Some Sage Discussion

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Originally Posted by JanVanding

I'm going to borrow a quote from Mr Happy here.

"If Sages were given any buffs, what's the point of even using any of the other 3 healers?"

We are in an excellent spot, there's just a learning curve to adhere to when it comes to them.

That said I'd absolutely make Toxikon an OGCD, it's a movement button sure (we already have Phlegma for that to be fair) but the fact it costs addersting, is only damage neutral except when used as an opener and is a GCD makes it a very clumsy resource spender.

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Phlegma isn't a movement skill because of how potent it is, you need to use it on cooldown, not save it for movement.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Phlegma isn't a movement skill because of how potent it is, you need to use it on cooldown, not save it for movement.

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Untrue, you have 2 charges for a reason. You either choose to use both for a big attack, or you can choose to use one charge and then save the other for melee movement/double weaving. The flexibility is there depending on what suits your needs at the time without stopping your GCD throughout the whole fight. If you can optimize and use both charges for damage in burst windows, go for it. If doing that would cost you a GCD when you have to move and slidecasting with Dosis can't cover it... then you didn't optimize your Phlegma /Toxikon stacks well enough and ended up losing more than if you had just saved Phlegma for movement.

Exactly. Phlegma can serve well as a movement tool and with its 45s cooldown per charge, it won't naturally align with every 2min burst anyway.
And the 6y range is fairly lenient for a "melee skill" because you can use it even when halfway out and still cover enough distance to get at full range within the GCD. Not every movement can be covered with slidecasting, some Lilies, Ruin IIs, non-burst Phlegmas and even Toxikons will be necessary. Better that than doing nothing because "burst optimization".

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Originally Posted by LachleinStratos

I don't have too much issue regarding Kardia, except I was hoping all Sage's dps to Kardion target did not just heal, but also provide a minor barrier.
For example, halved the current cure potency and apply minor barrier on the other half potency for Phlegma, Dyskrasia and Toxikon.

What I personally would like to see more is Eukrasia upgrades.
Eukrasia currently only upgrades Diagnosis (healing), Prognosis (healing) and Dosis (DoT). This is an awesome design and I believe it what makes Sage unique. This upgrade can be further explored to upgrade other abilities in the utility department. I believe SE will definitely introduce them in the next expansion. Here are my versions.

Phlegma upgraded to Eukrasian Phlegma
Eukrasian Phlegma spreads your primary target with Eukrasian Dosis to all nearby enemies and refreshing its timer.
You can do this every 45 seconds with 2 charges while you are in melee range which makes sense.

Icarus upgraded to Eukrasian Icarus
Rush to a target enemy's or party's location. Create a barrier to the target and everyone you passed through.
Barrier potency: 200
Very niche however you are able to rush to protect all party members you pass through by doing some positionals between yourself and the party into stacking phase

Holos upgraded to Eukrasian Holos
Cure potency: 150
Reduces damage taken by self and nearby party members by 20%
This version trades healing for a stronger party wide mitigation

Toxikon upgraded to Eukrasian Toxikon
Requires 3 Addersting to use Eukrasian Toxikon. Instant cast and cost no mana.
Create holograms Milpreves (4 floaties) to continously cast Toxikon three times on your target.
Instead of pressing Toxikon each time off GCD, this allow you to expand all at once in situations where you require dishing out continuous minor heals while you cast other spells.
At the moment there is no other reason to use Toxikon outside instant cast moving phase and it does not cost mana. This give us a better reason to stack 3 Addersting and reward us for this function.

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I mirror your sentiment, with one exception: Eukrasian Icarus. As it is now, each Eukrasia upgrade changes the spell enough that there's a reason to use both variants. There's no reason for me to use Icarus over your Eukrasian Icarus because it's basically Icarus but better. I wouldn't mind the Icarus upgrade bascially becoming a Rescue on a lower cooldown (I would love to use rescue on the noobs more often). However, I see what you're trying to do and whole-heartedly agree. So far, my only complaint for the class (level 80) is the lack of Eukrasian upgrades. As you said, Eukrasia undoubtedly feels like the Sage's unique selling point, and they should lean into it more.

Actually, come to think of it, didn't Dark Knight have something like Eukrasia in Stormblood? I can't remember.

In many of the high-end fights, we have many situation where each healer heals their own respective portion of the damage and have to heal separate objective such as ST/OT. I have already seen parties that deny SGE by locking the spot to SCH.
IMO the bare minimum adjustment for Sage healing is the following:

• Diagnosis to 700 potency without changing E. Diagnosis: this is to quickly bring up hp of the revived party member. I had many situations where I have nothing but E. diagnosis because my addersgall is for the next incoming party aoe/tank buster. I have to pray that the downed is healed by co-healer. No boss is really gonna wait for me to cast multiple cure 1. (WHM/AST/SCH laughing with their fat heal) Hell, I sometimes couldn't even save myself after I get revived. It is just stressful.
  
  
• Rhizomata to 60s cooldown: addersgall feels harder to preserve even though it charges up after some time. SCH aetherflow is 3 stacks right away per 60s for multiple uses.
  
  
• Holos and Panhaima to 90s: this would make boss heavy constant damage situation much more manageable without taxing the co-healer.
  
  
• Haima to 60s at least: Consider SCH Exocogitation is 45s. Haima on the other hand with similar usage is a harsh 120s for no reason. I hated the idea that I must save Haima for tank buster and no other use when SCH can throw Excog on revived party member as well as constantly throws it at the tank on ANY situation.

sage is ok for me so far, love the funnel lol

- icarus being 2 charge is fine by me, but considering we heal from range, is there any point being 2 charge? unless it has additional effect like instantly heal the target party member who we charge to, then yeah flying to someone is going to be a habit.

- i take soteria skill want to be the "plan ahead" skill, so when tank aggro a lot, you pop soteria and hope the extra heal from kardia can help you more, but it kinda fall flat for me since extra 50% effect for 130 potency is heal is not a lot at all.

in my mind, i want soteria to become a skill when you active, the kardia effect will trigger by itself every 3 seconds or something like that, basically when it active, it become temporary auto regen.

- i feel like eukrasian diagnosis and prognosis should be pure barrier only skill, i always use this as opening skill for my tank, so the direct 300 potency heal feel kinda wasted since the tank is usually still at full hp, if the tank drop to half or something, i just use the "addersgall" heal or just normal heal.

- dyskrasia (our aoe attack) should be on range? i mean its funnel, its flying around, why we need to get close to our enemy? lol

I feel like I'm on the opposite side of the fence for a lot of people regarding sage.

Frankly speaking, most of its kit is reasonably strong, and there's a surprisingly little anti-synergy with SCH. Sure, our shields overwrite, but if you're together with a SCH, just don't use them. SGE mostly relies on damage reduction and regen in the first place.

While we won't know for sure until savage drops, I think SGE's only real weaknesses is on the single target heals, pepsis being crap, Icarus and Rhizomata needing a second charge, the anti-synergy regarding addersting generation and usage, and soteria's weirdly long CD.

Overall, I've found use for pretty much every skill SGE has, and had no real trouble doing either EX trials.

SGE feels a bit weak, but I don't think it play weak at all.

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Originally Posted by nelothi

Your name is rather... fitting.

moving on.

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Seems you aren't looking for a discussion but instead an echo chamber

I really like Pepsis in particular because it changes the timing of your shielding to be more intuitive with the way a Scholar plays to avoid overwriting each other. Scholar has bigger shields so they are the logical choice to use a GCD shield for the party before damage comes out if needed. Once a cast bar for a raid wide starts a Scholar who still needs to GCD heal is going to use Emergency Tactics to transform their next Succor or Adlo into raw healing. A Sage in the same party would use Eukrasion Prognosis/Diagnosis to burst heal AFTER damage goes out to take advantage of Pepsis and convert their barriers into more healing. Emergency Tactics tells a Scholar to Shield before damage happens. Pepsis tells a Sage to Shield after because if the shields are absorbed by damage Pepsis can't be used. If you understand both toolkits you shouldn't ever be overwriting GCD shields and this entire situation assumes that both healers are completely out of oGCDs to begin with. I'm actually very pleased by the shield healers synergy. Pepsis is clever in that regard although it feels very odd for anyone coming from Scholar since it's the reverse of what your habits are.

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Originally Posted by JanVanding

I'm going to borrow a quote from Mr Happy here.

"If Sages were given any buffs, what's the point of even using any of the other 3 healers?"

We are in an excellent spot, there's just a learning curve to adhere to when it comes to them.

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Nah, if Sage isn't given any buff, why would you bring a Sage? Just bring a SCH.
Happy is... Not the youtuber I'd quote, he has a respectable experience with the game but not all of his words are the absolute truth. IMO they're often far from the truth and the kind of guy to be baited by flashing things, but that's another topic.

Sage will inevitably suffers the comparison from SCH.
A lot of tools are much better than SGE's tools, Protraction, Expedient, Excog are all amazing tools.
In comparison SGE got Krasis that traded 10% max hp for 10% healing (on all action, including tank cooldowns).

Holos and Expedient, Expedient wins.
Reason behind that is simple to me, Holos has a heal AND its mitig lats 20 seconds. Where do you use that? During a long series of raid wide? Before those raidwide when your team will be already topped?
Expedient can be used before to snapshot the most raidwide and has the sprint if you need to move. I can think of a lot of situation in ultimate where Expedient would've made a lot of players nerdgasm.
On top of that, SCH has Fey Blessing that is probably the healing part of Holos. SGE is SCH but with a lot of button merged together. You have to press less buttons but you don't have the flexibility, if you want to mitig AoE you will use Kerachole and/or Holos, SCH can use Sacred Soil and Expedient, then use Fey Blessing.

Pepsis is okay but will never be considered for single target healing. The only scenario I can see pepsis used is after a transition when there is no target and your team lost a bunch of hp.
Or your team needs to move a lot, there is no target and you need to heal during that time, UCOB and Heavensfall or example. If there is a target and you need Burst Heal, Zoe+Pneuma.
Even then, on my test with current BiS, 2 Progonis heal for 11k, Eukrasian prognosis + Pepsis heals for 1.7k and 6.4k respectively. I can't think of a situation where your shield is half damaged and you want to break it, that would need too much setup of a low reward when you can just have your AST using its Star or Zoe+Pneuma yourself.
Oh and Ixochole heals for 7.5k.

Then, the weakest tool of the whole SGE kit is in my opinion Rhizomata. Its cooldown is too high for its effect.
It has to be compared to Recitation that makes an ability free and critical. Not only "free" means you can use it at 3 aetherflow, there is also a critical on it!

IMO, SGE wins on SCH with Kerachole and Pneuma, despite its cooldown far too long. I can't be exactly sure about Seraphin and Haima/Panhaima.
Other than that, SGE should remain good enough for harder content.

Pepsis is extremely underwhelming with how weak sage shields are.

Often, a tank loses it for a single auto attack so you waste Pepsis.

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Originally Posted by NobleWinter

I really like Pepsis in particular because it changes the timing of your shielding to be more intuitive with the way a Scholar plays to avoid overwriting each other. Scholar has bigger shields so they are the logical choice to use a GCD shield for the party before damage comes out if needed. Once a cast bar for a raid wide starts a Scholar who still needs to GCD heal is going to use Emergency Tactics to transform their next Succor or Adlo into raw healing. A Sage in the same party would use Eukrasion Prognosis/Diagnosis to burst heal AFTER damage goes out to take advantage of Pepsis and convert their barriers into more healing. Emergency Tactics tells a Scholar to Shield before damage happens. Pepsis tells a Sage to Shield after because if the shields are absorbed by damage Pepsis can't be used. If you understand both toolkits you shouldn't ever be overwriting GCD shields and this entire situation assumes that both healers are completely out of oGCDs to begin with. I'm actually very pleased by the shield healers synergy. Pepsis is clever in that regard although it feels very odd for anyone coming from Scholar since it's the reverse of what your habits are.

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I still vastly prefer emergency tactics where I can pure heal on demand. Shields that are already applied to party members often better left alone instead of getting destroyed by pepsis.
Even in dungeon, the shield I pepsis'd end up making me heal harder after the next aoe damage taken. For now I only use pepsis to purposely rid of low duration shield, so I can reapply new one to the party.

After some discussion with a healer main friend, we stumbled on a dead end: what is SGE’s answer to Living Dead? Sure SCH too had a hard time but they’re not 100% hopeless to solo heal a living dead. At least on SCH I can semi-plan Emergency Tactic by having the buff active & use it within next 15s window before repeating it 2nd time for quick bursts of heals. This helped me to squeeze in two ET'd Adlo within LD's tight 9s window in addition to other existing resources (Obviously the best answer would be not to letting them proc the invuln at all, but still...)

I’d guess Zoe would be incorporated, but with what? Pepsis is hilariously weak unless you’re trying to refresh your shield’s timer when you accidentally applied the former too soon to catch incoming damage.

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Originally Posted by Miziliti

I still vastly prefer emergency tactics where I can pure heal on demand. Shields that are already applied to party members often better left alone instead of getting destroyed by pepsis.
Even in dungeon, the shield I pepsis'd end up making me heal harder after the next aoe damage taken. For now I only use pepsis to purposely rid of low duration shield, so I can reapply new one to the party.

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you can weave pepsis right after using e prognosis though?

if you need the hp you dont need the shield, and if it doesnt matter then pepsis isnt needed. its the same with emergency tactics. if you Do need the hp and the shield both sch and sage accomplish the same in 2 gcds (succor + etactics succor, or e.prognosis + pepsis + e prognosis)

i fail to understand what youre trying to say here

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

After some discussion with a healer main friend, we stumbled on a dead end: what is SGE’s answer to Living Dead? Sure SCH too had a hard time but they’re not 100% hopeless to solo heal a living dead. At least on SCH I can semi-plan Emergency Tactic by having the buff active & use it within next 15s window before repeating it 2nd time for quick bursts of heals. This helped me to squeeze in two ET'd Adlo within LD's tight 9s window in addition to other existing resources (Obviously the best answer would be not to letting them proc the invuln at all, but still...)

I’d guess Zoe would be incorporated, but with what? Pepsis is hilariously weak unless you’re trying to refresh your shield’s timer when you accidentally applied the former too soon to catch incoming damage.

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zoe pneuma is like 900 potency, and you can buff it to 1188 potency with krasis and physis. a buffed taurochole or druochole should easily finish the job after that. and even if not, you still have time to use a buffed e.diag then pepsis



read tooltips guys its not hard lol

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Originally Posted by QooEr

zoe pneuma is like 900 potency, and you can buff it to 1188 potency with krasis and physis. a buffed taurochole or druochole should easily finish the job after that. and even if not, you still have time to use a buffed e.diag then pepsis

read tooltips guys its not hard lol

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Heh, so in the end it still take as much effort as SCH. Honestly, I didn't think of using Pneuma for I've always used it for AoE healing. Granted, it's also my least touched healer. I'll gladly take your input to good use.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

After some discussion with a healer main friend, we stumbled on a dead end: what is SGE’s answer to Living Dead?

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Same as SCH honestly, hope you have resources saved up and spam DuoChloe or a Zoe > Euk/Diag > Pepsis

But if you're low on resources because the DRK didn't pre-plan the use (aka everything is going to sh!t), then yeah LD is almost always a death sentence if you're not a WHM

This pepsis discussion ..... I will add, and I may be wrong, but the game does alot of buff/debuff snapshots. Therefore, like with warrior, I would/could actually line up my mitigation(s), wait for the incoming damage animation and hit shake it off to snapshot the mitigation buff(s) as it falls off. This if course buffs the shield of shake.

With pepsis I think, and I have tried this, used it as the damage (snapshot/animation) went off triggering the heals as the shield fell off. I'll need to record the process to see if the heals truly proc (^_^). If so, it's kinda an interesting skill play (latency be damned though). Depends on the response and priority of pepsis with the server as well.

Hence, you should technically get both benefits (damage reduction/heal). Again, I have not done a formal check. If not, than yes this ability is to "clear" your shields to, in some cases, add a bigger buffed shield or to get the mobility (emergency tactics) healing of E-prgnosis.

*Stronger shields overwrite weaker ones as many probably know*

Pepsis is also well suited to testing given that the tool tip says if E-prgnosis or E-diagnosis is not on a player they do not receive healing.
I'm not logged in so I won't be able to check this for a bit.

Shields feel weak at the start of every expansion. It usually gets better with gear.

And LD is just a bad skill. It might be made better if healers constantly overcap their resources, but otherwise, it's very much a "don't use unless you have a whm" skill or your healers have a plan. And even if your healers have a plan it's probably still better to just do the mechanic properly.
It's great for blind prog though, to get that extra few seconds of footage.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

After some discussion with a healer main friend, we stumbled on a dead end: what is SGE’s answer to Living Dead?

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Frankly, it's to avoid it at all costs.

Unless if it's preplanned, it's just better to either desperately try to avoid triggering Walking Dead, or just give up on the DRK and ready a Raise. If I think that I don't stand a good chance at preventing Walking Dead from triggering, that's what I would do, as seeing Living Dead pop up on the buff bar means I'm not panicking enough.

There's simply no way if you're doing a half decent job at managing your CDs, that you'll have enough of the right ones up to recover from Living Dead on your own. It's far worse than as SCH, as the most important skill for SCH to use on Living Dead is ETactics, which has such a short CD that you'll almost never be without it when you need it. And if you have Recitation up, that's like 70% HP on a single GCD.

For SGE, if you don't have Pneuma or Durochole up, you stand no chance at recovering from Living Dead I believe. Even with one of them, it'll be a struggle to do it, and you'll be doing it while ignoring the rest of the party, so hope that nobody else needs additional healing beyond the AOEs you're using for the sake of that DRK until you've recovered a bit of your resources.

I am fairly curious about my experience with SGE. Just because of some of the comments I've read and I think the experiences sound mixed. On the one hand, I read comments about how heals feel weak, and of course the above query about handling Living Dead. This is all stuff that falls in line with my experience, which to me is positive because my experience has been closer to what I've asked for. Then on the other hand we've had comments on the forums that describe SGE in a similar manner to 5.0 SCH in relation to oGCD's and shields. I've not ran it in much pre-EW content (aside from grinding 71-80 in Bozja) and it sounds like you can play the job mostly using just its oGCD's and not much of its GCD shields. But I feel like I'd run out of oGCD's too soon in pretty much every group I've ran with a couple of exceptions. My experience of 5.0 SCH was that I'd very rarely use my GCD shields because oGCD's were enough and made me remark how I was more of a shield healer on Diurnal AST because of Neutral Sect, which suffices for how frequently I'd comparatively use GCD shields on SCH and because Celestial Opposition was an oGCD shield.

But on SGE:
I've got decent gear, whilst I'm not yet fully geared, but nearly there...I mean by yesterday's standard, now that the new patch is out, I have the next tier to get.
I've ran SGE through all EW dungeons and trials
I've ran SGE through all post-MSQ dungeons and doing expert roulettes
I've cleared the first EX trial on SGE and have progged most of the second

And I've found I need to use my GCD shields a lot more than I've seen some suggest. So I am cautious to state, "this balance is great, I am happy with this" if further down the line I realise what I could be doing better and find that it offsets that balance and great feeling and find my feedback was in fact not very good, hence my curiosity.

My admittedly limited experience with Sage has been negative. The job feels weak and overly busy. You have to use multiple abilities together to achieve what other healers do with a single ability.

I genuinely feel sorry for any individual who decides to check out what healing is like and chooses Sage as their first healer. The job is not user friendly and is bound to drive a would-be healer away from the role.

Sage feels strong to me and is strong. Numerically, the healing values are good. A big factor on whether Sage feels weak or strong is if you are using the mitigation and healing % increase effectively - optimizing this aspect, and using Kardia + Soteria will make SGE's heals feel strong. Using them incorrectly will make SGE feel a lot weaker in comparison overtime.

After playing SGE for a while now in pre-Endwalker and Endwalker content, I think a big issue for people thinking Sage feels weak is also because they haven't changed the way they prioritize their healing compared to other healers. The priority on healing abilities really changes as Sage level up, but this is largely due to whether you have access to Rhizomata (an addersgall meaning you spend more healing abilities using the gauge first to avoid overcapping and losing MP), access to Holos (another mitigation, which means you can spread out your healing more), access to Kerakeia (Lv 78 trait) and access to Panhaima. The priority of healing on Sage really evolves as you get higher in level, and it matters a lot more than other healing jobs because SGE just has a lot more synergetic healing skills, so it requires more thought on your part to play Sage effectively.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

what is SGE’s answer to Living Dead?

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

hope you have resources saved up and spam DuoChloe or a Zoe > Euk/Diag > Pepsis

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Yeah... I think best option is: Living Dead > Dead Dead
Just raise and use your cooldowns later

SGE really struggles to get HP back up, but I think it might be the same with SCH.
Death is very punishing for barrier healers

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

My admittedly limited experience with Sage has been negative. The job feels weak and overly busy. You have to use multiple abilities together to achieve what other healers do with a single ability.

I genuinely feel sorry for any individual who decides to check out what healing is like and chooses Sage as their first healer. The job is not user friendly and is bound to drive a would-be healer away from the role.

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This is the problem 2.0 SCH had and it wasn't weaker, it just had a certain way of being played and it was just harder as result. Then they tried to make it less "weak" and it became OP. If anything, I like SGE this way, a variety in difficulty has been something I've been asking for and YoshiP suggested SGE would be harder to learn during the demonstration in the live letter. I think I am understanding why. Normally for people completely new to healing in this game, I've always recommended White Mage but am generally willing to help people get started with the others.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Sage feels strong to me and is strong. Numerically, the healing values are good. A big factor on whether Sage feels weak or strong is if you are using the mitigation and healing % increase effectively - optimizing this aspect, and using Kardia + Soteria will make SGE's heals feel strong. Using them incorrectly will make SGE feel a lot weaker in comparison overtime.

After playing SGE for a while now in pre-Endwalker and Endwalker content, I think a big issue for people thinking Sage feels weak is also because they haven't changed the way they prioritize their healing compared to other healers. The priority on healing abilities really changes as Sage level up, but this is largely due to whether you have access to Rhizomata (an addersgall meaning you spend more healing abilities using the gauge first to avoid overcapping and losing MP), access to Holos (another mitigation, which means you can spread out your healing more), access to Kerakeia (Lv 78 trait) and access to Panhaima. The priority of healing on Sage really evolves as you get higher in level, and it matters a lot more than other healing jobs because SGE just has a lot more synergetic healing skills, so it requires more thought on your part to play Sage effectively.

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Thanks for the perspective. I was wondering if it was something like this, I've been trying to make use of them with my other abilities, but I probably just need to get the balance right. So it's later dependence on oGCD's is less 5.0 SCH where you don't have to give forethought but instead better planning of how you synergize your skills, that to me is a lot better, because I still consider damage reduction as a form of shield healing. But as I expressed with the above, I feel like this is the way it was with 2.0 SCH, I remember people thinking it felt weak but after a time I was able to optimise it and do crazy carries with it where it definitely was not weak and I feel is why it was OP when they gave it more ability to pure heal. I just need to find that spot with SGE.

In which case, I am happy to say I am satisfied with SGE. At the moment, the only changes I would make would be to Toxicon, I want a reason to use it more, I like the mechanic. Anything else, time will tell as I get more efficient. But it feels like they've made the steps in the right direction with it that I want, which I've expressed before with cautious optimism. And I am starting to understand maybe why YoshiP's response in that one interview was "try SGE" when it came to complaints about that lack of engagement.

I feel like what would change this is if I find myself healing 30% and DPSing 70% again, because I don't think SGE's DPS kit is enough to make 70% DPS uptime engaging, especially if we're not getting much use out of Toxicon.

One thing that I do find a little odd with Holos is that it's an AoE flat heal + damage reduction on a long cooldown. You kind of need to use it at very specific moments to get the most out of it. I can't use it before an attack like Kerachole because then I lose all of the healing rather than get that healing from a regen that ticks after the hit goes off, but the damage reduction won't reduce the damage you're immediately trying to address. More optimal use of it will come down to fight knowledge and using it right after the first hit of a high damage phase.

Sage feels weaker in healing output than the other healers still, a bit annoying. It is harder to recover a death from yourself or another player than other healer as well imo. Gcd heals last resort for me but they are so weak without a Zoe that if you hit the point where you need to gcd heals it feels awful. All 3 addersgall on healing 1 dps to reasonable hp from a rez, so rip me if I have a raidwide to heal soon or tank buster or more dps make mistakes which they always do.

There is so much small mitigation in the kit but it also comes with heals so you dont want to waste them, why can they not have excess heals convert into shielding or something? That would be nice. Given we cannot guarantee crit shield like a scholar can, something to help us have a chunkier shield when needed would be nice, zoe makes a very small difference and again its another wasted heal at times.

I've got to say I'm a little disappointed with how Sage turned out. I will admit that this is due to my expectations for the job though. As someone who mained and loved the playstyle of a Discipline Priest in WoW, that's more of what I was hoping for when I heard about Sage. For me, one of the most satisfying parts of a heal-through-damage class is getting that buff (Kardia in our case) on the group and then throwing a heavy hitting ability on something or a powerful dot and watching those delicious green numbers shoot out of all your teammates as their bars fill up.

That's not really a thing for ours here. Imo Kardia doesn't even feel like a main piece of our kit, rather it's just another extra bit of healing that helps smooth things out. The fact that we don't even have an aoe buff application to get Kardia on our teammates shows me that this really isn't the focus of the class. Again, this is fine and I'm still having fun with it and it's still enough to get through content, I was just hoping for something a little different than what we got.

Honestly, Sage requires you to be a bit of a paranoid Healer, and prepare for damage rather than react to it. It is very much like 2.0 Scholar where you prepare and null damage before it happens rather than following the White Mage/Diurnal Mindset.

Funny enough, your Ex Diag is where you get your punch of healing. The job very much does evolve its priorities as it gets higher on in level, requiring you to shift your focus from Dro to Kerachole and Physis as your go to combo. Terachole is your bread and butter, and you should basically have those on cooldown at all times in dungeons.

Sage doesn't really struggle with getting hp up fast, but the methodology is very much different than the other healers. Sage definitely does require a more practiced hand from a veteran healer to use effectively out of the gate, as knowledge of previous mechanics and healer Spidey Sense help as well.

I kinda feel the devs don't understand us or maybe players from Asia are very diferent from NA/EU. All i see in the forums are people wanting better DPS rotations or more fun DPS rotations. But they gave us SGE a healer with Healing Rotations... idk SGE isn't really my style. To many buttons for cheap healing, "clicking 3 rotations" to keep tanks alive... the spells look cool at least.

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Originally Posted by Szylver

I kinda feel the devs don't understand us or maybe players from Asia are very diferent from NA/EU. All i see in the forums are people wanting better DPS rotations or more fun DPS rotations. But they gave us SGE a healer with Healing Rotations... idk SGE isn't really my style. To many buttons for cheap healing, "clicking 3 rotations" to keep tanks alive... the spells look cool at least.

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The request for more fun DPS rotations is mainly because most of the time we're not actually healing and the problem is that it is boring as heck. And it seems like the best way to handle that problem whilst respecting the game's design and healing difficulty. A lot of the time, we fend off people who make the fallacy "if you want to DPS play a DPS" and it's true, but we actually want to heal, DPS is just a part of it.

As one on the "we need better DPS" side of the argument, I am still game for busier healing, because ultimately my main complaint is that Broil and Art of War spams with 30% healing 70% DPSing ratio to be really, really dull, SCH used to handle this problem with a better DPS rotation, but the best version of SCH for me has always been 2.0 and finding similarities of it in SGE I think is going to make me want to hold onto it. I like that it feels weaker because it means I feel like I have more to do. But at the same time, it isn't actually weak, it just has a higher difficulty curve to learn and benefits from you reading encounters more.

But I think it is good that not everybody likes SGE. I think all healers should play differently and appeal to different healing styles, because if you don't like how SGE heals, you might like how WHM heals as an example. I find the big problem has generally been "healers should do this, healers should do that" whereas it should be a lot more job-specific...because otherwise what you get is a more homogenised approach.
SGE has more DPS tools and a weaker pure healing kit but shines with its shields and damage reduction? Great, that's the kind of kit that I want and missed from 2.0 SCH. Sure it's DPS tools are a step down from 2.0 SCH, how busy I've felt so far I feel compensates it. Though that may change but I hope not.

I feel like the danger with the complaints about it feeling week is that do what they did to 2.0 SCH, give it better heals and find suddenly it's OP. Because the people who've optimised it better will be able to output even more DPS.

After getting past the brutal solo duty, I'm finding my opinion of Sage has somewhat changed. I still feel the job is overly busy for a healer. However, it's not underpowered. Sage is fully capable healing job. It's just different.

I found the key to playing a Sage is to play it like the Scholar you always wanted to play. Without the fairy, of course. Sorry, Eos.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

After some discussion with a healer main friend, we stumbled on a dead end: what is SGE’s answer to Living Dead?

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Make your co-heal do it, Swift-Rez, make your DRK mitigate or bring another tank.

Living Dead is an issue with DRK more than Sage tbh. Even if you can solo heal it, it's a resource drain and a thorn in our side.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Make your co-heal do it, Swift-Rez, make your DRK mitigate or bring another tank.

Living Dead is an issue with DRK more than Sage tbh. Even if you can solo heal it, it's a resource drain and a thorn in our side.

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SGE's answer to Living Dead, at full resources: Throw on that 20% Heal Buff, Zoe+Pneuma for a giant heal before going to Ixochole/Taurochole. Physis if you have to or put Haima to prevent damage while you heal. Soteria also is important as people more often than not forget about it - especially with how strong it is per GCD. 4.5k per GCD means you can fit 17k worth of Healing just by rolling your GCD alone 4 times. It's resource intensive, but SGE has the tools to bring up Living Dead by itself if it must.

If it comes down to it, Pepsi(s) and Diagnosis spam may be your only choices of recourse if you don't have Rhizomata or any Addersgall ready(and even then that tells that either you screwed up or too many other people in the party screwed your resources by getting hit by avoidable damage).

So, walking dead or living dead?
If wd, well krasis into physis into zoe e. prognosis into pepsis + druochole.

If it's just ld, well, kindly ask your drk to never use it again, and then just cast krasia/psysis + haima for dungeons or krasis /psysis + taurochole/kerachole + holos of it's really a lot

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

After getting past the brutal solo duty, I'm finding my opinion of Sage has somewhat changed. I still feel the job is overly busy for a healer. However, it's not underpowered. Sage is fully capable healing job. It's just different.

I found the key to playing a Sage is to play it like the Scholar you always wanted to play. Without the fairy, of course. Sorry, Eos.

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I'd agree it's busy but it's "shield" which is what is supposed to be the core of it's gameplay is extremely weak.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

I still feel the job is overly busy for a healer.

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That how I feel about Astrologian. The difference for me is everything a Sage does seems to directly relate to something tangible for them making for smooth intuitive gameplay. Astrologion is always interrupting itself with a wholly unrelated side game of card management.

I would like Holos better if it applied just a shield with the damage reduction. Would feel easier to use since i wouldn’t be wasting that healing for the damage reduction.

I feel like some DRK low key hate SGE. Every time doing a dungeon with DRK as SGE is a wild ride for me.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

SGE's answer to Living Dead, at full resources: Throw on that 20% Heal Buff, Zoe+Pneuma for a giant heal before going to Ixochole/Taurochole. Physis if you have to or put Haima to prevent damage while you heal. Soteria also is important as people more often than not forget about it - especially with how strong it is per GCD. 4.5k per GCD means you can fit 17k worth of Healing just by rolling your GCD alone 4 times. It's resource intensive, but SGE has the tools to bring up Living Dead by itself if it must.

If it comes down to it, Pepsi(s) and Diagnosis spam may be your only choices of recourse if you don't have Rhizomata or any Addersgall ready(and even then that tells that either you screwed up or too many other people in the party screwed your resources by getting hit by avoidable damage).

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In other words, too much of a resource drain. It would be better to just raise the DRK—you’d spend much less on them that way.

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Originally Posted by jojober

I would like Holos better if it applied just a shield with the damage reduction. Would feel easier to use since i wouldn’t be wasting that healing for the damage reduction.

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I find Holos useful if you have back-to-back raidwides—it heals the first and mitigates the second, so you and your co-heal spend less resources healing the second. You can find more uses for the mitigation versus the healing, in my opinion. Multi-hit raid wides where you won’t have Panhaima (e.g., Ahk Morn, Neo-Exdeath’s punchies pre-enrage, E12S pre-enrage, E2S pre-enrage) are a wonderful place for the initial heal + mitigation for subsequent hits. In more casual content like dungeons, I personally use it on trash packs, since the initial heal gives the tank a top-off, and then there’s the mitigation for subsequent trash pack autos.

I don’t really think I’d want it to apply a shield though. Depending on the situation where you use it, the shield won’t be as beneficial as a heal top-off.

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Originally Posted by Miziliti

I feel like some DRK low key hate SGE. Every time doing a dungeon with DRK as SGE is a wild ride for me.

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I think this is just a lot of DRKs not utilizing proper mitigation; or perhaps not even understanding their kits. I run in to WAY too many that think their only cooldown is TBN, and refuse to use much else. I’ve seen some that completely ignore things like Reprisal and Arm’s Length on trash packs in dungeons. Some that save Rampart and Shadow Wall for bosses. I had one in the level 90 MSQ dungeon that used Oblation twice. During boss fights. Never on trash. That same DRK also used Dark Missionary and Dark Mind on packs of all physical-hitting mobs. So you can imagine how much fun I had with them…