sage or demon for my assassin

Spardex - Archosaur wrote: »

Hi im currently doing my spirtul culvitation and i cant choose between sage or demon and i do know im gonna choose either sage or demon well, you can always skip culti. my seeker chose sage on 98 but i just cant choose sage bloodpaint are you ready/able/willing to give 50-60m for that skill? gives additional 3% heal and demon spark gives higher attack rate and i like doing lots of damage and heal myself and use less potions if you want to use less pots I guess you don't have 50m lying around for sage bp but i cant choose also i trained my assassin 1 str 4 dex no vit all the way so which one should i choose i cant make my mind up also everyone telling me sage is better just because it makes you hit faster demon is the one that makes you hit faster which i looked up along with other skills here look http://pwi.ecatomb.net/skill.php also i like doing pvp alot

DionDagger - Dreamweaver wrote: »

It requires, demon dagger devo and ribstrike for farming, rest of the skills are optional.

DionDagger - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Actually they run about the same price. Demon dagger devo is 17-20mil on DW, demon WE is 10-12m, rib strike is normally around 6m. If a person isn't greedy you can find Sage BP at 30m, which is 2x the amount it take to open the book pack it comes from.

tweakz wrote: »

It's no wonder there's so many derp-apsers.

First off: sage isn't less dps because of demon eruption. Sage can get same 5.0 using genie skill unless under water using Wind Shield and WS retains dmg reduction. Demon can likewise get the dmg reduction that sage has using pots or genie. Main question here is: Are you willing to pay each time you go 5.0? I personally use it decisively - same as pots on demon.
First off, you seem new to PWI so I'd like to welcome you. We normally don't use genie skills in a dps calc. While your sage sin is spamming WS (overwriting sage damage reduction) just to catch up to the aps of a demon, the demon can use their genie to Extreme Poison, Tangling Mire, or Frenzy to further extend the gap in dps back to 40-50% or more.

Demon's use pots and sage don't? Well, if you'd bothered to educate yourself by actually reading other posts, then you can see demons often get comparative heals as sages, despite their weaker paint, because of the greater dps. There are also very few situations where a pot would make a significant difference, considering you get 3-8k paint heals a second, and a pot is 3.5k hp over 10 seconds.

The main difference is sage tend to utilize their genies offensively for dps, and demon's have the option of using them for greater dps or saving them for a defensive maneuver. Its more up to the player. Sage have their natural sage spark reduction advantage for defense, but for 99% of situations a demon sin will still pick offense because killing faster and greater amount of paint heals is both offensive and defensive. They just have more of an option, and a good sin knows when he'll need to play defensively.

Second: Culti choice makes a huge difference on weapon selection. Agreed.A sage veno Sin*may utilize a much cheaper G13 dagger for the -.1 int, while a demon would go for higher dmg. This also affects non sparked dps, so it matters how you use or want to use your assassin. Most Assassins don't erupt for mobs anyway. Sure; the G13 dagger is inferior in dph dmg, but the savings can be used for other equips or refines.
Lemme get this straight. Your previous advice suggests sage sins can keep up with dps of demon sins, then you suggest they use a weapon with roughly half the dph of a G16 weapon just for the aps (and call other people derpa-aps idiots). It's not just behind in dph, its behind in dps and sage sins still should continue to 3.33 aps G16 instead of being 4.0 G13 because aps aren't everything.

Then, in a few paragraps, you make the argument that people should ignore skill costs, but you're acting like the difference between G13 and G16 costs are vastly important.

Well, it's true sage are more "stuck" in their gear choices because they lack aps from a triple spark and need to find it elsewhere. In PvE, it means they're stuck with the same aps setup and often forced to have either G13 or G16. A demon will have more options, like R8, zerk G15s, or r9 for aps (and still remaining permasparked). A demon will also have more gear options, because changing gear pieces may only drop them to 4.0, while it'll drop a sage to 2.22-2.86 aps. This gear swap normally doesn't make up for the sage's natural damage reduction, but its nice that demons have an easier option to be very offensive or defensive. A good example would be swapping ornies to cube neck/warsong belt or swapping weapon to r8r for 20+ def levels. Now you're only 3.33 aps, but you've gained about 40% defense.

Sage has an always on wolf emblem. This represents more consistent dmg which goes along with more survivability. Demon has better spike dmg from it.
As always, very situational. Most bosses don't last longer than 60 seconds, so assuming a 40% crit rate a demon gains 16% paint heals while a sage gains 8%. If the boss lasts longer than a minute the sage starts coming back to even until the 2 minute mark when the demon pulls ahead.

Pretty much, for pve or pvp, I prefer demon. Since I stealth past most mobs and kill guards and bosses I demon is active pretty much 100% of the time, with the cd being as I run between mobs. The main bonus of sage is not the weaker but permanent WE, its the 8 second cd for a constant spammable 10 chi or in situations where you need to use a chi skill and fall short its nice to use WE instead of Inner Harmony.


Power Dash is another major factor. In PvE: Sage PD wins and helps sages actually out dps demons.
Do the math. You use 2 sparks and longer than 1.2 seconds, so about 6-8 attacks, to increase your crit rate for 50% for 8 second. This is about a 13% dps gain for sages or an 11% dps gain for demons. Wow... blowing demons out of the water there who are only about 48% more damage ahead of you now. As always, its much better to Subsea than powerdash, even if alone. If you're alone and can EP+Powerdash then thats better. If you're in a squad, then subsea is better. If you're in a squad and another sin is Subseaing, then PD is better.

On my sage sin, I rarely use Power Dash. I prefer to save the Inner Harmony for keeping my sparks up.

Subsea will be situation dependent, and helps compensate for the spike dmg difference of wolf emblem. It is more timing dependent than demon subsea, but also a hit if timed right.
Agreed. Demon is better when other debuffs aren't considered, but sage is better when a squad is also debuffing. Its so dependant on squad dynamics its hard to say one is better than the other, but what I will say is its hard to die on a boss when you are getting 130% paint heals because of demons 15 second length. For me, its a great defensive tactic as well as offensive.

Consider your squad: Do you want to be the assassin that brings sage BP to an otherwise unsuccessful run, or do you want to be the assassin that dies on Snakefist and nearly causes a squad wipe?

It takes about 6k hp and a tiny bit of skill to tank snakefist with demon paint. Sage paint is ~40m. If the sin is willing to pay 40m for a skill I hope they have at least 6k hp first. As I said in the second post, the real benefit of sage paint to me is the hour buff since both demon and sage heal my characters to full between each boss attack or with each aoe.

Also... the boss starts stacking his frenzy buff and hits harder the longer you take to kill so killing faster means you're less likely to have people being 1 shot (even if they have sage paint, lol).

Ignore the "look at skill costs". The poor stay poor by acting like poor. Once you hit 100: you'll be getting easy coin. Do you want to benefit for 1 month only to suffer a year or more? None of the Assassin skills run anywhere near the cost of demon Heaven's Flame 9 seconds...which is mere 6 seconds compared to 8 and 14.


Both cultis are great. -You really can't go wrong. My post isn't to talk someone into going sage: it's just to balance this thread out from biased derpa-aps minds.

DionDagger - Dreamweaver wrote: »

P.S. Random question. Is it strange I rarely use Headhunt in PvP? Mine is only lv 3, but I don't find the skill that attractive when I use DPH. I also have my Morai, AEU, and Chrono skills that I use more.

WnbTank - Archosaur wrote: »

So you dont find using or even maxing your longest stun(Has highest single target dph too) worth it but you have your chrono skills? Spell cutter seems to have its uses in PvP but I am not paying 40m for that one, same with blood frenzy for PvE. Its almost as amusing as Tweakz suggesting on weapon that isnt good for anything but chi gain and burning ppls charms as it cant get trough em.

WannaBM - Archosaur wrote: »

Sorry to point out a detail, but i keep see you repeat this point in many of your posts and it is not realistic.

A DPS chars damage output ranges from 150k to 400k DPS. Most of us are in the 150-250 range, and that includes the majority of +10 mobless tanker sins. 300 - 400 really is more of a dreambuild thing.

2% of that is indeed 3-8k or 3 to 5k for the more realistic numbers.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

I gave it a large range because I was talking about both [?] and regular bosses, and was umbrellaing squad damage (where you have HF, pdef debuffs, sometimes amp...) or solo/duo situations where you're likely to only have EP or 2 debuffs. And I was talking about sparked heals.

For 3k heals a second at 5 aps, thats 600 heals per hit. 600/.02= 30k dph. Realistic enough, right? That's reachable on [?] bosses while soloing. For 8k heals a second you need 1600 heals per hit, 1600/.02=80k dph. This is more a squad situation or at least 1 other debuffer, like duoing with a BM. Think my highest hit so far was a zerk crit in Nirvana with my old G15s and it was like 255k on a [?] boss. Zerk crits aren't consistant damage, obviously, but averaging the high and low end damage and the debuffed times 8k isn't unrelistic. Some bosses, like metal boss, even aids your paint heals by frenzying himself so he takes more damage.

iirc correctly boss attack rate is like .75 or .6 with rib (can't remember exactly) except when they then combine their phys attack with their magic combo for kind of a double attack. So just to "muddy" things up, we can look at how much we heal every 1.66 seconds, too

Point is, we heal a very significant portion of our hp no matter what paint we have and its almost always back to 100%.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

If you're unsparked during a boss as a sin, you're doing something wrong.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

True. For instance Dark Colluseast (GBA boss) or 3-3 bosses you might hang out unsparked waiting for his shout to say when he'll do a special attack. But at those times you're also taking almost no damage either. Think he hits for around 850 normal attacks.

And back to different styles of play with different culti, a sage may risk using Inner Harmony->PD to increase their dd on those bosses since even if they get debuffed they still have spark damage reduction. A demon is more likely to hold Inner Harmony and keep triple sparking and even if they get debuffed they can just IH->triple spark again. Both work, different techniques for different cultis.

Unholly - Morai wrote: »

If your base attack rate is 2.86 i wouldn't say it is worth it:

The damage increase from going from 3.33->4 aps is 21%~ this extra damage could easily be covered by using EP. All in all you would be getting 1%~ extra damage and 30 more chi over the 8 seconds of the buff. For the cost of 60 more genie energy and a genie with less regen due to having to stat strength meaning less genie skills that you can use on your next spark cycle.

Even with a 3.33 base you will only be gaining 5% damage and 40 chi over combining WS EP.

The only time a genie with RC is going to give you more overall DD is if you are fighting a boss that will die in one spark cycle and have a squad that debuffs for you, meaning the only way to increase your damage is self buffs. Other than that a magic genie with WS,EP and TM should give you a much higher overall damage dealt and will give you the ability to spam these skills more frequently.

In the end a high magic genie will give you more damage and survival compared to a dedicated RC genie.

If you want demon spark aps with a sage have a look at crimson soul powder, this will give you 1 spark cycles worth of demon aps. Though finding a time where using something like this would be cost effective would be tough.