sage bp worth it for a buff alt?

PlsStahp - Sanctuary

I have a baby sin (lvl 80) which i am currently planning on bringing to the 89s.

I play a bm as a main so shes my BP toon. Should i go demon on my sin and forgo the sage bp or go sage for the sage bp?

My main concern is that ive heard demon sins suck and aps=noob. I want a challenge too and not be some 'aps noob'.

I guess sage sins have a better edge due to sins having tons of chi gaining skills which allows them to permaspark. However, they need better eq or so i heard.

Considering that i want to bring her to 100 eventually, which path do i go?

WannaBM - Archosaur

First of all, dont listen too much to what others think are noobs or not. In fact, when they say things it is time to start looking what is so good about the thing they hate.

I also have my main being APSer while i have a buff sin for BP. My BP is also lvl 10 because i am not yet sure what to do with this.

My sin is purely for buffing because i hate sins and everything they represent in my eyes I started it with the thought that i never want to play a sin for real. From that viewpoint, the only issue to go sage or not is the cost of the skill.
Fact is, that those are 30 pretty well invested milions. As it is, in a normal dual client "solo" situation, i will receive about 500 HPs worth of paintheal per second. On top of that i will spark heal 3000 HPs every 10 seconds for 200 per second. If those 700 are not enough, i can add crabmeats for 350 per second bringing it to 1050 HP/s healing.
Sage BP would increase that part from 500 to 750 per second. That is very significant, even in the tougher situations where i use crabmeats, it will add like 23% to my healing per second. Wow. No way i could achieve an equally worthy effect by investing 30m anywhere else.

So for your bp slave considerations, ye sage would be the way to go.

But there is more. Even a sin-hater like me sometimes has its doubt if this sin is ever gonna play a different role. I might want to equip her for farming sometimes. In that case she must be demon. Who knows i might want to equip her for pvp sometime in the future. I dont know what i want her to be in that case

As for whos having the edge im still not sure. I have experience with BM and Barbs in TT. I found that both need pretty significant equipment before we will be able to solo emperor, GBA and steelation properly. This made me lean towards believing that sins are probably better farmers because:
-they have free chi helping them to spark risist/purify more often
-they have rib strike to calm the bosses down
-they can recast the most important buff of them all when purged. BP

So i ask the sins in some mobless FW what they can really solo in TT and to my surprise all 3 of them say they cant even solo 2-3. So i aint too sure anymore. They may simple be noobs in TT. They may be right. I dont know, and the discussions on the forum about whom is best for farming is not helping much either I would definately not go sage sin for farming though. You do not want to use extra chi to perma spark regardless of the lack of int from spark. You want to use the extra chi to be extra. To allow you to still be perma sparked even when you lose some time being sleeped/stunned. To spark earlier than you would normally need to because you need to resist or purify one of the bosses spells.

DionDagger - Dreamweaver

Even tho I love my sage BP. I would suggest going demon if the toon is gonna be used for farming, mainly due to the skill cost and the lack of int from spark doesnt help once you have to notch defensive gear. I recommend sage to those that don't want to invest in an aps set much, but still want to do a bit of farming, or the toon is their main, in that case it's a different story.

As for what WannaBM said. Sin's need top notch gear to solo things like 2-3. I don't because I am sage, but even then I can still bite the dust because the last boss hits me for like 4k. My rines are pretty much +5-+7 all around. I'd suggest +8 average for that boss to think about truly soloing.

Evertide - Lost City

I play a sin currently only for pve i was nv2 (found out r8 daggers are actually better imo) dag's with normal sin pve armor (r8 chest ahsura nv2pants etc eetc)
and wannabm is right cant solo 2-3 so i dual log cleric n barb (barb for buffs) and it ables me to solo 3-1 up to last boss, since ive upgraded my daggers to nv3 i havent been to HH/TT recently...
honestly i am currently lvl'n bm for HH/TT dungeons jus cuz the difference in life and defense and a couple other things that i personally think bm would be a better select for TT farming for act's higher then 2-2

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

I've stated before, the real attraction for lvl 11 paint, sage or demon, was the 1 hour buff. I know my bm's defenses are high enough that as long as I'm attacking pretty regularly I fully heal off of paint alone. It doesn't matter if it's demon or sage. For the most part, the only time I'm in trouble is if I'm purged and paint is gone or if I'm chain stunned, slept, lose my spark, can't keep my dps up,... In those situations sage or demon hardly matters also.

The real bonus for me was with lvl 11 paints I could spam multipler TTs without it running out (and especially without it surprising me by running out in the middle of a boss).

I personally prefer to duo with a demon sin because demon rib strike and better dps make a big difference in how much damage I take and how quickly things die. I also like demon Subsea because it's rarely timed perfectly, especially when duoing, and 15 seconds gives me a bigger window to match with my 9 second HF than a 7 seconds sage.

PlsStahp - Sanctuary wrote: »

My main concern is that ive heard demon sins suck and aps=noob. I want a challenge too and not be some 'aps noob'.

I guess sage sins have a better edge due to sins having tons of chi gaining skills which allows them to permaspark. However, they need better eq or so i heard.

Considering that i want to bring her to 100 eventually, which path do i go?

For PvE, there isn't too much for either sage or demon to do than aps. Especially the better geared you get. Undergeared sins have to 'finesse' a little, sleeping 1 mob to kill another or shadow escaping, or stopping to buff Focused Mind and Deaden Nerves for just a few mobs. Aps=noob is just a label. It's because so many sins have the mindset "all I need is more dps to tank" and then they get aggro and still die. Solution? More paint heals by more dps which means more aggro and... dieing more. Ignore people who say aps=noob. Just be smart. Sometimes aps really is the best solution, sometimes its not. Use it when its appropriate, which for a sin is alot of the time.

Sage chi gain is an edge in PvP where you skill spam more and aps less. In PvE demons have an easier time permasparking because they get more aps from their triple spark, meaning they don't have to stop and use skills just to keep a perma spark. 4 aps is permasparked. Most sins get 3.33 with all their gear. This means sage need to find chi by skill use, demons triple spark to 5.0. This means after 1 spark sage get 250 chi and demon get 375.

One culti really doesn't get an equipment advantage over the other. Sage can start soloing earlier because they're triple spark gives them 25% reduction. This effect is similar to a 33% boost in hp so a 6k sage sin triple sparked is more like an 8k sin in survivability. This means they can start soloing with lesser armor as long as they stay triple sparked. But sages are somewhat more constrained in their gear choices because they don't get -int from their triple spark so they need to find -int elsewhere. This limits them to the standard aps set (every piece) and often a -.1 weapon like G13 daggers, or dropping out of a permaspark situation (2.86 aps/3.33) or heavily relying on windshield to keep up their aps and eating their genie. On the other hand, demon's can swap gear pieces for defense and comfortably use G16 daggers with only .-05 and still remain permasparked. Demon gear advantage is more versatility and cheaper aps, sage gear advantage is the 25% survivability boost so lower refine requirements.

One last thing to point out, and this has nothing to do with a buff alt. A standard aps setup is 3.33 base and 5 aps triple sparked. Compare a 3.33 sage and a 5 aps demon and the damage from attack speed difference is roughly 50% (5/3.33=150.1%). The difference between 2% bloodpaint and 3% bloodpaint is... you got it, 50%. This is a very basic analysis and I'm sure some sage's want to throw in Powerdash (about a 3% difference) and sage mastery (about a 1% difference) and ignore Wolf Emblem or argue for genie use (sage will windshield, demon will frenzy or EP or TM) but most the time the demon will have very similar amounts of paint heals just from their higher dps, but as WannaBM pointed out they'll be sparking more for more heals, resisting damage more often, etc... and thinks will go down quicker. If you're duoing and you HF+TM and your Sin alt Triple sparks+Subsea things die fast.

All that said... I went sage buff alt and play my demon BM and demon Sin. Now my demon Sin has sage bp if I ever feel he needs it. Demon bp runs 15m+ and you can get sage bp for around 30m. All I wanted was the hour buff and with both so expensive the sage was a better choice.

Unholly - Morai

Questions you need to ask yourself:

What am I farming and will i be farming anything harder?

How have I been doing with 2% heals? If you can survive what you are currently farming and dont intend to go for something harder, the extra heal is pointless

When farming how do i die?

Can the cost of a 20-30M skill be spent on more damage, hp or defence? If you can get 30% more damage i would say that 30% damage > than 50% more heals. Sure you will heal less but you will kill the boss faster also. (In my opinion)

Do i have a sage sin in my FL that i can abuse? Seeing as you are making a buff alt, im guessing the answer is no but still worth a look.

When/If I play my sin more often how much will i invest in it? Generally demons are much cheaper to fund to a point you can effectively farm with them.

If you answer all of these questions and they come out in favour of sage bp then by all means go for it. Personally my knee jerk reaction would always be that unless you can get Sage BP really cheap, the money can almost always be spent on other things that give more benefit.

Aps =/= noob, anyone who tells you this is wrong and you should ignore them

Sorry for not giving an exact answer but i hope this helps

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

Unholly - Morai wrote: »

Questions you need to ask yourself:

What am I farming and will i be farming anything harder?

How have I been doing with 2% heals? If you can survive what you are currently farming and don

pssh...

I always write these walls of text I think are good advice then I see another post as simple as this and go "Wait. That's better advice."

Unholly - Morai

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

pssh...

I always write these walls of text I think are good advice then I see another post as simple as this and go "Wait. That's better advice."

b:cry there was more, at least you dont mess up posting the wall of text (hangs head in shame).

I have read a lot of your posts,you flesh out each argument and explain things. If you have the time to write it dont stop, its good stuff!

DionDagger - Dreamweaver

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

I've stated before, the real attraction for lvl 11 paint, sage or demon, was the 1 hour buff. I know my bm's defenses are high enough that as long as I'm attacking pretty regularly I fully heal off of paint alone. It doesn't matter if it's demon or sage. For the most part, the only time I'm in trouble is if I'm purged and paint is gone or if I'm chain stunned, slept, lose my spark, can't keep my dps up,... In those situations sage or demon hardly matters also.

The real bonus for me was with lvl 11 paints I could spam multipler TTs without it running out (and especially without it surprising me by running out in the middle of a boss).

I personally prefer to duo with a demon sin because demon rib strike and better dps make a big difference in how much damage I take and how quickly things die. I also like demon Subsea because it's rarely timed perfectly, especially when duoing, and 15 seconds gives me a bigger window to match with my 9 second HF than a 7 seconds sage.



For PvE, there isn't too much for either sage or demon to do than aps. Especially the better geared you get. Undergeared sins have to 'finesse' a little, sleeping 1 mob to kill another or shadow escaping, or stopping to buff Focused Mind and Deaden Nerves for just a few mobs. Aps=noob is just a label. It's because so many sins have the mindset "all I need is more dps to tank" and then they get aggro and still die. Solution? More paint heals by more dps which means more aggro and... dieing more. Ignore people who say aps=noob. Just be smart. Sometimes aps really is the best solution, sometimes its not. Use it when its appropriate, which for a sin is alot of the time.

Sage chi gain is an edge in PvP where you skill spam more and aps less. In PvE demons have an easier time permasparking because they get more aps from their triple spark, meaning they don't have to stop and use skills just to keep a perma spark. 4 aps is permasparked. Most sins get 3.33 with all their gear. This means sage need to find chi by skill use, demons triple spark to 5.0. This means after 1 spark sage get 250 chi and demon get 375.

One culti really doesn't get an equipment advantage over the other. Sage can start soloing earlier because they're triple spark gives them 25% reduction. This effect is similar to a 33% boost in hp so a 6k sage sin triple sparked is more like an 8k sin in survivability. This means they can start soloing with lesser armor as long as they stay triple sparked. But sages are somewhat more constrained in their gear choices because they don't get -int from their triple spark so they need to find -int elsewhere. This limits them to the standard aps set (every piece) and often a -.1 weapon like G13 daggers, or dropping out of a permaspark situation (2.86 aps/3.33) or heavily relying on windshield to keep up their aps and eating their genie. On the other hand, demon's can swap gear pieces for defense and comfortably use G16 daggers with only .-05 and still remain permasparked. Demon gear advantage is more versatility and cheaper aps, sage gear advantage is the 25% survivability boost so lower refine requirements.

One last thing to point out, and this has nothing to do with a buff alt. A standard aps setup is 3.33 base and 5 aps triple sparked. Compare a 3.33 sage and a 5 aps demon and the damage from attack speed difference is roughly 50% (5/3.33=150.1%). The difference between 2% bloodpaint and 3% bloodpaint is... you got it, 50%. This is a very basic analysis and I'm sure some sage's want to throw in Powerdash (about a 3% difference) and sage mastery (about a 1% difference) and ignore Wolf Emblem or argue for genie use (sage will windshield, demon will frenzy or EP or TM) but most the time the demon will have very similar amounts of paint heals just from their higher dps, but as WannaBM pointed out they'll be sparking more for more heals, resisting damage more often, etc... and thinks will go down quicker. If you're duoing and you HF+TM and your Sin alt Triple sparks+Subsea things die fast.

All that said... I went sage buff alt and play my demon BM and demon Sin. Now my demon Sin has sage bp if I ever feel he needs it. Demon bp runs 15m+ and you can get sage bp for around 30m. All I wanted was the hour buff and with both so expensive the sage was a better choice.

I would like to say that sage does give a slight advantage for certain bosses like Steelation and Colleast in 3-1 where you cant always build enough chi by auto attacking alone. I once ran out of chi because Colleast decided he wanted to attempt to purge me 5x in a row. It's quite rare that that happens, but it's an example where culti can matter. As for the rest, I prefer 50% more paint heals over 50% more damage, maily due to the fact I hate seeing my HP dip if it's aviodable. Demon is faster ofc, but for what I want my sin to do. Sage fits my playstyle, sometimes that's more important than what farms faster.

As for the aps=/=noob people. APS is still the best DPS tactic in the game, including PvP. Charms negate it due to the fact of their being space between attacks, but still does a lot of damage. Just ignore them.

NottLie - Dreamweaver

Why dont just make another sin , lvl him to lvl 89(very easy with hyper and fc) just to have sage bp that you can use all the time and even in your demon sin, so you get all the benefits ?

PlsStahp - Sanctuary

NottLie - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Why dont just make another sin , lvl him to lvl 89(very easy with hyper and fc) just to have sage bp that you can use all the time and even in your demon sin, so you get all the benefits ?

dont really have much time to make another sin :c



well, ive thought of making 2 sins, 1 sage and the other demon but i havent gotten to it yet. ill prob do it cuz itll let me farm TT 3-3 in the future but for now, ill be concentrating on my sage bp sin b:laugh