces to powerful Aetherflow abilities which are all instant cast and oGCD.
3. Using Aetherflow abilities increases the job gauge by 10 points and reduce the recast of Aetherflow  by 5 seconds per stack used.

DPS Skills in a nutshell:

1. Broil is your strongest filler attack at 230 potency.
2. Miasma is a 300 potency DoT, Bio 2 is a 350 potency DoT and should be kept up at all times unless the boss is about to disappear. Bio 2 is instant cast and should have 2 oGCDs used whenever you use it.
3. Ruin 2 is your weaker filler attack at 100 potency, but is instant cast and allows oGCD weaving.
4. Energy Drain is a great oGCD skill that is both used for dealing damage and recovering MP, and is key in managing Scholar’s mana.
5. Shadow Flare is an oGCD skill that does 250 damage in an AoE area. It has a 60 second cooldown and should be paired with every other Bio 2.
6. Miasma 2 is your filler AoE skill. It has a initial potency of 100 and has a total potency of 200. It’s also your strongest instant cast skill and is great for weaving if you can afford it’s crippling MP cost.
7. Chain Strategem should be used in such a way that it benefits the party the most. It’s usefulness increases with the amount of crit you have on your gear.
8. Bane spreads your DoT’s to other targets and has a chance of resetting the DoT time. DoT damage is lowered for each target it hits.

Scholars and Healing

It took you this long to actually get to this bit?

So, as a Healer you just top the tank off the tank whenever they take damage right? Not much to explain here, so surely it’s not going to take 12 pages.

WRONG.

As mentioned earlier in this guide, the goal of Healing is to make sure nobody dies while accomplishing this in as few Healing GCDs as possible. Inefficient Healing stems from people who think the raid needs to be topped up at all times, these people often end up overHealing, throwing away valueable MP, DPS and in some cases even take aggro from a tank if they are doing excessive Healing. Excessive Healing is thus a suboptimal playstyle and should be avoided if possible.

How do i heal as a Scholar?

Scholar Healing differs slightly from White Mage Healing and Astrologian Healing. Astrologians and White Mages do not have a fairy that casts spells while Scholars do. This cuts down on Healing enormously and allows you to optimize your DPS enormously. Keeping track of your Fairy’s cast time while looking at the intervals of an enemy attacking your tank also helps. However, don’t go overboard with this. An Autoattack can always crit and murder your tank when you thought it was fine. For general content i use the 20% rule. The 20% rule is a mindset that you try to keep the tank alive for atleast 20% of their maximum HP to prevent deaths from Crit RNG. This however does require a lot of attention and might not be suitable for new Healers until they get comfortable with Healing. IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO KEEP YOUR TANK ALIVE AND PLAY IT SAFE THAN LETTING THEM DIE, JUST TO GET THAT JUICY BROIL 2 OFF. All shields that the Scholar applies have a duration of 30 seconds before expiring.

Also keep in mind that Healing is heavily dependant on your group and other factors.

Another part of Scholar Healing is that the shields we apply all have innate delays. This can be a GOOD thing or a BAD thing. You’ll find some examples below. The delay is approximately 2 seconds.

You will rarely if ever notice these delays if you play normally.

Why are delays a GOOD thing?

Shield delays can be a good thing for Adloquium if you decide to spread it with Deployment Tactics, especially if you are taking continious damage from a DoT. This allows you to apply your Adloquium to a target, and then spread it to your allies with the full shield intact while your target is taking damage. A good situation to show this would be Zurvan Extreme. Personally i use an Adloquium to heal the wave cannon target, before spreading it afterwards. Due to the innate delay in your shield it won’t be eaten by DoT ticks that are chewing away at your target if you time your deploy properly. This means you can effectively heal someone for 300 potency and then spread the skill to your allies, getting the best of both worlds. Keep in mind that the Deployment Adloquium also has a one second innate delay.

Why are delays a BAD thing?

While the delay is nice for niche things such as putting out fully intact shields it’s downside is also quite apparent which can be summed up in one simple sentence. You applied the shield and it didn’t actually soak the big hit it was meant to mitigate. This is the downside of shielding delays and is why Scholar can be considered a proactive Healer instead of a reactive Healer. Another issue is that you cannot use Adloquium back to back thanks to the delay. The first shield will not have been registered when your second Adloquium gets applied

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at our Healing skills and what they do.

NOTE: The cast timers assume a base GCD of 2.5 seconds. Your cast times may vary depending on how much spellspeed you have.

Healing Skills and Utility.

Protip: All single target heals have a cast timer shorter than the GCD. This allows you to sneak in oGCDs after every heal which will clip far less than clipping after a DPS spell.

Physick. – Restores target’s HP with a cure potency of 400.

Effect: 400 Potency. MP Cost: 600 GCD: Yes. Instant Cast: No.  Cast: 2.00 seconds.

A basic heal. Does exactly what the description says. Heals your target for a potency of 400 and nothing more. In all honestly, this particular heal rarely gets used due to how inefficient it is in terms of GCD/Healing. It is however far more cost effective when it comes to mana compared to Adloquium. Physick mainly gets used if you need to throw out another heal right after an Adloquium on the same target. This is because of the innate shield delays as mentioned above, and the second Adloquium would either overwrite the first ‘’fresh’’ shield with a slightly higher number or would not apply something at all, wasting the main use of the skill. Another good use is to use it as a filler heal during downtime. You can use it to top people off for relatively cheap.

Adloquium. – Restores target’s HP with a cure potency of 300 potency and applies a shield with the same amount as HP restored. If the heal is a crit, the shield is double the amount of the HP restored.

Effect: 300 Potency. MP Cost: 1560 GCD: Yes. Instant Cast: No.  Cast: 2.00 seconds.

Adloquium is where the fun bit of Healing starts. It is a fairly  single target heal costing 1560MP, but makes up for it with it’s versatility and usefulness. Not only does Adloquium heal your target, it also shields them for the exact amount healed. It becomes even better if it decides to crit though. If you get a critical hit on Adloquium the shield gets doubled for the amount it heals you. Say that you crit an Adloquium for 10,000. This means that you will get shielded for 20.000 HP! To make things even better, this also works with deployment tactics allowing you to get some serious mitigation out if you get lucky. You can even pretend that you’re a tank Adloquium is arguably the most versatile healing spell in the game.

Succor. – Heals all targets in range with a cure potency of 150 and applies a shield equal to the 150% of HP restored.

Effect: 150 Potency. MP Cost: 2040 GCD: Yes. Instant Cast: No.  Cast: 2.50 seconds. Radius 15y

Succor is your AoE heal. Unlike Astrologians or White mages we only get one AoE heal that we get to spam freely. With it’s 150 potency heal and 225 potency shield, Succor is stronger than it’s respective counterparts, albeit comes at a higher MP cost. Succor also synergizes extremely well with Emergency Tactics, turning it into a 375 potency raw heal, this allows Scholars to give people a quick nudge of healing if desired For sustained restoring of HP however, the other Healers have far more effective means of doing so. Succor also does NOT have the same properties as adloquium where the shield gets doubled if it crits. Succor is also extremely Mana inefficient and should be avoided using too much. Spamming succor leads to drying up your MP pool extremely fast. Just like Adloquium, succor costs more mana than it’s respective counterparts which are Medica and Helios and is the second most expensive healing spell, just behind Cure 3. If AoE healing is needed, it’s better to use Indomitability instead since it’s an instant cast ability that only costs one Aetherflow stack, allowing you to use more GCDs on DPS rather than healing. A Succor with both Fey Illumination and Largesse up is almost as strong as Indomitability. (495 potency vs 500)

Lustrate. – Restores the target’s HP with a cure potency of 600 at the cost of one Aetherflow stack.

Effect: 600 Potency. MP Cost: 0 GCD: No. Instant Cast: Yes.  Recast: 1.00 seconds.

Lustrate is an extremely powerful tool when placed in the right hands and can take care of a lot of Healing in a pinch. It heals the target with a potency of 600 and is Instant Cast. The Instant Cast makes this skill really stand out as it allows you to rescue someone if they need a heal immediately. Since a lustrate costs 1 Aetherflow stack we can tie an MP cost to it. Assuming we’d use the stack on Energy Drain instead we would gain 1200 MP and 150 potency. Thus we could say that lustrate costs 1200 MP and is a potency loss of 150, even though you do not see it. This is still far less than the cost of an Adloquium though, since that eats up almost a complete GCD and 1560 MP.

Indomitability. – Heals all targets in range with a cure potency of 500 at the cost of one Aetherflow stack.

Effect: 500 Potency. MP Cost: 0 GCD: No. Instant Cast: Yes.  Recast: 30 seconds. Radius 15y

This is hands down the strongest Aetherflow ability Scholar gets in my opinion. Indomitability is a staple of Scholar’s AoE Healing and should always be used over succor if AoE Healing is needed. Just like Lustrate, it only costs one Aetherflow stack and is Instant Cast. It’s cost is easily justified when you compare it to succor since you don’t use a GCD and trade an Energy Drain for it which would net you 1200 mana and 150 potency. Indomitability perfectly covers the glaring weakness that Scholar has when it comes to AoE Healing. With a cooldown of only 30 seconds, Indomitability comes off way faster than White Mage and Astrologian’s counterparts, which are Assize and Earthly Star. This allows Scholar to recover from AoE Healing using far less GCDs than White Mage and Astrologian by using indomitability. If you need to heal raid wide damage, this skill is the first one you should use.

Excogitation. – Applies a buff to the target party member that heals them with a cure potency of 800 when their HP falls below 50% at the cost of one Aetherflow stack. Cannot be applied on self. Buff lasts for 45 seconds.

Effect: 800 Potency. MP Cost: 0 GCD: No. Instant Cast: Yes.  Recast: 45 seconds.

Excogitation is our new plaything. With a potency of 800 it’s a lot stronger than lustrate, but that’s pretty much it. Just like Lustrate this is an extremely powerful tool when placed in the right hands. Unlike lustrate though, it doesn’t instantly heal someone but triggers as a heal bomb of some sorts. You also CANNOT use this skill on yourself. Excogitation will be extremely useful on Multi hit tank busters, allowing you to DPS through the buster while Excogitation and your fairy heal up the tank. Again, like all Aetherflow abilities Excogitation is Instant Cast. At the cost of one Aetherflow stack we can tie an MP cost of 1200 and a potency cost of 150 to it when comparing it to Energy Drain.

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A note on Healing Aetherflow skills.

All Aetherflow skills are listed as ABILITIES instead of SPELLS in the game. This means they are UNAFFECTED by both BUFFS and DEBUFFS. This can either be useful or hindering, depending on the situation. For example, your Fey Illumination and Largesse will NOT  buff any of your Aetherflow skills. However, any Healing debuffs that might have been applied to you will also not affect your Aetherflow skills (or your fairy for that matter) This means if the situation calls for it, you still have an answer to deal with Healing when being inflicted with debuffs.

Sacred Soil. – Creates an Area that reduces all damage taken by 10% at the cost of one Aetherflow stack. Cannot be used at the same time as Shadow Flare. Has a 20% chance that the next succor will cost no MP.

Effect: 10% Reduced damage. MP Cost: 0 GCD: No. Instant Cast: Yes.  Recast: 30 seconds.

While it may sound impressive on paper, in theory Sacred Soil is by far the Weakest Aetherflow ability that we have in my opinion. It reduces damage by 10% which sounds strong on paper but in theory it’s far weaker than you might think. The thing is, if fights were designed around sacred soil, you’d be forced to bring a Scholar along for every raid fight. It however has some very niche uses in that you can use it to ignore certain mechanics by stacking excessive amounts of mitigation. Sacred soil is extremely useful for that due to its large range. Again, since it’s an Aetherflow ability, Sacred soil can be given the cost of one Energy Drain which is 1200MP and 150 potency.

A huge misleading thing about sacred soil however is WHEN the buff is applied. This is not instantly but rather on the next server tick. It could take up to 3 seconds for you to receive the effect so make sure to place it in time if you decide to use it.

Sacred soil is very nice for progression however, it gives you that little leeway on mitigation for raidwide damage. This makes some attacks such as Neo Exdeath’s Almagest a lot more manageable, but as your group starts to gain their first pieces of gear it quickly fades into obscurity.

Sacred soil can be compared with the Astrologians skill collective unconsciousness . This skill also reduces damage taken by 10%, but unlike sacred soil it also applies a regen with a potency of 150 for 15 seconds, this totals to a regen of 750 potency which is stronger than an Aspected Helios with Largesse. The drawback is that the astrologian cannot move or use any other abilities while using this skill and they suffer from the same issue as Scholar that their skill is based on server ticks. However, Astrologians can decide to cancel the channel after the damage goes out. The regen still persists and heals the group while the mitigation is gone. Thanks to the regen I find collective unconsciousness a far more useful skill. The damage reduction from soil and collective unconsciousness do stack though, but there’s only a rare occasion where such excessive mitigation is needed. Neo Exdeath’s Almagest comes to mind, making the DoT tick far more manageable.

Sacred Soil also stacks with Passage of Arms, creating an even bigger safety net if desired.

Emergency Tactics. – Your next Adloquium or Succor will restore more HP instead of applying HP and a shield.

Effect: Swaps shield for HP. MP Cost: 0 GCD: No. Instant Cast: Yes.  Recast: 20 seconds.

Emergency Tactics is a skill with a fairly niche use. It swaps out your shields for additional Healing. Shields in general are better than Healing because you can still apply shields even if everyone is topped off. As a general rule, Emergency Tactics does not see a whole lot of use except for when using it on succor, and even then you don’t want to replace your succor with Emergency Tactics all the time.

So, it’s useless then?

No, not at all. Emergency tactics is as the skill says best used for emergencies. It also complements the AoE Healing Scholar has to offer since they get to use succor twice in a row. Once to apply shields and once to do a full Healing version of succor. Emergency Tactics is useful when paired with Swiftcast to provide a lot of burst Healing in a short timeframe. Succor > Emergency Tactics + Swiftcast > Succor will take care of a lot of Healing. Emergency Tactics should only be used if Indomitability doesn’t cut it for Healing purposes or if you need to hold Indomitability for another heal check for whatever reason.

Deployment Tactics. – Spreads Galvanize and Eye for an Eye to all targets in range.

Effect: Spreads Eye for an Eye and Galvanize. Potency. MP Cost: 0 GCD: No. Instant Cast: Yes.  Recast: 120 seconds. Radius 10y

This skill is what makes Scholar the king of mitigation. Thanks to deployment tactics you are able to spread a shield from your party member to all other party members in range. Imagine casting Adloquium on a party member to recover some of their HP before a raid wide attack comes out. The shield they have on them bolsters their defenses for the next hit. If you want, you can use Deployment Tactics to shield EVERYONE in your party in range, turning it into Scholar’s most powerful mitigation tool.

Deployment tactics copies everything from your current target, including the duration. This means if a shield had 20 seconds remaining before spreading, everyone else will also receive a 20 second shield.

This effect gets amplified further if your Adloquium decides to crit to get that juicy modifier. Deployment Tactics also takes that in account and provides everyone with a massive shield. This is especially hilarious if you were also under the effect of Healing buffs earlier on to bolster your Adloquium and can lead to potentially raid threatening attacks to deal next to no damage on the entire party. Good usage of Deployment Tactics will cut down on Healer GCDs and allows you and your co Healer to deal more damage.

As with all shielding abilities, Deployment Tactics also has the shield delay built in. Deployment Tactics can also be used from your fairy, allowing you to position your fairy in such a way where it’ll hit everyone and deploy off her maximizing it’s efficiency. You cannot use deployment tactics on yourself. It can only be used on allies.

As you can see we’re provided with a wide arsenal of Healing abilities that synergize really nice with each other. (Succor + Emergency Tactics and Adloquium + Deployment Tactics) We also have a ton of juicy oGCD stuff if the situation calls for it thanks to our Aetherflow skills and we have a fairy providing additional mitigation and support to help us out. This makes us a highly versatile Healer capable of tackling almost any situation that we encounter. Should our fairy die for any reason though or if we use our stacks incorrectly, we’ll be punished for that accordingly by being weaker than the other two Healers and being gated out of our stronger skills.

A quick recap on Healing.

1. Physick is your weakest heal. It’s not very effective to spam this due to it’s low GCD/potency conversion. It however does not cost a lot of mana and can be useful in situations where you’re low on MP and do need to heal.
2. Adloquium is a far stronger heal than Physick, but it comes at a heavy cost. It is extremely versatile and an unrivaled tool when paired with deployment tactics. If Adloquium crits, it’s shield value is doubled giving it extreme shielding abilities.
3. Succor is our AoE heal. It recovers a small amount of HP and shields for the same amount. Succor Synergizes well with Emergency tactics if you need a lot of AoE Healing.
4. Lustrate is arguably our strongest single target heal. It instantly heals the target with a potency of 600 and has a recast timer of only one second, allowing you to fire Lustrates off in rapid succession if needed.
5. Indomitability is an extremely powerful AoE heal on a cooldown of only 30 seconds. It is by far the strongest and most useful Aetherflow ability we have in our Arsenal
6. Excogitation can be seen as a delayed lustrate with a far higher potency. It triggers when the target reaches 50% health and heals them with a potency of 800. It has a cooldown of 45 seconds and cannot be used on yourself.
7. Emergency Tactics swaps the shielding aspect from both Adloquium and Succor with Healing. It’s useful when paired with succor but not as useful when paired with Adloquium.
8. Deployment Tactics spreads the current Shield and Eye for an Eye status to your target. It synergizes extremely well with Adloquium. It cannot be used on yourself but can be used on your fairy.
9. All shields last for 30 seconds before expiring. This means you shouldn’t mindlessly spam shields if people are not going to take damage. They also cost enormous amounts of MP.

With that out of the way, let’s move on to the next chapter.

Mana Management and how Mana recovery works.

Note: This section assumes you are level 70. The basics still apply for lower levels, but with different values.

Mana management is essential to becoming a good Healer. If your MP pool is completely dry, then you won’t be able to do things. But how does mana work and is there a system behind it? You may have noticed that spells always increase in increments of 120 or 240. This is because the base MP pool we have in stormblood is 12000. You can easily see this by switching to a caster since their MP values are static and cannot be modified. Every spell, both DPS and Healing has an MP value of 1 to 100 which gets multiplied by 120. This dictates their total MP Cost. Physick for example has an MP value of 5. This means that physick costs 120 * 5 MP, for a total of 600, which checks out. The formula for this equation is

INT((BaseCostFactor * BaseMpFactor)/100)

Or in simple terms again taking physick, the base cost which is 5 gets multiplied by your base MP pool which is 12000, this leads up to 60.000. We then divide this value by 100 to get to our final MP cost for physick, which is 600.

Mana regeneration:

How does mana regeneration work?

Mana regeneration, just like MP costs have a base calculation of how Mana regains. Unlike Mana costs however, some of this is tied to your Base MP and some of it is tied to your Maximum MP.

MP Refeshes such as Lucid Dream and Energy Drain are tied to your Base MP, using the following formula:

INT(Refreshpotency * BaseMpFactor)/1000

As our Base MP in stormblood is 12000 we can conclude that one point of refresh potency is equal to 12 MP. This means that Lucid Dream will refresh 960 MP per tick (12*80) and Energy Drain has a MP Refresh value of 100 (1200/12)

The BRD and MCH crossclass skill Refresh regenerates 600 MP per tick. It lasts 30 seconds and ticks 10 times. This means it’ll recover a total of 6000 MP. Unlike other MP regenerative buffs it does not scale off your base MP, but provides a flat MP recovery. Paladins for example will recover the same amount as a healer does.

Natural MP Regeneration and MP Regeneration through Aetherflow scale off your maximum MP. You naturally regain 2% of your maximum mana every 3 seconds, and Aetherflow regains 10% mana on use. If we take an MP pool of 15.000 as example, that’d mean you would recover 1500 MP from Aetherflow, and 300 MP passively each tick.

Scholar has 3 main ways to regain Mana.

1. Through the Aetherflow skill, regaining 10% of your maximum mana
2. Through Energy Drain, regaining 1200 mana per cast (100 refresh potency)
3. Through Lucid Dream, regaining 960 mana per tick (80 refresh potency)

Taking our 15.000 MP pool as described earlier, A Scholar will be able to refresh 1500 MP from Aetherflow, 3600 MP from Energy Drain and 3360 MP from Lucid Dream every minute. (6720*0.5) This puts our total MP refresh over a minute at 8460 MP from skills. Assuming we get 300 MP every 3 seconds passively, this also adds up to another 6000 MP, putting our MP recovery at 14460 MP every minute. Note that this is done under optimal circumstances and most likely will not happen in realistic scenarios. This number also increases or decreases depending on your mana pool.

Knowing how Mana management and Mana recovery works is a key point in becoming a great Scholar. This allows you to calculate whether you can afford heals or not and gives you insight whether you’re getting into trouble later down the fight or if you end up fine.

Role Skills.

The final part of this guide will touch on Role Skills and which Role Skills in my opinion are the best for Scholar. Some Role Skills such as Swiftcast and Lucid Dream are mandatory picks in high level content, while other skills such as Rescue and Break are extremely situational. All role skills cost 0 MP.

The cast and recast values assume a base spellspeed of 0/364 and a 2.5s GCD.

Cleric Stance. – Increases attack magic potency by 5% for 15 seconds.

Duration 15s. Effect: 5% increase in attack magic potency.  GCD: No Instant Cast: Yes Cooldown: 90s

Our first Role Skill and quite underwhelming. I personally consider the new Cleric Stance an insult and a slap in the face to the old version. The new version gives you a 5% damage increase with a 16% uptime. This effectively gives it a DPS increase of 0.8% if used without any other cooldowns. If we use it in a raid scenario this number will increase slightly due to lining up with buffs and debuffs. However, It still won’t even come close in making a significant change in your damage output. On top of that, it’s also on the OGCD and forces you to clip, either forcing you to use Ruin 2 to avoid that clipping, or clip even more. This puts the new Cleric Stance into the ‘’useless’’ category for me during progression. There are far better options to take than this. For speedruns, it provides a niche boost and is worth taking.

Break. – Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 50 and applies heavy for 20 seconds.

Duration 20s. Effect: 50 potency + Heavy.  GCD: Yes Instant Cast: No Cast:2.5 seconds

Another fairly useless skill. It does 50 potency, is stuck on the GCD and applies a heavy that reduces movement speed by 40% for 20 seconds. Unless you need to kite a certain add in a fight i don’t see this skill getting much use. At least it costs 0 MP and you can use it for free, i guess.

Protect. – Increases the physical and magic defense of all party members in range.

Duration 30m. Effect: Increased phys and magical defense by 20%  GCD: Yes Instant Cast: No Cast:3 seconds

The first good role skill. Protect, in a raid scenario is considered a must pick by one of the Healers in my opinion. The free mitigation saves lives and helps you cut down on Healing GCDs. Protect raises the magical and physical defense stat by 20%. Just like Fey Covenant however, this isn’t the advertised 20% but a lower value. This scales by your gear and becomes stronger as your item level increases. This is why i consider protect a mandatory pick if you’re doing any kind of endgame content. The bonus is too good to pass up.

Esuna. – Removes a single Detrimental effect from the target.

Effect: Cleanses 1 Debuff  GCD: Yes Instant Cast: No Cast:1 second.

Esuna does what it says on the tin. It cleanses one debuff from the target. It simply boils down to ‘’Do i need to cleanse debuffs in this fight or not?’’ on whether you pick it or not. I consider this a situational but useful role skill. Alternatively you could use selene and have her use Fey Cleanse, assuming debuffs are sparsely needed to be removed.

Lucid Dreaming. – Reduces Enmity by half and refreshes your mana with a potency of 80 over 21 seconds.

Duration 21s. Effect: Reduces enmity by 50%. 80 potency MP refresh. GCD:No Instant Cast: Yes Cooldown: 120s

Lucid Dreaming is our second must pick skill. It provides essential MP regeneration which is needed thanks to our massive MP costs on Healing spells. Lucid Dream ticks 7 times over it’s 21 second period and restores 960 MP per tick for a total of 6720 MP over its whole duration. This means it essentially regains you 3360 MP per minute.  In the Mana Management section you can read more about how these calculations work.

Swiftcast. – Next spell will be cast instantly.

Duration 10s. Effect: Next spell is instant cast.  GCD: No Instant Cast: Yes Cooldown: 60s

Swiftcast is our third must pick skill. It turns your next cast into an instant cast when used. This is great for if you need to resummon your fairy, or if you need to raise someone. It is also useful for turning one of your broils into an instant cast, allowing you to weave 2 oGCDs in it’s spot. Not having swiftcast really harms your versatility as a Healer

Eye for an Eye. – Erects a magical barrier around a single party member or pet that has a 20% chance of applying a 10% damage debuff to anyone who hits the barrier for 10 seconds.

Duration 20s. Effect: 20% chance of reducing damage by 10%.  GCD: No Instant Cast: Yes Cooldown: 180s

A good skill, but with an incredibly and argueably too long of a cooldown. When it procs it’s amazing and really helps you in reducing damage, but if it doesn’t proc it’s useless. Eye for an Eye should be applied at least 10 seconds before the to be mitigated damage goes out, this is to maximize the chance that it procs. Eye for an Eye also only procs on phsyical attacks and not magical attacks. But once it procs, it mitigates both physical and magical hits. Eye for an Eye can be spread on the group using Deployment tactics, but this doesn’t do much in general, unless both the tanks are taking damage from seperate mobs. This Role skill isn’t a must, but still extremely useful. If Eye for an Eye regained it’s old 120s cooldown along with it’s old barrier duration it would be a must pick.

Largesse. – Increases Healing magic potency by 20% for 20 seconds.

Duration 20s. Effect: 20% heal up.  GCD: No Instant Cast: Yes Cooldown: 90s

In my opinion our fourth ‘’Must Pick’’ ability. Largesse provides you with a 20% Healing up boost which is significant and makes Healer checks a lot easier and helps you cutting down on Healing GCDs, saving you mana and allowing you to spend more time DPSing. It’s cooldown of 90 seconds isn’t too bad either, allowing you to make good use of it during a fight. Largesse stacks with other healing up skills such as Fey illumination, Mantra and Convalescense.

Surecast. – Next spell is cast uninterruptable while ignoring Sleep, Stun, Knockback and Draw in effects.

Duration 5s. Effect: Next cast is uninterruptable while Ignoring sleep, stun, knockback and draw in effects. GCD: No Instant Cast: Yes Cooldown: 30s

A situational skill if you ask me. Surecast can be good if there is a lot of knockbacks and stuns going around during raids, though this generally is not the case. The low cooldown of 30 seconds makes it a nice, spammable spell though. Personally i wouldn’t use this skill much, unless there’s heavy crowd control going on in a fight.

Rescue. – Instantly draw target party member to your side.

Effect: Draw target to you.  GCD: No Instant Cast: Yes Cooldown: 150s Range: 30y

Another situational skill. It allows you to pull out a party member which is in danger and would otherwise die if not rescued. With it’s range of 30y it’s also fairly long. Rescue also interrupts casts from casters if they happen to be casting. Alongside being useful it also has the potential for being a troll skill by pulling melees out of melee range and forcing them to run back to the boss, or interrupting the casts from a caster. Rescue can also cancel out LB animation locks, making LB3 take far less time to finish. Just Rescue a melee DPS as their LB3 cast finishes and you’re set. This makes Rescue an Useful, yet situational skill. This allows melees to move freely instead of being locked in.

TL;DR on role skills.

1. Cleric Stance is stripped of it’s former glory and isn’t nearly as good as it used to be. the 5% damage for 15s on a 90s cooldown is pitiful.
2. Break is useless unless you need to kite adds. It’s 50 potency and GCD lock are bad. It costs no MP and still deals some damage though.
3. Protect is a mandatory role skill for one of the Healers. It’s 20% physical and magical defense increase is really good.
4. Esuna is mandatory if you need to cleanse debuffs in a fight. If not, it’s useless. A situational skill
5. Lucid Dreaming is your second mandatory role skill. It provides you with 6720 MP on a 120 second cooldown over a 21 second period, on top of dumping half your aggro.
6. Swiftcast is your third mandatory role skill. It’s an extremely versatile skill with only a 60 second cooldown. It’s essential for raising people and resummoning your fairy.
7. Eye for an Eye is an useful role skill, helping in mitigation. It’s not as good as the mandatory role skills, but still a top pick on my hotbars.
8. Largesse is arguably your fourth mandatory role skill. the 20% heal up for 20 seconds on a 90 second cooldown is a far better deal than most other skills.
9. Surecast is a situational skill. Good if there’s a lot of crowd control going out, bad if not.
10. Rescue is another situational skill. Good for getting DPS out of AoEs, but good players won’t be there. It also has troll potential.

Role skill tiers.

Below is my opinion on how good the role skills are. These are ranked from best to worst. in each role skill’s description you can see why i ranked these skills as is.

Mandatory: Largesse, Lucid Dreaming, Protect, Swiftcast

Useful: Eye for an Eye, Rescue

Situational: Surecast, Esuna

Why would i use this?: Cleric Stance, Break.

CREDITS:

Hereby i want to thank the following people for helping me to make this guide. Without them i wouldn’t have done it.

My static for letting me play Scholar in an excellent environment. (Thoro Heavypunch, Polka Lullaby, Spool Spoolington, Dave Ackerman, Jo Musse, Neelia Eris, Pasuno Gremory)

The Math Warlocks from the Balance Discord, Nemekh and Pimoh Orinx in particular.

Nemekh for providing the graph of Chain Strategem

You, for slogging through over 40 pages of an elitist rambling about the good old days.

Changelog

18-7-2017 – Guide created, Patch 4.0

27-10-2017 – Updated the tooltips for patch 4.1, minor cleanup on text. (Succor and Adlo)

27-10-2017 – Fixed various tooltip errors that have been changed (Excogitation crit, Fey union meter usage)

23-5-2018 – Changes to Fairy Updates

Previous Versions

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18mlqzGKN3KpC8l9ujQFixNrSrFkWBVSwmNWxw3lthgA/edit#heading=h.a2idhy849fkg  (4.0)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LrZP8VUnDhChjxtocBS_a-ZWQdjM-ZOEE7sryUu1LXY/edit#  (4.1 / 4.2)