As expected Square Enix had used the latest announcement event to announce the next expansion for Final Fantasy XIV. The next expansion, titled ‘Endwalker’ will walk the Earth Fall 2021.
They already announced a new job called Sage, which, was a surprise to a lot of people. Before the expansion, Geomancer was highly tipped as the next healer, as it was repeatedly mentioned in the Astrologian job quest storyline since the start of Stormblood. So everyone was expecting the next healer, which is quite long overdue since the Heavensward era to be Geomancer. This being the Astrologian job was in fact featured prominently in the Coerthas Central Highlands part of the A Realm Reborn story before we ventured into Ishgard and Astrologian being made the official third healer in the game. As a result, based on the previous trends, the announcement of Sage caught a lot of people off guard.
In terms of Sage, it is not entirely a new job in the Final Fantasy World. III and the Tactics Advance series have them. From my memory the Sage job had long cast time and low HP pull but high movement and strong spells. Sages in the Tactics Advance series is a Nu Mou specific job. So in that sense probably that is not a huge surprise as Nu Mou was introduced in Shadowbringers. Sages in Tactics Advance had ridiculously high MP pool and can cast both status and elemental spells. But the most prominent spell Sages had in Tactics Advance is their ability to cast the Ultima spell. Apart from that, from a Final Fantasy XIV point of view, the other spells were already taken by White Mage (Water (defunct), Aero); Healers, Summoners and Red Mage (Raise / Resurrect); Summoner (Bio) etc. Sages also have incredible dodge rate, giving their low HP pool, low defence and long turn time. Basically Sages in the Final Fantasy history are usually offensive jobs not healing jobs.
The other big departure of Final Fantasy XIV Sage from the traditional Sage is their choice of weapons. In Final Fantasy XIV, Sages use a unique weapons called Nouliths that look like the floating turrets in the Mobile Suit Gundam series, especially the F91 Gundam. They are powered by aether and float around the user when unsheathed. However, in Tactics Advance, Sages use Mace and Shield – yes despite their low strength and defence they can wield a shield on top of a weapon. Also, certain weapons would amplify their spell potency too e.g., the Lotus Mace will make the Giga Flare spell even more deadly than it already is.
From all the departure from the traditional Sage job in the Final Fantasy history, it is quite obvious that Yoshi-P is going to make Sage a unique job in Final Fantasy XIV.
So far what we knew is that Sage is no longer an offensive job, but a healer job. Also, the fact that Sage being introduced as a barrier healer, has now really drawn the clear line between barrier healers (Scholars) and pure healers (White Mages). What is interesting now is the repositioning of Astrologian to become a pure healer in the game, which means, it lost its original advantage as being the stance healer making it a very adaptable healer in the game. Astrologians, with subsequent expansion, had lost a lot of its original flavours – from the changing of how the card system works and now the migration to the pure healer category. How this is going to play out (pun intended) will really be depending on how Yoshi-P and the team tweaked Astrologian so it still remains interesting and unique.
As for Sage, as a barrier healer, I don’t know how it is going to distinguish itself from Scholar, apart from looking really cool and have some unique weapons. After all, on the offensive side all healers have become very homogenous with the usual basic single target spell, damage over time (DoT) spell and area of effect (AOE) spell. With White Mage’s lilies reworked, this job now has occasional strong attack spells in addition to the stun effects of Holy. Scholars are more about utilities and pre-planning with higher movement damage spells like Ruin II. As for Astrologian its unique point of view is still the card tricks, which now made it a lot more straight forward and less annoying with the RNG impact, giving users a bit more control. In terms of card effects, now it is just about buffs for specifical types of jobs instead of the original array of different usages. So how could Sage provide its very own point of view remains an interesting aspect. As it will be competing with Scholar, the traditional barrier healer, it will be very interesting to see how Sage can prove it self to be a formidable healer in the heat of battles.
I suspect Sage would be more tied in to the Endwalker lore but I think it would be exciting to explore this seemingly magitek based healer and its lore when the expansion comes out. For the time being, and probably even in the new expansion, I think I will still stick with my White Mage, that is unless they seriously messed it up as they did in Stormblood.
Meanwhile you can see the new Sage in action in this official video.
