My vision of a Healer Dancer

[kikix12]

So major misconception as damage absorption effects are in fact heals. Just because they're preventative heals doesn't mean they're not treated as effective healing, which is what devs actually look at when making healing skills.

I assure you, I know that. But there are certain reasons why in practice, it just doesn't work the same, hence why in this discussion in particular, their "big heal" heals less is valid.
Adloquium heals less and puts on a shield. It also costs you an arm and a leg in MP. If the one you heal is not the tank, chances are that the shield will never be used up and it will just fall off. Hence to heal non-tanks, you have to use Emergency Tactics or hope the DPS will get hit...something that you never should want. This is the "quirk" of a Scholar, a change of the basic toolkit. That's what we are talking about here, right?!

As I said above, Dancer have "big heal" as well, just with a quirk. No different than Scholar.

This would also explain the other misconception that their basic AoE heal isn't Indomitability, but rather Succor, which has the effective potency equivalent to Medica or Helios.

I know that Succor is the basic AoE heal...Indomitability is the "big AoE heal"...I did main Scholar to lvl70, you know. However in practice, Succor suffers far more from the shields falling off than Adloquium. In practice, at least half of the shield is wasted in majority of the encounters. It is NOT as good a heal as Medica, unless you use Emergency Tactics. It IS however useful in that you can prepare the party for AoE you know is coming in advance to lessen the HP drop in the first place though.

This "shields dropping off" and the fact that as heals neither of these two can compete with Cure II or Medica respectively, is exactly why Emergency Tactics had the cooldown reduced from 30 to 20 in the last patch. Developers realized that the true healing output of Scholars is just barely doing it for the content. I cannot say now, since I stopped playing Scholar after reaching lvl70 to wait for it being fixed (and I don't think this patch did it fully, though it certainly helped and solved the issue of no AoE).

Also, the only reason why Scholar gets those bigger heals so late is because the class system starts it off almost 30 levels behind the other healers in terms of toolkit (hence the fairy, which is another element added to effective healing).

Irrelevant. We're not talking about why its like that or is it good or bad. We're talking about whether the game is true to the scheme you spoke of...and it's not true at all. It never was, seeing as Scholar is the second healing class that came out, not the third. The reason why Astrologian is almost identical to White Mage in that respect stems from the fact that its a hybrid between Scholar and White Mage. Otherwise, it would have its own tweaks as well.

You'd be surprised at how different you can make a healer look while still keeping to the basic toolkit. Even tweaking the parts of that toolkit while retaining its effective healing can make a generic healer seem far from it.

That's what I did. Make it look different while still leaving it with the basic toolkit. It's all there. A basic heal, a big heal, an instant heal, an AoE heal, a big AoE heal, a panic button. It's just not dumbed down to a copy-paste heal.

And I wouldn't be surprised. But many would. The very same people that everyone wants to try healers, but that won't. They would be surprised, but they won't even try. And that's the problem. Unless there will be a healer that is already different at first glance, they will never start playing a healer, even if they would enjoy it.

Being conservative keeps the status quo. You claim that you want unique classes to bring more players to tanking and healing, but at the same time, you seem to be in favor of keeping the status quo. I prefer to be realistic rather than optimistic. If I want something to change, I don't do the same things the same way, hoping that the randomness of life will this time be in favor.