Octopath Traveler 2 Scholar Job Guide

This is an in-depth guide to the Scholar job in Octopath Traveler 2. This guide will break down the Scholar job including Skills and interactions with the other Jobs of Octopath Traveler 2.

What is the Role of a Scholar

Scholars are the mages of the Octopath Traveler universe. They specialize in the use of staves and Elemental Magic, specifically Fire, Ice, and Lightning spells.

Scholars play a highly offense-oriented role, controlling the primary 3 elements. This often makes them damage focused, but they do have limited capacity to support their allies.

In Octopath Traveler 2, Osvald V. Vanstein has Scholar as his main role. Betrayed by someone he worked closely with, Osvald’s life is in ruins. His family is gone and he’s been imprisoned, falsely accused of their murder. His journey begins imprisoned, with only two goals, gaining freedom and getting revenge on the person that put him there.

How the Scholar Job Changed for Octopath Traveler 2

One of the biggest changes to the Scholar Job is that Scholars rely on a new buff for their damage. They lost the ability to spam the 2-hit variations of their spells, instead gaining access only while they have the new Advanced Magic buff applied to them. This also means they gain two new skills in Stroke of Genius and Elemental Barrage.

Stroke of Genius gives allows Scholars to apply a random variety of buffs to themselves, including Elemental Attack and Speed Buffs. While the effects applied are random, they will stack across multiple uses or applications.

Elemental Barrage is a new unique multi-hit, multi-Elemental Spell. Like many of the multi-hit skills, it also chooses a target at random. However on a single target, it can be a great option for checking weaknesses or breaking foes weak to multiple elements. Each hit will choose Fire, Ice, or Lightning for its damage type, so while it’s not all 6 elements, it’s still a nice skill for Scholars.

Their old Divine Skill Alephan’s Enlightenment has been moved to Osvald, who starts as a Scholar and retains it as his Latent Power.

Scholar Skills: Overview and Recommendations

Like all jobs, the Scholar has both Active Skills and Support Skills that can affect their combat ability. Below you can read the overview and recommendations for each skill individually, followed by a segment with recommendations on which skills to pick first and why!

Active Skills

Active Skills are skills used in battle, to either attack, provide buffs, or apply debuffs. Below are the Active Skills available to Scholars. Scholars have access to Fireball and Icewind by default, the other skills require the use of Job Points, or JP to unlock.

Among the Active Skills are Divine Skills, which are powerful skills that are unique to each job. These however cannot be unlocked until all other skills have been unlocked first, which requires a large amount of JP, in addition to their own unlock cost.

Fireball / Fire Storm

• Skill Type: Fire
• SP Cost: 14
• Effect: Deals fire-based damage to all foes. (with Advanced Magic: Deals fire-based damage to all foes twice)
• Boost Effect: Increases damage per BP Spent.

Fireball is a generic, but great spell. The way they changed up the Scholar’s kit to require a buff to get access to your stronger spells is interesting. You’ll still want to BP boost Fire Storm for the maximum damage, but even Fireball on its own seems pretty good.

Icewind / Blizzard

• Skill Type: Ice
• SP Cost: 14
• Effect: Deals ice-based damage to all foes. (with Advanced Magic: Deals ice-based damage to all foes twice)
• Boost Effect: Increases damage per BP spent.

This skill functions similarly to Fireball or Lightning Bolt, but deals Ice-based damage instead. Much like Fireball or Lightning Bolt, you’ll still want to charge it with BP and unleash it as Blizzard when possible via Advanced Magic.

Lighting Bolt / Lightning Blast

• Skill Type: Lightning
• SP Cost: 8
• Effect: Deals lightning-based damage to all foes.
• Boost Effect: Increases damage per BP spent.

This skill functions similarly to Fireball or Icewind, but deals Ice-based damage instead. Much like Fireball or Icewind, it’s great when empowered, but better when Advanced Magic is applied for Lightning Blast instead.

Analyze

• Skill Type: Debuff
• SP Cost: 1
• Effect: Reveal the HP and Weaknesses of a single foe.
• Boost Effect: Increases the number of weaknesses revealed per BP spent. At Max Boost, reveals all weaknesses of the selected target.

Analysis is great for finding weaknesses quickly. This makes it exceptionally good to find weaknesses in rare or one-time encounters. It can also be great for bosses, assuming you don’t want to fight them blindly.

Stroke of Genius

• Skill Type: Buff
• SP Cost: 5
• Effect: Applies 2 random attribute-raising effects to yourself. (Effects can stack.)
• Boost Effect: Increases the number of effects per BP spent.

Stroke of Genius can be useful, but a bit unreliable. It has 8 different attributes it can roll, and can roll the same attribute multiple times. As a Scholar, you’ll really only care about Elemental Attack primarily, , where the rest will affect other jobs.

Elemental Barrage

• Skill Type: Fire, Ice, Lightning
• SP Cost: 10
• Effect: Deals fire, ice or lightning-based damage to random foes 3 to 5 times
• Boost Effect: Increases the minimum and maximum hits by one per BP spent.

While this spell doesn’t deal a ton of damage by itself, it can be a great tool for breaking a single foe. This is especially true when they are weak in at least two of the three elements.

Advanced Magic

• Skill Type: Buff
• SP Cost: 15
• Effect: Boosts the intensity of an ally’s next two spells.
• Boost Effect: Increases the number of intensified spells by 1 per BP spent.

Advanced Magic is strong, but an interesting way to balance the Scholar. It upgrades the effect of any multi-target spell to hit all foes twice, instead of once. This means it can upgrade Fireball, Icewind, and Lightning Bolt from the Scholar, but also the Heal Wounds, Revive, and Luminescence spells of the Cleric.

Divine Skill – Alephan’s Wisdom

• Skill Type: Buff
• SP Cost: 30
• Effect: Greatly Boosts the intensity of an ally’s next three spells.
• Boost Effect: Requires Maximum Boost to activate

This is a direct upgrade to Advanced Magic, making your spells hit three times instead of only twice. While this slows down the tempo of the Scholar job slightly, it does make up for it with increased damage and breaking power. It also affects the same spells as Advanced Magic, meaning it’s equally beneficial to the Cleric as well.

Which Scholar Skills you should take first

Active Skills can be taken in any order in Octopath Traveler 2, So, it’s worth considering the benefits of taking each skill. The cost for the next skill increases as you pick skills, so take the time to plan which skills you’d want to make sure you never feel weak.

Since you start with only two of your elements, I recommend prioritizing Lightning Bolt early on. This gives you access to all three elements and allows you to deal with a wider variety of foes.

Analyze is not always worth prioritizing. For the most part, Osvald’s Study Foe will work exceptionally well. Analyze only becomes important when using Scholar as a battle job. This is because Study Foe is unique to Osvald, and if he’s not present, there’s.

In terms of buffs, Advanced Magic can be worth prioritizing. While it’ll only see use in longer encounters, the extra damage and breaking power it provides make it worth having. If you can create the window to set up, it can also help with breaking rare enemies, who are hard to hit with physical attacks.

Stroke of Genius is a very low priority, due to its RNG factor making it incredibly unreliable. If support options exist to apply the skill to multiple targets within the party, then could be worth more consideration.

Support Skills

Support Skills are passive bonuses that can be mixed and matched with Support Skills of other jobs after unlocking them. Support Skills are unlocked alongside your Active Skills, being tied to the number of unlocked Active Skills for the job. These provide stat boosts or other combat effects entirely passively and do not need to be activated beyond applying them to a character.

Evasive Manuevers

• Total JP Cost: 130
• Effect: Reduces the chances of random encounters. (This effect does not stack if equipped on multiple characters)

If you’re looking to get through areas quickly and safely, this is a great Support Skill to use. Since it reduces random encounters, it’ll let you traverse more quickly by running, while still lowering the number of encounters. However, if you’re trying to level up, you shouldn’t be using it.

Elemental Augmentation

• Total JP Cost: 630
• Effect: Inceases the equipped character’s Elemental Attack by 50.

As a job that relies on Elemental Attack, this is a great effect early on for Scholars. It’s really good for anyone that can make good use of Elemental skills. Much like other flat bonuses though, it can fall off later on into the game where gear gives a greater bonus.

Extra Experience

• Total JP Cost: 1,630
• Effect: Increases EXP gained from encounters. (This effect does not stack if equipped on multiple characters)

This is hands down one of the better Support Skills when you’re traversing areas. Getting this will reduce the need for any excessive grinding later on. However, it’s still great for situations where you need to grind for any reason.

Advanced Magic Master

• Total JP Cost: 4,630
• Effect: Raises the number of times the equipping character can use more intense spells by 1.

This Support Skill is basically only useful to the Scholar, at least out of the basic jobs. It allows for an extra spell to be enhanced by Advanced Magic or Alephan’s Wisdom. This helps a fair bit with reducing overall BP and SP expense on casting Advanced Magic, while also providing another turn of Alephan’s Wisdom.

Scholar Job Synergies

Below you will learn which secondary Jobs best complete the Scholar as a starting Job and how the Scholar Job synergizes and performs best as a secondary job with other starting jobs!

How Osvald Synergizes with Other Jobs

Through the use of his Latent Power, Concentrate Spells, Osvald can turn otherwise weak multi-target spells into powerful single-target burst damage. This includes those of other jobs.

However, Concentrate Spells is limited by the fact they only can affect Elemental Damage. This ultimately only makes it relevant to the Scholar or other advanced jobs that deal Elemental Damage to multiple targets. Out of the base jobs, this leaves Cleric as the only other job that can benefit, and the result of doing so is a stronger version of Holy Light.

Check out our Osvald Character Guide to learn about this character and their unique actions within the game. You can also check out our Walkthrough of their story, for hidden items in their story and boss strategies.

How Scholar Synergizes with other Jobs

Cleric is an exceptionally good pairing, which gives them access to better supportive options, while also allowing the Scholar to take advantage of their high Elemental Defense for increased healing power.

Additionally, as a Cleric, you’ll get access to Mystical Staff, giving you a way to deal some damage while still recovering SP. Advanced Magic will also be able to upgrade Luminescence into Radience, giving you a reliable 2-hit Light-based damage source.

The Scholar’s Advanced Magic buff is most suited to the Scholar but also benefits Clerics as well. Since it alters the multi-target elemental spells into their 2-hit variants, it seems limited in nature.

The Dancer can be an okay pairing, giving access to Peacock Strut to further boost their Damage potential. Ruinious Kick can also provide some additional Breaking power, despite the low Physical Attack of a Scholar.

Scholars usually lack Physical Defense. Using it in combination with the Merchant job can allow them to use Sidestep to mitigate this weakness. Additionally, you be able to restore HP, SP and cleanse yourself of negative statuses with Rest.

While the Thief itself isn’t a great pairing for Scholar, Throné’s Latent Power can allow for easier setup of Alephan’s Wisdom, and still allow for the use of a BP item to be able to make the best use of it as early as possible.

While Warrior isn’t the most ideal job combination for the Scholar, it does provide them with some additional bulk and physical breaking options. This can allow them to keep on the offensive, or give themselves some defensive buffs while they prepare between uses of Alephan’s Wisdom.

When considering advanced jobs, Arcanist is an exceptionally strong option. Not only will they have access to five of the six elements in spells, but the Arcanist’s Malice and Blessing skills are also affected by Advanced Magic and Alephan’s Wisdom. This gives Osvald exceptionally high-breaking power and damage potential.

Additionally, the Scholar can make use of the Arcanist’s Seal of Diffusion Skill, allowing them to spread around random attribute buffs with Stroke of Genius. While this is a little more of a niche buffing option, it can be an easy way to distribute buffs to extend with Seal of Eternity if you get something desirable.

Conjurer is the only other advanced class that Osvald can use fairly well. This can help him to fit in reliable, high damage between powerful spell casts. He’ll also have access to Prayer for Rain, which can help alleviate some of the SP issues that he’d run into when set up for maximum damage.

This concludes our in-depth Job Guide for the Scholar in Octopath Traveler 2.