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One of the disadvantages of playing a hand post-flop from early position is that any attempt to get in a raise bears the cost of occasional missed bets and free cards. The late position player who regards continuation bets as "mandatory" neutralizes a substantial part of his positional advantage. One should not continuation bet all the time when checked to--that helps your opponent by foreclosing opportunities for him to make mistakes.

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You are also correct. When you feel your opponent won't call your bet with a worse hand but he may bluff the next street if you show weakness that's fine, but this was a coordinated flop that helped hero's hand enough that a semi-bluff was definitely appropriate. Sure you're trying to induce villain into making a mistake, but why give him control of the hand when you have no clue where you stand here? I like your thinking much better when hero is the one holding a monster on a ragged, non-coordinated flop that's very likely to have missed the villain. Hero was the original aggressor and I think that he needs to make an attempt to keep that control here and let villain define his hand a bit to us. This isn't exactly a safe flop for hero here - he's behind plenty of hands that call preflop and needs to hit his draw if he is going to win this hand. If you check behind and allow villain to lead the turn, what if an offsuit 9 falls and now you have a flush draw + straight draw and villain leads the turn? You've picked up some more outs but do you have any clue how strong your hand (or draw) may be in relation to the villains? With this line you only lose a small amount on a hand where you stand to lose a considerable amount by continuing on and missing your draws. The other possibility, as I stated earlier, is that villain may have called preflop with any pair 22-QQ and be ahead of you here but capable of laying it down if he can put you on a hand with a king and he isn't holding a pair that hit a set on the flop. It's unlikely that he'll fold a better hand on later streets if you don't represent a hand that's ahead of his right now.