Scholar endgame, and how much does race matter?Follow

1) Unfortunately Scholar doesn't really offer too much as a main job in the higher levels, primarily due to the importance of White Mage and Black Mage in Abyssea in comparison to Scholar. As far as being just a single target magic damage dealer, Scholar excels fairly well, but it lacks the curing capacity that White Mage has (it's limited to Cure IV) and it lacks a a good number of magic spells required for "grellow" proc'ing a mob for seals/+2 items (It has none of the Light based spells natively, three of the four Dark based Black Magic spells, and only two of the four Black Magic elemental spells per element.) The unique abilities they have for the most part pale in comparison to what a White Mage or Black Mage can do.

2) As of right now, race basically has no bearing on the success of a job, especially given the boosts one can obtain in Abyssea through Atmas and Cruor buffs.

3) As I laid out in the first answer, the primary reason right now that Scholar isn't all that popular is that it really doesn't very much in comparison to White Mage or Black Mage. It can't cure as effectively as a Whm can due to being limited to Cure IV, doesn't have the nuking power that Blm has, and lacks too many grellow proc'ing spells to really be useful in that regard either.

There are some jobs that excel at weakness procs where others fall short (for example, Warrior is capable of covering a great number of weaponskills capable of triggering Blue !!, whereas Samurai has far fewer). For normal experience points parties in Abyssea this is for the most part irrelevant since no one's going to be fighting NMs anyway, but if you're in a low-man group for Abyssea NMs (which is the norm nowadays in place of full alliances), you'll be wanting each member to be able to contribute quite a bit, and in cases like that having a Whm and a Blm is going to far, far more than a Whm and a Sch or a Blm and a Sch.

Red Mage has unfortunately come to a similar position as Sch, in that it really doesn't offer enough unique abilities to justify it being in an NM hunting group over a Black Mage or White Mage. For the most part they lack the same spells for proc'ing grellow that Sch are lacking (the Light elemental magic line, half of the Darkness elemental spells, and the tier III-ga and Ancient magic elemental spells). Refresh II is generally unneeded for mages, since /Rdm has opened up the ability to Refresh yourself, as well as one of the staple Atmas for mages giving a 10mp/tic refresh in Abyssea. Really, all that Rdm has going for it is they're still the best for enfeebling mobs, but in Abyssea even that doesn't really justify them having a spot in an NM hunting group.

Things might be different here come the next version update though, since we don't know what the future will hold as far as what the next big activity will be and how said activities will affect job usefulness. For example, one of the biggest perks of Whm as a healer is they have Cure V and VI, which allows them to manage curing the larger HP pools that players have in Abyssea due to Cruor buffs/Atma. If we find ourselves having to work with our normal, "Outside Abyssea" HP pools for the next endgame events for XI, Cure IV is going to become a good deal more useful again. Likewise there may be nothing to "proc" in said future events, which would make Blm less essential for NM farming.

Really though, the way I see it, just level what you love. I mean I have Sch leveled and though I really have absolutely no use for it at all, I still enjoyed leveling it, and it just lets me have that option available should I ever need to use it for something.

Anyone who thinks the Yellow "!!" looks somewhat green, please calibrate your monitor. I'm a stickler about monitor calibration for my own displays, and on every display I have, the yellow "!!" is clearly yellow.

Just a tangent as I always wondered why people called it "grellow" until I asked and was like "no it doesn't..."

I don't know, my monitor is calibrated and there's clearly green areas. If you notice, none of the !! are a single shade. For example, "red" exclamation marks are actually orange on the top and bottom of the punctuation marks, and only red at the middle. Likewise, "blue" is actually blue on the top and bottom, with middle being more of a purple. For "grellow" they're yellow at the ends, but green near the middle. If you're only seeing a single color, then there must be something wrong with the respective .dat files, cause between myself and every other screenshot I've ever seen, the !! are of varying related colors.

Edited, Mar 22nd 2011 9:33pm by Vlorsutes

Also, with the following version update, we should see blizzard 5 on SCH, which will be a massive leap forward in damage output in almost every abyssea situation. SCH retains its solo capabilities which, depending on the situation, may or may not be better than BLM. I'm anxious to see what this unnamed Light elemental nuke does, honestly. I'd be ecstatic if SCH could segregate from BLM while still performing a very similar role.