Scholar Guide (Part V)
Overview
A Scholar in Dark Arts functions essentially as a Black Mage, requiring standard nuking sets such as maxed damage and high skill. In Part IV, we covered the elemental skill set for Scholar and reached the conclusion that when maxed, functions at similar efficiency to a near maxed Black Mage; however, the gear required to reach this difficult to near-impossible to attain. So while theoretically a maxed Scholar should function at equal or better capacity to a maxed Black Mage in Elemental Skill in the long term, this is actually near-impossible to see in practice due to current gear limitations.
In this post, I hope to move back into normal nuking sets outside the realm of resist rates and do a real in-depth comparison of the nuking efficiencies between Scholar and Black Mage. I had previously done a rather basic analysis of the nuking capabilities between the 2 jobs, and this time hope to provide a little more depth. Previously, I only provided comparisons between Black Mage and a Scholar nuking under various charges, but did not consider the fact that charges are not infinite. This analysis will attempt cover this issue.
Lastly, I hope take the basic concepts behind the Scholar's inherent MP efficiencies and apply it to an underused set of nuking equipment - the maximum Enmity Down set. For various reasons, this set never became popular on Black Mage; however, because of the innate MP efficiency advantage of the Scholar's nukes when paired with stratagems, in addition to gear selection differences between the 2 jobs, this set can be used to great effect on a Scholar.
I highly recommend at least taking a glimpse at the math portion of this post; however, if you would like to skip over this section, begin reading at "Scholar Efficiency and Gear" and focus on colored text and conclusions.
Also, please forgive the randomness of the pics. I just threw together anything that had me on SCH.
Enjoy!
Scholar Guide (Part I)
Scholar Guide (Part II)
Scholar Guide (Part III)
Scholar Guide (Part IV)
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scholar and Black Mage Gear Sets
Before beginning the real analysis, I feel it is important to just note what gear sets I am using in my analysis and calculation of damage values for the first part of this post. These are what I feel are the "ideal sets" for Scholar and Black Mage in typical nuke setting (max damage). Refer back to these gear sets if you are interested in understanding how the values calculated in this post were derived.
Notes:
- The spell Blizzard IV is specifically maxed in all sets.
- I do not include the ACP body in this analysis, so the Scholar sets can actually be slightly better.
- These sets do not actually give you "max damage" since I am using Aureole over Phantom Tathlum
- Day and Weather Bonuses, the gear swaps associated with them, and Stormsurge are not considered
- Various sets may no longer be "the best" as new gear is introduced in future patches. Also no Maat's Cap.
- "Base Stats" are done using BLM/RDM and SCH/RDM with capped standard merits.
- Cream Puff food (+7 INT) is used.
- Mob is assumed to have no MDB and 65 INT (the INT value will distort the final values, but not relative differences)
The things not considered in the analysis, if fully considered, would benefit Scholar more than Black Mage.
________________________________________________________________________________
Black Mage "Max Damage" Standard Nuke Set
Maximizes Black Mage damage when there is no day or weather bonus. Again, the actual best damage set would include Phantom Tathlum and not the Aureole, but assuming you had the Aureole, you would likely make this trade-off anyways.
EDIT: Could / should have used Sorcerer's Ring but it's probably a bit late to change out graphs. The values for Black Mage will be a bit understated due to this; however, if we consider the fact that I am not including wearther bonus, +7 INT from stormsurge, or ACP body, I think this analysis is still weighed to favor BLM.
MainAquilo's Staff+5 INT , Hidden Bonuses
SubBugard Strap +1+1 INT
RangedAureole
+8 MACC
HeadMorrigan's Coronal
+4 INT , +5 MACC
BodyMorrigan's Robe
+5 MAB , +8 INT
HandsMorrigan's Cuffs
+5 MAB , +5 MACC
LegsMorrigan's Slops
+10 INT , -2 Enmity
FeetMorrigan's Pigaches
+3 INT , SET: +5 MAB
BackIxion Cape
+5 INT
WaistSorcerer's Belt
+6 INT
NeckPrudence Torque
+5 INT
Ear 1Novio Earring
+7 MAB
Ear 2Moldavite Earring
+5 MAB
Ring 1Tamas Ring
+5 INT , -3 Enmity
Ring 2Snow Ring
+ 5 INT
Final Statistics
INT148MAB69Enmity-9Damage1306
________________________________________________________________________________
Scholar "Max Damage" Standard Nuke Set
Maximizes Scholar damage when there is no day or weather bonus. This set below has a number of "flaws" such as lack of ACP body as well as the fact it ignores weather bonuses, which is a staple trait of the Scholar. It also will not include Stormsurge. I exclude these because the act of casting Storms on yourself would complicate the MP efficiency analysis. Just assume that whatever the results are here, it should actually favor Scholar more in practice.
MainAquilo's Staff+5 INT , Hidden Bonuses
SubBugard Strap +1+1 INT
RangedAureole
+8 MACC
HeadRee's Headgear
+2 MAB , +2 INT , +2 MACC
BodyMahatma Hpl.
+11 INT , -4 Enmity
HandsVicious Mufflers
+5 MAB
LegsMahatma Slops
+8 INT , -4 Enmity
FeetYigit Crackows
+2 MAB , +3 INT
BackGleeman's Cape
+5 INT
WaistArgute's Belt
+5 INT , +2 MACC
NeckPrudence Torque
+5 INT
Ear 1Novio Earring
+7 MAB
Ear 2Moldavite Earring
+5 MAB
Ring 1Tamas Ring
+5 INT , -3 Enmity
Ring 2Snow Ring
+ 5 INT
Final Statistics
INT144MAB41Enmity-15Damage1076.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scholar Versus Black Mage - MP Efficiency
When comparing MP efficiencies, Black Mage can only increase efficiency by increasing the damage output (and to a much, much smaller extent by adding Conserve MP, but I will disregard this argument). Scholar, on the other hand, can increase efficiency primarily through the use of Stratagems, which are innate to the job itself.
Here's an example of this:
Compare a Taru Scholar and Black Mage, both subbing RDM. A BLM will have an innate +2 INT advantage as well as a +22 MAB advantage on Blizzard and Thunder Spells. A SCH will have the benefit of stratagems. Let's consider both these jobs nuking naked and geared Blizzard IVs (506 Base Damage) on a typical mob with 65 INT and no innate MDB. Chance for resist is disregarded. Below is a summary of the Damage to MP Ratios for each possible nuking case at both naked and "perfectly equipped" scenarios...
In this hypothetical situation, we find that a completely naked Scholar using Parsimony nukes (9.32) actually has a significantly higher Damage to MP Ratio than even a perfectly geared Black Mage (7.96).
This illustrates the point that a Scholar can maintain incredible damage to MP ratios even without specifically gearing for damage. While you are still losing efficiency by not gearing for maximum damage, you are still producing a very efficient nukes as a Scholar as long as you use Parsimony.
Based on this very limited analysis, it is very clear that when using Parsimony, a Scholar is far superior to Black Mage in MP efficiency; however, to truly understand the advantage that a Scholar focusing on Dark Arts DD has over Black Mage, we must take into account that there are a limited number of charges produced at a rate of 1 per minute.
In this next part of the analysis, we'll consider this fact and see if Scholar maintains its advantage.
________________________________________________________________________________
Further Analysis of Efficiency
If we assume that every charge a Scholar uses will be devoted to maximizing efficiency through the use of Parsimony and possibly even Ebullience (a fair assumption in most Scholar DD situations), then the amount of MP efficiency the Scholar can produce will be highly dependent on the rate in which he nukes. To give an extreme example, if a Scholar only nukes on average once per minute, he can Parsimony every nuke, giving him incredible efficiency. If on the other hand, the Scholar nukes an average of 4 nukes a minute (roughly the max), he can only Parsimony on average 1 out of every 4 nukes and the efficiency will decrease.
Excluding resists, a Scholar's MP efficiency is primarily determined by his nuking frequency.
Typical nuking frequencies can vary from very infrequent nuking (1 or even less than 1 nuke per minute average) to nearly spamming nukes, such as in certain solos (4 nukes per minute or slightly higher). Below is a graph that tracks how the Scholar's efficiency decreases over time as various nuking frequencies.
Notes:
- Uses "Max Damage" sets for both jobs
- Efficiencies are based on the best combination of charge use possible (e.g. at 1 N/M, best is always Parsimony)
- Assumes that the Scholar initially starts with 4 unused charges
- Only tracks the average Damage to MP Ratio up to 8 minutes of nuking
We see that even in a situation of heavy nuking (up to 4 nukes per minute), Scholar is able to maintain an extremely strong MP efficiency. If we were to actually calculate how low the MP efficiency at 4 nukes per minute would be given infinite time, it would actually just be the average MP efficiencies of 1 Parsimony Thunder IV, 1 normal Thunder IV, and 2 normal Blizzard IVs, which comes to a 8.78 Damage to MP Ratio, still higher than the Black Mage's stable 7.96.
Below is a summary chart showing the average MP efficiencies of Scholar nuking at various rates (in average nukes per minute) after an infinite amount of time. Keep in mind that even the longest fights nowadays probably don't exceed 60 minutes, so if anything, these ratios should be higher for Scholar.
"N/M" = Average Nukes per Minute
Based on these final values, it is clear that even under the most strenuous nuking rates, a Scholar will still compare very favorably to Black Mage with regards to Damage to MP Ratios. Keep in mind that this analysis does not even include both Stormsurge merits (+7 INT to Scholar) and constant Scholar weather bonuses. When shortcuts were taken in this analysis, they were done to the detriment to the Scholar; the efficiencies in this analysis understate the true values for Scholar and the gap is actually wider..
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scholar Efficiency and Gear
If you happened to skip over the analysis portion of this post (which I suspect many of you will), here is the first take-home message of this post:
Scholar is inherently more efficient than Black Mage, and therefore can still produce very adequate damage to MP ratios without specifically adding statistics from gear which maximize damage.
If you take a glimpse back at the charts I provided in the previous analysis section, you can clearly see that even completely naked, a Scholar will actually fair pretty well against a perfectly geared, 5/5 Morrigan's Robe Black Mage. The fact that Scholar is already innately comparable to a geared Black Mage opens up a variety of potential gearing options while nuking. While is it almost always optimal to gear towards the best possible Damage to MP ratio, whether this be by purely stacking damage statistics (INT or MAB), or by stacking resistance statistics (MACC and Elemental Skill), there are rare cases when it may be most prudent to stack other statistics.
With the knowledge of how Scholar and Black Mage compare in both naked and ideally geared scenarios with regards to MP efficiency, I will focus the remaining part of this post on gear selection, specifically for a very underused set that focuses on maximizing the Enmity Down statistic.
________________________________________________________________________________
The Enmity Down Set
In Part IX of Enmity Testing, I establish the enmity caps at -50 to +100 (unfortunately without testing methodology - forgive me I've gotten lazy). For our purposes here, the pertinent number is -50, something you should be well aware of from Part III of the Scholar Guide series. Because you should have gear to reach at or near -50 enmity for Light Arts already, there is actually little to even no gear additions required to outfit this set!
The goal of this set is to maximize damage while capping -50 enmity. We are not considering MACC in this set - it will have similar accuracy to your typical maximum damage set. You'll notice many of these pieces in your Light Arts enmity down cure set; the following gear set was my gear set (Blizzard IV) on Kaeko back in January 2009.
MainAquilo's Staff
+5 INT , Hidden Bonuses
SubStaff Strap-2 EnmityRangedAureole
+8 MACC
HeadMahatma Hat
-6 Enmity , +4 INT
BodyMahatma Hpl.
-4 Enmity , +11 INT
HandsArgute's Bracers
-2 Enmity , +3 INT
LegsMahatma Slops
-4 Enmity , +8 INT
FeetArborist Nails
-5 Enmity
BackErrant Cape
-5 Enmity
WaistPenitent's Rope
-3 Enmity , +5 INT
NeckPrudence Torque
+5 INT
Ear 1Novia Earring
-7 EnmityEar 2Novio Earring
+7 MAB
Ring 1Tamas Ring
-3 Enmity , +5 INT
Ring 2Trooper's Ring-4 Enmity
Final Statistics
INT135MAB27Enmity-49Damage943
This set gives a total of -49 with merits, compared to -15 in the standard nuking set. This can be upgraded to the cap at -50 with either HQ AF2 hands, Mahatma Cuffs, or an HQ Errant Cape. In addition, Aureole is likely unattainable, so you can outfit yourself with White Tathlum (-2 enmity) as well. Lastly, the belt slot may change with the addition of Weather Obis - when making a 'perfect' set for this you may want to exclude belt slot so you can switch into Obis. In general, I would just try to use as much of your Light Arts Curing gear as possible.
But how much damage are we giving up to reach this Enmity Down? Referring back to our maxed damage Scholar nuking set earlier in the post, we find that this set results in roughly a 133 damage decrease, or about a 14% damage decrease, and a gain of -34 Enmity.
So this set is easily obtainable for a typical Scholar, but why use it?
________________________________________________________________________________
Uses of the Enmity Down Set
Remember that as a Scholar, you likely carry all or near all of this gear to begin with for Light Arts, so it's not really 'costing' you anything in terms of inventory slots - it only requires a macro. This is not an essential set for a Dark Arts Scholar, but it will provide you added flexibility at pretty much no "cost" in inventory or gear.
When using MP based attacks, one of these 3 things will eventually cause you to stop attacking:
1) Lack of MP
2) Speed of the Nuke and Recast
3) Enmity Issues
Lack of MP is the typically seen issue on an NM such as Tiamat where you would try to nuke out your MP pool then rest during the attacking phase (when it flies). Basically, you only stop nuking because you lack the mana to do so. Sets which attempt to maximize Damage to MP Ratios - either by purely stacking damage stats (INT and MAB), or resistance stats (MACC and Skill) - do so in order to increase the amount of damage that can be dealt on the same amount of total MP. This is the typical thing most BLMs worry about when gearing for any situation.
Speed is an issue when doing ganks. This is an example of why BLM or generally nuke DD is not preferred in fast fights as the speed is hindered by recast times and casting speeds. When nothing hinders you from nuking, it's the time that it actually takes to nuke that limits your DD. In the particular case of Summoner Blood Pacts, it's the recast time of the Blood Pact: Rage, which ranges from 45 to 60 seconds, that typically limits the Summoner.
The final component, enmity, is what the focus of this section is on...
Typically when nuking, you are focusing on maxing MP efficiency - either by high Damage to MP Ratio or by minimizing resist rates with skill gear. In the situation that (1) a mob is not resistant to nukes and can be attacked with fairly high damage to MP efficiency with innate skill, and (2) the TE cap is not constantly reached by the tank either due to time or fight style, it will be the enmity generation that eventually stops a player from nuking. In this instance, the "most efficient" nukes are the ones that generate the least enmity assuming you can produce modest damage to MP ratios.
Let's think about this for a second just to make sure we're on the same page before continuing. As a DD, your ultimate, simplified job is to deal as much damage as possible without greatly disturbing the overall pace of the fight. In some situations, you have plenty of MP to nuke with, but still don't because you'll take hate if you do - these are the situations I'm talking about.
To illustrate the effectiveness of this set, I'll be providing in game examples in the next section...
.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Non-DD, Provoke Based Tanking
In any situation where the tank is using an "old school" build that relies on provoke based blood tanking, this set will be useful. In situations like this, it is almost impossible to reach CE levels above 1 (basically you cannot produce enough CE to offset your CE loss due to damage taken). Your typical PLD/WAR based tank is a good example of this. While pretty much weeded out of endgame HNM scenarios, this situation does still occur in game sometimes at 'lesser' events.
Because CE is constantly floored at 1, the maximum amount of total enmity (TE) is essentially equal to the amount of volatile enmity (VE), which is unaffected by damage taken. A typical PLD/WAR can easily cap VE within 30 seconds still, especially with the aid of Sentinel. In this hypothetical situation, let's consider 2 Scholars on a level 80 mob (VT), one nuking in the ideal damage set , and the other nuking in the ideal "enmity down" set (both listed previously). Hate is drawn when the Scholar's TE exceeds 10,000, the VE cap which the PLD will likely be at.
The above graph illustrates the amount of damage that can be dealt on a level 80 mob using our various sets (at 0 enmity, -15 enmity, and -49 enmity respectively). We clearly see the amount of damage that can be dealt before taking hate using a typical provoke based, VE-only tank such as PLD/WAR increases drastically with the use of an enmity set.
________________________________________________________________________________
"Standard" Endgame Tanking
The above situation is generally not seen as often nowadays. The "old styles" of tanking have generally been replaced with either PLD/NIN, NIN/DRK, RDM/NIN, or some form of DD-based tanking style when applicable. What all these newer styles have in common is that they produce high amounts of CE relative to the amount lost due to damage taken. Because of this, in most fights today, good setups can easily produce what is collectively known as the "hate cap", which is the state reaching and maintaning 10,000 CE and 10,000 VE (20,000 TE).
One should remember though, that even when using a tank that has reached the "hate cap" it is always possible to at the very least, momentarily steal hate off the tank if you yourself reach the cap. This has to do with the fact that VE is constantly decaying, and therefore you can really only reach the "cap" for the instant you used that action.
Because of this, in order to retain perfect balance in the fight and not take hate, DDs must deal damage at a certain rate that prevents VE gain from reaching 10,000 VE. While CE will eventually become capped at some point in a long fight, VE can be controlled as long as your pace is monitored properly. The ideal way to do this is to look at "Volatile Enmity Generated Per Minute".
At a constant decay rate of 60 VE per second, we know that in 1 minute, a person will decay up to 3,600 VE (assuming he has this much to begin with). If your damage dealing pace generates under 3,600 VE per minute, you can safely say you will never reach VE cap, and therefore never steal hate off a typical higher end tank - regardless of how much damage you've dealt over the course of a fight, no matter how long. So how much damage can one generate in a minute before reaching 3,600 VE at various - enmity levels?
Again, we are using a level 80 mob in our example with the same sets (0 enmity, -15 enmity, and -49 enmity). Remember that if you are nuking higher level targets the amount you can deal to reach this 3,600 VE cutoff is higher (see tables if interested).
Just eyeballing the graph, you'll notice that if you were to nuke in your normal damage set, the amount of damage you can really deal to maintain this pace is actually really low... probably 1 or at the very most 2 nukes per minute. On the other hand, if you were to use your enmity down set, you can produce up to 1700+ damage per minute and maintain pace. So while you are doing about ~140 damage less per nuke in an enmity down set, you can ultimately generate significantly more "safe" damage. This is always assuming you have the MP to do this though.
In practice, I will be the first to admit that this set should not be so widely used when dealing with your true "hate cap" tanks. I would not default to this set for most things; however, it is still very useful. Overall, you know about how much hate you will generate over time and if you're close to yanking it off your tank. If you ever feel you are even close, just use this set instead of max damage (assuming no resist situations of course) - you are sacrificing about ~140 damage for a great deal of safety.
In my last example, I will cite a specific instance where this set shines...
________________________________________________________________________________
A Special Case - Guivre [S]
Guivre (Sandworm version) poses a very unique challenge, especially when low manned. For those not familiar with this fight, Guivre constantly loops around a track, running to particular spots on the map very quickly, then stopping for brief moments. He'll aggro on sight from quite a long ways away. You can engage Guivre in 2 fashions: (1) aggro or perform an action on him, or the much harder (2) successfully attack Guivre from the back side. If you successfully pull off (2), you'll get a standard, probably a bit harder version of the normal Guivre; however, if you do not, you'll get Guivre that's basically pre-raged and has infinite TP gain. It's nasty. Whichever version you happen to get, every 10% HP of damage you deal to Guirve will cause it to run off, so the fight is essentially done in 10% chunks.
If you happen to get the raged version due to a bad pull, your only safe bet is to just deal 10% damage as fast as you can to force it to run off before he kills you. And this is where the Scholar enmity down set comes into play - you have to do as much damage as you can very quickly, before the tank can often gain large amounts of TE. MP is not an issue, but hate certainly it. In this case it is clear you want to focus all attention at minimizing TE gain.
.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Enmity Down Set and Black Mage
At this point I've talked about and hopefully convinced you that the enmity down set can be extremely useful on Scholar in Dark Arts as well as Light Arts. It provides a nice boost in nuking flexibility at basically no cost in inventory slots since the enmity down set is already vital to the Light Arts curing set to begin with. In this last section, I just want to briefly talk about reasons why this set never became popular on Black Mage.
Essentially all uses of the Enmity Down set described in this post for Scholar can be equally applied to Black Mage in terms of enmity efficiency and the amount of damage you can do before reaching certain VE and TE cutoffs. One reason Scholar makes so much better use of this set comes back to the first topic of this post - MP efficiency. Controlling enmity is an important concern, but ultimately, in nearly every situation you can get yourself in in this game as a magical DD job, your first concern is MP efficiency. Without this, nothing else matters.
To illustrate this, here is a quick overview of the "best" Black Mage "Max Enmity Down" set I could come up with...
MainAquilo's Staff
+5 INT , Hidden Bonuses
SubStaff Strap-2 EnmityRangedAureole
+8 MACC
HeadMahatma Hat
-6 Enmity , +4 INT
BodyMahatma Hpl.
-4 Enmity , +11 INT
HandsMahatma Cuffs
-3 Enmity , +6 INT
LegsMahatma Slops
-4 Enmity , +8 INT
FeetArborist Nails
-5 Enmity
BackMahatma Cape
-6 Enmity
WaistPenitent's Rope
-3 Enmity , +5 INT
NeckPrudence Torque
+5 INT
Ear 1Novia Earring
-7 EnmityEar 2Novio Earring
+7 MAB
Ring 1Tamas Ring
-3 Enmity , +5 INT
Ring 2Trooper's Ring-4 Enmity
Final Statistics
INT140MAB49Enmity-50Damage1124
If this set looks familiar, it's because it's actually the exact same set my 2009 Scholar used except for upgrades at the hand and back slots (which are HQs). Even without providing some mathematical analysis it should be obvious that Scholar makes better use of this set. The gear sets are near, if not completely, identical, which removes the gear advantage Black Mage has over Scholar. But the biggest reason is that almost all of these gear slots are not normally carried pieces of equipment for a Black Mage. The "cost" of outfitting a Black Mage with this set in inventory slots is enormous compared to a Scholar.
.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Conclusions
I realize this post is long, even for my standards, so I'll try to provide as best a summary as I can of the take-home points. I highly encourage you read the contents of this post if you want to cite this for any potential arguments though. The math and "assumptions" are absolutely critical for you to accurately use the numbers I have provided. But still I realize it's good to summarize... so here's this post in five easy statements:
(1) A completely naked SCH in Parsimony nukes at a higher efficiency than even a perfectly geared BLM.
(2) Even when considering the fact a SCH doesn't get infinite charges, it still nukes at a much higher efficiency.
(3) The use of a "Max Enmity Down" set for SCH requires little to no "cost" in inventory slots.
(4) This Enmity Down set is potentially very useful in a variety of both mundane and endgame situations.
(5) SCH makes better use of this Enmity Down set than BLM due to inventory differences and its innate abilities.
My intention for this post is not to fuel a Black Mage versus Scholar debate, something I know this Scholar guide series has been cited for on a number of occasions. I would like to continually point out that (1) Black Mage has and always will be my favorite job; (2) I am most competent on Black Mage; (3) all my unique solos were first accomplished on Black Mage; (4) my most difficult solo (LBC) could not be done on a Scholar in its current form. I do not care to fuel this debate in these guides - if I choose to it would be in a separate post.
The undeniable fact is that Scholar provides an unrivaled MP efficiency in Dark Arts, even when spamming nukes at an insane rate of 4 nukes a minute (something you would be hard pressed to pull off even in a solo). This post hopefully illustrates both this and the added fact that its innate efficiency gives it advantages when using non-damage-maxed gear sets like the Enmity Down set described in this post.
My hope for this particular post is just to give you the best and fullest understanding of what characterizes a nuke-based DD and why a Scholar can amply compete with, if not straight up blow BLM out of the water in many nuking situations. To be fair, this post does not talk about maximizing damage in short bursts, which is something Black Mage still excels at; however, I still feel that this post covers the vast majority of nuking situations, where MP efficiency is by far the most important stat.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Pic of the Day
I've finally reached 75 again.
A couple of friends were trying to teach me how to solo Arrapago Remnants for Macha's Coat on RDM and offered to just go on a "test run" with me at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night. We ended up going and this drops on the very first QQTH on 3F...
My lot as one already had the drop and the other didn't have a job that used it...
For those that don't know, I was the first NA to ever complete a Morrigan's Robe (2nd overall) back sometime around Feburary or March of 2007. Macha's Coat also dropped on the very QQTH we ever killed then, too; so I'm basically 2/2 on this drop when wanting it. I was told I'm lucky, but if I were really lucky I wouldn't have been banned and then would have never needed to do this again =P
Drama Thread of the Day
It's a good one.
Wait... Seriously?
We've all seen the stories about being banned for gardening where the Special Task Force supposedly confuses normal players with RMTs. I think the story poses some interesting questions regarding auto-jailers. This one on the other hand...
Basically someone named a new LS "SpecialTaskForce" and got LM-17'd for "impersonating SE personnel." The GM conversation is included in the thread so you can see how absolutely ridiculous this ban is (in addition to generally how much of a dick the GM is). I really don't know what else to say other than I really recommend you read the thread and the screenshot conversations. This is easily the most ridiculous reason to get jailed I've ever heard of. The fact this person may have been perma banned just tops it.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
A Scholar in Dark Arts functions essentially as a Black Mage, requiring standard nuking sets such as maxed damage and high skill. In Part IV, we covered the elemental skill set for Scholar and reached the conclusion that when maxed, functions at similar efficiency to a near maxed Black Mage; however, the gear required to reach this difficult to near-impossible to attain. So while theoretically a maxed Scholar should function at equal or better capacity to a maxed Black Mage in Elemental Skill in the long term, this is actually near-impossible to see in practice due to current gear limitations.
In this post, I hope to move back into normal nuking sets outside the realm of resist rates and do a real in-depth comparison of the nuking efficiencies between Scholar and Black Mage. I had previously done a rather basic analysis of the nuking capabilities between the 2 jobs, and this time hope to provide a little more depth. Previously, I only provided comparisons between Black Mage and a Scholar nuking under various charges, but did not consider the fact that charges are not infinite. This analysis will attempt cover this issue.
Lastly, I hope take the basic concepts behind the Scholar's inherent MP efficiencies and apply it to an underused set of nuking equipment - the maximum Enmity Down set. For various reasons, this set never became popular on Black Mage; however, because of the innate MP efficiency advantage of the Scholar's nukes when paired with stratagems, in addition to gear selection differences between the 2 jobs, this set can be used to great effect on a Scholar.
I highly recommend at least taking a glimpse at the math portion of this post; however, if you would like to skip over this section, begin reading at "Scholar Efficiency and Gear" and focus on colored text and conclusions.
Also, please forgive the randomness of the pics. I just threw together anything that had me on SCH.
Enjoy!
Scholar Guide (Part I)
Scholar Guide (Part II)
Scholar Guide (Part III)
Scholar Guide (Part IV)
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scholar and Black Mage Gear Sets
Before beginning the real analysis, I feel it is important to just note what gear sets I am using in my analysis and calculation of damage values for the first part of this post. These are what I feel are the "ideal sets" for Scholar and Black Mage in typical nuke setting (max damage). Refer back to these gear sets if you are interested in understanding how the values calculated in this post were derived.
Notes:
- The spell Blizzard IV is specifically maxed in all sets.
- I do not include the ACP body in this analysis, so the Scholar sets can actually be slightly better.
- These sets do not actually give you "max damage" since I am using Aureole over Phantom Tathlum
- Day and Weather Bonuses, the gear swaps associated with them, and Stormsurge are not considered
- Various sets may no longer be "the best" as new gear is introduced in future patches. Also no Maat's Cap.
- "Base Stats" are done using BLM/RDM and SCH/RDM with capped standard merits.
- Cream Puff food (+7 INT) is used.
- Mob is assumed to have no MDB and 65 INT (the INT value will distort the final values, but not relative differences)
The things not considered in the analysis, if fully considered, would benefit Scholar more than Black Mage.
________________________________________________________________________________
Black Mage "Max Damage" Standard Nuke Set
Maximizes Black Mage damage when there is no day or weather bonus. Again, the actual best damage set would include Phantom Tathlum and not the Aureole, but assuming you had the Aureole, you would likely make this trade-off anyways.
EDIT: Could / should have used Sorcerer's Ring but it's probably a bit late to change out graphs. The values for Black Mage will be a bit understated due to this; however, if we consider the fact that I am not including wearther bonus, +7 INT from stormsurge, or ACP body, I think this analysis is still weighed to favor BLM.
MainAquilo's Staff+5 INT , Hidden Bonuses
SubBugard Strap +1+1 INT
RangedAureole
+8 MACC
HeadMorrigan's Coronal
+4 INT , +5 MACC
BodyMorrigan's Robe
+5 MAB , +8 INT
HandsMorrigan's Cuffs
+5 MAB , +5 MACC
LegsMorrigan's Slops
+10 INT , -2 Enmity
FeetMorrigan's Pigaches
+3 INT , SET: +5 MAB
BackIxion Cape
+5 INT
WaistSorcerer's Belt
+6 INT
NeckPrudence Torque
+5 INT
Ear 1Novio Earring
+7 MAB
Ear 2Moldavite Earring
+5 MAB
Ring 1Tamas Ring
+5 INT , -3 Enmity
Ring 2Snow Ring
+ 5 INT
Final Statistics
INT148MAB69Enmity-9Damage1306
________________________________________________________________________________
Scholar "Max Damage" Standard Nuke Set
Maximizes Scholar damage when there is no day or weather bonus. This set below has a number of "flaws" such as lack of ACP body as well as the fact it ignores weather bonuses, which is a staple trait of the Scholar. It also will not include Stormsurge. I exclude these because the act of casting Storms on yourself would complicate the MP efficiency analysis. Just assume that whatever the results are here, it should actually favor Scholar more in practice.
MainAquilo's Staff+5 INT , Hidden Bonuses
SubBugard Strap +1+1 INT
RangedAureole
+8 MACC
HeadRee's Headgear
+2 MAB , +2 INT , +2 MACC
BodyMahatma Hpl.
+11 INT , -4 Enmity
HandsVicious Mufflers
+5 MAB
LegsMahatma Slops
+8 INT , -4 Enmity
FeetYigit Crackows
+2 MAB , +3 INT
BackGleeman's Cape
+5 INT
WaistArgute's Belt
+5 INT , +2 MACC
NeckPrudence Torque
+5 INT
Ear 1Novio Earring
+7 MAB
Ear 2Moldavite Earring
+5 MAB
Ring 1Tamas Ring
+5 INT , -3 Enmity
Ring 2Snow Ring
+ 5 INT
Final Statistics
INT144MAB41Enmity-15Damage1076.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scholar Versus Black Mage - MP Efficiency
When comparing MP efficiencies, Black Mage can only increase efficiency by increasing the damage output (and to a much, much smaller extent by adding Conserve MP, but I will disregard this argument). Scholar, on the other hand, can increase efficiency primarily through the use of Stratagems, which are innate to the job itself.
Here's an example of this:
Compare a Taru Scholar and Black Mage, both subbing RDM. A BLM will have an innate +2 INT advantage as well as a +22 MAB advantage on Blizzard and Thunder Spells. A SCH will have the benefit of stratagems. Let's consider both these jobs nuking naked and geared Blizzard IVs (506 Base Damage) on a typical mob with 65 INT and no innate MDB. Chance for resist is disregarded. Below is a summary of the Damage to MP Ratios for each possible nuking case at both naked and "perfectly equipped" scenarios...
In this hypothetical situation, we find that a completely naked Scholar using Parsimony nukes (9.32) actually has a significantly higher Damage to MP Ratio than even a perfectly geared Black Mage (7.96).
This illustrates the point that a Scholar can maintain incredible damage to MP ratios even without specifically gearing for damage. While you are still losing efficiency by not gearing for maximum damage, you are still producing a very efficient nukes as a Scholar as long as you use Parsimony.
Based on this very limited analysis, it is very clear that when using Parsimony, a Scholar is far superior to Black Mage in MP efficiency; however, to truly understand the advantage that a Scholar focusing on Dark Arts DD has over Black Mage, we must take into account that there are a limited number of charges produced at a rate of 1 per minute.
In this next part of the analysis, we'll consider this fact and see if Scholar maintains its advantage.
________________________________________________________________________________
Further Analysis of Efficiency
If we assume that every charge a Scholar uses will be devoted to maximizing efficiency through the use of Parsimony and possibly even Ebullience (a fair assumption in most Scholar DD situations), then the amount of MP efficiency the Scholar can produce will be highly dependent on the rate in which he nukes. To give an extreme example, if a Scholar only nukes on average once per minute, he can Parsimony every nuke, giving him incredible efficiency. If on the other hand, the Scholar nukes an average of 4 nukes a minute (roughly the max), he can only Parsimony on average 1 out of every 4 nukes and the efficiency will decrease.
Excluding resists, a Scholar's MP efficiency is primarily determined by his nuking frequency.
Typical nuking frequencies can vary from very infrequent nuking (1 or even less than 1 nuke per minute average) to nearly spamming nukes, such as in certain solos (4 nukes per minute or slightly higher). Below is a graph that tracks how the Scholar's efficiency decreases over time as various nuking frequencies.
Notes:
- Uses "Max Damage" sets for both jobs
- Efficiencies are based on the best combination of charge use possible (e.g. at 1 N/M, best is always Parsimony)
- Assumes that the Scholar initially starts with 4 unused charges
- Only tracks the average Damage to MP Ratio up to 8 minutes of nuking
We see that even in a situation of heavy nuking (up to 4 nukes per minute), Scholar is able to maintain an extremely strong MP efficiency. If we were to actually calculate how low the MP efficiency at 4 nukes per minute would be given infinite time, it would actually just be the average MP efficiencies of 1 Parsimony Thunder IV, 1 normal Thunder IV, and 2 normal Blizzard IVs, which comes to a 8.78 Damage to MP Ratio, still higher than the Black Mage's stable 7.96.
Below is a summary chart showing the average MP efficiencies of Scholar nuking at various rates (in average nukes per minute) after an infinite amount of time. Keep in mind that even the longest fights nowadays probably don't exceed 60 minutes, so if anything, these ratios should be higher for Scholar.
"N/M" = Average Nukes per Minute
Based on these final values, it is clear that even under the most strenuous nuking rates, a Scholar will still compare very favorably to Black Mage with regards to Damage to MP Ratios. Keep in mind that this analysis does not even include both Stormsurge merits (+7 INT to Scholar) and constant Scholar weather bonuses. When shortcuts were taken in this analysis, they were done to the detriment to the Scholar; the efficiencies in this analysis understate the true values for Scholar and the gap is actually wider..
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scholar Efficiency and Gear
If you happened to skip over the analysis portion of this post (which I suspect many of you will), here is the first take-home message of this post:
Scholar is inherently more efficient than Black Mage, and therefore can still produce very adequate damage to MP ratios without specifically adding statistics from gear which maximize damage.
If you take a glimpse back at the charts I provided in the previous analysis section, you can clearly see that even completely naked, a Scholar will actually fair pretty well against a perfectly geared, 5/5 Morrigan's Robe Black Mage. The fact that Scholar is already innately comparable to a geared Black Mage opens up a variety of potential gearing options while nuking. While is it almost always optimal to gear towards the best possible Damage to MP ratio, whether this be by purely stacking damage statistics (INT or MAB), or by stacking resistance statistics (MACC and Elemental Skill), there are rare cases when it may be most prudent to stack other statistics.
With the knowledge of how Scholar and Black Mage compare in both naked and ideally geared scenarios with regards to MP efficiency, I will focus the remaining part of this post on gear selection, specifically for a very underused set that focuses on maximizing the Enmity Down statistic.
________________________________________________________________________________
The Enmity Down Set
In Part IX of Enmity Testing, I establish the enmity caps at -50 to +100 (unfortunately without testing methodology - forgive me I've gotten lazy). For our purposes here, the pertinent number is -50, something you should be well aware of from Part III of the Scholar Guide series. Because you should have gear to reach at or near -50 enmity for Light Arts already, there is actually little to even no gear additions required to outfit this set!
The goal of this set is to maximize damage while capping -50 enmity. We are not considering MACC in this set - it will have similar accuracy to your typical maximum damage set. You'll notice many of these pieces in your Light Arts enmity down cure set; the following gear set was my gear set (Blizzard IV) on Kaeko back in January 2009.
MainAquilo's Staff
+5 INT , Hidden Bonuses
SubStaff Strap-2 EnmityRangedAureole
+8 MACC
HeadMahatma Hat
-6 Enmity , +4 INT
BodyMahatma Hpl.
-4 Enmity , +11 INT
HandsArgute's Bracers
-2 Enmity , +3 INT
LegsMahatma Slops
-4 Enmity , +8 INT
FeetArborist Nails
-5 Enmity
BackErrant Cape
-5 Enmity
WaistPenitent's Rope
-3 Enmity , +5 INT
NeckPrudence Torque
+5 INT
Ear 1Novia Earring
-7 EnmityEar 2Novio Earring
+7 MAB
Ring 1Tamas Ring
-3 Enmity , +5 INT
Ring 2Trooper's Ring-4 Enmity
Final Statistics
INT135MAB27Enmity-49Damage943
This set gives a total of -49 with merits, compared to -15 in the standard nuking set. This can be upgraded to the cap at -50 with either HQ AF2 hands, Mahatma Cuffs, or an HQ Errant Cape. In addition, Aureole is likely unattainable, so you can outfit yourself with White Tathlum (-2 enmity) as well. Lastly, the belt slot may change with the addition of Weather Obis - when making a 'perfect' set for this you may want to exclude belt slot so you can switch into Obis. In general, I would just try to use as much of your Light Arts Curing gear as possible.
But how much damage are we giving up to reach this Enmity Down? Referring back to our maxed damage Scholar nuking set earlier in the post, we find that this set results in roughly a 133 damage decrease, or about a 14% damage decrease, and a gain of -34 Enmity.
So this set is easily obtainable for a typical Scholar, but why use it?
________________________________________________________________________________
Uses of the Enmity Down Set
Remember that as a Scholar, you likely carry all or near all of this gear to begin with for Light Arts, so it's not really 'costing' you anything in terms of inventory slots - it only requires a macro. This is not an essential set for a Dark Arts Scholar, but it will provide you added flexibility at pretty much no "cost" in inventory or gear.
When using MP based attacks, one of these 3 things will eventually cause you to stop attacking:
1) Lack of MP
2) Speed of the Nuke and Recast
3) Enmity Issues
Lack of MP is the typically seen issue on an NM such as Tiamat where you would try to nuke out your MP pool then rest during the attacking phase (when it flies). Basically, you only stop nuking because you lack the mana to do so. Sets which attempt to maximize Damage to MP Ratios - either by purely stacking damage stats (INT and MAB), or resistance stats (MACC and Skill) - do so in order to increase the amount of damage that can be dealt on the same amount of total MP. This is the typical thing most BLMs worry about when gearing for any situation.
Speed is an issue when doing ganks. This is an example of why BLM or generally nuke DD is not preferred in fast fights as the speed is hindered by recast times and casting speeds. When nothing hinders you from nuking, it's the time that it actually takes to nuke that limits your DD. In the particular case of Summoner Blood Pacts, it's the recast time of the Blood Pact: Rage, which ranges from 45 to 60 seconds, that typically limits the Summoner.
The final component, enmity, is what the focus of this section is on...
Typically when nuking, you are focusing on maxing MP efficiency - either by high Damage to MP Ratio or by minimizing resist rates with skill gear. In the situation that (1) a mob is not resistant to nukes and can be attacked with fairly high damage to MP efficiency with innate skill, and (2) the TE cap is not constantly reached by the tank either due to time or fight style, it will be the enmity generation that eventually stops a player from nuking. In this instance, the "most efficient" nukes are the ones that generate the least enmity assuming you can produce modest damage to MP ratios.
Let's think about this for a second just to make sure we're on the same page before continuing. As a DD, your ultimate, simplified job is to deal as much damage as possible without greatly disturbing the overall pace of the fight. In some situations, you have plenty of MP to nuke with, but still don't because you'll take hate if you do - these are the situations I'm talking about.
To illustrate the effectiveness of this set, I'll be providing in game examples in the next section...
.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Non-DD, Provoke Based Tanking
In any situation where the tank is using an "old school" build that relies on provoke based blood tanking, this set will be useful. In situations like this, it is almost impossible to reach CE levels above 1 (basically you cannot produce enough CE to offset your CE loss due to damage taken). Your typical PLD/WAR based tank is a good example of this. While pretty much weeded out of endgame HNM scenarios, this situation does still occur in game sometimes at 'lesser' events.
Because CE is constantly floored at 1, the maximum amount of total enmity (TE) is essentially equal to the amount of volatile enmity (VE), which is unaffected by damage taken. A typical PLD/WAR can easily cap VE within 30 seconds still, especially with the aid of Sentinel. In this hypothetical situation, let's consider 2 Scholars on a level 80 mob (VT), one nuking in the ideal damage set , and the other nuking in the ideal "enmity down" set (both listed previously). Hate is drawn when the Scholar's TE exceeds 10,000, the VE cap which the PLD will likely be at.
The above graph illustrates the amount of damage that can be dealt on a level 80 mob using our various sets (at 0 enmity, -15 enmity, and -49 enmity respectively). We clearly see the amount of damage that can be dealt before taking hate using a typical provoke based, VE-only tank such as PLD/WAR increases drastically with the use of an enmity set.
________________________________________________________________________________
"Standard" Endgame Tanking
The above situation is generally not seen as often nowadays. The "old styles" of tanking have generally been replaced with either PLD/NIN, NIN/DRK, RDM/NIN, or some form of DD-based tanking style when applicable. What all these newer styles have in common is that they produce high amounts of CE relative to the amount lost due to damage taken. Because of this, in most fights today, good setups can easily produce what is collectively known as the "hate cap", which is the state reaching and maintaning 10,000 CE and 10,000 VE (20,000 TE).
One should remember though, that even when using a tank that has reached the "hate cap" it is always possible to at the very least, momentarily steal hate off the tank if you yourself reach the cap. This has to do with the fact that VE is constantly decaying, and therefore you can really only reach the "cap" for the instant you used that action.
Because of this, in order to retain perfect balance in the fight and not take hate, DDs must deal damage at a certain rate that prevents VE gain from reaching 10,000 VE. While CE will eventually become capped at some point in a long fight, VE can be controlled as long as your pace is monitored properly. The ideal way to do this is to look at "Volatile Enmity Generated Per Minute".
At a constant decay rate of 60 VE per second, we know that in 1 minute, a person will decay up to 3,600 VE (assuming he has this much to begin with). If your damage dealing pace generates under 3,600 VE per minute, you can safely say you will never reach VE cap, and therefore never steal hate off a typical higher end tank - regardless of how much damage you've dealt over the course of a fight, no matter how long. So how much damage can one generate in a minute before reaching 3,600 VE at various - enmity levels?
Again, we are using a level 80 mob in our example with the same sets (0 enmity, -15 enmity, and -49 enmity). Remember that if you are nuking higher level targets the amount you can deal to reach this 3,600 VE cutoff is higher (see tables if interested).
Just eyeballing the graph, you'll notice that if you were to nuke in your normal damage set, the amount of damage you can really deal to maintain this pace is actually really low... probably 1 or at the very most 2 nukes per minute. On the other hand, if you were to use your enmity down set, you can produce up to 1700+ damage per minute and maintain pace. So while you are doing about ~140 damage less per nuke in an enmity down set, you can ultimately generate significantly more "safe" damage. This is always assuming you have the MP to do this though.
In practice, I will be the first to admit that this set should not be so widely used when dealing with your true "hate cap" tanks. I would not default to this set for most things; however, it is still very useful. Overall, you know about how much hate you will generate over time and if you're close to yanking it off your tank. If you ever feel you are even close, just use this set instead of max damage (assuming no resist situations of course) - you are sacrificing about ~140 damage for a great deal of safety.
In my last example, I will cite a specific instance where this set shines...
________________________________________________________________________________
A Special Case - Guivre [S]
Guivre (Sandworm version) poses a very unique challenge, especially when low manned. For those not familiar with this fight, Guivre constantly loops around a track, running to particular spots on the map very quickly, then stopping for brief moments. He'll aggro on sight from quite a long ways away. You can engage Guivre in 2 fashions: (1) aggro or perform an action on him, or the much harder (2) successfully attack Guivre from the back side. If you successfully pull off (2), you'll get a standard, probably a bit harder version of the normal Guivre; however, if you do not, you'll get Guivre that's basically pre-raged and has infinite TP gain. It's nasty. Whichever version you happen to get, every 10% HP of damage you deal to Guirve will cause it to run off, so the fight is essentially done in 10% chunks.
If you happen to get the raged version due to a bad pull, your only safe bet is to just deal 10% damage as fast as you can to force it to run off before he kills you. And this is where the Scholar enmity down set comes into play - you have to do as much damage as you can very quickly, before the tank can often gain large amounts of TE. MP is not an issue, but hate certainly it. In this case it is clear you want to focus all attention at minimizing TE gain.
.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Enmity Down Set and Black Mage
At this point I've talked about and hopefully convinced you that the enmity down set can be extremely useful on Scholar in Dark Arts as well as Light Arts. It provides a nice boost in nuking flexibility at basically no cost in inventory slots since the enmity down set is already vital to the Light Arts curing set to begin with. In this last section, I just want to briefly talk about reasons why this set never became popular on Black Mage.
Essentially all uses of the Enmity Down set described in this post for Scholar can be equally applied to Black Mage in terms of enmity efficiency and the amount of damage you can do before reaching certain VE and TE cutoffs. One reason Scholar makes so much better use of this set comes back to the first topic of this post - MP efficiency. Controlling enmity is an important concern, but ultimately, in nearly every situation you can get yourself in in this game as a magical DD job, your first concern is MP efficiency. Without this, nothing else matters.
To illustrate this, here is a quick overview of the "best" Black Mage "Max Enmity Down" set I could come up with...
MainAquilo's Staff
+5 INT , Hidden Bonuses
SubStaff Strap-2 EnmityRangedAureole
+8 MACC
HeadMahatma Hat
-6 Enmity , +4 INT
BodyMahatma Hpl.
-4 Enmity , +11 INT
HandsMahatma Cuffs
-3 Enmity , +6 INT
LegsMahatma Slops
-4 Enmity , +8 INT
FeetArborist Nails
-5 Enmity
BackMahatma Cape
-6 Enmity
WaistPenitent's Rope
-3 Enmity , +5 INT
NeckPrudence Torque
+5 INT
Ear 1Novia Earring
-7 EnmityEar 2Novio Earring
+7 MAB
Ring 1Tamas Ring
-3 Enmity , +5 INT
Ring 2Trooper's Ring-4 Enmity
Final Statistics
INT140MAB49Enmity-50Damage1124
If this set looks familiar, it's because it's actually the exact same set my 2009 Scholar used except for upgrades at the hand and back slots (which are HQs). Even without providing some mathematical analysis it should be obvious that Scholar makes better use of this set. The gear sets are near, if not completely, identical, which removes the gear advantage Black Mage has over Scholar. But the biggest reason is that almost all of these gear slots are not normally carried pieces of equipment for a Black Mage. The "cost" of outfitting a Black Mage with this set in inventory slots is enormous compared to a Scholar.
.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Conclusions
I realize this post is long, even for my standards, so I'll try to provide as best a summary as I can of the take-home points. I highly encourage you read the contents of this post if you want to cite this for any potential arguments though. The math and "assumptions" are absolutely critical for you to accurately use the numbers I have provided. But still I realize it's good to summarize... so here's this post in five easy statements:
(1) A completely naked SCH in Parsimony nukes at a higher efficiency than even a perfectly geared BLM.
(2) Even when considering the fact a SCH doesn't get infinite charges, it still nukes at a much higher efficiency.
(3) The use of a "Max Enmity Down" set for SCH requires little to no "cost" in inventory slots.
(4) This Enmity Down set is potentially very useful in a variety of both mundane and endgame situations.
(5) SCH makes better use of this Enmity Down set than BLM due to inventory differences and its innate abilities.
My intention for this post is not to fuel a Black Mage versus Scholar debate, something I know this Scholar guide series has been cited for on a number of occasions. I would like to continually point out that (1) Black Mage has and always will be my favorite job; (2) I am most competent on Black Mage; (3) all my unique solos were first accomplished on Black Mage; (4) my most difficult solo (LBC) could not be done on a Scholar in its current form. I do not care to fuel this debate in these guides - if I choose to it would be in a separate post.
The undeniable fact is that Scholar provides an unrivaled MP efficiency in Dark Arts, even when spamming nukes at an insane rate of 4 nukes a minute (something you would be hard pressed to pull off even in a solo). This post hopefully illustrates both this and the added fact that its innate efficiency gives it advantages when using non-damage-maxed gear sets like the Enmity Down set described in this post.
My hope for this particular post is just to give you the best and fullest understanding of what characterizes a nuke-based DD and why a Scholar can amply compete with, if not straight up blow BLM out of the water in many nuking situations. To be fair, this post does not talk about maximizing damage in short bursts, which is something Black Mage still excels at; however, I still feel that this post covers the vast majority of nuking situations, where MP efficiency is by far the most important stat.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Pic of the Day
I've finally reached 75 again.
A couple of friends were trying to teach me how to solo Arrapago Remnants for Macha's Coat on RDM and offered to just go on a "test run" with me at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night. We ended up going and this drops on the very first QQTH on 3F...
My lot as one already had the drop and the other didn't have a job that used it...
For those that don't know, I was the first NA to ever complete a Morrigan's Robe (2nd overall) back sometime around Feburary or March of 2007. Macha's Coat also dropped on the very QQTH we ever killed then, too; so I'm basically 2/2 on this drop when wanting it. I was told I'm lucky, but if I were really lucky I wouldn't have been banned and then would have never needed to do this again =P
Drama Thread of the Day
It's a good one.
Wait... Seriously?
We've all seen the stories about being banned for gardening where the Special Task Force supposedly confuses normal players with RMTs. I think the story poses some interesting questions regarding auto-jailers. This one on the other hand...
Basically someone named a new LS "SpecialTaskForce" and got LM-17'd for "impersonating SE personnel." The GM conversation is included in the thread so you can see how absolutely ridiculous this ban is (in addition to generally how much of a dick the GM is). I really don't know what else to say other than I really recommend you read the thread and the screenshot conversations. This is easily the most ridiculous reason to get jailed I've ever heard of. The fact this person may have been perma banned just tops it.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________