/SCH informationFollow

Figured Id compile the possible uses of SCH as a sub, since I see so many people griping about it already. I dont believe SCH is the new definitive sub, but I also believe that SE intended it this way. SE did not want to make any of the preexisting subs useless. Every sub has pros and cons, and times when it shines or fails. SCH is no different. So, below I list some of its pros, and situations in which I see it as potentially useful.

I havent got SCH to sub levels yet for a job, so a lot of this is theoretical. But I think its all accurate, and Ill make changes as actual experience requires. I welcome suggestions and actual experience that people can add to this information. Corrections are welcome too, as I may have made some mistakes as to what spells might benefit from what abilities. Anyways, on to the information.

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Cons of /SCH - You lose out on the benefits of other subs.
/SMN - autorefresh, avatar buffs like group Blink, MP bonus II
/BLM - earlier Drain and Aspir, Warp, Elemental Seal, Conserve MP
/WHM - -ga, -na, Divine Seal, Teleports, Stoneskin, Blink, Shell II
/RDM - Dispel, Gravity, Stoneskin, Blink, Phalanx


Benefits of /SCH for all jobs:

White arts and Black arts
White arts raises Healing, Divine, and Enhancing to a B+ rating of your MAIN JOB, not the SCH sub*. It reduces the cost of all WHM spells by a flat 10%. Similarly, it seems to reduce casting time and recast timers by 10%. Consquently, it raises the casting cost, timers, and recast timers of BLM spells by 20%.

Black arts raises Elemental, Enfeeble, and Darkness to a B+ rating of your MAIN JOB, not the SCH sub*. It reduces the cost of all BLM spells by a flat 10%. Similarly, it seems to reduce casting time and recast timers by 10%. Consquently, it raises the casting cost, timers, and recast timers of WHM spells by 20%.

* - It seems that Light and Dark Arts may grant skill levels based on main job level, what the main job is, and possible capped skill levels of the job. Until further testing, Ill just not here that the Arts raise a skill to somewhere between D and B+ of the MAIN job, not the sub.

For now, it is easier to view this link to see how SCH sub will affect your skill levels.

Strategems
/SCH will gain access to 1 strategem every 4:00 mins at level 20. The strategem is based on which arts are active at the time.

Lvl 20 Penury/Parsimony
Reduces the MP cost of your next white/black magic spell by 50%. Does not stack with the native 10% from arts.

Lvl 50 Celerity/Alacricity
Reduces the casting time of your next white/black magic spell by 50%. It also reduces the recast timer by 50%. Does not stack with the native 10% from arts.


Spell list
08 - Stone
10 - Cure
16 - Water
20 - Protect
24 - Aero
30 - Deodorize
32 - Fire
34 - Cure II
36 - Regen
40 - Blizzard
40 - Shell
40 - Sneak
42 - Drain
48 - Thunder
50 - Invisible
60 - Stone II
60 - Cure III
60 - Protect II
68 - Water II
70 - Raise
72 - Aspir
74 - Regen II


Uses for particular jobs:

BLM/SCH

Access to Cure III, Regen II, Raise, Sneak, Invisible, Deodorize, Shell, and ProtectII. In an emergency, this can make BLM a competent backup healer. I think lack of -ga and -na will prevent BLM from playing/being forced into the roll of main healer.

C+ Enfeeble skill raised to B+. (Black Arts) This means stronger blind, poison, bind, and sleep spells.

~B skill in Healing, Divine, Enhancing. (Light Arts) Stronger BLM enhancing spells at the cost of increased MP and casting time. Also, at certain stages the increased healing skill may show on cures. Unclear of what a B rating would mean for Regen II.

Flat 10% reduction in BLM spells, casting time, and recast timers. Benefits should be easy to see.

50% reduction in cast times or cast cost every 4 mins. This means faster or cheaper AMs; faster Escape/Warp in emergency; faster or cheaper -ga spells; potential to double magic burst with stronger spells (if/when skillchains return); cheaper or faster Raise.

WHM/SCH

Access to Drain, Aspire, Stone II, Water II, level 1 nukes.

C Enfeeble skill raised to ~B. (Black Arts) Paralyze will take longer to cast, and cost more, but should also be stronger.

C+ Enhancing skill raised to B+. (White Arts) Stronger barspells, regen, stoneskin.

~B skill in Darkness and Elemental. (Black Arts) Potential for magic bursts, though not spectacular. B rating in Darkness should greatly facilitate Aspir and Drain.

Flat 10% reduction in WHM spells, casting time, and recast timers. Faster recast timers on spells like R3.

50% reduction in cast times or cast cost every 4 mins. Faster Teleports. Cheaper or faster R3.

RDM/SCH

Access to Drain, Aspir, Regen II

E Darkness skill to ~B. Stronger Drain and Aspir. Stronger Bio III.

E Divine skill to ~B. Ok, so mostly useless.

C- Healing skill to B+. Potential for stronger cures.

C+ Elemental skill to B+. Potential for more reliable nuking (Lowers resist rate).

Flat 10% off of spell costs, timers and recasts. The 20% penalty will mean a RDM with one grimoire open will pay more for opposite spell cost, but RDM native fastcast should help offset the penalty of casting time. Arts are on a 1 min recast timer, while staying in effect indefinitely. Thus a RDM curing could freely change to black arts and back once every 60secs. A RDM nuking (which we might see more of) could do likewise with cures once every 60 sec.

SMN/SCH

Access to all /SCH spells. Of note, Cure III, Regen II, Drain, Aspir

~B skill level in Healing, Enhancing, Divine. Improves SMN ability to act as healer or backup healer, so long as -na and -ga are not required.

~B skill level in Darkness. Again, drain and aspir should greatly benefit from this.

Flat 10% off cost, casting time, and recast timer. Cheaper and faster cures.



Edit: Added info for RDM Bio III; confirmed 50% recast timer reduction with Celerity/Alacricity; clarified white arts and black arts information.
Edit: Note added to Black and White Arts, until which time as we get more data.
Edit: Changed data for the suspected skill levels from White and Black arts.

Edited, Nov 27th 2007 8:40pm by Isayyah

Edited, Nov 30th 2007 10:39am by Isayyah

Looks really good, rate up. A few points though.

• Regen restores a set amount of HP (barring WHM merits and the Cleric's Briault) so Healing Magic skill has no effect on it.
• Elemental and Enfeebling Magic skill primarily affects the resist rates of spells, whereas INT/MND affects the potency. So /SCH's boost to these skills mainly makes the spells more reliable.

Otherwise, a nice optimistic view of the subjob.

The lack of fast/low mp (.5sec cast time/5-7mp) Healing Breath triggers makes /sch look pretty lackluster for Drg.

A B skill level is 200+ @75. Since SMN doesn't have any of these skills natively, how can a support job (max lvl 37) grant a 200+ skill since typically lvl 37 is around the 115 mark? If it does, that's awesome (and arguably overpowered)!

Edited, Nov 27th 2007 1:03am by Unholyllama

The part I like most about a SCH sub in theory is that it give Drain, Aspir and Healing spells, no other sub does this. RDM, WHM and PLD give healing spells, BLM and DRK give drain and aspir. I suppose you could maybe argue BLU, I don't remember what level it gets it drain/aspir spells, but they're too weak even with a BLU main.

For BLM I think it would be most helpful for AM, 1/2 price is a lot to conserve, the only problem is that it's once every 4 minutes. Once I get SCH high enough to sub I'll let you know but I think I'd still prefer /RDM

For WHM Aspir + white arts would be helpful for maintaining mp, I mean after all with WHM I find it's mostly about having and maintaing mp. /SMN may be more helpful with its higher +Max MP, and its auto refresh.

For RDM I think it's a solid sub for anything but solo. It's the closest you can get to Rdm/Rdm ;) Depending on how efficeint this is as a sub it could really help with parties.

For SMN, yes, you do have a lot to gain, both healing spells, and aspir... YAY

Now the question I have is the definitions we have for the arts raising the ratings. Does it raise to a level, or does it raise it an amound. i.e. would it give my BLM a B+ rating in enfeebling because it says it'll raise to B+ or will it give a B+ because as a sub instead of raising the rating by 2 (for SCH main) it raises it by 1, imagine if it gave a A++ in Elemental magic with Dark arts :P

Recast reduction caps at 50% so you won't see any difference if the strategems give a 50% recast reduction.

I've heard most people saying /SCH gives D skill with arts if you don't natively have the skill on your main. Are you saying that it does in fact give you B rated magic skills on non-native magic schools?


edit:


Well it will be quite handy for solo sleep-nuking. Faster Sleeps, better Elemental Skill with the occasional cheaper/faster nuke on a 4 minute timer. Aside from that, I agree there's very minimal utility.

I can't use it in dynamis because of no Sleepga. If not for that this would be a decent sub for dynamis. Especially for higher skill for Aspir. It would probably turn my 50% resist rate into a 10% resist rate.

I probably wouldn't get a whole lot of use out of it in Salvage unless the arts effects don't wear off when you enter(Our RDMs are pretty low on the /ja priority).

I'd only be able to use it in merit camps that don't need -nas, even then most of the time I'd rather take Auto-Refresh since few mp are actually spent on healing.

I don't do HNMs, though in my limited experience nothing pops out to me as a nice to have from this sub for those either. I would probably see more utility from /whm for Bar-ra.


In summery. I probably will level the sub. I do a weekly ENM(Brothers) with another RDM up in Bearclaw Pinnacle and this sub would be pretty nice for that.

Edited, Nov 27th 2007 11:52am by Ranzera

I could see RDM/SCH being used for soloing, mainly for the fact that Fast Cast could be used with Drain and Aspir (with Dark Arts) and Regen II could be especially helpful for restoring HP lost with Convert. A Cure IV coupled with a Regen II = some nice HP restored over time. The only thing SCH itself doesn't offer is melee ability (which would be used for soloing). Heck, I'm using an Ash Pole +1 for soloing purposes with Meat Jerky because its melee ability is so poor.

Something not pointed out yet but worth mentioning for RDM/SCH is BIO III. With the boost of Dark magic to a B+ skill (256) this puts us in the 9 damage per tick tier without any added gear.

This is 2 more damage per tic from your Base stats of before. Also, it is now possible through gear and merits (if you really wanted to go that far) to boost this to the assumed max 10 Damage per tic tier (291+ Skill). Also with the reduced cost of the spell thanks to Dark arts its not as prohibitive damage per mp wise to cast.

I'm sure someone will find something to exploit this on one day.

When I hit 10, probably in a hour or so if someone hasn't confirmed it I'll switch to smn/sch and see what happens to casting skills.

Remember that you can't do much with skill without spells. And SCH doesn't have that many subbable spells that would make having a B rating from sub hurt.

If you actually got thunder III and such from sub and could have a B skill of a 75 job from sub, then you would need to worry about balance.

Ok, I understand what you are saying now. What you say makes sense, and it COULD be that way, but its not.

My BLM/SCH, when using White Arts, got a B+ skill level in healing. BLM doesnt get native healing. Healing skill was there because of the /SCH sub.

When you use /SCH with a job that has no native magic skill, Light/Dark Arts will raise the skill to where it would be if the main job had a native D-rated skill.

I have tested this with several jobs. In each one, using Light/Dark Arts brings my skills exactly up to a native D rating. Here, since misinformation is still being spread around (despite my having plastered it all over threads for the past 5 days), I'll do it all over again, with every single job:

-My 61 WAR/SCH with Light Arts has 187 Enhancing, Healing, and Divine Magic skills. With Dark Arts, it has 187 enfeebling, elemental, and dark magic skills. None of the magic skills are native to WAR, and they all correspond to a D-ranked skill when boosted.

-My 34 MNK/SCH has 93 in all magic skills after being boosted with Light/Dark Arts.

-My 37 WHM/SCH got 102 Dark and Elemental skill(1 elemental magic merit) while enfeebling was boosted to 109. Enfeebling is native to whm, so it got boosted to a full B level, while Elemental and Dark magic skills were only raised to a D level b/c WHM does not have them natively.

-My 41 BLM/SCH has enfeebling magic skill at 121 with dark arts activated. With Light Arts activated, it has . . . 113 in healing, enhancing, and divine magic skills . . . Which is odd that enhancing isn't boosted to 121 like enfeebling magic is . . . but I'm looking at it on my screen, it's only 113 with Light Arts up, bringing it from an E rating to a D rating, along with healing and divine skills. This is an interesting anomaly. Can anyone verify this, or is my game glitched?

Moving on . . .

-My 15 THF/SCH has . . . 7 skill all around b/c /SCH isn't high enough to use Light/Dark Arts yet.

Moving on and skipping all jobs under 20 . . .

-My 41 DRK/SCH has 113 Healing, Enhancing, and Divine Magic skills with Light Arts up. With Dark Arts, it has 121 enfeebling.

-MY 35 NIN/SCH has 97 Enhancing, Healing, and Divine skills with Light Arts. It has 97 enfeebling, elemental, and dark magic skills with Dark Arts.

-And finally, my 60 PUP/SCH has 184 healing, divine, and enhancing skills with Light Arts, and 184 dark, elemental, and enfeebling skills with Dark Arts.



So, there you have it. In every single case, non-native skills are boosted to a native D rating. Every single case. I did it before, and I just did it AGAIN, just now, as I typed this, to double check and be sure. Anyone claiming to have boosted non-native magic skills beyond a D rating either has merits, or they're lying, plain and simple.

Edited, Nov 27th 2007 5:39pm by CireXF

Thanks CireXF. That's the type of numbers that I was hoping to get for confirmation. I was a bit taken back on the B rating thing and while I'm still surprised by the boost the arts give (D rating is impressively powerful imo), I can see it being a bit more balanced than the OP's claim of a B.

Thanks again

Isayyah, I apoligize that I came off pissy. It wasn't so much directed at you, but at the several threads of people asking about it, and declaring different info. In retrospect, I probably should have just started a new thread about it.

I also apologize, because it looks like we're both right after all . . .


x-posted from a similar thread:


Ok, all the jobs I've tested are under 75. My only 75 job is RDM, which gets all magic skills natively, so I didn't think testing it would prove anything . . .

Well, on my 75 RDM . . .

Light Arts = 246 Divine skill (not capped for my level)

256 healing skill

256 Enhancing skill

Dark Arts = 276 enfeebling skill

256 elemental skill

246 dark skill


So, my healing and elemental skills are boosted to a B+ level while Dark is boosted to a B-, and I don't know about Divine because it's not capped. Enhancing remained a B+, Enfeebling remained A+.


On all my other jobs between 20 and 61, Light/Dark Arts only boosted skills to a D rating. So, we're left with a few questions:

-Could it be that they start boosting higher than that after a certain level?

-Why are my healing and elemental skills boosted farther than the 246 people seem to be getting?

-Why is my native Dark skill not boosted as far as my native healing and elemental skills?

-For that matter, in my 41BLM/SCH test, the enhancing wasn't boosted to a full B rating, even though BLM gets native enhancing. What's going on there?

-Is this how it's supposed to work, or is it a glitch?

-Can any 60+ SCH describe the +/-ness of their skills after using Light/Dark Arts?

Just tested on 42WHM/10SCH.

Divine 126 (uncapped)
Healing 126 (Uncapped)
Enhancing 119
Enfeeble 119
Dark 28
Elemental 28

Light Arts:
Divine 126 (uncapped)
Healing 126 (Uncapped)
Enhancing 123 (B+)
Enfeeble 119
Dark 28
Elemental 28

Dark Arts
Divine 126 (uncapped)
Healing 126 (Uncapped)
Enhancing 119
Enfeeble 123 (B+)
Dark 115 (D)
Elemental 115 (D)

Having the Skill at a B level means nothing if you have to give up the decent spells in that Skill to get it.

Divine is the best example. The only Jobs that get any boost in Divine Skill from /SCH get no divine spells at all when /SCH.

In nearly all cases, the boosted skills are only useful for Jobs that have both poor ability in the Skill, yet have native spells that they use regularly in that Skill (Scholar gets very few useful spells pre 37). WHM Enhancing/Enfeebling, RDM Elemental are about the only ones that are used...

Are you absolutely sure on this? A WHM has native C+ enhancing. I would expect Light Arts to raise that to B+, or B at minimum.

I was thinking of going BLU/SCH. Just an idea.

another necro-post, sorry, but just started the job myself, so I was looking through the forums. As far as this topic is concerned, I don't suppose there's anyone out there with a level 75 job who's never levelled a mage, who could check the bonuses granted from 0 skill?

Probably a silly question, I know.

Not possible.... For all magic skills enhanced by an arts ability, you will have at least a subjob D skill for those magic skills because SCH has D in all 6 of those magic skills. You have to be either SCH or /SCH to use an arts ability.... Duh?


*edit*a little thinking can prevent a necro-post >.>

Edited, Nov 13th 2008 1:00pm by Banggugyangu

N-n-n-n-n-necrobumped thread. Was written before Sublimation came out.

Scholar sub will get dispel with Dark Arts on...

Please add a section about BLU/SCH for main healing purposes. The MP regain from that job combo is very nice, as well as added healing skill for BLU uncapped healing spells. Works well @ birds, since they have no AoE or status effects.

Also, how do Altracity and the like work with BLU magic? Anyone know? Is BLU magic considered white/black, or is it a spell by spell basis like most blue things?

BLU/SCH for nuking isn't bad either, mostly for the MP assist. (aspir+MP drainkill+sublimation+magic hammer+refresh trait)

l.

Healing magic helps increase the returns from Curative Blue Magic. Therefor, a B- in healing from /SCH will boost Magic Fruit/Pollen/Wild Carrot/Healing Breeze more than /WHM would.


As for Stratagems: it is possible Rapture might work. Divine Seal is just Cure Potency +100%. According to the Cure calculator, it affects Blue Magic spells as well (But could be a mistake).
Rapture is Cure potency +50%, but stratagems are spell specific. It is highly probably that the stratagem would not be applied on those.

I'll test it sometime when I get home.

Forgot to post it. Rapture doesn't work with blu spells; the stratagem isn't spent when doing this spells.

Not like SCH/BLU was very useful, but it's good to know <_<