How Do You Play "your" SCH?

Scholar is one of the few jobs I find where your ability to play it is highly correlated with your ability to write macros. The main benefit of scholar is that it can go from nuking to curing in an instant assuming you have "/macro set #" commands in your macros to take you from nuking pallets to healing pallets and to enfeebling pallets.

A simplistic view of my macros is pallet 1 would be a curing pallet 2 enfeebling and pallet 3 ice nukes. You then reserve 2 spots for activating light arts and taking u to the healing pallet and activating dark arts taking you to your ice nuking pallet. You can also tie in storm spells so that whenever you cast thunderstorm, for example, it will take you to a thunder pallet.

As complicated as the macros are this allows you much more flexibility while playing the job. Scholar has an excessive amount of spells and keeping track of them is probably the hardest part. But when you do the macros right you can easily play as a nuker while farming pop items and switch over to helping cure for the NMs.

While there are limitations to scholar the flexibility to go from support to damage in an instant is what has drawn me into enjoying it so much. People can compare Sch to Blm Whm and Rdm all day but in the end I can do it all and I can do it quite well.

Is this entirely true? I can't remember offhand if I macro in obis for helix, but just from experience (not any actual facts, this is just eyeballing) I feel like helix potency is affected by the same thing as nukes. Stacking a ton of MAB with atma shows this. I always figured the reason we stacked a lot of INT was because of the resistance to duration. You want to make that DoT last as long as possible. I understand not gearing MAB because that's like trying to super-buff a Bliz 1 nuke. It's small so who cares. Of course in Abyssea, all bets are off. We can have tons of INT and MAB. I'm interested to test obis on helix in there.

My sch has so many macros its ridiculous but effective.

I don't think they will precisely because we can hit Cure 5 numbers with Rapture/Aurastorm already.


No need to test, obi's are useless on helices, the bonuses auto apply. Stack your relic accessory or other INT belt there as well as the corresponding storm spell to boost it even more.

Macros are key to SCH, I would say more so than ANY OTHER job. I have a full book solely dedicated to SCH and there is definitely room for improvement. I'd be interested to know how people macro their SCHs.

I start in a lobby which has various links to different spell lines. I reserve almost all White magic to the Ctrl button and all Black Magic to the Alt button (with a few exceptions). So for instance to toss a Cure 4 to someone I will hit Ctrl-2 which brings me to the Cure 4 line. When it does, it instantly changes my gear to my healing set (or whatever set relative to the line). Once I'm at the cure 4 line I have a macro for each party member (1-6) then the relevant strats that are influential in 7-9 (Rapture, Accession, Penury). The 0 key brings me back to the lobby. I devote each line of the book to a specific gear set, so i have lines dedicated to T5 nukes, T4 nukes, helicies, buffs, storms, enspells, barspells, absorb spells, Cure 4, Cure 3, etc.. Each line has the same format with 1-6 being devoted to the spells 7-9 to the strats and 0 bringing me back to the lobby.

I cannot relate to everyone how well this works!! I can get to ANY spell and be ideally geared for it in about 3 keys.

Ah yes, that is right. I'm still curious if having it macro in for te correct game day makes a big difference. I got the Zodiac Ring for that too. The numbers are rarely big enough for my liking and I always hate to give up INT, even in Abyssea. Curse of the Elvaan.

I have 1 pallet dedicated to curing, 2 sets for enfeebling one for light arts and one for dark arts, and I use an Ice Nuke pallet as the first of many nuking pallets.

Ctrl-1 and Alt-1 are the main ways i navigate the book of macros. Using Ctrl-1 to use light arts and take me into the cure pallet from any other pallet and once in the curing pallet it will take me to the enfeebling pallet for my light arts gear.

Alt-1 conversely will use dark arts and take me to the Ice nukes pallet which is my hub for nuking and on that pallet i have the main Ice spells some oh ***cure macros and some important Storm spells. Hitting one of the storm spells will take me to one of the other nuking macros 5-10 which are of different elements. And like the healing macros hitting the dark arts macro a 2nd time will trigger a switch to the enfeebling pallet.

To make use of the AF3 hat I've even come to make some pallets that when nuking normally it will retain my Literae Hat but when I hit Ebuillence it will swap to a pallet that makes use of the Savant's Bonnet.

All in all I find making the macros string together half the fun of the job.

Yes and no.

The weather and day bonus is always active on helixes so you don't need the Obi.

DMG is effected by INT and MAB from what I've read, INT is just used to make sure you get the max damage you can for your gear.

Working on it. I'm half meriting INT and that (I originally had Focilzation merited, but I never use it)



Akeda!!! (and so agreed, Though we get all our cures at the same Level PLD gets there's so I don't think we'll get it)