Maybe its different for scholar. But if you also have to dps as WHM you are only going to run out of MP that much sooner.
BRD and MCH (me) in my static and we hit 38% on Faust with relative ease on the first pull.
Cleared it? No, not yet. A few of us could stand to have some better gear. We're in the process of that right now, and I'm confident when we go back in, we'll have little issue with it.
Ye of little faith, Aegis. BRD and MCH could be a lot better, true. But we'll NEVER be obsolete. Not a chance.
After a night's (really short because reasons) of trying to get past faust, my 2 gil.
I was pulling comparable/slightly less DPS than a slightly worse geared BLM. The utility of Overcharge was helpful, but considering Faust is a straight up DPS check, it was a bit difficult. I certainly wasn't the only one not providing top of the line DPS, as the Ninja who is as geared as me was pulling slightly above the BLM, and only our DRG was pulling farther ahead by a considerable (10%ish) margin.
It's tough, but certainly doable. My static has no intention of kicking me, as pulling comparable dps and having a regen aura is reason enough to keep me. We didn't clear it after about an hour an a half, but getting 1-2 pieces of alex gear across the board before thursday will easily help us over that hump.
Personal highlight was an 8.6k wildfire.
one of the parses on reddit, 1317 on Faust
no AoEs used
http://i.imgur.com/WKDgZfw.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/8s1mqSZ.jpg
My 2 cents after spending a few hours on A1 tonight:
Our BRD was consistently pulling a bit above 1k (and brought Foe's which increased our smn dps as well), easily killed Faust with him so your point that they'd be excluded is false.
Outgoing damage on Oppressor is extremely intense, and Mage Ballad was incredibly vital during the divebomb phases because even without dpsing I was running on fumes as a whm by the time the boss was at 40% health, so your point that their utility is useless (and that healers that are ooming just need to "git gud") is also incredibly false.
In other words, stop making these awful threads because you never have a god damn clue what you're talking about.