Sage or Demon in a "Pickle"

A lot of other Sage Veno skills are pretty decent, but are more squad focused. Downside? Expensive as all hell.

Demon Veno skills in general are far more accessible and more useful for a solo veno, but have fewer really good skills. They are much cheaper and more accessible though. Ironwood is also replacable with Myriad, but its raw damage output is scary. (you DO lose a guaranteed Phys debuff for a 20% chance at Phys Def Break sadly)

I'm going for Sage, since they have more useful skills in general... and yes, Soul Degenerate. If you play your veno regularly I'm sure you'll hit 92 in a few weeks easily.

Cochiti - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I disagree. Ironwood cannot be replaced with Myriad because the chances of getting a break are equally low and they do not last long enough. And it's not that much of a loss to trade 40% debuff for a full break and, trust me, you hit that break more often than you think it will hit.



Good luck. I do not like Sage Venos except for one because I know how he works and we get our debuffs going at the same time and he watches out for my breaks. Sage Veno seems more like a cop out and I generally dislike Sage Venos, but that's because most of them don't know diddly about using their skills appropriately anyway. There's more to picking Sage or Demon based off of one or two skills. But hey, look at the bright side, the Anni Packs are back (yet again) and so the tokens will be cheap as dirt and we can get our skills good and cheap again.

talk about biased BS, sage is far from a copout. to me, demon is so unreliable, and most of its moves just result in quick get aways, allowing them to be yet another idiot phoenix abuser.

sage on the other hand makes a great improvement on our commonly used moves. it works out this way with pretty much all classes where its improvements on our skills vs adverse random effects, that can yield some nice damage. the only thing is, i think this leans more in favor of sages.

Cochiti - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I disagree. Ironwood cannot be replaced with Myriad because the chances of getting a break are equally low and they do not last long enough. And it's not that much of a loss to trade 40% debuff for a full break and, trust me, you hit that break more often than you think it will hit.

I've posted this before so I won't do the calcs again. A % debuff does not translate proportionately the same amount of extra damage every time, so there's no one answer to whether sage or demon is better. On average, against low pdef targets (most PvE mobs have low pdef), the 40% debuff of sage allows more damage than a 20% chance at an armor break. Against high pdef targets (i.e. most PvP opponents), the opposite is true and demon does more damage on average.

I prefer not to think of it as a 40% debuff vs. a 20% chance at armor break. I prefer to think of it as demon Ironwood getting a 20% chance at armor break, and trading off the guaranteed 30% phys debuff of Ironwood for a 30% wood debuff on Venomous. So to me, the demon version of the basic 3 skills (fox form, Ironwood, Venomous) favor caster venos. The sage versions favor fox venos (fox form has additional pdef and accuracy, Ironwood's longer duration lets you cast then switch to fox form to melee, Venomous lets you spam spells when needed without giving up the extra chi-generation of melee).

Paradoxically, sage triple spark gives a higher magic attack bonus, while Demon triple spark gives a higher melee attack bonus. The sage/demon skills were not made so that one is "better" for certain builds. They are just a mish-mash of different capabilities. Some caster skills have better sage versions, some have better demon versions. Some fox skills have better demon versions, some have better sage versions. It's entirely up to you to decide which ones you like better.

axt57 wrote: »

SD is seriously overrated as usual; there is a whole other class which can do just that, and its more then likely (unless you're a solo veno) you're going to have an archer in your party, especially at endgame tasks. Failing that your genie can reduce max hp to some extent.

Sage Soul Degen gives a 20% hp debuff. The archer version tops out at 16%, unless the archer goes sage, which almost no archer does because they're focused so much on crits. The genie version tops out at around 10%, though realistically you'll have a hard time getting it higher than 5%.

axt57 wrote: »

And demon spark is better with its lower mgk damage due to crit chance.

No it's not. A 1% increase in crit chance translates into a less than 1% increase in average damage. For a typical arcane build, sage triple spark will have about a 16% magic attack advantage over demon triple spark. And AFAIK no demon caster skills come anywhere close to adding a 16% crit chance.

The only place where crits are an advantage is in PvP, when you're trying to punch through someone's charm. And even there, a hypothetical 5% vs. 10% crit chance means demon only has an advantage in 1 in 20 attacks. (The biggest advantage would actually be if demon fox wallop hit its 20% chance to crit all attacks for 5 sec.)

I appreciate that you really like the demon skills. It has some nice skills in it, which clearly make it superior in certain situations. But please try to keep things balanced. Demon is not better at everything overall like you seem to be trying to imply. The developers did a pretty good job mixing things up so you're forced to make some hard choices.

axt57 wrote: »

I did not say demon spark is better then sage. I said its better with low dmg; ie the way it is.

I see. My mistake then, and my apologies. b:thanks

"Sage work better in squads overall" - I disagree, but to each thier own. Also:

If you have a well co-ordinated team, demon amp is be a better choice. Lasts longer so your squad can throw more skills in (especially if they know its coming and time their skills well), also due to its longer length crits under amp are more likely.

Just one of the benefits of demon veno in a good squad.

But the game breaker for me is the demon nova; huge damage, seal and amp. Squads love it when I pull it off, especially in RB Delta where Chi is no issue; it is king. Shame its damn expensive to get.

Oh I forgot to mention purge; demon purge is better for squad work because its got a lower CD and therefore you can debuff those bosses that bit quicker. I don't think there are many cases where the AoE purge of the sage veno is better in PvE; in fact I can't really think of one off the top of my head.

Cochiti - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Here here!b:victory I, in no way, meant that Sage Venos are bad. I prefer to work solo or with people I know can do their job well. I have only worked with one Sage Veno very well in tandem, but only one. Demon Amp for the win, I love it on my veno. b:victory

demon amp's damage difference is less than 1% higher than sage, therefore is not ftw :P.

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

It's higher if there's only one veno. If there are two venos taking turns amping, the Sage version yields about 1.5%-2% more damage. Overall I consider the Sage version better though since I usually stack Rainbow and Extreme Poison on top of the Amp to make maximum use of it. The extra 5% thus gets leveraged into an extra 7%-10%, more than enough to offset the extra 6 sec of the demon version.

I do agree the demon Bramble is simply better all-around.

I like having a second veno in a squad just to keep the Amp continuous if we can get it timed right. I also like to drop Myriad and EP when I Amp. The more room to get more damage in with a full squad or even one DD the better. I'm an impatient person and like things to die quickly so I can go kill the next thing.

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

It's higher if there's only one veno. If there are two venos taking turns amping, the Sage version yields about 1.5%-2% more damage. Overall I consider the Sage version better though since I usually stack Rainbow and Extreme Poison on top of the Amp to make maximum use of it. The extra 5% thus gets leveraged into an extra 7%-10%, more than enough to offset the extra 6 sec of the demon version.

Are you saying that there are 2 sage venos amping in that case to get that 1.5-2%? Amping itself takes time; 2 demon venos can amp less often and therefore spam more DD, did you take that into account? And the wood debuff the demon venos have to help DD in those cases?

7%-10% more - are you inlcuding the same stack for the demon version in making that statement? And do you include the fact that you can stack said skills for longer with demon amp? Fox rainbow's CD is 20 seconds, instant channel, demon amp lasts 26 seconds. EP has a CD of 1 second, so you can spam it throughout the whole amp.

"1% is not that high. its so negligible its not even worth considering for the argument."

I'm getting mighty tired of people throwing random % about.

I don't want to get caught up here too much, so I won't voice my opinion on everything being said, but I do agree that going sage/demon on a veno has pretty much equal advantages and I believe it should be based on your build and playstyle more than anything else. I am a sage venomancer and I find the skills wonderful even at 90 when I can't get some of the truly good ones such as sage soul degeneration.

axt57 wrote: »

I'm getting mighty tired of people throwing random % about.

Solandri's post has all the math but it's not a random number. It's rounded off a little but it's not random.

axt57 wrote: »

solandris math posts all involve perfect situations in which all parties seem to function like bots and work in milliseconds, which never happens in PWI. Every single "analysis" misses out inconsistencies like lag and player skill. These gaping holes makes such calculations nearly pointless if you wish to apply them in reality - yet she/he applies them to his arguments regardless.

I'm an engineer by trade. The idea is to come up with mathematical models for the bounding cases (best-case or worst-case scenarios). Those bounding cases need to be carefully selected so in RL practical applications, you do not exceed them. i.e. I didn't randomly pick the no-lag "function like bots" scenario for the analysis. I picked it because it established one endpoint (the "perfect" case). The other endpoint (the no-Amp case) is obvious what the result will be. Once you have the two endpoints established, it's trivial to draw a line between them to cover every case in between.

If you have one veno Amping, all other things being equal, the demon version will allow more damage than the sage version. If you have two venos Amping, all other things being equal, the sage version will allow more damage than the demon version.

As for lag, it doesn't really affect the comparison. I can show why mathematically, but you seem to dislike it when I show math. So I'll only show it if you want to see why. b:chuckle I didn't mention this because it didn't contradict what my analysis showed, and I thought it was extraneous information. But just because I don't type something up doesn't mean I haven't thought of it.

The fact that she/he is subtly biased towards sage (like missing out wood debuff in the "analysis")

I didn't miss it. I mentioned it in my very first post in this topic, post #6.

I try my hardest not to bias my posts. Yes I'm going sage, but that's because my veno plays as heavy fox most of the time. I'm actually neutral on which Amp is better - it wasn't a factor in my decision to go sage. I just felt the comparison of Amp based on a single veno left out a significant fraction of real-world situations. So I brought up the 2-veno scenario (see below for why).

The reason I left the wood debuff out of the Amp comparison is because it can be kept up 100% of the time, meaning it can be considered independently of other effects like Amp. If the wood debuff lets you do 10% more damage, then you can simply take all the Amp stuff I calculated and add 10% to the solo demon's damage output.

But including the wood debuff with Amp limits that entire analysis to a solo veno. The Amp calcs on their own are applicable to solo caster venos, fox venos, and groups with non-venos. It makes no sense to limit it to only solo venos by including the wood debuff, when the wood debuff can be factored in independently by anyone who wishes to consider a solo demon veno.

Same goes for lots of other skills like sage Soul Degen. Its effect can be considered independently, so I don't artificially limit the applicability of the Amp analysis by including it. Extreme Poison can't be kept up 100% of the time, so when you use it actually makes a difference. Which is why I brought it up.

and a bizarre playstyle she/he follows don't really help it either. So I consider them completely pointless to such discussions; if anything I'd call it some sort of weird way of trolling. Its a shame that others, mostly sage venos like yourself and waffletroll and that tweaks take it all in and then churn it out in other threads.

Instead of applying maths to everything, I speak from experience. Since this is what actually happens, I'd think its far more useful to other players, rather then number crunching for perfect situations. However I only speak for the demon side of things so naturally I'll always sound biased to demon.

I speak from experience too. Venos are so common that 2+ venos in a group is the norm for me, not the exception. So I felt a comparison of sage vs. demon Amp based on a veno soloing was not representative of real-world scenarios. In fact, if I'm soloing, I'm often spam-healing most of the time when Amp would be useful, so can't even use it.

Qualitative reports of effectiveness are great for coming up with new and different strategies. But when you want to compare two different things, you need a quantitative analysis. The only way to compare sage vs. demon qualitatively is by playing two venos, one sage and one demon. I suspect there's an exceedingly small number of people who've done that.

axt57 wrote: »

An engieneer? Do you erect dispencers and build sentries? TF2 jokes aside, you must be pretty good engineer if you find the time to take games this seriously.

It's all a matter of what you find enjoyable about the game. Some people enjoy leveling and getting stuff. I enjoy figuring stuff out. I've been playing since last November, and my main is only up to level 88. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some Tideborn characters who've already passed me in levels.

In any case I notice that you have not yet gone sage/demon. If that is so then you have no real experience and simply function by drawing lines between your endpoints to make theoretical conclusions.

The vast majority of sage/demon skills simply have more damage, bigger effects, different durations/cooldowns, or add effects I've experienced with other classes or genies. Very few effects are new and need to be experienced in person to fully appreciate (e.g. purify from sage Sprint, 5 sec of all crits from demon Fox Wallop).

Might I add that, realistically, having 2 venos with sage (or even demon) amp can be hard to come by; since sage amp has a hefty price tag unless you get lucky; demon amp seems somewhat cheaper.

Yeah, the last poll I saw had venos going sage by a 3:1 margin, so the demon skills are cheaper.

I haven't really noticed a difference in prices for the non fb89 drops. I think there'll be the same ratio of people who buy all the skills for either one making them equally available to the non all in one buyers?