Quote Originally Posted by Melithea View Post
I don't think anybody actually hates Scholars, though I will openly admit to being pretty annoyed with Scholar-primary players who want to eat their cake and have the White Mages' pie, too. Healing is already pretty narrow ground to share between two classes as it is. Frankly, from what I can tell (and I have both jobs at 50) White Mages drew the short straw and Scholars are still demanding more. I prefer White Mage for reasons that go well beyond game mechanics and into reasons like aesthetics and tradition. I was a WHM main in FFXI, which was essentially my first (graphical) MMO. I loved Rosa from FFIV (Bows for WHM when, Yoshi?), I love how the AF looks, and I like using light/holy based magic.

It feels like Scholar was created purely to try to balance 8-man parties by making them require two healer slots. They could just as easily give the faerie to WHM, fix Cure III's range and give us a Haste spell (seriously, where the hell is my Haste spell?) and then you'd have one actually good healer job instead of two adequate, but incomplete healers. This would also cure Arcanists of their split-personality disorder.

I initially planned on playing both WHM and SCH so that I could exhibit more flexibility, but unfortunately it looks like the way end game gear acquisition was designed will make that near impossible (bait and switch?). I'm happy for those who enjoy playing SCH more, but WHM is supposed to be the iconic healer.
No, Scholar was added because they wanted Mitigation Healers in the game. It allows them to make more complicated encounters.

I don't understand why you are so threatened by the idea that there's another class that can also heal. Mind you, this isn't my first MMO. WoW has Holy Paladin, Holy Priest, Disc Priest, Restoration Shaman, Restoration Druid, and Mistweaver Monk. SWTOR had Jedi Sage/Sith Sorcerer and the two gun healers (Smuggler and Bounty Hunter, iirc). Rift had...a ridiculous number of healing combinations. I remember at least three, four if you count the Defiler, in the Cleric class alone, plus Chloromancer and I honestly forget what else they had.

Point being, there can be multiple classes in the healing role, and it doesn't make you any less of a special snowflake. Scholars and White Mages are designed to work together. White Mages are the unquestioned kings of throughput/reactive healing. Scholars are designed to be the kings of mitigation and pre-planning. These two playstyles mesh really, really well in a two-heal scenario, and allow for much more complicated and intense encounters.