Quote Originally Posted by RinaB View Post
Hi everyone, so I am not a healer main and sort of dabbled and leveled AST and WHM back in shadowbringers and haven't healed until yesterday. I just have a few questions regarding sage gameplay to see if im currently understanding it properly. I am also 73, so here we go.

1: if my tank is at full health but has an incoming tank buster is it bad to cast Eukrasion Diagnosis on them for the shield?

2: when is the most optimal time to use Haima? It has such a long CD it is usually only good for 1 buster on a typical boss.

3: for anyone who's played a holy paladin in wow, should I just keep Kardia on the tank all the time because of how Kardion works and Soteria or move it around constantly like beacon of light from wow?

4: I've had tanks who clearly don't understand how to use mitigators and I'm forced to spam diagnosis and Druochole. Should it always be Eukrasion or is spamming normal ok in emergencies where that half second counts?

5: I'm a little confused at when to use Pepsis. Ideally I want the shields on my party at all times so is this kind of a last resort button?

Other then those questions I feel I'm doing alright, I'm enjoying it as it's a big change from my comfort zone role. Ty in advance for any guidance and advice you all may have for me.

1. Optimally speaking, if the tankbuster is not lethal (leaves the party member with HP remaining), then you don't use an Eukrasian shield. You just heal it up after the hit takes place. As a sage, you have many tools at your disposal to do so. Single Target skills like: Druochole, Taurochole, Soteria + Kardion hits over time, and later -- Krasis to magnify those healing actions. Toxikon is not a DPS gain during combat because it has the same potency as Dosis, but takes at minimum 2 GCDs to execute (Eukrasian Diagnosis to shield, followed up by Toxikon). You lose damage compared to using Dosis -> Weave in a healing ability -> Dosis -> Weave in a healing ability, so generally opening up with Eukrasian shields isn't the most ideal unless you need that shield to keep someone alive. Using Eukrasian shields when the tank can survive a tankbuster without your shield is basically throwing away MP.

2. Optimal time to use multi-hit barriers is effectively during big bleeds, mutli-hit attacks, or strong persistent damage. Those are instances where the barriers will persistently pop. You can see its use during wall to wall pulls because it acts as a strong lasting barrier against many hits and let your kardia proc without worries. If you can't get the full advantage of Haima, it's just planned to be used for a small shield + the heal from excess shields expiring.

3. This is situational. You can usually leave kardia on a tank because the kardia system is devoid of interactivity and the game severely lacks damage beyond what your oGCDs can cover, but if you want maximum performance, you can kardia swap to apply Soteria on a DPS to heal between attacks as well.

4. You should always be using Eukrasian shields (1s + activation with 1.5s lockout after) over diagnosis (1.5s cast with 2.5s lockout) because both of them have effectively the same cast time. Diagnosis is 100% a loss. Eukrasian shields are not only more potency per shield, you also can recup some of the DPS loss /healing through Kardion when using Toxikon and give you more room to weave oGCD healing.

5. Pepsis is just SCH's Emergency Tactics but in reverse. After applying Eukrasian shield, you can use pepsis to pop the shield, effectively giving the healing potency of an Eukrasian shield's potency as raw healing. Using Eukrasian Prognosis -> Pepsis -> Eukrasian Prognosis is how you can rapidly let the party gain some HP back without oGCDs left because the total potency of Eukrasian shields is bigger than their counterpart. The optimal use case is to apply the Eukrasian shields, take enough damage to leave a small sliver of the shield remaining, then use Pepsis to gain maximum healing potency while reducing shield waste.

Needless to say, most attacks do far more than what your Eukrasian shields will mitigate when you do need Eukrasian shields to survive lethal attacks (especially for raidwide), so the optimal use case is hard to achieve and generally have better alternatives (like the rest of your healing and mitigation toolkit) since GCD skills are more like a last resort, but it's one of those niche things you can do with Eukrasian Diagnosis's shield value to maximize the value of your Eukrasian shields.