Sage is so close to being a perfect job

[rewd]

There are only so many ways you can make a health bar go up.

Benediction and Essential Dignity are burst heals meant to be used at low HP. One you learn at level 50, the other at level 15. One is more powerful and with a longer cooldown, the other is weaker but on a shorter cooldown and a charge system.

Asylum and Collective Unconscious are party regens. One you learn at level 52, is a bubble and boosts healing from every source. The other you learn at level 58, regen is weaker and applied as a buff and it mitigates damage if you channel it and people stay in range.

Assize and Earthly Star are skills that deal AoE damage while providing AoE healing at the same time. One you learn at level 56 and is centered around you. The other you learn at level 62, can be placed and be detonated either automatically or at will. One deals more damage, the other heals more.

Look, skills that make a health bar go up in the same exact way that also manage to be different. Wild, isn't it?

[Sani2341]

There are only so many ways you can make a health bar go up.

True.

Still feel like other games manage to implement more of them than FFXIV.

All Heals in this game, to me at least, feel very same-y. Direct heal + optional extra effect (regen,shield, etc.)
The only ones that actually feel different are like 1 or two per Healer (whispering dawn, earthly star, horoskope, regen)

Imagine how different (though not necessariloy better) AST would feel to play, if all, or at least most, of it's heals worked like Earthly Star and Horoskope, being cast and then detonate for the actual effect with an ogcd if needed, or when their timer ran out.

Or how different SCH would feel if you only had mitigation/shields on eatherflow and regens from the fairy.

Even WHM could be made to feel different from how it is now if you drew some inspiration from the cnj quests and added interplay between their damage and healing spells, one buffing the other.

Or, to bring this back around to the topic at hand, if SGE had more than the one mechanic where dmg->heal. Imagine if SGE also had a debuff that would work akin to a party wide bloodbath, healing everyone for a % of the damage they dealt to the debuffed enemy.

[Iedarus]

Snip

I figured by at least making Toxicon DPS neutral and getting Addersting off E. Prognosis, Sage could open up with building Addersting while their Addersgall is building up (while using Rizomata off cd of course). Once they get a full stack of Addersting they could then move on to their oGCDs. It's this level of resource balancing that would make Sage much more engaging than Scholar's "blow 90% of your AF stacks on ED while completely ignoring the Fae Gauge."

[Nizzi]

Don't you think that Sage is just going to accentuate the problems the healing community already have instead of solving them?

*Edited for grammar.*

I don't think Kardia should be overstated in it's significance to Sage's healing. It's basically a fairy that you can choose who it heals; I believe it heals at the same time rate, though the fairy keeps healing even if you aren't casting spells/doing DPS. Functionally I don't see this being too much of an issue, but yes, you're definitely going to want to be slapping that Dosis button to get your full value out of it. In terms of "healing less" because of Kardia, I don't think it will end up being any less healing than Scholar already has to do in 4/8man content. If your group has taken a raid wide, you're going to want to heal anyways, and if it's a tankbuster of significance, you're probably still going to want to heal your tank unless you're certain that Kardia can make sure they're in good enough standing before the next damaging mechanic.

The biggest issue with Sage I see is that... who exactly is this job designed for? I don't particularly see it as an amazing way to get players who were previously afraid of the role into it. I feel like a majority of the people who will be trying it out for longer than a day or two due to new expansion novelity will already be healer mains, so it's probably going to be a lateral shift of Scholar players, perhaps with some White Mage/Astrologian players who wanted "Scholar, but without pet jank". Outside of that, I think you're right. It's just going to accentuate the problems we have now. Sage offers no meaningful distinctions to it's DPS kit. It's a "DPS healer" the same way Scholar is a "shield healer", so basically fluff that doesn't really mean much in how the job is approached or played. The problem has never been "ugh, it really sucks having to stop DPSing to heal, I wish I could do both at the same time with one button", it's always been "when I have nothing to heal, my DPS downtime is mind numbingly boring hitting one button" to which Sage offers absolutely nothing new. People who love healer design in Shadowbringers may enjoy it, but anyone who doesn't like healers due to being a "vet healer" or someone who just doesn't like 1-1-1 spam, Sage is definitely another sign of the core design problem.

[rewd]

I don't think Kardia should be overstated in it's significance to Sage's healing. It's basically a fairy that you can choose who it heals; I believe it heals at the same time rate, though the fairy keeps healing even if you aren't casting spells/doing DPS. Functionally I don't see this being too much of an issue, but yes, you're definitely going to want to be slapping that Dosis button to get your full value out of it. In terms of "healing less" because of Kardia, I don't think it will end up being any less healing than Scholar already has to do in 4/8man content. If your group has taken a raid wide, you're going to want to heal anyways, and if it's a tankbuster of significance, you're probably still going to want to heal your tank unless you're certain that Kardia can make sure they're in good enough standing before the next damaging mechanic.

The biggest issue with Sage I see is that... who exactly is this job designed for? I don't particularly see it as an amazing way to get players who were previously afraid of the role into it. I feel like a majority of the people who will be trying it out for longer than a day or two due to new expansion novelity will already be healer mains, so it's probably going to be a lateral shift of Scholar players, perhaps with some White Mage/Astrologian players who wanted "Scholar, but without pet jank". Outside of that, I think you're right. It's just going to accentuate the problems we have now. Sage offers no meaningful distinctions to it's DPS kit. It's a "DPS healer" the same way Scholar is a "shield healer", so basically fluff that doesn't really mean much in how the job is approached or played. The problem has never been "ugh, it really sucks having to stop DPSing to heal, I wish I could do both at the same time with one button", it's always been "when I have nothing to heal, my DPS downtime is mind numbingly boring hitting one button" to which Sage offers absolutely nothing new. People who love healer design in Shadowbringers may enjoy it, but anyone who doesn't like healers due to being a "vet healer" or someone who just doesn't like 1-1-1 spam, Sage is definitely another sign of the core design problem.

I'd argue that "SCH without pet [jank]" is not SCH. If someone wants to shield (despite shields being often useless), they are better off with WHM and AST, instead of SCH and SGE.

[Grimoire-M]

I don't think Kardia should be overstated in it's significance to Sage's healing. It's basically a fairy that you can choose who it heals; I believe it heals at the same time rate, though the fairy keeps healing even if you aren't casting spells/doing DPS.

170/2.5 vs 180/3 (the media tour values, assuming pet potency is fixed) is about a 12.3% increase for Kardia assuming 100% DPS spell uptime. That translates into needing to drop 8 spells a minute to lose out to Scholar. That’s fairly difficult to achieve outside of prog. Really it’s Scholar who needs a potency bump. Or Kardia needs a nerf.

The biggest issue with Sage I see is that... who exactly is this job designed for? I don't particularly see it as an amazing way to get players who were previously afraid of the role into it. I feel like a majority of the people who will be trying it out for longer than a day or two due to new expansion novelity will already be healer mains, so it's probably going to be a lateral shift of Scholar players, perhaps with some White Mage/Astrologian players who wanted "Scholar, but without pet jank".

It’s the same problem as AST vs WHM. Thanks to SE’s core design problems AST is just WHM with better cooldowns. Sage is Scholar with better cooldowns, mostly in the form of healing throughput. And they have better fallback options compared to Scholar. The ‘cost’ of that is needing to heal and DPS slightly more in the near absolute worst case scenario, where the absolute worst case scenario is Scholar needing to use back to back Succor for throughput.

[rewd]

Sage is Scholar with better cooldowns, mostly in the form of healing throughput.

This doesn't seem accurate, especially because they pretty much share most of their cooldowns, unlike WHM and AST.

[QooEr]

This doesn't seem accurate, especially because they pretty much share most of their cooldowns, unlike WHM and AST.

and unlike scholar, sage doesnt lose any potency from using addersgall. kerachola doesnt need people standing in 1 spot. Sage also gets physis ii instead of fey illumination. One is a 1000 potency regen on the party, and the other one is... 5% magic damage mitigation

[rewd]

and unlike scholar, sage doesnt lose any potency from using addersgall. kerachola doesnt need people standing in 1 spot. Sage also gets physis ii instead of fey illumination. One is a 1000 potency regen on the party, and the other one is... 5% magic damage mitigation

Sacred Soil can be placed anywhere and heal people far from SCH. SCH also gets Expedient to get the kind of mitigation Kerachole has, but SGE doesn't get a Sacred Soil equivalent. This actually highlights SGE's weakness of being unable to heal people that are not nearby (something every other healer can do).

Physis II is weird. It applies a strong regen and it has a long cooldown. It also increases healing from GCDs, but this doesn't synergize with the skill itself or with how healers usually operate. You will use this skill to heal people, and since it is a regen, it means there is enough time to let it tick before the next raidwide. This also means that usually there is no reason to use GCDs, wasting the buff.

Fey Illumination is more versatile and doesn't have the same clunkiness, as its effects work together. It can be used to full effect during pre-pull, downtime or during combat if you need a lot of mitigation that forces you to use Adlo/Succor.

EDIT: SGE doesn't lose DPS to use Addersgall (but if we are talking about healing throughput, this doesn't matter necessarily), but its MP restoration is tied to it. SGE also has no alternate spender for it and has less flexibility because it only gets a stack every 20s instead of three stacks at once.

[QooEr]

Sacred Soil can be placed anywhere and heal people far from SCH. SCH also gets Expedient to get the kind of mitigation Kerachole has, but SGE doesn't get a Sacred Soil equivalent. This actually highlights SGE's weakness of being unable to heal people that are not nearby (something every other healer can do).

Expedient is the equivalent of pneuma. Kerachole is the equivalent of sacred soil. I can count with the fingers of 1 palm the instances where "healing people from afar" is relevant, and for each of those theres two more that make kerachole more versatile than soil.
For instance soil is completely useless in junction shiva or junction titan. kerachole would be amazing there.

Physis II is weird. It applies a strong regen and it has a long cooldown. It also increases healing from GCDs, but this doesn't synergize with the skill itself or with how healers usually operate. You will use this skill to heal people, and since it is a regen, it means there is enough time to let it tick before the next raidwide. This also means that usually there is no reason to use GCDs, wasting the buff.

So you dont use it for the healing buff, you use it for the regen. just like fey illumination is mostly used for the 5% mitigation. its strictly a better fey illumination

Fey Illumination is more versatile and doesn't have the same clunkiness, as its effects work together. It can be used to full effect during pre-pull, downtime or during combat if you need a lot of mitigation that forces you to use Adlo/Succor.

you can use physis ii in the exact same way to buff your own shields. your criticisms of physis ii apply to illumination as well