UPDATED: Culti Guide - Demon Vs. Sage Archer

Walpurga - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Full buffed catabarb means enough charms, Cornered Beast, invoke, Bestial Rage, solid shield, tree of protection, nearly 50K HP. def level hammer, r9rr armor with jades, and +10 or above mdef ornies

How you gon' kill dat **** solo lol? Even if you wear out invoke, solid shield, and charm you then get Cornered Beast, which means they invoke again, solid shield comes off CD, charm ticks again, etc

Shhh, them HL casters 2 pro mang

Joshcja - Sanctuary wrote: »

Solo killing a fully buffed cattabarb is pretty sicknasty level damage.

If these barbs are getting solo'd by an archer when they aren't by a mage, then yeah, I'm gonna question their mages 'cause wtf. O.o;;

Decus - Dreamweaver wrote: »

This + your forum title = so much win. Please include a screenshot of a tt99 +5 crossbow in your sig somewhere

Does that even work? I've never seen it in action and I don't have sage range buff

Man, if I had a dollar for every time I saw a sage archer make some stupid claim like this.

When you say catabarb, everyone thinks 40-50k hp rock solid monster. But tell us the truth now. Was it a real catabarb? Or a barb w/ less than desirable cata-pulling gear, built to wear claws, who got forced in front of a cata because his faction was short on actual catabarbs?

Unless you can consistently deliver a kill on a 50k hp top class catabarb, which you can't, then you probably have no right to even attempt to use "I soloed a catabarb because sage is gud" as a point for you.

Well I don't know about sage archers, but when I played an r9 demon archer a while ago I soloed the enemy main r9 catabarb, his cleric, bm, sin, and the r9 archer that was trying to protect them. The speed proc on QS is extremely nice to take out the support and purging people. Best hit I got on the barb though was 25k crit but that was with tower debuff. Since I purged and ST that barb, he became 1-shot enabled but your timing has to be dead on. b:chuckle

Why keep bringing up which culti path is better? One path will never win. The culti path has always been biased off game play and personal bias. Each culti has ups and down. I have a sage 97 archer? Why did i choose sage? Because i loved to hear ppl say how fail i am cuz i was sage. I always laugh when the fail sage archer was the one that didnt die and kept going. Im not going to say sage is bettetr nor that demon is. Its all situational. T?bh anymore ppl are going to claim their culti is better and defend their culti. A simply need of approval u can go do all the math. I always tell any class to to ecat and look at skills and make ur decision based on urself.
For me, sage just looked better. I like the increase in base damage over extra crit. Im biased towards more reliable damage. Its just my play style.

Decus - Dreamweaver wrote: »

This is the best way to put it. I really need to make some room in my sig for this.



What kind of opponents are you facing?!? How inattentive can someone be to let the entire squad go down by one archer? Sorry, I have a hard time believing this. I mean, I am not as endgame-y as I used to be (cba to keep upgrading **** anymore); but, when I was, I couldn't look the wrong way in TW without getting obliterated.

A lot of times cat squads go in alone (just cat + support) while the DD mayhem is going on in another lane, so it's not as chaotic.

I can see a cleric in a cat squad getting sniped off, because the cleric is usually focused on the rest of the squad, and are sometimes in the air as well. Once I followed a cat squad going into my base and killed 3 clerics in the air without the rest of the squad (r9 archers) reacting. They were too busy hitting what's in front of them to help their clerics, and the clerics were too busy focusing on what's in front of them to help each other. Or they were just bad...really 1 sleep and they would have made it through.

I suppose you can pick off the cleric from stealth then IG barrage. I'm assuming only the archer had decent gear, so the rest of them may well just drop dead if they're not any good with reaction times. Then it's just a matter of dueling the archer, and if he sucks he can go die too. As for the barb...if the rest of the squad was down then the barb might as well not bother trying to devote too much resources to survive, otherwise a cat barb can last quite long under fire from a whole cat kill squad if he uses everything he has.

There's also a huge gap between "R9 gear" and "JOSD and refined R9 gear" IJS.

1v1 against an endgame barb is really another story though.

Always the same arguments. People aren't really gonna make their choices based on this guide. Even if it wasn't so flawed (comparing skills against each other without even considering combos?) people would still make their own choices. Most (unbiased) people will tell you Demon is better, because Demon IS better. I'm Sage, and basically chose it just to be different. It was a long time before this update, when Sage was even further behind Demon. The gap isn't so big anymore, so it's a bit more viable, but Demon is still better. 1 vs. 1 on a Demon archer I win more than I lose, but against Arcanes (who should be our main targets) Demons are more effective. Sage probably better vs. Heavies, but nobody would choose to fight a Heavy rather than an Arcane anyway, so that point is invalid.

Zen_Archer - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I guess I should have been more clear in my point about cata barbs, cause people obviously can't infer obvious things.

I have never solo taken down a true well geared cata barb; as I said in my post, those barbs require a team effort.

The cata barbs I have taken down were not top tier barbs and had less than steller gear where my gear far outclassed them.

As a sage archer I do much more benefit to my squad for cata-killing purposes simply because I have more magic skills, longer metal debuff skills to help clerics and myself attack, and the quicker channeling and cooldown on my metal AOE. I chose my culti for TW purposes since I was in a cata-killing squad. Again, my play-style.

The example I gave was me soloing a team of people, but that was just how effective a demon archer can be. Now in a team play, demon path will shine as well. You say that your magic debuff is helpful to the team in TW. Sure...if your cleric is well geared and alive. I find that in most TWs back when I still played, most clerics are not as well geared as their HA and LA targets. Also, demon cleric debuffs is better or equivalent than archer and well as seeker debuffs. If you are focused on doing metal damage to support your team, that's fine. But know that your damage compared to an arcane class is no where close. Most of the damage that kills the cata barbs are everything else except metal (most of the time). As an archer, your job is to take out arcane support first. If you fail to do this, your heavies will die and your team fails. When I TWed and I saw my own faction archers attacking cata barbs while their clerics are spamming purify, IH, stream heals, and wings of protection... I rage on them for being silly...oh so very silly and should be talked to for being inattentive and not following instructions (as arcane supports are always first priority targets).

The most damaging damage an archer can do is barrage. Everything else is kinda MEH. If you find being sage and doing barrage is better since you got 20% more crit after QS then all for it. But if you find that being demon and doing more barrage damager per second is better since you already have high crit, then all for that too. For demon archers, a good defense is a good offense. the faster you take out the enemy, the better your team and faction survives.

Only useful debuff on cat barb is Sage STA or BV for either sides. (though HF will most likely override). Then if you're Demon you can also drain chi. When all of that is done move on.

_blood_rain - Sanctuary wrote: »

If you chose your culti so that you could hit catabarbs w/ that **** water skill and debuff them for clerics (LOL) then I don't know where you got the idea that you are qualified to write a guide.

I'd have thought you'd at least say something about 20% hp debuff?

Ignore STA, it`s all bout Frost Arrow guys, it`s all bout Frost Arrow!

HideYoHubby - Archosaur wrote: »

Ignore STA, it`s all bout Frost Arrow guys, it`s all bout Frost Arrow!

hey now I crit 7.4K sage frost arrow on a BM in TW

did I mention he was self buffed, unmarrowed and in aps gear?

Walpurga - Dreamweaver wrote: »

hey now I crit 7.4K sage frost arrow on a BM in TW

did I mention he was self buffed, unmarrowed and in aps gear?

Next time I troll ppl, I`ll sage spark Frost Arrow instead of BoA. Still dropping full N3s for 18k crit really got me giggling. Then again 7.4k crit aint horrible for FA, considering it has pretty non existent damage addons on it.

Unholly - Morai wrote: »

2- Your stun time for these calculations are wrong. You are completely ignoring the channelling and damage of QS. Simply if we are going to take stun>QS>auto as the combo for these calculations then you should be taking off 1.6 seconds off of the stun time of each combo leaving demons with 1.9 seconds of stun time and sages with 3.4.

Sweetiebot, please give Unholly 4 points for taking into account cast / channel time.

when demon qs procs it have the ability to bypass charm some times. i never checked the details but with what i have seen the 2 hits(qs and first normal atack) hit the enemy at same time or something like that. someone posted a video with some tests(i think it was quilue)

whenever i see a cata barb i will just STA, arrow inferno, search for any healer, debuff again if needed, and only then start atacking, usualy with qs/auto atacks for purge(if barb wasnt purged yet) and only then metal skills (tho i think auto atacks may have higher dps on some cata barbs)

as asterelle said, the diferences betwen take aim is less than 20%

if you spark in TW/NW, people will either stun you, gang you or run, unless you ig or anti stun if you anti stun, they will still be able to kill you and if you ig the dmg reduction from sage wont help you, same thing with barrage