RE: Sage Design

[ty_taurus]

When Endwalker was first teased, Sage immediately captivated me with its visual design and initial promises of a healer made in response to the feedback from players wanting more DPS tools. Yet Sage's conservative approach to that identity has left it sitting in Scholar's shadow, and I want to continue expressing my feedback on the job and my hope for its future (despite my increasingly waning hope for the future of this game in general).

The Problems with Sage

• Sage's DPS is as shallow and miserable as every other healer's DPS.

Spamming Dosis ad nauseam is not enjoyable full stop. That was the main criticism players like myself had during Shadowbringers that was supposedly what Sage was designed to address. It has not gotten better since then.

• Kardia and Eukrasia feel like an afterthought.

The most unique ideas baked into Sage's skillset are also, unfortunately, the most underwhelming. Instead of utilizing Kardia And Eukrasia as Sage's main source of healing, they are largely outclassed by Sage's other healing resources, which leads me to the third point...

• Sage copies too much from Scholar.

Many of Sage's most important and impactful healing actions are identical to, or extremely similar to actions found on Scholar, most prominently the Addersgall suite which is a nearly direct copy of Aetherflow.

Solutions

• Redesign Sage's DPS playstyle to something fresh and new for healers.

I want to make it clear that I am not saying Sage needs a DPS rotation on par with DPS jobs. Instead, I would point to Gunbreaker, a tank with a greater emphasis on DPS variety than other tanks, but is still not as robust as a true DPS job. The same should apply to Sage. And I think there's room to take inspiration from PVP Sage with faster cooldowns, some frequent OGCD attacks, and an offensive version of Pneuma.

• Make adjustments to Sage's healing that put more weight into Kardia and Eukrasia.

I think a very easy solution that would make a big impact would be to change what tools Addersgall is spent on. Instead of copy-pastes of Scholar's Aetherflow actions, why not spend Adderstall on Soteria as your single target heal, "Pankardia", a proper AOE Kardia effect as your AOE, and a new action that causes Kardia to apply stackable, smaller barriers for a set duration? Adding more DPS options also expands the range of resources that Eukrasia can potentially take advantage of as well.

To tackle both sides of Sage's issues, consider a rework to Philosophia... Since "Pankardia" could be introduced much earlier, you could have Philosophia function similiarly to an Enshroud/Reawaken type effect that gives you a faster set of attacks, and adds another layer of Kardia healing during the duration of that attack string. The healing can also be converted to layered barriers through the new Addersgall action, allowing you to take advantage of the support better even if the party is healthy.

Final Thoughts
For me, Sage is a job where I really want to look and feel cool and stylish. It takes visual inspiration from sources like Gundam, but I do not feel cool, flashy, or heroic when playing as a Sage. Instead I feel slow, basic, and listless. Both because Sage fails to live up to the expectations of a proper DPS oriented healer, and also that the healing I do doesn't capture the thematic qualities that are supposed to set Sage apart. It's time this changes, and while I'm doubtful it will, all I can do is continue to put my feedback out there in a desperate effort to see Sage live up to the fantasy it deserves.

[Carin-Eri]

Agree to some extent. Sage is my second most played class (Dancer being my first).

Generally I feel that, if I am on a team which (for whatever reasons) requires more focus on healing or shielding it feels pretty rewarding (for lack of a better term) to play.

However, if/when I'm on a team of experienced players who require minimal healing, I don't really feel as if I'm contributing much due to mediocre DPS.

[Xenoviastar]

I don't usually look into people's profiles but when i see someone talking about job design but they aren't even max level I am sceptical.
Sage has the most dps options in their kits compared to other healers, especially compared to SCH.
Sage already has the most OGCD's and they made pneuma dps positive already.(which I disagree with personally) I believe if you want/have to "heal" then you sacifice your "dps" casting, to HEAL, Rez, Etc.

PS. you are a support/healer.

[ty_taurus]

I don't usually look into people's profiles but when i see someone talking about job design but they aren't even max level I am sceptical.
Sage has the most dps options in their kits compared to other healers, especially compared to SCH.
Sage already has the most OGCD's and they made pneuma dps positive already.(which I disagree with personally) I believe if you want/have to "heal" then you sacifice your "dps" casting, to HEAL, Rez, Etc.

PS. you are a support/healer.

Because I refused to play Dawntrail. I did savage with Sage during EW. I know how to heal, and I know that an extra 60 second OGCD and a regen on a 3 minute cooldown ain’t gonna change shit about how the job plays.

PS, you can be a healer and also have gameplay elements that aren’t just healing. If tanks can tank while having more than one basic attack, one DOT, and one cooldown, then so can healers. Yoshi P directly stated in lead up to EW that they were trying to respond to players asking for more DPS on healers. I would appreciate if at least one healer could actually be designed to make the game playable for someone like me so I can experience Dawntrail, but I will not touch the game until there’s a healer not burdened with miserable glare/broil/malefic/Dosis spam ad nauseam full stop. It’s bad design, and I will not tolerate it any longer.

[Valence]

Wait, GNB has a DPS emphasis? Because of what, more weaving than DRK? I guess?

Either way, I do wish you good luck in your uphill battle with the devs.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]Sage has the most dps options in their kits compared to other healers, especially compared to SCH.[...]

Quality over quantity, I'd say.

• Sure they have Toxikon II, but they are treated very similarly as Ruin II/Lily management and thus isn't part of a SGE's routine.
• Sure they have E.Dyskrasia which no other healers had its equivalent in their present iteration, but realistically speaking, when do you even use this outside dungeons that has bajillion targets to DoT - which also amounts even less? While in theory you can E.Dyskrasia first pack then spams Dyskrasia, how many times do you think we'll miss them due to location desync? In the end, running together with tanks as you E.Dosis III targets one by one is still more reliable; the same routine you do with their siblings as well.
• Sure they have Pneuma, but not only it's not a dps gain (just to correct you there mind you) it's also treated as "Cure III but DPS neutral" unless you're cleaving multiple targets, which is also a rarity in 8-mans...
• Phlegma is the oddball (pun intended), but in practice they're still too same'y as combination of Assize and Afflatus Misery given how suspiciously close they are in potency to the latter and its cooldown being adjusted at the same time as when Assize got knocked down to 40s.
• I personally could even go one step further by considering Psyche to Aetherflow's equivalent as "another button I press every 60s, no buts", except Psyche requires no thought while Aetherflow requires conscious decision from my end to spend them for EDs when not needed. But this is just me-thing.

At the end of the day you are still spending majority of your time 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 on all four healers. It's ridiculous and beyond lazy. They can do better, they had been better. They SHOULD be better.

P.S. SCH still holds the top spot on having the most number of oGCDs amongst all healers, just to correct you a bit there. I'm not even counting how Summon Seraph changes into Consolation here.

[Carighan]

Quality over quantity, I'd say.

• Sure they have Toxikon II, but they are treated very similarly as Ruin II/Lily management and thus isn't part of a SGE's routine.

I mean, that a movement ability is used for movement sounds smart design to me? A big issue of most DPS jobs is how they use their movement tools rotationally instead of for movement ,after all.

[ty_taurus]

I mean, that a movement ability is used for movement sounds smart design to me? A big issue of most DPS jobs is how they use their movement tools rotationally instead of for movement ,after all.

It’s an uptime management action in theory; you use it to avoid losing damage you would otherwise lose if you have to run far and don’t have a reason to cast your DOT. But outside your initial three casts, you only get it after you’ve already lost damage by casting your barriers which is a bit counter intuitive.

If barriers are a necessity then sure, it can help you avoid losing even more damage, but Sage is designed to heal almost entirely with their OGCD. Every other heal except Pneuma is weaved, and Pneuma is DPS neutral, so in practice, you really shouldn’t need your barrier spells in a lot of encounters. I’ve heard DT has gotten faster with its mechanics, so perhaps in harder difficulties it sees more use, especially when progging.

Toxikon being an uptime tool wouldn’t be so unremarkable if you generated Addersting in more ways than casting heals you rarely ever need. Make your DOT generate 1 each time you reapply it for example. That would feel thematic since Toxikon is a reference to poison-tipped arrows, and that would raise Toxikon up significantly in my opinion. If Sage also needed it for weaving OGCDs, that would also give it a lot of interesting use cases, but since Dosis just had to have a 1.5 second cast and every cast is a weave window, we can’t have spells designed for enabling weaving since there’s no point.

[ty_taurus]

Wait, GNB has a DPS emphasis? Because of what, more weaving than DRK? I guess?

Either way, I do wish you good luck in your uphill battle with the devs.

You do have more tools to weave with, yes, but also your cartridge system has a priority system to it. You don’t just dump it into Fell Cleave, for example.

It’s not the deepest pool out there, I’ll grant you, but there’s more going on for it than the other tanks, and it was designed as a sort of “tank that feels like a DPS.” You can argue with how successful that was if you’d like, but it’s satisfactory enough for me that I think it’s worth referencing. Of course, I don’t mean Sage should have Gunbreaker’s rotation. It’s DPS should still feel like a caster, and should have the flexibility to pivot to healing smoothly.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I mean, that a movement ability is used for movement sounds smart design to me? A big issue of most DPS jobs is how they use their movement tools rotationally instead of for movement ,after all.

Mobility tools that are tied to GCDs will always have secondary values attached to them, i.e. weaving. If Toxikon II exists in a world where we never received Trashologification to our filler spells, then they would have significantly more inherent value and I'd have less issue with them.

We have seen how this happened to early EW WHM. The moment our filler became 1.5s without Lily adjustments (except the 20s part, I think they should've stayed 30s), people become more inclined to avoid them than not, thus giving birth to the early EW WHM 'mana issue'. The difference was WHM didn't had the absurd HPS from the rest of their kits to offset the avoidance of Lily spells unlike SGE's bloated oGCDs, which 4 of them also encourages you to use them. But because I can already do that anyway with 1.5s cast time, that also means I'll be pressing more 1 2 1 1 1 1 while trying to minimize Toxikon II usage - one from my already small list of DPS options.

I want to be incentivized to press less of 1 2 1 1 1, not discouraged.

Now if (general) you do really need Toxikon II that much as a mobility tool, be my guess I suppose. But when that day arrives, are we still a spellcaster if we need that much of a mobility?