THIS POST IS LONG. IT'S SO LONG THAT I HAD TO SPLIT IT INTO MULTIPLE DIFFERENT POSTS.

PLEASE UP THE MAXIMUM CHARACTER LIMIT MAN COME ON.

Sage was handled extremely poorly

Unfortunately sage was released fresh off the heels of the end of an era of crippling mage domination. During a time where the community was extremely sensative to the power of classes due to how strong mages were for so long. Unfortunately, Because sage is also considered a mage by the general BDO community - he has always been unfortunately constantly compared and put into the same view as something like succ wizard in the eyes of some part of BDO's community. And while others could see the clear and distinct differences, others could not. Leading to a "Sage Hate" Culture quickly bubbling up and spreading rapidly throughout the community. It immediately became much easier to simply say "Sage is OP" instead of actually taking the time to see what the class actually does. This lead to the community turning sage as a class in general into a "boogie man". The hatred spread rapidly and uncontested.

Succession Sage

I think if you ask anyone who's played succession sage what they think happened to the class they'd say it was gutted tremendously and left in disrepair ever since. 
From day one succession sage had high potential, unfiltered potential. It was a class that had very clear strengths, and very clear drawbacks. The issue is that the drawbacks were not able to be punished due to the way Rift Chains I-frame works.  Essentially you could start a skills charge > iframe > end skill > Iframe. And although a large potion of these abilities were unprotected and can be punished, it was extremely hard to do so due to the damage of his abilities being too risky to engage into. As well as the fact that he could vanish into the void after letting the skill cast.

So while the class on paper had the ability to be punished when coming out of rift due to some of the skills being unprotected, in practice is was nearly impossible to do so in group fights. This lead to sage becoming an immediate favorite to the succ mage FOTM players who recently got nerfed. And so it began, succ sage became the new "FOTM" class. 

If you ask anyone who plays sage now or in the past, they'll wholeheartedly agree that succession sage needed to be nerfed in some way.

And Nerfs It Did Receive.

On May 18th, 2021 Succession Sage was hit with a few really hard hitting nerfs.

● Prime: Rift Chain - Changed to now apply Super Armor when the skill is used on cooldown.
● Flow: Finishing Touch - Added a 17 second cooldown to the skill.

● Reduced the PvP damage of the following skills:
- Prime: Void Gateways - Reduced by approx.
-14% - Prime: Spatial Collapse I~IV - Reduced by approx. -18%

As well as various changes to Rift Chain that made it impossible to lose track of during fights.

And so it was

On paper, these nerfs don't seem like much to a player who doesn't play sage. In fact it would look like it was exactly what the class needed to be brought "in line"
But to players who played Sage, we knew what these nerfs meant for the class. 

To delve a bit deeper, these nerfs on their own wouldn't be as hard hitting as they are together. (excluding losing Iframe on Rift Chain.) 
It's the fact that they all hit at one time that spelled the "end" for succession sage's ability to defend itself, as well as a large portion of it's large scale viability.  These nerfs essentially turned sage into a lesser archer when it comes to large scale and 1v1. 

1v1 

I won't go too deeply into this, since there's not much to it. You cannot 1v1 effeciently on Succession Sage anymore. It has no way to avoid damage, and it has no way to get it's damage off relatively safely. Not only that, but it's so insanely easy to track that 1v1'ing a sage succession is essentially just waiting for them to use Rift chain, watching where they go, meeting them there, and either grabbing them, or immediately blowing them up due to their extremely lackluster defensive capabilities. For the succession sage, there is no form of counterplay to this outcome. You cannot escape it, it will happen. 

High End Large Scale

This is a bit more nuanced, because it's largely gear based. Although the general afflictions succession sage suffers in 1v1, he suffers in large scale Except to a much larger extent due to there being more players. 

If you want to succeed in large scale on succession sage, you have to outgear vs your opponents by a large margin.

Essentially you're a dive bomb

you will die. But your aim is to at least kill 1-2 other people before you do. 

The problem with this, is that unless you massively overgear your opponents, doing this is extremely hard to do. You cannot survive chip damage, and if anyone decides to fight you specifically, you cannot do anything about it and you have to pray your team saves you before you run out of stamina or get grabbed/blown up in SA. 

You have an iframe to get into fights

but you have nothing for escaping fights.

And you don't have the survivability to be able to rely on your SA to survive through in-combat mobility.

So in short, unless you have enough gear to completely overwhelm multiple opponents in the blink of an eye before you get one shot, succession sage has no place in largescale whatsoever.

But it should be, no reason a class should be left behind especially when Succ Sage ALREADY suffers in multiple forms of PVP, esp in 1v1 and DFS. It's a serious issue that ppl paid money for a Class, grinding hundreds to thousands of hours, only to be forgotten. That's precisely why he's doing it this way...because ppl don't give a shit, and would rather it just continue to get burried like it's been. Instead of providing any positive feedback or suggestions as to how it can be improved, you take the time to criticize the OP for NOT copy pasting, but continuing to expand on the issues of the class? Why would he condense the list of issues spanning almost half a year, to a single Wall of text? Succ Sages have been dealing with the same issues for 6 months, and you're agitated it got bumped to first page? What should take it's place? A class in the process of getting reworked? Some other player complaining about Musa not having a grab? Kinda think a class that's had the same bugs and issues spanning half a year AND not scheduled for any fixes, might kinda take priority over a class in the midst of getting reworked. He's providing feedback...feedback that's kind of important to the few Succ Sage mains that are left and not getting any from PA.

We've not heard ANYTHING about the classes standing, and until something happens, I'd expect this to continue. PPL continuously stumble into Discord excited for the class, then figure out that it's bugged all to hell and nothing like the "top frag" vids they see on youtube. So they will most definetly be pissed off and come here to post. I don't think this is the end, just the beginning especially after reworks hit live and ppl want an answer. If it's going to get fixed/reworked or not. If the tickets we've submitted of bugs will be addressed or not. It's got dozens of bugs still, find it kind of odd that several skills/combos are still bugged yet they somehow find time to nerf it. Class already suffers, and there's nothing more infuriating then literally outplaying someone trying to take your spot b/c of a flawed class design with bugged skills only to lose it and then have folks who're playing meta or reworked class spout bs like "Not everyone should be good at everything"....Succ Sage isn't good AT ANYTHING. He excels in NW/Siege when he has a good team backing him up, that's it. Something other classes can do better b/c they have tools to survive when focused. They have CC's that work and don't fire in the completly wrong direction. EVERYONE is aware it's the worst 1v1 class, but no one at PA is bothering to acknowledge ANY of the feedback we've given for 6 months now.

That's the problem, there are those with MULTIPLE pages of Replies...and those haven't had any response either....that's exactly WHY he's doing this now. If you actually take the time to read what he's posted, instead of assuming they're the same...You'll find each one Addresses something completely different lol. That's how many issues the class STILL has.

"awakened sage changes" =/= succ sage changes. You realize succession and awakening are different right?