A Scholar's Education (Guide)

Too many situations, do I have a geo; is my dINT actually close to zero; am I just trying to kill a charmed party memvber?
Let's instead say they uncap the DoT from helix.
THEN what would the best set look like.
ItemSet 325975
Both merlinic w/ DM aug: 10INT 30macc, 50mab, 10MB & 15?mdmg.
I may be wrong. but it's probably not far from best.

edit not worth a bump:Mine don't have DM augs either; the quantity of DM needed to get those augs would probably be terrifying.
'regular oseem aug' you mean CHR+1 acc+3, MB+10, MAB+30 & MB+10, MAB+40 & MB+10, or something else? it's still going to either be BiS or just going to swap in Arbatel loafers+1, amalric nails+1, or Jhakri feet+2 at a low enough augment and swap hat or body for MB+ if MB1 drops much below 40.

Thanks for the reply buddy. Can you change your leg/feet slots for no Oseem augments and (regular stone Oseem augments)?

I generally make my sets as close to BiS without looking towards DM augments and consider regular-stone and DM augments as needed.

Edit: Merry christmas
ItemSet 356832
Head/Body/legs adding up to 30 MB I

edit: I havent done much testing with Peda. M.Board +3 but it looks like it could be promising. stats are nice, there are literally thousands of combinations with MB1 to come up with an "all-in-one" best in slot to be honest is impossible.

Chimera is right assuming youre aiming to get 10,000 (cap) it depends on so much, what you are fighting, do you have GEO? do you have a BLM casting burn on it? Is it frazzle3'd?

Thank you so much. Yes, I generally do have an Idris GEO around. I have a silly question based on your assertion.

How does having an Idris GEO (for acumen, I assume) or a BLM casting BURN (for INT minus?) and a RDM doing Frazzle 3 (M.Evasion down)?

If I do have those things, would I need less MAB (and as result, possibly move around some pieces for MB1+50 and MB2+40(?) caps to ....create a set with more INT bonus? or conserve MP?). Is this one acceptable change if I have the buffs you mentioned?

Edit: Merry Christmas to you both as well. :)

did some testing and this was the best thing I could come up with.

I rotatated about every option i could of
Raetic+1/Akademos
Head/Body/Legs/Feet with Merlinic at 9/10/11 mb to get to 40 and Amalric+1 and peda mboard+3

which its kinda ironic I spent all that time and got the same conclusion that I tested about a year ago. This was just solo without a geo on a lvl 100 monster so macc was not an issue. I saw 1 resist in about 50 helixs
ItemSet 356832

The amalric nail+1 for whatever reason(mDMG+11??) seem to really be the goto to mate with the hands for the set bonus.
My Merlinic augs:
feet 9MB 39MAB
head 11mb 36mab
body 10mb 27mab 7 int
legs 9mb 27mab (prob some room for improvement here)

I dont have the belt to test, who knows what +2 Mallques from Ambu would do in the mix, get alot of MDMG but sacrifice a ton of MAB?

There are just thousands of potentially combos, but I could never get Akademos to outperform Raetic+1

The most I got with my gear and Akademos was 8391, the most I got with Raetic+1 was 8694, a 3.5% improvement

Link to my last time I was testing:
https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/32145/a-scholars-education-guide/64/#3326692

Did some more testing with some good news :) Orpheus's Sash is a game changer if you are close to the mob. I saw a 12% increase from refoccilation stone. If you are able to be close to apply the helix this is definitely the way to go

8694-> Refo Stone
9763-> Orpheus's Sash <2 from mob
9698-> Orpheus's Sash Between 2-3

I think news is not the right word here lol. It's known since that sash exists. I was thinking the only reason people doesn't include it in sets here is because it's conditional and people usually nuke from distance, but its obvious that sash easily beats anything with just mab. Question is, would it also beat Skrymir Cord +1 for Helixes? or even NQ? Magic Damage +30-35 sounds OP for helixes since someone mentioned its roughly 1mab = 1mdmg for helixes.

waiting a bit for the sash, the price is going to crash bigtime in a 30ish days. theres damn near 60 ashs' on the AH on Asura.

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/49789/the-black-sacrament-a-guide-to-black-mage/14#3417755

When I tested the sash, I found that even at range it was beating MAB refo stone for me. I then wrote a lua function to work out when to use elemental obi's over the sash based on distance to target and current day/weather/storms etc

I am honestly shocked to see so many sets still showing Akademos/Enki. Daybreak/Ammurapi beats it on every stat except INT. I need to rework my sets to see if it can come out ahead on Magic Bursts as well as normal nukes.

Akademos is still in a very good position for Magic Burst sets because it's not so trivial to cap out on 40% Magic Burst Damage as SCH without it (or making considerable sacrifices eslewhere). Unless bursting Luminohelices, it's probably winning against Daybreak for that reason

Akademos is still better for bursting than daybreak.

I've tested that much.

to your point I went out and sure enough with the following set
Daybreak/Ammurapi beat out Raetic+1/Enki everytime

with weather2 casting the same day. Amalric+1 nails also beat Arbatel+1 with Klimaform
ItemSet 370430

How about Locus ring and Static Earring? Depends on your Merlinic Hood augment, you would get MBII+4% and nice amount off macc and probably lose some mab (~10?) and int (~15?).

so your saying drop the hood, freke, malignance earring
for mboard+3/static/locus

testing:
same helix as day and weather2 up. all helixes done <1 distance from mob for consistency on Orph sash lvl 100 monster

40MBI(merlinic 10/10, neck 10,locus/static 10) + 9MBII(Mujin/Peda Head+3)
ItemSet 341515
Lightsday 17110
Lightsday with Ghastly Tathlum+1 17542
Lightningday 12080
Lightningday with Ghastly Tathlum+1 12204

VS

40MBI(merlinic 11/10/10, neck 10) + 5MB II
ItemSet 370430
Lightsday17221
Lightning 12082


VS
Sub in MDMG Mallquis/Ghastly+1
ItemSet 356832
Lightsday 17638
Lightningday12276



untested: Crematio Earring which would possibly beat Malig or Regal.

tldr& Daybreak + LuminohelixII is the way to go if a mob isnt light resistant! Looks like it comes down to the Augments on Merlinic Hood. with over 35mab(and even more if you can get mdmg) you can beat the Peda head+3, however macc is similar until you add 19 elemental skill +15mb acc on Peda head+3.
note: 3x Merlinic pieces need to add to 30mbi, legs/body need to add to 20mbi.

What was the consensus on Misu regen as percentage or additive? Also, with that info does the gear on the previous page stand for best pot/duration combo?

Back with another new SCH question: what's generally the best 'starter' Akademos (if there is a choice)? See lots of talk about it, but can't find the path listed. It is generally just 1, or multiple? Can you change path on it later?

For 3000 silt, Nolan will change the path on weapons or armor. The rank on it will stay the same.

Cool, I just found some info saying that path C seems to be best too, so answered my own question.

Thanks!

Akedemos should be Path A

That seems to depend on the rest of your gear and the content you're targetting mostly. I'd actually second going with path C for a new SCH because they're likely to benefit from the additional accuracy more than pure INT/MAB. once acc is a non-issue and you're maximizing helix burst dmg, yes, path A.

Which slots have gear that boost Regen's potency?

Weapon (Musa, Bolelabunga)
Head (Empyrean armor)
Back (JSE cape)

Then there's a specific augment for all 5 Telchine items, Duskdim slot, but it's "only" a max of +3 sadly, not sure it's worth it.
For Body maybe, for legs and feet uuh... for Hands and Head obviously not because Empy.
It goes without saying this regen +3 comes at the cost of 10% duration. Not really a very fair trade compared to the other slots.

Anything else I'm forgetting?

Guess I didn't forget anything then, sadly :-(
Also I think one of us should update BG-wiki.

I think a few pages ago someone found out that the reforged 109 and 119 Empy head doesn't add 10% and 15% Regen potency respectively, but static values of +7 for the 119 and (presumably) +6 for the 109.
Which is frankly more in line with the old +2 version from Abyssea that added +1 to +5 according to the Regen tier.

Wonder if the JP description is correct and the 10/15% is simply an english translation error.
Can anyone check? Anybody knows what could I do to check the JP description?

the JP wiki site is translating to Regen recovery amount +15

I answered myself already. It's 10% and 15% even in the JP wiki.
Source.

Given this, I'm a bit reluctant to believe it's an error in the description of both the eng AND the jp text.

I can't get how 15%, if it really is 15%, becomes +7 though.
It can't be a matter of rounding.
15% of +40 (base value) is exactely 6, it can't possibly become +7, and Doryl in his detailed test noticed +7 from the base value already.

So maybe there's something wonky about % calculations that are in base 256 or 1024 instead of base 100 and maybe this is making that perfect 6 become a 6,1 which gets then rounded to 7?
I'm pretty clueless but I'm a bit skeptic to believe the description having being wrong on both the eng AND the JP description for such a long time.

No mention at all in the JP wiki pages that there's an error in Arbatel Head description, this really leads me to believe it's gotta be a % for real.

You did a research while I was writing the previous post, thanks!

From the JP wiki I found (link above) it's actually 15% for the 119 and 10% for the 109, just like the English version.
See here:

Regen page from JP wiki (japanese original text)
Regen page from JP wiki (english google translated text)

Cross referencing all values, it seems that all the results from those % calculations get rounded up.
0,5 becomes 1
1,2 becomes 2
2 becomes 3
3 becomes 6
6 becomes 7

I think this is because of the base 1024 issues that we've had with Haste and all other percentile values in game.
Like that 15% maybe is 154/1024 actually.
That would produce values that are not perfectly rounded, like 6,1 for instance, which then gets rounded up to 7.


Someone more competent on Math than me can add something and fix my mistakes maybe?

It's % to base Regen value then add 1 HP to get the expected result

https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/109412-Regen-Spells-and-their-Enhancements

Thanks for the reference.
So the game floors the % results, then adds 1?
Uh... sounds strange. Is this the only in game situation where this happens?

Are we sure it's not a result of the same "issue" affecting the Haste % not actually being /100 but /1024 values?
I thought none of what is actually displayed as % for us players was actually really considered as % by the game engine, but /1024 values or similar.

Good info, I dont use the head and opt for duration most times but +7, bleh, I thought it was +15 per tic all these years