Post update experiencesFollow

Some people are idiots. This was true before the update as well.

When I am met with such idiocy, I believe the person was doing me a favor by not inviting me. A run set by such an idiot can only end in disaster.

I'm now a believer in scholar as a main healer in end game.

I have to admit, with war and pup as my jobs, I had fallen into the "rdm or whm only" trap. We were in dynamis, and the tank party had a scholar and bard. Well, a few people had to leave and we shifted members around to give the scholar their own party to heal. This let us drop the whm in with the bard and pld.

Smooth sailing, right? Wrong.

I was floored by the difference. I simply could not register, without seeing it first hand, the damage mitigation that scholar can give a party in an end-game situation. Not only was the entire tank party now taking tons of damage, but the paladin had less mp than before because of all the healing he was doing.

Keep in mind, this same scholar frequently goes in the blm party, when no additional healers are needed, and nukes with them. Their gear is good, but not godly by any means.

In a way, I understand why I missed this before. It's hard to notice what didn't happen unless your face is shoved in the difference. And scholar has tricks to prevent the damage from happening.

Maybe I'll dust off that old sch38 of mine and play around with it. :D

You'll add a Haste cycle to what you're doing that's pretty much it. Oh and a 4th Stratagem charge. SCH falls into the same issue many other jobs that aren't the cookie cutter jobs, idiots don't know how to play the jobs but are experts on why the job sucks in a party.

I'd say broken but I used to say that about being able to Convert without being RDM main...

Y'know, gaining Convert kinda reminds me of when I first leveled the job, trying to figure out the optimal balance of Strategems/Sublimation/etc. All I've determined so far is that it's going to vary widely based two major factors:

-Sublimation setup: Merits, AF/Relic, HP/Race all play a role in how fast your average Sublimation charges, so this varies a lot by player. I have both AF/Relic and full merits and my charge usually maxes in 5-6 minutes while actively casting; or it can happen a lot faster if I don't cast at all. Even assuming your gearswaps are completely optimized, there's always going to be a minimum charge time, and your real charge time which is going to vary a lot based on your actions.

-Strategem usage: If you just spam Parsimony every time a charge refreshes, you could probably get a good rhythm going, but that's hardly optimal. Personally, even if I'm using charges on nothing but Parsimony, I only use it under the following conditions:
-@4 charges, or will be before next nuke (30s~ usually),
-MP is within Uggalepih activation range,
-Sublimation/Convert are down and MP is low,
-Stone5, maybe.

When you consider all this, it becomes very difficult to come up with some ideal strategy that applies to more than a very particular set of circumstances; there's just too many permutations. Honestly, I think trying to perfectly balance Sublimation and Convert so that Convert doesn't interrupt Sublimation is pretty much a fool's errand, as sitting around on recast timers for either is making you much more inefficient than the alternative.

This is how I usually start off:
-Parsimony first nuke to get recasts started
-Free nuke until MP is within Uggalepih range, then start spamming Parsimony
-Use Sublimation once your MP is low enough to stay within Uggalepih range and continue nuking to low MP
-Convert, Cure, Activate Sublimation
-Repeat

At this point my timers are all over the place, so I just make the best decisions I can as timers diverge. All I know is, Sublimation is a gradual effect on a very low recast, while Convert is an instant MP refill on a long recast; Convert always takes priority. If Sublimation gets cut off below 150ish MP by Convert, I'll usually nuke once and use it to get the cycle going again. My focus is always on keeping recasts rolling as much as possible on things like Strategems and Convert to maximize their benefit, and keeping Sublimation active as often as possible. I would certainly never wait an extra minute, or even an extra second, on Convert just to see that shiny 'Sublimation: Full' icon.

Same here, no need to take it personally.

There's nothing wrong with what you outlined in your post; I just wanted to offer the counterpoint that such strategies are difficult to tailor to many situations. Therefore, working out rules and priorities for your abilities in relation to your MP status to maximize overall efficiency is generally more useful in playing the job on a day-to-day basis.