WHM/SCH, a few questions

[Conrad]

To preface this, I haven't played WHM in about a year. The job grew stale for me, with no updates and no progression past Dynamis gear.

That being said, I've heard from a variety of sources that /SCH on WHM is exceptional, and if that's the case I might buy gear for the job again if I'm needed on it. What piques my curiosity is that it boosts WHM in all of the areas that it needed help in, while sacrificing little in switching from the major subjobs. My major questions are:

1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Dark Arts gives WHM 256 dark/enfeebling/elemental skill. Following this logic, does this make Aspir and Drain relatively useful (assuming that one buys +Dark gear)? I doubt that elemental skill would have any practical use since WHM has access to such a small amount of +elemental.

2. Outside of the above + Dispel, is there any reason not to have Light Arts up fulltime?

3. Confirm the rumors: Is /SCH the best sub for WHM? Feel free to fill in anything that I've missed from the above questions. I'm very interested in how the job works as a whole.

[Alistaire]

yes yes and yes, with the added note in reference to you saying "assuming that one buys +Dark gear" that rdm/blm or /drk still makes good use of aspir and all the skill gear you can get for rdm won't amount to what you'll have as whm/sch.

[layoneil]

1) yes. elemental is useless because the best spell you would get is Water II.

2) the very rare Sleep when you can't Repose.

3) yes.

[Zosi]

WHM/SCH is hands-down better than any other sub at the moment. In addition to the ability to drain/aspir as well as a naked BLM, you gain full-strength Conserve MP, flat 10% MP cost reduction and 5.5% Fast Cast for all your white magic, and half-cost and half-casting-time stratagems on a 2 minute timer with two max charges.

[Chupunpupun]

WHM/SCH is hands-down better than any other sub at the moment. In addition to the ability to drain/aspir as well as a naked BLM, you gain full-strength Conserve MP, flat 10% MP cost reduction and 5.5% Fast Cast for all your white magic, and half-cost and half-casting-time stratagems on a 2 minute timer with two max charges.

But you can't warp when shit hits the fan!

[Zosi]

WHM/SCH is hands-down better than any other sub at the moment. In addition to the ability to drain/aspir as well as a naked BLM, you gain full-strength Conserve MP, flat 10% MP cost reduction and 5.5% Fast Cast for all your white magic, and half-cost and half-casting-time stratagems on a 2 minute timer with two max charges.

But you can't warp when shit hits the fan!

Celerity -> Teleport-Dem, with an optional /pcmd leave while it's going off if the situation warrants it. Not quite as fast (10s vs 4s), but probably good enough.

[Deftscythe]

Is Sch always the best Whm sub, or just at 75? I'm taking my Whm to 53 for the new teleports.

Also leveling Blm from 40 to 55 for Retrace. I know /sch kind of sucks at 75, but if I'm just doing parties in that stretch, would /sch be any good?

[Vail]

it's a good subjob worth using after lv20 (when light arts/dark arts are acquired) and compares mostly equal to other sub jobs all the way up. post 50 it overcomes /blm gaining it's own conserve MP, and post 70 with sublimation I'd wager that without someone refreshing you, it picks up even more.

the only subjob worth using over sch is /blm, and only for fights when you use elemental seal regularly: namely for ES sleeps or ES slows, dependant on the NM in question

[Linktri]

I'm a 75 WHM/SCH with capped enfeebling Magic merits. My Enfeebling is capped at 274 with Light or Dark Arts active. I don't get resisted on debuffs too often. Using Scholar as a subjob lets you manage your MP much better. With the flat 10% reduction in MP cost and the 50% reduction you get every 2 minutes. Having Sublimation up won't completely replace a Red Mage as a refresher in the party. (Refresh and Sublimation do not stack.) If you have a Bard that keeps Ballad 1 and 2 up for you consistently, manage Sublimation well and ensure you have Stoneskin up, you'll be hard pressed to run out of MP if you take a knee here and there. Using /SCH is much more work than any other sub for White Mage but it is entirely worth it.

Celerity + Penury = Cheap and very fast Raise III/Reraise III.
Penury (*2) is great for reducing the cost of rebuffing parties with Protectra V and Shellra V from about 180 MP to about 90.
If you're a Regen III whore like I am, spamming Penury + Regen III on tanks (or Samurai MP sinks) really reduces the cost of keeping the party's HP up.
Having Dispel at your disposal and Aspir helps a ton. An emergency Sleep on light based (or resistant) mobs adds defensive flexibility. Nukes are shit. You might be able to MB for 200 or so on a VT but who SCs anymore?

If you put some merits into Martyr and Devotion as well, you can keep your MP costs for the whole party very low. Devotion for me is about 240 MP to a party member. Martyr heals for about 450 HP. Since you're keeping Stoneskin up for Sublimation, the damage you take from those job abilities will be negligible.

Celerity is very useful but you need to be a macro genius in order to fire those spells off for when they are needed. Celerity + Penury + Divine Seal + Curaga IV = more cheap healing (and hate) than you will ever need.

[Nirokun!]

whm/sch 75 with dark arts up, dark magic skill +15 (torque/earring/nashira manteel), macc +25, and pluto's staff~ i get nice aspirs (70~100?mp)every minute last time in sea (last time i remember getting to play whm lol) with your standard resists here and there (didnt get to aspir that much because i didnt use that much mp )

being able to save penury for your most mp-intensive spells is just great, i love my /sch

[orson]

WHM/SCH is hands-down better than any other sub at the moment. In addition to the ability to drain/aspir as well as a naked BLM, you gain full-strength Conserve MP, flat 10% MP cost reduction and 5.5% Fast Cast for all your white magic, and half-cost and half-casting-time stratagems on a 2 minute timer with two max charges.

Huh!? I hope you mean geared Whm vs naked Blm because Blm gets 269 base dark skill.

[Zosi]

WHM/SCH is hands-down better than any other sub at the moment. In addition to the ability to drain/aspir as well as a naked BLM, you gain full-strength Conserve MP, flat 10% MP cost reduction and 5.5% Fast Cast for all your white magic, and half-cost and half-casting-time stratagems on a 2 minute timer with two max charges.

Huh!? I hope you mean geared Whm vs naked Blm because Blm gets 269 base dark skill.

I meant geared, but even ungeared, 256 (naked WHM/SCH with Dark Arts up) is a lot closer to 269 (naked BLM) than WHM/BLM or any amount of +dark skill on RDM. It's in the same league as a naked BLM, but not the exact same skill number, you're correct.

[Sai]

I'm lvling sch to sub on whm. Anyone familiar with windower macros know how to setup a good Celerity + Cure V macro?

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm fairly sure this doesn't work:

/ja "Celerity" <me>
/ma "Cure V" <t>

Putting in a /wait 1 kind of defeats the purpose of Celerity in the first place, doesn't it? Just curious if windower macros would let you get around it somehow.

[Wizerd]

WHM/SCH is hands-down better than any other sub at the moment. In addition to the ability to drain/aspir as well as a naked BLM, you gain full-strength Conserve MP, flat 10% MP cost reduction and 5.5% Fast Cast for all your white magic, and half-cost and half-casting-time stratagems on a 2 minute timer with two max charges.

5.5% Fast Cast?

I thought it was a flat -10% casting time and recast time.

I'm 99% sure it's -10% recast but I never tested casting time.

[Vail]

I'm lvling sch to sub on whm. Anyone familiar with windower macros know how to setup a good Celerity + Cure V macro?

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm fairly sure this doesn't work:

/ja "Celerity" <me>
/ma "Cure V" <t>

Putting in a /wait 1 kind of defeats the purpose of Celerity in the first place, doesn't it? Just curious if windower macros would let you get around it somehow.

make it "/ma "Cure V" <stpc> and just time it yourself with the arrow/enter

[Eldelphia]

1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Dark Arts gives WHM 256 dark/enfeebling/elemental skill. Following this logic, does this make Aspir and Drain relatively useful (assuming that one buys +Dark gear)? I doubt that elemental skill would have any practical use since WHM has access to such a small amount of +elemental.

2. Outside of the above + Dispel, is there any reason not to have Light Arts up fulltime?

3. Confirm the rumors: Is /SCH the best sub for WHM? Feel free to fill in anything that I've missed from the above questions. I'm very interested in how the job works as a whole.

1. Aspir is useful but you have to switch between Light and Dark Arts and then back again. Because of the recast on Aspir it's not too much bother but if you're caught needing to cure whilst having Dark Arts up, remember it will up the casting time and MP cost of your white magic spell. It's useful but you need decent gear and good timing to get reliable results.

2. No. Light Arts is the best thing since sliced bread (UK saying). All spell cost and casting time reduced and it raises your Enhancing magic to a B+ and so your barspells improve considerably!

3. Now that WHM has access to two charges and sublimation, it's hands down the most efficient sub for WHM. I used to sub both BLM and SMN a lot and even when /SCH was first released, preferred /SMN but now /SCH blows it away. I would go as far as to say that WHM benefits from /SCH more than any other job.

Celerity is great for...

when weakened for helping to cut down the recast timers on Raises
Getting stoneskin up in a hurry
Buffing mid fight
Getting somewhere else in a hurry

Penury is great for...

Haste in meripos
Cure IV or V when not in 'o-shit' mode
Everything
Raise III when you have 125 mp (you don't need to wait for 250)

Sublimation is just great when you don't have a RDM. My preferred meripo now is definitely WHM+BRD. (I have both)

I use /SCH for everything now - Dynamis/Limbus/Sky. Not so sure on Salvage as our group has stalled but it might not be quite as efficient there initially if you don't get a JA cell fast.

[Wizerd]

2. No. Light Arts is the best thing since sliced bread (UK saying).

Worldwide saying - or at least we say it in Canada. <_< Which I guess is practically Europe anyway!

I use /SCH for everything now - Dynamis/Limbus/Sky. Not so sure on Salvage as our group has stalled but it might not be quite as efficient there initially if you don't get a JA cell fast.

Nothing else you can sub in Salvage will help anyway, regardless of whether you only get SJ just before boss or whether you get it at the start. If you're not gonna get SJ at all I guess you can sub BLM for warp after, but every area has decent access to subjobs before the boss, even Arrapago. Zhayolm may be an exception, in which case you know you won't be getting sub if that's gonna be the case.

The only reason not to sub SCH in Salvage is if you won't get abilities (back to Arrapago with this one <_<) but will be getting SJ; then BLM and SMN subs still help.

All our WHMs in Dynamis, Salvage etc have started using WHM fulltime once they got it leveled. In fact, SCH sub has added so much to WHM that I am thinking about leveling it up myself since it won't be so boring, rather than just using my wife's character when I need a WHM! lol.

[Alibeemac]

The only time I ever sub something other than /SCH now is when I am running around doing little things like quests, craftin etc ie Tele-Altep, Escape to get to Bastok quicker and sub /blm or if I am going to the AH I sub /blm for warp back to MH faster >.>

There is absolutely hands down no better sub for WHM than /SCH. SE brought some love back to the WHMs with this job.

[Scorsese]

Some of the members in my ls use SCH as a sub. I, myself, prefer BLM sub....because it's what I'm used to, and I like having Warp.

That being said, it does work fairly well when there's no RDM/BRD/COR present to refresh.

[Uzor]

Personally, I love SCH sub. For MP efficiency, its hands-down the best sub available for pure MP efficiency. Besides, have to love half-cost 33% activation on Raise III.

I have to disagree with nothing besides BLM being worth subbing for WHM. for pure MP, I'd say /SMN is a much better sub then BLM, as BLM sub on average saves 6-7 MP per 100 MP spent, whereas SMN sub gives you 20 MP every min back. You'd need to spend almost 300 MP every min in order for Conserve MP to keep up with Auto Refresh in MP gained/saved. For Salvage, I usually sub SCH in Silver Sea and Bhaflau, where both SJ and ability is easy to get, whereas I sub SMN in Zhayolm and Arrapago, where you might only get SJ, but not ability.

Sure, you don't get neat spells like Warp, Tractor and Escape with /SMN sub, but Auto Refresh by itself gives you more MP then BLM sub.

Either way, a WHM should have SCH, BLM and SMN lvled as available subs, as they're all useful, some more then others in certain situation. On average, I'd say SCH is a more useful sub then any of them in a group situation where you can use abilities. In solo situations though, like questing, BLM is superior simply due to warp. Although you could very well use Teleport - Altep and warp from Rabao, its all a matter of taste really.