I just cant grasp Sage

Sometimes I felt like I'm managing tank cooldowns with Sage. There's I think three skills that give a 10% dmg reduction, though two of them don't stack (but can be used back to back). So it's possible to have 20% dmg reduction at times (with the 120sec cd skill though) and able to keep up 10% mitigation at most times. The multi-stack shields (Hainama and Panhainama or something?) seem really cool and unique (.. so much that I often forget to use them since I'm not used to anything similar on my hotkeys), though the aoe one seems -very- situational. Can't think of many situation where the entire party gets hit multiple repetitive times, but guess maybe the 81-90 content has some more of that (only ones I can think of are the stack-marker lasers that hit multiple times, like pagl'than last boss or final steps of faith or moon lady)

Not a Sage main. Only played it a bit, that said it has some strong heals. I would say this though some tanks don't use proper cooldowns. Take 1 dungeon i did yesterday. Sireson. Tank did the 1st pull and didn't use a single def cooldown except sentinel at the end of the pull. I had to burn all my instant heals to keep him alive instead of periodically throwing one out as I dps to heal him with Kardia.

If you're really struggling, I recommend to go practice in a lower level dungeon first so it's not as if you get a full list of skills you have to figure out. This helps you consolidate a small section of the sage's toolkit at a time. After familiarizing with what you have learned so far, then you can go read tooltips for other skills, and then practice those skills in a higher level dungeon. That helped me get a good grasp of the Sage's toolkit.

EX: If you pop Kradia on the tank in Satasha and then spam Dosis, you can sustain them very well at Satasha (Lv 15).
Then you go to level 30 dungeons to practice how Eukrasia works and Phlegma for positioning.
Then you go to level 45 to 50 dungeons to practice with your Sage Gauge, Icarus, and Soteria. At this point, you should be working on getting a feel on when to heal, and how much you can use your passive healing from Kardia to sustain them.
Then to level 60 for new abilities - practicing how Zoe will augment your heals, when to best use Pepsis over your other healing tools, and how effective the upgraded Physis II works in tandem to your healing abilities.
Then to level 70 for newer abilities - figuring out when to use Taurochole and Haima, preshielding for Toxikon stacks.
And then you're set to where you need to be. You can continue the same pattern of learning at level 80 and level 90.

That's the prob with starting at lvl 70.
There's a lot to learn about the role first, then the job.

That's why it feels unintuitive or unfun.
I don't recommand people jumping into healing with Sage if they never healed before unless they have at least some strong knowledge of how it can perform.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

If you're really struggling, I recommend to go practice in a lower level dungeon first so it's not as if you get a full list of skills you have to figure out. This helps you consolidate a small section of the sage's toolkit at a time. After familiarizing with what you have learned so far, then you can go read tooltips for other skills, and then practice those skills in a higher level dungeon. That helped me get a good grasp of the Sage's toolkit.

EX: If you pop Kradia on the tank in Satasha and then spam Dosis, you can sustain them very well at Satasha (Lv 15).
Then you go to level 30 dungeons to practice how Eukrasia works and Phlegma for positioning.
Then you go to level 45 to 50 dungeons to practice with your Sage Gauge, Icarus, and Soteria. At this point, you should be working on getting a feel on when to heal, and how much you can use your passive healing from Kardia to sustain them.
Then to level 60 for new abilities - practicing how Zoe will augment your heals, when to best use Pepsis over your other healing tools, and how effective the upgraded Physis II works in tandem to your healing abilities.
Then to level 70 for newer abilities - figuring out when to use Taurochole and Haima, preshielding for Toxikon stacks.
And then you're set to where you need to be. You can continue the same pattern of learning at level 80 and level 90.

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This is my preferred method of learning new classes. It lets you digest the entire kit of a class step by step instead of being dumped on by a ton of skills and trying to put the jigsaw puzzle together.

Jesus, calm down.
Maybe try and get the role first, than the basics of the job, read its tooltips, before coming to the forums and calling a job "garbage"

Sage it's not as easy as WHM, it's pretty complex, their own kit has some pretty nice interactions with itself, but it takes some time to get used to it
just like AST you can't simply jump into a new role, get the most complex job and expect everything to be a piece of cake. o. O

I've been using sage so far in story and have a good grasp on it, only usage situation I haven't figured out is Pepsis. It can only be used to dispel a shield into a heal, otherwise it does nothing. Is it just a skill to do just that? If I wait for damage then the shield is gone and Pepsis doesn't work. It seems to be a 50 potency increase for using it though but it doesn't feel good to use.

Everything else is pretty simple. I'm a little shy of 83 before the game refused to let me login for nearly 5 hours today.

i think sage is similiar to scholar in its time based spread of skills for scholar you use emergency tactics to boost your 2 basic heals for sage you use eukrasia to boost them but added bonus you have pepsis for that extra if needed burst also similar to scholar where youd use fey blessing or indomitable so if your struggling with sage try scholar out see if that helps things click

use the force

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Originally Posted by Mesarthim

I've been using sage so far in story and have a good grasp on it, only usage situation I haven't figured out is Pepsis. It can only be used to dispel a shield into a heal, otherwise it does nothing. Is it just a skill to do just that? If I wait for damage then the shield is gone and Pepsis doesn't work. It seems to be a 50 potency increase for using it though but it doesn't feel good to use.

Everything else is pretty simple. I'm a little shy of 83 before the game refused to let me login for nearly 5 hours today.

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Pepsis was the most interesting part of the Sage kit to me. Barriers only last 30 seconds so the effective hp is lost if you aren't able to predict damage well. Pepsis acts as a safety net for inexperienced shield healers to always get value out of their barriers. For more advanced usage though I thought about attacks that can't be shielded at all. Take for instance the occasional mechanic where everyone has their health dropped to a single digit. These attacks ignore shields completely but a Sage can use preemptive shielding and convert it into health with Pepsis. Warrior of Light Extreme is a prime example where a Sage could shield early during the countdown and benefit thanks to Pepsis while a Scholar would be wasting their time doing the same.