Why does Sage punish you for using your healing spells?

[caffe_macchiato]

Why does sage punish you for using healing spells? The way Kardion works is that you ONLY heal when you cast a damage spell. No other healer works like that or has their healing tied to their damage. It's such an unnecessary mechanic that incentivizes healers to make Suboptimal plays. As a former White Mage player (let's not get into the thin air nerfs, shall we) it's incredibly frustrating that sqenix ignores what gameplay feels like for healers. Just make kardion work whenever you cast ANY gcd. I shouldn't be forced to spam damage moves when my tank is dying.

Maybe Square Enix finally decided to cater to the "meta" for healers, which is to do no healing unless on oGCD and to spam damage spells instead. Damage meters judge you heavily on your DPS, which means that any bit of GCD healing is a hit against your record and is heavily discouraged. With Sage, you can heal while using your damage spells, and (Pan)haima, your best shield, is oGCD. Along with the other oGCD heals, regen, and defense buffs that you have. It feels like Square Enix, more than any other healer, understands what healers really do (spam damage) and cater to that as much as possible.

Also, as a long-time player, I apologize on behalf of those in this thread calling you a "troll". Constructive discourse should always be welcomed. And seeing that you're on-point, they're the ones missing out.

[GarretStrongstaf]

Where are those moments because I feel like my tanks are always dying. Is that my fault or am I not giving them enough mitigation when I am playing Sage? @Penthea

A tank dropping during trash pulls in dungeons is almost never only on the healer. Almost all content in the game can be healed with OGCDs provided a tank is using their full kit to mitigate damage. If a healer has used their OGCDs properly and still finds themselves spamming single target heals to keep their tank alive then its likely their tank isn't employing a mitigation strategy that compliments this play-style.

[Hyperia]

I tried Sage at level 58 in the Vault with my friends and I felt like I was always struggling to keep the tank alive in any form. The shields never lasted long enough for me to catch up on heals and my instants were always down. Trying to use the DPS to heal thing was nearly impossible as I was spamming my heal to try and keep them alive. Our tank (PLD - no way I'll try sage with a DRK) was using the normal CDs and mitigations so no issues on their part. On my WHM, its medica 2, regen and Holy / Stone till I'm asleep, but Sage feels incredibly weak compared to WHM, AST or SCH.

I'll admit, I'm a WHM career main, and healing is my thing but on Sage I just can't keep people alive. The only time I have fun on Sage is when I am a co-healer to a strong healer such as WHM.

Trying to solo healer on Sage is maddening. I'll get it to 90 via non-solo healer methods, it's just not fun for me which is really sad, I was looking forward to another healer job but this is pure stress.

[DubiousDisk]

I tried Sage at level 58 in the Vault with my friends and I felt like I was always struggling to keep the tank alive in any form. The shields never lasted long enough for me to catch up on heals and my instants were always down. Trying to use the DPS to heal thing was nearly impossible as I was spamming my heal to try and keep them alive. Our tank was using the normal CDs and mitigations so no issues on their part. On my WHM, its medica 2, regen and stone till I'm asleep, but Sage feels incredibly weak compared to WHM, AST or SCH.

I'll admit, I'm a WHM career main, and healing is my thing but on Sage I just can't keep people alive. The only time I have fun on Sage is when I am a co-healer to a strong healer such as WHM.

Trying to solo healer on Sage is maddening. I'll get it to 90 via non-solo healer methods, it's just not fun for me which is really sad, I was looking forward to another healer job but this is pure stress.

That's just low level Sage really, as others have mentioned, it is VERY oGCD heavy, a lot more than the other healers imo, the higher level you get, the easier it becomes, cause not only do you have more to use, but also you grow accustomed to rotating them. Plus as you've said, you're a WHM main, I personally always find it hard to go back and forth between a pure and shield healer, it's why I personally just play shield heals.

I wouldn't say it's weak persay(atleast not yet, I wanna take it into EX before I comment on that), but it's definitely way different.

Solo healing a DRK though, that I cant deny, is pretty hard.

[Shialan]

I tried Sage at level 58 in the Vault with my friends and I felt like I was always struggling to keep the tank alive in any form. The shields never lasted long enough for me to catch up on heals and my instants were always down. Trying to use the DPS to heal thing was nearly impossible as I was spamming my heal to try and keep them alive. Our tank (PLD - no way I'll try sage with a DRK) was using the normal CDs and mitigations so no issues on their part. On my WHM, its medica 2, regen and Holy / Stone till I'm asleep, but Sage feels incredibly weak compared to WHM, AST or SCH.

That sounds more like a problem on your side (eg. not really understanding how this job works) than a problem with Sage. I also healed it right after the expansion started and had zero problems. I didn't even play for more than 3 months and was a WHM main before.

[Liam_Harper]

The only time I have fun on Sage is when I am a co-healer to a strong healer such as WHM.

Once you get into endgame it's the other way around entirely. Sage hard-carries WHM when it comes to healing. In fact you just get in their way if you try to heal, they have lots of strong HoT's and need to use their oGCD's to recover mana, so you just push them into overheal while hurting your own dps.

Most likely it's just not your preferred playstyle and you're comfortable on your main. Sage at 90 is extremely good at healing and far superior to WHM.

[Raim]

If the tank is dying on Sage then the tank isn't pressing buttons. You can layer and cycle so many cooldowns on Sage and never press a GCD heal.

[Hyperia]

If the tank is dying on Sage then the tank isn't pressing buttons. You can layer and cycle so many cooldowns on Sage and never press a GCD heal.

They were using their buttons and on a similar run with my WHM, I did mostly DPS. On my Sage run, they died twice, and I just couldn't keep them alive with the existing healing kit with shields.

Yea, I've already accepted that Sage is not for me, unless something radically changes with the job or myself. I wont totally rule it out in the future but as of right now, playing it makes me feel bad

[van_arn]

I don’t get why some people disliking a style of a role is a bad thing. If the job system is working as intended, you *should* dislike some jobs within your favorite role just as much as you like some other jobs within your role.

I’d be more worried if all the healers could be played exactly the same way and were a good fit for one specific type of healer. Sage embracing the green deeps lifestyle and running with it is excellent, and would probably do well with changes that lean into that concept more heavily.

[Miles064]

I don’t get why some people disliking a style of a role is a bad thing. If the job system is working as intended, you *should* dislike some jobs within your favorite role just as much as you like some other jobs within your role.

I’d be more worried if all the healers could be played exactly the same way and were a good fit for one specific type of healer. Sage embracing the green deeps lifestyle and running with it is excellent, and would probably do well with changes that lean into that concept more heavily.

If anything, healers and tanks should be more different from each other while still covering the basics. The idea that sge is a "dps healer" gives me a small amount of hope that I might find it fun and maybe even join the healer ranks as an off role to dps. WHM was so boring and ast just feels like WHM+(which is neat dont get me wrong but almost feels like WHM should "graduate" to AST after a bit).