Scholar Discussion #3 (post March patch)

[Kyreth]

Oddly enough, I'll take this from a similar point of view.

Y'see, I'm a Corsair. When we came out, RNG went OMFG SLUGSHOTTER.

And Bards started pulling out crosses, holy water, and chanting exorcisms every time I came to PT. Becuase I could do PT buffs, and shoot effectively, they both thought my job's purpose was to ruin theirs.

Didn't happen. Won't happen with Scholar, either. Yes, a Scholar can do wonderful things. They can't do them for too long, however.

And they work much better sharing the love and buffs with a party. A Scholar is good. A Scholar with BLMs is superior, but also makes the BLM's game go up as well. It's a job that begs to be used with parties, becuase it's not that you can see a Scholar deliver a buff for themselves. It's being able to spread that buff that matters. Klimaga. xxxStormga. Phalanxga. Stoneskinga. -ga, period.

BLMs are not out of a job, nor will they ever be.

[Meian]

Oddly enough, I'll take this from a similar point of view.

Y'see, I'm a Corsair. When we came out, RNG went OMFG SLUGSHOTTER.

And Bards started pulling out crosses, holy water, and chanting exorcisms every time I came to PT. Becuase I could do PT buffs, and shoot effectively, they both thought my job's purpose was to ruin theirs.

Didn't happen. Won't happen with Scholar, either. Yes, a Scholar can do wonderful things. They can't do them for too long, however.

And they work much better sharing the love and buffs with a party. A Scholar is good. A Scholar with BLMs is superior, but also makes the BLM's game go up as well. It's a job that begs to be used with parties, becuase it's not that you can see a Scholar deliver a buff for themselves. It's being able to spread that buff that matters. Klimaga. xxxStormga. Phalanxga. Stoneskinga. -ga, period.

BLMs are not out of a job, nor will they ever be.

Exactly, great point. Blms get stronger with a fellow SCH beside them, not one overtaking the other.

[Rocl]

Klimaform AoEs with Manifestation <.<

Well, damn maybe I had my effects off and filters on. I'll try that again later

Just to make sure I wasn't retarded, I just did it in my exp pt

Who then promptly asked me wtf I was doing ('-'*)

[Reapz]

Just to make sure I wasn't retarded, I just did it in my exp pt

Who then promptly asked me wtf I was doing ('-'*)

So you are still retarded! Atleast your party thinks so anyway

[Aemora]

BLMs are pissed because they were previously the only job (not counting SMN) relied on for nuking and magic damage.

Blms or just you?

The reply you gave is EXACTLY my point on what all Black Mages are like, including myself...

Blm is a selfish job, lots of E-peen and competition in Nuking damage (as seen from VARIOUS signatures with Blms MB damage on Fafnir or Nidhogg); Sch is not.

See, I leveled Scholar thinking that it wasn't a Rdm, and it wasn't a Whm, yet allowed me to be similar to them. Where as my other jobs (Blm, which I go mostly to everything; Smn, which hardly sees the light of day as far as "usefulness" goes; Cor, which I kinda stopped playing because Bullets and Missing costs too much; and Brd whenever we do Salvage or KV) hardly got any playability at all in the end-game shit I did. I wanted something that was wanted, that could use the merits I spent time and effort into my best geared job, and could recycle a fair few of the gears I had for it with great effectiveness (and I don't just mean Novio Corsairs)... Scholar was released, and it was the answer to what I'd been looking for, but it was lol'd at mightily.

Then it got patched, and the versatility of it sky-rocketed. Blms are "pissy" because Scholar can nuke 6 extra spells, whoopdy-fucking-doo. And let's face it, we aren't going to be nuking anything below Blizzard4 are we. Whms should be more pissed that Sch's actually out-perform them now, with Paralynaga, and Erasaga... But no. Whm's are infact happy that they no longer have the burden of keeping people deattributed themselves. And Sch's got a personal Refresh, so that saves Rdms 40 more MP. However, Rdms still have Haste and Refresh, and Whm's still have Haste, Cure5 and Raise3. Blms still have higher damaging nukes, better JTs and infinate MP every 2hrs. Scholar can ~ga stuff and be more effective than Whm/Rdm/Blm IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES, but will never be as good as them in others.

Scholar is a crowd pleaser, Black Mages are selfish people who are all about the 2k+ screenshots, and you, sir, are afraid that a sub-par job, in your opinion, can piss on your territory.

It won't. And those who HAVE leveled Scholar will come to agree.

[Not Kuno]

As a BLM that has SCH lvled I don't feel threatened by it. It's fun to play it sometimes but I find myself having to do non-blm stuff alot (aoe buffs, etc) so it's like 1/2 BLM 1/2 other type of support.

[Lordwafik]

Yeah I can't see how blms are going to stay threatened. SCH's saying they're outnuking BLM (me included) means we used Ebullience to do it. Now keep this up and you'll either be out of MP or out of charges in no time, therefore making yourself kinda redundant to the blm pt since charges are best used AOE'ing the weather first.

BLMs like spooky always make me lol.

Another example is the extreme exclusivety of the Dagger weaponskills. Since the game came out up untill WotG, Dancing Edge + Shark bite have been "Thief only". No other job would get it no matter what they subbed . However, dancer got them, but did any thief cry? Of course not, because we understand, having played thief, that they're not going to outdamage us, they might come close, but in order to do so they'll have to be playing for themselves (eg - horde TP, only use JA's that affect your dmg/acc output) and not playing to be a dancer that uses TP to heal.

Same thing with the exclusivety of weaponskills like Rampage, Steel Cyclone, etc etc. Mages who feel threatened by SCH are princesses who need to realize that melees have had many things shared between them since the get go, and while many can use the same thing, it'll always be one who reigns supreme in certain abilities / weaponskills , and I'll give you a hint : It's usually the ones with A skill.

[Kaeko]

The damage difference is quite easy to see if you actually duo as a SCH with another BLM like Wafik says - assuming you're both about equally well geared. SCHs have to use charges in order to keep up with damage or efficiency (it makes a big difference) against a BLM, so if you run out of them, BLM is a more efficient, and stronger nuker. Because of this charge limitation, SCH is slower when it comes to killing something.

Also for those of you worried about BLM being overtaken by SCH, there are a couple points people don't seem to mention enough...

1) SCH is a new job, hence rare. You will never find enough SCHs anyways.

2) SCH does not get Stun w/o /DRK (which would would your defense gimp w/o Skin).

3) SCH is a much harder job to play and control well compared to BLM (ask anyone here with both).

Think of it like Diminishing returns here... Adding a SCH can help your party greatly due to versatility, but hording them (if you could ever find enough), would drastically reduce the effectiveness. Having someone that can AoE moves and crowd control is awesome, but you don't need everyone to be able to do it. On the other hand, you can never have too many Stuns. BLMs also get Ga3s still, which work much better in situations where you're hording BLMs (since you'll get a near instantaneous kill from having so many go off at the same time).

Which is a better nuker depends on your play style and your priorities. SCH isn't going to win any e-penis contests and it will generally kill slower, but it is incredibly more efficient than BLM. If you're a bigger fan of MP efficiency than killing speed (like me), SCH will jump out at you as a better nuker; I have a feeling most won't though. Oh yea, all the buffs, crowd control specialist, versatility, etc. etc. etc.

[lost071]

The damage difference is quite easy to see if you actually duo as a SCH with another BLM like Wafik says - assuming you're both about equally well geared. SCHs have to use charges in order to keep up with damage or efficiency (it makes a big difference) against a BLM, so if you run out of them, BLM is a more efficient, and stronger nuker. Because of this charge limitation, SCH is slower when it comes to killing something.

Also for those of you worried about BLM being overtaken by SCH, there are a couple points people don't seem to mention enough...

1) SCH is a new job, hence rare. You will never find enough SCHs anyways.

2) SCH does not get Stun w/o /DRK (which would would your defense gimp w/o Skin).

3) SCH is a much harder job to play and control well compared to BLM (ask anyone here with both).

Think of it like Diminishing returns here... Adding a SCH can help your party greatly due to versatility, but hording them (if you could ever find enough), would drastically reduce the effectiveness. Having someone that can AoE moves and crowd control is awesome, but you don't need everyone to be able to do it. On the other hand, you can never have too many Stuns. BLMs also get Ga3s still, which work much better in situations where you're hording BLMs (since you'll get a near instantaneous kill from having so many go off at the same time).

Which is a better nuker depends on your play style and your priorities. SCH isn't going to win any e-penis contests and it will generally kill slower, but it is incredibly more efficient than BLM. If you're a bigger fan of MP efficiency than killing speed (like me), SCH will jump out at you as a better nuker; I have a feeling most won't though. Oh yea, all the buffs, crowd control specialist, versatility, etc. etc. etc.

Ok so because SCH has to use JAs to reach the damage it doesn't count? The JAs are part of what makes SCH different. SE said that out of the current mage jobs, none of them are really reliant on JAs so they created SCH with this in mind. Why are people so afraid of another magical DD? Look at all of the melee jobs out there that all have fairly similar roles. I mean the job definitely will be partially support but I just don't see why so many people are upset that there is now two jobs that are capable of dealing good magical damage it just doesn't make any sense.

[Kaeko]

The damage difference is quite easy to see if you actually duo as a SCH with another BLM like Wafik says - assuming you're both about equally well geared. SCHs have to use charges in order to keep up with damage or efficiency (it makes a big difference) against a BLM, so if you run out of them, BLM is a more efficient, and stronger nuker. Because of this charge limitation, SCH is slower when it comes to killing something.

Also for those of you worried about BLM being overtaken by SCH, there are a couple points people don't seem to mention enough...

1) SCH is a new job, hence rare. You will never find enough SCHs anyways.

2) SCH does not get Stun w/o /DRK (which would would your defense gimp w/o Skin).

3) SCH is a much harder job to play and control well compared to BLM (ask anyone here with both).

Think of it like Diminishing returns here... Adding a SCH can help your party greatly due to versatility, but hording them (if you could ever find enough), would drastically reduce the effectiveness. Having someone that can AoE moves and crowd control is awesome, but you don't need everyone to be able to do it. On the other hand, you can never have too many Stuns. BLMs also get Ga3s still, which work much better in situations where you're hording BLMs (since you'll get a near instantaneous kill from having so many go off at the same time).

Which is a better nuker depends on your play style and your priorities. SCH isn't going to win any e-penis contests and it will generally kill slower, but it is incredibly more efficient than BLM. If you're a bigger fan of MP efficiency than killing speed (like me), SCH will jump out at you as a better nuker; I have a feeling most won't though. Oh yea, all the buffs, crowd control specialist, versatility, etc. etc. etc.

Ok so because SCH has to use JAs to reach the damage it doesn't count? The JAs are part of what makes SCH different. SE said that out of the current mage jobs, none of them are really reliant on JAs so they created SCH with this in mind. Why are people so afraid of another magical DD? Look at all of the melee jobs out there that all have fairly similar roles. I mean the job definitely will be partially support but I just don't see why so many people are upset that there is now two jobs that are capable of dealing good magical damage it just doesn't make any sense.

Note sure if you quoted the wrong person hmmm

Anyways my point is SCH's base magic damage cannot compete with a BLMs, but with stratagems they can overtake BLM in MP efficiency by a large amount; however, charges are not infinite and so there is a limit on how far you can go before you run out and this is something SCHs have to learn to manage. The comments about JAs not counting or somehow being afraid? ;o I'm not sure where that's coming from since I have both jobs and pretty much <3 SCH to death.

This thread has gotten very close to KI/Allakhazam SCH forums in the last page or so, so I'll try to put this back on track with some actual experiences...

A couple people have mentioned that they are having issues maintaining Accession Thunderstorm and being a nuker since you have to go back to light arts every 3 minutes and Accession. It then costs you a 2nd charge to go back into Addendum:Black. I think in a situation like this, you may be better off sticking to normal Dark Arts and using 3 spells? Either this or give weather separately while staying in Addendum:Black. If you switch back and forth, you are basically getting 1 charge to spare every 3 minutes, which isn't that great.

[Toth]

This Spooky nonsense just never ends. SCH compliments BLM. End of story. A SCH can nuke and nuke well but BLMs will always be top tier when it comes to magical damage.

[Lordwafik]

A couple people have mentioned that they are having issues maintaining Accession Thunderstorm and being a nuker since you have to go back to light arts every 3 minutes and Accession. It then costs you a 2nd charge to go back into Addendum:Black. I think in a situation like this, you may be better off sticking to normal Dark Arts and using 3 spells? Either this or give weather separately while staying in Addendum:Black. If you switch back and forth, you are basically getting 1 charge to spare every 3 minutes, which isn't that great.

In a duo situation, I've been doing this :

On a mob where you blow all your MP and rest once finished to a decent amount due to it being somewhat resistant (Golems) or Reraise (Aerns) , I've been doing Accession Thunderstorm (Charge 1) > Dark Arts + Addendum : Black (Charge 2) > Parsimony x 2 (the rest of my charges, but obviously 1 between each nuke) and what I find is by the time I'm up to using parsimony, the charges from the first 2 are filling up and I can use a third one. The next battle starts with me having 3 or 4 charges up.

On a mob like a pudding or other trash mobs, I just do the same thing, but have less time to rest so after a while I stop using parsimony as much.

In a manaburn on the other hand (puddings, dynamis, limbus, einherjar, etc), where there's multiple mages, a lot of the time I won't even need to land hueg nukes or even blow so much MP, so instead I'll be nuking 1 t4 tops with a few t3, and no need to go for Parsimony in this situation and I can ebullience, esp if there's a bard too.

When soloing on the other hand, I don't use any light art charges outside of once per hour for RR2. Sometimes I don't even go into light arts mode if stoneskin is up , I'll just cast thunder/hailstorm from dark art mode, costs me a bit more but at the end saves time instead of going through the charges.


My big problem now as a SCH is MP. Do taru get 1000 MP at 75? I only have 800 and it hurts when I'm soloing Aerns, I've had to zone so many due to me running out of MP despite my efficient charge usage. I'm thinking of going back to the old ocean rope (+40 mp), but I don't see many places I can squeeze MP out of - I did notice rostrums had +30 mp and those wouldn't be bad at all, considering I nuke in RSE boots, they're the same amount of +int but give more MP and tiny smidgeon of fast cast - those two alone give me a starter MP count of approx 870, with a meronpai +1 it'll give me over 900. Oh how I wish I could use zenith mitts


Oh ya forgot to add, pissed off JPs last night who overcamped me on sky golems by pulling with Alacrity + Gravity, oh how fast and delicious it is Of course though , Sky golems only like japanese people and they got 2 ullis to pop to our 0(while overcamping us and taunting us like faggots when we asked them to move to nexus since they had 18 people and we had 3) . I wish many tidal waves and earthquakes apon them.

[Kaeko]

My MP as Tarutaru with capped MP merits is 1027 standing and 901 nuking. Perhaps moving to an "initial full MP" nuking set? This can push you an extra 600-1000 total damage before resting on a full MP pool, especially for an MP efficient job.

Also, for your Aerns soloing, when are you blowing Sublimation? I usually don't bother using it at all and just let it store unless I actually need it on the Reraise. I also store it on Puddings until higher chains and attempt a chain 6 with it. I'm not sure if it's the best method for overall speed/safety. As a non-taru, your Sublimation is a lot stronger so how you use this may be more key to your longevity than me.

Last thing... I think if SCH ever got a non-robe refresh slot it would get a huge boost. Not being able to keep AF1 head on at all times in the standing set lowers the speed at which Sublimation stores MP by 1MP/tick. Being able to keep AF1 hat on while still getting refresh normally from body slot would give you 4MP/tick with Sublimation going, as opposed to 3MP/tick right now.

[Lordwafik]

Also, for your Aerns soloing, when are you blowing Sublimation? I usually don't bother using it at all and just let it store unless I actually need it on the Reraise. I also store it on Puddings until higher chains and attempt a chain 6 with it. I'm not sure if it's the best method for overall speed/safety. As a non-taru, your Sublimation is a lot stronger so how you use this may be more key to your longevity than me.

On aerns, I'll use sublimation only when it's needed (example : If I go on a resist streak and MP starts to dip and I can just use a tad more MP to nuke them down), however I still find myself sleeping them if they RR due to me not having MP, I need to swap some gears around I think for nuking, I'm too used to being BLM and having so much ele skill already. My sublimation usually returns me about 250-260 MP.

Last thing... I think if SCH ever got a non-robe refresh slot it would get a huge boost.

We need morrigan's robe sooooo badly


Anyway this was a great update, I just can't wait for merits, I'm already speculating group 1 might just be all the JA's recasts lowered, like this :

Penury | Parsimony recast ( -2 sec per merit)
Celerity | Alacrity recast ( -2 sec per merit)

etc. That'd be nifty for those to be either group 1 or two, I sure as hell would max accession and parsimony.

[Meian]

A couple people have mentioned that they are having issues maintaining Accession Thunderstorm and being a nuker since you have to go back to light arts every 3 minutes and Accession. It then costs you a 2nd charge to go back into Addendum:Black. I think in a situation like this, you may be better off sticking to normal Dark Arts and using 3 spells? Either this or give weather separately while staying in Addendum:Black. If you switch back and forth, you are basically getting 1 charge to spare every 3 minutes, which isn't that great.

In a duo situation, I've been doing this :

On a mob where you blow all your MP and rest once finished to a decent amount due to it being somewhat resistant (Golems) or Reraise (Aerns) , I've been doing Accession Thunderstorm (Charge 1) > Dark Arts + Addendum : Black (Charge 2) > Parsimony x 2 (the rest of my charges, but obviously 1 between each nuke) and what I find is by the time I'm up to using parsimony, the charges from the first 2 are filling up and I can use a third one. The next battle starts with me having 3 or 4 charges up.

On a mob like a pudding or other trash mobs, I just do the same thing, but have less time to rest so after a while I stop using parsimony as much.

In a manaburn on the other hand (puddings, dynamis, limbus, einherjar, etc), where there's multiple mages, a lot of the time I won't even need to land hueg nukes or even blow so much MP, so instead I'll be nuking 1 t4 tops with a few t3, and no need to go for Parsimony in this situation and I can ebullience, esp if there's a bard too.

When soloing on the other hand, I don't use any light art charges outside of once per hour for RR2. Sometimes I don't even go into light arts mode if stoneskin is up , I'll just cast thunder/hailstorm from dark art mode, costs me a bit more but at the end saves time instead of going through the charges.


My big problem now as a SCH is MP. Do taru get 1000 MP at 75? I only have 800 and it hurts when I'm soloing Aerns, I've had to zone so many due to me running out of MP despite my efficient charge usage. I'm thinking of going back to the old ocean rope (+40 mp), but I don't see many places I can squeeze MP out of - I did notice rostrums had +30 mp and those wouldn't be bad at all, considering I nuke in RSE boots, they're the same amount of +int but give more MP and tiny smidgeon of fast cast - those two alone give me a starter MP count of approx 870, with a meronpai +1 it'll give me over 900. Oh how I wish I could use zenith mitts


Oh ya forgot to add, pissed off JPs last night who overcamped me on sky golems by pulling with Alacrity + Gravity, oh how fast and delicious it is Of course though , Sky golems only like japanese people and they got 2 ullis to pop to our 0(while overcamping us and taunting us like faggots when we asked them to move to nexus since they had 18 people and we had 3) . I wish many tidal waves and earthquakes apon them.

Just how many hands do you have, sir?

Glad I wasn't the only one who casted weather spells and stoneskin while in dark arts mode.

I have about low 800-ish mp with 8/8 merits and I am hume. With sublimation, the -10%, conserve mp, strategems to reduce mp cost to half, and able to Aspir when able seems to make up a bit for it.

[Acturus]

[...]

Just how many hands do you have, sir?

[...]

Wafik's final form:

http://www.mortalkombatonline.com/co...nder_final.jpg

[Aemora]

In a duo situation, I've been doing this :

[...] I've been doing Accession Thunderstorm (Charge 1)

Just like to point out that that is a waste of a charge. If indeed you are duo'in, you may as well cast Thunderstorm twice, as it costs the same MP and saves you a charge~

[lost071]

My MP as Tarutaru with capped MP merits is 1027 standing and 901 nuking. Perhaps moving to an "initial full MP" nuking set? This can push you an extra 600-1000 total damage before resting on a full MP pool, especially for an MP efficient job.

Also, for your Aerns soloing, when are you blowing Sublimation? I usually don't bother using it at all and just let it store unless I actually need it on the Reraise. I also store it on Puddings until higher chains and attempt a chain 6 with it. I'm not sure if it's the best method for overall speed/safety. As a non-taru, your Sublimation is a lot stronger so how you use this may be more key to your longevity than me.

Last thing... I think if SCH ever got a non-robe refresh slot it would get a huge boost. Not being able to keep AF1 head on at all times in the standing set lowers the speed at which Sublimation stores MP by 1MP/tick. Being able to keep AF1 hat on while still getting refresh normally from body slot would give you 4MP/tick with Sublimation going, as opposed to 3MP/tick right now.

I don't understand why you wouldn't be using it more often. You said you let it store the full charge then you only use it when you need it? I think that before you start doing anything you should have a full charge but after that you should be using it every 30-60 seconds. You realize that the AF hat does not raise the stored cap but merely makes the tics go from 2-3 MP per tic, so if you're only using it once in a while you wouldn't even need the hat.

[TeancumMemsochet]

In a duo situation, I've been doing this :

[...] I've been doing Accession Thunderstorm (Charge 1)

Just like to point out that that is a waste of a charge. If indeed you are duo'in, you may as well cast Thunderstorm twice, as it costs the same MP and saves you a charge~

That's what I had to start doing at Proto-Omega last night. It became easier to get the BLMs w/e storm they wanted by individually casting than trying to AoE it after the initial buffing.

[Reapz]

That's what I had to start doing at Proto-Omega last night. It became easier to get the BLMs w/e storm they wanted by individually casting than trying to AoE it after the initial buffing.

BLMs don't stand still in these kind of things so yeh lol.
on topic: SCH48!