Scholar (SCH) is a barrier healer, who shares this role with sage. It is one of the job upgrades of arcanist (ACN), with summoner.
Scholars specialize in proactive and supportive healing and shielding. It generates the biggest shields out of every healer. Due to their kit often conflicting and interacting with each other, it is the hardest healer. Like with other barrier healers, it struggles with pure recovery as they have less tools to deal with burst healing. Scholars also possess a debuff they can apply to one enemy, making them take 10% more critical hits.
Though scholars are nearly the weakest job in the game in terms of personal damage in single-target (second only to astrologian), they are still expected to do damage, as with every healer.
Ruin and its upgraded variants are scholar's single-target damage spell. When no healing is needed, scholars should always be casting this spell to deal damage.
Bio and its upgraded variants are scholar's damage over-time spell. It is also instantly casted. Whenever on the move following the tank in dungeons, apply Bio to every enemy, since you will not be able to stop and cast Ruin. Refresh the duration of Bio by casting it again on the same enemy if its duration is about to expire. If an enemy is about to be defeated, continue using Ruin instead.
Art of War and its upgraded variant are scholar's AoE damage spells. It is the hardest-hitting AoE spell out of every healer! Whenever there are a group of two or more enemies, cast Art of War instead of casting Ruin; it will deal its full potency to every enemy hit!
Scholars can apply Chain Stratagem to an enemy. This will increase the amount of critical hits they take by 10%, making up for its low personal damage. Because it is applied as a debuff to enemies, it sees much greater effects in alliance raids.
At level 92, it is upgraded to also allow the scholar to use Baneful Impaction, which is an AoE damage over-time. It does not apply Chain Stratagem's critical hit vulnerability.
Healing
For information on how to heal, read the Healer Guide! It is highly advised that you read that page after reading this section.
Succor is scholar's basic AoE heal. When numerous players, or even everyone in your party has taken damage, cast this spell once instead of healing everyone individually with Physick.
Adloquium is scholar's shielding spell. It heals targets, while also granting a barrier to them that negates damage taken.
Healing Abilities
A good healer is one that maximizes the use of all of their healing abilities: actions that are typically free of cost, but have a cooldown instead, and can be casted in between casted spells.
Though some abilities are only executable through the faerie summoned, it will still be noted and listed normally below. Keep in mind: all abilities executed by the faerie will originate from them. If they are too far away, they may miss their abilities.
Despite some abilities having AoE utility, they may be used as forms of single-target healing for the tank, in contrast with healing spells!
This action requires a faerie to be actively summoned.
Your faerie will cast Whispering Dawn from its location, which grants a regen. It being an AoE allows for numerous, or even all party members to heal over-time.
In addition to Eos casting Embrace, the tank in trash pulls will be healed for greater amounts over-time, especially if you need to supplement with healing yourself.
This action requires a faerie to be actively summoned.
Your faerie will cast Fey Illumination from its location, which increases healing magic potency and reduces magical damage taken to all party members affected. It reducing magical damage taken will additionally be helpful for any raid-wide damage, and helps you, and your co-healer if present, heal with spells (not abilities) more effectively to recover.
Though it is rare, some trash mobs in dungeons may cast spells that deal magical damage to the tank. An infamous example of this are ice sprites in The Stone Vigil, which deal very high amounts of magic damage.
This action grants you three stacks of Aetherflow, and restores 2,000 MP. This will help regulate your MP alongside with Lucid Dreaming, and you should always have this action on cooldown – do not use it, or the actions it grants only in emergencies.
If this action is about to come off of cooldown, but you still have stacks of Aetherflow, you may expend stacks by using Energy Drain. Due to its very small potency, it should not be solely used as a DPS tool; it is more important to use them as a resource for healing. Actions that use Aetherflow for healing will be noted. A healing action that uses Aetherflow is listed below:
This action costs one stack of Aetherflow for each execution.
Lustrate allows you to instantly heal any target for a very large amount – just slightly less compared to Adloquium. Due to its raw healing power, it should entirely replace Physick, and even Adloquium. This will allow you to use Ruin or Art of War instead, which will allow you to deal damage in addition with healing! Scholar's AoE damage is the highest amongst all healers at this point.
This action costs one stack of Aetherflow for each execution.
Upon executing this action, you will be given a marker to place the center of this bubble. Party members standing within the bubble will take 10% less damage. This becomes more effective when mitigating damage of multiple party members in trials and raids.
Though the mitigation applied by this action may sound nice on the tank in trash pulls, it does not heal over-time until level 78 upon learning Enhanced Sacred Soil. At that point, this action will become better than Lustrate, as it will heal more than it over-time in addition to granting damage mitigation. Some raid-wide attacks can be entirely solved with Sacred Soil alone. Just remember to remind party members to enter the bubble, if they are not standing inside of it already at the time if placement.
This action costs one stack of Aetherflow for each execution.
This action is an AoE version of Lustrate, healing every party member in range instantly for an amount better than Succor. Instead of using Succor to heal multiple people, consider using Indomitability instead. If more AoE healing is needed, and will not result in overhealing, it may be a good idea to use Succor.
Deployment Tactics spreads Galvanize, the barrier effect from both Adloquium and Succor, from yourself or a party member, to all party members in range. This action is only used to spread the barrier from Adloquium, as the barrier that action grants is greater than the barrier Succor gives. Good scholars memorize when next raid-wide attacks are incoming, and can heavily increase the potency of Adloquium to spread an extremely strong barrier to all party members, greatly reducing the mitigation needed, and saving other mitigation tools for later.
Emergency Tactics entirely converts the barriers, both Galvanize and Catalyze from your next cast of Adloquium or Succor into health. Given its name, it is typically only used for emergencies, when people take more damage than they should, whether if it is failing mechanics or the tank just suddenly taking a huge chunk of damage out of nowhere, with stacks of Aetherflow not available for use. It is not recommended to use this action for every instance of healing, as it would also override the aspect of scholar being a barrier healer and its mitigation aspect.
You should aim to use this action as little as possible, but it will be inevitable that some groups will take more damage than others.
This action requires a faerie to be actively summoned.
Dissipation orders your faerie away, but grants you three stacks of Aetherflow and increases the potency of your healing magic spells (meaning abilities such as Lustrate are not affected) are heavily increased by 20%. Due to your faerie being ordered away, actions such as Embrace or Whispering Dawncannot be executed. It is best to use any actions needed before ordering them away.
Though this action may seem scary due to certain abilities being unable to be executed, its power makes up for the difference through healing power alone, as actions such as Lustrate can quickly heal anyone, and you can heal with your healing spells at a much greater magnitude. This action pairs especially well with Deployment Tactics to deploy a bigger barrier.
This action costs one stack of Aetherflow for each execution.
Excogitation will be granted to a party member, healing them for an amount greater than Lustrate when they go below 50% HP. This is one of scholar's best abilities for trash pulls, as you do not even need to consider healing the tank until this action is spent, in addition to its fire-and-forget aspect.
In the case that another party member takes a great amount of damage dealing more than half their HP, consider healing them with this action instead of Lustrate, first. Or alternatively, if you know a party member will make fail future mechanics, you may grant them Excogitation to help out with healing once they fail a mechanic. Its duration being the same as its cooldown means you can always have a safety-net engaged on someone.
This action requires a faerie to be actively summoned.
Using any action that costs Aetherflow while your faerie summoned will fill your faerie gauge by 10, up to 100. This gauge is only spent on this action, which when used, the faerie will tether to a party member and focus-heal them with double the power compared to Embrace. This will allow the tank to sustain even better within trash pulls, or help you heal a DPS who took damage from failing mechanics easier. Though the regen from this action is extremely potent, it is still important to heal immediately when needed.
