Originally Posted by
Euphares
At the highest level of play healing boils down to being able to get away with the least amount of GCD healing and the most amount of damage, SCH is favored because it has the best mitigation on top of having decent shielding when the situation requires GCD healing. It also has good OGCD regens.
Even in E10S, the fight where shields are perhaps most important, most groups still have the AST as diurnal because at the end of the day mitigation > shields and SCH has more than enough shielding to cover the hardest shield checks. Some groups do have Noct Ast/SCH as their healer comp, but these are very rare and clearly not necessary as there is no wiggle room, you either mit entirely or the entire group gets damage down, nullifying the speedrun. The precedence is that SCH is the best shield healer (which also includes mit in its identity btw) in the game right now, regardless of the number of picks. If the argument is going to be that SCH is badly designed enough to warrant an overhaul the above cannot be true.
All of the potency values you listed aren't really relevant, GCD heals are almost never used except in pre-pull. And OGCD wise, passive regens are better than ogcd shields, because mitigation is superior hence why vast majority of Ast's are diurnal.
If mitigation is so valued, and SCH is the best mitigation healer, then this is its identity and it is filling a desirable niche. Based on this, there is zero evidence suggesting that it is lacking in its job. Saying that soil's value is contingent on its cooldown is a moot point because we are judging holistic value of abilities, which cooldown is apart of. Watering down tools to prove a point isn't very honest either, neither are what-if scenarios.
Seraph is rarely used because it requires a loss of DPS to use effectively if I recall, the same applies to Neutral. It is the same reason for both.
The only aspect that Noct Ast wins over SCH is having better ogcd shielding, but that's one spell and its hardly significant or top groups would be using Noct Ast over Diurnal.
The whole point of this thread was to say that SCH received "no love" and that the job is in a bad spot, this isn't true because SCH is meta right now. Saying this will be true in EW is up for debate but isn't based on any evidence aside from "because Yoshi-p hates Scholar."
There is more evidence to suggest Sage will fill a niche of an offensive shield healer, which is a completely different identity from Scholar which is a defensive shield healer. Which means that the only way Scholar will be out of a job is if Sage is overtuned, which again has nothing to do with Scholar's design. The biggest flaws of Scholar's current kit is pet ai, which I believe warrants concern and discussion over, but is still indicative of the game's engine not supporting pets well.