Back in the SwingFollow

Hi hi, Scholar forum :) My character's name was Serena on Pandemonium. I haven't played since September, but I think I might make a return to the game. Not sure if I will stay on Asura or migrate over to play with a RL friend on Sylph, but I will be on one of those two servers. At any rate, when I left, I had a mid 50s Scholar, and should I return, that is going to be the job I am going to focus on. With that in mind, I have some gearing questions! :)

First off, I wasn't very involved in endgame stuff, so I'm pretty limited in my experience there. I have a 75 puppetmaster as my highest job, but hopefully if I go over to Sylph my Paladin friend will be able to help me work towards gear. I've read a bit about Abyssea and seen some of the gear sets. I'm also familiar with the sets from various assaults. I know that as with any other job, there is no full time set of armor to wear, but I am kind of looking for a baseline to start at. With all of the abyssa stuff released, is there any benefit to doing the assaults over and over for points?

I've read that it is beneficial for Scholar to have various armor sets for whatever role they might be filling. While I know that they can do more than just heal / buff, I do want to start off building a set for that since it is what I prefer to do. As I get back in the swing of things, I can work toward enfeebling and nuking sets. So for now, please consider that I am looking for a healing / support role. Being that I haven't reactivated my account yet, I can't tell you what all I have already, but I can say it isn't anything extensive. I know I have all of the elemental staffs, only NQ. I have some +mp gear.

I suppose I just want to be able to plan my return so I can get as much catching up done as effectively as possible. Would I be better off taking SCH to 80 right away and THEN working on getting better gear, or should I take the time to get PUP to 80, get gear for SCH, and then level it? Thanks so much in advance for all of your help, I really appreciate the assistance!!

Serena

Generally good advice above. In addition, you could consider Conserve MP gearsets for non-stat based spells.

With regard to enhancement spells: As above, Phalanx and Enspells are purely based on your magic skill. Stack that wherever possible. It's also worth noting what exactly that enhancing magic does to your output, as it tends to run by tiers of effectiveness. For example, a good rule of thumb with Phalanx is every 10 skill you gain, i.e. 280-290, the damage resistance improves by one (until it caps at 300 skill). Thus, if you're lingering around, for example, 287 skill, that extra 7 skill is doing nothing. At this point you can adjust your gear to cover other bases, which I'll suggest in a moment.

Enspells gain one damage for every 20 skill you gain after a certain threshold (check the wiki for the formulae). As these are offensive magic spells, "surplus" skill improves the accuracy of the damage landing for full, unresisted. Thus, cutting out skill points may not be entirely beneficial as compared to Phalanx.

Stoneskin is a spell unto its own: it's based on your MND and enhancing magic skill on the cast. It caps at 350 (outside of using special items). Because of the skill discrepancy between Light and Dark Arts, your SS set can change very rapidly. Again, check the formulae on the wiki for these. If you can cap out SS with most of your gear, the other slots can be used for Haste/Conserve MP/-enmity.

Consider -emnity where you can't fit in anything else useful when Accession buffing, as you can generate hefty amounts of VE.

Edited, Jul 14th 2010 3:47pm by Secretkeeper

Thanks so much for the replies thus far! I really appreciate the help and rate up's all around :) One thing I forgot to mention is that I haven't done any of the 3 minis, so I have those as an option for gear as well. Are they worth using on SCH, or should I hold off until I decide if I want to finish PUP or BRD? Thanks again!

Serena

Recast was precisely the reason I said it needs to be priority over MND/Healing magic. Even 1 second off the recast is millions of times better than the 0-3 extra HP you could squeeze of MND/Healing Magic.

Besides, it's not like our current options overlap any important piece for our cures.



Edited, Jul 14th 2010 10:17pm by Drakonite

0-2 more HP healed falls into the "Nearly Irrelevant" territory to me. However, anyone getting cured one second later IS a pretty big deal; as that can often make the difference

Really, you've overestimating the amount of stuff we can squeeze in the slots that have Fast Cast/Haste. Basically, only swift belt gets in the way of any serious potency if you're using the Korin Obi. Veela's competes with Errant for a -enmity chunk. And AF2 Hat with a Cure pot Selenian cap for anyone that got that. Feet/Grip/ExtraEar have nothing to write home about.

-37/41 is more than enough for what I do. And barring Errant/Veela (I use errant), only head has any significant chunk if you actually bothered to carry a piece exclusively for -Enmity.



You don't do VNM's I take it? Or never fought a mob Hundred Fisting?

Enmity-33% is 50% more HP cured for the same amount of hate; Enmity-50% is 100% more HP cured for the same amount of hate. Those last 17% are the most valuable points you can get, I hardly see the point of wearing 30-40 if you're not willing to use more. Also, why in the hell wouldn't you carry gear strictly for Enmity- when you're main-healing on SCH?



Ionno how you fought your VNMs, but I soloed my Krabkatoas on RDM/SCH and lowmanned the rest as RDM/NIN with a SMN / RNG or two. Certainly not situations that would require CureIV spam, regardless.



Cure IV spam during Hundred Fists is a good way to go down with the ship; Bind, Sleep, Gravity, Kite, Phalanx, Sentinel, Invincible...... If you don't have one of these methods of countering it available to you, why are you even bothering? Whatever.

I make those statements within very particular contexts; yours is what I'd call a blanket statement. If you're going to attempt to mock me, at least try to get it right next time.



Any fight that requires regular cures and takes over 30 minutes is going to cap your Enmity without any gear; this happened to me on a regular basis camping and holding HNMs. But you knew this I'm sure; I'm just giving you an example of how to properly refute an argument, instead of sniping like a primary-schooler.



You already said that potency wasn't worth it, where'd the recast argument go?





If you want to talk sh*t on my means of debate, get your own house in order first... so sick of having to correct/fend off your nonsense every time I post.

Edited, Jul 16th 2010 4:50am by LyltiaofLakshmi

Alright, I'm thoroughly sick of arguing this with you, so I ran some actual tests on Cure IV recast:

SCH/RDM 80, naked: 7s
+Light Arts: 6s
+Argute M.Board: 6s
+Scholar's Loafers: 5s
+Loquacious Earring: 5s
+Fay Staff (FC+2): 5s
+Teal Cuffs: 5s
+Swift Belt: 5s
+Goliard Saio: 5s
+Tatsu. Sitagoromo (Haste+3): 5s
Trade Argute M.Board for W.Turban: 5s

SCH/WHM 80, naked: 8s
+Light Arts: 7s
+Argute M.Board: 6s
+Scholar's Loafers: 6s
+Loquacious Earring: 6s
+Fay Staff (FC+2): 6s
+Teal Cuffs: 6s
+Swift Belt: 6s
+Goliard Saio: 5s
+Tatsu. Sitagoromo (Haste+3): 5s
Trade Argute M.Board for W.Turban: 5s

As you can see, 2 slots gives you the same real recast that 8 slots does; even with /WHM (which only matters temporarily, anyway) you have to give up 6 slots to get to 5s. Try it yourself; you clearly didn't before you ranted on about it all over the thread. You want to drop this nonsense now, or want to keep going?

No, no, nice try though. The point was to show that you should already have a 5 second recast with /RDM using standard Cure gear, so stacking more recast gear like you were advocating earlier is a complete waste.

If you backpedal any faster you're gonna go back in time or something.

If you're not going to bother doing the tests yourself, at least read a little more carefully; you have to wear both AF and Relic to get to a 5s recast. If you honestly think that giving up MND+7 Enmity-6 (Goliard + Teal) is worth 1 second of recast on the job with the most robust damage mitigation abilities in the game (which just so happen to generate large amounts of enmity)... I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Seriously, I leveled this sh*t as soon as it came out and I can count the number of times I cast CureIV back to back on one hand.

Also, 6s compared to 5s is a gimped recast? Composure and Seigan, those gimp recasts. Acting like 1 extra second matters on Cure IV for SCH is just stupid. Allow me to indulge when I say, if you're spamming Cure IV back-to-back on SCH, and that 1 second is making the difference between life and death, something's definitely wrong somewhere; your tank sucks, your party structure is subpar, your other support is asleep.. I could go on. I sure as hell am not gimping myself out of a chunk of MND and Enmity- to pick up somebody else's slack; but then again, my LS knows how to play the game.

I'm pretty sure another argument we had ended this way, so let me give you some advice, in hopes to avoid a 3-peat; either find a new LS with people who know what the hell they're doing so that you can learn to play the job properly, or remove your head from your ass. Either will get you favourable results.

Edited, Jul 17th 2010 3:02pm by LyltiaofLakshmi