I said "similar" please read. I am taking a few things from everyone who has posted, trust me I will do well enough. I thank everyone who has chipped in some info..I got my own playstyle but that will not hurt any groups I join.
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i wont say you are bad, but that play style is bad. its the same thing with smn. not using obey, you run the chance of garuda/ifrit using skills to screw things up. dont have your dots up? lolgaruda contagion'd anyway. fight requires stuns be time well? here comes ifrit with a stun! pet management is part of the class. others have said it also, but blowing the one HoT that a sch has is pretty bad. even more so when you need it.
You absolutely need to control your pet as a Scholar. There isn't any question. Why? Because she will completely waste all the long-cooldown skills you need right at the beginning of a pull for no apparent reason.
For instance...HM Brayflox: Tank will begin pulling the 4-5 groups for the initial big pull...but your pet will cast its aoe heal right after the tank pulls the first group and keeps running. That aoe heal will not hit the tank, will hit you and your party members, and you will now be pulling aggro on everything the tank touches. Good luck with that.
Not controlling Eos on Obey to use Whispering Dawn when you need it is like if a WHM told you they just used Medica II once every 60 seconds and never other than that.
Its a play style I have used a lot and I have determined to work imo. The OP can do whatever he feels is best for him and so will I. If I see or feel the need for a change of play style for the better of me or my group (mostly the latter) I will change it. But until I see my group drop like flies and in not because of their inability to dodge, I then will make a change. So far after months of me being "a bad scholar" I have yet to receive any complaints from anyone.
The truth is outside of solo healing fights with lots of raid-wide damage or the very hardest content in the game everything is easy enough to where it doesn't matter if you use your big aoe hot at the right moment or just let it go off whenever. If you're striving to be as good as you can at the class, then you'd be crazy to not want to manually control some of its most powerful abilities.