PART TWO: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

Awakening Sage.

I have a lot of ideas when it comes to how horrendously bad Awakening Sage was treated. But I've already expressed these opinions in multiple other posts. So I won't go insanely deep into detail here about all his misgivings and overbearing changes

The beginnings 

Awakening Sage upon release was an absolute buggy mess and atrocity to play. That is not an overexageration by any means whatsoever. It was quite frankly the most buggy, and unfinished class released in a very long time. I'd argue it was the worst release of a class ever quite frankly. 

But even with that, the very few players that played the class quickly fell in love with the concept. And we knew that if given just a little bit of love, the class would eventually be playable and had a ton of potential. 

An Explanation of Sage

For those who have never played sage awakening, I'd like to give a short explanation of how the class initially worked in terms of it's iframe. But to do that, I need to explain what "overcharge" is.

Very simply put, overcharge is a buff you receive after casting any ability. Once you have this buff, you can use your iframe again immediately (Bolt). 

After the first couple rounds of bug fixes, the eventually released the "overcharge" feature for Awakening Sage. They did this because prior to it's release, Sage essentially had no way of moving during fights whatsoever unless it was in the form of diving into the enemy team or completely running away. 

Bolt was a 2 second CD, and you could not use it on CD. 

This means you essentially had the ability to dive into an enemy team, then one mobility option for in-combat repositioning for skill casting and combo'ing. So basically, you'd dive in, iframe once, then sit there like a deer in headlights praying 2 seconds pass before you get attacked. 

So Obviously, the release of "Overcharge Bolt" was an extremely welcomed change.

With the release of overcharged bolt, we could cast an ability to gain Overcharge then immediately iframe afterwards. This allowed us to have completely unmatched mobility and combat prowess. We were undoubtedly the strongest PvP class in the game by a very large margin, and even though the overall BDO community hadn't yet noticed just how strong awakening sage was in this period, the still small amount of players that did play him knew exactly how his strength would be perceived coming somewhat fresh off the heels of succession sages initial reign, which in itself came fresh off the heels of succ mages domination. 

To explain why we were so strong

When they released the Overcharge feature, they made it to where you could receive the Overcharge buff from any ability even ones on CD. This means that you could take your shortest, fastest animation ability and use it as an overcharge buff. This came in the form of Relay


Relay is a short burst of lightning that sage can shoot out directly in front of him briefly. it has a 2 second CD, but could be spammed while on CD. And of course, it granted the Overcharge buff.  Not only that, but the skill itself did very decent damage, was medium range, AND it could be used as an animation skip (Think Ninja's shuriken throw into shadow stomp.) except for every ability in awakened sages kit. 

This allowed Sage to completely dominate in any pvp situation whatsoever. 

But that's not it.

Sage has access to a LARGE Reservoir of accuracy.  

Depending on which accuracy buff he chooses to use, he could have a base accuracy rate of either 32% or 26%. 

26% At pretty much all times

32% If you successfully got off your preawakened buff (which is unprotected and risky.)

But again, that's not it. 

Not only that. he still has his E buff that grants him another 15% accuracy rate. 

as well as add-ons for accuracy

What this means.

Essentially, sages could (and technically still can) run full RBF crystals and AP accessories and weapons, without EVER needing to spec into any sort of accuracy equipment whatsoever and be completely fine. And if you did, it's just an extra Plus towards DP/eva memes.

This turned awakening sage into THE monster of the BDO community.

And even we as the sage community knew we needed to be nerfed. And we actively supported the idea of us being nerfed.  

But when the nerfs came, they rained heavy. And didn't stop until we were at our current situation.

A very brief explanation of the nerfs, and what they meant for Awakening sage, as well as what they will mean when the reworks drop.

I won't post all the nerfs and changes Awakening sage has received throughout his career, but I'll go into the most important ones that have lead awakening sage to being the dead class that it is currently.

Essentially, 


Overcharge was changed from being able to be gained from abilities that were on CD. Meaning we couldn't spam our Bolt > Relay >Bolt until we ran out of stamina. We now had to sacrifice many of our main damage abilities purely in order to iframe and move freely in fights. 

And this change, was beautiful. 


The Sage community was extremely happy with these changes, it turned the class from deadbrain rmb simulator, to a class that actually had a VERY DISTINCT drawback to it's ability to stay protected. It added multiple layers to what playing sage effeciently meant. 

Now players playing against sage had very clear openings to catch us between our iframes, and us as sages had to keep our brains turned on and figure out which ability we were going to sacrifice in order to stay alive in real time, it was amazing to play, and I'm sure if you ask any other awakening sage they'd say the exact same thing. 

So Sage now had very clear drawbacks to it's protection, something no other class in the game has. NO OTHER  iframe / SA spamming class in the game has a meaningful handicap to staying protected besides it's CD, or losing stamina. 

Sage on the otherhand, constantly and rapidly had to sacrifice his main abilities in his already extremely limited awakening kit in order to just have a free range of movement in-combat without being forced to dive bomb into enemies head first and unprotected. Or using his one only escape ability that's on a long CD.


The Storm 


Us as sages were completely comfortable with where we were. We still felt our accuracy needed to be addressed, but overall we seen our class as being in a decent spot now. Not insanely overpowered, and not insanely garbage. 

But the overall BDO community however...did not think so.

You have to remember 

Awakening Sage was brought into the spotlight fresh off the heels of a succession sage era of domination

Succession Sage was brought into the spotlight fresh off the heels of a succession mage era of domination


The overall community still had a hatred for sage and it's players. 

Even if sage was now in a state where it could be fairly easily punished and outplayed during fights, the overall community still hated sage for how strong it previously was. Very quickly another hate culture grew within the BDO community, and so did the rate of bandwagoners. 

So eventually, through what can only be explained as harmful misinformation, sage was made out to still be far too strong in the meta. Even though it's performance in Large scale was in line with multiple other top contenders when it comes to fragging. Same with his 1v1 viability being in line with the other strong 1v1'ers

The outrage continued to grow uncontested. Most of the sage community by this time that was filled with mostly Succ Mage FOTM rerollers had already left due to not being able to mindlessly iframe spam anymore, yet the overall BDO community still hated sage. Some due to just being misinformed, some due to just being angry that they lost in PvP to a sage at some point and never took the time to learn how the class works in order to punish it. (y'know..how all fighting games learning curves are.)


The Cold War of Nerfs



As I've already explained, awakening sage had grown a hate mob at it's heels. Mostly due to a misinformed community, mixed with salty players that don't feel like learning how to fight a class. 

So the bombardment of nerfs and changes began.

August 25th, D-day

● Bolt - Changed so that your character will no longer disappear and changed the Invincible effect to the Super Armor effect.

(Plus some other nerfs that I don't really feel like typing. As an example though they turned relay into a clunky mess that doesn't flow smoothly with bolt and a few other abilities.)

"A direct message from PA on why they chose to change bolt from an I-frame to an SA"


"There were adjustments made to the performance of awakened Sages in addition to awakened Novas. First of all, using "Bolt" would make your character Invincible and disappear from sight, then proceed to attack right away with another skill to overcome your enemy. These features were relatively too powerful. Accordingly, adjustments were made so that your character will no longer disappear when using "Bolt," and changed the Invincible effect to a Super Armor effect. Additionally, the Critical Hit Rate +100% effect was deemed too advantageous in a multi-versus-multi battle, so the effect was removed. It was completely removed because you can still maintain a quite high level through remaining buffs or skill add-ons."


Essentially, what they were trying to combat was not only bolts visibility (which it was already fully visible), as well as sages ability to avoid damage then attack directly afterwards. 

What the Nerf meant


To briefly explain what the nerf meant for us sages, I'll need to very briefly explain all of the abilities we have in our kit that are meant for mobility.

Bolt (Now only SA): Use an ability --> gain the the ability to dash one time SA.  Free range of movement.

Spear bolt (Unprotected): The sage locks onto a target, and throws a spear towards them. afterwards traveling directly to the target. All the while completely unprotected.

Impaling Flash(brief iframe > SA)[8sec CD]: Sage locks onto multiple targets, and throws a spear of lightning. He then briefly goes into a 0.3 second iframe before transitioning into SA and teleporting between each target hit by the lightning spear.

Divine Executioner: (SA>Iframe>SA)[17 sec CD]: This is our escape/far distance relocation ability. The sage throws a spear into the air and flies forward. (you can also use it to dive directly ontop of a target.) He is only in an iframe for the brief 0.4 seconds in which he leaps into the air. Not when he flies, and not while he's throwing the spear into the air from the ground.

Rift Chain: (Iframe) [4s CD, preawakening only.]: Sage enters a portal and can move freely within it for 1.5 seconds. 

As you can see, almost halfhalf of our abilities used for mobility are locked behind directly diving into the enemy. The other half is locked behind completely disengaging / wasting a long CD (in the case of divine executioner.), sacrificing other abilities in our kit in order to use it,

Or it's locked behind being in preawakening to use it. 

On paper, having to be in preawakening to stay mobile isn't a bad thing, no? many classes have abilities that are only accessable in preawakening. 

The only difference 

Is that in order to gain access to the iframe, you need time to pause the fight in order to do so. It's not as simple as C swapping into preawaknening and usin the ability. The only way to effectively go into preawakening safely is to use either a rabam ability, or one of the extremely slow casting preawakening skils.

Most sages go for either using Spatial collapse, or Void eruption. Both have a forward guard on their initial casts, so they are completely safe to use in order to gain access to the preawakened iframe. The only problem is, they're locked behind an animation cast both going into them, and coming out of them. meaning you need a lot of time during battle to be able to get them off without getting caught. 

Not only this 

But using Rift Chain, due to it being a relatively slow mobility ability, and incredibly easy to track, all the enemy has to do is follow you and grab/explode you as soon as you leave the animation.  So many times, using this ability in battle is an auto lose situation.

So what are we left with for in-combat, free range of mobility?

We have Bolt, which currently we still need to sacrifice a large portion of our very limited awakening skill kit to use.  It is also only SA.


Now for a second, imagine. 

A musa, who between every dash has to use an ability in order to perform another dash.

A sorc, Who has to sacrifice a new ability between every iframe or SA

A Tamer,  Who has to sacrifice a new ability between every iframe or SA

A Lahn, Who has to sacrifice a new ability between every iframe or SA

There are more, but I believe you get the point.

PA nerfed sage without taking into account the nerfs that he already received.


I won't go into just how bad these changes made sage in group PvP scenarios, as well as some 1v1 scenarios, beause I already have in other posts. And I want to get to the main meat of this post as it's already been 2 1/2 hours of writting this.

To make it brief.

Awakening sage can't avoid damage or Grabs. In order to move freely in SA you need to sacrifice your very limited awakening kit between every sa dash. most of which being unprotected unless you want to sacrifice your strongest combo abilities and longer CD's

For a class who's entire gameplay design is being directly in front of their targets, not being able to avoid damage at all or grabs at all, means you're now put into the situation of needing to completely obliterate your opponent before they get the chance to react in any way shape or form. And when you're 730 gs this is easy to achieve, But when you're in the 620's - 670's or below, doing so is most of the time just not possible. 

Well thought out and expressed. I understand they wanted to bring the class in line with current live, but looking at what's to come and how it's effected the already mainly TP to target kit, it was too much. At very least, Bolt should be iframe 2 sec cd with free overcharge SA. Feel like that would be much better...or, get rid of the need to use a target for it's TP skills or exchange some all together. I'd be ok with losing surge for another ranged tool...class can't dive now, mainly kite...but without a good amount of skills. Overcharge is also a meh mechanic...cool in concept, but it feels like they didn't really go too much into it as they should've.