Is sage just scholar with a different skin?

[ty_taurus]

To put the movement issues into perspective.
WHM using lilies for movement is a 85 potency loss. It used to be 75 potency in SHB but w/e. It was also a weaving tool so you wouldn't clip Assize or Quickcast or PoM or w/e (you get the gist) so overall those 75 potency lost felt lesser than they actually were. Which is why now more than ever Lilies need a potency buff.
SCH using Ruin II for movement is a 75 potency loss. It used to be 90 potency in SHB but Ruin II being the only weaving window (outside of Biolosys) meant that Ruin II + ED was actually a 10 potency gain (200+100 vs 290). That is no longer the case since you can weave whenever. Doesn't matter when you ED as long as you use it before Aetherflow comes offcooldown. So yeah Ruin II right now feels a little outdated for optimized play, it's great for prog though and a ease of use luxury no other healer has.
AST technically has Lightspeed but if you're serious about AST gameplay you know that it's best to save it for the 2 minute burst windows rather than movement due to the amount of weaving AST needs to perform.
Then we have SGE who not only has a gapcloser (which allowed me to ignore positioning on several occasions since i just dash to people who're already in the right spot, it also has Phlegma which, yes is melee range but its been stated several times before that you rarely wanna be out of melee range anyway since that makes dodging mechanics and healing the entire party easier. Phlegma is also DPS positive, we actually gain like 180 potency and don't suffer any penalties from movement. If Phlegma nor Icarus works we have Toxicon which is DPS neutral if you know when to fish for it and spend it wisely. Meaning that we now have 3 healers who would prefer to slidecast and 1 healer who can slidecast and run around without DPS penalty (If played well). This is well balanced indeed.

Not arguing that the situation isn't unbalanced, but Toxikon really is not DPS neutral unless you earned them through E. Diagnosis cast during pre-pull or during a phase change in which case you have, at most, 3 of them to use before the next phase change. Any more than that and it's a 330 potency loss.

[RinaShinomiya]

Not arguing that the situation isn't unbalanced, but Toxikon really is not DPS neutral unless you earned them through E. Diagnosis cast during pre-pull or during a phase change in which case you have, at most, 3 of them to use before the next phase change. Any more than that and it's a 330 potency loss.

Yes, which is why i said "Toxicon which is DPS neutral if you know when to fish for it and spend it wisely". If you're fishing for it during up time you're just doing it wrong and that's probably it's biggest weakness. If Rhizomata gave a Addersting I feel like this issue would get alleviated a lot since, talking about normal versions of the current raids since i don't run savage, P3 is the only raid with down time that allows generating sting mid-fight.

[ty_taurus]

Yes, which is why i said "Toxicon which is DPS neutral if you know when to fish for it and spend it wisely". If you're fishing for it during up time you're just doing it wrong and that's probably it's biggest weakness. If Rhizomata gave a Addersting I feel like this issue would get alleviated a lot since, talking about normal versions of the current raids since i don't run savage, P3 is the only raid with down time that allows generating sting mid-fight.

Ah I missed that part, but I do think it's worth emphasizing regardless. As much as it makes sense for Rhizomata to grant Addersting, I also feel that it creates 2 issues if we went that route.
- First, it could make Rhizomata turn into a DPS button. Even if it's just for the sake of mobility, it puts pressure on you to use it to avoid losing DPS in situations where you otherwise might.
- Second, it also kind of locks Toxikon in as just a restrictive, stronger Ruin II which I feel like is an inherent weakness in its design and needs to be corrected. As it stands, it's a glaring flaw in Sage's design and while I recognize that the rest of the job is largely very strong, I would rather sacrifice some of that power in exchange for making Toxikon something fun and rewarding.

[EaMett]

To be fair, With sage mobility, 3 is all you need for a fight. There are a couple of fights that could benefit from a few more (Phoinix + Ex fights) but you can fish for them just fine during downtime sections.

[Tobias_Azuryon]

I don't think so?

They have the same skills but the play with SGE feels a lot different imo.

For SGE it's about constant smaller upkeep of passive mitigation so that your smaller heals can continue to do better, and hoping that you get a crit sometimes.

SCH feels more "direct" in that if you want to big shield, you will. Because you Recitation, you can emergency tactics, etc and "plan" that movement out.

I'm working on a big post but there are some issues with the new "meta" of healing and encounters vs SCH though. SCH's shields are on the GCD meaning that unlike SGE's passive mitigation + heals with Dosis, SCH has to stop everything to cast their shields without swift. To add to this because of the fairy lag (something easily fixable now that we have new SMN to look at) SCH felt like they were more focused on a MT than the entire party imo like SGE is.

If there were a heal equivalent to "chip damage" I'd say that's what SGE is while SCH is a heal nuke when utilized effectively. Pnuema and zoe give you a lot of options but the key to the kit imo is a lot of small heals frequently vs fire and forget skills like excog/adlo/etc.

Upkeep vs Application I guess?

If they give SCH a barrier or two on AF or weavable, move ED off of AF, they'd go a bit of a ways towards making SCH's kit more uniform with the new "meta." The issue right now is AST has quick/passive heals and regens, WHM has regens, SGE has mitigation, but SCH only has fairy heals and AF to heal with which doesn't allow for any passive healing outside of fairy, which you can't even direct to specific targets to make it more useful.

I definitely feel like "playing" SCH and SGE back to back they have much different identities, but I do think SGE shows some of the glaring flaws in SCH's current kit that can be fixed thanks to SGE and new SMN.

[RinaShinomiya]

*snip*

I think the crux of the issue is that the jobs don't give us a reason to really care about GCD healing once we leave the ARR level range. Esp. people who wanna perform the best they can will solely rely on OGCD heals and GCD heals are seen as a last resort. It doesn't help that MP is supposed to balance GCD heals but since so little are used it becomes not only a DPS loss but also a Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis fuel loss to GCD heal.
I wish we had mechanics that gave us reason to care about GCD healing again. I really like the lily system for that but it needs improvements, AST is supposed to be GCD healing orientated, after all Synastry and Helios exist, but for some reason they keep giving it the most powerful OGCD's and that class really doesn't need more OGCD's to weave, cards already make AST busy enough. Sage's Pneuma & AST Macrocosmos might be the best GCD heals we have right now, ironically because both of them are also DPS neutral attacks.

[IDontPetLalas]

I think the crux of the issue is that the jobs don't give us a reason to really care about GCD healing once we leave the ARR level range. Esp. people who wanna perform the best they can will solely rely on OGCD heals and GCD heals are seen as a last resort. It doesn't help that MP is supposed to balance GCD heals but since so little are used it becomes not only a DPS loss but also a Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis fuel loss to GCD heal.
I wish we had mechanics that gave us reason to care about GCD healing again. I really like the lily system for that but it needs improvements, AST is supposed to be GCD healing orientated, after all Synastry and Helios exist, but for some reason they keep giving it the most powerful OGCD's and that class really doesn't need more OGCD's to weave, cards already make AST busy enough. Sage's Pneuma & AST Macrocosmos might be the best GCD heals we have right now, ironically because both of them are also DPS neutral attacks.

I would agree with a lot of what you're saying however i don't see that AST is 'supposed' to be GCD oriented, I could point out that SGE has its equivalents. I do agree that AST has plenty of OGCDs and doesn't need any more thrown at it. If anything the fact that ASt has cards to deal with historically argued for it having the 1.5 sec cast time and its wealth of OGCD heals, as opposed to a job like WHM which really need to be able to slidecast in order to deal with its relative lack of mobility.

[RinaShinomiya]

I would agree with a lot of what you're saying however i don't see that AST is 'supposed' to be GCD oriented, I could point out that SGE has its equivalents. I do agree that AST has plenty of OGCDs and doesn't need any more thrown at it. If anything the fact that ASt has cards to deal with historically argued for it having the 1.5 sec cast time and its wealth of OGCD heals, as opposed to a job like WHM which really need to be able to slidecast in order to deal with its relative lack of mobility.

I know this is a hot take that AST is supposed to be a GCD healer but honestly skills like Synastry feel pointless on AST because they're restricted to GCD heals, Horoscope (i meant to say Horoscope not helios in my previous post) is a weak 200 potency OGCD heal unless you use a Helios or Aspected Helios at which point it becomes 400 + whatever Helios is restoring, both of which require GCD heals. Then the GCD kit of AST is a carbon copy of WHM, minus Cure III which is... I mean it's Cure III and a equally useless trait trying to justify using Benefic for an enhanced Benefic II as well as Astrodyne buffing Spell cast time, which granted mainly affects DPS but it also affects GCD heals & HoT effects. Lastly Neutral sect which applies shields to your aspected GCD heals while also buffing them by 20%. And then you play AST in PvP and realize they gave it a Dualcast trait which would be extremely interesting trait to see a GCD healer be built around in PvE. So clearly the devs seem to have at least an idea of a GCD healer here but for some reason they overpower the OGCD abilities so much to the point where AST's stronger GCD kit (compared to WHM) still can't keep up with the power of its OGCD abilities nor do they bother to make GCD healing be a return on investment to DPS like Lilies are on WHM. It feels like the devs don't have the confidence to double down on a GCD healer design because the meta pretty much demands good OGCD to not disrupt our Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis factory. Out of all GCD healing interactions i mentioned in this post Macrocosmos is the only DPS neutral one, it just really feels like a missed opportunity to me that they'd give all those GCD enhancing tools and do nothing with them because Celestial Opposition, Earthly Star, Exaltation, Celestial Intersection & essential Dignity are just so strong that you forget the GCD healing buttons even exist.

[Semirhage]

To be fair, healing design in general is "supposed" to be GCD oriented. I say this not because it's the way the game's design encourages you to play (because it isn't). It comes out in live letter statements and consistent bizarre design direction. This is an oversimplification, but by all appearances the healer designer expects that you spend most of your time spamming GCD heals, occasionally using an oGCD, and maybe casting Dosis twice a minute if you're lucky enough to find the time between the two very scary instances of outgoing damage per minute.

[ty_taurus]

To be fair, healing design in general is "supposed" to be GCD oriented. I say this not because it's the way the game's design encourages you to play (because it isn't). It comes out in live letter statements and consistent bizarre design direction. This is an oversimplification, but by all appearances the healer designer expects that you spend most of your time spamming GCD heals, occasionally using an oGCD, and maybe casting Dosis twice a minute if you're lucky enough to find the time between the two very scary instances of outgoing damage per minute.

Meanwhile the only time I've even touched E. Diagnosis while progging P1S was when someone was dead during temps and I threw every barrier ontop of myself in hopes of living to LB3 (which failed every time, mind you). Haven't progged P2S and onward yet; busy work weeks for me.