Quote Originally Posted by ty_taurus View Post
do either Scholar or Sage focus on applying and interacting with barriers in their gameplay?
Literally depends on the player. A lot of healers will teach people that to play Scholar, they should apply Adlo lots and use excog all the time. I see this regularly in duties where Scholars pointlessly spam Adlo on me and use Excog when I'm a Warrior and don't need any of these things.

When I play Scholar, I virtually never use Adlo. I play it as a Pure Healer. I reactively heal people when they actually take damage instead of constantly shielding them "in case" they stand in a red circle. There are few dungeons that make me use Adlo and one of them is occasionally the last pull of Amaurot. Any support that has done that pull knows what I mean! Depends on the tank though, sometimes I can get away without it, depends how squishy they are.

I use Excog as a reactive heal on bosses, because if it ends up not being needed then I get to use Energy Drain instead.

I see similar teachings with Sage. People will teach you to spam barriers on people. I don't play it like that, I just play it like Scholar as a pure healer. But it's more justified to play it with barriers due to the Addersting system.

Ultimately, they are barrier healers because the majority of casual players use them that way, despite that many raider healers don't.