Sage's skill Pepsis is useless

[SirShady]

it's useful when i have a garbage party and i've already wasted literally every other heal keeping them alive. could it be better? yeah. maybe stronger or something or provide a regen but useless? far from it.

i'm sorry if it eats into your precious green DPS time. consider playing a rez mage.

How does this have 9 upvotes? How condescending can you be? I've never run into a team so bad that I've had to use it, and I'm a Sage main. The only time it MIGHT be useful is during healing checks like P4S. Otherwise it's totally superfluous next to your tons of OGCD heals. I have this button on my bar and have probably a hit it a total of two times. Neither of those times felt necessary.

I'll mention damage, I have no problem being open on that and couldn't care less if some Sylphie comes along wailing "filthy green dps!".

Abilities like Krasis, Soteria and Pepsis should be straight up deleted and replaced with dps buttons.

I'm not interested in improving them because we don't need them. We have far too many healing buttons. It's ridiculous how much free heal we have considering the damage intake of most content and people want to add even more? It just turns the gameplay into mindlessly churning out healing buttons without thinking because we don't run out. I'm even fine if a party wipes once a month because we didn't have Pepsis, if it boiled down to missing 150 aoe potency and all other options were exhausted, that group massively screwed up and deserves to wipe.

The healing aspect of healers is more than adequately covered, so yes, delete the useless fluff and add some dps.

Everything this man said right here! Except for Soteria being deleted... I like the idea of being able to Kardia multiple party members and used Soteria to AoE heal rather than all this boring standard AoE healing. If only the people in charge of designing Sage had actually committed to the concept.

[Shibi]

To SE: The Sage skill Pepsis is completely useless, I can't understand why one would want to instantly remove a shield effect that's already just applied for a healing effect with a weak potency equivalent to that of Medica.

It's not useless, it's not perfect, but it has a place. The SGE version of SCH's "Emergency Tactics" spell.

Can be used in Heal-checks when everyone's health is so low we will wipe. 1 GCD for the euk+2 OGCD for the shield+pepsis with no adders used. So it is fast and buys us time.

And also, another time I use it, which is sadly sometimes needed although it shouldn't be: You are in low level content and have melee DPS eating far too much damage. You are out of 'galls and a hardcast heal is just too long.

[Shurrikhan]

they didn't need to.
if you're saying a heal should just be removed due to it being useless and instead not improved upon to be an easier to use or better heal, it's likely your priority isn't the healing skill itself.

Were you falling short so of today's "stick it to the <strawman>" rants that you missed the OP literally asking for the skill in question to be improved upon as either an easier to use (less convoluted) or better heal (one that is worthwhile enough to have a use case commensurate to its complication)?

...But, alas, I suppose anyone who wants Dissolution reworked (to be useful for more than just an extra 3 EDs per raid cycle) must also be suggesting such as convoluted euphemism for "I just want more DPS"?

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Pepsis also have another use: removing the shield because you think the currently applied shield won’t stay active long enough for next crucial mechanic. You use Pepsis over there to reapply a brand new barrier.

Personally I just feel like 30s cooldown is a bit too long, but it’s not like SGE needs it anyway. They have $hitton of free heals.

[Renathras]

As others have said, it's SGE's take on Emergency Tactics, which is also a relatively short CD. 30 sec CDs are short enough to BASICALLY always be available when you need them, so you can use them frequently and avoid having to use other oGCDs. Granted, this one requires a GCD to use, so...meh.

As a short duration CD, it's functional in what it does. Does it do a lot? No. But it's not a 60 or 90 or 120 sec CD and it uses no special resources like Addersgall to employ it, so it's not supposed to be.

The main use for it is if you heal a party after a mechanic and have shield left over but they aren't at full health OR if you have major healing like solo healing EX1's Styx if the other healer is down (or you're just solo healing to bring another DPS) and need to spike in some extra healing or have shields left over after healing. A neat trick is to understand that the shield can be freshly applied at full strength OR have a mere 1 HP of shield left and Pepsis will do the same amount (full) of healing either way. So you can trade in a depleted shield for a full heal, effectively getting double mileage out of an applied shield by allowing most of it to be consumed and then getting a heal in there to refill that HP bar. This can also be useful in single target for 4 mans. Throw an instant shield on an injured tank when the trash is about at half health, wait for the shield to be almost depleted, then pop Pepsis to exchange a depleted shield for a heal on the tank that cost you no resources or additional casts.

Does SGE have other tools to work with? Oh yeah. But Pepsis is just there if you want to wring a little bit more out of it or have situations that need a short CD to be used and your big ones either are on CD or need to be held for an upcoming mechanic.

It has its use and its place. Could it be betters? Sure...but it's also a short CD with no resource cost. What do you expect, really?

[Seraphor]

In addition to all the great points already mentioned about it being Sage's Emergency Tactics, it also has another quirk that Emergency Tactics doesn't have.
It still works with a partially expended shield.
So you use E.Diagnosis for 300 potency HP and a 540 potency Shield, target takes damage equalling less than 540 equivalent potency, you then Pepsis for another 450 potency heal.
Obviously the timing doesn't always work out that way, but it's a decent trade off for not having the same powerful critlo mechanic that SCH has.

[SargeTheSeagull]

It's not useless, it's just very niche. If it could dispel haima/panhaima it would be more useful imo

[LeonKeyh]

It's not useless, it's just very niche. If it could dispel haima/panhaima it would be more useful imo

Huh. That and giving Pepsis charges definitely would be more useful/interesting. Never thought of that.


To OP:

Really though, I normally use it if a Eukrasian Prognosis leaves 2+ people still under 100% health (which is fairly rare). It's an OGCD that doesn't need resources so I just pop it.

I agree it's not an amazing ability and could use see some improvements (e.g. it heals for the maximum shield value instead of current, that way the "ideal" way of using it would be popping it right before shields break), but definitely not "useless."

[Rongway]

I agree it's not an amazing ability and could use see some improvements (e.g. it heals for the maximum shield value instead of current, that way the "ideal" way of using it would be popping it right before shields break)

It already heals for a fixed potency regardless of how much of the shield remains. Eukrasian Prognosis shields for 320p and Pespis will convert any amount of remaining shield to a 350p heal.

[QooEr]

personally the biggest problem i have with pepsis is just its potency. pepsis is functionally a 150 potency aoe heal, because the difference between regular prognosis and e.prog+pepsis is only 150 (300 vs 100+350).
getting a non-tank to full health needs around 2300-2500 potency. 150 is a drop in a bucket.

you must also consider the times when pepsis is used. the situations where a sage resorts to pure gcd healing are not only rare, but also dire. with so many other healing and mitigation actions, the only time youll need to use pepsis is when you have already exhausted everything else. 150 total extra potency is far from adequate for a last resort tool, and even less one that can only be used once because of its cooldown.