Why are there no multi-hit skills on Sage?

[Shurrikhan]

I would replace already existing Sage oGCDs with those multi-hit abilities, so the normal single-hit version would still be noticeable as your passive healing (like Eos) since all of your big Kardia heals are still restricted by cooldowns.

I think the plan isn't really to just staple high potency Kardia healing on top of the already strong oGCD heals that Sage has, but replace the fire and forget abilities with something that interacts with your core job mechanic.

I mean, feel free to bind/siphon additional healing potency-per-minute specifically to attacks as you wish, but that seems a separate issue.

Which seems like the better fit for what should heal more on Sage: Greater total damage in the given spell, or solely the numbers of hits it has? Effects being arbitrary, should the big lazer animation Pnuema heal for less than a bunch of wispy little muted shots via, say, Smínos Melissón ("swarm of bees")?

Is there something you specifically want from a dichotomy where some skills may deal more damage (via fewer hits) but others heal for more (via a lower total damage but more hits)? EDIT: And does that seem like a healing/damage priority lever that you want to create specifically in that way?

[ForsakenRoe]

I think the plan isn't really to just staple high potency Kardia healing on top of the already strong oGCD heals that Sage has, but replace the fire and forget abilities with something that interacts with your core job mechanic.

Yeh, rather than having Physis as a standard HOT, it could have been stacks of 'everyone gets healed by AOEKardia'. Druochole could have, instead of being Lustrate 2, been 'you trigger Kardia healing 4 times with this one move', stuff like that, that incentivizes thinking about who Kardia's applied to, not just 'is it on the MT'

Trying to do an EX roulette run with no OGCDs except Krasis and Soteria is actually quite interesting, dare I say fun, because of how fast you can hot-swap Kardia from one player to another. If they shortened the CD on it from 5 down to 2s so you could swap after every GCD if needed, that'd be nice

[Absurdity]

I mean, feel free to bind/siphon additional healing potency-per-minute specifically to attacks as you wish, but that seems a separate issue.

Which seems like the better fit for what should heal more on Sage: Greater total damage in the given spell, or solely the numbers of hits it has? Effects being arbitrary, should the big lazer animation Pnuema heal for less than a bunch of wispy little muted shots via, say, Smínos Melissón ("swarm of bees")?

What if we changed the big laser to a barrage of (maybe medium-sized) lasers, doing 4 hits and 4 instances of Kardia healing? Granted it would heal more than the laser currently does and have some awkward damage potencies, but that can always be adjusted. Nobody said that the spell needs to look whispy and little just because it's multi-hit.

Is there something you specifically want from a dichotomy where some skills may deal more damage (via fewer hits) but others heal for more (via a lower total damage but more hits)? EDIT: And does that seem like a healing/damage priority lever that you want to create specifically in that way?

What I want from this Dichotomy is simply more spells and abilities that interact with Kardia and funnel more of our current healing through that mechanic, be that through increased healing from proccing multiple instances or changing the function of what it does.
Spreading it to the party, increasing it's healing potency or maybe even converting the Kardia healing into a barrier are what comes to mind right away, and you could then choose on which of your skills you want to use those modifiers on.

[Post]

Yeh, rather than having Physis as a standard HOT, it could have been stacks of 'everyone gets healed by AOEKardia'. Druochole could have, instead of being Lustrate 2, been 'you trigger Kardia healing 4 times with this one move', stuff like that, that incentivizes thinking about who Kardia's applied to, not just 'is it on the MT'

Trying to do an EX roulette run with no OGCDs except Krasis and Soteria is actually quite interesting, dare I say fun, because of how fast you can hot-swap Kardia from one player to another. If they shortened the CD on it from 5 down to 2s so you could swap after every GCD if needed, that'd be nice

Kardia works like that in PvP. Just to keep that tally going for 'the PvE jobs need to take cues from the PvP ones.'

Also, I imagine that they left Kardia so undercooked because they realized they keep adding boss phases where damage goes out and there's nothing to hit. So rather than chance giving SGE just a simpler 'no enemy available' toolkit or maybe the ability to 'attack' an ally with offensive skills to proc Kardion effects when enemies aren't available, they threw their hands up out of frustration or fear of poor reception and played it safe.

You know, I often wondered why the hell they got rid of my ability to aim and control my faerie, and I think it rests on this core design.

The FFXIV devs feel that players shouldn't have to use resources outside of what they're easily given in game to succeed, and I respect that, but sometimes I think they just draw the line where it suits themselves over the players. The Faerie was perfectly manageable if you set up keybinds for Embrace, Steady, Place and Follow (all their additional actions were just turned into oGCDs that you have bound anyways), and maybe even macros if you wanted. The tools have always been there, but they concluded that they should polish off the rough edges entirely rather than putting the work to make it work as is.

Like, why wasn't the pet hotbar configurable, and why could you not tell Eos to default heal your target or targets' target? Those were functions they could have included in the UI somewhere. It wouldn't have been 'clean' so they didn't go that route.

These would be the kinds of things players from other MMOs would just learn to deal with and someone would eventually make an addon to assist with it, and I think it's that end state that SE tries to avoid, rather than just embracing that player choice in their own way by including additional actions or options in game to help those less technically savvy not miss out on an advantage.

On that note, Undraw is the weirdest action in the game's history. It was put in at a time when ASTs could draw a card they wouldn't want to play because players would otherwise need to /statusoff a drawn card with their own macro, yet it was still objectively worse because they didn't let you use Undraw while casting and there were separate ones for your Royal Road and Spread (though there was never any reason to remove these without simply playing them). It still exists today even though the reason for its existence is gone, when it literally cannot be used to a player's benefit ever, barring some glitch I don't know about. But, Undraw is an example of them working to make a system they had -- with sometimes difficult to manage technical aspects for a layperson -- usable for both that layperson and without ripping into players that enjoyed something's fun.

[Renathras]

Yeh, rather than having Physis as a standard HOT,

I know I harp on this a lot - and I'm pretty sure it's one of the things we agree on - but it's an absolute missed opportunity that SGE has literally no AOE Kardia button. It's like a no-brainer to add it, yet it's nowhere.

Worse, SGE was, instead, given these overpowered AOE oGCD heals and mitigations and even shields instead, and stuff like Pneuma. And even dumber, Kardia has a CD preventing hot-swapping it from target to target, something it DOESN'T have in PvP and has a much more engaging playstyle that way (not to mention necessary, given it has no actual heals other than Kardia effects...)

[ForsakenRoe]

I know I harp on this a lot - and I'm pretty sure it's one of the things we agree on - but it's an absolute missed opportunity that SGE has literally no AOE Kardia button. It's like a no-brainer to add it, yet it's nowhere.

Look at what WHM gets from 80-90 in terms of new actions. An upgrade for it's Glare/Holy to make them do 10 more potency, Aquaveil at 86, Lilybell at 90.

Doesn't it make perfect sense that SE would take the absolute lowest-effort route, and throw AOEKardia as a CD on SGE as the level 96 or even 100 skill? Also, making sure to make it not be part of the gameplay of the class, but just a standard bland CD with no other interactivity beyond 'press it and then wait for it to be back in 2mins'

[Supersnow845]

AOE kardia vs physis 2 by square enix design philosophy is always going to have physis 2 win out because if it was a kardia skill it would be one less skill for diagnosis spammers to press and all healers are designed so that those people aren’t left behind

Kardia was always going to fail as a mechanic because in order to make it interesting it would require making the healing next to impossible without doing DPS and that’s a like square is likely never going to cross

[Renathras]

Look at what...

Honestly, I'd go more the Whispering Dawn route. Instead of Physis, give it an AOE Kardia on a 60 sec CD at that level. Granted, it has Prognosis where SCH doesn't have any baseline AOE heal until Succor, but...SGE also starts at level 70, so it's not like that'd be an issue.

AOE kardia vs physis 2...

Thing is, you don't need that for casual content. Casual content is designed to be Medica 1 spam healed, and SGE has Prognosis that is functionally...well...identical to Medica 1. It's SLIGHTLY weaker, but not enough to matter in Sashtasha or even Aetherfont. Like, considering you can heal Aetherfont without issue with only oGCDs, I'm pretty sure you could heal it with just Diagnosis and Prognosis. As I say fairly frequently, MSQ content isn't designed to be super engaging to high end players, so there'd be no change there. High end players just actually COULD heal it with only Kardia. Which...actually might make it more engaging. I know not a LOT more engaging, but think about how many people think AST is more engaging due to Cards. And it's not like you need a LOT of abilities to do this.

AOE Kardia: 60 sec CD, 10 sec duration, basically the next 3-4 attack spells, but that's roughly the equivalent to an AOE Cure 1.5, which is sufficient for general healing. [OR 30/6 sec respectively, half to be more like Emergency Tactics).
Kardia 2: 60 sec CD, 6 sec duration, basically the next 2 attack spells, lets you spot heal a second target or double up on healing your tank.
Soteria: Somewhat how it works now, though I'd cut the stacks down to 2 stacks (from 4) and the CD down to 30 sec. This should be your Durochole level healing tool and actually interact with Kardia. Think Emergency Tactics' short CD.
Krasis changed to increasing healing effects you do by 10%. "But that's a nerf". Works with AOE Kardia and Kardia 2. "Oh...okay then". In case you need to buff up single target healing through the roof or use with your AOE healing.

High end players could probably juggle those skills, possibly with some mitigation abilities (Tauro/Kerachole; nerf their healing but the mit is still valuable) to get their party through while maximizing damage output, but for casual players doing MSQ/roulettes, they can freely fall back on Diagnosis and Prognosis (or just go through content Diagnosis spamming) and clear the content just as well as a Cure1/Medica spamming WHM can.

.

I mean, YES, they could do more with it (a DPS rotation where combo actions did more healing, etc), but even just the above would make SGE functional with BOTH a Dosis + smart oGCD use AND a Diag/Prognosis spam "MSQ Jimmy Casual" playstyle. For casual content, of course.

[ForsakenRoe]

Honestly, I'd go more the Whispering Dawn route. Instead of Physis, give it an AOE Kardia on a 60 sec CD at that level. Granted, it has Prognosis where SCH doesn't have any baseline AOE heal until Succor, but...SGE also starts at level 70, so it's not like that'd be an issue.

My sarcasm went undetected again, but I suppose this one was probably my fault for wording it badly. What I mean to say is, while my preferred solution would have been that AOEKardia be a thing in the current SGE kit (because it makes sense to have), I expect that SE will try to sell it to us as a 'new cool thing' next expansion. And the pessimistic tinfoil take, I guess, would be that they purposely didn't give it us now, so that they had a 'freebie' skill to slot in with Dawntrail, since they're apparently struggling for ideas on what to give SCH, it could theoretically track that they would not have too much inspiration for 'SCH 2' to work with either