Scholar Discussion #3 (post March patch)

[Toth]

My mistake here. I meant a Cure V for a WHM without merits and the healing potency gear. Sorry for the confusion. You can tell I do not have WHM past 37

edit: Dingaling

[Aemora]

You can also "nuke" with Rapture >.>

Ever tried Rapture + Banish? kekeke...

[TeancumMemsochet]

On anything endgame, I haven't gotten my SCH nukes to even come close to those of the BLMs. I get way to high resists to make nuking worth it. Now I've not level'd BLM or have many nuking merits(elemental magic/INT) or even HQ gear. So I prefer DD support role(AoE SS & Enspell).

Anybody got any recommendations on a good(and preferably cheap) Dark Arts gear set? Currently mine looks like:

Ele Staff, Bugard Leather Strap +1, Morion Tathlum(yeah, I know about this one)
AF hat, Mohbwa Scarf+1(I'd rather have a torque here), Antivenom earring, Moldavite earring
AF body, Earrant cuffs, Tamas, Balrahn's
Red cape +1, Penitent's rope, Errant slops, Yigit crackows.

Subbing RDM, this gives me 65+38 INT.

[Vigilia]

On anything endgame, I haven't gotten my SCH nukes to even come close to those of the BLMs. I get way to high resists to make nuking worth it. Now I've not level'd BLM or have many nuking merits(elemental magic/INT) or even HQ gear. So I prefer DD support role(AoE SS & Enspell).

Anybody got any recommendations on a good(and preferably cheap) Dark Arts gear set? Currently mine looks like:

Ele Staff, Bugard Leather Strap +1, Morion Tathlum(yeah, I know about this one)
AF hat, Mohbwa Scarf+1(I'd rather have a torque here), Antivenom earring, Moldavite earring
AF body, Earrant cuffs, Tamas, Balrahn's
Red cape +1, Penitent's rope, Errant slops, Yigit crackows.

Subbing RDM, this gives me 65+38 INT.

65 base INT makes me guess you're elvaan, go get Desamillion earring from ENM60 for a cheap Phantom +1. Elemental Torque is by far the best bet for nukes, or Uggalepih Pendant, so just save gil till you can afford the torque or get some friends together for Tonberry fun. Vicious mufflers are free and easy to get with a couple of friends (or solo if you feel like the challenge). For rest of the stuff I can't think of any cheap or easily obtainable alternatives.
The list of good gear to aim for over time includes things like Prism/Merciful cape, Novio Earring, Mahatma Slops and Goliard Cuffs/Clogs.

[whoami]

No SS but got to try sch out in ksnm wyrm and hills past two days.
Max ele skill i have atm is 303 (4 merits). On wyrm i was able land helixes for 100 dmg at start but toward low hp it resisted to 20 max. T4 nuke i was able to top out at 1k dmg early on and resist later on (ls blms told me resist happen a lot at low hp so i dont feel to bad about the resists). Was sch/rdm during first 25% help nuke with blms. Then at 75% droped klimaform and wether then cure the blms till it went down again on ground. After that i didnt have enough ele skill to over come resist so i mostly just healed/buffed blms.
On hills was hitting 800-1k thunder/blizz 4 w/o any potency boost. Toped it out at 1.2k for my highest nuke. Helix were 77-100 intial dmg no potency boost and 110-135 with uggly pendant full int set and potency with day/wether matching. Just for comparioson top geared blms in my ls were doing 1k tier 4s 1.3k ga3 and 1.5k Am2. Had almost no resist issues on helix in full int/mab set up still stuck to resist set on tier 4s to keep constant dmg.
Both times i used a resist set macrod in uggly pendant below 51% mp for boost to nukes. Also gave blms inital wether to start on both didnt on hills after that due to nukers kiting.

I can post my resist set that i nuked in and helix set if people want to see them.

[Toth]

That sounds about right, whoami. Thank you for the info.

More and more reason to retire my BLM to stun whoring duties only

It's just more fun (and often more effecient) to come SCH than BLM.

[whoami]

yeah i used resist set on sch heres my gear used:
resist:
main: hq staff
offhand: +1 int grip
ammo: taru rse +2 int
head: elite baret (+4 skill)
neck: elemental torque (uggly pendant when it was latent)
ear1: magnetic ear
ear2: moldavite earring
body: af body (+15 skill)
hands: yigit hands (yeah i know had them before and working on golliard/mufflers)
ring1: +4 int
ring2: +4 int
back: +3 int cape
waist: obi (thunder) Prope (blizzard no obi for that yet)
legs: druid slops (+5 skill)
feet: yigit gages (+3 int +2 mab)

Not the greatest set but its build for resist my though is better to lose some dmg then get more resist for better DoT with nukes.

For helix used:
main: HQ staff
offhand: +1 int grip
range: taru rse ammo (+2 int)
head: af (+4 int)
neck: ele torque or uggly pendant depending on mp (+7 skill or +8 mab)
ears: magnetic and moldavite (+5 mab)
body: errant (+10 int)
hands: yigit (+5 ing +2 mab)
rings: +4 int each ring
back: +3 int
waist: obi (for duration wasnt keeping track but close to almost 2 minute durations
id say or Prope (only got wind/thunder obi atm almost done on ice/fire)
legs: errant (+7 int)
feet: yigit +3 int +2 mab

gives me a max bonus of 1.15 dmg (hq staff) increased duration (obi)
+17 mab gear (uggly active) +43 int (not counting staffs for int).

[Kaeko]

Just got done soloing Bugbear ENM on SCH... no meds used.

Was a bit harder than I thought since turns out Bugbear runs at +12% speed. Bind would resist after a few uses. Gravity and Sleep same deal.

It as firesday so I used a lot of Pyrohelix to keep MP efficiency high then just basically kited it back and forth like a RDM soloist would on this. Stoneskin is pretty easy to keep up with Celerity while kiting and you can absorb quite a few hits with Stoneskin and Phalanx.

Around 30% I blew Tabula Rasa. I went through some complex macro changes to help me use this more efficiently on nukes and it worked really well. I think this 2hr is actually quite strong when you spam correctly since you get all your spells off at half the time. I chewed through that last 30% extremely quickly with just Parsimony > Ebullience > Alacrity > Tier IV nuke (about 1100 without day/weather in this).

Overall, pretty happy with things even though it was slightly messy. I thought about soloing this on BLM before but now I have some doubts since it seems to still resist quite heavily after 2-3 uses on any move. I could definitely get this to about 15-20 minutes if I went in on like Iceday. Also, I was a bit timid since I had no idea what to expect.

Going to try a couple other reasonably hard solos soon on SCH as well.

[whoami]

thanks for confirming the bugbear en i was looking a thtinking it might be solo possible by a sch. If you do holy cow or any other enms solo or duo let me know seems like sch could do very well in a lot of them.

[Potentate]

Sorry if this has been discussed: Will any amount of ele skill allow me to land helix on cerb or khim? I just got done trying on cerb with only my merits, gown, torque, and earring, (+41) and never landed helix for more than 2, so i assume another 20~ skill (beret, slops, cape, genie gages) wouldn't help much. If not, which HNMs are susceptible to helix? It seems like all kings are, and sky gods generally are not - how about tia?

[whoami]

I belive khim and cereb are basic SE Fuck you mages for landing spells you usually would see brd/blm and rdm/blm and whm/blm to es slow 1/2 and elegy for tanks. Blms are basickly there to stun (at least for cerebus)
There is 2 ways to get low helix dmg on mobs.
Reason 1: flat out resist you can add more gear that has elemental magic then macc (genereal assumption rule its a 1:1 ratio on macc = elemetnal but no solid proof to date.) till you hit 300 which covers a nice solid rate for anything that you wouldnt see blms using resist sets on. Typical resist sets for blms are reaching 320 elemental skill then stacking int i believe (correct me if im wrong). The only things i personlly would use a full ele skill set is sky gods and hnms if i did them.
Reason 2: Your int and MAB just suck compared to the mobs MDB and int. In this case your better off using t4 t3 nukes or elemental dots/bio II for dmg. Adamantoise (at least the limbus one) sucked for me to land helix on. My general rule of thumb is use a t3 to see what that dmg is then determine if helix are worth it or not. If tier 3 is hitting 450-550 then helix should be fine for dmg (inital dmg wont suck) if it hit for 250-350 on average and its not resist use t4s for dmg with 1/2 mp cost for better elemental DoT.

[Toth]

More SCH in salvage fun:

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b7...enspellga1.png

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b7...enspellga2.png

Enspellga damage is just awesome for a majority of any remnant run. SCHs can also nuke chariots (and mega bosses) very well:

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b7...hvschariot.png

Funny statement that made my night:
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b7...ess/lolsch.png

SCH in meripo having fun:
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b7...s/schnuke2.png

I found a glitch! This shows up when you ask the gobbie to playback the SCH G5 fight:

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b7.../schglitch.png

[Kaeko]

Was able to solo a Ul'Yorva in Sea on SCH/RDM. If you use Helix (No weather or day) + Bio II, it just barely breaks the regen. Wasn't too hard when you mix in nukes. Not sure if Om' version is possible due to higher regen. No 2hr or med used.

[liefe]

Did you bush kite or drag it across water? How long did it take to kill?

[whoami]

Mind if i ask how you soloed that one? I assume a combo or gravity and bind with nuking in there maybe starting off a charged sublimation. Probly using 1/2 mp cost on tier 4 as well?

[Kaeko]

I kited around the JoJ area since there are no Sharks there.

These seem to have building bind and gravity resistance. I used bind quite a bit but tried to avoid Gravity unless I really needed it. You can actually deaggro these pretty easily - even though they run fsater than normal, you can mess with their pathing because they are so huge. After you get a deaggro, you can get a free nuke off (parsimony of course) to make things go faster.

Generally, just keep Helix on and Bio II. Fight took about 20 minutes without meds and 2hr. You really need those nukes as your primary damage or it takes forever because Bio and Helix just barely breaks DoT. The key to this is MP management I think. Sublimation and Parsimony are key.

[CubsWoo]

On the topic of Sea, would I be better off trying to solo organs for my Obis with SCH/RDM or SMN?

[Kaeko]

On the topic of Sea, would I be better off trying to solo organs for my Obis with SCH/RDM or SMN?

I'd personally say SCH because you can play it exactly like a BLM. Will be faster than doing it with a SMN. If you need Aern organs, it's also much much safer since you get sleep.

[kenshyn]

Hmmm, what about smn/sch best of both worlds isn't sleep below 37? with the arts u actually have skill rating and you got to love that,

[Acturus]

Hmmm, what about smn/sch best of both worlds isn't sleep below 37? with the arts u actually have skill rating and you got to love that,

You're still bound by the speed at which you can deal damage using SMN main.