Sage VS Demon Psychic - If They Went Head to Head

Longknife - Harshlands wrote: »

I literally just named one.

When we're talking demon vs. Sage, the sage is going to have a 13 second, 9 second or 6 second charm cooldown while the demon will have a 14 second, 11 or 7 second charm cooldown, depending on how vigors are placed. The sage is given bias windows of opportunity in his favor, which is huge considering a single Soul of Silence blocks out a good 5 seconds of DDing. (AKA if the demon dares use empowered vigor when a sage empowers, he's heavily reliant on luck because a single SoSi proc will kill any possible combo and result in a charm tick)

The demon CANNOT purify DoTs without taking a massive hit to his chi, thus making it so that the DoTs are a direct threat to chi, not to mention keeping DoTs on is dangerous as it makes a kill setup really easy for the sage. A demon literally cannot get **** done with his DoTs, by comparison. Likewise, realize that DoTs are one of the only safe ways to stack damage when a Psy has SoSt up. Say both Psys waste their genie on fortify or badge to avoid SoSt and now their genies are dead. Neither will want to set of SoSt cause both could potentially die due to it. But whereas a demon is basically helpless in this time, a sage can continue charm ticking, harassing, and probing for an opportunity this way.

A demon's strength has always been regarded as their crit rate. However, with the current crit passives arising, that little advantage suddenly grows smaller as there's a much bigger difference between, say, 15-25% crit and 40-50% crit. One of those has you jumping from a crit every ~7th hit to a crit every 4th, the other is a much smaller jump comparatively. Likewise, one of those crit advantages requires some positioning on behalf of the demon, and since the sage requires absolutely no positioning whatsoever, the positioning becomes the demon's burden, becomes highly predictable and little things like Glacial Shards and Crystal Light suddenly work against the demon and prevent this. Tide Spirit on the other hand demands chi and, again, is highly predictable. Everyone and their mother knows Tide Spirit on a demon is killer, so this is the window of opportunity the sage is saving IG or what-have-you for. Good luck rebuilding that chi if you need Psy will to purify DoTs, otherwise have fun dealing with the DoTs as the sage continues to build chi faster than you.

And that's the last point: the sage builds chi hella fast. Mind you, demons that utilize Mo zhen's taunt do an exceptional job of killing chi too, but my point is that Psys really only need one spark for any of their chi skills, and with Sage spirit Blast and the sage chi skill, not to mention a Psy's already exceptional cast speed. Hell, Disturb Soul in Psy vs. Psy can really matter. A sage will consistently dish out Earth Vector, a demon? Not so much. Where a sage saves spark on Earth Vector at 50% of the time, a demon saves it on Psy will only 30%. The odds work in sage's favor to build chi faster, and ultimately it's demon, not sage, who is more dependent on chi in the fight. A demon needs chi for Tide spirit, a demon needs chi for a helpful stun 100% of the time and a demon needs chi for their only purify. A sage? A sage doesn't even NEED it, but Earth Vector is helpful. Hell, with the spare chi, they can spend more on things like Soulburn or Telekinesis.

At the end of the day, it really does come down to chi management and BoL, with the better Vigors being helpful as well.