Healing is now a state of permanent hatred.

[KDSilver]

For scholar. Here's my controversial hot take. Despite the simplification of the dps rotation. Sch still plays the same way it's always has.

No.
- I no longer have to keep track of my dots timer during downtime
- I no longer can micromanage the fairy while I'm doing something else, like dedicated target for embrace, whispering dawn when casting something else (raise/heal/dps spell)
- I no longer have to keep track of my aetherflow cooldown, trait was removed + out of combat.
- I no longer have to question myself about the fairy to use. Yes, Eos was the way to go for a lot of content. Be fairy swapping during fight transition/or going full selene when the extra healing was not needeed.
- More and more Raw healing capacity and HoTs were added through time made preshielding really less valuable that it used to be. Adlo slowly transitioned from shield that is recommended to use to "I need gcd heal and physick sucks".
- Less mitigation tools over time (Virus splitted into DPS, eye for and eye deleted)
- Scholar was yet versatile, with really good healing abilities, but misusing one of those at the wrong time (namely indom/whispering dawn) was a stronger punishment. Now just press any button, it'll do something. We lost that risk/reward/planning/knowledge of the fight even more. That's still a thing to preplan healing in a fight, but we got so many oGCD that now you can't even really be wrong, outside of spamming adlo and succor all day.
- Not a really good point but still, no mana managment (I can hear already that scholar's mana never was hard because its mana economy was really good, but i'm taking about Miasma II weaving for this. Without teamwork or good party composition with brd/mch for refresh or even some manashift, you had to deal with it on your own).

Despite still having a lot of its old toolkit, Scholar lost so many things to think about and got so much more healing capacity that it's now closer to a WHM/AST feeling that the real old scholar.

When I remember all I did during HW (a bit less in SB), I cannot let someone say that's "it's the same but more simple".
No.
I used to say that scholar had 4 mini-games inside its gameplay. Fairy managment, Aetherflow managment, dot managment and shielding managment. Proper planning and usage of each reunited together made a strong and real fun healer.
All of these are still here. But they no longer are mini games cause like I said, now, just press some key buttons, it'll do something anyway.
Scholar's gameplay were terrible butchered in the name of this so called healer balance where they took the decision to cut the fun for it.
For me, scholar was what I called an almost perfect class. He had the tool, the deep gameplay. Now it's plenty boring and blend.
It sure needeed some adjustment regarding the fairy (even critlo was way too strong, you shouldn't have a shield allowing you to ignore mechanic or incoming damage at all), but not to where we are now.


If people are right now having fun with it, who see barely a difference, that's all great for you guys.
But I know what class I played and put time in for these last 5 years, and it's not what I currently have on my hands. All what made me in love and dedicated to it are gone, and no one will make be believe that's it's pure fantasy to think that.

I won't talk about what the healer role got away too, that's another layer of the long list of what we have lost.

That's why healers and precisely scholar is now so dead boring and unfun to play (at least, from an older dedicated healer player's point of view).