Sage quick mechanics overview

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Actually he was arguing against the idea making Toxikon DPS neutral, not describing an existing "issue" with it. I brought up how making it neutral would make Sage's gameplay far more fluid and fun, and he fears that if they did make it neutral, it would make Sage's spam barrier on the tank.

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From what I can see, it is possible to make it dps neutral via pre-shielding, shielding during phase changes, etc. I do still agree that it should be 660 potency because seeing my GCD heals gather dust during a fight is not a good feeling. Increase the potency of just this one ability, and everything in Sage's kit comes together.

I just had an epiphany that the healers would feel SO much better to play if all their DPS abilities from GCD healing were DPS neutral, for example raising Afflatus Misery's potency to 930+. This is why I feel like, for Scholar, they should do something similar to also encourage them to GCD shield, mid-fight. That and maybe also nerf all the oGCDs on all the healers to further incentivize this new play style.

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Originally Posted by Iedarus

From what I can see, it is possible to make it dps neutral via pre-shielding, shielding during phase changes, etc. I do still agree that it should be 660 potency because seeing my GCD heals gather dust during a fight is not a good feeling. Increase the potency of just this one ability, and everything in Sage's kit comes together.

I just had an epiphany that the healers would feel SO much better to play if all their DPS abilities from GCD healing were DPS neutral, for example raising Afflatus Misery's potency to 930+. This is why I feel like, for Scholar, they should do something similar to also encourage them to GCD shield, mid-fight. That and maybe also nerf all the oGCDs on all the healers to further incentivize this new play style.

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Actually Afflatus Misery's Potency would need to be 1240 to be DPS neutral since it also consumes a GCD cast. Lily + Lily + Lily + AM = 900 (currently) while Glare + Glare + Glare + Glare = 1240 (As of EW)

I brought this up in a different thread, but Afflatus Misery could also stand to be a DPS gain rather than a loss. Because Lily generation is timed, you can only currently pump out Misery so often anyway, so you don't have this excess pressure to spam lilies like you might if spells like Pneuma or Macrocosmos were DPS gains. Much like Assize, you'd be pressured to use them on Cooldown rather than for their defensive utility which defeats the purpose. Imagine also if Cure 1 nourished the Blood Lily and Misery did something like 1300 potency. WHMs would literally be spamming Cure 1 instead of Glare because the net gain would be better, but since you can't do that with lilies, you can find the right moments to use them rather than burning them on-site.

I'd also want to experiment with keeping Misery at 900 potency, but also trying to include more ways to manipulate Blood Lily nourishment to gain DPS. One idea in a dead thread that came up was a Lily spell that nourished the blood lily, increased the potency of the next lily heal, and deal damage to enemies nearby the healed ally based on a percentage of HP overheal if not just a flat potency. Regardless of how it was implemented, if WHM had the ability to close the gap of that loss and turn that into a gain somehow with the way they healed and supported, you could keep WHM with a fairly shallow DPS action pool and still add a lot of depth with how experienced healers could interact with the kit in order to maximize Misery's DPS potential, and I feel like that would ultimately be a win-win. It keeps the job simple with a baseline level of forgiveness while allowing experts to push the kit further.

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Originally Posted by Iedarus

From what I can see, it is possible to make it dps neutral via pre-shielding, shielding during phase changes, etc. I do still agree that it should be 660 potency because seeing my GCD heals gather dust during a fight is not a good feeling. Increase the potency of just this one ability, and everything in Sage's kit comes together.

I just had an epiphany that the healers would feel SO much better to play if all their DPS abilities from GCD healing were DPS neutral, for example raising Afflatus Misery's potency to 930+. This is why I feel like, for Scholar, they should do something similar to also encourage them to GCD shield, mid-fight. That and maybe also nerf all the oGCDs on all the healers to further incentivize this new play style.

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I don't think SCH's mechanics really allow that since SCH's identity lies more in oGCDs than GCDs, unless they decide to have shield breaks feed the fairy gauge instead of Aetherflow usage. But, the fairy gauge doesn't provide any DPS directly. It's just more healing.

However, if we're talking about SCH's mechanics and DPS, right now, using Aetherflow healing causes a DPS loss since that's one less stack for Energy Drain. This also affects their MP generation. If using Aetherflow healing was like how TBN worked, i.e. TBN breaks, get a free use of Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow, then SCH would have one of their core problems fixed.

It still suffers in other areas, but at least I won't feel like shit for using my stacks as the developers want me to.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

You realize it's basically impossible to 100% sustain shields due to the mp cost? You learn that pretty quickly on SCH, and that's going to be true on SGE.

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Yea realistically you won't have 100% uptime shields ofc. But you only need 3 at the time, as toxicon 2 have 0 mana cost, your shields would cost 1000 - 400 (dosis cost) so to spam shields you would be down 200 mana for every shield.

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Originally Posted by Laphicet

Here's the problem. As others have pointed out (and I was corrected about), Toxikon is a DPS loss. Not neutral, a loss. You have no reason to use a GCD shield to fish for it as that would just result in you losing out on two dosis only to get back one dosis if the shield breaks. It's better to rely on your OGCDs instead and pretend the mechanic doesn't exist. That's not too good design now, is it? If they made it neutral you'd have a reason to go for it due to the movement, and in spite of what you're saying it wouldn't be constant movement since you'd still need to wait for the shield to break, as early refreshing and pepsis don't give you addersting. Plus if the shield never broke you'd still waste a GCD. The only time you'd use it with the current design would be if you ran out of OGCDs to use, and that's already an awful situation to be in.

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Yea my point was that toxicon MUST be a dps loss. Not an entire dosis of a loss but something akin to the difference between a ruin2 to a broil. So it should have around 580 potency so 80 potency loss. 330 potency loss is way too high and how it is now its basically a pre pull/downtime mechanic

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Originally Posted by Sighearth

Yea my point was that toxicon MUST be a dps loss. Not an entire dosis of a loss but something akin to the difference between a ruin2 to a broil. So it should have around 580 potency so 80 potency loss. 330 potency loss is way too high and how it is now its basically a pre pull/downtime mechanic

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"Toxicon MUST be a DPS lost or else SGE might want to actually use a core function of their kit."

... Hello?

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

"Toxicon MUST be a DPS lost or else SGE might want to actually use a core function of their kit."

... Hello?

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I guess it not worth even try to explain if that is your point. Why don't we make every healing gcd gives a resource that does a ton of damage so you can just heal freely and dps freely so you can massively reward overhealing and 0 optimization or planning? If you think spam shields/regens brainless and having no cut in efficiency is fulfilling a core function then I'm glad the devs are diverting from you view of a core function.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

I don't think SCH's mechanics really allow that since SCH's identity lies more in oGCDs than GCDs, unless they decide to have shield breaks feed the fairy gauge instead of Aetherflow usage. But, the fairy gauge doesn't provide any DPS directly. It's just more healing.

However, if we're talking about SCH's mechanics and DPS, right now, using Aetherflow healing causes a DPS loss since that's one less stack for Energy Drain. This also affects their MP generation. If using Aetherflow healing was like how TBN worked, i.e. TBN breaks, get a free use of Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow, then SCH would have one of their core problems fixed.

It still suffers in other areas, but at least I won't feel like shit for using my stacks as the developers want me to.

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Of course they'd still have their oGCDs but they'd have a reason to supplement those with their GCDs. The Fae Gauge just needs an overhaul. Quite frankly, since Scholar's true identity comes from their stratagems and tactics, I kinda wish they would just take focus away from the fairy and create a new meter which would allow for the usage of said new, powerful tactics/stratagems. The summoning of aetheric beings is Summoner's thing, anyway, and if the devs really want to separate the two, this is one way to do it.

Well the problem there lies in the fact that a damage ability uses the same resource as healing. Sage doesn't have this issue which is why it looks so much better to play. I feel like they should just replace energy drain with a GCD damage ability that procs off shield breaks, or something, that doesn't consume aetherflow, while figuring out another way to not have aetherflow overlap.

Edit: Wait, I got it: What if dissipation was reworked so that you eat your remaining stacks to fill the fairy gauge or augment something else?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Literally all they need to do is double the potency to 660 and suddenly, even though it's DPS neutral, you're still getting a heal and barrier out of that which is increasing healer DPS indirectly and thus ultimately something you want to prioritize. Would actually make a significant difference in Sage's playstyle that not only would help in giving veterans more skill expression, but also doesn't pressure casual play in any way.

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Sounds like a problem another healer job has……. I don’t think they gonna buff it. They never did for whm.

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Originally Posted by Iedarus

Well the problem there lies in the fact that a damage ability uses the same resource as healing. Sage doesn't have this issue which is why it looks so much better to play. I feel like they should just replace energy drain with a GCD damage ability that procs off shield breaks, or something, that doesn't consume aetherflow, while figuring out another way to not have aetherflow overlap.

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SCH functionally breaks without a way to dump Aetherflow stacks as we found out at the beginning of ShB. Fey Union directly feeds off of Aetherflow usage. Dissipation generates extra Aetherflow stacks. Without Energy Drain or healing demands that require that much Aetherflow usage, SCH does not work. I know because I was there.

Aetherflow is SCH's core mechanic and also its core issue. With SGE having a similar mechanic, I'd rather SCH get reworked to have something else.