Some Sage Discussion

[Archwizard]

Couple thoughts on Sage thus far:

1. The phrasing of Soteria and our attacks using "Kardion effects" definitely leaves open the possibility of having multiple Kardions out in the future. I'd love to see a cooldown to Kardion our entire team for a few GCDs, but that can be saved for a future expansion.
More immediately though, anyone else feel like Kardion's potencies are sort of... underutilized? Every attack is 170p healing through Kardion, but each spell has to specifically list that out. I'm a little surprised that, for instance, our AoE spells don't heal for any more than Dosis when dealing with a crowd (which is exactly the scenario you'd want that type of healing and make it actually competitive with Holy-spam, can't get much mileage out of Toxikon even if you can churn them out faster on pulls if you have to keep spamming heals), or Eukrasian Dosis doesn't effectively HoT the Kardion target (even as little as 10-20p/tick). Everything is just the same, no scaling.

2. I'm still on the fence about SCH's "critical Adloquium effects double the barrier" because it puts a huge portion of the protection you're meant to provide to chance, but at least Scholars have a cooldown to allow them to game that effect so they can guarantee such a heal when it counts. That SGE recycles the same mechanic with no such guarantee is bizarre, especially since Sage's barrier heal spells are weaker than Scholar's.
If this take on critical barriers persists, then I hope at least Sage gets the same diligence with regards to its own barriers in the future. For instance, if it could get sort of a "Enhanced Benefic"-esque trait from attacking (Phlegma?) with a low chance to guarantee your next Diagnosis/Prognosis is critical?
Granting I have the same opinion with regards to Freecure, that it should proc from attacks instead of lesser heals. Let the Green DPS do DPS.

3. The combinations of dual-effects on Sage's cooldowns are sometimes... bizarre. Not bad, just highly specific.
For instance, Taurochole and Holos each are potent instant heals with 10% mitigation. The burst heal suggests it should be used as aftercare, but the mitigation suggests it should be used to pre-empt an attack. There's the rare scenario where you use it to top someone off before a heavy attack that needs to be mitigated, but in all likelihood, the common usage will put at least one of the elements to waste due to the conflict between their timings, or at least reduce them to just one of the elements (ie overhealing with Taurochole in a rush to apply mitigation early in a pull, using Taurochole as just a stronger Druochole, or saving Holos for its healing after a raidwide has already gone out).
This could just be me being picky, I'm willing to defer to others on this one.

4. I agree with the concensus that Pepsis feels underwhelming as a single-target heal and response to Emergency Tactics (anyone know how it affects Differential Diagnosis?), but I would suggest an addition to its effect: If it removes at least one Eukrasian Diagnosis effect, it will return an Addersting. (Phrased like that, so it still only returns up to one Addersting regardless of how many Diagnosis effects it removes at once. No exploiting it by spreading Diagnoses throughout the party and bursting them all.)
This could hopefully kill two birds with one stone by allowing a Sage to cooperate with a Scholar healer, allowing them to generate Addersting (even at a reduced rate) with mitigated fear of having their effects overwritten.

Overall, I think Sage's healing model is unique and has a lot of potential to it, it just needs a little more meshing between its moving parts.

[RobynDaBank]

All I can say so far is... I'm not one to call for greater damage options, but... how are people already managing doing no damage at all on SGE?! Seeing this on people who have earlier healers up too... Unsurprisingly the group isn't able to stay up properly as well. Okay sure perhaps Eukrasia + Dosis is annoying, but no Dosis, no AoE, nothing? And these people are quick to put their Kardion on the tank too...

Like... yeah it's a new Job, but how can you not feel something is off when you stand idle across the packs? Sure it's manageable without their contribution. But on SGE..

[Rilifane]

Personally, I really like the dual effect of skills like Taurochole and Holos. It makes it more interesting to utilize both effects to their fullest and rewards planning over reacting aswell as working with the co heal. It's not a straightforward "push button, HP bar goes up", we have enough of that. It's instead something that's most effective when not blindly topping people off or just reacting.
It gives the toolkit a little bit of depths and god knows healers need that.
Sure, in prog scenarios or in DF with Sylphies, one of the effects will often get wasted but I'm okay with that.
For the former it's to be expected, nobody is able to play at peak efficiency and for the latter... it doesn't matter, does it?

[Saefinn]

I think my verdict is...

I love the kit and how it works together and it makes for interesting healer play and so far I've felt like a shield healer again, which was missed and DPS variety has been frequent enough to not kill my experience so far. I'd not change much of its kit so far and it feels closer to what SCH should have been in 5.0 and definitely is a step in the right direction.

I think Toxicon suffers too much at single target situations and means I Dosis spam more. And my concern is the lesser healing requirements get, the bigger of an issue this will be. Fortunately in an AoE situation, it's more often or not a DPS gain regardless of whether more efficient healing methods are available. If this experience is transferred to single target, you'll make DPS more engaging and people can complain less that healers aren't healing, because it has been incentivized.

If incoming damage is strong and frequent enough it's not an issue I think because you legitimately have a reason to put a shield up and there is a mobility benefit to using Toxicon still. But healing requirements will go down. Maybe it could be bigger damage for the first enemy only. I know there is some saying make it an oGCD...my self include, but I wonder if would make it more like Energy Drain in terms of feel/flow and I don't want that.

I feel like where healing requirements go down is where we will suffer again...but I think out of the healer jobs, we're in the best position alongside AST for dealing with the monotony...depending on how frequently we can get Toxicon without it being a DPS loss.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Now that I have been 90 for a while and done some extreme practice I can say that sage really does not keep up vs a scholar.
Some heals as others have said sound like you want to use them BEFORE damage comes due to the mitigation but due to its higher cure potency you dont want to waste that heal, pepsis just sucks and unlike sch we have no way to ensure a fat aoe heal when we need.
If I have multiple dps making mistakes I can easily pocket heal them on other healers, not so much on sage where you run out of addersgal and ogcds and even then you did very small heals!
The healing + shielding output feels too weak to cover people's mistakes like I can on my astro or on sch.

[Hysterior]

Main issue I have for now is recovery from death
Weather I die or someone else die, I find it so much easier to get someone back in shape with other healers
I like the gameplay so far though, really fun too play

[Zied]

I wish Zoe worked on healing abilities

[Rilifane]

Now that I have been 90 for a while and done some extreme practice I can say that sage really does not keep up vs a scholar.
Some heals as others have said sound like you want to use them BEFORE damage comes due to the mitigation but due to its higher cure potency you dont want to waste that heal, pepsis just sucks and unlike sch we have no way to ensure a fat aoe heal when we need.
If I have multiple dps making mistakes I can easily pocket heal them on other healers, not so much on sage where you run out of addersgal and ogcds and even then you did very small heals!
The healing + shielding output feels too weak to cover people's mistakes like I can on my astro or on sch.

Zoe + Pneuma is 900 potency. That's a pretty fat aoe heal.
The oGCD kit is very close in terms of potency with SGE being a bit ahead and having the huge upside of Addersgall heals not competing with dps skills. "Feeling" weak and being weak is not the same; SCHs Lustrate has exactly the same potency as Druochole. Indom the same as Ixo. Excog 100 more than Tauro with Excog not usable as a clutch heal if someone is already above 50% but possible to use in advance to autotrigge while Tauro also has mitigation.
The Aetherflow and Addersgall heals are almost carbon copies of one another. Potencies are the same, cooldowns the same, functionality almost the same (SS ground target vs Kera around SGE, Excog auto triggering vs Tauro instant heal with mitigation).
I don't know why a Lustrate would feel stronger on SCH than a Druo on SGE does.
Adlo and EDiagnosis have the same upfront heal and shield potency, Succor has higher upfront healing, EPrognosis higher shield but overall potency is the same.

At least on the 2nd ex trial, I was able to take care of the majority of healing on SGE without resorting to GCD heals and it was as messy as it gets with up to 12 deaths in a kill and several more during prog; including dying myself a few times during the evening. We constantly had vuln stacks on several people at once, up to 4 on the tanks, often having to clutch heal someone that ate a stack right before an aoe. Those weren't clean runs by any means.
But I honestly can't say I felt starved for resources or too weak against the incoming damage when people made mistakes. On the contrary, I often had spare Addersgall and was about to overcap.

If you need mitigation before the aoe hits and everyone is topped, Kera is great. If there is still some HP loss, Holos is the way to go. SGE has enough options, blasting Holos before a hit just for mitigation when it's not necessary but follow up hits would fall into the lenient 20s window, it was just poorly timed.

[Pandatwin]

My biggest frustration with Sage is the ridiculous amount of buffs placed on the target.

It's not uncommon to open with Krasis, Physis II, Kerachole and finally Haima just before the Heal buffs wear off. Stack Kardia on top of that and we're at 8 individual buff icons from the Sage alone.

There's no reason whatsoever that Kerachole should have two buffs, combine it into one like Sacred Soil does. Physis II also does not need to be two buffs. Either increase the healing potency buff duration or decrease there regen time with increased potency. Timing the use of my skills off of the buff durations is needlessly difficult.

[QooEr]

My biggest frustration with Sage is the ridiculous amount of buffs placed on the target.

It's not uncommon to open with Krasis, Physis II, Kerachole and finally Haima just before the Heal buffs wear off. Stack Kardia on top of that and we're at 8 individual buff icons from the Sage alone.

There's no reason whatsoever that Kerachole should have two buffs, combine it into one like Sacred Soil does. Physis II also does not need to be two buffs. Either increase the healing potency buff duration or decrease there regen time with increased potency. Timing the use of my skills off of the buff durations is needlessly difficult.

kerachole has two buffs so if you get paired with anohter sage on duty finder, your kerakeia (regen) stacks, and only the kerachole (mitigation) overwrites