Evolved Sage Wishlist

[ty_taurus]

Introduction
As the resident Sage-obsessed asshole who refuses to shut up about the missed opportunity of Sage's job fantasy, and occasionally spends money specifically to not play FFXIV and just beg for Sage changes, I think it'd be remiss of me not to go over what Evolved Sage needs, and also what it explicitly does NOT need.

The Issues
Let's start by establishing what fails with the current Sage design. First, Sage's playstyle is too similar to Scholar's. Sage was supposed to be a healer who heals through DPS, but every active healing decision a Sage makes has nothing to do with Kardia or DPS, and their most essential healing actions currently are reskins of Indomitability and Sacred Soil. Second, Sage's DPS is as shallow and boring as every other healers'. When Sage was announced, Yoshi P described it as a healer designed to respond to player feedback about wanting more DPS variety. If there was ever a healer to explore having a more involved DPS rotation, it should be Sage especially because it can utilize aspects of a DPS rotation to interact with Kardia.

What Sage Needs

• Aetherflow healing needs to go. Addersgall as a resource is fine, but if it stays, it should be spent on actions like Soteria and other ways of augmenting Kardia healing.
• More DPS variety with shorter cooldowns. Go all in on the prospect of a healer that feels like a DPS. Give it more attack spells and attack OGCDs. Let DPS fuel Sage's access to more healing resources, and build existing healing resources into effects on certain attacks or as Kardia augments.
• Make Sage look cool. This is a healer loosely inspired by a Gundam mech, there is no reason Sage's DPS shouldn't look flashy as hell. I don't want to feel like a laser hair removal specialist cleansing someone's legs of every follicle.

What Sage Does NOT Need

• Do NOT remove DPS actions from Sage. Change what certain attacks do, or replace some with new animations if you feel its necessary, but Sage's DPS arsenal is already painfully shallow. We don't need less.
• We DON'T need a full DPS refund on every Eukrasian barrier breakage. The last thing I want to see is Sage encouraged to spam barriers all day. I do want every action to serve a purpose, including GCD heals, but the focus of Sage's healing should be on Kardia, not Diagnosis and Prognosis.
• Do NOT make the job even easier than it already is. It doesn't have to be this full-on sweaty try-hard healer, but allow us to have something more technical. Reborn Sage will still be there for anyone who wants an easier Sage to play.

Some Less Important Wants and Ideas
If you plan on removing the cast time from Dosis, I'm actually okay with this, but if so then Sage definitely needs to focus a lot on weaving and double weaving both for healing and DPS. I genuinely think Sage should have an Enshroud, Reawaken, Overcharged type action that gives it a rapid-speed DPS window, because that actually compliments Kardia very well by allowing you to trigger Kardia more rapidly, especially if we add more ways to augment Kardia healing, such as adding more Soteria-like ways of augmenting Kardia. I'd also really like to see a DPS-positive form of Pneuma, and I think you can easily achieve this by making Pneuma itself an attack with no added healing while adding a Eukrasian Pneuma that can be used off-cooldown and retains the existing Pneuma's same potency as Dosis with added AoE healing around you. Please make Addersting more interesting. I don't think Toxikon being an uptime tool is inherently bad, but only being able to generate Addersting from Eukrasian barriers severely limits the mechanic.

Conclusion
Evolved White Mage does not excite me, nor does it give me confidence that the other healers will turn out better, but honestly, if any healer is going to have a more fun and interesting Evolved mode, I would bet on Sage. I've seen what Mr. Tamaki can do with PVP Sage. The folks here can attest to me glazing the ever loving hell out of PVP Sage to an obnoxious degree, but I do genuinely feel like the effects and cooldowns on Sage's PVP kit are way more interesting and would almost 1:1 translate to PVE very well with only a few exceptions that could be easily adjusted. Whatever happens, this is really the make or break for my interest in Evercold, and I'd love to experience both it and Dawntrail with an Evolved Sage that meets even a quarter of my expectations. My bar isn't as high as I make it sound.

[Heroman3003]

Just allow me to use Eukrasia again while it is active to remove it instead of having to rightclick the buff and my life is yours.

[Carighan]

Full barrier DPS refund on every cast? <3

Actual healing gameplay for a healer? I know it's preposterous to FFXIV players, but the MMO-player in me that started with M59 back in 1999 would be excited as all hell.

[ty_taurus]

Full barrier DPS refund on every cast? <3

Actual healing gameplay for a healer? I know it's preposterous to FFXIV players, but the MMO-player in me that started with M59 back in 1999 would be excited as all hell.

Please don’t pull the “actual healing gameplay as a healer?” Thing. It’s very condescending. For Sage, DPS is healing. That’s the thing that’s supposed to set Sage apart, but you made me realize I could clarify that point better. I was referring specifically to Eukrasian Diagnosis/Prognosis giving a full x2 Dosis potency refund as flat damage, for whatever Dosis’ potency ends up being. Doing what PVP does and having a way to apply a barrier through Kardia and that barrier fully refunding damage… that’s a different story.

When I get home later I can update that in the original post. But what I don’t want is for the weight of Sage’s healing playstyle to lean on Diagnosis. That’s apparently what White Mage is doing with High Cure anyway. We need healers to have different healing playstyles.

[Carighan]

For Sage, DPS is healing.

Sure, but by the same logic for a tank, being dead is damage avoidance (you cannot take damage if you die). Kardia is healing that... exists. Plus it's not variable. If you want healing through damage, we really only got Pneuma (as Philosophia works with heal GCDs too and ends up being significantly more healing output that way). Yes, I was condescending, towards the current class design.

And yeah I can't really see the issue happen. I don't think they'll want to remove Eukrasia - that is ultimately the real design-side identity of Sage, after all. Given how this means our shields ar a 1.5x GCD, and only refund 1.0x the damage, I don't think they want to mess with that setup. I rather suspect they'll bake the remaining 0.5 GCD worth of damage the other way around via some newer version of Kardia so that over X GCDs, we cause Y damage and Z healing, exactly like a White Mage would, only they do it with 3 healing GCDs then their big new nuke while we do something like some nuking that causes healing, a nuke here or there from the shields being used up, and also the shields in themselves from GCDs. As in, no full offset because our actual filler nuke partially offsets healing, so healing doesn't need to fully offset damage (we're expect to use more damage GCDs to do that, requiring less healing GCDs).

Of course, that's a big ask: For one, Kardia needs to be non-trivial in healing amount, and work as an actual heal not a token tank HP regen tool. At least the Scholar fairy heals other people automatically. If they'd do something like a trait "20% of all damage caused heals the Kardia target, if at full health, this healing is spread evenly over friendly targets in X radius around Kardia or so", that could work. A bit like some iterations of WoW's various healing tools did it.

[ty_taurus]

Sure, but by the same logic for a tank, being dead is damage avoidance (you cannot take damage if you die). Kardia is healing that... exists. Plus it's not variable. If you want healing through damage, we really only got Pneuma (as Philosophia works with heal GCDs too and ends up being significantly more healing output that way). Yes, I was condescending, towards the current class design.

And yeah I can't really see the issue happen. I don't think they'll want to remove Eukrasia - that is ultimately the real design-side identity of Sage, after all. Given how this means our shields ar a 1.5x GCD, and only refund 1.0x the damage, I don't think they want to mess with that setup. I rather suspect they'll bake the remaining 0.5 GCD worth of damage the other way around via some newer version of Kardia so that over X GCDs, we cause Y damage and Z healing, exactly like a White Mage would, only they do it with 3 healing GCDs then their big new nuke while we do something like some nuking that causes healing, a nuke here or there from the shields being used up, and also the shields in themselves from GCDs. As in, no full offset because our actual filler nuke partially offsets healing, so healing doesn't need to fully offset damage (we're expect to use more damage GCDs to do that, requiring less healing GCDs).

Of course, that's a big ask: For one, Kardia needs to be non-trivial in healing amount, and work as an actual heal not a token tank HP regen tool. At least the Scholar fairy heals other people automatically. If they'd do something like a trait "20% of all damage caused heals the Kardia target, if at full health, this healing is spread evenly over friendly targets in X radius around Kardia or so", that could work. A bit like some iterations of WoW's various healing tools did it.

Kardia being a glorified tank regen is what I’m asking to be rectified. Clearly, there is a desire by players like myself who want a healer that blends healing and DPS together. When I ask for more DPS variety and beg them not to strip DPS away, it doesn’t mean want a healer that doesn’t heal. I wouldn’t main healing if I didn’t want to heal, but having both healing and some DPS gameplay at the same time is essential to me.

[Shaboinky]

I would just love to see Continuation for Sage, maybe as a speed-heal boost for single target

[ty_taurus]

I would just love to see Continuation for Sage, maybe as a speed-heal boost for single target

100% love it.

[Zaytex]

It should lean heavily into the original fantasy that was intended for it, but failed miserably.

''A healer who heals by doing damage''

As such, SGE should get a lot more damage buttons, in fact, it shouldn't have any healing abilities available at its base-kit (or very weak ones that are incredibly efficient) that you can just access and spam repeatedly. Everything should be locked behind a damage button/combos which unlocks powerful healing spells and mitigations. The rotation of the job then becomes finding the balance of doing the most amount of damage, whilst putting out adequate healing and mitigations. The job would have an optimal damage rotation, but the difficulty comes from the SGE player having to understand the encounter design and the situation specifically with their team composition in order to know how to change their rotation for the encounter they're in so they're doing enough healing.

For MSQ content, you could basically play your job like a DPS because healing there is a nothing burger. For extremes, savages and ultimates the level of DPS you'd need to pull back or adjust would change, so not only does the encounter differ but also the rotation of the job. You wouldn't suffer like current design, where you literally do not have a job outside week 1 prog of high-end content (and even then, it's boring).

Bigger dps combos/buttons = higher mitigations and shields. I'd also tune down the amount of regen's they have and or make them more costly/limited.

If people go ''but that sounds too hard'' ''but that sounds more like a dps than a healer (tank get to have rotations, yet that criticism is never levied against them)'' then you literally have evolved whm which has the most nothing dps ''rotation'' of job design in the history of FF14, and a healing toolkit powerful and easy to use.

I doubt this will happen, instead SGE will get lobotomised like WHM and the developers will have the audacity to tell you its anything but that.

[ty_taurus]

It should lean heavily into the original fantasy that was intended for it, but failed miserably.

''A healer who heals by doing damage''

As such, SGE should get a lot more damage buttons, in fact, it shouldn't have any healing abilities available at its base-kit (or very weak ones that are incredibly efficient) that you can just access and spam repeatedly. Everything should be locked behind a damage button/combos which unlocks powerful healing spells and mitigations. The rotation of the job then becomes finding the balance of doing the most amount of damage, whilst putting out adequate healing and mitigations. The job would have an optimal damage rotation, but the difficulty comes from the SGE player having to understand the encounter design and the situation specifically with their team composition in order to know how to change their rotation for the encounter they're in so they're doing enough healing.

For MSQ content, you could basically play your job like a DPS because healing there is a nothing burger. For extremes, savages and ultimates the level of DPS you'd need to pull back or adjust would change, so not only does the encounter differ but also the rotation of the job. You wouldn't suffer like current design, where you literally do not have a job outside week 1 prog of high-end content (and even then, it's boring).

Bigger dps combos/buttons = higher mitigations and shields. I'd also tune down the amount of regen's they have and or make them more costly/limited.

If people go ''but that sounds too hard'' ''but that sounds more like a dps than a healer (tank get to have rotations, yet that criticism is never levied against them)'' then you literally have evolved whm which has the most nothing dps ''rotation'' of job design in the history of FF14, and a healing toolkit powerful and easy to use.

I doubt this will happen, instead SGE will get lobotomised like WHM and the developers will have the audacity to tell you its anything but that.

Very much agree. I really want the job fantasy that Sage was sold as, and I feel like it fills that in PVP already so it's not like I think the dev team doesn't see Sage as somewhat having that identity to some degree. It's why I'm not completely out of hope that something good might come from it.