Greetings,

after the nerfs to Succession Sage in May 2021, the class has been left with its main defense (Rift Chain) crippled and long standing class issues left un-updated.

This letter intends to make Succession Sage a more diverse, tactical and less predictable class and simply more fun class. (All of which it greatly lacks right now)

I will go over some of the abilities and mechanics and suggest easy things that can/should be done to improve them. 

Firstly; does Succession Sage need more protection? As a dedicated Sage player, I say no. Sage is an offensive caster and should not have too much protection. Instead, some of its clunky animations and delays need to be fixed to make that lack of protection less punishing. These changes aim to make Sage more capable of defending himself in duels for spots and improving his mobility in pve and pvp.

Primary Abilities

Let us first talk about Prime: Rift Chain, because nearly every problem the class has, connects to this ability.

1st Problem: Rift Chain is supposed to help offset the long cast time Sage has on nearly every ability. The problem is, it doesn't do that. Rift Chain requires you to first finish the ability's cast time (Example: Ator's Energy and Spatial Collapse) before even being able to slip into rift and then requires you to go through the same lengthy animation those abilities would have without Rift Chain.

Suggestion: Allow us to immediately slip into Rift Chain upon ability activation and have stored abilities activate more quickly when coming out of Rift. Spartial Collapse and its Flow are the biggest offenders - where you go through a long, unprotected animation of landing the ability. This portion needs to be sped up to not punish Sage so much for using Rift Chain. A last option can be to make it so Rift Chain applies super armor for the entirety of the ability it is used with. This (not even) 1 second it grants now (while off cooldown) makes no sense.

2nd problem: Sage lost all its survivability when Rift Chain lost its Iframe on cooldown.

Suggestion: In my opinion, this change should be reverted altogether, because the class design simply does not work without it. Keep Sage visible in Rift but restore it to what it was; the class dearly needs it back. Alternatively, reduce Rift Chain's cooldown to at least 3 seconds down from 4 and increase the travel speed of Rift Chain by 10-15%. 

3rd problem: The collision on Rift Chain!

Suggestion: Please just remove the collision when Rift Chain is on cooldown. :D We are so tired of getting stuck on critters or dying amidst a pack of mobs or getting body blocked by other players when chasing after Nouver. :D Please just remove it. <3

Prime: Ator's Energy (S+LMB): This ability suffers from a cast time that is unproportional to the damage it deals. Sage in pve relies on it because it is our only Tier 3 addon, but is slowed down by its lengthy cast. So much so that some people even tend to skip it entirely. 

Suggestion: The best way to improve it is to give it the Ator's Mark treatment where it has its cast time shortened when used after another Sage ability - or cut its cast time in half. A less satisfactory solution would be to change its damage from 1307x8>1522x8 to bring it more on par with Sage's other lengthy casts.

Prime: Atomagia (RMB after S+LMB): This ability is supposed to deal damage by stacking enemies and having the lightning strikes it summons overlap. There is plenty of practical issues with this. 1: The lightning hits random enemies in the entire (huge) area of the spell instead of ones stacked in front of Sage. 2: The individual AoE of each lightning strike is incredibly small and unreliable. 3: The Cooldown is very long.

Suggestion: Make it so Atomagia prioritizes enemies in front of Sage or where the crosshair aims or at least the enemies closest to Sage. This allows Sage more control over Atomagia. Slightly increase the area of each lightning Strike to make it more usable against enemies who aren't tiny and thus have no tightly stacked hitboxes. (As a bonus, but not necessary when above things are done) Reduce the cooldown to 20s down from 45s to allow Sage to use it after every 2nd Ator's Energy.

Prime: Voidgates (Shift+RMB): Long, unprotected cast time and mediocre damage for said cast time, especially in pvp after the damage nerfs in May.

Suggestion: Allow Voidgates to be used with Rift Chain to cut short some of its cast time and make Sage less vulnerable while using it. (Again, instead of making abilities protected, allow Sage to play more skillful by using his abilities wisely)

Prime: Ator's Mark (S+E): There is an issue where Ator's Mark has an after delay when trying to use certain abilities right after it, making it feel clunky and resulting in a DPS loss when used with certain abilities. These abilities mainly are Spatial Fissure(Shift+LMB) and Illusion Expansion (Shift+F).

Prime: Spear Bolt (W+C): This ability sports an annoying, unprotected sliding portion after teleporting.

Suggestion: Have this ability work more like the Awakening version by moving the damage from its Dash Hit to the First Hit and allowing Sage to instantly teleport behind the enemy instead of doing an awkward slide after teleporting to the enemy. I do not know why anybody thought this was a good idea. :) Reduce the cooldown to 7s to give Sage a tool to be used in 1v1 and for moving quicker from pack to pack in PvE.

Secondary abilities

Succession Sage has fewer abilities and fewer total Skillpoints required than most classes. So it could be considered to give some of his Absolutes, Prime versions. But let us deal with what we have for now.

Absolute: Realm of Anguish (S+RMB): A summon with an unnecessary cast time and very low damage.

Suggestion: Increase its damage from 1025x14>1800x14. I had this nice fantasy where Realm of Anguish would persist for as long as there is an enemy present within its area. But that would certainly be too difficult to change.

Absolute: Gravity Rift (Shift+E): Like all Sage Absolutes, it suffers from really bad damage. It's outclassed in any way by the third rabam. 

Suggestion: Add a 50% crit change and increase the damage from 793x6>1427x6.

Absolute: Ator's Thorn (RMB): Laughable damage and costs stamina.

Suggestion: I would love to see this ability become a bit more like what Shock Relay is for Awakening Sage: A quick chip damage tool Sage can utilize aside from his slow abilities or to cancel certain abilities in pve. God knows Succ Sage needs some quick abilities to be less predictable. The ability no longer costs 100 stamina but 50 mana instead. Increase damage from 544x2(Please...)>1200x4 and remove the 50% movement speed debuff from it and replace it with a 5% crit damage for 5 seconds buff. This ability can now quick activate after any other Absolute or Prime ability. Increase its AoE size so it can actually hit more than 1 enemy. :)

Rabams (Skill Enhancements)

All of Sage's Rabams are currently considered underwhelming and at the very best, gimmicks. So I will only focus on the most glaring issues to keep this post shorter.

Ator's Palm: Add a 50% crit chance for this ability and remove its long wind up time.

Energized Thorn: Remove the long wind up time from this ability and reduce its cooldown from 13s>7s to make a more feasible pulling tool for Sage in pve. (Pulling is something Succession Sage is not very good at right now)

The problem with Time and Space (Ebuff, Reset, Overdrive)

Sage was advertised as this master of time and space, yet he does nearly nothing with time. 

Sage is the only class that gets punished for using its Ebuff because it keeps resetting Prime: Overdrive for very little time gain. Many might disagree, though I view a stable 10% cast speed over an hour of grind as more efficient than some crit chance and damage ever now and then. At most grindspots anyway.

Suggestion: Remove the Ebuff and Overdrive interaction entirely, so Sage can use his Ebuff without second thoughts like any other class or have him not lose stacks constantly when the Ebuff is on cooldown.

Reset: This is such a gimmick, because Sage has low cooldowns on almost all abilities. Other classes have mechanics that really add to the class and feel like a part of them (Nova's Engarde for example) but Reset feels poorly thought through and like it was rushed. Reduce Reset's cooldown from 10 minutes to 5 minutes, so Sage can still have a higher uptime of his Ebuff and speed up Reset's cast time.

Overdrive: Anyone else thinks that Overdrive sounds a bit dramatic for what this ability actually does? Overdrive sounds a bit like going rampant. Maybe add a 1% crit chance per stack of Overdrive. 

Imagine thinking a class is not fun cause they slightly tooned down his extremely broken mobility+protection spell lol.

FOTM reroller detected...

Neither am I flavor of the month, nor a reroller. I have stuck to Succession Sage since the day it released and I still care dearly for it. Hence this post.

I also do not think that taking away the only defensive tool of a class can be called "slightly" toned down. It is enough to shatter a class.

Succ Sage is still strong lol

"only defense tool" yea idk the dash is still superarmor off cooldown and you have s block. the class damage is still bonkers.

I disagree. Superarmor does absolutely nothing for Succ Sage. Rift is slow and you are visible in it. Any competent oponent knows to punish this immediately. Which is what the topic kind of is about: Making Sage less predictable and less 1 trick pony.

And damage... well. Most classes have more damage now and most importantly, faster damage. Sage has essentially 1 or 2 abilities he can really use to get things done. Both of which are too slow and telegraphed. My suggestions seek to change exactly that.

Remove the weakness of a classe is who you make it completly broken.

Actualy Sage Succ look terrible cause of the awakening that is superior on every aspect.

Sage Awake definitely needs a nerf to give him real weakness. Like its happen with Succ.

In my Opinion Succ need nothing.  its perfectly fine as is it.  It can perform perfectly.

its Awake that need to be step down,  The awake must lose in protection or damage, as desired. and the ranged grab capability of Seize be removed. and why not Electrify 15% accuracy be remplace for something useless like a *Normal class*. like a 15% movement speed.

I suppose this is easy to say unless you really play the class. I agree that Succession pales in the shadow of Awakening and that it needs adjustments. Though Succession had enough weaknesses prior to the nerfs, such as being very predictable and slow. The nerfs just took everything from the class to counterbalance these weaknesses.

lmao

Go play with dk, and you will see how not having shit on your dash makes difference compared to sitting in perma SA...

Also you're wrong, there is very few classes on par with sage damage, you just need to gitgud.

yes, awakening needs heavy nerfs.

Less visible than a mae/musa dashing in superarmor, not to mention said dash is affected by slow which almost every meta class has. It's less about the 1v1 but group pvp. any buff to a class made specifically for a 1v1 without consideration for group pvp is a bad buff. in group pvp, you can barely track who u are hitting much less swirling particles. 

and no most classes dont have more damage, maybe faster. with your logic, would you say guardian would need a buff? hint they dont