Just remove healers.

[Silverbane]

... Your "meaningful contribution" is spamming the same button a bazillion times and trying not to die from boredom. A DPS player is always reasonably engaged, regardless of the content. ... Are you really going to argue Eukrasian Dosis III every 30 seconds and two charges of Phlegma make up an engaging DPS kit? If so... that's utterly laughable.

Wow, it's like you don't even realize that Dyskrasia and Dyskrasia II (which are DPS gains over everything but Phlegma when you can hit two or more targets) even exist ... just like that idiot Sage I saw spamming Dosis into a pack of trash mobs, when he could have been putting the DPS to shame spamming Dyskrasia instead.

BTW, I looked up every character with Semirhage's character name in the Lodestone, and there's eight or so, none of whom have even one level of Sage. Not that having a few levels of Sage would guarantee good knowledge of the kit, but the fact that he or she appears to have none at all does make their pronouncements about Sage a bit less credible, don't you think?

How about you? Do you run Sage much? Do you burn down groups of trash mobs (and ads, sometimes) using Dyskrasia when you do? If not, why not? Afraid to stand in the thick of it? If so, don't worry, a fundamental unreality of FFXIV is that if the tank does his job, you can stick a flaming poker up a mobs butt while laughing in their face (if you're flexible enough LOL) and they'll still ignore you in favor of the tank. Most mobs don't care who's killing them, they just hate tanks!

[N.B. There is one thing I dislike about Sage: the names of the spells.]

[WaxSw]

Wow, it's like you don't even realize that Dyskrasia and Dyskrasia II (which are DPS gains over everything but Phlegma when you can hit two or more targets) even exist ... just like that idiot Sage I saw spamming Dosis into a pack of trash mobs, when he could have been putting the DPS to shame spamming Dyskrasia instead.

LOL, oh yes instead of pressing 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 we press 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 such differentiation. This must be trolling, no one is this dense.

BTW, I looked up every character with Semirhage's character name in the Lodestone, and there's eight or so, none of whom have even one level of Sage. Not that having a few levels of Sage would guarantee good knowledge of the kit, but the fact that he or she appears to have none at all does make their pronouncements about Sage a bit less credible, don't you think?

Not at all when logs have been posted here over and over and as Sage main I can confirm what they say is true. Sage's gameplay is so basic anyone with a bit of experience and knowledge about how healing works in this game can see how its played and if said player has played Sch even worse as the majority of their kit are almost copy-paste

[Silverbane]

LOL, oh yes instead of pressing 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 we press 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 such differentiation. This must be trolling, no one is this dense.

Oh, and 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 is just so much more exciting, right?
What you seem oblivious to is that knowing the right DPS key to hit depends on the combat situation, and can change pretty quickly, even if you do spam the one you pick until the situation changes. Understanding that and adapting to it on the fly takes some intelligence you don't seem to have.

Have you ever out-parsed good DPS on a trash pull? If not, you're a disgrace to SGE, because if you understood all the ramifications of your kit, you typically would. The exception is when the mobs are too brutal and/or the tank too squishy, then you have to adapt, heal a bit more and DPS a bit less. That's part of the fun: watching the tank's health bar (and your own) there among the sea of red mob health bars (generally from straight above the fight), evaluating the rate of change in each bar to see when you need to toss off an oGCD heal or mitigation (or, in the worst case, stop DPSing and just heal). And all the while watching for telegraphs of AoEs you need to dodge, and keeping half on eye on the health bars and any debuffs showing in the party list.

Ever done that? If not, why not?
If so, where you bored by it?

I genuinely enjoy running SGE. You don't. But rather than asking:

• What is Silverbane doing that I'm not?, or
• How might Silverbane's reasons for enjoying the game be different from mine?

you just insult me. Not that I care about that: it's not like you're anyone whose opinion I value, after all, and when the only response you have to my remarks is a personal attack, to me that says you've lost the argument.

So why don't you ask questions like the above? Are you afraid of the answers?
And why are you so desperate to convince other people that, in a world where people can all have legitimately different values and goals, no one with a brain can possibly honestly enjoy running an FFXIV healer?

Oh, and don't even try to argue I don't have a brain. I clearly do, as my writing demonstrates.

[ForteNightshade]

Wow, it's like you don't even realize that Dyskrasia and Dyskrasia II (which are DPS gains over everything but Phlegma when you can hit two or more targets) even exist ... just like that idiot Sage I saw spamming Dosis into a pack of trash mobs, when he could have been putting the DPS to shame spamming Dyskrasia instead.

Yes, because spamming the AoE equivalent makes sense a difference. How much of Dyskrasia II do you spam in actual challenging content? Only in Dragonsong, and it's only relevant in one phase out of seven. Huh. For such compelling gameplay, you sure don't use it. Almost like the difference between spamming Dosis III and Dyskrasia II is non-existent.

How about you? Do you run Sage much? Do you burn down groups of trash mobs (and ads, sometimes) using Dyskrasia when you do? If not, why not? Afraid to stand in the thick of it? If so, don't worry, a fundamental unreality of FFXIV is that if the tank does his job, you can stick a flaming poker up a mobs butt while laughing in their face (if you're flexible enough LOL) and they'll still ignore you in favor of the tank. Most mobs don't care who's killing them, they just hate tanks!

This entire argument is nothing more than a sad strawman. Yes, I spam Dyskrasia in AoE situations. It doesn't suddenly make healer gameplay any more engaging because you're trading one boring button for another. The notion that people simply don't understand how healer DPS functions, and that's why they find it boring, laughably misses the point so much I have to assume you're trolling. Looking people up on the Lodestone doesn't amount to much. They can be using alts for one reason or another, and frankly, leveling a job in this game isn't much of an accomplishment. Nevertheless, if credentials is what you want, you're welcome to look up Cassandra/Cactuar on certain websites. I'll hazard a guess I have far more than you.

Have you ever out-parsed good DPS on a trash pull? If not, you're a disgrace to SGE, because if you understood all the ramifications of your kit, you typically would.

No, you wouldn't. Good DPS burst for significantly more than healers. Either you aren't playing with good DPS players or you're assuming they aren't good when in reality they're conversing their kit for the upcoming boss or a larger pack. Assuming all things equal, if you put a DRG with everything ready to go against SGE in a ten pull pack. That DRG will outshine you by a mile.

[Silverbane]

Regarding whether I as SGE can out-DPS a DPS when doing AoE:

No, you wouldn't. Good DPS burst for significantly more than healers. Either you aren't playing with good DPS players or you're assuming they aren't good when in reality they're conversing their kit for the upcoming boss or a larger pack. Assuming all things equal, if you put a DRG with everything ready to go against SGE in a ten pull pack. That DRG will outshine you by a mile.

I don't run a DRG but I do run a DNC, so to counter your evidence-free assertions of Revealed Truth, I decided to crank the numbers of DNC vs. SGE for multi-target AoE.
Conveniently, both have point-blank non-diminishing AoEs with the same radius.

First, I baselined damage per potency at Stone-Sky-Sea L60 Basic Training outside Idylshire. Both the DNC and SGE were overlevel and overgeared, so they were both synced down to the same level and iLvl.

My SGE did about 4.1 base damage per point of potency, DNC did 3.9.
Given how damage varies, they were both basically doing the same damage per potency, so comparing potencies will be indicative of the damage they do.

Calculating SGE AoE average potency for spamming Dyskrasia is easy: at this level, it's 160, every GCD. And of course, you can still heal/sheild.mitigate with oGCDs as you do. Note that if Phlegma is off CD, this number will go up.

For DNC, you need to create a Markov tree, because you have a base 2-beat rotation of 100 and 140 (proc'd) potency, a 50% chance in those two beats for each of a 140 and 180 potency attack to become available (that each consume another GCD), and a 50% chance for each of those procs to get an oGCD 100 potency AoE attack (Fan Dance II).

Do the math, and you find that DNC potency doing their AoE rotation ranges from 120 (no procs, happens relatively often) to 190 (everything procs, happens pretty rarely), with the average potency per GCD being 146.

So there you go. Under the experimental conditions above, a SGE will on average out-DPS a DNC by 10% when doing multi-target AoE.

Feel free to duplicate the experiment and the math if you can stand learning the truth.
Feel free to do it at different levels and iLvls and DPS classes; maybe the winner changes.

But this proves that all those that said I was lying or only running against incompetent DPS when I claimed to out do those DPS at AoE as an SGE are just plain wrong. And their error is either because they are too lazy or too stupid to do the math or were just being dishonest.

Edit: I note that I've neglected Standard Step in the above analysis, and if the DNC can be optimally positioned when they finish it, it will bring them closer to the SGE's output, because Standard Step is a big part of DNC's AoE damage output. Maybe someday I'll go back and add that complication to the analysis (along with the minor damage buffs available, and Phlegma for SGE to be fair) -- I don't expect anyone else here to do so, because I don't see any evidence that they have the necessary analytical skills -- but for now, the analysis clearly shows SGE's ability to contribute damage at a level comparable to a DPS in a very common situation.

[Amenara]

...

You know anecdotal evidence means nothing when there are actual numbers that disagree with you right?

Edit: I should have just ignored them when they said synced to level 60 because that data is absolutely worthless.

[WaxSw]

1-2-3-1-2-3 excitment

It IS much more more exciting, not only gives a bit of room for failure but also those 1-2-3 combos have something else attached to them, be it resource generation/different effects that tied into each other/positionals/branching paths, those tools are far more engaging than spam 1 button over 100 times per instance

The whole combat fast changing is nonsense, there is no fight in the game that changes wildly from AoE to ST outside very short specific scenarios and add phases and there is no extra thought or complexity in changing from "standard single target nuke that does not have any consequence" to "standard AoE nuke that does not have any consequence".

Not even gonna comment on the intelligence one, just gonna say that thinking so highly of changing from spamming 1 to spamming 2 speaks way more about you than me.

Outparse and healing dungeons

Out-parsed, yes, out-damaged no and its impossible as proven by logs:

(I'm just showing normal mode as it has way more AoE than any raid)

As anyone can see even at the 95th percentile a Sage which boast the highest dps in dungeons is significantly less damaging than a dps on the same range, in fact as shown in the following image one would have to go as low as as 40th percentile (definitively not "good" players) to see a dps comparable to what a 95th percentile Sage does:


Dungeons runs are so absurdly undertuned that tanks can solo them so there is barely anything to heal and there is a large amount of examples of Exs and above that do not require healers so the whole "watching the tank bar go low" argument fails by game design, even in the encounters with significant damage (super high end basically) due to the scripted nature of healing in the game there is no variation (and as such the healing gameplay is lacking being more a puzzle than actual fast thinking) and no adjustment bar "this guy fucked up the mechanic" and in those scenarios the fuck ups are usually non healable instant deaths, as healer healing is only fun the first clear, past that is mindless repetition with a bland kit that does not even require even a 10% of my GCDs and not even a 40% of my whole gameplay actions. As example of how fucked this is here is a P4S P2 log as Sage (which has the highest hps requirements of the current tier):



Dosis alone was almost 60% of all I did in the fight and the whole healing not even reached 25% of my total casts and not even 1% of my total GCDs even tough I was the healer healing the most in that encounter

Ever done that? If not, why not?
If so, where you bored by it?

As shown previously, I've done that in probably a variety of encounters far wider than most of the people, Where I bored? Let's say that mindlessly pressing the same button 144 times is not precisely what could be described as good MMO gameplay

Why you enjoy it argument and insults

There was no argument to begin with I was just surprised and found funny the intellectual dishonesty using dyskrasia as example of engaging gameplay in Sage is and thought no one could be saying it seriously. If you find it complex and engaging more power to you but as said previously it says a lot about you

Let alone how I said "no one is this dense" as insult (if you consider it one) where you straight up said "Understanding that and adapting to it on the fly takes some intelligence you don't seem to have."

So why don't you ask questions like the above? Are you afraid of the answers?
And why are you so desperate to convince other people that

In the message I replied to there was not a single question so I don't know what you want me to answer but...

different values

I'll answer this:
First I do not think that lack of brain is a requirement for enjoying the job, however in this game I do think that outside very small niches like optimization the majority of players that enjoy it are simply extremely innexperienced.

There is a multitude of reasons but they can be summed up with:
-Extremely bland kit with only "apparent" complexity
-Multitude of redundant tools
-Scripted game design
-Lack of healing requirements make healers barely necessary if they are to begin with

Healing for the less skilled can be sometimes fun as they do not realize the true power of their tools, do not know the standard healing playstyle or simply do not read their tooltips but past that point it becomes a role about doing a mindless, extremely repetitive task over and over to fulfill a job that may not even be necessary or impactful which is quite the opposite of engaging.