Sage: Media Tour Feedback

[Kissune]

Toxikon costs one stack, and pneuma is a long cd heal nuke, what is that you don't understand about their opportunity cost ? The only way you're getting toxikon stacks is with botched phase transitions or something like that. It goes back to pressing a gcd heal, plain and simple. And you lose your ability to nuke heal once you press pneuma. And it's certainly, not as you described. The opportunity cost has always been there... And ruin 2 should have followed suit in potency with added mp consumption like it originally was.

Ye gods, man... No. Opportunity cost is not the 'cooldown'. For example, sacred soil has both an opportunity cost of damage (100 potency you lose by not pressing energy drain), healing (could have been spent on any of the other aetherflow spenders) and a seperate cost of a cooldown (30s). Opportunity cost is the cost you pay *specifically by choosing to do one thing over the other*. Cooldowns are completely irrelevant, charges are irrelevant. I am purely talking about what you lose by pressing toxicon over dosis, or pneuma over dosis. Currently, at EW live, you lose nothing. Your dps profile remains completely unchanged. You gain something, either mobility or a burst heal, at no cost to your overall output. Whereas something like ruin 2 gains mobility at the cost of some dps potency. Or if you wanna use charges as an example, indomitability has an opportunity cost of 100p, since you could have spent a stack on energy drain instead. Toxicon would only have an opportunity cost in endwalker if you could spend the charges on anything but toxicon, but you can't. Since its neutral to dosis, you don't gain or lose anything by pressing it. Functionally, it's just an instant cast dosis. It gains an opportunity cost in two+ target scenarios, however, but those are infrequent enough in actual relevant content that I can mostly dismiss it. 'Losing your ability to nuke heal' is not an opportunity cost, it's just a cost. The opportunity cost for pressing pneuma is not the long cooldown on it, it's the loss you take by not pressing something else. So if pneuma was a loss, and you press it, the cost of a huge burst heal is the cooldown, and the opportunity cost is the difference in damage between pneuma and a dosis.

I beg of you, please learn to distinguish what opportunity cost is vs a regular cost. Everything in this game has one or both, but the former forces you to think more and rewards you more for optimization rather than simply 'using your tools'. The only point in which a dps neutral toxicon with no 2+ target scenario would gain a cost is if you absolutely needed one for movement, and had to use a shield to make it happen. But that just... in my experience? Doesn't happen. Sage has enough movement tools between phlegma, swiftcast, DoT refresh, and icarus.

Do you spam the shields on cooldown though ? I don't know what kind of content you play, but if it's anything like what taurus suggested, you won't just fire it off cooldown.

I do every bit of content from dungeons to ultis, and no, I've never 'spammed my shields on cooldown' yknow why? Bc I lose damage and go mana negative that way. If pneuma was a gain over dosis, I would use it on cooldown as much as I possibly could. It's sort of like how WHM is forced to have a misery under buffs to be optimal, since misery goes from dps neutral to a gain under 2min raid buffs.

A dps positive pneuma would be more comparable to something like earthly star or assize, where the goal is to maximize your uses in the fight by using it on cooldown, while also being happy if it just so happens to catch healing. Assize is a short enough cooldown that if you have a good idea of your kill time you can mess around with it a bit, and earthly star mitigates a lot of its issues by having a 10 second window where it can be detonated, while also being able to manipulate the times it comes up at during the initial prepull by choosing when you set it. Pneuma would be more like assize if it was positive, where you use it on cooldown, and the only real manipulation you have on its timings is when you use it in your initial opener, which sets up when you can recast it later. If its neutral, it just... sits on your bar until its needed, and is no more interesting of a skill than ixochole (in fact I'd argue it's less interesting, apart from the interaction with zoe). If its negative...then suddenly you need to pick out choice moments where you absolutely need the healing, and the ability becomes a lot more interesting. The big giant sage laser feels better to me when I'm not just using it on cooldown, yknow? It's like neutral sect, or deployment tactics, or something. The BIG button that costs some damage in return for a very powerful effect. And before you ask, yes, I also think macrocosmos should be dps negative.