[Sage]: Feedback and Suggestions after 3 Months

[ty_taurus]

Deleted Post

[elioaiko]

I agree that SGE seems to be their way of "accepting" DPS healer philosophy and there's evidence of good design in its kit, even if it's surface level.

Your bit about Eukrasia is interesting but it's really there as a way to save button space and give it a unique flare I suppose. To be it just feels like a practical SB Dark Arts SPAM without being too annoying. I don't really see them changing it though unless it effects oGCDs.

Rhizomata can stay oGCD but I do like it giving 1 addersting as you can use Toxicon for actual movement.

I personally can't see them adding more damage spells for SGE without the community busting into flames over it having a more engaging rotation but Idk I was shocked when they created Kardia so who knows.

As for Kardia, I think it's fine and even Soteria is fine. It's not meant to be the sole healing for tanks, just a reward for being able to balance oGCDs while dealing damage. I think Eukrasia can turn Soteria into an AoE spread of Kardia for a short duration with the same 90s CD. This way you have a choice between using it for MT or party sustain.

I personally like the animation for Holos but I hate that it's 120s when it could be 90s. It's meant to be a long-term mitigation tool.

Haima could be a 90s CD tbh since it's main purpose is for sustaining constant autos.

This is more of me thing but I find that Krasis is cumbersome to use as you need to apply it on a target before the skill to get the boosted healing. This requires weaving into tabbing to your ally and then weaving using the skill if you don't have a double weave window. Perhaps it could just increase the potency of healing on single skill used on the next target automatically or boost AoE healing action for half the potency.

[ty_taurus]

I agree that SGE seems to be their way of "accepting" DPS healer philosophy and there's evidence of good design in its kit, even if it's surface level.

Your bit about Eukrasia is interesting but it's really there as a way to save button space and give it a unique flare I suppose. To be it just feels like a practical SB Dark Arts SPAM without being too annoying. I don't really see them changing it though unless it effects oGCDs.

Well, like I stated, it's not actually all that effective as a way to save space since two of the three actions it alternates between are buttons that are almost never used at all in any circumstances outside of getting Sastasha as your leveling roulette. The only time I've used either Diagnosis or Prognosis at all is using Prognosis to top people off during a phase change, and I don't even need that realistically. We would have the exact same number of buttons simply having E. Dosis as a separate button and having Diagnosis/Prognosis upgrade into their Eukrasian counterparts. So is it really saving space as it stands?

Rhizomata can stay oGCD but I do like it giving 1 addersting as you can use Toxicon for actual movement.

In all honestly, this is probably my most hated proposed change that everyone has stated thus far because it perpetuates this idea that Toxikon has to stay as-is, which as I mentioned above, is something I loathe with immense fervor. Toxikon is terrible objectively, and I cannot accept it as a dull, uninspired movement tool gated behind the illusion of good healing. How anyone could look at the possibility of it being a worthwhile reward for actually healing and say "mmm, no. I think I prefer this inoffensive version instead" is something I cannot mentally process as a thing people believe. I'm sorry, that's obnoxiously harsh, but I'm being harsh intentionally to show the level of hate I feel for the current Toxikon, and how much I vehemently believe it is a bastardization of game design.

I personally can't see them adding more damage spells for SGE without the community busting into flames over it having a more engaging rotation but Idk I was shocked when they created Kardia so who knows.

GNB was created specifically with the mindset of creating a tank that felt like a DPS. There should be no reason SGE can't be the same for healers. I recognize that it's not fair to leave WHM, AST, and SCH in their state, but at the very least, we should allow SGE at least spread its wings so that people can more aptly show their desire to move healing in that direction more by playing the job that actually does feel like a DPS.

This is more of me thing but I find that Krasis is cumbersome to use as you need to apply it on a target before the skill to get the boosted healing. This requires weaving into tabbing to your ally and then weaving using the skill if you don't have a double weave window. Perhaps it could just increase the potency of healing on single skill used on the next target automatically or boost AoE healing action for half the potency.

I forgot about Krasis to be honest. I'm not really sure what I'd do with it at the moment, but it definitely feels like fluff and doesn't seem to have a clear moment of use. It's really nice to give to SCHs before they use Deployment Adlo, but I'm more often paired with WHMs and ASTs because people actually believe that pure healing vs barrier healing is actually a thing and not a baseless label, and both of them have moderately stronger single target heals that often mean I don't really need to give the tank anything other than more Kardia.

[elioaiko]

I mean Toxicon is hard to gauge because it was put there as a way of "rewarding" you for using E. Diagnosis but of course in reality, you only used it during downtime or prepull. It's even more annoying when there isn't downtime. I get that but it lives in the same situation as Misery, only a DPS loss because they seem to be thinking that making it DPS neutral breaks the balance. I agree that Toxicon shouldn't stay as is, because it's almost never used outside of untargetable moments. But I personally don't think they will change much about it until next expansion. It's just one of those things that aren't important to them. I mean look at the state of WHM and they refuse to even mention much about it pass "whm will be getting adjustments" along with the recent announcement that the job adjustments will be small due to Ultimate. So thay either means WHM will get nothing or have usable MP recovery. I'm not expecting them to do anything about SGE since the reception behind it was "positive" aside from the doom and gloom in the initial release of being unable to heal enough in dungeons. Now it's a solid healer that people use more often than AST and SCH combined who are objectively stronger. SGE and WHM sit in this boat of being "solid" when the longer the expansion continues, the more powerful SCH and AST get.

Rhizomata change would just give them a free charge of movement every 90's and that would make worth using it on CD.

I, myself am also tired of them attaching healing to damage because it will never be used for healing but rather aligning with buff windows. But alas here we are. Perhaps they could allow adderstings through using using Taurchole (so it's not spammable) and encourage not being capped/and usage of Rhizomata would be meaningful.

While I would love for SGE to feel like an actual battle healer, SE has vehemently made it clear that they want healers to "heal" most of the time despite that dpsing is the only button that matters after prog. The fact that they took WHM's Aero 3 and nearly all of SCH's DPS kit and have yet to give them anymore DPS tools kinda shows how they really feel. And they don't care, people have been asking for a diverse DPS kit since they don't want to give "mandatory" support traits. So they will continue to do the one filler, one nuke, 1 dot across all healers with a few trinkets that they haven't deleted yet.

We need to keep pestering them until they actually sit down and think about how healers can benefit from a more diverse DPS gameplay.

They seem to have no problem with making tanks do plenty of damage in different forms so why are healers just relegated to Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dorsis spam?

[WaxSw]

Snip

I see where you're going and overall I think is nice but here's my feedback about some things I'd change:

2: The 24s would mean it only aligns with party buffs in the opener and at 4m, I think its fine but if the game is moving towards a 1m-2m rotations a dot that only aligns evey 4m the timer would have to be adjusted

3: The problem of high damage toxicon is that the damage scalation in AoE is always weird, in this case for example its not until you can hit 16 targets that 2xDyskrasia would be better than E!Diag->Toxicon and to balance it so its not a gain lets say past 3 enemies it would need to have over 70% damage falloff. Adding a timer to the action partially patches the problem but at the cost of hurting sage's mobility and capacity to double weave/use pots without clipping

Personally I dont see a problem with toxicon being a conditional slight dps gain as playing around those conditions would make the job more interesting, as example making toxicon give a status so the next Eucrasian diagnosis reflects damage equal to a dosis but after that status is consumed cannot be aquired again for the next 30s creating a pseudo rotation of diagnosis->toxicon->diagnosis on top of additional means to gain addersting

4:This is problematic, mitigation happens before the damage while healing happens after so usually they dont work too well combined. This works in Holos because the heal is small enough that makes the 10% somewhat competitive and allows for the party to be slightly damaged before a raidwide so it doesnt overheal much, Pneuma on the other hand is much stronger than Holos especially when paired with Zoe so the heal would be the dominant use and outside very extreme scenarios where the 10% may decide if the party survives or not it would be seen as side effect.

I would leave both skills as they are now and if anything merge krasis into soteria to get that space for new skills.

5:I agree that pepsis needs a change but this would work only as an ogcd, in a gcd we are talking about way too little heal and a generation of addersting less efficient gcd wise in battle than just waiting for the shield to break and that is almost as niche as today's pepsis. As an ogcd it would work nice and would add some control to the barrier generation of addersting

6: Same problem as Pepsis, this change would only work as an ogcd as its literally Eucrasian diagnosis but worse due to the lack of heal, if anything would work in scenarios were the damage is so low a shield doesnt break but those are kinda rare to see at max level. As ogcd I can see it working much better, would offer the same as the gcd version but without the shortcomings

7: A combo for Sage is an idea that I can get behind, however there are 5 problems/questions I see
-Assuming the GCDs are 1,5s this would leave sage with no room to heal if needed, which is problematic because...
-Its strict timewise, no charge system was mentioned so sage would have a window where either they go into the combo or lose dps that could conflict with the healing needs of the fight
-Doesn't align with 1m-2m raidbuffs
-What actions would break the combo?
-Button bloat, for this combo 2 buttons would be used (and 2 buttons would have to be removed to make it neutral), this is not a short term problem but in the long run can make Sage feel worse

Aside button bloat the problems can be solved easily with adding charges, reducing/increasing its cd to 60/120s and making cast times instant so this could work fine, however if I were to design a Sage combo I would make it so it augments dosis and dyskrasia like eucrasia, that way you solve to some extent the button bloat and keeping it gcd only allows for ogcd healing mid combo.

[Haadrak]

My biggest issue with SGE is that Square said it's meant to be a shield healer. What shields? I have E. Prog. Lol. E. Diag. Lol. Then I have Haima and Panhaima. I ask again, what shields? I spend 99% of my time casting direct healing. SGE is a mobility healer if anything.

Also, what's a toxikon? I seem to remember having a spell of that name somewhere...

[Silver-Strider]

Haima and Panhaima.

More than SCH got at least.

[Haadrak]

More than SCH got at least.

Fair point. What was the point however of making this big distinction between shield healers and pure healers if all healers just do the same thing anyway? The only difference is SGE has roller skates on.

[AnotherPerson]

I'm going to be against removing Toxikon II for mobility reasons if only because it's currently the only skill that currently doubles as both a mobility and weaving tool without incurring a loss. Phlegma also fills this niche, but you also want to use this within raid buffs, so it's not always readily available as an on-demand weaving tool. Having more weaving slots and on-demand double-weaving slots to bank on is a good thing, but it shouldn't be the only thing in the toolkit.

Instead, addersting should just be more incentivized first and become the main gimmick of SGE DPS gameplay. Have addersting be more readily available and give SGE more skills that interact with addersting.

Let addersting charge in multiple ways with a new status buff [Addercharge]:
4 stacks of [Addercharge] gets consumed to give 1 stack of addersting.
1. On breaking Eukrasian Diagnosis shield, grant 4 stacks of [Addercharge]. This is still the same as current Sage getting 1 addersting when Eukrasian Diagnosis breaks.
2. On breaking Eukrasian Prognosis shield, each shield break grants 1 stack of [Addercharge]. Generates up to a maximum of 2 addersting in a party of 8 if all shields break.
3. Using addersgall healing abilities grant 2 stacks of [Addercharge].
4. Every Eukrasian Dosis grants 2 stacks of [Addercharge].

5. Leave Rhizomata as it is and let it be traited to give both 1 Addersgall and 1 Addersting.

Now you have multiple ways of generating addersting and the resource management becomes much more flexible to use.
Now you can introduce other skills like Eukrasian Toxikon II (AoE DoT) or Eukrasian Dykrasia (AoE DoT) that requires 1 addersting with their own unique caveats & additional effects if the sage does not need Toxikon II for more mobility & double weaves. Later down the line, there can even be an Eukrasian Pneuma to strengthen Pneuma as a healing tool by using 2 addersting to grant all party members Kardion up to 5 times - keeping it inline with SGE's capstone skills. It would reinforce using Soteria as a strong healing tool as well by giving the toolkit more synergy as a DPS healer.

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[Seraphor]

Eukrasian Toxikon
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 450 for the first enemy, and 60% less for all remaining enemies.
Additional Effect: Restores HP to targets under the effect of Kardion granted by you
Cure Potency: 170
Addersting Cost: 1
Cast: 1s
Recast: 0.5s

Basically, you use 1s on casting Eukrasia, 1s casting Eukrasian Toxikon, and then jump straight back into your next GCD after that.
You sacrifice that weaving window for 120 additional potency. You're choosing between using your Addersting resource for damage or mobility.
It's not a full 330 potency reimbursement, so you're not forced to use Eukrasian Toxikon over regular Toxikon every single time, but if you don't have anything you need to double weave or any forced movement, then you can squeeze some extra dps out instead.
It also expands the uses of Eukrasia to boot.