Battle sage stat balancing

[StealthFire]

I've always wanted to try battle sage/professors, but never truly understood the fine art of balancing their stats :/

As I understand it, the majority of all stat points need to go in AGI in order for a sage to be called a battlesage at all. But what of STR/INT and DEX?

Will there be enough left over for VIT? Will battlesages get hammered into the ground by hammerfall?

[alekth]

I usually try to stick with calling the str-less ones hindsight builds. It's really hard calling my sage/scholar battle when for almost all her leveling she's kept missing the monsters completely as far as the weapon is concerned.

Before linkers the melee build was usually mid str, mid int. With soul linkers most builds don't have str, and have high int instead.
As sage I didn't get any sort of balance, it was almost pure int/agi, it was all solo pvm anyway (though even 1 base vit rarely gets stunned from a snowier's hammerfall).
As scholar I'm aiming for a more balanced build, but not balanced in the str-direction, rather in the support/survivability in party-dungeons places. I didn't find balancing that so hard actually, as long as I stick to the purpose of the character.

So it's along the lines of 120int for damage, 177-179 aspd for damage again. Purely offensively one can go a lot higher. 70 dex without equips, 40vit are adequate for my partying purposes. Regular dex equips can bring that to 85dex, reasonable hp gears (that is, no pupa/ares) to around 9k hp. It obviously isn't supposed to drop a ME in the precast, pvm/mvp/generall support more like it.

[Nack~]

it depends what you want in your battle sage=o

Are you intending to actually do damage with weapons? or are you just going to be relying on the hindsighting? I consider a battle sage as a build with str rather than a 99int 99 agi build i usually call them highsight sages:(

if your going to rely completely on hindsight you need no str unless your planning on getting enough to make use of the attack speed bonus of the sage diary *shrug*? you need no dex since hindsight activates on miss and you can get as much vit as you want by dropping agi or int accordingly:(

As for what i consider a battle sage... well this is my battle sages build you can have a looksee and see what you think *shrug*

this is with bless agi too:(

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f233/Nesipopo/sagey.jpg

I know the undershirt is hard to get and stuff but i'm not saying this is the best build or whatever..:( just showing you my build as an example of what i consider a battle sage lol! thats her 99 build which i tested on a Pserver shes only 80ish in game! sorry chaps!

[charlestio]

IMO, str stat in the 60's is easy to increase using mantis clips/rings and other equipment like firelock shoes and mge a mid-head gear str+1 item. Granted, these amount to a big chunk of zeny, but making a balanced build and having people go "wow" with your damage makes up for it. 70 is easy to reach, but aim for 80 if at all possible.

AGI is pretty good at 75 and up, although you need to make sure you have a mocking to make up for lower flee in the early levels. An aspd of 172 and up is acceptable for auto-cast frequency and hence damage, although 176 aspd is IMO the best compromise between aspd and expending enough points into agi.

Int should be either 85 or 91 for power and balancing purposes of a true battle sage, anymore will make you more of a "magic" sage, and any less makes you an underpowered one. Regardless, this post merely being general suggestions, I'll stop there to avoid segueing into semantics of what a "battlesage" really is.

VIT isn't too important if you're doing PVM, which is what battlesages are best at anyway. Pvp and GvG just requires too many stat points either in vit or dex to make an effective battlesage, so there. Vit at around 10 to 20 should be ok [For PVM].

I set my dex to a total of 40, bt wished I could put in more. My low hit rate is somewhat solved by my buying a Counter Dagger - which was expensive, but pretty much worth it. without that dagger, my hit is somewhat low, but I change weapons accdng to the situation. I'd advise total of 50, if possible. (Or just get the counter dagger and rely on casts+ autocasts if equipping a book type weapon) ^^

LUK or crit type battlesages is a challenge to pull off, since our stats are already stretched so much, but at the least, with a minimum of even just 30 luk + crit gear like clip of counter or any number of crit increasing weapon-cards, you can make a decent crit battlesage...(which of course is totally invalidated by the counter dagger).... with higher damage than that same dagger due to cards+elemental imbue.

Best advice I'd say is to drag along a priest friend to level with you - with good enough defense, magma dungeon is more than possible (don't get mobbed), and GH prisons is fun. even the new ice dungeon is mucho fun if you avoid getting mobbed.

Hope my ranting helps ^^.