Lobbying for Succ Sage Rework

I'll start first by asking for PA to please just port over the Succession Sage Mobile kit seen here: https://youtu.be/j4K2HrGJnR8

Please read the below Fixes, Nerfs and Buffs to the P.C kit, to address bugs which have persisted for over a year, and provide a more fleshed out time caster class that ISN'T pigeonholed into largescale-only content at gear cap. 

You delivered a buggy, unfinished class with

- no options

- no cancels

- no combos

- no chase

- no escape

- no cancels

- no speed

- no slows

- no heals

- no other utility

- no sustain

- squishiest dp

Specifically made to do well in largescale and categorically can't function in other forms of content.

Lo and behold literally no one plays him, except maybe two to three top geared players using the tag function, because Succ sage is hard blocked from about 85% of the games content, can't make silver past Elvia orcs, struggle at low end spots due to stamina and can't hold a spot anywhere. 

Please see the following list to rebalanced this unbalanced class who's hemorrhaged players since launch.

Bug FIX

Primary movement skill - Because of the 30 foot long hitbox during riftchain which registers back attacks, crits etc along its entire length for the entire duration no matter where abouts you are in the animation, succ sage takes massive amounts of damage from all sources during primary movement and spends huge stamina for the privilege. 

This is his only movement at the moment like dragging a vulnerable tail behind him through war zones, attacks, enemy aoe circles etc. This punishes Succ Sage constantly and the likelihood is you'd have taken less damage if you'd just sheathed your weapon and stood still. This is the definition of a skill that is NOT fit for purpose. 

Solution: a fast and easy way to fix this is to make all uses of Riftchain partial Iframe at the beginning, transitioning into Super Armour afterwards. So the first third of the skills travel distance is iframe and the latter two thirds SA. 

This allows the player to choose between travelling a short distance to reposition safely and dodge on reaction, or travelling further in SA. This is also a way to address largescale abuse. 

Nerf

First, please revert the changes to Reset and Overdrive. We have no business using our powerful class buff so often, it was bad enough using it twice in a row with a ten minute wait. Now, its significantly worse, will agitate many and encourages questionable gameplay, like spamming auto attacks at a wall until Reset is off cooldown to fuel the next ebuff. 

Solution: Make our E-Buff a NORMAL E-Buff that can't be Reset and used back to back anymore.

Instead, allow a Prime: version of Reset to kick in automatically at maximum Overdrive Stacks, to allow sage to use Ators Fist, Spatial Fissure, Illusion Expansion, Realm of Anguish, Prime:Rift Storm, Ators Energy, Gravity Rift, (without CC effects) once more during their cooldown, as long as stacks are at maximum. This prevents Ebuff abuse in largescale, and provides more rewarding, engaging gameplay.

With the nerf to ebuff spam, the rest of the issues are as follows:

PROVIDE SOME BASIC UTILITY YOU GIVE EVERYONE ELSE

Attack cancels - keeping him slow and steady as a caster is in-theme as he is impactful, but every other class has access to some kind of cancel which helps their dps, survival and comboability. Being able to at least change his mind would keep him slow but allow him some level of control over his OWN abilities during an encounter.

Solution: A cancel skill bound to spacebar should be available for at least his slowest spells, with some melee range damage applied to aid his dps for endgame grinding. Or, as Succ Sage is a time caster, this cancel could reset him to a previous moment in time, cancel his skill and provide a small undo wounds heal on top for 200 hp. 

Secondary movement skills - succ sage has no other form of movement outside of rift chain, which gets him killed, eats up all nearby damage thanks to a bugged hitbox, destroys his stamina, is easily tracked and leaves him disadvantaged in almost all other matchups. 

Solution: please incorporate a short distance dash or blink step to provide a choice between moving with RC over a greater distance (and eating damage across the whole rift trail), or repositioning over a much shorter distance with an alternate form of movement. 

Attack Slows - HE IS A TIME AND SPACE THEMED CASTER ANS HE'S THE ONLY CLASS IN THE GAME WITHOUT ATTACK AND MOVEMENT SLOWS. 

Solution: Please add - 30% Attack and - 30% movement speed for 10 seconds debuff to Realm of Anguish in keeping with other classes slows, so we can use it to mitigate damage in PvE and for self defence in PvP. 

But as it stands, he's fundamentally lacking far too much in important areas, and over achieving in one area. I can't think of a better example of being unbalanced as a class than having lopsidedly over-the-top performance in limited content confined to the walls of RBF with no self sufficiency, journeying or growth, and being garbage everywhere else.

It's lopsided and provides an unpleasant experience.

At this point the cass, be it Succ ou Awak, needs an entire overhaul.

They designed the class, so the skills and the anmiation, with certain perks in mind.

When they nerfed him, they basically took his fundamental concepts and threw them to the bin, so since then the class can't work unless all of his animations and skills are redone, because they got rid of the basics that led the deisgn of his entire kit.

And when you see some "buffs" they recently gave him, it's clear that they don't understand how he works anymore . Yes they can buff some damage numbers, anybody can do that it's just changing a value, but when they do things like nerfing impaling flash (announcing it as a buff) or taking away FG from Shock Relay, which is the skill that is used to initiate or cancel most of the moves in Awak, replacing it with a stiff, that ends up messing with combos more than helping anything, leaving sage with no protected opening in awak, you know that they clearly lost track.

Long story short, they are affraid of taking Sage back to where he was before the huge nerfs, even after the huge shift brought by the class rework at the end of last year, because they fear that some players go hysterically crazy shouting for nerfs like they did the first time (even when some classes have been far more dominant than Sage in BDO's history), so they try to make him function like they can by tinkering and trying random changes. But it can't work, because they got rid of the fundamentals.

Awakening Sage players seem to be relatively happy with his current state, the post from Zethian mentions one single change to address Awaks stamina, and I've heard from quite a few awakening players that they'd be quite content with that simple change, and good for them, I'm glad. 

Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum you've got the Succ Sage players with posts ending up a wall of text because those writing the suggestions are having to backtrack the devs dreadful design decisions and trying to explain why those choices are bad to people who don't play him and don't care, before addressing the original issues and bugs which have persisted for over a year despite the ticket submissions and awareness raising.

Any time you try to get some brains put into the kit, you get people say "well you're easy to play so you should stay the way you are", by which they must mean bugged, flawed, unplayed and altogether unfinished, like a product that hasn't been quality assured before hitting the shelves.

Thing is the people saying those things are usually the people who are on strong classes you can play just as easily, yet accomplish significantly more in every aspect of the game.

Real question is why is this class not being QA'd and what is the point of being "easy" if you can't achieve anything except ebuffed top frags from a quiet corner in RBF. 

Please stop abusing the Forum Tags.

I don't think anybody understand where those complaints are about.  Succ Sage seems to be super strong at the moment.

If other people are going to do it to get more attention for their post I'm not above it either.

And I've explained the issues in detail above haven't I, nothing I can do if you're gonna disregard everything I've mentioned to tell me to be quiet. 

Yeah he is at a decent spot rn.

What are you basing that on exactly? I've explained in-depth why he's not in a good spot BUT also abusable by top geared players in largescale, which isn't good for other classes,

yet I'm not seeing any receipts as to how he's in a good spot, back up what you're saying instead of just making baseless comments with no proof. 

would you prefer for it to not even be good with highendish gear in its presumed strong content? coz theres thats reality as well for some classes.

This post isn't to assist you with your problems with awakening casters, I've pointed out glaring issues with succ sage which people have yet to actually address. No one wants an ebuff node war slave as their main. Awak nova and berserker got away from this crutch mechanic but we've but dropped into it even deeper than on release and its dreadful game design. 

I'm not going to compare your class with mine either, albeit we've both seen many times in the discord people refer to Succ Sage as the shit version of wiz, and yours is the class with the greater tools at his disposal. The only benefits Sage has over wizard is his Ebuff on tap, which is disgusting, and rift chain manoeuvrability, which would have been an excellent tool in 2016 but now is both too abusable due to the high damage in the game, and too much of a liability with the high speed in the game. This is why so many original sage players wanted the mobile kit instead which didn't rely on either crutch mechanics. 

We've agreed on other topics before Whyso, like grabs being an instant win button, and extremely high damage in the game from the fastest classes, but as this is a Succession Sage post after all, feel free to downvote, as is the custom.