buwumet: nothing is wrong with sage, it is perfect in every way

sincerely, a sage main

formy52: As someone who plays SGE as my main healer, it hurts a bit because it's so close to being like, actually really great, but it's missing a bit of uniqueness, a special something, that SCH has in spades.

Far as I can see it, at Lv. 100, it has two things it would like. The first is just a second charge of Zoe, that alone would make it feel better to play because it only has one on a 90s cooldown. Given how it struggles to heal massive damage, unless you're very confident, you'd ideally want to save that for a Zoe Pneuma special. Even having one extra charge gives a SGE more leeway to do more exciting pre-shields.

Second, for a capstone, and one on a 180s cooldown, Philosophia actually sucks. It's just such a whatever button. Pankardia sounds hype but in practice you're not really getting much use out of it because it's not going to heal the party up after a big raidwide to prep for the next attack. It's maybe a little useful for consistent low levels of damage, like bleeds, but then you're treating it as a budget version of Panhaima. Maybe if each heal also came with a shield which could stack, that might give it a bit of juice.

Speaking of, Panhaima is really feast or famine. It's amazing for multi-hits, and nothing else. So many times I've pressed it, it eats a single stack, and 4 stacks go away to overheal because everyone was full health already as the co-healer dealt with it. It might be nice if we could refund the remaining stacks earlier, like how you can dump Lilybell to just get a single big heal, that might be a good emergency use of Panhaima when you know a fight doesn't have a good use for it, deploying Panhaima only to then immediately detonate the heal.

A lot of it does work well, Haima is amazing for tank upkeep, especially in dungeons, I'd go so far as to say SGE is better in dungeon content than SCH. Holos is a fantastic general purpose button, Physis II is reliable and dependable.

I just wish it was a bit better in a few certain key areas to give it closer parity with SCH.

exaluna9241: Sage & Astrologians are my fav just for the visuals ahah

I do love all healers tho, but I've never tried savage / ultimate content.

Thanks for your video, I learnt quite a few things even though I have both Scolar & Sage lvl 100 !

dtaggartofRTD: As a scholar main that has played a lot of sage too, this covers a lot of my gripes with the job. It's basically a fairweather healer. It works really well when the party is doing fine. adequate to cover the healing required under normal circumstances. The major thing I tend to enjoy about sage is that its personal DPS is so much higher than Scholar.

The sheer flexibility of Scholar's kit and the autonomous nature of the fairy appeal greatly to me.

cekefun: As a sage main this expansion, I partly agree! For a static, a SCH is a lot stronger!

However, going into the PF, I personally feel like SGE is a bit easier for me to play.

The movement on my shields allows me to more easily adjust when someone fucks up.

It's easier to cover someone in narnia with my kerachole by standing in the middle of the group and them rather than try to place my bubble.

If my cohealer refuses to heal (looking at you glare mages), the pneuma, physis and philosophia allow me to regen a bit better in a pinch than the somewhat clunky SCH setup.

This could of course just be my personal preference...

tessieract: sage has one massive advantage over scholar that makes me prefer it, I would hate to have to remember to re-summonn eos EVERYTIME we wipe to a hard fight.

Polarthief: "What is wrong with Sage?" It can't make big shields or raidwide sprint /video

Hopefully Evercold fixes both jobs. SCH is way too jank and SGE just can't compare to the megashields (also Philosophia sucks, I'll say it. I thought it was an incredibly underwhelming 3m cooldown. Compared to any other 3m Healer cooldown and it's no contest that Sage got the weakest one)

DarkDyllon: Sage is fine for every content, it's just that Scholar tends to do a better job than Sage, just more effort.

For example in Endwalker, we had a Sage and a Scholar, the Scholar simply gave the Sage a time table for when NOT to do anything, we got to P6 with 0 issues, we never had to worry about our lives, a Sage wouldn't be able to do this.

But Sage is just the "easier" option of the barrier healers.

lawrencehelber216: My shield healer swaps between SCH and SGE depending on how they feel that day. I remember the group got really used to expedience in one mechanic and when we suddenly didn’t have it, a lot of us were caught off guard. It was very funny.

volpixel: i think the thing that disappointed me most with sage was how the devs were all “we’re making a healer that heals by dealing damage” and all we got really was kardia and pneuma. i really want it to have more tools in that vein. like i don’t expect kardia to work like raw intuition in aoe pulls cause it would be busted, but like at least give them a short cooldown to have that effect. also more spells like pneuma so they can pump out healing and better damage than scholar at the same time.

i think that’d give it a more unique niche that makes the more rng-heavy shielding a worthwhile tradeoff.

this would really give scholar and sage unique feels. use scholar if you want chain (for now lol) and really good guaranteed shields plus insane outputs with seraphism, and expedience. use sage if you want more damage, stronger use in aoe pulls, actual useful instant gcds, and overall more control and synergy.

cause the way things are rn i never touch sage cause scholar can do everything i need.

oneunknown8226: Something that wasn't brought up, but at least I personally have experience with is that Kardia is a double-edged sword. Yes, it gives you greater granular control over where your 'passive' healing is going, but that means you also need to have the spare mental bandwidth to be doing that level of micromanaging - while the fairy just does it for you. The amount of times when I was progging UCOB on SGE and our tank randomly started getting chunked bc I'd swapped Kardia onto the baiting rDPS and forgot to swap back to the tank after was embarrassingly high, and it's most likely to occur during the point when forgetting is most impactful, new prog - because you're trying to learn the fight and so are more likely to forget a swap.

Patron_Saint_of_Gobs: I hope they create more divergences in kits in evercold. I believe we have a shot to see this with the end of the 2 minute window we see in content. I would like to see Sage go further into the smaller shields etc... but faster coolies and more mobility while scholar is slower, less mobile, more methodical, with bigger shields. If balanced you can see the similar power between the two and the key is encounter design where sage shines in certain spots and scholar in the other. Absolute balance may not be there (almost impossible with the number of variables) but we will see this as depending on the healer and the other jobs brought one or the other will have the payoff needed.

Callius0: I cannot stand scholar. It used to be my main healer but the fight against itself with cool downs growing more apparent every expansion feels so miserable. So I'd rather play Sage. I tried both in m1-12s and q40 and scholar just pisses me off lol

gyropp: first-krasian diagnosis

bardic-inclination90: When I picked up Sage after hitting Level 70, it was very difficult to get how it worked. Attacking as a pseudo-Regen just made me feel very unsupportive as a Healer. And if something went wrong, it felt like my emergency buttons were just not as strong as Scholar (let alone my fave White Mage).

I am curious how it will play in Evercold since they said they want healers to focus on healing as GCDs.

1EnZBosS1: I am still a new to the gamer(well newer as i have now almost completed endwalker). Sage is the class i always am afraid to play cause when something goes wrong. As a sage i can't recover from it. Healing always feels lacking when you actually need to heal. Have had a few wipes in even dungeons cause of it.

Raionhardt: I've comfortably done 4 ultimates with SGE and even carried greedy healers so I think SGE is pretty gud. You mainly have to play around Physis II, Kerachole, and Zoe cooldowns. You don't need spreadlo. Panhaima and Holos are very strong. Taurochole gets much more use over Excog.

I've never felt at a disadvantage progging ultimates on Sage. SGE is less represented in world prog groups because of Chain Stratagem. There's ultimates where SCH feels horrible to play compared to SGE even. You should heal through a few ultimates before commenting on them

pokehero5327: Very excited to see how the changes in evercold will change this relationship between the 2 jobs. And on a related but also unrelated note I kinda hope Toxicon becomes a more damage positive tool for bosses. To have such a cool animation be relegated to for movement when you just happen to have addersting is a crime.

Elidan1012: Is this not the kind of differences that gives them the last shred of job identity left?

We can't as a community complain about job actions being too similar and also complain about actions being better than others in specific situations

b1ngnx33: SAGE IS BAD!!!!!!

Varichan: not #1 in dps, literally unplayable

DarthStuticus: I started on SCH/SMN. in Shadow Bringers. Immediatly switch to SGE once it released because i hate the Jank and Anti-Synergy of SCH.

nemamiah7832: If there's a question in the title of the article, the answer is more often than not - no.

PH03NIX96: Idk I've never had an issue healing massive raid wide.

I use a combination of Zoe Pneuma, Eukrasian Prognosis Pepsis, or a timed Panheima that expires shortly after the big raid wide.

Sprinkle in any of the mitigation or heal enhancements as needed.

But I'm also not running ultimates /shrug

DevilSeiji: When last we farmed eternal queen ex, I tried switching to sage from sch, bec scholar shields are soo much slower.

I do not play enough sage so that switch was not what I expected xD

stevoyah: I may be a doctor but...I love sage lol as a tank/dps main when I want to heal.

Galliao: They're just bookworms.

Jun 28 2026

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