A Scholar's Education (Guide)

I was always under the impression that Grimoire was additive to fast cast, and in the same bucket subject to the 80% cap for the casting timer reduction, but that Grimoire went beyond that cap for recast timer ONLY.

Maybe a stupid question; but as a complete mage noob looking to pick up scholar, how do you set up your macro books? Do you have a page for each element? or set up pages by Tier? Do you have pre- built skillchains on buttons for fastest possible immanence timing?

I havn't set up a lua for it yet, but I'll likely use Arislan's as a starting point. I assume they'll have some keys mapped, or maybe even a Elemental toggle to reduce the amount of pages used. I know for RUN / COR theres a single button for runes / quick draw and you toggle the element via the lua.

I'd love to see / be told some example templates so I can get accustomed to something the right way rather than changing it along the way once I've already developed somewhat of a muscle memory.

SCH to me seems really complicated compared to the jobs I play, so any help would be appreciated!

I use a modified version of Elizabet's luas for RDM SCH BLM GEO.

It's nice in that you can cycle elements and then have a single macro bar entry each for t1, t2, t3, t4, t5, helix, helix2, etc.

Other things that found their way onto the bar are kaustra, "open sc," "close sc," absorb-tp, ebullience, enlightenment, food, and whatever weapon skills i tend to be using at the time.

I find all the buffing and white magic can be managed easily enough with shortcuts and don't really require macro spots.

If you prefer a more vanilla approach, I'd recommend reading Lute's blog even though it's in Japanese. His macro bars are very well thought out and conducive to high level vanilla play.

Just DM me if you'd like to see my actual luas.

Also do you guys use the /echo after actions to keep track of your stratagemns, or an add-on? I saw the one add-on floating around that was a white or black book based on which arts your in that kept track of your strats, but I know a static member of mine had an echo tied to stuff. Mainly just wondering if theres a better add-on out there or if it's better just to keep it simple.

The SCH-Hud add-on is very simple. Timers plugin also keeps tracks of stratagems, but the hud addon is just a much better visual aid than timers.

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/55678/sch-hud-addon/

That's exactly the one I saw in passing awhile back. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

I was looking at helix duration today:
With the set form here:
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/All_Jobs_Gear_Sets/Scholar

I was getting 4:14 duration
I added a bookworm cape that took it to 5:00
then Tabula and bookworm it was 5:52

Is that the longest duration that we can reach at the moment?

I'm lacking things I can spend my money on. Scholar is one of my most used jobs, and I'm up for doing anything I can to make it better.

I asked this 5 years ago, but I am asking again. Does Tupsimati have any place whatsoever in the current endgame? And if the answer is yes, how is it being used? Thanks for any information.

PS: I should say I do not have Bunzi Rod maxed. It is on 0 and I doubt my group is maxing this out anytime soon.

If your Bunzi rod is on 0, you'd be better off working on an Aymur than a Tupsimati.

If you want it for maxing AM2 then you want this for if you hit 3k tp.

I assume this is a situation where you want more but you don't want to commit to an Opashoro.

Yeah, I'm never making a prime. If I did it would be for Dark Knight. It would be a waste of time, then?

If you really have so much money and don't know what to do, you could consider payin a merc for an Mboze kill so you can aug your rod at least up to R25, heh

I could, but I am one of the firmest believers of playing the game I pay for, as opposed to paying someone else to play it for me so I can shortcut.

I mean, not gonna completely deny that, but you would still have to work for it.
The majority of work, arguably, is getting all the RP to aug it to R25, and R25 comes from the V20 kill, which is not "the last".
As much as I agree it's not the same level of satisfaction as killing it yourself, you could consider it as a mean to improve your character so that you can kill Mboze's strongest version on V25 to unlock the final upgrade of R30.

At least that money would go to something that would constitute a noticeable upgrade for your character, unlike Tupsimati which is a very niche thing at best.

Never paid a merc in the 20 years of playing the game, and don't plan on doing it for the next 20. I get what you're saying, but I'd rather have something to work toward. The game gets so few proper updates that I'd rather take my time and work towards my goals steadily with my linkshell.

Anyway, it seems Tupsimati is so incredibly niche that I'll save my gil for a Crocea Mors, or something else. I never get to play RDM (my group has several better RDM), but it is clearly more useful if it is needed. Thanks for the feedback.

Anyone wanna share Oshala set?

The short versions would be:

Dmg: 5/5 Nyame + ws cape and accessories.

Max ACC (to land AM3): 4/5 Empy +3 + r15 Gazu+1 hands + all accuracy accessories.

(My staff is only stage 3 so I really don't mess with it much tbh)

AM3 will be up whether the WS lands or not, so the acc set is not necessary. Unless you want to use Oshala in an SC of course.

Yup I always want it to miss. Wish they had just copy pasted the SC properties of Vido/Ground Strike or better yet the first Fusion/Gravitation weaponskill instead. Universal Light/Darkness please.

Is there any reason to use tier 1 storm spells over tier 2 storm spells once you unlock them?

Not really. Unless you're REALLY low on MP and can only afford the T1.

In practical terms, there's never a reason to use them that I'm aware of.

I guess you could also use them to give stats to melee with Stormsurge, since the stat doesn't change for T1/T2...bit of a stretch though.

Good to know. Setting up macros, so I don't need to macro tier 1 storms.

you can safely drop them from your magic list

I am sure most scholars know this but when creating 3-step fire (Liquification -> Fusion). If you close both skillchains with helix it serves to keep your skillchain window open longer, for more bursts but also allows you to tier4 nuke, inbetween Liquefication and Fusion.

ie:
Immanance Stone > immanance pyrohelix > fire4 > immanance ionohelix.

depending on your fastcast optimization(using the scholar grimoire pieces) and lag you may find it safer and more reliable to do a fire 3.

Keeping the burst window open longer lets you almost always finish off your enemy within 1 longer skillchain for Sortie

Wizard's Roll + Caster's Roll
FTW

We usually run naturalist/wizards, naturalist just makes life easier on the SCH(s) for the aoe refresh/aldo/regen5/phalanx/firestorm etc

The wizards is overkill except on F/G/H for the most part.

Once you get in a grove with properly dressing the bosses with Vido/burn/frazzle/impact

Geo get BoG/EA/demat/entrust timer syncd for the proper bosses, everyone is handing out 99ks like Oprah handing out cars.