Sage vs. Demon

Sakubatou - Sanctuary · August 2011

Looked through "Search" and scanned the forums, haven't seen a Sage vs Demon thread in a few months. Thought we'd revisit it.

Now that we have all our skills, some have been fixed or changed, and we have a decent 89+ Seeker community I thought I'd startup this question once again.

I'm an 87 seeker considering my culti. I'll admit to alt FCCing and account stashing my seeker experience orbs from my 100+ characters BHs (I did level 1-40 myself, and then about 2 levels out of every 10 doing my culti) so I don't know the class as well as I should, but I can guarantee you, I know it better than even most seekers.

I have a 5.0 BM, Barb, and 3.33 Sin on the same account to share gear with, as well as a few casters and can farm anything else my seeker needs. My goal is pve support, as always, but I'd like my seeker to fill a roll that my other characters don't, I guess. I've gone with a 5 str, 3 dex, 2 vit every two levels build then capped my vitality at 80. Once he can use my barbs gear I'll prolly restat down to 3 vit (maybe) and aim for 450 strength.

So. I guess what I'm looking for is a tank that can do awesome dph (not dps) and aoes. Just my thoughts but suggest another use for my seeker or way to make it more versatile and I'd be interested.

What path/skills do you like and made the difference of sage vs demon and which did you/would you pick.

The_Shocker - Heavens Tear · August 2011

I chose sage, and I'm happy that I did. I am biased, but here's my reasoning as to why I chose...

I have never aspired to have high APS as a seeker, and I like the ability to take a ton of damage and keep on ticking. therefore:
sage 3spark (less damage) > demon 3spark (increase attack speed)

I like the increased range on the vortex over the stun possibilities. On most things I drop vortex on, they're dead before any stuns would really make much difference, but I hate long range magic mobs that are sitting right outside vortex range; Sage vortex gets most of 'em now.

Tidal protection on blade affinity and anti-stun on unfetter both are good defensive skills that were lacking pre-celestial and as demon IMO. Especially in pve when you can anticipate more stuns than in pvp. Demon BA reduces cooldown which is cool, but 50vs60 sec to me is - meh... a purify on unfetter is cool but stun is the only one i care about purifying, which can't be self-purified. Everything else i can use QPQ or 3spark.

Adrenal numbness: I would rather have more defense than more accuracy, my accuracy is already decent enough, and the things I can't hit... 10% isn't gonna matter much.

Heart, Mind, Soul Shatter were all toss-ups for me, both sage/demon versions are good, so I didn't use them to make a decision.

Blade & Sword Mastery is huge IMO. demon = 1% crit, really? that's it? Sage is the equivalent of attack level +15. VERY nice.

Heartseeker would be cool with extra range, but sage adding 15% chance to immobilize makes it more reliable. I pretty much expect to stop a target every time i use sage heartseeker.

Your other main everyday attack skills could go either way for me... some groovy sage effects and some groovy demon effects, but the reasons above were the deciding points for myself.

Good Luck with your decision. You'll be awesome either way as long as u learn the class.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary · August 2011

Well, I have a sage sin on one account and a demon sin on the other so I rarely do much without paint. Its a crutch (and eliminates the need of a cleric so I can have more dd or 1 less share from the split). With bloodpaint demon spark has always given better survivability because I can get anywhere from 500-3k back per attack in most paint heals and 25% faster attack rate means I get 25% more heals, can spark 25% sooner (for 20% hp heal and 3 second invulnerability) and things die 25% faster. So I really don't see sage's 25% dmg reduction as having better survivability, especially since some things aren't reduce like Nirvana pheonixs fire damage or the aoes of the claw boss or final boss in FCC.

I'm leaning sage. With my sin the sage chi skill was kind of annoying because I never wanted to stop for 2-3 seconds to earn 50 chi. On every character I have added Cloud Eruption and will on my Seekers genie, but when pulling barbs have more skill spam options as well as beastial rage so I found myself wanting that sage chi skill as my squad waited for me to chi up before my next pull because I vortexed on my last.

Great point on Unfetter. I can always QPQ negative effects of (or trip spark them away). Liking sage more on that skill where before it was pretty equal.

For my stances, I keep finding myself favoring the sage of the stance but the demon of the activating skill. Like Northern Waltz I prefer sage (40% chance means I can prolly catch the initial group of debuffs and triple spark too) but like the faster cast of the demon Staggering Strike. Parched Blade I prefer demon (4 second stun instead of 3) but prefer the added dmg of sage Stalagstrike since my main use of Parched Blade is before vortex, then hit stalagstrike drops. I prefer the demon version of Soulsever for its increased attack and defense level debuff but prefer the sage damage of Gemini Slash (a beast of a skill). 0/3 on matching those up and no matter which way I go I sacrifice something.

Demon vortex is still glitched to not stun anything, right?

ItsAWolf - Archosaur · August 2011

The_Shocker - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Blade & Sword Mastery is huge IMO. demon = 1% crit, really? that's it? Sage is the equivalent of attack level +15. VERY nice.

I'd just like to nitpick a little on this:

OP aims for a 450 strength seeker, which means a +300% physical damage modifier when using a sword. Furthermore, the difference between Demon and Sage sword mastery is 75% or 90%. Throw in a lvl 10 barb buff for an extra 30%. Using a regular attack this would mean the difference would come down to:

5.05 * physical attack
5.20 * physical attack

That's a difference of ~2.97%

Naturally this is a bit more than the <= 1% damage over time increase you'd get from 1% critical. This gives the advantage to sage mastery on regular attacks, which I presume seekers don't use much after they reach this level.

However, keep in mind that when you get a critical hit the extra modifiers from your skills also get doubled, while mastery does not affect these skill modifiers. Take for example:

Say your weapon attack + rings + garnet shards add up to around 2000 damage (this should be a quite well refined high level sword with nice shards, I'm not exactly sure what seeker's preferred endgame weapons are)

Yataghan Vortex (sage or demon) damage:
base damage plus 100% of weapon damage plus 8300

demon:
base damage: 5.05 * 2000 = 10100
added skill damage: 1 * 2000 + 8300 = 10300
total = 20400

for sage:
base damage: 5.20 * 2000 = 10400
added skill damage: 1 * 2000 + 8300 = 10300
total = 20700

which comes down to a difference of ~1.47%

Gemini Slash (lvl 10):
base Physical damage, plus
450% of weapon damage, plus 4915.0.

demon:
base damage: 5.05 * 2000 = 10100
added skill damage: 4.5 * 2000 + 4915= 13915
total = 24015

for sage:
base damage: 5.20 * 2000 = 10400
added skill damage: 4.5 * 2000 + 4915 = 13915
total = 24315

~1.25% damage difference.

For all skills the sage mastery will most likely end up being the better option, but the damage gap with the 1% crit is not as large as it would initially seem, so don't base your choice on this mastery (at least that's my opinion).

Other than that it was a very nicely detailed post and certainly makes sage seem the way to go if I ever level my seeker that high

Sakubatou - Sanctuary · August 2011

Yah, I did the numbers for BM and sin a while ago as far as mastery. For BM its about .5-2% in favor for sage. For Sin, its about the same but because of their huge base damage and weapon multipliers, and the fact they get 2% crit for demon, demon mastery can actually become more powerful. What I found was the more endgame the weapon (Lets say TT80 vs Rank 9) the more the crit% impacts it. With Sins Sage had a 3% advantage with a standard TT80 dagger but a 1.5% disadvantage with +10 Rank 9. I expect Seekers to be somewhere in the middle of BMs and Sins because they only get 1% crit if demon, but they have more str for damage modifiers and their weapons have a high base damage.

Not to mention, if I chose to pk crit rate increase is more valuable.

Overall, mastery wont sway my decision one way or the other. I'm guessing with attack spam sage mastery is favored but with skill spam demon mastery becomes favored.

ReMakaBo - Archosaur · August 2011

When i studied the skills pre-release, I invisioned my seeker being more efficient in TW, both offensive, and defensive. So I made sage. I personally dislike anything PvE in current PWI, so for me and my playstyle, sage was the way to go.

Sage vs. Demon

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