Sage Has No Identity

[Pyitoechito]

I love FFXIV. I love all the jobs up to this point. As clunky as some of them are, they are at least unique and have some semblance of identity. And it’s because I love FFXIV that I have to point out the utter travesty that is Sage and it’s absolute lack of any identity save that which it cloned from Scholar.

I want to preface this by saying this is NOT about viability, nor is it strictly about potency or “who does it better”. This is about GAMEPLAY. Sage does not meaningfully differentiate it’s healing playstyle from Scholar in anything but the highest-tier content, as more than half of their skills are at best alike and at worst identical to their counterparts.

I’ve compared their skills while trying to be as objective as possible, and grouped them based on their effects, possible uses, flexibility, the actions taken to utilize said skills, and what their most common use will likely be.

(It’s a given that all healers will have similar skills; every healer has a dot, a single target nuke, an aoe nuke*, a single target gcd heal, an aoe gcd heal and a rez. Therefore those skills won't be covered here…)

The Good
Skills unique in their purpose and usage. They don’t really have a 1:1 equivalent between jobs. I won’t cover them in much detail because they don’t really have a straight comparison.



Sage
Phlegma, Icarus, Physis II, Toxikon, Haima
Eukrasia would be here… except eukrasia only interacts with three spells, none of which end up being functionally different from their Scholar counterparts. E. Dosis = Biolysis. E. Diagnosis = Adloquium. E. Prognosis = Succor. Eukrasia is nothing more than a trigger to save hotbar space.



Scholar
Energy Drain, Ruin II, Fey Illumination, Dissipation, Chain Stratagem, Seraphic Veil



Honorable Mention: Soteria/Fey Union
While Soteria and Fey Union have been compared because both can be used to increase the passive healing received on the tank, both skills actually have very different ways to be used. Fey Union is a lot more flexible than Soteria since it can be easily applied on any party member, and its effect can be stopped at any moment. If one wants to use Soteria to heal chip damage on a different party member than their current Kardia target, they’d have to swap targets temporarily.


The Okay
Skills that serve similar functions but have nuanced effects, or are used in different ways gameplay-wise.



Kardia/Embrace
They function as ‘passive’ regen. However SGE can change their target if they so desire, while SCH is at the mercy (or comfort!) of the fairy AI.



Pepsis/Emergency Tactics
They serve to give each healer a way to turn their barrier heals into pure heals.



Zoe/Deployment Tactics
In application, both of these skills allow each healer to grant the party barriers of otherwise unattainable potency. However the effects themselves are very different and not wholly comparable.



Taurochole/Excogitation
This is their “better” single target heal that consumes a resource, both on the same cooldown. SGE exchanges healing potency for damage reduction.



Rizomata/Recitation
These skills allow each healer to heal while remaining resource-neutral. However Rizomata, for instance, allows SGE to use their Sacred Soil equivalent, while SCH cannot. Similarly Recitation guarantees a critical heal, which has its own implications.



Panhaima/Consolation
Both of these skills place a barrier on the party that can be stacked with each healer’s on-demand GCD barrier, which can be refreshed more than once, and have similar total effective healing potency. But they’re both available under different circumstances and lend themselves to different situations.



Krasis/Protraction
Every healer gets a single target buff that increases the survivability of their target. Krasis gives more healing received while Protraction increases max HP.



Pneuma/Expedient
Both are DPS-neutral 10% party mitigation on a 120s cooldown. The main difference being that Expedient provides a movement buff and Pneuma heals the party. Pneuma’s recast timer is also affected by spell speed.


The Ugly
Skills way too similar to ever be acceptable. They’re either carbon copies or function in the same way despite their minuscule differences.



Addersgall/Aetherflow
Both jobs get three stacks every 60 seconds to spend on healing. Only difference is Scholar gains them upfront and Sage has to wait. As for MP recovery, SCH restores more MP from gaining it while SGE restores MP from spending it. Functionally the same.



Physis/Whispering Dawn
The potency is slightly different, and Whispering Dawn originates from the fairy and not the caster, but for all intents and purposes they are identical.



Druochole/Lustrate
No comment.



Dyskrasia/Art of War
I know I said I wouldn’t cover duplicate GCDs, but this one irks me too much. Just… look:

• WHM Holy: hard-cast around self.
• AST Gravity: hard-cast around target.
• SCH Art of War: instant around self.
• SGE Dyskrasia: instant around self (again?).

They could have made it an instant around target to complete the set, but no. This GCD isn’t even affected by eukrasia for an AoE dot. They must have already been on such a roll with the copy-paste bonanza that they went ahead and copied Art of War without even considering that they could make the skill somewhat unique. Ugh.



Kerachole/Sacred Soil
While one is ground-target and the other applies as a standard AoE… same mitigation, same regen, same duration, same recast, same cost, same level, same icon...

Yet this was far from the worst of it. Come, and I will show you…

Both skills even unlock their regen traits at the same level!!



Ixochole/Indomitability
The pattern should be readily apparent at this point.



Holos/Fey Blessing
…



[Insert smart conclusion title here]

It didn’t have to be this way. Kardia as a “damage on heal” variation of Embrace is actually quite interesting and unique, but they didn’t have to copy nearly every other fairy skill verbatim after that (looking at you, Physis/Holos). Addersgall and all the related skills didn’t have to be a copy of Aetherflow. They only had to slightly tweak the effect of Kerachole to give it some semblance of uniqueness and not feel like a copy of Sacred Soil. There wasn’t even an attempt to hide this, as evidenced by almost every equivalent skill being learned and traited at the same levels.

I know that healers have to have some basic skills in order to clear all content, but that doesn’t mean they have to have the same exact skills to be used in the exact same context in almost the exact same ways. It’s just not justifiable for Sage to have so much overlap with Scholar that it lacks any unique identity.

[Risvertasashi]

Yeah, pretty much. Sage is to scholar what Astro is to white mage. And then there's tank homogenization which doesn't even have an analog to the pure/barrier split...

[Jirah]

Don’t bother going to redit with literally any constructive critique. As most of the posts are just hype men or memes. “Hurray for homogenization”

[WaxSw]

Sage is basically what 6.0 Sch was going to look like before the devs remembered they had to add another healer

[Ironthorne]

I'll still definitely try the job out for sure. But I'll wait a bit for the hype to die down. Probably a month, give or take, when everyone just collectively realizes "well, that's a healer alright" and then goes back to DPS classes, cause that's where the fun is.

[Risvertasashi]

I'll still definitely try the job out for sure. But I'll wait a bit for the hype to die down. Probably a month, give or take, when everyone just collectively realizes "well, that's a healer alright" and then goes back to DPS classes, cause that's where the fun is.

Probably won't even need to wait that long. Heavensward had DPS in need for all of a few days before the hype of dark knight and astro died enough to put green and blue back to 'in need'.

[Sebazy]

Ah yes, good old Reddit, where you get downvoted off the map for suggesting that maybe Eos and Whispering Dawn is actually better than Selene's haste buffs a year too early

And yes, it's pretty fair to say that Sage is a repeat of what AST did with WHM for HW. It's actually going to be really interesting to see how it's personal potency stacks up vs Chain for progression. Sage brings a ton of potency which has me assuming that SE don't want to see a repeat of what happened with AST in Gordias but you never know.

[Risvertasashi]

Ah yes, good old Reddit, where you get downvoted off the map for suggesting that maybe Eos and Whispering Dawn is actually better than Selene's haste buffs a year too early

And yes, it's pretty fair to say that Sage is a repeat of what AST did with WHM for HW. It's actually going to be really interesting to see how it's personal potency stacks up vs Chain for progression. Sage brings a ton of potency which has me assuming that SE don't want to see a repeat of what happened with AST in Gordias but you never know.

We haven't seen the meta get as bad as HW for a while - closest being the last tier of Stormblood, I think, but even that wasn't as bad as heavensward.

So I'll also be curious to watch. SCH and SGE will undoubtedly leapfrog each other as to which is favored in the meta - but will it generally be viable to play any healer, a la 5.x, or will SE have to go through a learning process to get them to be relatively balanced, like AST & WHM in heavensward? I'll be interested to see how it plays out as well.

[KDSilver]

I won't call SGE having no identity just now.
It definitly shares a lot with SCH, the same way AST does with WHM but differently worded and done.

But it still brings its uniqueness and some interessting flow i'm looking foward to play.
Some of its ability have some flexibility and comobing those will be interested depending on the situation.

But yes, on one way, it's still has this vibe of "i'm SCH but without the cluncky aspect and a bit of your former self"

+ I like the aethestic and animation

[KDSilver]

We haven't seen the meta get as bad as HW for a while - closest being the last tier of Stormblood, I think, but even that wasn't as bad as heavensward.

So I'll also be curious to watch. SCH and SGE will undoubtedly leapfrog each other as to which is favored in the meta - but will it generally be viable to play any healer, a la 5.x, or will SE have to go through a learning process to get them to be relatively balanced, like AST & WHM in heavensward? I'll be interested to see how it plays out as well.

I'd fine it funny if people would make SGE/SCH work properly in the raiding scene (and I think they could, the same way WHM+diuAST was). They both have some versatile toolkit with strong regen, mitigation and direct heal.
Just to proove to devs that this pure healer/shielder never truly existed.