2021-2022 SCH Hopes & Expectations

I was curious as to what people are expecting or wanting for future job/spell updates and AF3+3... I returned in 2018 and loved seeing all the chatter in this forum that year and last year. I wanted to start the conversation as I'd like to see SCH used in more strategies with an updated kit.

Here's a few random thoughts, some borrowed from other posts:

• AF3+3: what stats do we need to give these pieces some hype

• Spells: Adloquium (10) / Klimaform (15), skill cap to 50TP & 60M.Acc

• Modus Veritas: ...

• Tabula Rasa: T3 Skillchains?

• REMA / Su5 Augments: Why not give us more M.Dmg along with weapon damage so weapons might be worth throwing Swarts / RP into them

What other ideas would get us talking about the job again?

Max Regen V set and PLD's AoE Cures is a setup I'd like to see discussed. Seems like it would have pretty good synergy. I mean, It seems like a no brainer strat, but PLD, SCH, RDM, BRD, COR and GEO setup would be ideal for that to work out perfectly. Having that setup is probably the most flexible crew in terms of capabilities to confront pretty much anything.

What I'd like to see is them allowing Haste to finally be AoEable with Accession.

My biggest issue with SCH is just how limiting the stratagem system is. Besides the delay inherent to the JA -> spell combo, there's just no way to compete with unlimited AoE debuff removal vs WHM on main heals. Additionally, cureskin saves soooooo many lives it's absurd.

To be able to compete with WHM, SCH absolutely needs some help in two key areas: AoE -nas and preventative heals (cureskin). These shouldn't be copy-paste from WHM, but have their own unique SCH-like implementation. My suggestion on how to do this while retaining SCH's unique flavor is below:

To cover unlimited AoE -nas, I'd suggest changing the mythic weapon to include an effect of returning a stratagem for successful -na application while under the effect of a stratagem (akin to Yagrush). Doubling up on stratagems would still only return 1, so Celerity + Accession + Cursna would still only return 1 stratagem. Further, you only receive 1 stratagem per cast (as opposed to per player hit).
To cover preventative healing, I'd love to see Rapture behave kind of like a cureskin for Regen, but instead of stoneskin it could behave like Drain III's overheal. If a regen ticks a player to full health, it adds the remaining "wasted" regen hp tick to the player's max HP. This effect stacks up to a certain percent of the player's max hp. Say 10-20%? This also synergizes well with sublimation's max pool.

Some would say being a capable main healer and having nukes in your back pocket is too OP, but to be perfectly honest, dipping out of LA to go nuke takes so much time and gives you less opportunity to correct for bad situations. You need to switch to DA and A:B, then to do any decent damage, you also have to Ebullience. Now you're down 2 strats and to get back to LA to aoe -na a bad stat or aoe panic cure, you're looking at 3 JA, 2 stratagem cost and 1 cast. That's a long way away, and quite taxing on your timed resource.
Bouncing between la/da isn't very viable unless there's not much healing that needs to be done. Which... suddenly SCH becomes preferred for lower level content and now it has a niche, with the ability to specialize and be perfectly capable on harder content.

WHM still retains superior protective capability. Between Divine Caress and Sacro, you can pre-empt a lot of bad things. Faster reaction times as well without having to JA to AoE -nas away. And not many people like it, but Misery is still very powerful and massive aoe -nas. Melee WHM is strong too, and you can build a strong Holy set to blow some socks off. Not as strong offensively as SCH, but still quite good. WHM will never lose its spot as the best healer. But SCH can't even begin to compete without some help.

I love that idea.

Empy Pants also gives WHM insane mana efficiency. Which SCH really has nothing to combat.

I'm unsure if this is the case. Regen is a VERY mp efficient heal. And sublimation is a non-sub-specific MP restore that WHM has no chance of competing without a specific sub. WHM requires /rdm or /sch to get any MP back. Without the pants, WHM would be unable to keep up in heavy healing for sure.
I guess the question is: is sublimation enough during main healing? And I don't play SCH enough to answer it.

Good points. Whm/sch with empy legs +3 is insane mana efficiency. WHM/anything else with empy legs +3 is not. I geared out my WHM mule's SCH for main healing just for fun a few months ago and found even fulltiming raptured aoe regen 5s I would go oom anytime there was any serious singletarget healing outside of regen. Wherewith WHM as long as you're not overhealing like crazy you're never losing MP.

Sch not only has very strong sublimation but also myrkr with both regain and high Occult acumen, I can basically refill my mp at will by tossing out a nuke in occult accumen gear whenever I'm free and then I have tp for myrkr whenever its necessary. mp should not be an issue for sch if you know what you are doing. Also sch can have well over 100 hp per tic regen which is super mp efficient and in a lot of content can nearly eliminate the need for heals.

Debuffs and aoe damage beyond what regen can handle are really the main issue for sch healing, there's too much content that can just eat up all our strats now and yag whm just has a much easier and faster time dealing with aoe debuffs and heals. So yes if they gave sch some way of getting strats back or not using them all up as fast that would help.

I don't really mind though, sch is also incredibly strong soloer and can compete with blm for damage on MBs (often just limited by damage cap)while providing the SCs for those MBs, the problem is really just that MBs aren't worth using on a lot of content which is an even bigger problem for blms.

What about making Immanence a stance instead of a time limited JA. Reducing the time barrier on mage setups maybe can increase the overall output and make them more competitive with melees.

Maybe if it stayed on until you close a SC with it that would be interesting, you do want it to come off after a sc closes though so you can MB.

When I'm soloing on sch, if I can get away with meleeing using the mythic I commonly do Omniscience -> Immanence -> Stone->(distortion) MB X1 -> Omniscience -> (darkness) MB X2 that lets me do 3 MBs for 1 strategem while also using my strongest ws and getting solid SC damage. Biggest problem is really just if I have a stupid tank trust trying to block every MB/SC. Depending on what I'm doing I can use Seidr Cotehardie so I don't run out of mp or I can just occasionally stop to throw my tp into Myrkr to keep mp going.

empy +3 gear maybe one day, but I've learned not to get my hopes up

Yes please to buff adloquium and Klimaform both are way too small of buffs atm and making them scale would help a ton.

Modus veritas yeah its a bad feeling to just have a completely unusable job ability. These days even if it worked in the unnerfed way I don't think that would even be broken, plenty of easier ways to get capped damage. Could make it a completely different job ability or just try to make it function as advertised.

I'd be down for some special spells that could provide higher SC properties with Immanence. Personally I'd be even more interested in adding range especially to omniscience but I'd be down for most single target elemental ws's getting range especially staff ones, this would help people take advantage of occult acumen and open up a lot more options and maybe make cors have a little more competition on crushing stones and make mythics for blm and sch a lot more appealing.

As to magic damage on REMAs/SU5 other than mythic for sch it wouldn't matter since even a simple akademos is better for nuking than than any of the others. SU5 is for enhancing duration/regen potency. Empy is unnecessary fast cast and awesome lock style. Aeonic is not useful. Mythic is easily your best melee option and also one of your best nuking options but yes even when meleeing you do mostly magical damage so I guess magic damage would usually be better on it but plenty of other popular REMAs with elemental ws's that don't benefit much from the +dmg in the augment that are still very popular.

basically tack on Ea+1 stats with slight improvements to the special stats on the gear already.
far too many enhancing magics don't scale with skill, in addition to these, also include blink, & animus minuo/maximus. this should be changed. T6 nukes should be added. SCH had access to the same tier nukes as BLM at 75 cap because it was designed to be a blm alternative, it should be adjusted to resemble that once again. Also, the magic damage stat does not effect Kaustra. This needs fixed.
Helix spells should have their DoT cap adjusted back to 99,999. can leave Modus Veritas as is then. If not, change it to also increase duration instead of halving it.
I like the idea of changing stratagems to be stances. With that in mind, make Tabula Rassa add another stance that can be held at the same time.
Staff Relic should be given MAB as it's totally missing from the weapon. Empyrean MP needs to be +300, not +30 & should also be given MND&INT+. Mythics aren't too bad, they just need a bit, mDMG would do fine. Aeonic needs the Occult acumen +100, not +30 & MAB.
As mentioned above, change stratagems to stances. At subjob level, only one stance at a time. At some point Lv.50+ increase that to two. With Tabula Rassa, that increases to three. Thus allowing us to cycle out stratagems we don't want active while letting us keep up multiple at a time.
There is a precedent for this: Seeing Blood-Red.

Adjust manifestation to work on all black magics, not just black magic side enfeebles & dark magic, and either let manifestation work on light magic side enfeebles as well or let accession work on those.
Also, adjust Enlightenment so it grants access to a single cast of Embrava or Kaustra.

What do I expect? SCH is totally ignored.

AFAIK Rapture doesn't affect Regen at all, since Rapture is basically a Strat for Divine Seal on Healing Magic, and Regen spells are classified as Enhancing Magic.

Correct.

I really wish it would though. Would be nice to have 100+/tick regens for that mp cost.

I decked out SCH expecting SE to make it useful again when they were "fixing" jobs. Boy was I mistaken.

Honestly not breaking the job worse than it already is was an improvement over the WHM update they tried.

SCH is perfectly fine imo. Sure some stuff would be cool to see adjusted, Modus, Rapture, etc. But SCH itself is very much usable and perfectly capable of doing all content in replace of a WHM.

Just because a job (SCH) doesn't fall under the "meta" jobs of quickest clears possible doesn't mean it needs fixing.

We're going to be eternally punished for abusing modus in Sea back in the day. They'll never give it back to us

and abusing Embrava through abyssea up to neo nyzul isle.

My hopes for this coming year is for SCH to get all Staff WSs natively.

I hope for 2021, someone becomes inspired and makes an updated guide.

This one seems pretty up to date.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Community_Scholar_Guide

I'm a returning player and I've used it quite often just I go back to the older guide on here too as I can't solo a lot of these NMs and lack of friends makes it harder to get stuff. Since most of my friends quit long time ago.