Curse

LifeInfusion · Feb 19, 2011, 11:48 PM // 23:48

I don't see the point in having 0 spec in everything and 1 scythe attack (+19+27 damage=46 plus base damage) with 3 recharge? I think you are better off with AoHM than filling the entire bar with 6s flashes (seeing how you are in melee range), since pious will only strip 2 of the 6 recharges (Dust Cloak/Rending Aura/Staggering Force).

With flash enchants other than Pious renewal's self recharge (it acts like Assassin's Promise, I tested) you still have 1 cooldown due to disable, which is the same thing as 1/4 cast with 3/4 aftercast.

Kunder · Feb 20, 2011, 12:00 AM // 00:00

5 enchants, 6s to cycle them all. You can definitely keep up the constant use of flash enchants even with the 1s downtime.

I can't say that I see AoHM being ever useful at all. 25 DPS, the absolute maximum for the skill (which you can't even reach without at least Pious Renewal) is negligible in Adjacent range. Swapping out one of our flash enchants would take about 5 HP/s off to give us some 12-17 DPS adjacent. That's honestly just horrible. If anything deserves to kick an enchant off its skill slot space, it would be SY.

TalanRoarer · Feb 20, 2011, 12:00 AM // 00:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Idea I stole from Varda is to use flashes with variable durations that are near-zero at rank 0. Can also toss in sand shards because it ends after 1 hit at rank 0.

I think we can beat that by hybridizing in two of the 6-sec flashes along with Pious Assault to end them.

So:

Build variant:
D/X, 16 Mysticism, 13 Scythe, 0 Earth, 0 Wind

Avatar of Dwayna
Meditation
Whirling Charge
Mirage Cloak
Fleeting Stability/Sand Shards/Harrier's Haste
Pious Assault
Dust Cloak/Rending Aura/Staggering Force
Dust Cloak/Rending Aura/Staggering Force

Usage: Maintain AoD and Medi. Spam flashes. Use Pious Assault on Dust Cloak/Rending Aura/Staggering Force. The other enchants will end almost immediately on their own.

---------

I'm also depressed to report that I had forgotten that arcane mimicry can't copy forms until after I had designed a whole team build around abusing AoD+Pious Renewal. Seems pretty useless copying Pious Renewal because the downtime is going to be awful. Any clever ideas to make this combo happen?

Was ERing with V during the "Test". Xeno ran a bar with the flashes (no idea if it was similar to the one you posted, I wasn't paying that much attention).

However, the results were decent. Now that our sin DPS is down due to the AS/BuH results, the partyheal really kept the pressure off during hard mobs or one of Minion's Leroy attempts.

LifeInfusion · Feb 20, 2011, 12:09 AM // 00:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

5 enchants, 6s to cycle them all. You can definitely keep up the constant use of flash enchants even with the 1s downtime.

I can't say that I see AoHM being ever useful at all. 25 DPS, the absolute maximum for the skill (which you can't even reach without at least Pious Renewal) is negligible in Adjacent range. Swapping out one of our flash enchants would take about 5 HP/s off to give us some 12-17 DPS adjacent. That's honestly just horrible. If anything deserves to kick an enchant off its skill slot space, it would be SY.

Well my point was to ditch one 6r enchant since Pious can only keep up with 2 of them. AoHM just seems like a logical substitute to make the 0 spec stuff do something other than maybe trigger fragility, but I'm sure there are other options.

edit: Nevermind, there's only 2 of them on your bar. I thought it was 3 but since it's 0 spec you only need to strip 2.

If Pious is just there to strip stuff, why not just forgo scythe attacks? 46/3=15.333 dps

OgChwyz7d+ig5uq30r5lcD

12+1+2 Mysticism , optional 13 scythe or 12 spear for midliner
Avatar of Dwayna, Meditation, Whirling Charge (1s), Mirage Cloak (1s), Fleeting Stability (2s, nets energy return), Guiding Hands (0 attacks, removes blind), Sand Shards/Harrier's Haste (4s) if using non-scythe, Attacker's Insight (3s)

Chthon · Feb 20, 2011, 12:41 AM // 00:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

I don't see the point in having 0 spec in everything and 1 scythe attack (+19+27 damage=46 plus base damage) with 3 recharge? I think you are better off with AoHM than filling the entire bar with 6s flashes (seeing how you are in melee range), since pious will only strip 2 of the 6 recharges (Dust Cloak/Rending Aura/Staggering Force).

With flash enchants other than Pious renewal's self recharge (it acts like Assassin's Promise, I tested) you still have 1 cooldown due to disable, which is the same thing as 1/4 cast with 3/4 aftercast.

The point of 0 spec is to end flashes quickly without needing a skill to remove them with. It also makes the heal more or less on-demand.

The point of Pious Assault is to insta-strip two 6-sec flashes, so you can replace two 10-sec quick-ending flashes with 6-sec flashes.

You can certainly run 2 more 10-sec in place of the 6-secs and AoHM in place of PA, you just lose some healing in exchange for some damage.

LifeInfusion · Feb 20, 2011, 10:50 PM // 22:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

The point of 0 spec is to end flashes quickly without needing a skill to remove them with. It also makes the heal more or less on-demand.

The point of Pious Assault is to insta-strip two 6-sec flashes, so you can replace two 10-sec quick-ending flashes with 6-sec flashes.

You can certainly run 2 more 10-sec in place of the 6-secs and AoHM in place of PA, you just lose some healing in exchange for some damage.

My issue with that is that you don't lose anything from speccing in Wind prayers. It would be different if you were running Attacker's Insight, Harrier's Haste. Whirling charge will end in 1 attack. At a moderate 11 spec + enchanting weapon, you can also slot Lyssa's Haste to make all of them recharge 33% faster, which I feel is better than adding more enchantments that only trigger the heal.

You can then slot any adrenaline attack like Reap Impurities, which charges rather quickly (1-2 hits) and can be run on heroes because it doesn't require any thought to use whatsoever and does the same damage as pious assault. You aren't using the adrenaline anyhow.

So 11+1+3=15 Mysticism, 10+1 wind, 10+1 scythe/10+0 any non-scythe weapon, 0 earth... or 12+1+3=16 Mysticism, 10+1 wind, 8+1 scythe/8+0

Avatar of Dwayna
Meditation
Lyssa's Haste
Whirling charge (4 recharge) = 5s IMS with 4 cooldown --> 1 hit delay
Fleeting Stability (6.67 recharge) = net gain +2 energy --> 2s delay
Mirage Cloak (6.67 recharge) ... half useful due to block chance albeit only 1s
any non-teardown attack skill/Save Yourselves!/AoHM/etc.
Guiding Hands (remove blind every 6.67s, needs 1/4 cast though)/Sand Shards (which does a measly 10 earth damage and locks you to a scythe) --> 2 hit delay, anti-block

(1/15+1/4+1/6.67+1/6.67+1/6.67)^-1=~1.3

Effectively a heal every 1.3seconds, blind removal. The good thing I find is you're not locked to being melee, you can bring a spear if you are so inclined. By being in midline with a spear you can make sure you heal more people. Flash Enchants are disabled 1 second, so anything with 1/4 cast and 3/4 aftercast is the same.

With Pious Assault and Whirling Charge, Mirage Cloak, Fleeting Stability/Sand Shards/Harrier's Haste, Dust Cloak/Rending Aura/Staggering Force, Dust Cloak/Rending Aura/Staggering Force it's every 1.43 seconds...

Whirling charge, Sand Shards, Rending Aura, Staggering Force, Sand Shards are 10 damage at 0 and only Rending aura is armor ignoring ... 1s conditions are only good for Fragility.

(1/6+1/10+1/10+1/6+1/6)^-1=~1.43

Whatever bar you run, you're capped at 53HP/s @16 and [email protected], so the difference between 15 and 16 Mysticism is marginal since 14+Mysticism gives you free 10energy dervish enchantments (costs 4 at 14 and +4 return from Meditation at 13). You could even drop to 10+1+3=14 Mysticism, 10+1=11 Wind, 11+1 Scythe/weapon mastery if you take a hit and get 47HP/s. Meditation still is +4 return and as long as you don't get hit with weakness then 10 energy stuff costs 4 (5 if you get hit with weakness isn't exactly catastrophic since 1energy/sec is 3 pips).

EDIT:
@Kunder. This kind of build is not something I would ever run on a player. It doesn't abuse PvE stuff and all it does is spam 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. That's why I don't like Pious assault. It requires looking at the skill monitor to makes sure Meditation doesn't get stripped, so heroes can't run it at all. Even with Lyssa's and 6 recharge enchant, you still don't meet the 3s recharge of Pious assault. If you load up Lyssa's and drop Pious assault, Rending aura and staggering force/dust cloak you don't have a problem.

While 13 is breakpoint for 4 energy return on meditation, Mysticism at 15 allows for 10 energy enchants to be free, so you can run 5 energy attacks every 3.75seconds.

I have Melonni hero with a staff and 15 Mysticism, 11 wind, 6 blood pumping out dark fury every 6-7 seconds (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...62&postcount=6)... I haven't noticed if Lyssa's Haste triggers 20% HSR on staff. There's no 36/36 dervish wand and focus items :P

EDIT2 : you could probably get away with D/E glyph of swiftness if you want to drop wind more to 8+1. Serpent's Quickness is too long of a recharge.

Kunder · Feb 21, 2011, 12:24 AM // 00:24

What I'm liking:

Staggering Force/Dust Cloak/Rending Aura <- your only manual teardown enchant, 4s recharge w/lyssa
Pious Assault
Sand Shards 6s recharge w/lyssa
Fleeting Stability 6s recharge w/lyssa
Whirling Charge 4s recharge w/lyssa
Lyssa's Haste 15s recharge
Meditation
Avatar of Dwayna

Attribute distribution is a bit of a conundrum. You want high Wind for Lyssa's and high Mysticism for Dwayna, but high earth gets you good sand shards damage whose 4-hit breakpoint is at 10 Earth, which is so close and yet so far...

I think the best distribution is this:
Scythe Mastery : 8 + 1
Wind Prayers: 9 + 1
Earth Prayers: 9 + 1
Mysticism: 10 + 3/4

This gets you Lyssa's Haste @ 11s, with a +20% enchant mod that gets you 13s out of 15s recharge. The downside is that this bumps Whirling Charge up to a 5s length with a 4s rechage, so you have to hit something to get rid of it (which you have to do with sand shards anyway). Fleeting Stability w/+20% enchant ends literally the instant it recharges, so you have good anti-knockdown (remember: you can't cast flash enchants while knocked down!) and stacking movement rate buffs means there is little chance of getting snared and unable to hit stuff like you need to. Sand Shards hits its 4 attack breakpoint, so its pushing out decent damage. If you just wanted pure healing, you can drop Earth and Scythe to minimum, but this isn't going to get you more than a 10-15% increase and you lose all of your fairly decent damage. Sand Shards isn't a joke at all with the fast recharge, especially if you have cracked armor.

As to the selection of Staggering Force/Dust Cloak/Rending Aura, you can choose whichever condition you like to inflict best. Rending Aura is probably the best overall, since it doesn't change your damage type and Cracked Armor is always good (for your team and for Sand Shards). I'm not entirely sure, it may even remove an enchant when you use Pious Assault on a knocked down foe, but that's probably a pretty marginal benefit anyway. Dust Cloak can keep up near-constant AoE blind, which is cool. Staggering Force really has nothing going for it.

Overall healing rate: 40 HP/s while Lyssa is up (86% uptime). Probably about 35-37 HP/s overall, we can't know what you will be doing during the downtime of Lyssa in-battle and therefore its hard to measure, not to mention that juggling enchants constantly you will be having some lapses due to the 1s cooldown after each use. Can't help that.

An interesting note: since flash enchants might trigger HSR mods, all you would need to do is get 1 HSR on Lyssa and then you could chain it indefinitely, having a 10s recharge and a 13s length.

EDIT: tested and you can chain lyssa indefinitely. In theory you could drop wind 1 or 2 points further and boost your other points. Losing 1 wind would give you +1 mysticism, losing 2 wind would give you +1 scythe and +1 earth. (and take away the need to hit something with whirling charge to get rid of it). In a real battle situation I don't know if this is worth it, you want a bit of leeway to make sure you can use Lyssa's Haste again quickly enough to have it recharge itself. Dropping 2 points is almost certainly not worth it, but only 1 point might work if you are very careful.

Keep in mind, Lyssa not actually ending anymore means you are losing out on its heal, but it was very marginal before. Your expected healing drops about .5 HP/s when you take into account the increase in Mysticism you could get for AoD if you dropped wind by 1 points. Getting rid of that 14% downtime is probably the best move.

Amusingly, I can't even play this build well right now since buying a scythe mastery rune from someone in Kamadan for anything less then my balls just isn't happening.

. Dropping scythe mastery entirely probably isn't a horrible idea against huge-armored mobs anyway, but it sucks for everything else (28-ish damage on average per hit at r9 scythe mastery against 60 armor if I'm calculating correctly). Figuring out the optimal attribute allocation with this build is really hard lol

Duran M · Feb 25, 2011, 05:53 PM // 17:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

EDIT:
@Kunder. This kind of build is not something I would ever run on a player. It doesn't abuse PvE stuff and all it does is spam 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. That's why I don't like Pious assault. It requires looking at the skill monitor to makes sure Meditation doesn't get stripped, so heroes can't run it at all. Even with Lyssa's and 6 recharge enchant, you still don't meet the 3s recharge of Pious assault. If you load up Lyssa's and drop Pious assault, Rending aura and staggering force/dust cloak you don't have a problem.

I tried this kind of build on my heros with a spear to keep them in mid range, but they run into melee to cast their aoe enchantments... any way around that?

LifeInfusion · Feb 26, 2011, 12:04 AM // 00:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duran M

I tried this kind of build on my heros with a spear to keep them in mid range, but they run into melee to cast their aoe enchantments... any way around that?

It happens sometimes but the enchants last short enough and because they have minimum 80+ armor (100 with Windwalker + 3 enchant), it doesn't matter much. They do it less with a staff though.

Blame it on bad AI. I noticed Mirage Cloak especially makes them go nuts.

Voodoo Rage · Feb 28, 2011, 03:26 AM // 03:26

This build does such insane minion healing, it seems like we really need to build an entire team based on the concept of preserving a large minion army.

LifeInfusion · Feb 28, 2011, 03:30 AM // 03:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

This build does such insane minion healing, it seems like we really need to build an entire team based on the concept of preserving a large minion army.

Except there's a minion cap now so that is pretty pointless. In the days of 30+ minions maybe. 7 hero update? 3 necro + one dwayna dervish + fallback for minions that run faster and heal?

Voodoo Rage · Feb 28, 2011, 05:00 AM // 05:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

Except there's a minion cap now so that is pretty pointless. In the days of 30+ minions maybe. 7 hero update? 3 necro + one dwayna dervish + fallback for minions that run faster and heal?

I'm just thinking that if you can run multiple MM and get a double or even triple minion army running, that's a hell of a lot of blue numbers flying up per Dwayna activation.

Kunder · Feb 28, 2011, 05:20 AM // 05:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

I'm just thinking that if you can run multiple MM and get a double or even triple minion army running, that's a hell of a lot of blue numbers flying up per Dwayna activation.

It is. See: quad MM on vizunah square. I mean, hell, I run dual MMs quite often in PvE already. With Dwayna's its just ridiculous. The more minions you have the more well spread out the enemy damage is, making individual minions last longer and your overall heals more efficient. As long as you hide behind the minions (and there are a LOT of super-hardy minions to hide behind), almost no enemies in PvE have enough single target damage to take them down fast (minus AoE bosses and such), and everything else never coordinates damage well enough to overcome the constant earshot healing.

One caveat: NEVER stand near something with sliver armor/whirling defense

LifeInfusion · Feb 28, 2011, 05:53 PM // 17:53

Actually this is the only thing that can heal sustained 20hp/s (10 degen) on allies (minions). It's not like you can spam 2 copies of Heal Area (or burst) and heal that...due to aftercast.

I just never bother with more than 1 MM, since casting the animate spells take 2 seconds.

I already get impatient with elementalist casts, aegis, and attunements...

Steel Cage · Mar 02, 2011, 07:35 AM // 07:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

Scroll down

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/a...t10470297.html

11+1+1=13 scythe
11+1=12 Mysticism
8+1=9 Wind prayers

Avatar of dwayna
Whirling Charge (6 recharge flash enchant with easy non-microed removal)
Lyssa's Haste (33% faster recharge of enchants)/Rending Aura (not that great since it has no synergy)
Radiant scythe - use as a finisher akin to final Thrust
Aura Slicer/Victorious Sweep
Heart of Fury
Irresistible Sweep (break block stances...use at the cost of removing Lyssa's Haste)
Res sig / I am unstoppable (Conviction isn't all that great now)

my version is more attack skill heavy, rather than defensive with SY!. If you run a human dervish you want SY!, drop Res.

It's still in testing stages but yeh.

You can still can use Mystic healing, you just need enchants on everyone (Orders or ER ele).

I've been using this build w/ Sabway (replaced the SS Necro) and have been steamrolling stuff. Very good build! MY thanks to you for making Dervishes awesome!

FoxBat · Mar 02, 2011, 08:30 AM // 08:30

This is my compromise build on damage/SY pump/healing.

Rending Aura
Dust Cloak
Whirling Charge
Meditation
Pious Assault
Pious Fury
Avatar of Dwayna
Save Yourselves!

12+1+1 myst, 11+1 scythe, 5+1 wind 4 earth

3 6r enchants powered by meditation, between battles cycle up rending/dust cloak so you can start battle with fury + assault to strip them. Then you keep assulting cloak/aura off while ending whirling charge with basic attacks inbetween. If you somehow get ahead of the cycles you can fury off of a whirling charge.

Voodoo Rage · Mar 03, 2011, 07:20 PM // 19:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

Actually this is the only thing that can heal sustained 20hp/s (10 degen) on allies (minions). It's not like you can spam 2 copies of Heal Area (or burst) and heal that...due to aftercast.

I just never bother with more than 1 MM, since casting the animate spells take 2 seconds.

I already get impatient with elementalist casts, aegis, and attunements...

I blasted through the Shiverpeaks and Ring of Fire missions in normal mode with a Dwayna's Dervish and 3 MM's also carrying Fall Back. The inherent problem is still waiting for the minions to keep up with the pace of play. Even with Fall Back, a lot of them fall out of range of the shout and a lot of times they don't really make it up close enough to me to even get healed by Dwayna activation. I still think the minion army serves a great purpose as a meat wall keeping your mid and back-line isolated but expecting the minions to be right up there as front line damage dealers does require a very patient pace of play that doesn't really fit my play style at all. These missions may not be great ones to test since they do require movement across long distances, so I'm sure the mass minion concept still would have utility on the right missions.

pingu666 · Mar 07, 2011, 03:56 PM // 15:56

you could start using some bone fiends? the ranged attackers, just need some good energy management, and a bit larger pool of energy if possible

Voodoo Rage · Mar 07, 2011, 05:39 PM // 17:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by pingu666

you could start using some bone fiends? the ranged attackers, just need some good energy management, and a bit larger pool of energy if possible

Again, the issue is still keeping Melonni/Mox right next to the minions so they get properly healed by Dwayna. The Derv hero is going to charge into melee range and the ranged minions are going to hang back.

LifeInfusion · Mar 07, 2011, 10:57 PM // 22:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

Again, the issue is still keeping Melonni/Mox right next to the minions so they get properly healed by Dwayna. The Derv hero is going to charge into melee range and the ranged minions are going to hang back.

You can run a avatar of dwayna derv orders with dark fury and a staff. The AI is a bit erratic on mirage cloak but it solves that problem.

Usually in between battles if your heroes are bunched up you can just micro the flash enchantments as you're running. It helps if you have a paragon.