The recent changes on the 31st of May have ruined Sage. The Bolt > Rift Chain change is genuinely the worst change they could've done to Sage. It puts you into pre-awk 50% of the time by accident. Bolt > Rift Chain flow is more of an inconvenience than anything else and messes up with movement combos. This has forced you to lock Rift Chain, making Rift Chain entirely unusable, so the change effectively deleted one of Sage's abilities.

And then on top of all of that, they removed the frontal guard on Shock Relay for no reason, they also nerfed the range of Impaling Flash.
WHAT IS GOING ON PA! We were asking for buffs because of the 1 year of monthly nerfs that overly nerfed our class.

I bow to you, lvl 63 Sage.

Yes, I have noticed that... it's rather awkward, having been used to just using Bolt, but, I have noticed that after using Rift Chain, you use Bolt again and you're back in awakening.  Hate to say it, but this maneuver did save me when battling Nightmarish Kzarka, so maybe there's some utility there.....

Still... if they gave us the option to link similar awakening/main skills, instead of doing us a "favor" and linking them themselves by redesigning skills, it would make this world a better place.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  If you think we need a fix, please ask us, or give us some options, or ways around it.  Or a way to keep it the way we liked it and give others the option to link the skills.

Peace.

I'm not gonna lie, once you get used to it, this change is quite good. Rift chain makes you move faster and further than Bolt so it's a nice way to move between packs in pve. Also an on demand iframe if you're overwhelmed by mobs.

If you don't like succ skills I would recommend locking it - you prob wouldn't want it anyway.

Of course none this means the issues of the class are resolved, stamina usage being the main issue.

I think it's bad, it f....s up movement combos in awakening (bolt > skill > overcharged bolt > bolt >skill ...), making you change stance when you don't want to and eats your stamina away.

Pack to pack mobility in PvE was never an issue in awakening when we had a functionnal Impaling Flash with good range (that they nerfed).

If they really wanted to make Rift Chain more accessible in awakening, they just should have given the ability to quickslot it. It would have been the best of both worlds : gives you a reactable Iframe, allows you to have a protected and mobile stance swap but doesn't mess with awakening mobility combos. 

Locking Rift Chain is not really a good solution currently, because even if it prevents Rift Chain to mess up with awak combos, it also takes away the ability to pocket preawakening skills, which are much too slow to be used in PvP as such.