At the behest of the others who support the order of the battle sage,
I'm updating my guide today. I've got 10 minutes before class, seems as
good a time as any.
Welcome to Spark Mage's updated battle sage guide, let's get down to business. First, for all you lazy people, the end.
Spark Mage's recommended ending stats:
STR 62+8
AGI 81+9
VIT 27+3
INT 73+12
DEX 35+5
LUK 1+3
Spark Mage's recommended ending skills:
Mage:
Fire Bolt 7-10
Sight
Fireball 5
Fire Wall 10
Cold Bolt 7-10
Lightning Bolt 7-10
Stone Curse 1
Frost Diver 0, 1, or 10
Thunder Storm 0 or 4-5
SP Recovery 0-5
Sage:
Study 5
Cast Cancel 1
Free Cast 10
Hindsight 10
Endow Quake 1
Earth Spike 1
Heaven's Drive 5
16 skill points remaining
And now, the whys.
Why would I want to be a battle sage?
If you're anything like me, you've found the other classes to be... Less than entertaining. HP sages run rampant and ruin the game for the honest person, anti-magic sages stand around a lot picking their noses or pissing off priests as they try to warp people somewhere, or perhaps being a shield crusader wasn't challenging enough for you. Behold, the weirdest perversion of the art, a mage that can melee! And believe this, they don't suck at it either (at least, later on).
Ok... So you did this because you're bored?
Yeah, basically. But it's a viable and entertaining build which will get quite a few /omg's from people, especially as you beat down an injustice in melee at level 72 using a bible and a few basic spells.
O.O Dude, what?!
Yeah, that's most people's reactions. So now that you're interested, let's get down to it.
Spark Mage's How a Battle Sage Works
It's quite simple. Take your average AGI knight, strip him down to his skinnies, then dress him up in the lighest armour you can imagine. Give him a dagger, and make him pose like he's using Endure after Counter Attacking every time he casts a spell. Voila, you've got a battle sage. It's not all bad though, imagine giving him a muffler that is both a mocking muffler AND an immune muffler (ah, you forgot Energy Coat). A battle sage's function is secondary tanking in a party (or primary if it's just you and a priest). Sages, being a type of mage, are not as sturdy as their cousins the knight, crusader, or assassin. However being primarily built for melee fighting, you have to get in there. Your job is clear, protect the casters from back attacks and help the primary tank do it's job with Endows, area enchants, or assisting in beating down the monster in question.
Our fantastic damage comes from the fact that we can cast spells while we fight, thanks to Free Cast. On top of that, Hindsight allows you to automatically cast spells (usually elemental bolts of the element of your choosing, at randomly chosen levels from level 1 to level 3 when it triggers) as you beat things down. When Hindsight triggers, you do about as much damage in that instant as any knight can do at level 90+. Now remember you're beating monsters with your book and (if you went for the 70 STR I suggested) you're doing about as much damage as those 90+ knights. Every 6-10 seconds you also cast elemental bolts or Heaven's Drive at the enemy you're fighting, thus doing the added damage of an under powered wizard (maybe 75% strength). The important thing to remember is tempo.
What, now we're bards too?
Yea.... No. It's a timing thing for sure, but it's not musical. You can't (usually) simply get away with beating down monsters, you have to cast spells as well, and make sure that if you're not currently casting or finishing casting a spell, you're starting to cast another one. For that purpose, you can't ctrl+click. Also, you want to take as long to cast as you can.
That doesn't make sense at all. We're mages, wouldn't we want to cast faster?
Normally yes, but we cast as a suppliment. Our primary damage is through melee damage and Hindsight. If you spend all your time casting spells (like Frost Diver), you don't get to melee. It also works the other way, if you don't cast too quickly then you do damage too late and may end up missing the chance to finish your spell (either you die, or kill the monster). Either way, you waste SP. So a good balance is level 8 bolts. The level 10 bolts take quite a while to cast (especially with a phen clip), but lower than 8 casts too soon to allow for proper meleeing.
So now a breakdown of the stats and skills...
Stats
You logically get INT first. You're a mage, don't try to level like a swordie. After your INT, go for AGI or VIT. It can take a while for your AGI to catch on, around 50 is when you start seeing results, so perhaps getting 20ish VIT first wouldn't be so bad (since we have close to priest like HP as far as our VIT multiplier goes). STR, VIT and DEX are last, raise them together. AGI is your primary defensive stat.
STR: I'm a damage fiend, I like 70 as a minimum. Combining cards with Endows, 60 is alright. Higher is better, go nuts if you think you can get it without hurting your other stats too much.
AGI: I suggest 90, you attack really fast which is good for triggering Hindsight, and you dodge really well. 70 is fine, but you have to suppliment it with another defense form (higher VIT and/or higher STR. High damage IS a good defense).
VIT: Minimum 20, we need the HP. I'd say 50 maximum, because we can't play like VIT knights (we need speedy attacks to trigger Hindight).
INT: 80 INT minimum, no exceptions. 85 is good because it passes and lands on several of the INT break points. 91 is a good maximum, because too much more INT and you won't have enough points for your other stats.
DEX: Think melee, not magic. 30 minimum by the end, 50 is probably the highest you would want because at that point you're using a lot of stat points and you could probably hit a wanderer at least half of the time.
LUK: 1. Critical hit sages do not work. We get no LUK boosting skills, we get no critical hit boosting skills, and association with a priest is not a reason to get LUK. If you wanted critical hits, you would have gone for an assassin.
Mage Skills
Elemental bolts, minimum 7. 7 is a bit on the fast side, but it's decent. 10 is alright, because not always are you going to be on the front lines. Sometimes you just can't tank four rybio (like when the cowardly knight turns tail and runs) and need to fall back on your mage side. Walk and cast.
Firewall, it's less necessary once the "battle" part comes in, but again as above you sometimes fall back on your mage side. It's the ultimate crowd control, and combined with HD it's a great way to thin a crowd. If you knew how to use it as a mage, do the same thing as a sage. You want it to level out of mage quickly anyways.
Frost Diver. It's a none, one, or ten situation. If you like FD, use it often, don't melee much, go for 10 by all means. As a battle sage, we don't want want to be casting a lot so it's counter intuitive. However level 1 can be used with Hindsight to do a random "mini Lex" (physical DEF is reduced, and combined with a Wind weapon you do extra damage to the now Water 1 monster). Don't expect to have the reflexes to stop attacking the moment they're frozen so you can cast Lightning Bolt at them. I personally think it's worthless and stick with my Cold Bolt in Hindsight. But for PvP, randomly freezing your opponent can break his ctrl+clicking (if they think it's that easy to beat you), and at the very least can disrupt his combat tempo a great deal.
Stone Curse 1 is for eventually getting Heaven's Drive. You want that spell, it's awesome, so you have to get this. Since you DO have to get that close to melee anyways, and you CAN survive it, SC becomes more viable as a spell for sages. However since we're battle, we want to fight. Frost Diver does the same thing but does it better, and we didn't want that very much either, so just stick with level 1 for HD.
Thunder Storm. Widely debated as a useful spell or not. I believe it is, at least as a hold over for until you can get HD, and definantly for when you're fighting the right element of monster. If you get it at all, you have to get it to level 4 before it's actually useful to you as a sage (remember, long casting time = good). I don't recommend over 5 though, it'll take too long (it's already a little slower than HD at the equivilant level). If you can't get it to level 4, don't get it at all.
SP Recovery is also a hotly debated skill for sages. We, as battle sages, do not need SP Recovery at all. Energy Coat is literally your greatest drain of SP when fighting full tilt in melee. A priest with Magnificant solves that issue entirely, and you've essentially got a constant immune muffler. We don't stand still that long though, you don't see the SPR tick much. The battle sage is one of the few mage builds that doesn't need to go to job 50. If you DO go to job 50, feel free to pick up a few levels of SPR, it'll make leveling to a sage easier. It'll reduce your down time a great deal anyways. SP Recovery doesn't help you when you're killing though, as a mage or a sage.
Sage Skills
Study 5 is a minimum. I suggest higher if you can afford it, but usually spreading out across the Endows and the area enchants will thin your options too much to get this higher.
Cast Cancel 1 is enough. The point of Cast Cancel for normal sages is to allow a sage to cut a spell short, save some SP, and either cast another spell (perhaps you cast the wrong elemental bolt, or perhaps you need to cast FW because something dangerous has just appeared and threatens to kill you) or run away (because let's face it, as great as walking and casting is, it can't compare to running away with Inc. AGI. Especially since Free Cast is absolute movement speed, not relative). You need it to get Free Cast though.
Free Cast 10, bar none. Unfettered attack speed and moving as fast as you can is a must for the battle sage on the war path. There's a positive and a negative side to this though. The positive side is that you can move a LOT faster while cursed if you cast a spell (and a fast moving grim reaper can be fun and freaky). On the negative side, speed buffs like Inc. AGI (and likely Moonie shoes) are negated while you're casting. It's a half speed drop.
Hindsight 10, again a necessity. At level 10 there's a 16% chance of activating the auto cast spell you chose. If you just go high enough for letting you cast an elemental bolt at level 3, it's only about a 9% chance (pretty bad). Level 10 lets you auto cast Frost Diver too, but only at level 1.
Endow Quake and Earth Spike 1, and I combine them together, because they are essentially the same thing: a prerequisite for Heaven's Drive. You don't want to raise Quake above 1, because there just aren't that many Earth weak monsters, and ES 1 because HD is, point for point, a superior spell (except for cost).
Heaven's Drive is the only other area spell a battle sage has access to. We had Thunder Storm up until now (if you chose to pick it up), but this one's better in just about every way. The only place it falls short is when fighting Earth monsters (as it does no damage) or Fire monsters (where it does less damage). So half the time you've got TS to do extra damage, the other half is HD (we'll ignore the other elements, because for the most part they resist all or no elements).
Battle Sage Skill Options
Now we've got 16 points to blow and quite a few skills to pick up still. You can't get HP to a high level anymore (thank mod!), but you can get the various Endows and area enchants pretty high still.
Endows:
At least 2 in all but Quake. 2 is also a recommended amount, though 3 is good for reducing failures. Raise them to 5 each if you want to be absolutely sure of success, but it's not necessary.
Land Enchants
Pick one and get it to level 5, or two and make them level 3. We don't really need Magnetic Earth since we can interrupt the spells of our current target, and outside of PvP almost nothing we can melee does area spells. Spreading ourselves over all three area enchants is bad, because none of them will give us enough bonuses.
Deluge is obvious, it works with wizards, so we can party with our magical cousins and kick some ***. The question is, Deluge and.... what?
Volcano has some ups and downs:
And so does Whirlwind:
Either way, you need the armour to work with it. Either are expensive (overly so...) and rare to get your hands on (probably why they're expensive), but getting one or the other kind of armour (pasana for Fire, dokkebi for Wind) will ultimately decide which you want to get. I trust Whirlwind in the long run, but Volcano is great for the here and now of my 1 STR life.
Magic Rod/Spell Breaker
Antimagic works counter to our "long casting times" rule. Worse, you have to be twitchy and anticipate the casting of spells to be able to counter, so you have to be meleeing slowly or not at all, and CERTAINLY can't be casting a spell yourself. That means no damage from us, and we might as well be caster sages. Magic Rod isn't all that bad though, at least you can melee and just jam on the hot key for it when you're about to be nailed and hope it works.
Dragonology
With so few dragon race monsters in the game, this is a rather bad choice. If more dragons existed, it might be worth it.
PvP and WoE
While it's counter to my enjoyment of a game (except games designed for it, such as Quake or Unreal Tournament, who's sole purposes is the rapid disassembly of your opponent by means of high explosives or other means), I've decided to include a PvP section.
plz tell how 2 build a battle sage for PVP!!1one
I hear this far too often, and I'm almost not in RO anymore! Essentially the only defining factors between a good PvP build and a good PvM build (which mine is, or should be) is a decided lack of AGI and a shift towards VIT to counter status effects and boost HP. While a good minimum for other classes is 40 VIT, I highly recommend 50 because we need the extra HP (we're mages after all, first and foremost. And our armour reflects that). I also suggest a minimum of 50 AGI, if only for the aspd. This would be one of the only situations where I'd advocate going with a dagger instead of a book (because size penalties apparently don't matter in PvP, and because at the 50 AGI mark a dagger is 2 aspd faster than a book).
You will absolutely need a phen clip to cast spells during a fight, everyone will be able to hit you. Picking up a few levels of Magic Rod might also be useful to help you get closer to wizards. Remember though that you are as well a mage, and not all wizards go into the fighting with a marc card in their breast pocket.
i want 2 do woe how build battle sage?11
Again something I hear too often. The rules don't change much here, instead of a phen though you'll be wearing a crusader.
O.O Kinky...
It's not like that, though you might find yourself a nice crusader of the opposite gender, and that'd be a nice situation. No, in this case you're joined by Sacrifice. You and your crusader buddy are going to be joined at the hip (where is up to you), where ever they go, you go (and vice versa), but make sure one of you works out who's the leader and who's the follower of the group. You make a two man team, killing and maiming together. For the sake of your friend, try to NOT get crowded, it'll get you both killed (you after Sacrifice dies and you're left with your own HP, and your crusader friend who now has less than 20% health and likely is out of healing options to have dropped that low and is now faced with the mob of people who killed you).
Sacrifice grants you the benefits of a phen clip without the added cast time. It also grants you Guard (should your crusader friend use it) and Defending Aura (again, crusader based) which will greatly add to your life expectancy (and his/hers). Being uninterruptable, you can cast and go berserker on the nearest knight and laugh as they cringe at the knowledge you're schooling them with (in other words, you're beating them down with a thick book and beating the smarts into them).
i need cru?
No, but it helps a great deal. Alone you're kind of a wimp, and don't be surprised if you fall over a bit too early in the fighting. You are, after all, still a mage. However Energy Coat combined with an immune muffler is roughly a 60% (Normal) damage reduction (so long as your SP is high), so for a time you'll be as hearty as any VIT knight. Without the crusader though, your options for spell casting while fighting are limited to low level bolts and the hope beyond hopes that your flee is high enough to avoid the enemy's non-ancient weapon (your saving grace, they don't expect a mage to be hard to hit, or hard to kill with a big pointy object for that matter).
Welcome to Spark Mage's updated battle sage guide, let's get down to business. First, for all you lazy people, the end.
Spark Mage's recommended ending stats:
STR 62+8
AGI 81+9
VIT 27+3
INT 73+12
DEX 35+5
LUK 1+3
Spark Mage's recommended ending skills:
Mage:
Fire Bolt 7-10
Sight
Fireball 5
Fire Wall 10
Cold Bolt 7-10
Lightning Bolt 7-10
Stone Curse 1
Frost Diver 0, 1, or 10
Thunder Storm 0 or 4-5
SP Recovery 0-5
Sage:
Study 5
Cast Cancel 1
Free Cast 10
Hindsight 10
Endow Quake 1
Earth Spike 1
Heaven's Drive 5
16 skill points remaining
And now, the whys.
Why would I want to be a battle sage?
If you're anything like me, you've found the other classes to be... Less than entertaining. HP sages run rampant and ruin the game for the honest person, anti-magic sages stand around a lot picking their noses or pissing off priests as they try to warp people somewhere, or perhaps being a shield crusader wasn't challenging enough for you. Behold, the weirdest perversion of the art, a mage that can melee! And believe this, they don't suck at it either (at least, later on).
Ok... So you did this because you're bored?
Yeah, basically. But it's a viable and entertaining build which will get quite a few /omg's from people, especially as you beat down an injustice in melee at level 72 using a bible and a few basic spells.
O.O Dude, what?!
Yeah, that's most people's reactions. So now that you're interested, let's get down to it.
Spark Mage's How a Battle Sage Works
It's quite simple. Take your average AGI knight, strip him down to his skinnies, then dress him up in the lighest armour you can imagine. Give him a dagger, and make him pose like he's using Endure after Counter Attacking every time he casts a spell. Voila, you've got a battle sage. It's not all bad though, imagine giving him a muffler that is both a mocking muffler AND an immune muffler (ah, you forgot Energy Coat). A battle sage's function is secondary tanking in a party (or primary if it's just you and a priest). Sages, being a type of mage, are not as sturdy as their cousins the knight, crusader, or assassin. However being primarily built for melee fighting, you have to get in there. Your job is clear, protect the casters from back attacks and help the primary tank do it's job with Endows, area enchants, or assisting in beating down the monster in question.
Our fantastic damage comes from the fact that we can cast spells while we fight, thanks to Free Cast. On top of that, Hindsight allows you to automatically cast spells (usually elemental bolts of the element of your choosing, at randomly chosen levels from level 1 to level 3 when it triggers) as you beat things down. When Hindsight triggers, you do about as much damage in that instant as any knight can do at level 90+. Now remember you're beating monsters with your book and (if you went for the 70 STR I suggested) you're doing about as much damage as those 90+ knights. Every 6-10 seconds you also cast elemental bolts or Heaven's Drive at the enemy you're fighting, thus doing the added damage of an under powered wizard (maybe 75% strength). The important thing to remember is tempo.
What, now we're bards too?
Yea.... No. It's a timing thing for sure, but it's not musical. You can't (usually) simply get away with beating down monsters, you have to cast spells as well, and make sure that if you're not currently casting or finishing casting a spell, you're starting to cast another one. For that purpose, you can't ctrl+click. Also, you want to take as long to cast as you can.
That doesn't make sense at all. We're mages, wouldn't we want to cast faster?
Normally yes, but we cast as a suppliment. Our primary damage is through melee damage and Hindsight. If you spend all your time casting spells (like Frost Diver), you don't get to melee. It also works the other way, if you don't cast too quickly then you do damage too late and may end up missing the chance to finish your spell (either you die, or kill the monster). Either way, you waste SP. So a good balance is level 8 bolts. The level 10 bolts take quite a while to cast (especially with a phen clip), but lower than 8 casts too soon to allow for proper meleeing.
So now a breakdown of the stats and skills...
Stats
You logically get INT first. You're a mage, don't try to level like a swordie. After your INT, go for AGI or VIT. It can take a while for your AGI to catch on, around 50 is when you start seeing results, so perhaps getting 20ish VIT first wouldn't be so bad (since we have close to priest like HP as far as our VIT multiplier goes). STR, VIT and DEX are last, raise them together. AGI is your primary defensive stat.
STR: I'm a damage fiend, I like 70 as a minimum. Combining cards with Endows, 60 is alright. Higher is better, go nuts if you think you can get it without hurting your other stats too much.
AGI: I suggest 90, you attack really fast which is good for triggering Hindsight, and you dodge really well. 70 is fine, but you have to suppliment it with another defense form (higher VIT and/or higher STR. High damage IS a good defense).
VIT: Minimum 20, we need the HP. I'd say 50 maximum, because we can't play like VIT knights (we need speedy attacks to trigger Hindight).
INT: 80 INT minimum, no exceptions. 85 is good because it passes and lands on several of the INT break points. 91 is a good maximum, because too much more INT and you won't have enough points for your other stats.
DEX: Think melee, not magic. 30 minimum by the end, 50 is probably the highest you would want because at that point you're using a lot of stat points and you could probably hit a wanderer at least half of the time.
LUK: 1. Critical hit sages do not work. We get no LUK boosting skills, we get no critical hit boosting skills, and association with a priest is not a reason to get LUK. If you wanted critical hits, you would have gone for an assassin.
Mage Skills
Elemental bolts, minimum 7. 7 is a bit on the fast side, but it's decent. 10 is alright, because not always are you going to be on the front lines. Sometimes you just can't tank four rybio (like when the cowardly knight turns tail and runs) and need to fall back on your mage side. Walk and cast.
Firewall, it's less necessary once the "battle" part comes in, but again as above you sometimes fall back on your mage side. It's the ultimate crowd control, and combined with HD it's a great way to thin a crowd. If you knew how to use it as a mage, do the same thing as a sage. You want it to level out of mage quickly anyways.
Frost Diver. It's a none, one, or ten situation. If you like FD, use it often, don't melee much, go for 10 by all means. As a battle sage, we don't want want to be casting a lot so it's counter intuitive. However level 1 can be used with Hindsight to do a random "mini Lex" (physical DEF is reduced, and combined with a Wind weapon you do extra damage to the now Water 1 monster). Don't expect to have the reflexes to stop attacking the moment they're frozen so you can cast Lightning Bolt at them. I personally think it's worthless and stick with my Cold Bolt in Hindsight. But for PvP, randomly freezing your opponent can break his ctrl+clicking (if they think it's that easy to beat you), and at the very least can disrupt his combat tempo a great deal.
Stone Curse 1 is for eventually getting Heaven's Drive. You want that spell, it's awesome, so you have to get this. Since you DO have to get that close to melee anyways, and you CAN survive it, SC becomes more viable as a spell for sages. However since we're battle, we want to fight. Frost Diver does the same thing but does it better, and we didn't want that very much either, so just stick with level 1 for HD.
Thunder Storm. Widely debated as a useful spell or not. I believe it is, at least as a hold over for until you can get HD, and definantly for when you're fighting the right element of monster. If you get it at all, you have to get it to level 4 before it's actually useful to you as a sage (remember, long casting time = good). I don't recommend over 5 though, it'll take too long (it's already a little slower than HD at the equivilant level). If you can't get it to level 4, don't get it at all.
SP Recovery is also a hotly debated skill for sages. We, as battle sages, do not need SP Recovery at all. Energy Coat is literally your greatest drain of SP when fighting full tilt in melee. A priest with Magnificant solves that issue entirely, and you've essentially got a constant immune muffler. We don't stand still that long though, you don't see the SPR tick much. The battle sage is one of the few mage builds that doesn't need to go to job 50. If you DO go to job 50, feel free to pick up a few levels of SPR, it'll make leveling to a sage easier. It'll reduce your down time a great deal anyways. SP Recovery doesn't help you when you're killing though, as a mage or a sage.
Sage Skills
Study 5 is a minimum. I suggest higher if you can afford it, but usually spreading out across the Endows and the area enchants will thin your options too much to get this higher.
Cast Cancel 1 is enough. The point of Cast Cancel for normal sages is to allow a sage to cut a spell short, save some SP, and either cast another spell (perhaps you cast the wrong elemental bolt, or perhaps you need to cast FW because something dangerous has just appeared and threatens to kill you) or run away (because let's face it, as great as walking and casting is, it can't compare to running away with Inc. AGI. Especially since Free Cast is absolute movement speed, not relative). You need it to get Free Cast though.
Free Cast 10, bar none. Unfettered attack speed and moving as fast as you can is a must for the battle sage on the war path. There's a positive and a negative side to this though. The positive side is that you can move a LOT faster while cursed if you cast a spell (and a fast moving grim reaper can be fun and freaky). On the negative side, speed buffs like Inc. AGI (and likely Moonie shoes) are negated while you're casting. It's a half speed drop.
Hindsight 10, again a necessity. At level 10 there's a 16% chance of activating the auto cast spell you chose. If you just go high enough for letting you cast an elemental bolt at level 3, it's only about a 9% chance (pretty bad). Level 10 lets you auto cast Frost Diver too, but only at level 1.
Endow Quake and Earth Spike 1, and I combine them together, because they are essentially the same thing: a prerequisite for Heaven's Drive. You don't want to raise Quake above 1, because there just aren't that many Earth weak monsters, and ES 1 because HD is, point for point, a superior spell (except for cost).
Heaven's Drive is the only other area spell a battle sage has access to. We had Thunder Storm up until now (if you chose to pick it up), but this one's better in just about every way. The only place it falls short is when fighting Earth monsters (as it does no damage) or Fire monsters (where it does less damage). So half the time you've got TS to do extra damage, the other half is HD (we'll ignore the other elements, because for the most part they resist all or no elements).
Battle Sage Skill Options
Now we've got 16 points to blow and quite a few skills to pick up still. You can't get HP to a high level anymore (thank mod!), but you can get the various Endows and area enchants pretty high still.
Endows:
At least 2 in all but Quake. 2 is also a recommended amount, though 3 is good for reducing failures. Raise them to 5 each if you want to be absolutely sure of success, but it's not necessary.
Land Enchants
Pick one and get it to level 5, or two and make them level 3. We don't really need Magnetic Earth since we can interrupt the spells of our current target, and outside of PvP almost nothing we can melee does area spells. Spreading ourselves over all three area enchants is bad, because none of them will give us enough bonuses.
Deluge is obvious, it works with wizards, so we can party with our magical cousins and kick some ***. The question is, Deluge and.... what?
Volcano has some ups and downs:
- + Fixed bonus damage for us feeble sages early on (with armour)
- + Bonus damage for Fire element weapons (which we can Endow for)
- - Fixed bonus damage isn't AS useful later on
- - No "defensive" nature for preservation later on
And so does Whirlwind:
- + Adds flee (with armour)
- + Increases FW's duration
- + Bonus damage for Wind element weapons
- - Increases FW's duration (longer lasting FWs and a three FW limit, hmm....)
- - Flee can be defeated by critical hits or spells
Either way, you need the armour to work with it. Either are expensive (overly so...) and rare to get your hands on (probably why they're expensive), but getting one or the other kind of armour (pasana for Fire, dokkebi for Wind) will ultimately decide which you want to get. I trust Whirlwind in the long run, but Volcano is great for the here and now of my 1 STR life.
Magic Rod/Spell Breaker
Antimagic works counter to our "long casting times" rule. Worse, you have to be twitchy and anticipate the casting of spells to be able to counter, so you have to be meleeing slowly or not at all, and CERTAINLY can't be casting a spell yourself. That means no damage from us, and we might as well be caster sages. Magic Rod isn't all that bad though, at least you can melee and just jam on the hot key for it when you're about to be nailed and hope it works.
Dragonology
With so few dragon race monsters in the game, this is a rather bad choice. If more dragons existed, it might be worth it.
PvP and WoE
While it's counter to my enjoyment of a game (except games designed for it, such as Quake or Unreal Tournament, who's sole purposes is the rapid disassembly of your opponent by means of high explosives or other means), I've decided to include a PvP section.
plz tell how 2 build a battle sage for PVP!!1one
I hear this far too often, and I'm almost not in RO anymore! Essentially the only defining factors between a good PvP build and a good PvM build (which mine is, or should be) is a decided lack of AGI and a shift towards VIT to counter status effects and boost HP. While a good minimum for other classes is 40 VIT, I highly recommend 50 because we need the extra HP (we're mages after all, first and foremost. And our armour reflects that). I also suggest a minimum of 50 AGI, if only for the aspd. This would be one of the only situations where I'd advocate going with a dagger instead of a book (because size penalties apparently don't matter in PvP, and because at the 50 AGI mark a dagger is 2 aspd faster than a book).
You will absolutely need a phen clip to cast spells during a fight, everyone will be able to hit you. Picking up a few levels of Magic Rod might also be useful to help you get closer to wizards. Remember though that you are as well a mage, and not all wizards go into the fighting with a marc card in their breast pocket.
i want 2 do woe how build battle sage?11
Again something I hear too often. The rules don't change much here, instead of a phen though you'll be wearing a crusader.
O.O Kinky...
It's not like that, though you might find yourself a nice crusader of the opposite gender, and that'd be a nice situation. No, in this case you're joined by Sacrifice. You and your crusader buddy are going to be joined at the hip (where is up to you), where ever they go, you go (and vice versa), but make sure one of you works out who's the leader and who's the follower of the group. You make a two man team, killing and maiming together. For the sake of your friend, try to NOT get crowded, it'll get you both killed (you after Sacrifice dies and you're left with your own HP, and your crusader friend who now has less than 20% health and likely is out of healing options to have dropped that low and is now faced with the mob of people who killed you).
Sacrifice grants you the benefits of a phen clip without the added cast time. It also grants you Guard (should your crusader friend use it) and Defending Aura (again, crusader based) which will greatly add to your life expectancy (and his/hers). Being uninterruptable, you can cast and go berserker on the nearest knight and laugh as they cringe at the knowledge you're schooling them with (in other words, you're beating them down with a thick book and beating the smarts into them).
i need cru?
No, but it helps a great deal. Alone you're kind of a wimp, and don't be surprised if you fall over a bit too early in the fighting. You are, after all, still a mage. However Energy Coat combined with an immune muffler is roughly a 60% (Normal) damage reduction (so long as your SP is high), so for a time you'll be as hearty as any VIT knight. Without the crusader though, your options for spell casting while fighting are limited to low level bolts and the hope beyond hopes that your flee is high enough to avoid the enemy's non-ancient weapon (your saving grace, they don't expect a mage to be hard to hit, or hard to kill with a big pointy object for that matter).
Thanks for the guide. I just created a new battle sage :)
ReplyDeletecan you update this guide and also post some leveling spot.
ReplyDeletees 2023 y funciona super!
ReplyDelete