If I was on the development team, this is what I would have done for SCH

[inhaledcorn]

A lot of those changes do sound cool, kudos for taking the time to make them. The class theme probably doesn't need a complete redefinition though, just some improvements to help it stand out again. AST more or less occupies the flex healer spot at the moment; they just either do the shielding side of that coin a little too well or SCH doesn't do it well enough. Personally, I think it's the latter combined with a lack of presence from Selene.

I disagree in how flexible AST really is. It's more "fill in the hole" than it is "flexible". AST can be the WHM or "SCH" if one currently isn't available, but it can't switch mid-battle. These changes would allow the SCH to switch mid-battle, having the ability to control their shields and regens by which fairy is active and what Tactic was used before their trademark spells. This would also leave the door open for a true, pure "shield" healer (the true opposite WHM, having strong shields attached to recovery spells and a large, on demand, HP-percentage based Shield that the WHM used to have, and nice oGCD healing, but almost no regens except for a cooldown or two and very little support [and probably really high personal DPS]).

These changes are interesting but Scholar still has a clear identity as the offensive 'DPS' healer, barely having to use GCD healing in many situations. It's clear that they want Scholar to be an offensive healer that uses aetherflow abilities to heal while using their gcd for DPS. The pets are certainly a part of that, but ultimately they serve mostly to increase you and your co-healer's DPS by reducing healing requirements.

Whether Scholar is fun or 'well-designed' is up for debate, but at the moment the majority of people seem happy with Scholar, so it's unlikely we'll see any changes to it in the near future

If it being the "DPS healer" is true then there are a few problems with that philosophy. 1) How much DPS vs healing do they bring that warrants their inclusion rather than a real DPS? There is no way a healer should do more damage than a DPS. It's hard to justify SCH DPS in even high-end content except v4S when a WHM can brute force most of the healing on its own. 2) If they were true DPS healers, then their DPS kit would have more interactivity with its healing kit, but it doesn't. Both WHM and AST have oGCD skills that is/can be a heal and damaging ability (Assize for WHM and Earthly Star and Minor Arcana to a lesser extent) whereas the DPS and the Healing aspects of SCH's kit are kept completely separate (except for Energy Drain, but that only heals the user unlike the other two skills I mentioned before which heal the party or target). Being the DPS healer was a lot more true when Cleric Stance existed as a Mind/Intelligence swap rather than a pathetic Raging Strikes since the fairy covered a lot of what a SCH needed to heal, allowing their DPS uptime to be really high for a healer. With the fairy being so weak now and SCH's heals so expensive and the shields are almost unnecessary except for a few cases, that's not really true anymore.