Physick on SMN

[Zyneste]

Buffing Physick itself would be to add an additional effect or increase its potency. Buffing Physick itself would entail a buff to SCH, the complaint I was addressing, as clear from the sentences immediately following your snippet...

Buffing SMN's use of Physick does not buff Physick itself.

...

Reading comprehension when? Or is this just purposeful omission for comedic effect? Sigh.

To alter any game balance that would shift the effect of one skill from poor to upwards is a buff. If SE created a skill that said "Your next Physick will do 10,000 potency healing" did they just buff physick, even though physick itself didn't change?

If it gets better, its being buffed lol.

[Shurrikhan]

To alter any game balance that would shift the effect of one skill from poor to upwards is a buff. If SE created a skill that said "Your next Physick will do 10,000 potency healing" did they just buff physick, even though physick itself didn't change?

If it gets better, its being buffed lol.

Then is the opposite also true? If it does not affect game balance, it's not a buff? Because that's where this would most likely end up.

Let's consider just that last question first, then...

Technically speaking... no. Life Surge is not not inherently a buff to Full Thrust. It simply buffs a skill, which at best use is Full Thrust.
Practically speaking... still probably not. Unlike something without any resource cost, best spent on a skill that would be used anyways, Physick will remain a loss of DPS that is too little to make up for any additional damage taken by a single party member, yet heals for less eHP than any healer AoE. If it still doesn't leave it advantageous to cast Physick even once within the normal conditions of a given encounter, it hasn't been buffed practically, either.

Let's consider what so empowers a SMN right now. Would a functional Physick, still useful only for solo-play, enhance any of those individual areas of strength? Does the lack of a functional Physick somehow hold SMN's near-endless mobility back from being the most consistently high-rDPS caster in the current meta? You may as well that certain balance-affecting bugs ought remain rather than fixing the bug and the other areas in the job's balance that were overcompensating for said bug with their own broken amounts of power.

SMN is arguably a bit OP. But that does not rest on Physick any more than Monk would somehow be more broken if, say, Riddle of Earth triggered on attack taken rather than damage taken (wasted when 0-ing damage), or MCH's actual performance -- not just gameplay -- would be improved by Gauss Barrel automatically reapplying itself after Overheat ends. Fixing bugs, inconsistencies, fundamentally flawed designs, and/or absolutely unnecessary annoyances does not inherently overpower a job. Why should we deal with any of those things just to hold a line in the sand that's merely the result of a the last patch - wherein the developers admit further tuning is required?