New healer; getting Sage to 80?

So, bit of an odd one for you guys; I'm a new healer in this game, aside from that one MSQ quest where you played as Alphinaud and a little work as Astrologian, I don't really have any experience playing healer jobs in this game.

Recently managed to beat the Shadowbringers MSQ; I saw that there were role questlines available that, once all four were completed, would provide some more lore for the story as a whole; as someone who is enjoying said story - and wanting to get a healer leveled besides - I decided to try my hand with Sage. Aside from being a high starting level, I've also had some very good experiences with Sage players in dungeons, so I'm a bit interesting in trying the job out myself.

My goal is pretty simple; get the job to 80 and complete the role questline. However, I'm not sure where to start; I'm looking up tips online for Sage, trying to get at the absolute minimum the damage and general healing skills figured out, but any tips will be appreciated.

Similarly, leveling from 70-80 on such a different class is a new experience; I was considering unlocking and grinding out the Bozjan Southern Front, but any other tips you guys have for leveling Sage will be appreciated.

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Originally Posted by Travel

So, bit of an odd one for you guys; I'm a new healer in this game, aside from that one MSQ quest where you played as Alphinaud and a little work as Astrologian, I don't really have any experience playing healer jobs in this game.

Recently managed to beat the Shadowbringers MSQ; I saw that there were role questlines available that, once all four were completed, would provide some more lore for the story as a whole; as someone who is enjoying said story - and wanting to get a healer leveled besides - I decided to try my hand with Sage. Aside from being a high starting level, I've also had some very good experiences with Sage players in dungeons, so I'm a bit interesting in trying the job out myself.

My goal is pretty simple; get the job to 80 and complete the role questline. However, I'm not sure where to start; I'm looking up tips online for Sage, trying to get at the absolute minimum the damage and general healing skills figured out, but any tips will be appreciated.

Similarly, leveling from 70-80 on such a different class is a new experience; I was considering unlocking and grinding out the Bozjan Southern Front, but any other tips you guys have for leveling Sage will be appreciated.

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SGE is a shield healer so it focuses on proactive healing (the other shield healer is SCH but SCH easily has the highest skill floor of any healer in the game so don’t go near SCH right now)

SGE’s core mechanic is kardia, a healing refund for doing DPS, every skill you have that causes damage (dosis, eukrasian dosis, pneuma, phlegma and toxicon) will proc kardia, the kardia target you select yourself and it’s generally the tank, now let’s do skills roughly in order of how you would use them

1) soteria is an extension of kardia, the next 4 GCD’s you do damage kardia will heal for 70% more than it usually does, this and kardia itself are the core of your tank upkeep

2) GCD heals (diagnosis, prognosis, eukrasian prognosis and eukrasian diagnosis), all healers have a core set of heals that can be used whenever you want but they cost mana and a GCD, for SGE this is the above 4, the eukrasian versions are accessed by pressing eukrasia, an augmenting skill, pressing eukrasia will add shields to your heals, now with the exception of a few very specific circumstances your eukrasian heals are always better than non eukrasian heals

4) physis is your AOE regen, it also applies a healing action ho buff for 10%, this will increase all healing actions including your heals, cohealer heals, tank self healing and everything else, it is useful for both it’s regen and healing

5) Haima and panhaima these are a single target and AOE heal that applies a shield that reapplies itself as soon as it cracks up to 5 seperate times, they are used for tank and party upkeep during pulls or times of pulsing damage like multiple raidwides, any uncracked shields that are present at the expiration of the skill will provide a strong heal providing another useful effect

6) the rest (holos Pepsis and rhizomata), holos is an AOE heal and 10% mitigation that stacks with kerachole for up to 20% AOE mitigation, use when you need more mitigation, Pepsis “cracks” the eukrasian prognosis shield you have active to give a flat heal, it is generally used when a mechanic needs raw healing not shielding (like doom) rhizomata instantly gives you an addersgall so can be useful when you need to use an addersgall skill but don’t have one

I’m not gonna mention krasis or pneuma since they are beyond level 80 skills

Okay now on to how to play SGE, SGE relies on you understanding how much damage the tank is taking and how much you can rely on your kardia as you are doing damage, SGE strongly relies on you basically always doing damage because kardia is a strong upkeep tool, generally in a dungeon pull you have 2 main pathways
-kerachole+physis- this pathway involves allowing the tank to pull while you are doing normal AOE damage and when they secure the pull use physis and kerachole alongside kardia to sustain the tank on the 3 seperate regens, depending on how much damage the tank is taking and how long the pull is taking you can also supliment this with druachole or holos as needed
-haima+panhaima- this pathway involves allowing the tank to secure the pull then giving them both Haima and panhaima at the same time and allow the pulsing shields to absorb damage for you while you heal with kardia, like the other pathway druachole, holos and soteria can be used to enhance this if you feel the tank is dropping too low

Using your GCD heals is possible, eukrasian diagnosis is strong as a single target heal but you have to be aware if you use a GCD heal you do not proc kardia so you want to avoid them if necessary

If you are in a raid or AOE situation then generally your core tools are kerachole physis and panhaima, SGE is strong in the healing over time department do not be afraid to let your regens tick and rely on them


Hopefully that gives you a bit of an overview of SGE, I’m happy to take questions if you have them

Oh looks like I deleted

3) addersgall skills (kerachole taurochole ixochole and druachole)
-kerachole is an AOE regen (500 potency) with a 10% mitigation, it is useful for both effects in both single and AOE targets (regen effect is added at 78, before that kerachole is kinda underwhelming)
-taurochole is a 700 potency single target heal with a 10% mitigation that does not stack with kerachole
-Ixochole is a 400 potency AOE heal, useful after raidwides
-druachole is a 700 potency single target heal that does not have a CD, useful for latch ditch tank upkeep

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

4) physis is your AOE regen, it also applies a healing action ho buff for 10%, this will increase all healing actions including your heals, cohealer heals, tank self healing and everything else, it is useful for both it’s regen and healing

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Small quibble, there's no reason to not use Physis on Trash Pulls as it's a really good maintenance heal combined with Kardia. It allows for almost constant DPS.

Combos:

Krasis + Physis + Kerachloe = ridiculous regen healing with 10% mitigation. Throw in One of the Haimas if the pull is extra spicy. This is available almost every single pull for most groups.

Holos + Taurochloe + Soteria = 20% mitigation with extra heals while you AoE damage. That combined with a tank who knows what they're doing and mitigating on themselves basically means they're taking minimal damage.

Zoe + Pneuma = huge aoe heal.

The key thing is to remember you need to be doing this stuff BEFORE the tank is in a bad way. You are not a reactive healer. Sage has very few oh Sh!t buttons. If you're falling behind, you're losing.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Small quibble, there's no reason to not use Physis on Trash Pulls as it's a really good maintenance heal combined with Kardia. It allows for almost constant DPS.

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Oh yeah that’s why I said one of the best options for pull heal order is kerachole+physis alongside kardia

also be aware his target is the level 80 job quests, that means he doesn’t have krasis or pneuma which is why I chose to not mention them, and while Zoe can buff eukrasian prognosis and diagnosis the fact that he doesn’t have access to pneuma means it’s hardly worth mentioning

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

SGE is a shield healer so it focuses on proactive healing (the other shield healer is SCH but SCH easily has the highest skill floor of any healer in the game so don’t go near SCH right now)

SGE’s core mechanic is kardia, a healing refund for doing DPS, every skill you have that causes damage (dosis, eukrasian dosis, pneuma, phlegma and toxicon) will proc kardia, the kardia target you select yourself and it’s generally the tank, now let’s do skills roughly in order of how you would use them

1) soteria is an extension of kardia, the next 4 GCD’s you do damage kardia will heal for 70% more than it usually does, this and kardia itself are the core of your tank upkeep

2) GCD heals (diagnosis, prognosis, eukrasian prognosis and eukrasian diagnosis), all healers have a core set of heals that can be used whenever you want but they cost mana and a GCD, for SGE this is the above 4, the eukrasian versions are accessed by pressing eukrasia, an augmenting skill, pressing eukrasia will add shields to your heals, now with the exception of a few very specific circumstances your eukrasian heals are always better than non eukrasian heals

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Fyi you can merge all the advices into a single post by editing and copy pasting the subsequent replies into your first reply. This will also bypass the annoying character limit.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Travel

Similarly, leveling from 70-80 on such a different class is a new experience; I was considering unlocking and grinding out the Bozjan Southern Front, but any other tips you guys have for leveling Sage will be appreciated.

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Supersnow845 & Deceptus has covered the gameplay aspect pretty well. So I'll just chime in for this part specifically.

BSF is only fast provided if you have the resources & access to Zadnor's 3rd zone. It also take some time to reach that point if you've never stepped into the content, so spamming highest lv dungeon DF for healer is faster in addition to their (near) instant queues.

You could make do with BSF but there's also not much you can learn from the job itself because optimum experience grinding in BSF involves pretty much camping in Zadnor's 3rd zone while zerging any skirmishes (FATEs) that spawns with parties. Even moreso when your partymate would bring their own form of self sustenance tools, rendering yours unused most of times.

Alright. Thanks for the help, gents; not gonna lie, a bit nervous about running this job, but I'm certainly gonna give it a try.

Wish my friends were playing the game these days; would help reduce my new healer anxiety, but I guess it can't be helped. Thinking about running a few lower-level dungeons to ease myself in, then trying to grind Levelling Roulettes and the highest-level dungeons that I have.

Thanks for the tips, guys! Glad you're actually willing to help out, unlike Reddit and Discord.

I'd say to try Sch before starting Sage, at least until lv60-70 because for a more casual/leveling playstyle they're almost identical jobs (all the differences like fairy placement, using recitation to gain extra ED or the opportunity cost of Aetherflow heals are meaningless unless you wanna squeeze the 100% of the job which someone who is starting with healers I doubt would do) that flow very similarly with the pros that while leveling Sch you get your skills gradually and gives you time to get used to them, later on you can get Sage and simply "translate" the skills like:

Adlo/Physick=Eukrasian Diagnosis/Diagnosis
Succor=Eukrasian Prognosis
Deployment tactics+Adlo=~Zoe+Eukrasian Prognosis (not exactly a 1 to 1 comparision even for casual gameplay)
Lustrate=Druochole
Excogitation=Taurochole
Sacred Soil=Kerachole
Indomitability=Ixochole
Whispering Dawn=~Physis
Fey Blessing=~Holos

And so on, its really... concerning how similar those two jobs are

Don't be scared to try any healing job, is the easiest role of the game in normal mode and the more you level up the more other roles can compensate and/or substitute you so your mistakes affect less the party