Quote Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind View Post
They're all good for different reasons.
SCH mains just need to get off their high-horses a bit.
High horse? Hardly. For starters, I'm on the main healer seat for 90% (if not more) of the activity I do with my FC. Meaning I'm usually on White mage or Astrologian and rarely on Scholar. I suppose this doesn't define me as a main Scholar.

As for why Scholars are "the best" right now is quite simple: Scholars simply makes everything more forgiving. Any content can be done with any healer combination, but bringing a Scholar makes things easier for the entire group. It eases up the HP check requirement or allows groups to push for more damage. In 2.X Scholars had this severe weakness for AoE healing, but this has been somewhat addressed as of 3.0. They do not have the ability to continuously heal the group for that much, however. But the addition of Emergency Tactics and Indomitability is definitely a good addition to their healing kit. The only real issue for this particular area of expertise would be the terrible MP/recovery ratio of their AoE healing capacity.

Does this make the other healers sub-optimal or a inferior pick? Well, no. Scholars have a pretty bad heal/mp ratio on single target or is very GCD inefficient. The basic healing spell is the same as White Mage's, but Adloquium is by far the most expensive spell. Obviously, you don't spam Adloquium to top someone off as with Cure II or Benefic II. Thus this makes their single target healing GCD inefficient. You could argue that the fairy's there to help buffer up the GCD inefficiency. But if that fairy's there for you, it's also there for the other healer.

So why not bring two Scholars if "they're the best"? Simply because the scholar-scholar synergy is terrible compared to whm/sch or ast/sch. I mentioned before that any job combination can be done for any content. But depending on the combination the gear check will be relatively high, compared to White Mage or Astrologian with a Scholar. Not convinced? Go into King Thordan EX with two White Mages with entry requirement equipment and see if your group can survive Ultimate End.