Some Sage Discussion

[Seraphor]

I'm going to borrow a quote from Mr Happy here.

"If Sages were given any buffs, what's the point of even using any of the other 3 healers?"

We are in an excellent spot, there's just a learning curve to adhere to when it comes to them.

That said I'd absolutely make Toxikon an OGCD, it's a movement button sure (we already have Phlegma for that to be fair) but the fact it costs addersting, is only damage neutral except when used as an opener and is a GCD makes it a very clumsy resource spender.

Phlegma isn't a movement skill because of how potent it is, you need to use it on cooldown, not save it for movement.

[AnotherPerson]

Phlegma isn't a movement skill because of how potent it is, you need to use it on cooldown, not save it for movement.

Untrue, you have 2 charges for a reason. You either choose to use both for a big attack, or you can choose to use one charge and then save the other for melee movement/double weaving. The flexibility is there depending on what suits your needs at the time without stopping your GCD throughout the whole fight. If you can optimize and use both charges for damage in burst windows, go for it. If doing that would cost you a GCD when you have to move and slidecasting with Dosis can't cover it... then you didn't optimize your Phlegma /Toxikon stacks well enough and ended up losing more than if you had just saved Phlegma for movement.

[Rilifane]

Exactly. Phlegma can serve well as a movement tool and with its 45s cooldown per charge, it won't naturally align with every 2min burst anyway.
And the 6y range is fairly lenient for a "melee skill" because you can use it even when halfway out and still cover enough distance to get at full range within the GCD. Not every movement can be covered with slidecasting, some Lilies, Ruin IIs, non-burst Phlegmas and even Toxikons will be necessary. Better that than doing nothing because "burst optimization".

[Adonan]

I don't have too much issue regarding Kardia, except I was hoping all Sage's dps to Kardion target did not just heal, but also provide a minor barrier.
For example, halved the current cure potency and apply minor barrier on the other half potency for Phlegma, Dyskrasia and Toxikon.

What I personally would like to see more is Eukrasia upgrades.
Eukrasia currently only upgrades Diagnosis (healing), Prognosis (healing) and Dosis (DoT). This is an awesome design and I believe it what makes Sage unique. This upgrade can be further explored to upgrade other abilities in the utility department. I believe SE will definitely introduce them in the next expansion. Here are my versions.

Phlegma upgraded to Eukrasian Phlegma
Eukrasian Phlegma spreads your primary target with Eukrasian Dosis to all nearby enemies and refreshing its timer.
You can do this every 45 seconds with 2 charges while you are in melee range which makes sense.

Icarus upgraded to Eukrasian Icarus
Rush to a target enemy's or party's location. Create a barrier to the target and everyone you passed through.
Barrier potency: 200
Very niche however you are able to rush to protect all party members you pass through by doing some positionals between yourself and the party into stacking phase

Holos upgraded to Eukrasian Holos
Cure potency: 150
Reduces damage taken by self and nearby party members by 20%
This version trades healing for a stronger party wide mitigation

Toxikon upgraded to Eukrasian Toxikon
Requires 3 Addersting to use Eukrasian Toxikon. Instant cast and cost no mana.
Create holograms Milpreves (4 floaties) to continously cast Toxikon three times on your target.
Instead of pressing Toxikon each time off GCD, this allow you to expand all at once in situations where you require dishing out continuous minor heals while you cast other spells.
At the moment there is no other reason to use Toxikon outside instant cast moving phase and it does not cost mana. This give us a better reason to stack 3 Addersting and reward us for this function.

I mirror your sentiment, with one exception: Eukrasian Icarus. As it is now, each Eukrasia upgrade changes the spell enough that there's a reason to use both variants. There's no reason for me to use Icarus over your Eukrasian Icarus because it's basically Icarus but better. I wouldn't mind the Icarus upgrade bascially becoming a Rescue on a lower cooldown (I would love to use rescue on the noobs more often). However, I see what you're trying to do and whole-heartedly agree. So far, my only complaint for the class (level 80) is the lack of Eukrasian upgrades. As you said, Eukrasia undoubtedly feels like the Sage's unique selling point, and they should lean into it more.

Actually, come to think of it, didn't Dark Knight have something like Eukrasia in Stormblood? I can't remember.

[Miziliti]

In many of the high-end fights, we have many situation where each healer heals their own respective portion of the damage and have to heal separate objective such as ST/OT. I have already seen parties that deny SGE by locking the spot to SCH.
IMO the bare minimum adjustment for Sage healing is the following:

• Diagnosis to 700 potency without changing E. Diagnosis: this is to quickly bring up hp of the revived party member. I had many situations where I have nothing but E. diagnosis because my addersgall is for the next incoming party aoe/tank buster. I have to pray that the downed is healed by co-healer. No boss is really gonna wait for me to cast multiple cure 1. (WHM/AST/SCH laughing with their fat heal) Hell, I sometimes couldn't even save myself after I get revived. It is just stressful.
  
  
• Rhizomata to 60s cooldown: addersgall feels harder to preserve even though it charges up after some time. SCH aetherflow is 3 stacks right away per 60s for multiple uses.
  
  
• Holos and Panhaima to 90s: this would make boss heavy constant damage situation much more manageable without taxing the co-healer.
  
  
• Haima to 60s at least: Consider SCH Exocogitation is 45s. Haima on the other hand with similar usage is a harsh 120s for no reason. I hated the idea that I must save Haima for tank buster and no other use when SCH can throw Excog on revived party member as well as constantly throws it at the tank on ANY situation.

[gumas]

sage is ok for me so far, love the funnel lol

- icarus being 2 charge is fine by me, but considering we heal from range, is there any point being 2 charge? unless it has additional effect like instantly heal the target party member who we charge to, then yeah flying to someone is going to be a habit.

- i take soteria skill want to be the "plan ahead" skill, so when tank aggro a lot, you pop soteria and hope the extra heal from kardia can help you more, but it kinda fall flat for me since extra 50% effect for 130 potency is heal is not a lot at all.

in my mind, i want soteria to become a skill when you active, the kardia effect will trigger by itself every 3 seconds or something like that, basically when it active, it become temporary auto regen.

- i feel like eukrasian diagnosis and prognosis should be pure barrier only skill, i always use this as opening skill for my tank, so the direct 300 potency heal feel kinda wasted since the tank is usually still at full hp, if the tank drop to half or something, i just use the "addersgall" heal or just normal heal.

- dyskrasia (our aoe attack) should be on range? i mean its funnel, its flying around, why we need to get close to our enemy? lol

[Dearche]

I feel like I'm on the opposite side of the fence for a lot of people regarding sage.

Frankly speaking, most of its kit is reasonably strong, and there's a surprisingly little anti-synergy with SCH. Sure, our shields overwrite, but if you're together with a SCH, just don't use them. SGE mostly relies on damage reduction and regen in the first place.

While we won't know for sure until savage drops, I think SGE's only real weaknesses is on the single target heals, pepsis being crap, Icarus and Rhizomata needing a second charge, the anti-synergy regarding addersting generation and usage, and soteria's weirdly long CD.

Overall, I've found use for pretty much every skill SGE has, and had no real trouble doing either EX trials.

SGE feels a bit weak, but I don't think it play weak at all.

[Phaty]

Your name is rather... fitting.

moving on.

Seems you aren't looking for a discussion but instead an echo chamber

[NobleWinter]

I really like Pepsis in particular because it changes the timing of your shielding to be more intuitive with the way a Scholar plays to avoid overwriting each other. Scholar has bigger shields so they are the logical choice to use a GCD shield for the party before damage comes out if needed. Once a cast bar for a raid wide starts a Scholar who still needs to GCD heal is going to use Emergency Tactics to transform their next Succor or Adlo into raw healing. A Sage in the same party would use Eukrasion Prognosis/Diagnosis to burst heal AFTER damage goes out to take advantage of Pepsis and convert their barriers into more healing. Emergency Tactics tells a Scholar to Shield before damage happens. Pepsis tells a Sage to Shield after because if the shields are absorbed by damage Pepsis can't be used. If you understand both toolkits you shouldn't ever be overwriting GCD shields and this entire situation assumes that both healers are completely out of oGCDs to begin with. I'm actually very pleased by the shield healers synergy. Pepsis is clever in that regard although it feels very odd for anyone coming from Scholar since it's the reverse of what your habits are.

[CKNovel]

I'm going to borrow a quote from Mr Happy here.

"If Sages were given any buffs, what's the point of even using any of the other 3 healers?"

We are in an excellent spot, there's just a learning curve to adhere to when it comes to them.

Nah, if Sage isn't given any buff, why would you bring a Sage? Just bring a SCH.
Happy is... Not the youtuber I'd quote, he has a respectable experience with the game but not all of his words are the absolute truth. IMO they're often far from the truth and the kind of guy to be baited by flashing things, but that's another topic.

Sage will inevitably suffers the comparison from SCH.
A lot of tools are much better than SGE's tools, Protraction, Expedient, Excog are all amazing tools.
In comparison SGE got Krasis that traded 10% max hp for 10% healing (on all action, including tank cooldowns).

Holos and Expedient, Expedient wins.
Reason behind that is simple to me, Holos has a heal AND its mitig lats 20 seconds. Where do you use that? During a long series of raid wide? Before those raidwide when your team will be already topped?
Expedient can be used before to snapshot the most raidwide and has the sprint if you need to move. I can think of a lot of situation in ultimate where Expedient would've made a lot of players nerdgasm.
On top of that, SCH has Fey Blessing that is probably the healing part of Holos. SGE is SCH but with a lot of button merged together. You have to press less buttons but you don't have the flexibility, if you want to mitig AoE you will use Kerachole and/or Holos, SCH can use Sacred Soil and Expedient, then use Fey Blessing.

Pepsis is okay but will never be considered for single target healing. The only scenario I can see pepsis used is after a transition when there is no target and your team lost a bunch of hp.
Or your team needs to move a lot, there is no target and you need to heal during that time, UCOB and Heavensfall or example. If there is a target and you need Burst Heal, Zoe+Pneuma.
Even then, on my test with current BiS, 2 Progonis heal for 11k, Eukrasian prognosis + Pepsis heals for 1.7k and 6.4k respectively. I can't think of a situation where your shield is half damaged and you want to break it, that would need too much setup of a low reward when you can just have your AST using its Star or Zoe+Pneuma yourself.
Oh and Ixochole heals for 7.5k.

Then, the weakest tool of the whole SGE kit is in my opinion Rhizomata. Its cooldown is too high for its effect.
It has to be compared to Recitation that makes an ability free and critical. Not only "free" means you can use it at 3 aetherflow, there is also a critical on it!

IMO, SGE wins on SCH with Kerachole and Pneuma, despite its cooldown far too long. I can't be exactly sure about Seraphin and Haima/Panhaima.
Other than that, SGE should remain good enough for harder content.