[Sage] What is a better job fantasy?

[ty_taurus]

Thus far, there’s been discussion on the past about how Sage ultimately fails at achieving the “healer who heals through DPS” fantasy that the job was claimed to have. As has been discussed at length, its DPS options and “rotation” are largely the same as every other healer, and that’s a problem.

There have been theorycrafting attempts for Sage in the past, and I’ve done my own fair share of theorycrafting as well, but having spent more time thinking about what the fantasy of the Sage really is, I want to go over what I believe the proper gameplay loop should look like to make a more satisfying healer. My goal here isn’t to outline a specific rework of the class or dig into the nitty gritty, but to give a more broad overview with an example of how I would approach the Sage’s offensive spells to accomplish this.
Things like names and values are meant to just convey the idea and open up a discussion about other ways to address the issue with Sage’s gameplay loop. So think of this as an opportunity for discussion. Having said all that, let me start by outline changes to the gauge that would be important to identify going into this example.

Gauge Mechanics

For starters, Addersgall is no longer generated naturally, but with the use of a new spell Eudipsia which also generates 1 Addersting. More on this later. Beyond that, the meter is instead replaced with a gauge that increases as you cast spells that have Kardia effects to a maximum of 100. E. Diagnosis barriers no longer generate Addersting on break, but rather, casting E. Diagnosis or E. Prognosis will consume 50 gauge to generate 1 Addersting instead.
That having been said, let me go into some details about your offensive tools in this concept:

Action Changes

I’ll reiterate briefly that the names and numbers here are more just a general idea. I’ll just be focusing on offensive spells to communicate the details of a proper gameplay loop, but there would naturally need to be other changes as well to fit this type of system. But regardless, here’s an example of a reworked offensive tool kit for the Sage:

Dosis III – Your standard single target offensive spell. No changes. Eukrasian Dosis III stays as your single target DoT but has one change: The Kardion effect changes to a weak barrier that, when broken, allows for 1 use of Atelektasis (more on this later). The barrier can stack with other GCD barriers or galvanize.

Phlegma- No changes or additions.

Kardiorrhexis – New offensive single target spell on the GCD. More expensive than Dosis III, but heals your Kardion target for 400 potency. Eukrasian Kardiorrhexis changes this to a barrier that does not stack with other GCD barriers or galvanize.

Toxikon – Replaces Dyskrasia as your standard AoE GCD spell. It has Dosis potency with 50% drop off and costs more MP but hitting multiple enemies refunds half the cost. This makes it both your AoE tool and your mobility tool. Standard Kardion effect. Eukrasian Toxikon applies an AoE DoT with drop off that does not stack with Eukrasian Dosis III’s DoT. It no longer requires Addersting.

Toxikon II - Toxikon now upgrades to this when you have Addersting. Effects are the same as Toxikon with a few adjustments: No MP Cost, enables 1 use of Atelektasis, consumes 1 Addersting.

Atelektasis – New DPS OGCD ability. It has AoE Dosis potency with 50% drop off. Causes targets to take 5% more damage from you for 15 seconds. Can only be used after Toxikon II or Eukrasian Dosis III’s barrier.

Eudipsia – New offensive spell on the GCD. Dosis potency in a line AoE with 75% drop off. It has a 1.5 second cast time and a 20 second recast time with 2 charges. It generates 1 Addersgall and 1 Addersting and provides the standard Kardion heal. Eukrasian Eudipsia loses its Addersgall generation to restore 8% of your MP alongside generating 1 Addersting and also restores 8% of your Kardion target’s MP.

Paroxysm – New offensive spell on the GCD. Phlegma potency cone AoE with 50% drop off. Instant cast with a 60 second recast time. It grants your Kardion target an 8% damage buff for 15 seconds. It costs 3200 MP.

Pneuma – The current Pneuma remains as Pneuma II, and a weaker Pneuma is added at a much earlier level. This is a Dosis potency line AoE with 50% dropoff that heals all nearby allies for 120 potency. Costs 1600 MP but has no recast time. Your Kardion target also creates an AoE heal for 120 potency around them that stacks similar to Dancer’s Cure Waltz.

Pneuma II – The same as our current Pneuma except the Kardion effect is also the AoE 120 potency heal as with the new base Pneuma.

Discussion

Naturally, the rest of the sage’s tool kit would need to be balanced around these tools, but again, the focus is more on Sage’s gameplay loop rather than a specific rework. This is just an example to detail more ways to create variety within the Sage’s spellbook.
Here, you have more spells that have unique effects on your Kardion target, which will make swapping your Kardia more important as there are effects in this example that benefit other party members other than just the tank. There’s also a more intentional gameplay loop with raw offensive tools as well to expand on the shallowness that is the current, universal healer “rotation.”

The floor is of course open to discuss Sage details in general, but I’m also curious what other Kardia effects might fit well into further delivering on Sage’s fantasy that I might not have thought of, as well as other ideas that could better address what Sage's fantasy should be.

[UkcsAlias]

For Kardiorrhexis to make it not overlap with the current barrier spell we have (which i think is fine due to the low level balance mechanics where a standard heal is still required). I would adjust its shield on this slightly.

Upon applying a shield to the target, when it breaks, the next attack of the player that was shielded will deal additional damage (a bit more than dosis). This means that instead of charging another AoE attack, you just boost your single target damage. When this shield is not depleted and you apply Eukrasian Diagnosis, this shield is removed without dealing any damage.

I think this adds just a little bit more dynamic gameplay, without instantly adding too much.

For your Toxikon/Dyskrasia idea the issue is that 1 ability currently deals quite a bit more damage, and requires shielding to charge, while the other one is just free. Using charges when targets are nearly dead is generaly wasteful here. Thats why i think having control here remains more important. I know you want to have some mobile damage options, but when i compare to the WHM on this, i wonder if its truly needed to have such capabilities. A solution like AST might already be enough to give this feature in a limited way.

For Eudipsia and Paroxysm. As they are on the GCD, i would just make it a 1,2,3 combo like many DPS classes already have instead of just having them standalone. Completing this cycle then could maybe charge 1 Addersting. (and this combo is not interupted by using any healing spell - and this is important since otherwise you are going to cause a conflict in logic that you should not have within any healing class, your healing should never be delayed because it boosts dps. Healing is your #1 priority, and always must be)
Alternatively in the 1,2,3 combo, you can make the 3rd ability a choise between taking Addersgall or Addersting (making this 4 buttons in total: 1,2,3 or 1,2,4). This surely enables the choise to prefer damage over healing. Which is something the scholar also has. But most important is that it effectively does not disrupt the casting moment of healing at all.

Still, I would not add too many dps abilities because in the end, you are still playing a healer, so a major focus on the abilities should still be healing. That the dps portion however is made more interesting (which is nice for passive healing), is definitely something that is missing on our dpshealer.

[ty_taurus]

Personally, I'm not really a fan of creating a 1, 2, 3 combo. I don't actually feel that it really adds anything other than bloat unless there's meaningful choice involved. A lot of jobs do have this, like Monk's rotation, but things like Machinist's 1, 2, 3 combo just exists to exist. That's not to say you can't make meaningful choices involved, such as the example of choosing between Addersgall and Addersting, but that seems more like a 1, 2 combo or a 1, 3 combo. For casters especially, I'd prefer staying with spells being on their own restricted through other means such as resoures, MP, or cooldowns.

I do get your points on Toxikon. Perhaps it would just need to be separate. I do also see your point on the logic of Paroxysm's demand for DPS over healing, and it would ultimately pressure you to get in 1 offensive-exclusive spell in your rotation, but you do still have OGCD healing since Sage doesn't really use GCD healing right now anyway outside of occasional moments in the hardest content. But I think this becomes more of a problem if you're choosing between Addersgall or Addersting more than anything else because you're highly pressured into taking Addersting each time where Addersgall generation would feel like a punishment.

I would argue though that if Sage's fantasy is to heal through DPS, then having a lot of DPS buttons does make sense if the goal is to look at what kind of healing or support you're able to provide through those DPS actions. In general, I argue that healing DPS should be on the same level of Tank DPS, and Sage should look more like Gunbreaker in contrast, because both roles both feature a different primary objective to DPS, but still exist in a game where maintaining optimal DPS is the end-all-be-all.

[Renathras]

Largely agree that a 1-2-3 combo or some sort of similar interaction is what SGE needs. So much so I'd drop the DoT entirely for it. I find MCH's 1-2-3 + two oGCD attacks much more interesting than DoT + Spam until DoT about to expire, reapply DoT. I think more than about 5-6 damage abilities on a healer is probably the limit. You still need bar space for heals, and Eukrasia only fixes so much of that.

Though I do like the idea of having different attacks generate bigger heals. But I'm also iffy on how that would work in practice since you could always just directly heal instead if you needed a bigger heal...

[Allegor]

I'd argue that's more of a player problem tbh. Like, scholar and sage have direct heals mostly for emergencies/as a fail safe, but if one would rather heal reactively instead of how the job is designed/intended, well....white mage is right there.

[vetch]

Give up on the 'DPS healer' swash. It can never be really true when bosses jump offscreen for a cutscene every three minutes; it can never be true when all FF14 healers are 'DPS healers' because the healing is so simplistic that there's no skill threshold you have to meet on them. It was always a buzzword taken from other MMOs because it sounded good, without any consideration for how FF14 healers actually play.

Give me four separate milpreves to attach to party members, with four separate weak Kardia pulses to allocate, four separate shield loci that I can channel through, four separate points I can launch AoEs from, four different locations that my attack's visual effect comes from when I cast Basic Laser Nuke Spell. Don't cop out and just have them fly a lil circle around a guy and then come back to me when I cast a heal that you lifted directly from SCH's spellbook. Boring. Don't give me Nu-Gundam funnels and then have them glued to me like plain old guns while I blast away. Boring.

Make this my Sage mechanic: needing to monitor where my teammates are so I can effectively use them as platforms for my own DPS and heals. Make it so that if I screw up and leave a milpreve on the BLM when I need to AoE adds, I actually face a consequence. Make it the Gunbreaker of healers. And give me more laser noises.

[Jandor]

Thus far, there’s been discussion on the past about how Sage ultimately fails at achieving the “healer who heals through DPS” fantasy that the job was claimed to have.

Healer who heals through DPS seems more like the route to a specific job fantasy, rather than the job fantasy itself.

Sage job fantasy is something more like "healer that heals through (aetheric) science and technology," redirecting some surplus laser beam power into heals feeds into that.

[Seraphor]

You stop DPSing and you lose your base regen.

That's like losing your fairy, your Regen, your Aspected Benefic.

It might only be one mechanic, but it fulfils the role of 'healing through DPS'. It only takes the one mechanic. If you lose a significant healing effect by not DPSing, then you need to keep DPSing to optimise your role as a healer.

Improvements could be made but I think your suggestions might be a bit too much to be realistic, although the Pneuma change would be great.

Something like Eukrasian Toxikon, which has a slightly higher potency but a 1s cast time (exchanging your instacast spell for a more potent cast spell) could be a useful addition without actually adding any more buttons, and capitalising on Eukrasia.

Plus a passive effect that has all DPS spells contribute to the job gauge. Maybe slow down the default rate to 1 Addersgall every 30 seconds (up from 20) but have each DPS GCD increase it by an additional 5%. (In 20s, which would fill the gauge to 66%, you'd cast about 6 spells for 30%, so basically back to 20s) This would reward constant DPS with more readily available Addersgall.

[GoatOfWar]

The 1 button rotation is an insult to the player's intelligence. As the staple ''dps oriented'' healer it was being sold as, it NEEDS more damage buttons. Buttons that synergise with, and spread Kardia. And more seperate damage buttons that trigger Kardia. Currently, sage is just a microwave scholar. Instant but lower quality barriers is all it has going for it. It does not change the gameplay from scholar and frankly, i would rather have had them fix the existing healers than adding another braindead carbon copy of the existing healers, sharing the exact same design problems.