If you are a fist barb, would you go sage or demon?

He's back and ruining threads with his presence, and as usual, I have no idea what he's talking about. I assumed that after months away from forums he'd come back and be higher than 49. Anyway, lets continue on yulkless...

Not that I would ever suggest anyone do this b:chuckle
... but glitched in fists in sage tiger form would be pretty epic. Be a "fist bm" with 120% more def and and 40% more hp. Unfortunately if you were to glitch on fists (again, not recommending it) I'd say demon would win that because you'd get tiger form increases without damage reduction.

Demon also wins with the skill Devour~>human form with fists because you'd be able to reduce pdef by 50% for 15 seconds. In the time it takes to change from tiger to human and equip your fists (1 sec, maybe) that means you can debuff your own mobs for 14 seconds of play time.

Demon Sunder = Sage Sunder because of the number of crits you could fit in 5 seconds with fists, whereas a slightly more squishy fist barb would benefit alot from the increased hp recovery.

Speaking of lower vitality. Demon roar is super sexy, but sage roar would help make up for your squishiness. Again, I'd put them at equal usefulness but I think sage would help balance out the build more.

Feral Regen. Have to give it to the demons. If you are using fists, then you will be using less skills and less mp but be squishier, so the hp regen will do you alot more good.

Beastial Onslaught. Kind of pointless to have that extra accuracy boost when you have 150+ dex statted, but with fists +35% crit rate for 6 seconds after a switch from axe to fists (about 5 seconds at 5.0 = 25 hits). Demon ftw.

Same thing with Mighty Swing. Demon is better because who cares about shorter cooldown. The 4 second stun will be more useful with a higher damage output.


K, here is my overall opinion. Barbs go fists because if you can't tank in a squad you may as well contribute with DD, and you may end up tanking with your DD. The problem is you ruin the point of a barb by becoming squishy in exchange for that DD. Demon continues you on the road of awesome DD, Sage balances you out saying "you've got enough DD, here's some damage reduction skills that'll keep you alive longer." So the choice is to keep up with the trend of insane DD or to un-nerf your nerfed build but not increase your damage output as much.