Some Sage Discussion

[Saefinn]

My admittedly limited experience with Sage has been negative. The job feels weak and overly busy. You have to use multiple abilities together to achieve what other healers do with a single ability.

I genuinely feel sorry for any individual who decides to check out what healing is like and chooses Sage as their first healer. The job is not user friendly and is bound to drive a would-be healer away from the role.

This is the problem 2.0 SCH had and it wasn't weaker, it just had a certain way of being played and it was just harder as result. Then they tried to make it less "weak" and it became OP. If anything, I like SGE this way, a variety in difficulty has been something I've been asking for and YoshiP suggested SGE would be harder to learn during the demonstration in the live letter. I think I am understanding why. Normally for people completely new to healing in this game, I've always recommended White Mage but am generally willing to help people get started with the others.

Sage feels strong to me and is strong. Numerically, the healing values are good. A big factor on whether Sage feels weak or strong is if you are using the mitigation and healing % increase effectively - optimizing this aspect, and using Kardia + Soteria will make SGE's heals feel strong. Using them incorrectly will make SGE feel a lot weaker in comparison overtime.

After playing SGE for a while now in pre-Endwalker and Endwalker content, I think a big issue for people thinking Sage feels weak is also because they haven't changed the way they prioritize their healing compared to other healers. The priority on healing abilities really changes as Sage level up, but this is largely due to whether you have access to Rhizomata (an addersgall meaning you spend more healing abilities using the gauge first to avoid overcapping and losing MP), access to Holos (another mitigation, which means you can spread out your healing more), access to Kerakeia (Lv 78 trait) and access to Panhaima. The priority of healing on Sage really evolves as you get higher in level, and it matters a lot more than other healing jobs because SGE just has a lot more synergetic healing skills, so it requires more thought on your part to play Sage effectively.

Thanks for the perspective. I was wondering if it was something like this, I've been trying to make use of them with my other abilities, but I probably just need to get the balance right. So it's later dependence on oGCD's is less 5.0 SCH where you don't have to give forethought but instead better planning of how you synergize your skills, that to me is a lot better, because I still consider damage reduction as a form of shield healing. But as I expressed with the above, I feel like this is the way it was with 2.0 SCH, I remember people thinking it felt weak but after a time I was able to optimise it and do crazy carries with it where it definitely was not weak and I feel is why it was OP when they gave it more ability to pure heal. I just need to find that spot with SGE.

In which case, I am happy to say I am satisfied with SGE. At the moment, the only changes I would make would be to Toxicon, I want a reason to use it more, I like the mechanic. Anything else, time will tell as I get more efficient. But it feels like they've made the steps in the right direction with it that I want, which I've expressed before with cautious optimism. And I am starting to understand maybe why YoshiP's response in that one interview was "try SGE" when it came to complaints about that lack of engagement.

I feel like what would change this is if I find myself healing 30% and DPSing 70% again, because I don't think SGE's DPS kit is enough to make 70% DPS uptime engaging, especially if we're not getting much use out of Toxicon.