Some Sage Discussion

[rewd]

I think Sage DPS is very involved.


Consider this.

At level 70, you can spam the single target shield on multiple people in a party and gain one of the DPS triggers to throw off a Toxikon. This means that if you can strategize enough by shielding specific people BEFORE they take damage you not only protect them but gain a DPS boost by doing so. This is LOADS better than SCH 'Broil spam'



I love Sage. It is far more involved than SCH and reminds me of the 2.x/3.x days of shield healing. I generally design healer hotbars the same as other healing bars, but Sage is designed more as a DPS which is exciting.

Toxicon is a DPS loss and there is no point in shielding people that wouldn't have died anyway. Throw a Physis or an Ixochole and you can continue your... Dosis spam. Which is the same as Broil spam. Or Glare. Or Malefic.

White Mage is very involved too if you apply Dia, throw some Glare, then Assize, a couple of Holy, two Dia in a row, three lilies in a row to proc Misery and so on.

Now if you play jobs the way they are intended to be played, things start looking different...

[Grimoire-M]

Toxicon is a DPS loss and there is no point in shielding people that wouldn't have died anyway. Throw a Physis or an Ixochole and you can continue your... Dosis spam. Which is the same as Broil spam. Or Glare. Or Malefic.

White Mage is very involved too if you apply Dia, throw some Glare, then Assize, a couple of Holy, two Dia in a row, three lilies in a row to proc Misery and so on.

Now if you play jobs the way they are intended to be played, things start looking different...

Ah yes I too enjoy not pressing buttons because there's nothing to heal. Better Diagnosis spam even though it's an active detriment to Kardia. Woo.

This game's encounter design actively discourages you from engaging with healing any more than is necessary. Fixing that would either involve substantially increasing the difficulty of most content to facilitate the active use of the current healing kits (ultimately requiring a rebalance of them to make it work as intended as MP costs would suddenly become a problem again), or require them to overhaul the role to match the encounter design. Most would agree the latter is easier, provided the devs actually had the resources and inclination to spare the attention.

Ever since ShB my opinion has been that neither exists, which means the solution is to tell them to get healer designers.