Demon or Sage

Of course, everyone has their own opinions, especially on topics like this. Being in Heavens Tear and turing on PK mode at level 50, I alwatys looked forward to the decision of becoming sage/demon.

As I neared the lvl 89 requirement, many veno's before me had made their selections. Many people know me on the server as a PvP veno. One that can usually stand their ground and didnt run away. When the decision came to choose Sage/Demon I saw almost every other single PvP veno went demon.

They listed multiple reasons why, the higher damage, you could run faster in fox, and a few others. The more I looked at the differences between Sage/Demon I really wondered why there werent many that experimented with Sage. ( I guess you cant experiment.

Well push came to shove and I went Sage, and it was the best decision I and any one else can make.

While Demon does have the chance to do higher damage, thats really all it is, a chance. PKing as much as I do I prefer to rely on the amount of damage I can do and not hope that i get that extra amount to kill the person Im after.

Obviously the whole running thing is pretty much invalid bc of Holy Path. Some argue that fox form running is free. I make the same arguement for Holy Path running. At 90 you get a daily quest in Old heavens tear that gives you materials to make perfect stones to fuel your genie. So again i argue that holy path is free as well. Not only that but sage veno fox form gives you a much higher physical defense advantage over demon fox.

Some venos swear by the demon ironwood scarab skill that has a CHANCE to put physical defense to 0. You also do have a skill at 79 that you can get that does the same thing. It even gives you a chance to get magical defense to 0 too.

I wont go through all the other skills and everything. But Sage Spark is SOOOO much better than demon spark. Not only do you get MORE damage with sage spark (at least if you attack via human form (magic)) but because of its similar look with single and double sparks, you can trick your oppenent much easier (especially in 1v1's) into thinking you have sage sparked.

Ive made this plenty long already but overall, I argue and believe Sage Veno is better for PK and for PVE.

I chose sage because I don't like random damage. Do I want a chance to do high damage, or do I want to know I'm going to do high damage. Not as high as the spike from demon, but at least you know the damage will be there.

Ironwood Scarab: Do I want a chance to reduce def to 0 where as the spell does nothing but damage if it fails? Or do I want to know I have 20 seconds of 40% def reduction with every cast?

Foxform: Why do I need running speed in foxform when I can use speed pots or a genie for the same effect? I'll take the defense boost, and I'm glad I did as I don't die easy. (Take that phoenix flesh ream, you can't kill me!b:victory)

That's the basic idea of why I went sage. I'm looking forward to getting more of the sage skills so I can really have fun.

I just recently went demon on my veno. This is what I have seen so far.

Ironwood Scarab: While it is no longer 100% chance to land the defense down, the 0% defense on a mob is very beneficial. Backing this up with Myriad Rainbow increases the chances of landing Armor Break onto a monster. I can see why demon venos "swear by" this set up. Sometimes you have good luck and other times you don't.

Fox Form: The speed increase is good for those of you out there who don't want to constantly waste your chi stones on Holy Path. As stated above, the speed increase is helpful when running away from physical ranged mobs when paired up with the physical defense increase granted by this spell.

Venomous Scarab: I have yet to learn the spell (not enough spirit) but from the description, it seems very beneficial when grinding since mostly, you spam this spell and the wood defense decrease will help more than anything else.

Metabollic Boost/Nature's Grace: These cool down times are going to help out greatly, once you are able to learn them. 90 seconds off the cool down timers seems to out weight sage's extra hp/mp granted since most people use charms. I, personally, use Metabollic Boost to prevent my charm from activating. Before I reach 50% hp, I use it.

I'll give more of my opinion later, but I hope this helps you in your decision.

I'm a sage venomancer. I started my character being a heavy build fox form venomancer so sage was best suited for me. I played magic build venomancer on other servers and just wanted to change things up and test different builds ^_^. Now, I am hunting gears to restat and switch back to arcane venomancer due to some stuffs I found and experimented. Before the genie was release, I wished i went demon; however, after the genies were release, I found almost every skills I wanted from demon benefit inside of genie (namely fox form speed boost and anti stun summer sprint). The only skill that I wished I had was hell nova which gives amp in damage. Sage skills are more consistent and personally i like the consistency of stuffs rather than playing with luck since my luck sucks to being with lol ^_^

fuel wise for genie you can just decompose any gears you find for fuel =\ I run low level BH for people and pick up "junks" that i change into fuel all the time.

There's more than that which is worthwhile. Catshops generally sell stones at 2-2.5 coin per stamina which still leaves tree quite cheap. You can also make your own, I just recently did another 800k stamina for my genie the total cost was 400k. So .5 coin per stamina, that's 100 coin for tree, 200 coin for holy path, 90 for relentless courage, and 300 for extreme poison (the 4 skills on my genie). Using a genie can cost you sure, but the right skills get you a better return than other options do, tree in particular.

demon is not any worse than sage for chi. crush vigor has 50% chance to gain 1 spark. cooldown=30s.

tweakz wrote: »

I chose sage. I use spark (Celestial Eruption) a lot for it's MP replenishing. I think Demon has faster cool downs to compensate. If I'd chose Demon, I may use Ironwood Scarab a lot more often (just a guess) since I wouldn't benefit as much from the spark. Some obscure reasons to go Demon: It's atm less popular so the books are cheaper/ easier to acquire, and Eden is far less challenging than Brimstone.

The inconsistent dmg may be better for LA/HA builds?

I would think a LA build would really get nice benefits from going Demon, all the extra critical added to their already high critical could make for some interesting nuking...

HA I would think would benefit from Sage to get totaly insany Pdef.... The extra fox bonus would allow it to use more arcane gear to balance out the Mdef hole, while still maintaining Barb level Pdef.

Right. Sage can gain 50 chi a minute which would be useful any time. Demon can remove 50 chi every 30 seconds, which is only good in PvP.

Brael - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Right. Sage can gain 50 chi a minute which would be useful any time. Demon can remove 50 chi every 30 seconds, which is only good in PvP.

Yeppers. I had to ask a few demon friends that just to make sure cause I tried it on mobs just for kicks and nothing. It didn't even aggro them which was funny o.o

Brael - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Right. Sage can gain 50 chi a minute which would be useful any time. Demon can remove 50 chi every 30 seconds, which is only good in PvP.

Keep in mind Demon can gain an average of 50 chi every 30 seconds with Demon Crush Vigor while the Sage version is only useful in PvP.

Then you can say the same thing about the Sage Chi skill in battle situations. In reality, you'd get 35 chi a minute since in the time it takes you to cast that skill, you could've used another chi gaining ability. Demon CV still results in more chi. Plus, the time it takes to go into and out of Fox is not a factor since the logical time to cast CV is right before you cast Amp. In which case, you'd already be in Fox Form.

The only advantage the Sage skill has is the ability to cast it while not in battle. In which case, I can just whip out a pet and spam pet heal, duel someone and smack them without my weapon unequipped, or there's always the apoth chi pots.