Advice Please

dougsenpai

Okay so I'm new to the game and made an archer. I have a few questions!

Also please don't bash me and tell me to just read guides; I have and on all of them the comments say that they're outdated so I'm scared to follow them if they are possibly inaccurate now b:sad

1) Demon vs Sage. What are the pro's and con's of both? Keep in mind I'm new, so "look at what demon skills do and what sage skills do" doesn't help me as I don't understand the implications or applications of the skills.

2) what are the must max skills, good to max skills, and max last skills?

3) what level 100 skills are most useful to buy first in your opinion?

Some context is that I'm an Archer on Dreamweaver who would like to be ready for some lower level TWs by the time the next map reset comes around (which seems to be aimed at around early May-June?)

If you have ANY other advice you'd like to give about what instances are good to run, how to aqcuire better gear, make money, etc please do share and help a new player out b:thanks

Eoria - Harshlands

http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1646831

Jarkhen - Archosaur

Eoria - Harshlands wrote: »

http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1646831

^ Was going to say mine was outdated too now with Primal, but it really isn't since all archer primal skills are basically worthless.

_blood_rain - Sanctuary

Archer forums so dead.

SAGE IS AWESOME AND DEMON SUCKS

now, everybody fight!

HideYoHubby - Archosaur

_blood_rain - Sanctuary wrote: »

Archer forums so dead.

SAGE IS AWESOME AND DEMON SUCKS

now, everybody fight!

Nobody will. My archer is currently sage and I do love few things in sage but with primal passives, cards and rebirth sage kinda got indirectly nerfed to pointless. I am stashing books for when I bother to change culti. Tempted to stall for next expansion in case sage becomes somewhat viable again. Only tier where sage is imo better is undergeared tier and its not exactly appealing reason to pick culti. If you go R9 pick demon, if not sage might work for you if you are into TWs/group PvP.

As for skills you need at level 11(sage/demon) Quickshot, Sharpened Tooth Arrow, passives, Blazing Arrow and celestial skills Blood Vow and Awaken for PvE. Rest are more of luxury if you can afford them. Some skills I mentioned might be "luxury" but are dirt cheap so might as well get em as priority. Quickshot is likely most expensive book atm but its your main skill on either path.. For PvP specific I would add Stunning Arrow on the list and Lighting strike if you are demon. Rest are again better but not a priority imo. Bout order of lvl 100 skills, BV is imo more needed than Awaken most of the time, least if you dont PvP much.

Bhavyy - Raging Tide

_blood_rain - Sanctuary wrote: »

Archer forums so dead.

SAGE IS AWESOME AND DEMON SUCKS

now, everybody fight!

Because archers suck as a class and pwi is virtually dead as more and more realise that it isn't actually a great MMO compared to what else is out there

_blood_rain - Sanctuary

Current days archer forums frequenters are no fun -.-;

where's Kiyoshi and Fleuri?

opkossy

_blood_rain - Sanctuary wrote: »

Current days archer forums frequenters are no fun -.-;

where's Kiyoshi and Fleuri?

Making Stormrage babies. And rainbows!

_blood_rain - Sanctuary

I miss posts like This

opkossy

We all miss those.

... Well except the idiots he was referring to. b:chuckle

Shadowvzss - Harshlands

HideYoHubby - Archosaur wrote: »

Nobody will. My archer is currently sage and I do love few things in sage but with primal passives, cards and rebirth sage kinda got indirectly nerfed to pointless. I am stashing books for when I bother to change culti. Tempted to stall for next expansion in case sage becomes somewhat viable again. Only tier where sage is imo better is undergeared tier and its not exactly appealing reason to pick culti. If you go R9 pick demon, if not sage might work for you if you are into TWs/group PvP.

As for skills you need at level 11(sage/demon) Quickshot, Sharpened Tooth Arrow, passives, Blazing Arrow and celestial skills Blood Vow and Awaken for PvE. Rest are more of luxury if you can afford them. Some skills I mentioned might be "luxury" but are dirt cheap so might as well get em as priority. Quickshot is likely most expensive book atm but its your main skill on either path.. For PvP specific I would add Stunning Arrow on the list and Lighting strike if you are demon. Rest are again better but not a priority imo. Bout order of lvl 100 skills, BV is imo more needed than Awaken most of the time, least if you dont PvP much.

what u mean with that? because primal increased the skill damage and critical rate, then sage not closer to demon? defence passive i think to both good, or do you mean the skill damage and debuff less effective now vs autoattack?

Jarkhen - Archosaur

Shadowvzss - Harshlands wrote: »

what u mean with that? because primal increased the skill damage and critical rate, then sage not closer to demon? defence passive i think to both good, or do you mean the skill damage and debuff less effective now vs autoattack?

The one thing sage really had going for it was the extra crit from quickshot, aside from the extra 1.5s on stun. The "extra skill damage" is negligible, as is the extra range; and the extra chi, while nice, isn't exactly a game-changer. However, with double rb and crit passives, endgame archers are hitting ~80% crit base -- which means sage's crit advantage is significantly less important than it was before, while demon's extra dps from quickshot remains just as potent.

Shadowvzss - Harshlands

Jarkhen - Archosaur wrote: »

The one thing sage really had going for it was the extra crit from quickshot, aside from the extra 1.5s on stun. The "extra skill damage" is negligible, as is the extra range; and the extra chi, while nice, isn't exactly a game-changer. However, with double rb and crit passives, endgame archers are hitting ~80% crit base -- which means sage's crit advantage is significantly less important than it was before, while demon's extra dps from quickshot remains just as potent.

i see, well my archer isnt rebirthed twice or r9 so i can't check the skill damage vs autoattack, only what i noticed is skill damage boosted but autoattack no, but that point with critical rate is sound valid

XShadowshotx - Heavens Tear

At end game builds, with all the trimmings it really wont matter if you're sage or demon the amount of dex an end game archer has or can have atm is close to 900. So the extra 15% damage is honestly noticeable. Also due to the amount of dex both sage and demon have about the same crit rate at end game. Look at both the skill paths, find what you like and stick to that, the argument of sage v demon as an archer is a never ending one. There are perks to both sides, and everything comes down to situational on either side.

Jarkhen - Archosaur

XShadowshotx - Heavens Tear wrote: »

At end game builds, with all the trimmings it really wont matter if you're sage or demon the amount of dex an end game archer has or can have atm is close to 900. So the extra 15% damage is honestly noticeable.

Did you mean "hardly noticeable?" If so, then yes. Otherwise, no, it really isn't.

XShadowshotx - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Also due to the amount of dex both sage and demon have about the same crit rate at end game.

Demon archers will have 4% more base crit; sage will have 6% more (most of the time) in practice because their proc gives +20% instead of +10%.

Really, the main differences are:

color=#c94040]Demon[/color Significantly higher normal attack dps due to +30% aps from quickshot
color=#c94040]Demon[/color Lightning Strike has 100% accuracy
color=#c94040]Demon[/color BoA hits 20% more often
color=#c94040]Demon[/color Wingspan gives a lv5 winged shell (=> next hit damage reduced by 80%)
color=#c94040]Demon[/color Thunder Shock has small chance to silence+immobilize

color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Stunning Arrow lasts 5s instead of 3.5s
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Slightly higher (6%) crit with proc
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Thunder Shock duration increased to 25s from 15s
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Frost Arrow works as an extra magic attack
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Stormrage reduces pdef/mdef by 50%
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color STA reduces hp by 20% instead of 16%
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Damage taken while in BoA reduced by 33%
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color More chi regen available (Technique, Lightning Strike, Quickshot, Wingspan)


Though, really, most of those are minor:
color=#c94040]Demon[/color 100% accuracy on Lightning Strike is only going to be of -significant- impact on sins and archers (especially with Condor)
color=#c94040]Demon[/color Wingspan is hardly used in PvP, so this isn't useful in most situations
color=#c94040]Demon[/color Thunder Shock's silence+immo chance is 10%, hardly reliable

color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color 6% crit is a negligible increase when you're hitting 90-95% crit
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Thunder Shock duration increase is only useful if you're not metalspamming the target, since you'd be refreshing it by the time the 15s was up if you were
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Stormrage costs 2 sparks so its use is rather limited
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Sage's STA advantage is hardly going to be noticeable (2k HP off of a 50k HP barb; on your typical 20k hp target, it's only 800 hp)
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Damage reduction in BoA is rather useless since people will just be interrupting you anyway


Cutting out the noise, we get down to the "major" differences:
color=#c94040]Demon[/color Significantly higher normal attack dps due to +30% aps from quickshot
color=#c94040]Demon[/color BoA hits 20% more often

color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Stunning Arrow lasts 5s instead of 3.5s
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color Frost Arrow works as an extra magic attack
color=#c9c9c9]Sage[/color More chi regen available

These are at the crux of the decision, really. The extra dps from demon quickshot is massive (42% dps at endgame on a 50% proc, but it's spammable in case it fails), and with the crit bonus from sage becoming less and less useful with 2nd rb and crit passives sage really doesn't have anything that comes close to competing.

If archers were more of a skillspam class, Sage might be more viable. As it is, unfortunately, 95% of our usefulness is in autoattacking and barraging. Demon has the advantage on both fronts.

XShadowshotx - Heavens Tear

Jarkhen - Archosaur wrote: »

Did you mean "hardly noticeable?" If so, then yes. Otherwise, no, it really isn't.

Yes I meant hardly noticeable, fingers get ahead of my brain sometimes lol.