Sch does not feel like sch...

[era1Ne]

I've been told my some of my guildmates that I should really just focus on AST if I really want to reach a satisfying top-tier level and I've also had parties tell me they dread getting a SCH.

Some healer comps are more used than others, but in general the balance is better than it was in heavensward imo and every healer comp has its advantage and disadvantage. Of course some work could be done, to make the classes (even) more fun, but at the end of the day, healers as they currently are, are decently balanced, especially compared to other games. Imo the developers are doing an good enough job, despite some smaller mistakes and when i see some comments around the internet for "balance" suggestion, then i am really glad they don't listen all the time and just take feedback (*) into consideration. At the end of the day, when i think/guess how much the dev team has to consider for job balance imo, i am just glad, i am not an mmo developer myself and can just enjoy the game

In general it is sad to see guys like your raid members seem to be, who maybe (!) heared or read something about scholar problems or that he is not as good as before and turn this into an "he is garbage" or similar situation. Also some take the "meta" or the discussions about it way to seriously. Even if whm and ast would be considered "meta", the scholar would still be an valid option and you should play what you want. The (speedkill) "meta" only really matters, if you do speedkills which very, very few people out there actually do and those guys use ast/sch most of the time btw. That said, if you do progress you shouldn't really follow the speedkill meta anyway, since bringing an rdm with the instant rezz is more important than an mch/brd range combo for example.

* Don't get me wrong. Feedback is very important, but some of the suggestion on different sites from people have nothing to do with balance and all to do with "i want my job to be op (again)"

AST can buff, but they don't have that level of consistency and most likely would not be able to line up with party buffs outside of openers. These are all things to consider in group comps.

An Scholar has also much higher own dmg and still brings eos, which is still strong aswell. For some the class is not as fun as in hw and certainly, he isn't as powerful, but he is still an very good option imo.