FFXIV Scholar (SCH) Basics Guide & FAQ – Shadowbringers Updated!

MIN & BTN Leveling Guides updated. Other notes...

Botanist Leveling to 90, as well as Miner Leveling to 90 are updated for the Endwalker tier. Older tiers needs some fixing, although I modernized what I could quickly – I placed the important notes on the top of the aforementioned guides reflecting the major things that you need to take note of.

I will post a personal update soon, for those that are curious…

Studying up on Scholar, ey? Surely, you’ll find supplemental and support info on the SCH job here! Basic information and FAQs in our Scholar Basics Guide. Read on if you’re expecting to learn about unlocking SCH, Scholar Job Identity, trait and skill list, crafters and gatherers related to SCH, and link to other important Scholar info! Perfect for the 

Scholar is a Healer job, and is one of the first nine jobs to be released in 2.0 A Realm Reborn. SCHs healed with White Mages as the only healing jobs at the time.

How to become a Scholar? Unlocking SCH:

First and foremost you need to have a Level 30 Arcanist, and have completed the L30 ACN class quest, “Sinking Doesmaga”. After doing this you can unlock the actual quest to become a Scholar, “Forgotten but Not Gone”. This quest is issued at the Arcanist’s guild by Murie, at Limsa Lominsa – Lower Decks.

You also have to complete a Level 20 MSQ, “Sylph Management”, which realistically should be completed by the time you’re looking to unlock Scholar. 

Note that, upon completing Forgotten but Not Gone you MUST EQUIP the “Soul of the Scholar” to actually formally BECOME a SCH. Interestingly, in the old days, unlocking Scholar required L15 Conjurer – thankfully that’s no longer the case.

Rushing to or want to know how to unlock a certain class? Learn more:
FFXIV Job Unlock & Requirements Guide.

Scholar Playstyle & SCH Job Identity

If you’ve asked yourself, “Why play, try, or choose Scholar?” – here’s my attempt at selling you the SCH class.

Scholars heal alongside a fairy pet. Curious now ey? FFXIV’s SCH is a very “technical” healer that rewards encounter knowledge and optimization heavily. It’s primary niche is damage mitigation through “prevention” via shielding and resists.

Through the management of Aetherflow stacks and your “fairy bar”, there’s a tension on how best to use your resources (Heh, Energy Drain). Scholars are undoubtedly on the technical side of healer jobs, as mitigation skills are utterly useless if mechanics blindside you. The payoff? IMO the most EFFICIENT healing kit overall – this coming from a White Mage main.

Aesthetically and thematically, Fairy + Book + Glasses + “Technical job”, this kind of schtick attracts quite a few people, heh. FFXIV’s Scholar, on a more serious note, hits a home run in the theme department. The job is, lore wise, focused on tactics and your gameplay reflects that.

DISCLAIMER

DISCLAIMER: This is not meant to be a blurb that aligns with the current meta. That changes from patch to patch. Our goal here is to provide you with an idea of what the job is trying to be, getting cues from both the Developers’ concrete decisions on job design, as well as our own feedback.

What Crafters & Gatherers should Scholar level?

While it’s common in MMORPG’s to think you want to craft your own gear as you level up your SCH… I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT.

Leveling up your DoH and DoL jobs should be thought of as a different activity completely. To be honest, if you’re a newer player, simply ensure that you DO NOT OVERCAP Levequests (always have less than 100).

The only relation a combat job has to a crafter or gatherer class is “which classes do you need to repair your gear”? My advice, ultimately, is pretty much all or nothing – level up all DoH classes in tandem. As a separate project, level up all DoL classes in tandem (with the optional Fisher).

What’s the best race for Scholar?

Racial stats are (was?) a thing. However, I highly recommend not caring about it. The difference in performance between the “best” and “worst” race for you is not even 0.1%.

My advice? Pick for aesthetics. Will you stay the same job forever? If you change mains, will you race change? Ultimately, the difference is so microscopic that I cannot in good faith tell you that racial stats are an integral part of your character.

I won’t even link the Racial Stats Guide, as I haven’t checked up on this in a while – and I don’t want to cement the idea that the “best race” really matters.

Related Scholar Guides – Read More!

Here are a few useful links for you:

Upcoming Odds and Ends

Here’s a few things we’ll be adding on here in the near future:

  • Adding a “links to further resources”, we’re doing a site restructure so once those links are set, they’ll go in here.
  • Human-readable, newbie-friendly skill and trait list.
    > I used to have the in-game skill list here, but I found it useless as the in-game one is better… I’d rather have a new player friendly rundown.
  • More descriptive job identity? Pics?
    > I dunno… pictures of the job gauges? A gif of some flashy skills?
  • Feel free to suggest anything else via comment or socials!

Summary & Outro

Well that’s about it for a really, really basic guide that hopefully points some lost souls in the right direction, or answers some of your questions regarding Scholar.


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47 thoughts on “FFXIV Scholar (SCH) Basics Guide & FAQ – Shadowbringers Updated!”

  1. I’ve got a scholar healing question. Do most scholars actively control their pet, or let her roam on her own? I’ve talked to several ilvl80s, and have heard conflicting tales of which is better/preferred. I’m at lvl 43 at the moment, and seem to heal just fine without controlling her, but I’m curious if that will fly in later content. Titan HM is hard enough to dodge as my pally/drg, I can’t imagine trying to do so while controlling me and my faerie.

    1. I tend to control my pet. In Titan HM, you can place your fairy to the side of Titan and you’ll only need to reposition if she’s hit by Landslide, and to Sustain when another player places a Weight under her (putting her on follow means she tends to eat the Weights you run out of). Also, using Whispering Dawn when in a dire situation is more effective than being on cd because she panicked earlier and casted it already, (particularly important on Ifrit/Titan Extreme).
      Controlling Selene’s Fey Glow/Light helps a lot in T2.

    2. I prefer to micro manage the crap out of my pets. Macros tend to help that as well. Popping her buffs at opportune moments help more than her sporadic usage of them. Low level stuff you can leave her on sic and it’s fine, but later you should keep her on a tighter leash lol. Like, I’ve got her embracing whoever I cast adloquium on, for example. Super helpful.

  2. so why not just have an INT build for your arcanist/summoner, and constantly be in cleric stance as a scholar when healing and off cleric stance when attacking?

      1. Plus most int gear above ilvl 70 specifically state acn/thm/blm/smn and mind gear cnj/whm/sch so you are never going to be using cleric stance to heal anyway even if it didn’t have the potency reduction since all you get for gear is mind gear (the extreme primal mode accessories are an exception, those are ‘all classes”) and permanently being in cleric stance to heal means your heals get negligible boost from mind since the stats are swapped. For trivial content where your party vastly outgears the dungeon however, you can sit in cleric stance to dps as a scholar and let your fairy do all the healing since she isn’t affected by cleric stance.

        1. EVeryone seems to be mis-understanding him. He is saying instead of adding your points into MND why not add them to INT and be in cleric stance all the stime when you’re healing..Meaning the INT will switch to MND and not applying the neglible heal boost. All in all it’s still not recommended due to the end game MND gears which will eventually limit the heal and damage potential.

      1. Calling it “cleric” stance isn’t really wrong, depending on where they’re getting the “cleric lore” (for lack of a better term) from, since in D&D (as well as a couple of other games/settings) clerics CAN deal pretty good damage while healing at the same time, so the skill being a damage booster isn’t exactly wrong. Calling it “priest stance” would probably be wrong on the other hand.

        1. YES! hahaha i agree with this! Not many people know that “Cleric” would imply battle (DnD). In most peoples mind they would confuse Cleric with “Healer”! Nice to see a gamer of age once in a while haha.

    1. I had the same thoughts when I started lol. You can’t because as you level up your scholar, it automatically adds a bunch of mind points for you until your measily one point of intelligence a level is negated completely. You’ll have more mind than intelligence no matter what you do as a scholar. So as an arcanist, you can put all your points in int and still heal like a champ. Cleric stance is crossclassed anyway for dpsing.

  3. so if you’re min maxxing as a scholar healer while leveling from 1-30 as an arcanist you should be picking MND over INT because you want your heals to be more potent? I just leveled a 30 arcanist and unlocked the summoner class and I’ve spent all of my trait points for intellect. If I wanted to do some scholar healing too would it still be good? I know you can buy those books but they’re 10000 seals and that’s steep.

    1. Ah… it’s steep but that’s the only way you’re going to be getting those points back. You’ll be surprised how easy 10k seals are to come by!

      1. would a cross class cleric stance with a mind built arc/smn/sch be good for players that want to dps or heal on occasion. I mean it beats dropping the seals, but will it hurt your smn dps?

        1. Cleric stance is only available to Scholars. So no, you can’t build mind and go summoner and expect to deal maximum potential DPS.

  4. And for the sake of curiosity, and because I like ‘hearing myself talk’. Adloquium, Cure potency of 300 that pops a barrier that negates damage equal to what the heal hit for, double if it’s a crit heal, for 30 seconds. Is that 30 seconds a static ‘no matter what’ kind of thing, meaning X heals Y for 350, does it A. Only stay active until 350 more damage has been done, or B. Shaves 350 damage off all the attacks made for 30 seconds.

    A. seemingly the more likely answer.

    1. Think of it as a Stoneskin that absorbs a varying amount, rather than the set 10/18%. It wears off either by absorbing said amount or if time has elapsed.

  5. This isn’t accurate. WHMs heal in desperate measure, SCHs prevent damage and can do decent heals. Also, Scholars excel at healing tanks while WHMs excel at healing the party.

    Think for a minute- Tanks take damage. Scholars prevent damage (Adlo is a spell that prevents damage for 30 seconds) which makes Scholars excel at healing tanks and WHMs preferably go to the rest of the party and the off tank.

    1. Sorry about this. Some of our data is left over from Closed beta days, we didn’t even have Adloquium up!. Thanks for pointing it out!

    2. Desperate Measure? The only time I get desperate is when I take half a minute to read a text, and look up to see the tank is below half health, though Cure II is an easy answer to that, and a cheap one too should freecure be available. As far as preventing damage to ‘The Tank’ since you’re so focused here, wouldn’t Adloquium be better for keeping the ‘shield’ on the tank since it has twice the cure potency of Succor(A fun note here is, succor is to Adloquium, as Medica is to Cure)? And furthermore, there is still the question on how up-to-date these skill descriptions are.

      Granted you have a nifty little troll that does extra healing on your behalf.

      And I’ll give you that Leeches > Esuna.

      And while yes, you can prevent damage from happening, White Mage generally has the ‘stronger’ cures. Granted, yeah, you can take Protect, and Stoneskin from our tree, you also lack the traits that buffer their effects, resulting in the White Mage being ‘better’ in damage mitigation, than prevention.

      Cure and Physick tab in at a dead even Cure Potency of 400. Same Cast and recast too! White Mage’s most basic heal has the additional effect of Freecure though, saving mp on Cure II.

      Yeah sure, Conjurer learns Raise much sooner than Arcanist gets Ressurection, but otherwise, Same spell, sadly Resurrection comes out on top here, because White Mages need a trait to use Raise in battle.

      Here’s a Fun point to throw in: Fairies! Now I don’t believe Eos and Selene can’t be out an about together, but they generally have carbon copy skills either way. So I’ll give Scholar the versatility vote because of your little trogs and the ability to send them after an ailing party member while you continue to focus on the tank.

      Now to be fair, AoE heal wise, Scholar gets Succor… and a HoT pet skill. White Mage gets two increments of Medica.

      Succor, to my knowledge has a heal potency of… GASP! 150. Medica trounces out with 300 cure potency, so even with your shield, and a critical heal… Well results are pretty damn even from a non-mathematical standpoint(to lazy to figure out exactitudes). Then comes Medica II… which I’d suggest only using when you know your Tank is pure win, with a potency of 200, and an additional effect of HP regen.

      Now to Cross class skills;

      We share a lot of commons here, so I won’t bother the bread and butter skills from Thaumaturge.

      This means, the four skills in question are: Virus, Eye for an Eye, Protect, and Stoneskin.

      From what resources I have available, Arcanists as far as cross class skills go, only get a trait effecting Virus(Super Virus). White Mages have traits effecting both Protect(Proshell), and Stoneskin(Graniteskin).

      Super Virus adds an extra 15% INT and MND enfeeblement to Virus.

      Proshell adds extra magic resistance to Protect, and Graniteskin boosts Stoneskin’s effect by another 8%(to 18%).

      Now, on to the, quite basically ‘frosting on top’.

      Cure III adds, albeit a smaller one, another AoE heal to White Mage’s Arsenal, with a Potency of 550, and a chance of a guaranteed critical cure should Overcure activate. And on top of that, Shroud of Saints is a Tank’s dream come true when it comes to ease of enmity control.

      And boiling down to it, Lustrate vs. Benediction, our ‘OH SHIT’ button for heals. Lustrate wins for recast time… So long as your good at managing to your Aetherflow. Benediction’s recast is appalling, but its a straight 100% without having to worry about another skill HAVING to be active for its use.

      In recompense; I’ll always love Arcanist for Virus and Eye for an Eye, But I like the Idea of a Tree Hugging, heal slinging, Pious magic user over… Well, someone who has their nose in a book to often. But, to the point, and without further ado, the usefulness of both classes/jobs are HEAVILY situational/player skill related. Having two of one job, or one of each, neither can truly be replaced by the other. We both keep people’s butts from being dragged to an early grave, so why the need for pointless aggression/competition between the two?

      1. Eww I double negatived the bit about fairies…. Don’t believe the can* be out together. Y’know… the one summon limit.

      2. Succor and Medica come out to be equal in damage undone, actually! Medica heals for a potency of 300, yes. But Succor heals for 150 then prevents for 150 as well. So it really just comes down to whether it’s undoing damage already dealt, or undoing some that was already dealt, and the rest that is about to be. So by the numbers, they’re the same. However, the practical differences will still depend on the situation, of course!

  6. I too am doing this right now I’m level focusing scholar but then I will be focusing white mage after that will summoner and then black mage hopefully they will allow different stat allocation between the different jobs

    1. You won’t really need to level SMN since it will be the same level as your ARN/SCH, all you need to do its get the soul crystal!

      1. Nope, attributes are class specific so if you have leveled mnd on your ACN then you can’t go back and add int for SMN. Same for any class with multiple jobs.

  7. I am also wondering about scholar vs White mage, it says White mage is better for big one hit heals and scholar is better for AOE but in the middle of a dungeon which would you want to have your back? I haven’t seen any buffs with scholar yet either

    1. Hey Emulation!

      To be honest, You’re going to want a WHM before you want a Scholar. They each have their own purpose, but WHM is more ‘important’ to a raid than SCH. (My opinion)

      Here is FFXIVGuilds Recommendation:
      Ideally you want 1 of each.
      – If you have 2 WHM’s, that’s okay. 2 SCH is less desirable.
      – While each are powerful healers, WHM is more versatile, and better in a pinch. SCH shines in more organized groups.

      1. Regarding to the buffs, I guess scholars can use most of the buff and few heal from Conjurer class as cross-class skills. for example, Cure, Protect, Raise and Stoneskin(lvl 34).

      2. I know these comments are somewhat old but I want to comment because I feel like you guys don’t really understand how valuable a shield type healer is.

        From Succor & Succor II: “Additional Effect: Erects a magical barrier which nullifies damage equal to the amount of HP restored.
        If critical HP is healed, the barrier is doubled.”

        When their shields pop, there wont be a need for excess healing as the shields prevent a lot of damage in the first place. A really well placed shield pretty much prevent a lot of dmg while healing at the same time so I wouldn’t dismiss the Scholar. However I am not sure if multiple Scholars can stack the same shield bubbles one one target, there isn’t that much information of the numbers yet.
        It would be worth noting that they have two fairy pets, one heals and the other supports.

        I know I am going Scholar since I used to play a Discipline priest in World of Warcraft for many years and their shields were awesome. I will fit right in with this job. Also….I really wanted a fairy pet…haha..

        1. Kproxy, you somehow misunderstand. I played Disc/Holy too, and while i was writing this I kept telling myself “damn shields are awesome”. haha. What made you think we think otherwise?

          1. I have to speak for scholars here. This mahiko guy’s really got us twisted. WHM more verse than scholars in a pinch? No dude, you’ve got your game wrong. Not only do with have shield heals, but that’s not even our main asset for supporting a tank or even an entire group. No one here in this thread have considered the fairy healing, and that healing coupled by the SCH can equal or even outshine a WHM More desired in raids? I wonder why then that I’m always getting asked to raid before WHMs.

            Scholar can also DPS far better than a WHM ever possibly can, whereas whm can barely deeps at all..SCH’s original class ACN is DPS based if you remember. Cleric stance, sacred ground, fairy positioning, shield heals with swiftcast. Do I really need to continue on versatility?

            Also I’d like to be filled in on why WHMs are always dying before me and I always end up having to res them in raids. That’s undesired.

          2. You seem to be generalizing the clearly bad WHM players you’ve queued with. And generalizing your experience.

            1. I personally prefer a WHM in a pinch. Benediction is a great emergency skill. I don’t mind having either class in a raid, not to the point of preferring one over the other. Having one of each is ideal.

            2. Why are you even doing DPS in the first place? I would never ask any healer to DPS at all. I’d rather have them do ZERO dps to have full attention to healing. Healer Heals Damage Dealers DPS. You’re just wasting needed heal mana. Survival > DPS

            3. Clearly you’ve been queuing with bad WHM’s

            Both classes have their own strengths and weaknesses. I can’t really say if one is better than the other. Again, I’d prefer having one of each in a raid.

          3. Well I’m geared with darklight and garuda grimoire and I have the MND stat to push around, so why not flip on cleric stance and pop some dots off? It’s about 2-5k constant DOT, and if I get off supervirus around 8k+ So I’m dpsing as a healer because I can, and I know what I’m doing with my controls. I’m going to start micromanaging my fairy next time I go to AK which will allow me to DPS even more!

          4. I know these comments are super old and possibly no one will ever see this, but in case they do I just wanted to clarify something about DPSing as a Scholar for people like Mitlet. While I agree that healing should be your main priority and that there are certain raids that require you to completely focus on healing, there are also several situations where you’re just left sitting around waiting for people to start dying and sitting there doing absolutely nothing. This is especially common in dungeons built for level 50s before level 100 gear existed. If you have a well-geared party you won’t need to heal that much and for the most part the fairy alone can keep up (especially with help from Eye for an Eye and Rouse). As far as the comment that DPSing will waste your MP, that should not be a problem for a Scholar as long as they use Aetherflow effectively. MP is almost never a problem if you’ve got that down. If the tank happens to take a big hit while you’re DPSing, just make sure you have Lustrate ready to go and that should be fine. Three of those in a row will restore 75% of max HP. You can easily switch between healing and DPSing and you can even do so while “stance dancing” as long as you’re quick enough to turn Cleric Stance on and off. Really each class has its strengths of course but it seems as if SCH is a bit more versatile.

          5. in terms of progression raiding, stance dancing for DPS is great for both SCH and WHM. For dungeons, they aren’t difficult enough to warrant much of a discussion as to which healer is more suited.

        2. It is actually better having 2 Eos rather than an Eos & Selene.
          Main reason for this is Eos just brings more to the table and being able to rotate a 20% magic dmg reduction, 20% increased healing and group regen is better than the DPS boost Selene provides.
          Selene is ok for CM/AK speed runs with premade groups but in my eyes Eos boost to healing can’t be replaced unless it is a light heal fight.

  8. I have a question regarding the leveling of summoner and scholar. both of these jobs level gain exp from arcanist. What happen if I have lvl 50 summoner (archanist lvl 50) and i decided to become a scholar for the fist time? Will my character become lvl 50 scholar right away?

    1. It has been mentioned that SCH and SMN will not share stat point allocations, so while we cant be too sure right now how this will work, we can safely assume if you have a SCH (high MND), you wont botch your SMN (high INT). It’s also something we’ve been wondering as well, Mickie.

  9. I am struggling to decide if I am going to want to job Summoner, White Mage, Black Mage or Scholar. Looks like I may have to do them all…I am beyond excited for this game!

    1. On that, I think Scholar may run as a decent healer…Does it seem as if White Mage will be more necessary though?

    1. our pet skills are still under construction. the fairy summon is actually Summon I and Summon II as a Scholar. Arcanist Scholar and Summoner have unique summons (which are summoned through the same skills). Summon I and II for SMN are Garuda and Titan Egi

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