Laser envy

So, SGE is about having lasers shot from those 4 floating laser cannons, right? And also somehow weaving barriers from them...

So why doesn't SAGE have the bigass 40y laser cannon that stun people? Why is it that the laser class all about shooting people up with lasers have, at best, the tiny Pneuma laser while the big nature-boy regeneration healer over there gets the insta-cast laser cannon?

Did you switched up SGE's big cannon and WHM's invencible field? Was Mesotes supposed to be a field on the ground with incredible regens aside from the invuln and enemy-scortching damage, so your WHM could be the perfect bubble protection? And was SGE supposed to have the big game-breaking lasers with Panhaima attatched to it?

Hell, WHM ended up with both the best CC in Poly and the best CC on his Purgation, meanwhile SGE can't CC anything at all. If you messed up, can you just admit that and switch them back?

Please?

Do the power move, change to Ast and enjoy seeing great balls of cosmos slow and heavily wound your enemies

You'll only take my Mesotes from my cold, dead hands. It synergizes so perfectly with how the class functions that the big stinky laser would be a downgrade.

No CC kinda sucks when you get a monk riding your ass for a minute straight, but I'm not sure stapling CC to the class anywhere would make a ton of sense or not cost an unacceptable amount of potency. A slow on Toxikon II, maybe..?

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Originally Posted by Sindele

You'll only take my Mesotes from my cold, dead hands. It synergizes so perfectly with how the class functions that the big stinky laser would be a downgrade.

No CC kinda sucks when you get a monk riding your ass for a minute straight, but I'm not sure stapling CC to the class anywhere would make a ton of sense or not cost an unacceptable amount of potency. A slow on Toxikon II, maybe..?

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Does it? Do you really get that much synergy out of that tiny area? Are you really surviving that much given that people don't really care about the 8k DoT as long as they get to wail on you because you just made yourself a big shiny target? Because I don't think it matches that well with a class that can only protect itself with a cast of Pneuma or the mediocre 2k heals of Kardia.

Either put a stun on Phlegma or Pneuma, or have some Silence somewhere else (Maybe Ikarus) to actually make you survive the people just diving your Mesotes castle to kill the Sage that thinks he's safe. Hell, at least make the Mesotes DoT actually cause you to do reduced damage, even if it is just to the sage holding the Mesotes, because right now it's ridiculous that you can kill the Sage before the goddamn DoT ticks twice if you just dive the guy.

Otherwise I don't really feel the synergy, Pneuma no longer deals more damage the closer you are to the target so now you can just try and get your Pneuma cast as hard as a SMN gets Slipstream (Less cast time, but no Bind to hold a target still long enough for you to pull it off.) So the only thing you get from engaging targets at that distance is Phlegma distance and Pneuma casts which... Meh?... Sure the damage is kind of good but WHM just gets to do that on a distance anyways... So it synergizes because SGE is capped at melee for Phlegma? Hell, the mesotes doesn't even protect you from CC, so you can get monkey flipped by a WAR and now he gets to wail on you while you're stunned in your "safe space."

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Originally Posted by Sindele

but I'm not sure stapling CC to the class anywhere would make a ton of sense or not cost an unacceptable amount of potency. A slow on Toxikon II, maybe..?

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in the current game balance there's no reason for any class not to have cc and it makes the dps take even extra work for kills as a result. Other classes can use CC to secure themselves a kill but even if you weave toxicons between moves or phlegma burst there's a chance they can just stun you > leave or silence you with no recourse and top themselves back up/get a potion/stall for backup.

Same issue with GNB in that people talk about the damage they can do but without cc or being able to lock down targets the dps ends up ultimately just "pressuring people" rather than killing and while kill may not be everything, not being able to stop them at all is annoying when so many classes have so many options while a handful have none.

Have Phlegma inflict heavy or a 2s bind (still wouldn't be as OP as WHM laser due to cast time), have toxicon apply a 1-2s stun for the phlegma to ensure the debuff > stun > Burst kill loop, etc.

People will say it's "OP" but when you have RDM who can line silence/bind an entire room every few seconds, aoe stun every 15s from WAR, laser beam stun from WHM, stunlock from Raiju and NIN, I think it's absurd at this point to think giving them a way of actually securing a kill is too much.

Their healing/shielding is bad outside of panhaima which is super interruptible AND laggy (so much so that I can literally use icarus immediately after pnuema effect goes off and fires and it will cancel the cast and the effect??) when things like WHM laser/WAR stun have instantaneous cc upon cast, so giving them at least some way to lock it down would be nice considering the CC is so potent in this mode.

I agree that the LB is "good" but that it's not nearly as viable as a lot of the others. The DoT doesn't do enough and not having some kind of regen or tiny barrier tick like autoturret for MCH makes it where it becomes a meat blender if you're even slightly at odds with the other team. For SGE to get full use of it they have to go into it making them killable, it's ground targetable so you have to double click and pray, or sit way in the back and place it from far away, then wait for the cast/animation/effect to show, all for a slightly better DoTon that is on a long cooldown that can only be moved once or can only be super viable if you're either at their doorstep, on the checkpoint, or contesting a specific point. The irony being that if you put it on a path between you and the next location, the crystal is then moving if it scares off the enemy meaning that unless you wait to move it, by which time the timer will be almost done, you're wasting it. It's one of the few LBs in the game where you have to basically gauge where your party is and where the crystal is going in order to make proper use of it.


I get the concept behind it but there's just too many LBs (like WHM) that are great to use all the time in every situation. that

Having a DoT field that has to take this into account:

A. Have to stay away from so they don't kill me to take it down
B. If I get inside to do my damage I risk getting destroyed by the melee
C. If the crystal moves and then moves again becomes pointless
D. Rest of the party has to stand in it after three repeated calls of LB ready

Don't get me wrong, watching everyone have to move on the fire map when I can stay in the barrier and not deal with any of the fire bombs (well like ONE of them because the field is gone by the second/third resolve) is cool, but I'd much rather have something I can always use or has a bit more utility. As it stands now aside from every now and again the opponent being too dumb to know they can't kill from outside it, It basically acts like a blender of just forcing everyone into the circle, which if your team is already struggling just amplifies the situation nine times out of ten.

I've turned around matches with it (For example even though we lost I've turned around the crystal when it's half on our home plate twice in one match before) but those times, while great, are fewer than the times where I fire it off and I felt like I waited that long to do a lot of nothing.

I mean, you're not using Mesotes when you're out standing alone, you're using it to force the decision of 'team fight us up close now or lose the point'. Your ST burst on its own is simply 'respectable' and not 'instantly lethal' even with Mesotes, but forcing them into a small area ensures extra value from Pneuma, ensures extra value from Phlegma, and ensures your Toxikon targets are close at hand for your melee. Every little bit of the extra value you get from these things counts in a team fight.

I am placing specific emphasis on 'team fight' here because yes, if you are dropping Mesotes solo or in awkward situations and expecting it to do anything, you will be disappointed. Mesotes has a much more limited scope of situations in which it is useful - but in those situations it is substantially more powerful than any other LB in the game. Nobody else gets to close space as hard for nearly as long, and only a few get to inflict such potentially devastating consequences for carelessness. With one button press on a checkpoint or at a pitched battle, you reduce the enemy team's opportunity space to a binary choice between "full engagement" and "full disengagement" for 15 seconds, and you're putting a significantly higher cost on that "full engagement" choice. The majority of the time the enemy team will not fully commit in a timely fashion, and this situation almost always results in a team wipe because it's essentially a self-inflicted power play for your team.

I agree that it's a much more technical LB with much starker limitations, to be sure, and even now I think I'm not really doing it justice - it's hard to explain just how much power it has when that power is much fuzzier and more context-dependent to understand than 'unga bunga 18k potency 2 second stun'. All I can really say is that if you gave me the choice between all the healer LBs and said I could take whichever one I wanted, I would take Mesotes every single time.

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Originally Posted by Sindele

Every little bit of the extra value you get from these things counts in a team fight.

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Yeah I feel you. Like I said I'm not saying SGE LB "sucks" or anything but the situation sucks in that the current situation.

I have to essentially hold an already long recharge LB that I might get once or twice a fight for a situation that may not even occur, which is a ton of group utility lost compared to stun beams, dps buffs, damage in general, etc.

In a balanced situation I'd be all about it, but time spent waiting for a good situation to use it that won't be immediately rendered meaningless or counter productive (like immediately having to move if you DO push them off the crystal meaning that then your lb just sits there useless until you have chance to move it again by which time it's already almost done) feels annoying at times.

Don't get me wrong, it provides some great mitigation and tactical choices, but in a game with zerg rush tactics and LB Nukes it just doesn't come as effective moment to moment to me. I can sit here and move around this slow (due to ping) field of effect, or I can stun nuke the party while they're on the point and allow them to pick them off making them dead/gone for 10 seconds. One provides immediate relief for the team and/or 10-13 seconds of safety, and other makes it where they MIGHT die too after killing your team for stepping into the field.

If you put down Mesotes with your party, they can still die leaving you alone in the field to die too, or the enemy can just burst you. So I've had to more often than not use it at range and pelt them from afar because the minute that field goes out you are target numero uno. When so many LBs like WAR's Guard nullification, DRG/SMN nukes, NIN and MCH deletion, etc exist in the game on top of the CC and damage the parties can provide, even if I do pop it in a crazy situation if I'm even in it I can immediately get undone by an LB.

It's just a lot of "Holding onto" an LB meaning I'm losing out on opportunity to help the team for what CAN definitely turn the tide for sure but unless on the checkpoint or about to get to their home base it seems like I'm better off just pretending it isn't there.

Again, great LB, but the rest of the mode (to me) makes it less "fun" to engage with because like some of the other LBs it requires team competence, efficiency and skill to be able to make the most use of it without getting zerg'd.

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Originally Posted by Sindele

I mean, you're not using Mesotes when you're out standing alone, you're using it to force the decision of 'team fight us up close now or lose the point'. Your ST burst on its own is simply 'respectable' and not 'instantly lethal' even with Mesotes, but forcing them into a small area ensures extra value from Pneuma, ensures extra value from Phlegma, and ensures your Toxikon targets are close at hand for your melee. Every little bit of the extra value you get from these things counts in a team fight.

I am placing specific emphasis on 'team fight' here because yes, if you are dropping Mesotes solo or in awkward situations and expecting it to do anything, you will be disappointed. Mesotes has a much more limited scope of situations in which it is useful - but in those situations it is substantially more powerful than any other LB in the game. Nobody else gets to close space as hard for nearly as long, and only a few get to inflict such potentially devastating consequences for carelessness. With one button press on a checkpoint or at a pitched battle, you reduce the enemy team's opportunity space to a binary choice between "full engagement" and "full disengagement" for 15 seconds, and you're putting a significantly higher cost on that "full engagement" choice. The majority of the time the enemy team will not fully commit in a timely fashion, and this situation almost always results in a team wipe because it's essentially a self-inflicted power play for your team.

I agree that it's a much more technical LB with much starker limitations, to be sure, and even now I think I'm not really doing it justice - it's hard to explain just how much power it has when that power is much fuzzier and more context-dependent to understand than 'unga bunga 18k potency 2 second stun'. All I can really say is that if you gave me the choice between all the healer LBs and said I could take whichever one I wanted, I would take Mesotes every single time.

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Huh... Yeah, you're right, Mesotes DOES sinergizes with the SGE more than I thought it would. I guess I never noticed just how much a SGE can do with a packed group of people. Probably the only way to get a good value out of his stuff too. But I dunno, I'd still trade it for the absurd 40y long stun laser with massive damage, low as hell cooldown and defense utility.

But I do see how the SGE is essentially forced to use Mesotes to actually mark people on Toxicon to then hit them with Pneumas and Phlegmas. I've just never seen it as that big of an AoE threat. Hell, I usually just ignore SGEs when I see them.