Taking WHM out of retirement.Follow

I'll let someone else touch on Afflatus, I'll be the /sch advocate.


Firstly, there's "Light Arts" and "Addendum:White". Add:White is like light arts+1, it gives access to spells like reraise 2, erase, paralyna, poisona, so on and so forth, to scholar. It doesn't do much for white mage main since we get those naturally, but its not any different from light arts, it just allows access to more spells while in light arts.

The benefit of Light Arts and thus, /sch, is huge. Having LA up gives a CONSTANT -10% off cast time and MP cost to white magic spells. Haste, cure, barspells, all of em. That in itself is huge, /sch also gives the passive trait Conserve MP, which while isnt amazing, it's something. I think it's like 7 mp saved for every 100 spent, so not stellar, but its still 7 mp.

Penury is your best friend. It halves the mp cost of the next spell by 50%, amazing mp management can be had when you use it on cure V, shellra V, RR, curaga III-IV, etc.

Celerity reduces your next spell's cast time by 50%, as well as caps the recast on it to be as short as possible. When you're weakened, haste the spell doesnt affect recast timers, but haste from gear does and celerity does, so always celerity ->raise and it will be up a lot faster allowing you to recover from wipes quicker. It has other uses such as quick stoneskins, getting back on a haste cycle after a few bad pulls, so on and so forth.

Being in Light Arts itself boosts any skills we have that weren't at least a B+, to a B+, so our Enhancing magic gets kicked up to 256 (any merits are applied on top of the 256 iirc) so our barspells get a nice little boost to them when /sch.


Dark Arts does the same thing for our black magic skills, namely, dark magic. /sch also gives us drain and aspir, which effectively means we now have an Aspir with a 256 dark magic skill backing it. If we use Addendum:Black (remember, Dark Arts+1, gives us access to spells) we get access to Dispel, so you can go do lamia 13 assaults and never have to change off WHM.



My biggest tip to using /sch, and more specifically Penury and Celerity, is to macro them, preferably in an easy to reach macro (personally, alt1 and 2 are Penury and celerity respectively for me). You'll forget to use them unless they're macro'd, and you'll be much more efficent with them if theyre macro'd.


Yea, wall of text, my bad.

Light Arts has a 2 hour duration, yea, you can and should keep it up all the time


Regardless of what regen effects you have on, sublimation is the same as poison, you need to have stoneskin up in order to rest. It does serve the application while its charging from preventing you from being slept, however, so thats neat.


You're pretty spot on for group 2. I went 5/5 Shellra, 1/5 Protectra, 1/5 Martyr, 3/5 Devotion. If you can live without Martyr, by all means 4/5 Devotion, but I like having Martyr for oh shi- situations so I just have it unlocked for those moments. Dont take it, or pro V, past 1/5.

It seems to me like, actually, 5/5 Devotion and 5/5 Shellra would be the absolute best.

...but I don't want non-WHMs to think I'm gimp when they see me casting Protectra IV (because they don't know how the bonuses compare) and I'm telling myself that I'll use Martyr but I probably won't.
Might go Shellra 5/5, Protectra 1/5, 4/5 Devotion as you suggested.
I have some time to decide because I'm redistributing some Merits and finishing off -Cure Spellcasting Time before I delve into Group 2; Regen Merits will probably come after Cure Spellcasting and all of Group 2 is complete.

I mean, back to Martyr; I see it as a possibility if you really needed to heal someone and were out of MP, but... I feel like if I work hard on my macros, utilize all of my abilities, and play efficiently, I shouldn't have trouble keeping my MP up as a Tarutaru WHM. Especially with Sublimation, Light Arts, and an above average hMP set.

Of course, you could use Martyr when you're Silenced, but any mage should be carrying Echo Drops at all times IMHO. At least in their Mog Satchel.

So it would be like I was getting Martyr for, maybe... Dynamis - Buburimu Cockatrice emergencies? lol

*rambling on*

Edit: By the way, do these Group 2 Merit Abilites (Martyr & Devotion) create much hate, if any?

Edited, Jul 27th 2009 6:04am by Poubelle

I've used martyr maybe 4 times since I unlocked it, but each time it saved my party member when they would have otherwise died (ie being silenced, the tank with a sliver of life and you dont have time to use and echo and cure). It is very much more of a one off situation, a nice back up.

To answer one of your last questions I do not believe there is any emnity gained from devotion or martyr but also to be honest I have never used one in a situation where I would have gained hate. If there is emnity involved I don't believe it would be very much.

In general however meriting will depend on what you do ingame, if you are more endgame with your whm then maxing barspells and devotion are pretty much manditory, cure casting being the standard to cap in tier one.

this thread was about someone who was struggling with the new JA/spells on update day, if you look on page 2-3 of the whm forum there's quite a few threads on it

ive been known to get 7second delay between command and action on a 10M/10M line in ffxi lol, it has that "crappy connectivity on the other side of the world" charm :P (also pretty hard to play whm in)

Edited, Jul 27th 2009 12:02pm by ZiGG

I did almost the same thing, but I took one from Devotion and opened Protectra V. I can't really think that 2:30 off of Devotion is that significant. In the vast majority of situations, I almost never use it at all. Having everything open is nice, even if it's just eye candy.

well the -.8% damage reduction isn't going to matter many times if you aren't an absolutely hardcore whm. I can understand people dropping lv5 to get shinies but as far as whm merits go there is absolutely no build that won't have at least lv4 shellraV in it

I apologize in advance if anything i mention was covered, some will be a repeat.

Whm merits, Cure Cast time has "tiered" caps. I don't remember the thread offhand, but there is a point when its more useful than others. If you have Cure clogs tho, you "can" do somewhat without Cure cast time merits, ir less merits here.

I did a combo of Cure cast time, Regen potancy and Barspells. Pretty much any combo is good here as all 3 are useful on a very normal basis.

Group 2, i'll definatly second, third, whatever we are at in terms of backing ups that Shellra X5, Devo X4 Pro X1. Pro i have since its better than Pro 4, yes, its only 5 Def, but it IS better, so i put 1 merit in, but never do more than 1, again, unless they add a Phalanx effect or raw damage reduction effect down. Shellra is Pure magical damage down, a must have. Devotion is restoring Mp, a Great thing to have, provided you have a mage in your party. This ability Will be wasted if say you are in a dyna group with yourself and 5 melees.

Here is where some will say throw 1 merit into Matyr. It actually has a few uses. You can use when silenced, its on par with "Waltz" speed, and you can use in magic Restricted areas or in magic aggro areas. SO it has uses, they are just more limited by what you are doing. Its also useful if you are out of Mp (tho that shoudl rarely happen)

Now for /Sch. Light arts has a 2 hr duration. However situationally depending you may switch back and forth between Light and Dark arts. Sch has a rather broad spell library, and Among theor dark spells they have Drain and Aspir. Activating Dark arts gives you a major boost to Dark magic Skill, enough so a whm/sch can efficiently use Drain and Aspir.

I think my current records are 189 Hp and 151 Mp. A whm/Blm will come nowhere near that.

Addendum Black like Addendum white offers Sch some Additional spells, however this consumes a stratagem. You will use this where you'll never use Addendum white since whm gets all those spells naturally. The 2 spells you get through Addendum Black are Sleep and Dispel. Dispel is a Very useful spell, but only really if you don't have a Rdm or Brd, but i still find a use for it from time to time.

Light Arts will Last for 2 hours and has a recast of 1 min. It wears when you zone. Light arts is a direct 10% Mp cut, 10% cast speed and 10% recast speed on ALL white magic spells. Penury will cut the mp cost of your next spell in half. Half of the origional cost, nto the 90% light arts cost, ex. Raise is 150 Mp, Under light arts its 135 Mp, under penury its 75 Mp.

Celerity is a cut of cast speed and recast by 50%. So again, raise has a 1 min recast. Light arts recast is 54 seconds, Celerity recast is 30 secs.

/Sch also offers a resist silence and conserve MP trait, which is always a nice thing for whm.

And finally Sublimation. Saps your Hp at 2 a tick, 1 a tick with Auto-regen, or 0 a tick with regen gear. Stoneskin WILL absorb the damage so you can rest, but like Any dot, if stoneskin falls you'll get up, even if you are loosing no HP. Like if you throw regen, you'll actually gain Hp but still cannot rest.

Its also a wake up call, just like a poison potion, except depending on your Hp, will last about 5 minutes and you can use sublimation when you choose. (barring the 30 sec recast)
When its done charging (which will take ~5-6 mins) the icon will change and you can use the charged Sublimation. This will restore 1/4 of your Hp in Mp. (forget offhand if gear and which gear effects this, HP+ i think does, while HP to Mp does not, pretty sure thats Not right, but gear effects this differently) So if you have 800 HP, it will restore 200 MP.

Now for the Whm abilities. Solice will Grant a bonus to your cures. They will provide the resiever with a ~25 second stoneskin effect, which will absorb a set amount of damage. Every cure you cast will add to a pool, which piles into a MAB effect for your next holy/banish. You also recieve a bonus to your Barspells and to the neg stats you can steal with Sacrifice.

Misery bases off the damage you take. Misery will increase the spells you can remove with Esuna. The most recent damage you recieve from an attack will pool into your next casting of Cura. With Auspice under Misery the WHm will gain Enlight and an Acc bonus when you miss an attack.

Typically whm stay in Solice mode when they need to cure, while will stay in Misery mode when they are in range of the mobs attacks and the mobs do a lot of Neg stats.

Essentially Esuna is AoE Erase All X2 while under Misery, while under solice its Poisonaga/paralynaga/blindnaga. You cannot remove Pertification of silence with Esuna since you cannot cast with them.

There's not even a reason to put a single point in Protectra. The defense is minimal.

I'd rather have people think I'm gimp because I cast Protectra IV than be gimp and cast Protectra V.

Pfft, who are we kidding? Protectra is merited for the shiny/completion factor, not because it's incredibly useful or anything. It's not much different from white boxes on most pieces of gear.

I'm not exactly missing having a 12:30 recast on Devotion instead of 15:00. 15:00 is a neater looking recast amount, anyway. (To this day I'm irked about the 8:20 on my RDM's Convert, but I tolerate it because Convert is badass. On the other hand, I don't get to use Devotion much anyway because in a lot of my parties, I'm the only MP user.)

Edited, Oct 25th 2009 11:20am by Fynlar