Some Sage Discussion

[rewd]

I think Sage DPS is very involved.


Consider this.

At level 70, you can spam the single target shield on multiple people in a party and gain one of the DPS triggers to throw off a Toxikon. This means that if you can strategize enough by shielding specific people BEFORE they take damage you not only protect them but gain a DPS boost by doing so. This is LOADS better than SCH 'Broil spam'



I love Sage. It is far more involved than SCH and reminds me of the 2.x/3.x days of shield healing. I generally design healer hotbars the same as other healing bars, but Sage is designed more as a DPS which is exciting.

Toxicon is a DPS loss and there is no point in shielding people that wouldn't have died anyway. Throw a Physis or an Ixochole and you can continue your... Dosis spam. Which is the same as Broil spam. Or Glare. Or Malefic.

White Mage is very involved too if you apply Dia, throw some Glare, then Assize, a couple of Holy, two Dia in a row, three lilies in a row to proc Misery and so on.

Now if you play jobs the way they are intended to be played, things start looking different...

[Grimoire-M]

Toxicon is a DPS loss and there is no point in shielding people that wouldn't have died anyway. Throw a Physis or an Ixochole and you can continue your... Dosis spam. Which is the same as Broil spam. Or Glare. Or Malefic.

White Mage is very involved too if you apply Dia, throw some Glare, then Assize, a couple of Holy, two Dia in a row, three lilies in a row to proc Misery and so on.

Now if you play jobs the way they are intended to be played, things start looking different...

Ah yes I too enjoy not pressing buttons because there's nothing to heal. Better Diagnosis spam even though it's an active detriment to Kardia. Woo.

This game's encounter design actively discourages you from engaging with healing any more than is necessary. Fixing that would either involve substantially increasing the difficulty of most content to facilitate the active use of the current healing kits (ultimately requiring a rebalance of them to make it work as intended as MP costs would suddenly become a problem again), or require them to overhaul the role to match the encounter design. Most would agree the latter is easier, provided the devs actually had the resources and inclination to spare the attention.

Ever since ShB my opinion has been that neither exists, which means the solution is to tell them to get healer designers.

[Hysterior]

For now I would only do something with Toxicon, it really feels like it is missing potency or another effect to be relevant

[Jallun]

Can I just...not have to run into melee range to use Phlegma, please?

This is how I feel about all healer AoE attacks as well, not just Phlegma.

For now I would only do something with Toxicon, it really feels like it is missing potency or another effect to be relevant

100% agree; the damage is too weak for two GCDs worth of time despite it being AoE. Something like reducing the falloff and increasing the radius to 8 yalms (like the old Bane) would be nice.

[LalaLuna]

The three things I really miss on Sage in its current form are:
- An Addersgall dump ability, either a HoT or an instant-cast damage ability
- A powerful single target heal requiring (lots of) mana. Once you're out of Addersgall, your healing options become exceedingly limited
- An instant cast, powerful heal on a cooldown that doesn't require Addersgall. Once you get raised in combat, your MP is so low and your Addersgall gone so you have nothing to heal yourself with (unless you somehow can weave Zoe/Krasis & Rhizomata onto your next Druochole, but you'd have lost the 5 sec invul upon popping Zoe/Krasis and have wasted 2 good cooldowns, provided you have them at all).


I'd love to see some future improvements especially on the latter two things.

[Nexxus]

For now i feel that my Diagnosis is a bit to low on healing. And the Barrier one can either be too low or too large. The low barrier is good for DPS purpose, it would be cool if Toxikon/Phlegma were out of the gCD.

[IceBlueNinja]

Sage is fine to me as it is and I really have no complaints on it. I do not wish to see it become like another astro that got destroyed because some people have complaints on it or want stuff change about it. I think they did extremely well and its very engaging and fun as it is. People listed ideas about making shields more effective and a reason to use and sage provides it because you should be dishing them out so that you can get your toxicon, hamia/and the 80 shield does this well by giving burst heals everytime one get smash. So now shields are finally being put to a reason to use them.

[inhaledcorn]

I'm liking Sage so far, but I do have a few complaints:

Addersgall overcapping. It's a similar problem SCH had in 5.0 before the return of Energy Drain. For Sage, it's not so bad since Addersgall skills don't cut into DPS, but it is also a part of our MP management. I just generally dump it on Druchole just to keep Addersgall rolling. I think a button that converts a charge of Gall into Sting would be great. Sage has a slight mobility problem. Without Icarus or Toxicon charges, SGE can lose uptime. That's bad since its passive healing needs DPS casts.

Addersting as a mechanic. It's annoying that Addersting only procs on Eurkasian Diagnosis and trying to fish for it is a DPS loss. Basically, as it is now, we're going to precast 3 E. Diagnosis, then an E. Prognosis just to charge our Addersting. The above suggestion can fix that, but I doubt that's something they want to do since it's "just like Scholar".

Icarus. It needs either charges or a shorter cooldown. It's just not working as it is.

Phlegma: the 45s charge is awkward. It doesn't line up in burst windows like its supposed to. If it was 2 charges with either 30s or 60s timers, it would work much better.

Zoe: I'd rather this force a crit on my next heal instead of boost the potency. The crit aspect isn't as valuable on Sage as it is Scholar due to the lack of Deployment Tactics, but Eukrasian Diagnosis does still have a bonus shield on a crit.

[AnotherPerson]

The three things I really miss on Sage in its current form are:
- An Addersgall dump ability, either a HoT or an instant-cast damage ability
- A powerful single target heal requiring (lots of) mana. Once you're out of Addersgall, your healing options become exceedingly limited
- An instant cast, powerful heal on a cooldown that doesn't require Addersgall. Once you get raised in combat, your MP is so low and your Addersgall gone so you have nothing to heal yourself with (unless you somehow can weave Zoe/Krasis & Rhizomata onto your next Druochole, but you'd have lost the 5 sec invul upon popping Zoe/Krasis and have wasted 2 good cooldowns, provided you have them at all).


I'd love to see some future improvements especially on the latter two things.

I don't want an addersgall dump ability. Keep that to Scholar. Don't make Sage a Scholar clone. Make addersting unique instead. As it is, addersting is mainly a mobility tool because they don't want you to spam Eukrasia Diagnosis and get away with doing more DPS than just using Dosis. Ideally, Toxikon would be slightly buffed to make it a slight DPS refund tool, but otherwise - it's a DPS gain when pre-shielding in AoE. Coupled with Pneuma, Sage's AoE kit is fairly fleshed out. The only possible thing I could want with Toxikon would be an Eukrasia Toxikon - an additional Single Target DoT, but keeps the Toxikon AoE. Not something to spam (and it's not something worth spamming with the way addersting works), but you can definitely use it in AoE and in Single Target. Imo, shielding should feel rewarding, but you shouldn't be spamming shields and be able to get away with it. In that regard, the current Sage design is going in the right direction.

I don't think we need a single target heal with lots of mana. The whole point of the sage kit is to juggle your addersgall with the rest of your oGCDs to prevent needing to burst heal intensively through mitigation, which falls in-line with the idea of "shield healing" or preventative healing. The "pure healers" are supposedly the ones with gigantic burst healing now. Let that be White Mage's thing. Sage has Haima and Panhaima, which fits their intended gameplay perfectly.

[Irenia]

Personally, in regards to Addersgall, what I would like to see is that if you are in battle, the gauge keeps filling if you are at 3 (if you are not in battle and you have 3, it stops filling, and if you aren't at 3, it fills regardless of battle state). If it fills and you still are at 3 Addersgall, you just get the mp Regen and the gauge empties.

Doesn't completely punish you if you don't need healing, but you still actively use it only if you want healing.