sage archers

I am sage, but I also deviate from the standard path in some other ways, so I am not sure that I would be a good standard of comparison.

Furthermore, I have never played a demon archer, so I do not know how to compare myself.

I will admit, however, that the added range can sometimes be useful (especially if you use a +range weapon), and I pull aggro often enough, so you should probably be prepared to survive that. And 4.5 seconds of stun can be nice, when you are rescuing a party member, you just have to get your timing right... and ... so on. When you have all of your skills, you burn through a lot of mana, but mana supplies are relatively cheap.

But most any situation you find yourself in, you will have to think your way through it, and I think situational awareness can be a valuable asset to any player. I sometimes wish I had demon attributes, and I sometimes die, but mostly I am pleased with how well things go for me.

But also, I think you should keep in mind that your gears will be a bigger issue than your cultivation choice.

Sage isn't as bad as people think. I was going to go sage or my archer for being bow/fist. With fist you can solo TT squad mode in an hour or so. I personally think pure bow is boring and bow is underpowered.

Frost Arrow. Sage frost arrow makes the target take all physical damage as water damage for the duration of the skill. I have watched Cata barbs drop in those 5 seconds almost entirely from that skill. Fighting a BM? Hit and switch to fists for a bunch of magic damage. Also Sage BoA gives a defense buff and is great for things like RB.

Olbaze i have to agree with you, its what i thought to. this is interesting,

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Sage STA. With lvl 11 STA and a good bow Demons can already 1 shot a lot of lesser robes. The same should be even more true with Sage. AOE 20% hp debuff wtf lol

Also, might as well mention Sage's faster Thunderous Blast and better Take Aim.

Although against well-geared players whose hp and pdef don't suck, the skills that really makes a difference for Sage are probably the better STA and the longer stun.

Aldryami - Sanctuary wrote: »

Alot of sage skills seem to revolve around generating chi. I'm wondering if this (along with genie chi skill) can be a route to perma spark without the need for 5 ap?

That is not really how it works.

From my point of view, sage chi generation roughly matches demon chi generation from increased APS. Sages get some non-combat chi generation, but the combat chi generation tends to be slow or iffy.

You will sometimes find yourself quickly filled with full chi, especially when you have cause to do close range AoEs, but its nothing like 5aps (nor even like 4aps).

Please be more realistic when talking about Sage's advantages.

Frost arrow is worse than Gush, but uses chi. Unless it does let you deal purely water damage for the duration of the skill like Nethare has claimed, it's basically a worse Gush. Moreover, it doesn't benefit from your metal debuff.

In RB you are in BB, unless your squad is being wiped. I don't see how the reduction in Sage Barrage is going to help. In TW you are priority for being stunned/interrupted while Barraging, people don't see an archer Barrage and try to cast BIDS at it, that's wasting time while your teammates are being damaged and worse yet, Purged. In that regard, archers pop pills, activate WoG, or use genie skills when Barraging anyway, making the Sage advantage not that significant compared to Demon.

The range advantage is real. This allows you to Barrage enemy towers and spawn catapults directly when equipped with any weapon that adds range.

The extra STA is a significant boost in my opinion, 20% AOE hp debuff tips the balance in the archer's favor significantly. This gives you and your teammates an easier time to take down a heavily refined target. STA + Arma (or any hard hitting AOE) at a group of people is a very powerful combo.

The stun advantage is real. Longer stuns are always welcome, especially in a team fight.

The increased base damage and extra fire damage from Blazing Arrow is also real. The damage increase equates to roughly equipping an extra attack ring. Although that's not a lot by itself, combined with such factors as increased STA, it can add up. Why do we use better arrows? Why do we use attack charms? Every little bit adds up and Sage just has this extra bit.

Demon Barrage blows Sage barrage out of the water, seriously. There are absolutely NO situations I can think of that I would prefer sage barrage over demon barrage.

To me the advantages of sage are chi generation, range, and hitting harder in general as well as being SLIGHTLY harder to kill. The frost arrow is indeed better than demon as well but I don't like that skill and I wouldn't use it even if I had sage frost arrow because the metal attacks are just plain better. And the blazing arrow is better, yea. I find the logic that we don't need crit because we already have a lot of it kind of baffling. It is because we have high crit that we should get more of it to capitalize on it?

The stun arrow is debatable. Sometimes I wish I had a longer stun, but I wouldn't always prefer that duration over 10% crit. Similarly while 20% on sage STA is a formidable one-up from demon's 16%, I personally prefer the extra 10% crit. While an extra 4% HP seems to be the better deal PER SHOT, I kinda like using it randomly to boost my crit, which benefits me even after I fire that arrow. PvE-wise, I use blood vow for HP-reduction needs, so that's only 2% extra HP off world bosses and TT bosses to me.

In the end I don't think sage is BAD, but I am of the opinion that it takes pretty good gear to make sage comparable to demon. In the lower grade/refine gears I find demon to be more effective, whereas higher up with better gears, I guess it would depend on your play style. I simply prefer the crit, the attack speed, better barrage, etc. etc. I have a genie and apoth for chi, and I don't find range too particularly useful to be used as a culti-determining factor, so the advantages of sage didn't quite outweigh how much I liked the demon skills. On of the flipside I do know some very good sage archers with +12 bows I wouldn't want to point their bow in my direction.

Edit: @ Miugre - Your priorities in skills baffle me.

My wife\s a sage archer XD But for some reason she don't play it much... lol You can pm her on vikapov or smth and ask what it was like.

Why do you think the skills are cheap? Just my opinion there are more demons than sages, so it would be harder seeing skills in AH, like for demon. Maybe I'm wrong.

You should just make a book clip from tokens anyway. Stunning, STA, Mastery, Thunder Shock, Thunderous Blast, a lot of the good stuff are in there.

and Ast it's not the same. A Sage uses Relentless Courage for Quicken, while I Quicken and can still use a genie skill of my own, like Frenzy.

Aesthor - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Edit: @ Miugre - Your priorities in skills baffle me.

How so? Not criticizing, just wondering. :P

If you're referring to Vicious Arrow, I only have it because I found it very cheap and I kinda-sorta wanted a Lv11 DoT. *shrug* It wouldn't have had much priority otherwise, especially since Serrated would outdamage it anyway.

The ones I'm after now are just the skills I use most often in standard PVE situations. Do all the sage benefits work for me? Not all, no - Lightning Strike and Thundershock in particular are kinda "meh" - but it's the skills' add-on damages which I like just as much. Frost Arrow's add-on damage more than doubles from Lv10 to Lv11, for instance. Other examples include,
Lightning Strike: 2214.9 -> 3820
Thundershock: 2214.9 -> 4238
Serrated: 4571.4/15s -> 6460/12s

I should also note that I'm not considering lv99 skills in this priority list (despite mentioning sharptooth earlier).

Maybe that explains some of it. Maybe not. ...eh. XD

Aesthor - Heavens Tear wrote: »

It's the fact that you have/want DoTs that baffle me, as damage over time skills in this game suck in general. Even nix bleed, which was hax in its day, is obsolete now. As I know you are mostly a PvE player, mobs hardly even last long enough to suffer a DoT's full effect. Unless of course your weapon/damage is just so bad that you can't kill a mob before the DoT wears out; I don't really know, haven't seen you play in-game. The highlights of sage skills are the ones I pointed out in my previous post, plus Mastery etc.

Actually, the most hilarious part about DOTs in this game is how the sin's bleed skill starts out so broken... and then by Lv11 it's no better than the others.

But it's more of a "just to say I have it" thing. That, and the fact that DOTs help me contribute to a boss kill early on with less chance of aggro stealing (my pattern is STA -> Extreme Poison -> DOTs when STA wears off -> normal hits / sparking a little later). It is true that I'm not pure dex (shock and alarm, I know) and my current weps aren't the best in DPS (+3 Vast Land, +3 Windcatcher, and OHT sling), so that probably changes the effectiveness of the DOTs a little bit by comparison... not much though. In standard grinding, I only ever use Vicious on an increased def mob... and that's usually when I have chi to burn and feel like being fancy with it just for its own sake (i.e. a combo of stormrage + frost -> vicious -> stun/knockback -> frost again -> metal skills).

I will eventually be after Stormrage, if only for its def/res reducing effect... but I've always liked Stormrage for the simple fact that (most) bosses can't shrug it off like other effects.

And I'll admit that I forgot to mention Mastery. That's obviously a priority skill as well - just trying to decide whether it'd make more sense to get it from bidding hall or just make a full AMP bookclip set for it.

Aesthor - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Actually I do prefer to be a sage 5 aps archer, if given that choice. Some of the demon crit boosts only work for ranged weapons, so there goes the crit advantage. Sage blazing arrow is just better, and the damage reduction in spark will help a lot in aggro-stealing/tanking scenarios. The only advantage that demons have over sage in 5 aps, in my opinion, is that it's much cheaper, but for BETTER? Definitely sage. Even so, I don't build my character around my claws, so that is null.

Right, I just meant that I hope people start going back to sage for reasons other than 5aps. I decided on sage back when it was considered the stupidest idea in the world... and around the time I actually hit 89, it started to experience a revival only because people could become more broken with sage than with demon (given enough money).

I'll tell you this much though... when they fix 5aps, the rush to switch back to demon is going to be hilarious. Maybe there'll be so many that Mirages will actually have value again. XD

Miugre - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I will eventually be after Stormrage, if only for its def/res reducing effect...

It does not reduce defenses. Instead, it creates an effect very like that of Myriad Sword Stance (except it lasts for 30 seconds and perhaps only offers 20% damage reduction, and is not an AoE). It can be handy when dealing with a boss that you can not tank. I have yet to see a boss that will not be slowed by stormrage, but also stormrage generates quite a lot of aggro so you will need a good tank for it to be anything other than a keystone kops style waste of time.