solo to 75Follow

Short answer? Carefully.

Long answer: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Black_Mage_Solo_Guide_by_Lion_heart

Insert Campaign and Campaign Ops where applicable.

I gave it a try when I was having a rough time with party invites one day around level 55 or so. It doesn't work too well honestly because SCH isn't much of a meleer. And while SCH main is certainly a versatile job, it isn't quite as versatile as, say, RDM, NIN, WHM, or BLU.

Honestly, even when it comes to melee/BST, most of the melee jobs aren't versatile enough to pull it off (the ones that can being THF or DRK).

Edited, Feb 13th 2008 4:01pm by Ketaru

Solo'd most of 1-37 Blm style but it was definately getting harder then doing so as Blm. You are missing some very important spells by this point, ie:

Bind (Probably the most painful one)
Sleep/Sleepga (Next in line)
Aero II/Thundaga and @38 Fire II

Not having Bind and sleep mean that, essentially, there is no way for you to keep up shadows throughout a fight. You will take damage; yes you can Regen/Heal that missing HP but it results in longer resting times and broken chains. On a positive note you will recover from taking a beating alot more quickly then a Blm but it is far better to not take on in the first place.

Because you lack higher tier nukes you will have to cast more spells per mob. This results in slower kills, more damage being taken, shorter chains, etc...

Finally the defecit in Elemental Skill even with Dark Arts up is starting to show. Resists for me were pretty common, especially on T(EM +3) and VT pets. If you are fortunate enough to have Elemental Merits then this will probably not be an issue but for me it, once again, resulted in shorter chains and more downtime.

Finally, on the plus side, the reduced casting time from Dark Arts makes avoiding interupts much easier and Alacrity can be a real savior if things turn ugly.

Edit - my peak solo XP/Hr was in Yhoator at level 27 killing Goblin's Bees for about 6K/Hr. Otherwise XP has run from 2-5K/Hr.

Edited, Feb 14th 2008 6:48am by Bladestriker

Just to add my two cents in here: I've been following that blm solo guide with almost all my jobs. What u need to do? just sub /nin after lvl 12 and you're done.

SCH/NIN works great. How? Dual Wield clubs + Utsusemi Ichi. With Yew wand +1 you'll get +8 mnd & +8 int plus the food you're using. At lvl 28 you can sacrifice +4 int/+4 mnd but you can get -50% spell interruption from Eremite's wand +1, plus 12 mp.

I'm lvl 30 atm, and I've never been in a party so far. You can jump to the next area for the next level ahead of your current in the guide just by using your NPC as stalwart shield style. He'll be tanking for you and you just focus in cure him or nuke whit utsusemi up. The pet will be dead by the time you get aggro from your nukes. And if you can't use npc, the current areas for your lvl are just great.

Another tip: Cast Invisible before you´re going to pull. This will prevent several deaths if while you're casting the gob turns to you or a posible link mob moves near the pet and you are at half way in the spell casting. Just press L3 quickly(This is safest than running or just moving. Some spells still can be casted even if you move) to cancel the spell and the gob will never know about your plans. If you're under lvl 25, use Tonko instead of Invisible. And remember to have Dark Arts always up and Alacrity everytime you can for faster pulls.