A Scholar's Education (Guide)

I'm wondering if there are pieces in a kaustra burst set that might be worth swapping for dark magic skill.

Also master levels will make a significant difference for duration.

The closest trade off I could see is swapping legs for Relic+3.

The difference is:
R30 Agwu leads by
7 Int, 9 MAB, 16 Macc, 20 Mdmg, and 2 MBB1 for 1-2 ticks extra of kaustra.

With no one consistently capping kaustra beyond the first, idk that the extra 1-2 ticks would be worth the other Stat loss. And that's the most favorable piece to swap in my opinion.

If you are master level 50, I calculate exactly 46 tics (506 skill with no other skill bonuses from gear)

In which case, you only get 1 more tic. So as long as you don't lose 2173 damage from a maxed 99999 burst, then you profit so probably not worthwhile.

I agree the swap just isn't worth it.
Don't forget however that mDMG doesn't exist for Kaustra.

If you want to eek out a bit more dmg and are even willing to sacrifice nyame:

	Nyame mail(rc25)	Agwu's robe(r30)
INT:	47	47
MAB:	60	60
MB1:	7	10
MB2:	5	0
mAcc:	40	55

I've heard rumours that the Relic head and AF feet don't stack when used in conjunction with capped 80% Fast Cast (so only wear 1 piece). I currently use both. Anyone heard/tested this?

I believe the effect caps at 25%, of which you get 10% from arts. So either-or will get you most of the way there, and running both complicates making an 80% fc set.

Previous discussion

Total anecdotal evidence here, but I used to use only one piece until I noticed the SCH I did Sortie with was seemingly casting faster than me. I asked him about it and he used both. I swapped to both and after that we seemed to cast the same speed. To this day I cast faster than most SCHs that I do Sortie with so I assume it's because of that difference.

P.S. Speaking of Sortie, I tried SCH/SMN the other day and it worked pretty well. You need to be ML30+ for Avatar's Favor to do this. Lost access to Haste so the GEO helped with Haste duty, but it meant I could have Shiva follow me around giving the whole back line MAB+15 which is like half of a good Wizard's Roll. Just make sure your fast cast set isn't depending on the FC from /RDM to cap. Also if you don't have the Magian staves for perp cost then the best perp down setup I could find was Avatar Belt, Evans Earring, and Assiduity Pants +1 giving -7 perp. You can also get -3 from Artsieq Boots in a pinch.

I think sch/smn is rather interesting. I was toying w/ the idea recently for avatar's favor.

However the 15 MAB from avatar's blessing on shiva might be a wash since /rdm give mab II trait. which is 24 MAB so your sacrifice some individual bonus for party bonus.

but... /smn has haste-ga from garuda instead of just haste from /rdm.. so I think you overlooked this benefit

I think the highest perp cost you will get from /smn is 9 so thats not a bad perp set.

I DO like the idea of having a pet anytime you have a tricky pull to make.

edit: I see you discussed alot of this on the smn thread. thank you for the feedback. I missed that thread until after I saw this one.

Honestly pets are so slow and meandering that I only did this once, when we were doing the basement midbosses for Aminon I used it to try to pull Ixion out of a giant cluster of elementals. Literally just as Shiva got close though, the COR arrived and blasted him in the face to pull him back. So it didn't end up saving any time.

I'm sure there could be times when a midboss is in a bad spot in the 4-square that it could be useful though. Especially Botulus since losing Invisible doesn't matter there. It just hasn't happened to us yet.

Botulusm can be pulled by Cor from max distance, then you can even use bolters and apply sneak while running away. I did it many times when it was in first room and I wanted him on the other side of naakuls, so I wouldn't be cut from boss after 5 min.

Yeah honestly I think most of SMN's abilities are just too slow and clunky to be very useful in Sortie. Sortie is too fast-paced to wait for an avatar to do stuff.

Reminds me of trying to utilize SMN in the Nyzul days. I'd try desperately to pop a Ward as soon as we port up to a new floor before everyone runs off, and inevitably still miss people.

Ultimately, I think for Sortie /SMN is just about getting a little favor flavor. Anything else will just slow you down more than it helps.

Even if you do pull an add with a few links, you can easily Breakga them before you run off. Casting Breakga is a lot faster than fussing with an avatar.

Hey guys. I'm looking to optimize my Scholar sets for Ghadjot and Dhartok to possibly solo them for Galli. I won't always be able to get a GEO to join me. Also, I have not yet got any +3 empyreans or augmented Odyssey gear, but do have the +2 set, Agwu, and other stuff.

I can make use of the Damage Calculator program, so if anyone is using this, what information would you put in to optimize these targets? For example, how much magic evasion would I put in? And finally, is Tropical Crepe still the best option, or is there something better? Also, what trust combination would you use? Thanks.

Not sure what you mean regarding magic evasion. But Trusts I use are usually Star Sibyl, Amchu, Yoran, Koru, Cherukiki.


Nuke set you should be okayish using un-augmented Agwus, Almaric hands (til you augment agwus). Empy+2 boots are super good, since you can keep storms up fulltime to take full advantage of the damage bonus.

If you have access to enter Ongo, SCH can easily solo RP ongo by just using Helix cheese.

Ghatjot should not be much of an issue, but it might take a few tries to take down Dhartok. My advice for Dhartok is to keep helix on it incase you take too long and the taint ends up killing you.

There are a few youtube videos of SCH soloing Dhartok, I would check them out.

Good luck!

I feel like I've asked this before somewhere but I can't find the answer.

Do storm spells work defensively? For example, if I am getting hit with fire elemental damage and I cast Rainstorm II on my character, will there be a chance for the Rainstorm to decrease fire damage against me? If so, do the elemental obis guarantee this? What about natural weather that is in the zone?

No.

The natural (day)/weather can proc in your favor... I believe anyway, not for certain

Weather page on bg wiki has the relevant information about weather, how it can proc etc.

I would say the reason it can't proc defensively for you is because there's no such thing as a defensive proc, only a negative proc on the offensive calculation.

The scenario where there is dark weather in the zone and you have water weather on yourself, a mob's fire spell won't be reduced by your fire weather because they're in dark weather, not fire.

well for it to work in your favor you need a mob that steals your buffs AND casts elemental magic.

So you need to cast rainstorm on yourself, have the mob steal it, then the mob casts fire at you!



.... I don't know any mob that could fit that situation... but maybe it exists?

Give earth weather to Gartell, maybe it will proc on his thunder TP moves!

So I ran out to do some testing in PVP.

1: You can force a 'defensive' proc, so to speak, in the sense that wearing an Obi on the target of the spell can force the opposing element day/weather proc, reducing the damage taken.

However,

2: The weather effect in question must be active on the caster. So storm spells cannot be used defensively, because you'd have to be able to cast them on the mob in order to have them work. It's actually pretty strange that the target wearing an obi can force the proc on the caster's cast to begin with.

This might be a pretty strange question but I'm wondering on the range details of Caper Emissarius.
We know it's a JA that gathers all the enmity from party members and forces it unto a target of your choices.
Surely there must be some range limitations though.

Like the target you want to pour enmity into must be I assume ~18 yalms from the SCH since that's typical JA range.

What about the other party members? Do they have to be within a certain range from the SCH? Within a certain range from the target of Emissarius?
What about the monster(s)? What happens if these monsters are beyond a certain range from PT members who have enmity on them? From the SCH using the JA? From the Target of the JA?


I'd love to know the exact details if anybody cares to share, thanks!

Afaik everyone involved needs to be in 20 yalms range from the mob. This also applies to Pacifying Ruby (Carbuncle needs to be under 20 yalms, not sure if Summoner himself too).

Disclaimer: it could be 25yalms, I would aim for under 20 for safety.

If it's "just" that then probably it's 25, since Martel found out some time ago that actions performed beyond that range from the enemy generate 0 enmity on that target.
So I guess it's safe to assume the same range applies to Caper Emissarius hmmm
Good point Simon.

Any thoughts on if this applies to magical autoattacks, or a place that it could be tried out?

I'm thinking about it for Bumba since it's double dark weather naturally, and I can't come up with other mob choices that are any easier to test on.

Provided the auto-attack is elemental, then this almost certainly applies. It's just... not all that useful. Since the natural weather/day would have to just so happen to line up with the opposing element for the attack in order to reduce the damage.

In Bumba's case.. I'm honestly not even sure what element his magical type auto-attacks are. For the original Sajj'aka type model I'd have guessed light, but Bumba seems like the dark version so this very well could have changed to dark. Would need to nail that down first.

Another option for testing would be any Balamor type mob. All magical melee(Pretty sure even the knockback kick is magic. Don't think I've ever parried it on run.) And there's a high chance that all of these are dark element. There's quite a few Balamor iterations from Skirmish, to vagary, to sortie even.

How are you going to give Bumba weather though? AFAIK he doesn't take your buffs, only dispels them.

Unless you mean his auto-attacks are light-based, in which case you could proc the natural weather.

That was my hope (light-elemental autos) given all the WS are light elemental based.

Quick test tells me light element autos are not always the case

vs Bumba v20
No resist element+ in gear, 5/5 nyame to prevent any absorbs

3/3 Tenebrae for 222 light resist, no Obi: Liement absorbed the first hit.
After that, Bumba autos did either 29 or 22 (6 samples).

First dust cloud/element change 45s in, still no Obi: autos changed to 61 or 54 (11 samples)
Obi on, all autos 54 (12 samples). No further dust clouds until Zisurru popped and ended my testing

I'm reading this as he starts in light-autoattacks and random weather procs reduced by 25%, then changed element and happened to be weak to the current day (iceday) so obi reduced damage by 10%.

Using the obi to block magic autoattacks works, but if the auto attacks change to a random element it's not useful here.

v25 Bumba occasionally did cast absorb, we thought at first we could dark shot(from the cor) to get the boost on kaustra, but it didnt work.

Bringing this up to get some insight on the extent to which "Grimoire: Spellcasting time -xx%" effects from relic head and artifact feet allow casting time reduction to exceed 80%. I've seen some claims of these two pieces allowing the casting time reduction to reach 90% outside of Alacrity / Celerity, but I'm not seeing that actually when looking into what people have observed and posted (haven't looked at Japanese sources yet). Please let me know if there is evidence of 90% reduction

(Please note that previously it was observed that there appears to be a maximum Grimoire effect of 25% recast time reduction (separate from Fast Cast effect) as this will come up later in regard to casting time reduction.)

For Teleport/Recall casting time discussed above, a predicted casting time with FC+80 and Light Arts effect might be 20(1-.8)(1-.1) = 3.6s, and the above corresponding results (lower bound 3.6s) seems consistent with this predicted time.

A predicted casting time under Celerity FC+80 / Light Arts / Celerity (max gifts) would be 20(1-.8)(1-.1-.6) = 1.2s, and the above observed results (1.27s to 1.3s) are well under 2 seconds, so it seems that if there is a maximum reduction under Celerity, it's greater than 90% but less than 94%.


Going back to casting time bar % results for Teleport-Yhoat to get a sense of what casting time reductions are possible without Celerity, it would seem for the last result (FC+80 and arts + 12 to 25 Grimoire: spellcasting time reduction), the corresponding predicted value for which Teleport-Yhoat gets the hands up, given a Grimoire effect cap of 25% (which was shown previously for recast time in the year 2014 but not for casting time AFAIK) is 73(1-.8)(1-.25) = 10.95% of the bar.

This is "close" to to the observed 11-12%.

If no cap existed on the Grimoire effect, one might "expect" to see sub-10% results with the hands up, such as 73(1-.8)(1-.1-.13-.12) = 9.49%, but this is not the case, so overall it seems it isn't possible to get 90% casting time reduction without using Celerity / Alacrity.

I included a comparison of observed bar % results vs calculated results with and without the Grimoire cap accounted for. Please note that I'm not sure how to explain the gap between Fast Cast +50 + Light Arts observed vs calculated.