SCH needs some nerfs

[Eloah]

I'd argue Scholar is the best healer for oh crap moments, raids or any content.

SCH was not horrible at the beginning of 4.0, the cries in this forum were mostly people who couldn't even play the job correctly.

SCHs aren't bad at Oh Crap moments per se, it's their kit isn't really designed for it and the moves they have for it are oGCD moves. The biggest thing is SCH has no spammable AoE. But as you said other moves can make up for that bringing them up to par.

As for the 4.0 SCH, I wont say it was unplayable, since I did play it, the issue was more getting rid of skills, potency needs, and no compansation with new skills or adjustment of old ones. Excog was broken, as was the fairy gauge. They nerfed our healing output without giving us anything in return; lily and our mp regeneration was nerfed which played into how we calculated things. The marginalized our shields making them pointless since ASTs were larger and had a lesser mp cost. And they practically made out AoE 0 because they nerfed the heck out of Bane and removed Miasma II, which prior to 4.0 wasnt a widely used skill but still, and some players use blizzard II for AoE as well. Basically they stripped SCHs identity and gave nothing in return. Yeah WHM lillies are meh, but WHM kept everything that was important.

Not to mention, we still have the lowest base heal of the 3 healers, and that's technically our only/main healing move; that's a spell mind you. The rest of our kit is about shielding. I mean I want more shields, call me shield ho if you will, lol, but a Physick II might be nice someday. Also, this is just a general observation, not a complaint.

I just hope for 5.0 we dont have a repeat

I also disagree with your premise that:

1. SCH shouldn't be healing in a raid setting - it has the best tools to deal with healing while not spending the precious commodity known as GCDs
2. Deployment Tactics needs fixing - it's one of the best mitigation tool in the game and enables so much LB cheese in the process; if anything I'd say it needs a nerf

I never said SCH shouldn't heal in raid, that was a comment stating what the OP said.

Also Deployment Tactics does need fixing. You are right it is a good mitigation tool, but only when Adlo crits, which is where all the OP talk comes from spreading a regular Adlo is not much better than a Succor or a Aspected Helios. It is better don't get me wrong, but for an ability that can only be used ever 2 minutes, and on SCH no less it should be, since that's SCH gimmick.

Also, keep this in mind, yes, compared to Aspected Helios, a Deployed Adlo is better, but AST also has a spammable AoE heal without a shield attached. And one could argue that besides Indom, SCH doesn't even have an AoE heal. Aside from when Energency Tactics is used Succor is to be viewed as an an AoE shield, not a heal.

How can we fix Deployment Tactics and not break it or make it OP, I'm not sure. But, it does need a tweak. I will say personally its relation to Eye for an Eye needs adjusting.