Sage's skill Pepsis is useless

[Liam_Harper]

The button I'd honestly change is Ixo, since it's identical to Indom. I get parity is a thing, but it's EXACTLY identical to Indom. Some CD, same cost (1 unit of resource you get 3 of per minute), etc. The only difference is SGE is rewarded for spending Addersgall while SCH is DPS punished for spending Aetherflow on healing.

I wouldn't mind seeing Ixo do something like applying aoe Kardia to all allies for the next 3 GCD's, 10s duration. Nothing fancy, but it plays into the "deal damage to heal allies" flavor more.

[Rongway]

I wouldn't mind seeing Ixo do something like applying aoe Kardia to all allies for the next 3 GCD's, 10s duration. Nothing fancy, but it plays into the "deal damage to heal allies" flavor more.

That should probably be its own action. Call it Perikardia and have it apply Perikardion(3) to everyone in range. Make it not stack with Perikardion from another sage but do let it stack with Kardion from any source.

[Nethereal]

That should probably be its own action. Call it Perikardia and have it apply Perikardion(3) to everyone in range. Make it not stack with Perikardion from another sage but do let it stack with Kardion from any source.

I would rather have bloated skills that interact with other skills than a skill for every single possible action that could be split.

[Rongway]

I would rather have bloated skills that interact with other skills than a skill for every single possible action that could be split.

An AoE Kardion is thematically sensitive enough to warrant being its own action.

[Shurrikhan]

An AoE Kardion is thematically sensitive enough to warrant being its own action.

It's effectively just another non-urgent AoE heal though? It's Medica 2 that simply punishes you for following it up with anything but damage... when damage was already the default choice.

That makes for distinction only on paper, not in practice.

And depending on how it's handled, it could actually reduce, for the duration it seems use, the In-practice distinction Kardia carries in its target selection.

[Rongway]

And depending on how it's handled, it could actually reduce, for the duration it seems use, the In-practice distinction Kardia carries in its target selection.

I'm not sure if I'm interpreting this part correctly. Are you saying that adding an AoE Kardia would diminish the choice of ST Kardia target?

You'd still use it on either a tank (because they have a higher HPmax than other party members) or a party member who's much lower than everyone else due to vulnerability. Having a ~500p AoE Kardia won't change that any more than having any of sage's current 500p+effect cooldowns already does.

[Shurrikhan]

...

My concern was simply that if this "AoE Kardia" ability applies it non-stackingly to all, you remove Kardia target selection over its duration.

More importantly than any "anti-synergy" (as you are still getting +3 or +7 affected targets regardless), that's a loss of mechanic/consideration.

If, on the other hand, it does stack, then yes, it would simply be the same as any other AoE cooldown. The way you describe it there, that seems the intent.

But that's really not great either. Its sole distinction from any other nonurgent/slow AoE heal is that further incentivizes the least interesting and most default play -- spamming 11111. So long as you don't put in on stacks to make it even moer dull, that gives a bit of window play to manage and pushing it to the end a sequence of AoE heals, if more than it alone were necessary. But that's it.



By contrast, consider instead, for instance, a revision of Soteria to apply Kardia's healing to each ally thus healed over its duration (changed from stacks as to actually invite some window management). It can be left on the main target to merely double Kardia's natural strength, or you can move it every third GCD to build up to increasingly more targets affected, at no loss outside of only the current Kardia target getting the outright doubled effect individually.

Then, rather than just having a generic AoE heal with a bit of on-paper distinction, you actually have button-presses, window management, and (near-spammable oGCD heal) target selection considerations unique to Sage. That would then have actual in-practice distinction. And it would cost no further buttons.

[Nethereal]

An AoE Kardion is thematically sensitive enough to warrant being its own action.

Fair.

If you balance the stacks right/the cd properly it would be very nice as a separate skill in terms of identity.

It's actually disheartening that they thought Kardia YOUR IDENTITY skill was in a good enough place to be released with only one skill that interacts with it, Soteria and it just increases how much you heal to the target.
Dancer's Curing Waltz is infinitely more intriguing as a partner healer ability and it's not even a healer. Sad, very sad.

For a healer with a partner it really does feel like they literally looked at none of the classic "tethered heals" from other media and just straight up copied SCH from back when you could target who got embrace and cleaned their hands of it.
It's actually maddening if you think deeply about how pathetic Kardia's current state is and they used that single skill to justify branding it as the "DPS healer"

They couldn't even be bothered to make an animation for being tethered to someone with Kardia, literally anything. Seeing the tether is part of the fun.