Part Lore, Part Gameplay Question: Why Sage & not Green Mage? Balancing the 4th slot

[Wawachume]

I'll take it.

I'd just like more green-mage-like animations.

Maybe sage will steal the techy parts of scholar's aesthetic like dancer stole from bard?

[NYCLouisGamer]

I never considered the tech aspect. Yes, some jobs are high fantasy and others are more tech mage.

As far as Scholar, I think that something being the "best" would be balanced out by having most players unable to use it to its full potential. The problems with SCH began when they decided to start dumbing it down while still keeping it powerful. At that point, there was no reason to use anything else.

The high barrier (ha-ha) to entry would be the balance needed. We should look at jobs based on how well the majority of players would use them, rather than seeing the top 1% and consider that to represent the job as a whole.

Speaking of Green Mage and Ivalice, I do miss Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (^_^)

[Semirhage]

And how would SuperScholar fare in, say, dungeon content? If it's so inaccessible that it's hard to clear easy instances with it, newbies who stumble into it are going to rage.

I'm not a fan of kneecapping a job's (or three!) potential skill ceiling and designating it the "newbie" choice. Though I'll admit I've never heard this particular angle on Scholars wanting to be OP again before.

[NYCLouisGamer]

That is a fair assessment. But one of the biggest complaints is already that multiple healer jobs are too dull and/or easy. Why not have an expert-level job and a more newbie-friendly job?

It is not possible to please both camps with the same job. We end up pleasing nobody. With 4 healer jobs, you can have some jobs for newbies to enjoy and other jobs for high-skill & experienced players to enjoy.

I am looking for ways to not have the healers be clones of each other. If people have better suggestions, we can go with that instead! We already have AST as a thinly-veiled WHM with cards. If SAG becomes a better SCH without a pet, I don't know that we have really added anything with the 4th slot.

[AnotherPerson]

That is a fair assessment. But one of the biggest complaints is already that multiple healer jobs are too dull and/or easy. Why not have an expert-level job and a more newbie-friendly job?

It is not possible to please both camps with the same job. We end up pleasing nobody. With 4 healer jobs, you can have some jobs for newbies to enjoy and other jobs for high-skill & experienced players to enjoy.

There shouldn't BE a 'newbie friendly' job once someone gets to content by lv 70+. No player is a newbie anymore with 50 to 80 levels worth of experience and doing content that expects them to be a veteran who went through multiple battles already. They may not be as good as the top tier healers, but they at least know how to use their core kit to get through the fight. There is a certain expectation people will have by the time a player reach endgame, and that expectation is how you know most people don't consider them as a complete newbie anymore that needs to be handheld through content.

The only time a job should feel 'newbie friendly' is at the low levels of the game, from Lv 1 to 50 since that's the period where a player learns how to use their kit at the fundamental level. All jobs should be made fun and have varying levels of unique complexity, but making a maxed out job be more simplistic for [anyone to play to be just as good] is the same as saying the ones who want to level it up for the mount and then complain they aren't doing as well as the others when they don't put in the effort to learn the job's toolkit. Just because a Black Mage who can't keep Enochian up can't do as much damage as a Black Mage who can, it doesn't mean Black Mage should be changed to have Enochian be traited so all bad Black Mages play at the same level as a Good Black Mage.

No job should have that kind of feeling, or else you'd be left with what MNK is currently reduced to today.

[NYCLouisGamer]

There shouldn't BE a 'newbie friendly' job once someone gets to content by lv 70+.

No job should have that kind of feeling, or else you'd be left with what MNK is currently reduced to today.

You both explained the problem with monk and why current expansion content should not be newbie-friendly.

/thread

[Semirhage]

That is a fair assessment. But one of the biggest complaints is already that multiple healer jobs are too dull and/or easy. Why not have an expert-level job and a more newbie-friendly job?

Ah. So 3.4 Heavensward and Stormblood. WHM was just an inferior AST in almost every single way during that time. As someone who likes the WHM aesthetic, I can say from personal experience that I eventually got bored of being told to "switch to AST if you want to get stronger" because "WHM is easy and weak on purpose and should stay that way for new healers".

[Raikai]

The "Sage" we are getting doesnt look like it'll be anything like any other Sage in FF history.
It seems like they just wanted a Sharlayan themed healer.
If they had added Green Mage I imagine, like with this version of Sage, it would still have the flying nodes and little connecting it to the class it's "based on" beyond the name.

My thoughts exactly.

I really dislike the name Sage, though, simply because it just doesn't fit a lot of the presented aesthetic. Sage to me screams old wizard like the sages Tellah (ff4) or Strago (ff6).

The only thing in common is literally just the name. I wish they actually came up with an unique job name, like they did with Gunbreaker.

[Iscah]

I also feel like the name doesn't fit the look of the class.

It seems like they just wanted a Sharlayan themed healer.

Ironically we already have a heavily Sharlayan-linked healing class. To the point that I'm expecting we'll re-encounter a certain villain if we go there.

[ItMe]

Ironically we already have a heavily Sharlayan-linked healing class. To the point that I'm expecting we'll re-encounter a certain villain if we go there.

I know, right? It's kinda confusing lol.
And I am hoping to meet them > : )