4 Paired Threads: SGE - How do you feel about it?

[ASkellington]

Finally ill say I bet if it was reversed where sage was doing what sch do and sch was doing what sge is doing, I bet people will be bashing sch and what not. Everyone is entitled to thier opinions but people act as if sage aint nothing yet they are the welcome most used healers in ANY content and the most play job while the favorite sch is the less played. Something is clearly wrong if everyone fav sch is the less played healer.

SCH after SGE is my least played healer. I'll post why in its section. Its not my favorite that goes to AST. But to answer that, yes I would. I bash on AST for not being different enough from WHM. Why would a reverse of SGE and SCH change that. In fact, I'd be just as pissed because "oh finally we get a pet healer" and it barely does anything with the pet. That argument makes no sense to me.

Second, SGE's popularity doesn't mean anything to me. Its popular, sure. But the reasons why aren't the greatest ones - its less clunkier than SCH (no fairy issues), its faster than SCH (its more instant casts and oGCDs), and its easier to pick up and play. Isolated on its own, that's fine, but again, see my first post about it.

People wanted a completely NEW healer. SGE isn't a completely new healer. Most of what it has we've seen on SCH just better updated.

I think you missed the parts where I said in the first post that I wanted them to do more with the idea of Pepsis and Kardia. If they had done so, I'd be fine with SGE because it wouldn't feel the same as SCH then. The fact is, it doesn't. And until it does, I am going to continue to call SGE a waste of potential, a missed oppertunity, and hestitently a waste of dev time.

[IceBlueNinja]

SCH after SGE is my least played healer. I'll post why in its section. Its not my favorite that goes to AST. But to answer that, yes I would. I bash on AST for not being different enough from WHM. Why would a reverse of SGE and SCH change that. In fact, I'd be just as pissed because "oh finally we get a pet healer" and it barely does anything with the pet. That argument makes no sense to me.

Second, SGE's popularity doesn't mean anything to me. Its popular, sure. But the reasons why aren't the greatest ones - its less clunkier than SCH (no fairy issues), its faster than SCH (its more instant casts and oGCDs), and its easier to pick up and play. Isolated on its own, that's fine, but again, see my first post about it.

People wanted a completely NEW healer. SGE isn't a completely new healer. Most of what it has we've seen on SCH just better updated.

I think you missed the parts where I said in the first post that I wanted them to do more with the idea of Pepsis and Kardia. If they had done so, I'd be fine with SGE because it wouldn't feel the same as SCH then. The fact is, it doesn't. And until it does, I am going to continue to call SGE a waste of potential, a missed oppertunity, and hestitently a waste of dev time.

As an ex ast main i can say the exist same of ast that now its a waste of potential ever since they damage it starting in SHB and its card doing the same boring different thing is no big dif from whm atm. It was perfect in stormblood and was like the red mage of the 2 other healers before sage, now I see nothing really dif on it other than the boring same effect cards.

[ASkellington]

As an ex ast main i can say the exist same of ast that now its a waste of potential ever since they damage it starting in SHB and its card doing the same boring different thing is no big dif from whm atm. It was perfect in stormblood and was like the red mage of the 2 other healers before sage, now I see nothing really dif on it other than the boring same effect cards.

The difference is they piss me off in two different ways. AST didn't start off as a watered down WHM. It became that way after two expansions. We had cards and the only change I'd have made to SB AST aside from RNG mitigation (which was a pain point) and a slight change to card effects (Balance/Arrow/Spire) would be to allow AST to change stances in combat.

SGE, starts off the way that it does now. It works. But it's still a SCH clone. Could it be better? Yes. Do I see it getting better? No. They're already working on an AST and DRG rework and its obvious they don't have time to change the fundamentals of multiple classes at once. Which is admittedly what the whole healing role needs but I digress.

AST pisses me off because they had a good idea and design and removed everything that made it unique and its taking them 2 expansions to bring some of it back - if they even do it decently at all.

SGE pisses me off because it COULD HAVE STARTED off as an improvement to healer design and wasn't. Which makes me believe that it wasn't worth the development time it was given. Future changes to the class could change that, but as it stands right now, that's how I feel about SGE.

[Post]

SCH fights with magic, not a book. Hope this helps.

SGE seemed like it was going to be pretty forgettable the moment I read its job actions before EW launch. Compared with RPR that actually took me a read or two (especially with all the unassignable actions changing in various conditions), I understood exactly how to play SGE and was able to come up with analogoues for every action except Phlegma and Icarus. Even its job gauge is just Aetherflow (So are Lilies, basically).

Compare this with AST when that was released, it had a lot of equivalent actions to WHM/SCH, but it also had buff extenders, Synastry in a time when fights still gave it a use, the option to shield OR Regen, and the entire card system. SGE's wholly unique things are its Haimas, which aren't particularly different from % damage reductions and certainly not unique enough to make a whole new job from.

Ok, but what about the aesthetic? Shielding using squares instead of hexagons, cuz it's got 4 Nouliths. Great. Why does SGE have 4 guns but only a melee ranged auto attack? Why can SGE only control its 4 guns to heal or attack one target at a time? Why isn't SGE allowed to heal or shield its Kardia for more when it executes special attacks, like Toxicon and Phlegma? The answer for all of these questions exist, and it's "balance", the most boring and disappointing of answers.

Sure, I'll play SGE over SCH. When I /random onto it. That's how I decide what job to play in EW. It makes so little difference, and they're all so similar, so I just use /random to keep things fresh. That's the state of the healing role, and SGE did its absolute best to maintain the status quo without adding anything fun.

Expedient is the most interesting tool the healer role has gotten this expansion (still think it made more sense for BRD or P.Ranged). What SGE offers is a way to finally play SCH without having to manage a pet, just in time for them to finish fully lobotomizing that entire system from the game anyways.

[Nizzi]

Now that I've done all high end content this expac (except TOP lol) on healer I find it hard to believe that anyone who thinks Sage is a well designed job or "better version" of Scholar is doing high end content on either job - and I don't mean to say that with offense. At both levels, prog and reclears/farming, Scholar just offers more to a party than Sage does. However, I feel that numbers don't really matter if a job inherently feels "good" to play or is fun. And if people like Sage, I'm happy for them. I hope they continue to move Sage in a direction that Sage players are happy with, without the cost of cutting into Scholar more to do so. If SGE offers people something that has what they like and doesn't have what they might not like about other jobs, such as opportunity costs or more involved management, that's totally fine. Diversity within this role needs to be cultivated more and encouraged more.

Sage's aesthetics aside, it is disappointing in nearly every aspect and represents everything truly wrong with the 5.0+ era of healer design. Sage shows that the developers either have no idea what to do with healers as a role, or are truly scared to try to innovate out of fear that something may get left behind in Party Finder again. This situation still happened though, with SGE being dumped in DSR in favor of taking Scholar because of how much better Scholar was (and still is) at mitigation in a mitigation intensive encounter leading to SGE having to get a buff. SGE's design also shows how obsessive the job design team is with having parity of healing skills, rather than having diverse skills that might be better or worse for a given encounter. This obsession leads to SGE especially being bland, where as the other three healers have some nuance to their kits that is just completely stripped away from Sage.

Do Addersgall heals really need to be copies of Scholar's? AST and WHM have different oGCDs and GCDs. Essential Dignity is different than say, Tetra or Solace. I don't think WHM has any functional equivalent to Essential Dignity, nor does AST really have anything that is similar to Lilies. And while AST and WHM do have a lot of similar buttons (Horoscope vs Plenary, Celestial Intersection vs Benison, Exaltation vs Aquaveil, their non lily GCDs) Astrologian has to approach healing differently than White Mage does, and that's a great thing. This isn't the case for Sage. Also, why do you have to heal when it isn't needed in order to keep your MP economy going?

Druochole is literally just Lustrate. Ixochole is literally just Indomitibility. An attempt was made for Taurochole vs Excog and Kerachole vs Soil, they do the same thing and fill the same functionality and you can swap between jobs and put them in the same places in your healing timelines and nothing changes for you. Kerachole's difference was a bit more interesting and an upside but now that they've made Soil even bigger it feels less like an actual difference or plus for Sage. Even some non Addersgall buttons of SGEs are just copies of Scholar ones. Pepsis is just Emergency Tactics but worse and Physis is just Whispering Dawn + Illum without the mitigation. Rhizomata is just Recitation if you decided to make it terrible.

The only interesting or slightly unique healing buttons that SGE has are Haima, Panhaima and potentially Pneuma, but I think Pneuma is underutilized for what it could be. Haima and Panhaima are actually cool and unique, and it makes me wonder why they played so much else of Sage's kit so safely. I wish they would've moved more of the kit into a direction similar to those buttons.

Some people say that Kardia is "Embrace but better" and I would just disagree entirely. Embrace does not require GCD uptime versus Kardia, meaning you are getting full value out of it when using GCD heals like Adlo/Succor or you have downtime mechanics. In something like P9S or P12Sp1's limit cut, you are still getting those Embraces, where you aren't getting the healing from Kardia as Sage during those mechanics. You can also use Fey Union to target specific people, and Eos will automatically heal targets for you. It has much more flexibility than Kardia. Even this tier I would just make Eos move over to a tank's platform after the tank towers in P10S and she heals them with no issues.

Eukrasia is such a letdown of a system. They came up with a good way to reduce "button bloat" and to also give Sage an actual DPS kit and it... is for two GCD heals and the DoT. Great. Riveting.

Addersting is also a terrible, terrible system. It requires an outright rework, in my opinion. Toxicon is such a terrible concept considering you cannot even use it if you don't have your free stacks from instancing/downtime or if you do not commit fully to a 330 potency loss to gain one stack back. You have to commit to 4 Ruin IIs on Scholar for a full loss of a Broil (295/300 potency) versus how you have to gain them back on Sage. Scholar too, can choose whenever to use Ruin II it wants, and even though it's always a DPS loss, SGE doesn't get the luxury of having full uptime during it. Of course, with 1.5s cast times, you should just be slidecasting everything, but the flexibility of SCH's kit vs the rigidity of SGE's makes me scratch my head how people can unironically say SGE is better designed. In what aspect?

This job is just absolute crap for the new healer job after 6 years. It fails to be what people were asking for, a healer with a more involved DPS rotation, and it also fails to do anything interesting with its healing kit which seems to be where SE wants these jobs to be different. It's honestly like they asked themselves "how can we take a good idea and make it worse?" But it's not for me, and that's fine. I just hope its design doesn't continue to cut things out of Scholar's by osmosis, much like it did with Energy Drain losing its MP recovery going into Endwalker.

[IceBlueNinja]

lord have mercy lol

[Post]

with the 5.0+ era of healer design... SGE's design also shows how obsessive the job design team is with having parity of healing skills, rather than having diverse skills that might be better or worse for a given encounter...

I don't think WHM has any functional equivalent to Essential Dignity, nor does AST really have anything that is similar to Lilies...

Good post. Just want to point out that Essential Dignity is Tetragrammaton, and that they were both basically answers to Lustrate. Their desire for healer parity in tools has always existed to an extent, but at some point they need the different jobs to be able to handle the same encounters, so it's understandable why.

We can highlight the effort in their parity attempts, though:

HW introduced the aforementioned which aren't exactly 1 to 1, but the oGCD group heal options were also new in HW.

SCH gets Indomitability at 52, hugely shaping what it's capable of with an Aetherflow charge. This allows SCH to AoE heal reactively much more easily, and heal while moving without needing to burn Swiftcast.

WHM learns Assize, but it is weaker by design in cooldown AND power due to WHM's already plentiful AoE healing. It gets the option to use it for damage instead in cleric Stance, and many encounters give a good reason to do so.

AST does NOT get an oGCD AoE at all. Instead it gets Lightspeed, which allows it to heal while moving and reduces MP consumption so that it can chain AoE heals for cheap.

All of these tools can tackle the same requirement (heal the group while moving) but do so in different ways.

In EW, all 4 healers get a new tool: the 1 minute single-target tankbuster ability.

They're all different on paper, but they're all employed the same way (weave oGCD on the ally) and cost the healers the same thing (the cooldown itself). It didn't allow the healers to tackle anything new, but more crucially it solves the same problem that every tank also got better at solving on their own, and even for other targets tank cooldowns are more effective and available.

[AmiableApkallu]

Like:

It gets the job done? :shrug:

Dislike:

Feels like what you'd get when you design a job based off of checking of certain boxes on a list rather than designing something that's fun on its own merits.

What I'd change:

Re-orient the job around Kardia-based effects.

[NobleWinter]

I'm a Scholar Main since ARR so Sage was very easy to adapt to with 90% of it's kit being identical. It just feels much weaker to play tho once you get used to having Recitation and Dissipation. The fact Kardia stops working when you press a GCD heals especially annoyed me. If I'm at the point where my GCD heals are all I have left I would hope that my healing gimmick is still, well healing? I absolutely love having a gap closer tho. Having a movement skill from early ARR onward is the life I wanna live. I'm so mad Scholar has to wait until level 90 to get 10 extra seconds of sprint. Sage is definitely easier to play for a novice Healer than Scholar but once you really start to understand how to play and plan your healing the ease of Sage loses it's luster in sight of the raw power Scholar brings. Nothing beats having 3 charges of Aetherflow with Aetherflow off cooldown and Dissipation waiting as well. Your tank could be having a seizure and you will get them through on willpower alone. Sage can never have more than 4 charges of Addersgall at time ready to go and some leveling dungeons really make it apparent you need more. A minor gripe I have with Sage is that all the action icons look the same. It's very hard for me to tell them apart and the odd naming convention doesn't help me either. If I rearranged my hotbar to be any different from Scholar I would be lost.

[IceBlueNinja]

I'm a Scholar Main since ARR so Sage was very easy to adapt to with 90% of it's kit being identical. It just feels much weaker to play tho once you get used to having Recitation and Dissipation. The fact Kardia stops working when you press a GCD heals especially annoyed me. If I'm at the point where my GCD heals are all I have left I would hope that my healing gimmick is still, well healing? I absolutely love having a gap closer tho. Having a movement skill from early ARR onward is the life I wanna live. I'm so mad Scholar has to wait until level 90 to get 10 extra seconds of sprint. Sage is definitely easier to play for a novice Healer than Scholar but once you really start to understand how to play and plan your healing the ease of Sage loses it's luster in sight of the raw power Scholar brings. Nothing beats having 3 charges of Aetherflow with Aetherflow off cooldown and Dissipation waiting as well. Your tank could be having a seizure and you will get them through on willpower alone. Sage can never have more than 4 charges of Addersgall at time ready to go and some leveling dungeons really make it apparent you need more. A minor gripe I have with Sage is that all the action icons look the same. It's very hard for me to tell them apart and the odd naming convention doesn't help me either. If I rearranged my hotbar to be any different from Scholar I would be lost.

That is wierd managing aethergall on sage was never an issue to me like how aether flow is on scholar, worst is when scholar dead and lucid/aether flow is on cool down. Sages aether gall is still going up and i get back half mp withing like 2 mins, I always seem to have aether gall to the point I just waste one or too. Ixchole/physis 2 and kera chole literally is enough for a sage to top up a party so yeah lol. I can handle big pulls in so fine as a ast/sage/whm while as sch yeah dead tank. Also if anything fairy is just as bad or worst than kardia, the fairy has to be stopping embrace to use its skills and what not and kardia can be switch on the fly to heal a dps while still keeping tank alive, seems more effective than the pixie who tries to heal everyone whos hurt where kardia the tank specially will only get all the healing.