Trailer - FINAL FANTASY XIV: ENDWALKER - Job Actions

[Rongway]

Okay, I think I've found another aspect of Sage that doesn't sit well with me.

If you look at the abilities, and what Sage's gimmick is, it should have been a blood mage.

Cardia, or "heart", doesn't seem to tie well into these noulith things at all. It doesn't thematically translate at all why shooting lasers at an enemy is healing an ally. If maybe you are transferring aetheric energy from one body to another, then that's fine for an explanation, but Cardia does a really poor job of communicating the flavor.

But when you remove the noulith lasers and look at the Sage's core functions, a clearer theme starts to emerge. It's a profession based on medicine, that "heals" (eucrasia) and "poisons" (dyscrasia). It's stacks are serpent themed to match this same duality (Adder's Gall, Adder's Sting).

It's within the larger context that Cardia makes more sense, where most of the job's abilities are themed around body fluids (pneuma, phlegma, pepsis, chole, etc.) and the heart is what keeps all of that moving through blood. Absent some more express thematic tie-ins, it just feels too disjointed to me.

But this is where the job falls apart, because there is nothing blood or even liquid about Sage's theming. It's all lasers. So instead of having some sort of fluid animation, or even renaming the ability "Transfusion," instead we have this bizarre nonsequitur between Nouliths (which rightly should have been called "fangs", to reference FF II/IV) and some nonsense ability that inexplicably heals.

I get all of this, but it is still lore that they literally just made up that is more disjointed than it needed to be. There is nothing *actually* connecting nouliths to fluids in the jobs' design, just in the names.

Nouliths were completely invented for the Sage class--they could have just as easily been called Fangs to fit with the humors/serpent theme. Same with Cardia/Infusion. It's so close to good design, and I'm hoping it's just a few conversations with NPCs away from coming together into a coherent whole.

Why do you need the connection to be so literal? Maybe once upon a time the Sages healed by manipulating humours more literally, and since then the advancement of magitechnology has allowed them to abstract the procedures, but even this doesn't needs must be the case. Chirurgeons don't literally cut people open here; they chant and throw glitter and people are healed. If you try to force everything to have literal adherence to nomenclature, you're going to find just about everything wrong with everything in the XIV world. It's a blend of high fantasy, science fantasy, and several other fantasies; some things are going to have purely symbolic fantastical names.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Why do you need the connection to be so literal? Maybe once upon a time the Sages healed by manipulating humours more literally, and since then the advancement of magitechnology has allowed them to abstract the procedures. Chirurgeons don't literally cut people open here; they chant and throw glitter and people are healed.

Because absent a more concrete design philosophy it's just a gundam DPS that they shoehorned into a healer role. Absent a better explanation for Cardio, there is absolutely no reason why I should believe floating laser swords heal as they do damage. With what little information we have right now, the job is totally nonsensical, even within the context of FF XIV. We have never seen a chiurgeon do any sort of healing that required shooting people with laser swords, much less people other than the patient. What we currently have available to the public is a DPS class with white mage cloak on serving as the clumsiest lampshade.

I'm okay with your explanation, but I'm not giving the devs the benefit of the doubt and inferring it for them. If their design actually is more coherent than it appears, then they can show their work. All I want is some reference in the official lore to fangs (make it a little more grounded in FF tradition), transfusions (better contextualize and define Cardio, the job's main feature that somehow makes the least amount of sense), and maybe some literal fluid manipulation like you said. That's not a huge ask to turn a job from borderline incoherent to brilliant.

[KageTokage]

We haven't actually gotten the deeper lore about Sage which the 70-80 job quests will likely provide so it seems a bit premature to assume there's no correlation between the spell names and how the job works in practice.

[Roeshel]

SGE - I like the concept and I cannot wait for it to be changed when newcomers don't do DPS to heal and let everyone die.

That's so not going to happen. They legit have WHM, AST and SCH if they are not ready to play the game.

[Garnix]

Because absent a more concrete design philosophy it's just a gundam DPS that they shoehorned into a healer role. Absent a better explanation for Cardio, there is absolutely no reason why I should believe floating laser swords heal as they do damage. With what little information we have right now, the job is totally nonsensical, even within the context of FF XIV. We have never seen a chiurgeon do any sort of healing that required shooting people with laser swords, much less people other than the patient. What we currently have available to the public is a DPS class with white mage cloak on serving as the clumsiest lampshade.

I'm okay with your explanation, but I'm not giving the devs the benefit of the doubt and inferring it for them. If their design actually is more coherent than it appears, then they can show their work. All I want is some reference in the official lore to fangs (make it a little more grounded in FF tradition), transfusions (better contextualize and define Cardio, the job's main feature that somehow makes the least amount of sense), and maybe some literal fluid manipulation like you said. That's not a huge ask to turn a job from borderline incoherent to brilliant.

OK, so I guess you hate gunbreaker too? I have never seen people shooting at each other to protect themselves.
What about red mage? They have 'contre sixte' but it's not even a counter attack!

[ChazNatlo]

Because absent a more concrete design philosophy it's just a gundam DPS that they shoehorned into a healer role. Absent a better explanation for Cardio, there is absolutely no reason why I should believe floating laser swords heal as they do damage. With what little information we have right now, the job is totally nonsensical, even within the context of FF XIV. We have never seen a chiurgeon do any sort of healing that required shooting people with laser swords, much less people other than the patient. What we currently have available to the public is a DPS class with white mage cloak on serving as the clumsiest lampshade.

I'm okay with your explanation, but I'm not giving the devs the benefit of the doubt and inferring it for them. If their design actually is more coherent than it appears, then they can show their work. All I want is some reference in the official lore to fangs (make it a little more grounded in FF tradition), transfusions (better contextualize and define Cardio, the job's main feature that somehow makes the least amount of sense), and maybe some literal fluid manipulation like you said. That's not a huge ask to turn a job from borderline incoherent to brilliant.

I get your point, and maybe they built a blood mage and went, "well, two edgelord classes in one expansion is probably too much."

But Thinking about the Fin Funnels from a medical standpoint, they sortof remind me of surgical robots, only with lasers and not attached to a full robot cause magitec isn't limited by our silly earthing limitations. I mean, modern medicine involves using a knife to cut someone open, then stabbing them a bunch with a string attached to your stabber to make sure all the wounds are sealed back up. Medicine is basically hurting people the right way so they can heal.

[KageTokage]

It's a Sharlayan discipline so it being something heretofore unseen is logical.

Even the version of AST we use (That actually manipulates celestial aether for magicks instead of simply reading the stars as its more commonly seen type does) was originally considered sensitive information they did not want being spread to the world at large, so I'd be surprised if that didn't end up becoming an issue in the Sage quests as well.

[SeverianLyonesse]

OK, so I guess you hate gunbreaker too? I have never seen people shooting at each other to protect themselves.
What about red mage? They have 'contre sixte' but it's not even a counter attack!

Gunbreakers have not only been well established in prior FF games, but we're already in XIV since ARR. We know how gunblades work.

Sure, Contre Sixte isn't actually a counterattack, but it also isn't a core feature of the Red Mage's gimmick. If Cardio were a situational oGCD it wouldn't affect the theming of SGE as much, but it's pretty much THE central mechanic and it makes no sense.

[ChazNatlo]

Gunbreakers have not only been well established in prior FF games, but we're already in XIV since ARR. We know how gunblades work.

I feel like observing that Gunbreaker gunblades work nothing like Garlean Gunblades. Garlean Gunblades are a sword with a gun attached, (a gun with a sword attached?) while a Gunbreaker Gunblade is just a sword with chambered shell, but no barrel. The explosion which would traditionally be used to fire a projectile is instead used to create a vibration in the blade, increasing it's cutting power. I believe in XIV versus VIII there is some magic involved also (Hence why Thancred can't use it properly without aid) which may explain why they can fire... well anything per: Not a gun, but in context why they can fire a protective shell.

[Daralii]

I believe in XIV versus VIII there is some magic involved also (Hence why Thancred can't use it properly without aid) which may explain why they can fire... well anything per: Not a gun, but in context why they can fire a protective shell.

Yeah, the cartridges are filled with aether instead of gunpowder. Thancred needs someone to charge his ammo or he can't use his gunblade for more than basic swordplay.