How should they address the disparity within the role?

[Connor]

snip for characters

What’s most confusing to me is that in general you don’t really see people acknowledging how absolutely busted Scholar has been for quite a long time. Though I guess maybe it’s just so obvious it’s never needed to be said. And I say that as one of the last remaining Scholar mains in existence lol.

I think one of the reasons Scholar has been so enduringly superior as a healer is that they’re constantly ‘power creeping’ it. That is to say, they add conditionals or tactical considerations to the abilities that are supposed to limit their strength when used reactively/without a plan…then immediately go and remove those conditions and considerations with things like Recitation allowing forced crits for pretty much every mechanic or even things like Excogitation auto-applying if the target doesn’t reach 50% (but keeping the same massive potency it had when it didn’t auto-apply lol). What started out as a specialised, tactical job with clear strengths and weaknesses (i.e strong single target weaker aoe etc), has gradually become so powerful that it can just do anything now. I mean, I can’t really think of any mechanic that can’t be solved with using Seraphism and farting out literal miracles lol

Whether Astrologian is in the same category of ‘being ridiculously perfect relative to encounter design’, I honestly don’t know. But I think if they want to address the disparity between healers that really needs to start with looking at how SCH compares with SGE (and the other healers too) and their capabilities/strengths/weaknesses. Then they need to determine an actual concrete identity for White Mage beyond ‘does a heal’ lol. Right now its main identity is basically the same as Sage’s lol - ‘I’m a worse version of my superior counterpart!’