Introduction

Scholar (SCH) has a unique healing style and kit. It is known for its potential to dish massive shields and mitigation, possibly the best mitigation in the game. SCH manipulates the Aetherflow to oGCD heal and deal damage. What is most interesting about SCH-- is its uniquely designed co-healing pet. The pet's main healing spell is independently automated to heal any missing HP target in your party. Your pet also has a collection of abilities that you can call upon to improve your healing and mitigation. To summarize, this job requires good pet and cooldown management for efficient healing-- which we will get into in this guide!

General Pros and Cons of Scholar

Pros:

On demand DPS mobility spell. (Ruin 2)
Independent and automated pet healing outside of your own GCD.
Moderately high raid-buff contribution.
The highest hard-hitting spammable GCD AoE among healers.
Highest shielding potential.
High range of healing coverage due to pet placement and allocation.
Party Sprint every 2 minutes.

Cons:

Depends on the party to optimize Chain's usage and value.
Can struggle to GCD heal if Lucid Dreaming, Aetherflow, and Recitation are on cooldown post-death; mostly because Dissipation and Energy Drain no longer grant you MP recovery.
Ability lockdown on some cooldowns when others are active, such as Seraph and Fey blessing, or Dissipation and any fairy ability.
No on demand instant GCD heal.
Loses damage potential when AF is used for healing over ED.

Scholar's Healing Gameplay

Scholar possesses a variety of healing tools, namely, pet actions, and the Aetherflow heals which consume stacks generated by the abilities Aetherflow, and Dissipation.

You need Aetherflow stacks to use the following abilities:

- Excogitation

- Lustrate

- Indomitability

- Sacred Soil

- Energy Drain

We want to use Energy Drain as often as possible to maximize our DPS gain; to avoid any healing done by other Aetherflow abilities. Therefore, we depend on our pet and other oGCDs to heal instead.

Healing Priority system

Burning your healing oGCDs first allows you to focus on casting DPS GCDs. That said, you want to avoid using AF stacks on healing and prioritize them on ED. So, this limits your free healing oGCDs kit to the following:

Whispering Dawn (60s recast)
Fey Union (Gauge-locked)
Fey Illumination (120s)
Fey Blessing (60s)
Embrace (3s)
Seraph (120s)
Consolation (120s)
Recitation (90s)
Expedient (120s)
Protraction (60s)

If you must GCD heal, then make it count to reduce the need to cast another GCD heal. Check the GCD healing combos section for tips.

First oGCDs to burn

Your first oGCD focus should be the following:

Whispering Dawn (60s recast)
Fey Union (Gauge-locked)
Fey Blessing (60s)
Seraph (120s)
Consolation (120s)
Protraction (60s)

You fairy oGCDs are your first to-go healing tools. Currently with the 1.5s Broil cast time, you lose no damage and those are completely free healing tools.

So, let's discuss their most opportune time for usage:

Whispering Dawn
Use this potent regen to top off your party post raid-waid AoEs or to get your tanks topped off if the fight's pace is slow on raid damage. It has a short CD of 60s and it is emitted from the fairy, so place your fairy around your party members or the tanks before using this ability!
Fey Union (Gauge-locked)
This ability is good when you need the fairy to hard focus heal a specific party member. It is usually used on tanks around busters, or heavy auto-attack damage. It can be helpful during mechanics that force 1 HP drop on a single target or bleed DoT. You can also use it to pick up targets that took extra damage from failing a mechanic. Note that using another pet cooldown will cancel the channeling of this ability.
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Fey Blessing
A 320p (pet potency) AoE heal with a wide range of 20y from the fairy's location. This ability is on a short cooldown of 60s with a massive range coverage. Utilize it to top off your party between AoEs especially when your party is spread around or split on multiple platforms.
Seraph/Consolation
This is one of your strongest free heals due to its massive healing range, and high potency heals and shielding. Seraphic Veil is Seraph's stronger version of Embrace; Consolation is a stronger version of Fey Blessing, and it has 2 charges! This ability is best used when there is a continuous amount of incoming damage, either from raid-wide AoEs or bleed DoT. Seraphic Veil is also great at picking up party members missing HP in between AoEs or healing sustained incoming damage on the tanks.

Because it takes time to activate this ability, plan it ahead of time.
Protraction
A free single target heal on a 60s CD with a 10% action heal buff. This ability has great synergy with the entirety of your kit. Always pair it with another oGCD to get the most use of it, or pair it with specific tank CDs, like TBN, NF, or any other self-healing/shielding ability that scales off max HP! Use this ability to top off a party member, or if they require more healing during AoEs.

Other free healing oGCDs include Recitation. The remaining oGCDs are mitigative. Let's discuss their uses:

Recitation

You can use this ability in multiple ways depending on the situation.

- It can be paired with Indomitability for a bursty AoE oGCD heal.

- Excogitation, for a bursty single target heal.

- Succor, for MP cost negation and bursty AoE GCD heal.

- Adloquium, for MP cost negation, Deployment Tactics, or simply single target healing and mitigation.

Preferably, you want to use this ability on either Indomitability or Excogitation, as GCD healing is something you generally want to avoid unless it is necessary. Recitation has a 15s duration, so use it 10s before it is needed, this way it goes on cooldown earlier.

If you do plan to GCD heal with this ability then make sure the healing is not wasted and it is fully consumed. Eg. the party is missing health and succor's base heal will effectively heal the party while shielding for the next upcoming AoE.

Fey Illumination
Grants a 10% GCD healing buff and a 5% magical damage mitigation, you mostly want to pair this ability with your co-healer's GCDs more than anything. Eg. WHM's Rapture, Medica 2, Aspected Helios etc. You can also use it to buff Succor/Adlo's potency by 10% if you think it is needed, especially if your party is suffering from damage up stacks.
Expedient
A powerful ability that grants movement speed and mitigation at the same time. This ability is great if you use it to help your party move faster around a mechanic while reducing the damage taken. It can be quite situational, but generally a strong exceptional ability.

Aetherflow Stacks

Scholar's most potent healing comes from AF's healing oGCDs. Let's take a look:

1- Excogitation: 800p single target heal that activates when the target is below 50% health.

This ability is quite powerful for multiple reasons:

- It can be put on CD earlier than needed because it has a 45s duration on the target, making it possible to have it off cooldown by the time it is needed again. As long as the target doesn't drop below 50%, it can be used much earlier than needed.

- It snaps healing buffs at the time of usage, so, abilities like Protraction, Recitation, and other healing buffs will remain in effect for the entire 45s duration until it is activated.

- It has great uses for mechanics that force drop 1 HP, and mechanics where the target will require healing but are out of range.

2- Sacred Soil: 100p x6 AoE Regen heal and 10% mitigation (18s), recast 30s.

This will be your most used Aetherflow ability due to its short cooldown, potent regen healing, and mitigation. This ability is efficient on a single target or more as it grants the target a 100p regen per tick for 15s while mitigating 10% of the incoming damage for 18s (lingering effect). If you are out of free oGCD abilities or no healing options, use this ability first, especially if you do not need the instant healing from Indomitability.

3- Lustrate: 600p single target heal, recast 1s.

This ability is your last resort when Excogitation and Sacred Soil are on CD. In terms of efficiency, it's less efficient than the other abilities in your Aetherflow kit, making it quite situational.

4- Indomitability: 400p instant AoE heal, recast 30s.

This is your instant AoE healing ability. It’s quite efficient on 2 targets or more as it heals for 800p (400x2 targets). Use this ability if you need to top off your party when needed. Make sure you prioritize Sacred Soil over this ability, especially if the instant healing isn’t needed; this is because Sacred Soil heals for 600p which is an extra 200p. If your party is too spread for Sacred Soil then fall back on Indomitability.

Other oGCDs

In addition to what we’ve already seen, Scholar has the following oGCDs: Emergency Tactics, Deployement Tactics, Dissipation and Chain Stratagem.

Emergency Tactics

This ability is useful when you need to burst heal your party members immediately, specifically when you are out of healing oGCDs. It has great synergy with the rest of your kit. This is also useful when you need to burst heal mechanics like Doom, where the party needs to be at full HP. The only downside is that it requires you to GCD heal, so avoid using this unless it is absolutely necessary.

Deployment Tactics
This is one of your best progression tools. It offers a massive shielding advantage, this is because you can buff one single target shield then spread its effects to the entire party. You can use this ability before any lethal AoE, especially when your party is stacked up on damage up vulnerability. You can also cheese mechanics by buffing the shield potency to its absolute limits and soaking high amount of damage to keep the DPS uptime. This ability is also good to utilize during downtime if there is an AoE or double tank buster post the downtime period. The only downside is that it requires you to GCD heal. If you are bound to GCD heal anyway, consider using Adlo + deploy over succor as it has more value.

You can utilize this ability by using the Succor tech; casting Succor/Adlo during downtime/prepull on one person that will not take heavy damage, and then ask your co-healer or tanks to mitigate damage off one person by using shields on them, e.g. Divine Benison then when the damage AoE damage hits, use Deployment tactics off this person to gain another AoE shield without casting a GCD. You would preferably want to use this on an off-tank because of their heavy defensive gear. Remember that the deployed shields will have the same duration as the original shield duration.

Chain Stratagem

This is a raid DPS buff, you want to get as many uses as you can out of this ability to boost your party's total damage. Ideally, you want to sync it with other party buffs or around high hitting GCDs from your party.

Dissipation
Mostly a recovery tool in progression or a DPS tool in farm parties. You want to save this ability in progression for emergency healing. It grants 3 AF stacks paired with a 20% GCD heal buff on succor and Adloquium. It is also a great tool to use post-death to recover when AF is on CD.

Synergy Combos

Healing buffs and augmentation: Fey illumination, Protraction, Recitation, and Dissipation.

oGCD Combo examples for single target healing:

Recitation > Protraction > Excogitation

This massively increases Excog's potency from 800p to 1,320p on top of the 10% max HP increase from Protraction.

Protraction > Whispering > Fey Union

This will tunnel a strong regen on a single target. You can also use Sacred Soil for additional regen and healing if needed. Note that Fey Union snapshots Protraction's buff unlike Sacred Soil.

Protraction > Seraph > Consolation/Seraphic Veil

For GCD healing’s ultimate combo:

Fey Illumination > Protraction > Recitation > Succor/Adloquium

You can also use Dissipation in the combo to increase the total healing value by an extra 20%.

In case something goes wrong with a party member, and you need to instantly top them off, pop Protraction > Excog, or Recitation > Excog/Lustrate to top them off on time. Tanks already have strong mitigation tools, and will likely not depend on your personal mitigation tools to survive. Consider using your defensive tools more often on your other party members.

Combo examples for Multi-target healing:

Whispering > Sacred Soil

Can be used every minute to top off your party.

Seraph > Whispering > Sacred Soil

This provides a potent regen, 10% mitigation buff, and shields per consolation usage.

Recitation > Indom > Fey Blessing > Seraph > Whispering Dawn > Consolation

These will heal your party gradually and for free.

Prepull before a raidwide damage AoE:

Seraph > Consolation > Illumination > Protraction > Adloquium > Deployment Tactics.

You can use Seraph 20s prepull to grant your party a shield 5s before pull that can last up to 25s into the start of the fight. The same goes for Deployment shields since they last 30s in duration. Using cooldowns earlier instead of reacting to the damage as it happens will help make them come off cooldown faster for their next use!

You can pair Adloquium with Recitation for a bigger shield prepull or use it on Excog prepull but gauge the value of Recitation by thinking if you will actually need a powerful AoE heal 60s into the the fight for a Recitation Indom.

Scholar's DPS Gameplay

Scholar's DPS gameplay is reliant on proper cooldown management and party buff alignment and bursts.

1- Keep your DoT up at all times. There are scenarios where it is expected to drop it, for example, in phase transitions.

2- Broil IV needs to have the maximum amount of uptime as your main DPS GCD. It has a 1.5s cast time, making it easier to move and weave with. Try your best to avoid using Ruin 2 unless you need to move for large distances.

3- Use Energy Drain in the opener and under raid buffs if you do not need the AF healing. Always dump your AF stacks when you do not need them, and do it under buffs. Never cap your Aetherflow!

4- Ruin 2 if you need to emergency double weave to heal or if you need to move and act instantly.

5- Use Art of War if you can hit two or more targets.

6- Use Dissipation when you are comfortable in a fight, knowingly, you won't need it for recovery.

7- Always place your fairy to ensure it can cast the maximum mount of Embrace. If the fairy moves, it will not cast an action.

Opener

Add or remove Broils depending on where raid buffs will be~

Single Target:

Breakdown:

Make sure you use your Chain with your other party buffs.
Precast Succor or use Deployment Tactics if there an AoE in the first 25s of a fight.
You need a minimum of 2.41 GCD if you have high ping.
Use Chain at the very last end of the GCD weave slot to catch the last swiftcasted Broil.
You use 4 EDs under the Chain, the remaining 2 EDs can be shifted around.

Movement Priorities

1- Slidecast: Pre-position and think of your movement around upcoming mechanics. Abuse the 1.5s cast time to have perfect uptime. Use Sprint to move for larger distances during your slidecasts.

2- Biolysis: Play around your DoT's refresh time, some mechanics will happen around your DoT refresh so preposition to the location during that window.

3- Swiftcast: If you don’t need this for healing then consider using it for Broil uptime as you move.

4- Ruin 2: Use it only when slidecasting, Swiftcast, Biolysis natural refresh are out of the question.

Scholar's General Gameplay & Summary

So, Let's Summarize!

You have a priority system that you need to follow when healing and dealing damage on this job.

1- Place your pet at the center of the arena when you port in at all times.

2- Never overcap your Aetherflow. Leave at least 1 stack until the next AF in case you need it for an emergency heal. Try to plan your free oGCD heals FIRST before using AF healing.

3- Keep your DoT up.

4- Use your Aetherflow and Lucid on cooldown to maintain a positive MP flow. Consider using Recitation and MP pots on Succor if you are heavily deficient on MP.

5- Prioritize your kit in the following order per level if you are out of free healing tools:

Level 70 to 77: Excog and Lustrate. Sacred Soil does not have the regen trait yet.
Level 78 and above: Sacred and Excog. Sacred gains the regen trait.

Note: Indom is useful if you need to heal 2 or more targets.

6- Rotate your low CD abilities as much as possible. This mainly includes your fairy abilities, Recitation and Protraction. Especially Protraction.

7- Avoid overcapping your fairy gauge!!

8- Utilize the synergy of your kit as often as possible for a better outcome.

Overall, always try to synergize your kit to increase the healing output.

Given that the DPS design is simplistic (maintain DoT, use EDs under buffs, and Broil uptime as much as possible), and place and manage your pet when you are dealing damage, it is important as a Scholar to be familiar with the oGCD kit to avoid GCD healing wherever possible.

The general prioritization loop consists of:

Optimize your offensive GCDs’ uptime and pre-plan your positioning. Get the maximum amount of Chain usage per fight.
Frequently use your kit and cycle your free oGCDs to keep the healing momentum going. Follow the healing priority system.
Utilize downtime to use your GCD shields to avoid healing when the target is back up.
Synergize with your co-healer and understand their healing cycle to avoid overhealing.

Scholar has a healing priority system:

1- Free fairy oGCDs, Recitation, and downtime/pre-pull Deployment Tactics.

2- Aetherflow healing.

3- GCD healing.

Avoid GCD healing as much as possible, coordinate, and communicate with your co-healer efficiently to reach that goal. Good fairy management goes a long way and can be very fruitful for your DPS uptime. Use Chain, Aetherflow, and Lucid on CD.