[Sage] Fixing Toxikon

[ty_taurus]

While Sage has largely been a breath of fresh air for many of us, even if not as divergent to the path to the healer formula as we might've wanted, one topic that's come up multiple times by myself and others is the ineffectiveness of Addersting as a resource.

The Issues
Toxikon is a GCD instant-cast DPS action that has the same potency as your current Dosis spell and costs 0 MP, but consumes 1 Addersting which can only be obtained by first casting Eukrasia Diagnosis and waiting for the barrier to break. This creates several problems with trying to actually utilize this tool:

- Because you must cast E. Diagnosis first, Toxikon requires 2 GCDs to be cast, meaning its functionally half the potency of Dosis. If you can cast E. Diagnosis and Toxikon for 330 Potency at level 90, then you could cast Dosis III twice instead for 660 potency.

- One might argue that casting E. Diagnosis while on-the-move would help you recoup lost DPS the next time you'd have to move, you'd actually be DPS neutral with losing 1 GCD every time you did this. Effectively, E. Diagnosis on-the-move is only a DPS gain once per 3 instances where mobility would be needed, though a smart Sage may often keep a Phlegma stack ready for this instance. Additionally, if the duration remaining on Eukrasia Dosis is 15 seconds or less, you'll gain more DPS overwriting your DoT instead, further limiting the situations in which E. Diagnosis will ultimately save you DPS.

- E. Diagnosis costs 900 MP, meaning Toxikon isn't as free as one might think. This is more expensive than the 800 MP you'd spend on two casts of Dosis.

- Even in AoE situations, Toxikon not only is a total potency loss because of its falloff damage, but two casts of Dyskrasia II at level 90 would equate to 340 potency on all enemies, whereas E. Diagnosis and Toxikon II would equate to 330 potency on the first target and 165 potency on all remaining targets.

- The main argument in favor of Toxikon is gaining it as a consequence of needing to cast E. Diagnosis, but this is, unfortunately, one of Sage's worst healing tools in their entire kit. Sage has so many fantastic healing tools to work with, that even while Progging Savage, E. Diagnosis is at best, a last ditch effort to salvage a failing run. There is one caveat to this: When the boss isn't targetable.
In situations such as prepull, or P2S limit cut where the boss cannot be attacked, E. Diagnosis becomes a way to potentially replenish your Addersting where no damage can otherwise be done. This turns a very limited stack of Toxikon uses into ways to preserve DPS while moving. Not all fights will have phase transitions like this though, and in some cases, you might not even get enough party damage in the first 20-30 seconds to get more than 1 stack of Addersting from prepull.

- An argument brought up against buffing the damage of Toxikon to equal twice as much as Dosis, or to turn it into an ability, is that it makes Sage benefit far more from party buff windows than the other healers, turns Addersting stacks gained during prepull or phase transitions into massive DPS gains, and could result in you almost spamming E. Diagnosis on the tank in EX, Savage, and Ultimate. These are valid criticisims, but it ultimately writes Toxikon into a corner.

Toxikon Overview
Ultimately, Toxikon is forced into an incredibly awkward state where you must use one of your weakest tools to get it, but it it can't be strong enough to incentivize you to use that weak tool all the time or it risks becoming broken or just changing Sage from a Dosis spammer to an E. Diagnosis spammer.

In this state, the ability feels terrible. In casual content, there's barely any reason to use it, and it makes Addersting feel like a tepid resource barely worth looking at. Even when you do try to maximize its potential, the value it offers is negligible.

The Solution
In an effort to encourage players to utilize barriers on the new healer, SE looked for inspiration from Dark Night's incredibly fun and satisfying TBN. In their defense, I really want to be incentivized to use GCD barriers, and I want this system of gaining Addersting to work. In order to achieve this, I propose taking inspiration from a different tank action: Gunbreaker's Continuation.

Thus I suggest the following ability to get added in the future: Myorrhexis

This DPS ability deals the same potency damage as Toxikon and can only be used after casting Toxikon. Additionally, it has a 30 second recast timer and two charges, meaning it can only be used when its recast timer is down and when Toxikon is used.

This means that Toxikon becomes true DPS neutral anytime Myorrhexis is off cooldown, creates a bit more engagement to DPSing as a Sage without being quite as busy as actual Continuation, and keeps Addersting on enough of a leash to prevent it from turning E. Diagnosis into an always-gain.

There would still be some level of burstiness to Sage's DPS in this example thanks to prepull Addersting that may be gained, but I think this could be easily compensated by lowering the potency of Dosis, Toxikon, and consequently Myorrhexis ever so slightly.

EDIT: Or we can simply just increase the potency of Toxikon to double that of Dosis, give it 2 charges, and a cooldown of 30 seconds. This is basically just keeping the concept as one button rather than two.

Personally, I am enjoying Sage a lot, but the lackluster functionality of Addersting is a big disappointment for me when it seems like a system with so much potential. I really wish we could see Sage more strongly feel like the Gunbreaker healer in contrast to the others. If Gunbreaker can exist with its DPS-like gameplay without overpowering and pressuring the other tanks, I don't see why Sage can't be the same for the healers. Not everyone wants that, but then again, not everyone needs to play Sage.

[-BlueGreen-]

From a DPS perspective, you can certainly say Toxicon is busted, but I just worked some math on E.Diagnosis healing in terms of MP efficiency and raw potency (see https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5818985), and it turns out that because Toxicon is a thing, E.Diagnosis is just flat out better than any other option Sage has when you need to cast a single target heal on GCD.

Toxicon, by itself, especially compared to other DPS skills is pretty lacking. It seems Toxicon exists to make E.Diagnosis that much better. The fact that over the 2 GCDs condenses the bulk of the healing into just one of those 2 GCDs also means that if you were to use Zoe on that one heal, it absolutely blows Diagnosis out of the water since 2x Diagnosis could only boost one of them with Zoe.

Of course, the whole thing rests on the assumption that you need a GCD heal (and likely a strong one at that) in the first place.

[RinaShinomiya]

I'd also make E.prognosis able to give addersting if 4 or so shields get broken so we get incentivised to barrier mitigate AoE raidwides. Toxicon being tied to just E.diagnosis always felt weird to me.
Other than that i really like your idea.

[Kabooa]

It will also suffer from the same issue Blood Lily does, in that by making it "Neutral", you don't change how you use the skill. It makes it more powerful janking it as we already do (Downtime stocking).

You directly improve current Toxikon by providing more Addersting sources, such as from Haima, Panhaima, and Pepsis.

I would instead also argue that Toxikon should embrace the barrage aesthetic its visuals support, having it hit multiple times while also invoking Kardia multiple times. This would give Sage some much needed bounce-back potential in the event of things going wrong (TM)

Edit: I'm editing the post here since it's got front page visibility - I keep seeing people say "Make it damage neutral".

The only way to make Toxikon "damage neutral" is by changing / adding ways to get addersting. You cannot simply add potency so that using the GCD heal is a net 0 loss during uptime because (and this will be bolded for emphasis) We already utilize methods to gain it so that we do not lose damage.

If you look at it solely from an uptime perspective, Toxikon is at 50% efficiency. 1 damage GCD for the cost of two total GCDs. Sliding this scale up already provides problems and further annoyances to contend with. At 60% (+60 potency to Toxikon) every moment of downtime is filled with Eukrasia shielding the tanks and 3 squishies, so that you can ideally pop 3 shields on the raid buster coming in and pop 1, maybe two, when the tanks start taking damage again.

This is beyond silly.

Scale it to 100%? To be "damage neutral" no matter when it's used? Every Dosis you use instead of filling Addersting is a damage loss. Every single one.

[Laphicet]

Just make it an OGCD like Alphinaud's toxicon is would be the best fix if you ask me. Would also make it a true parallel to TBN that way... A loss if the shield doesn't break but truly DPS neutral if it does.

[ty_taurus]

Just make it an OGCD like Alphinaud's toxicon is would be the best fix if you ask me. Would also make it a true parallel to TBN that way... A loss if the shield doesn't break but truly DPS neutral if it does.

I will counter this by saying it flattens the potential gameplay of Sage. Being able to create value in E. Diagnosis by making it DPS neutral sometimes means that you're breaking up Dosis spam with semi-frequent casts of E. Diagnosis and Toxikon accompanied by an an OGCD button to weave, and it's not just a 1-2 combo either because you need to wait for the shield to break. It would suddenly make Sage's rotation more dynamic while still being relatively simple. Let's say you get a prepull where you can only get 1 Addersting... You might have an opener like this:

E. Dosis II > Phlegma III > Toxikon II (0/3) > Myorrhexis > E. Diagnosis > Phlegma III > Dosis III > Toxikon II (0/3) > Myorrhexis > E. Diagnosis > Dosis III > Dosis III > Dosis III > E. Dosis II >Dosis III > Toxikon II (0/3) > etc.

[Jonnycbad]

That defeats the purpose of it being a movement tool.

[ty_taurus]

That defeats the purpose of it being a movement tool.

But it's a bad movement tool

[QooEr]

That defeats the purpose of it being a movement tool.

a movement tool on the already most mobile healer. its purpose is already defeated

[EnnCee]

I love my sage: run-and-gun healing! nothing better, BUT I rarely use toxikon because I don't have the time to pay attention to generating addersting. so, for me, it's just a wasted skill slot. I love all the rest and even with the server-tick/lag deaths that we all are suffering from, I don't really feel much need to complain.

fix toxikon?? yes, PLEASE!