Why does SMN have Physick?

[Raikai]

I suppose it's for pre-30 Arcanists to have any semblance of healing for when they q as heals?

I'm not sure how it works nowadays though... They really have to spend 30 levels with just 1 healing spell?

[Esmoire]

In general I would not be surprised if in 6.0 the arcanist branches are changed so SCH or SMN just becomes its own job or something that you can pick up without any requirements, and if Arcanist is still around they will hone it down more on healer or DPS. Every patch they move them further and further apart as it is so they may be content to just allow this anomaly to remain. New expansions are a great chance to make sweeping changes.

[Eloah]

They did mention they want to split the two jobs completely. It just hasn't happened yet.

In general I would not be surprised if in 6.0 the arcanist branches are changed so SCH or SMN just becomes its own job or something that you can pick up without any requirements, and if Arcanist is still around they will hone it down more on healer or DPS. Every patch they move them further and further apart as it is so they may be content to just allow this anomaly to remain. New expansions are a great chance to make sweeping changes.

The issue with this is that the jobs are completely separate now. They are only linked through the skill Resurrection, which while odd is good, since that skill doesnt need to change between the two jobs. As people have mentioned, Energy Drain is different between the two, Ruin II as well. Even Aetherpact is different but that was different from the onset, since it came post 2.0.

The reason Physick is still lackluster on SMN is unknown. As it was said before it feels more like an oversite than anything else. Both SMN and SCH do need a bit of "work" ease the transition that is being created now, since they are completely split, but there are no issues any more regarding changing one changes the other. Player wise, they are split. But most likely codingwise they are still linked to avoid the hardships that would come about with a complete split.

[dinnertime]

I doubt they will separate Summoner and Scholar because that is the selling point of Arcanist. Anyway, there is no need to separate them because Scholar has their own versions of Arcanist skills, like how Scholar's Physick is labeled SCH and not ACN. Like Eloah said, the only thing both jobs share from Arcanist is Resurrection.

SMN still keeping Physick is a mystery, but honestly this is just another case of the devs leaving behind questionable or redundant skills/abilities, like Fluid Aura.

[Myon88]

It's honestly strange, and a little sad. They bothered to downgrade (and yeah, it's a complete downgrade) summoner's aetherflow to energy drain all for the sake of differentiating smn and sch. So they can clearly expend the effort if they want to, even though smn got the short end of the stick there. But when it comes to physick which is as close to literally useless as a skill gets now, they leave it be.

[Rarrum]

Physick is very still useful pre-50-ish when doing Palace of the Dead solo runs on SMN.

[Ryaz]

I'm just surprised they haven't put in a trait for SMN that makes Physick scale of intelligence instead of mind. Would be an easy fix, you'd think.

[purgatori]

They did mention they want to split the two jobs completely. It just hasn't happened yet.

I'm glad they haven't yet. I wanted to level a healer so I could do the role quests in ShB and having SMN along as a bonus was really nice, especially given that I came to really enjoy how the job plays, and I think it will in fact end up replacing RDM as my magical DPS.

That aside, yes, physick is bafflingly useless. I wasn't entirely convinced of this before picking up the job; I thought, "it has to have some utility, right?" But no. It's just there.

[tdb]

the reason ACN has it was to give a healing spell available for players that start in Limsa (given there is no dedicated healing class available in Limsa from the get-go until you unlock SCH).

This seems unlikely to be the reason, since Ul-dah has no dedicated healer class at all. PLD and RDM have some healing capability now, but neither did in the 2.x days. PLD got Clemency in 3.0 and RDM didn't even exist until 4.0. And of course now we have a total of six major cities, four of which serve as starting points for various classes, but there are only three healer classes. Gridania didn't have a tank either until GNB was introduced in 5.0.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm glad they haven't yet. I wanted to level a healer so I could do the role quests in ShB and having SMN along as a bonus was really nice, especially given that I came to really enjoy how the job plays, and I think it will in fact end up replacing RDM as my magical DPS.

That aside, yes, physick is bafflingly useless. I wasn't entirely convinced of this before picking up the job; I thought, "it has to have some utility, right?" But no. It's just there.

Just as all damage skills on healers were originally useless without Cleric Stance. Yet they changed those to work off Mind, just as Vercure works off Intelligence. So why not do the same for Physick?