Curse

LexTalionis · May 05, 2011, 03:52 PM // 15:52

Hello everybody! I believe this build is strong enough and simple enough to play that it is worthy of sharing with everyone. Please do try it out! I hope you will like it.

Dwaynaway

UPDATE UPDATE (17th May): I'd like to thank everyone for their feedback, support, and personal build variations; which I have used in my efforts to improve the viability of Dwaynaway. I realise the information I've published in this OP is kind of completely outdated, so I'm making an attempt to consolidate the major changes to Dwaynaway that have occurred since the start of this post.

If there is great concern about aggro, there is no actual need to go using Avatar of Dwayna dervishes as a melee class. Avatar of Dwayna dervishes can mainheal more or less effectively when set on passive, although they do little or no DPS when doing so. I've made in-depth posts on page 3 (This being the most important one.) discussing this and the viable enchantments (thanks to AI) for this setup. You do not need 2 Dervishes to heal if using this healer, but you do need special considerations if using Remove Enchantments (Preferably Aegis Chains, Dwayna's Sorrow or micromanagement).
If not putting points in Scythe Mastery, strongly consider Grenth's Aura.
Please note that skills relying on physical damage do not work with Avatar of Dwayna dervishes when they are using attacking builds. This is because Avatar of Dwayna makes all dealt physical damage holy.
Avatar of Dwayna dervishes can work GREAT with Order of Undeath and minions, although party movement speeds tend to suffer (as is usual with minions)
The build is extremely flexible. Experiment! Don't get tied down to the same skills all the time - this isn't the game for it!

UPDATE: After some concerns about the DPS, I'm happy to report that you can switch out VEIL of Thorns (thanks, Shanaya) and/or a copy of Signet of Pious Restraint for Banishing Strike and/or Whirling Charge, both of which increase DPS by quite a bit (Banishing far more than Whirling Charge)

Note this picture is technically outdated. Only use it as a guideline.

Disclaimer: This build is not guaranteed to save you from over-aggroing. Very little in Guild Wars will with the exception of specialised tank builds and good player micromanaging, which is contrary to the point of this build.

Preamble: The concept of Dwaynaway is extremely simple. Soul Twisting reduces damage on your entire Team to very small packets, and Avatar of Dwayna churns out ridiculously frequent packets of small healing. I'm pretty confident that it's viable for any class and any player, as it is basically a 7 hero build and disregards the contribution of the player. It was born out of necessity as my connection is horribly unreliable and there are nights where I am incapable of accomplishing much without it thanks to rubberbanding, frequent disconnects and a latency of over 1000.

The team is extremely defensive and can handle most areas in HM quite easily with a minimum of micromanagement (mostly precasting Shelter on very dangerous elementalist or mesmer groups). I have tested it in all three campaigns and a little of the DoA. (But not the City HM because I suck and have very little experience with Guild Wars' elite content) In fact, it requires so little micromanagement that I wrote this entire post while alt tabbed from Guild Wars, vanquishing Morostav Trail for screenshots (and disconnecting 3 times). I'm a Guild Wars player with a terribly unstable connection from a malicious ISP, so I have to compensate by building strong teams.

Please note that this build violates some common-sense laws in Guild Wars as it uses verboten concepts like frontline heroes and Blood is Power.

Team Essentials:
Although the above image shows the "safest" way of running Dwaynaway, it is by no means the fastest nor the only way.

The basic structure:

2 Avatar of Dwayna Dervishes as shown above - the actual Flash enchantments on them are highly customisable.
1 Splinter Weapon Ritualist.
1 Soul Twisting Ritualist.
2 Mesmers for shutdown and damage.
1 Blood is Power hero (whatever you want, BiP is very easy to fit in a build)

Here is an example of what a variation of it can do. Several skills are different and this version does not use Minions since I normally can't stand babysitting them. Dwaynaway is a guideline and NOT a rule and you should feel free to experiment!

The current build can also be found at http://www.gwpvx.com/User:Nanashi

mortenya · May 05, 2011, 04:21 PM // 16:21

are you running scythe or staff on the dervish heroes?

also, how fast is this build at killing groups? it looks like there is very little damage overall, but then sometimes they are surprising. it looks interesting, i'll give the dervish heroes a try for sure.

LexTalionis · May 05, 2011, 04:35 PM // 16:35

Aha! A very good question. I run Scythes, as Splinter Weapon is responsible for a lot of the damage. 2 Dervish Heroes can actually do rather a lot of balling up, especially when everything is snared with Cripple+Burden.

Staves/Wands have the bonus that the BiP hero will hit them with BiP, but to be honest, Dervishes very rarely EVER have energy problems because Mysticism is... how should I say? Freaking overpowered.

I've experimented and it's perfectly viable to run D/R with Volley (Marksmanship at 0, just like Scythe Mastery), but if you use any Flash Enchantments with "Nearby" effects, the heroes will tend to run into range anyway. This build actually takes advantage of Hero AI to split up your team and make it slightly less vulnerable to AoEs (but it is not foolproof).

I've already said, but this defensive build isn't going to win any awards for speed. It's reasonably fast on large clumps, but it's flexible, so you can put damage on the BiP Necromancer (as in the Morostav Screenshot). Assuming the player is any good at inflicting damage, the build might actually be quite fast. (Please note my skillbar has absolutely nothing except Fall Back and Incoming on it, neither of which were used in battle.) Almost anything short of running around and casting Iron Mist/Aneurysm on enemies is bound to help the speed of the build.

Edit: The main strengths are that Avatar of Dwayna is exceedingly difficult to counter and extremely good bait for hexes. Hexes do nothing to them, blindness and blocking hurts your DPS, but doesn't stop Flash Enchantment AoE nor your healing, nor your Mesmers. You can put Foul Feast on the BiP if blind is really lowering your DPS. Experiment!

Cors Seel · May 05, 2011, 04:42 PM // 16:42

I guess it should work, nice concept

But i think the build can use some improvements.

Backfire is a bad choice. Mobs are down due to PI or they cast spells slower because of Shared Burden. And you also have some rupt skills so backfire isn't going to do much damage. The second mesmer has illusion and domination skills. Make him a illusion or a domination mesmer, not a bit of both. I would change guilt by power drain or waste not want not or drain enchantment. These provide much better e-management. And i'm not sure if only 1 "e-management skill" on each bar will give the mesmers enough energy to spam all the way.

If you fix e-management on the mesmer heroes you could probably change your bip necro for an other hero of your choice

.

About the dervish: The 2nd signet is signet of pious restraint? I feel signet of pious light > signet of pious restraint so why would u need 2 signets?
You should use as many short recharge flash enchantments as possible to abuse dwayna's power. And do they use sand shards correctly? I guess they frequently remove it with the signets.

LexTalionis · May 05, 2011, 04:57 PM // 16:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cors Seel

I guess it should work, nice concept

But i think the build can use some improvements.

Backfire is a bad choice. Mobs are down due to PI or they cast spells slower because of Shared Burden. And you also have some rupt skills so backfire isn't going to do much damage. The second mesmer has illusion and domination skills. Make him a illusion or a domination mesmer, not a bit of both. I would change guilt by power drain or waste not want not or drain enchantment. These provide much better e-management. And i'm not sure if only 1 "e-management skill" on each bar will give the mesmers enough energy to spam all the way.

If you fix e-management on the mesmer heroes you could probably change your bip necro for an other hero of your choice

.

About the dervish: The 2nd signet is signet of pious restraint? I feel signet of pious light > signet of pious restraint so why would u need 2 signets?
You should use as many short recharge flash enchantments as possible to abuse dwayna's power. And do they use sand shards correctly? I guess they frequently remove it with the signets.

Sure it could use improvements! It's modular - If you don't like certain things, feel free to change them! They might actually have more synergy with your main class that way. The build posted above is just semi-optimal assuming your main class isn't going to do anything other than call targets.

I was finding the need for an increased rate of teardowns and Pious Restraint has a very nice side effect that makes clumping easier and protects your backline. Flash Enchantments other than Lyssa don't really matter, they're there to be taken down, but all you need is one good swing with Sand Shards up to do a hell of a lot of damage.

Also, I play a primary mesmer, so as an aside: (ahem)

Backfire isn't half bad. The energy cost is normally prohibitive (you have BiP), but in a build where I'm going to be lagging out half the time, nothing says "I hate you, monk/ritualist, go and die" quite as well as Backfire, heroes don't cast it on things without spells, and it works well on Dervishes, which are frequently uninterruptible. I wish Heroes used PI every time it was up, but they don't. As I've noted on the wiki, feel free to replace it with Panic or Energy Surge or whatever, it's not set in stone.

Waste not Want Not is overrated and conditional energy management. It requires a very heavy investment into Inspiration to even return 7 net energy, otherwise it'll return 5-6 every 12 seconds, which is frankly not enough to warrant a slot (when I want mesmers to be killing things). PDrain is there because it's an interrupt and it has a nice side effect. Don't underestimate BiP.

BiP lets you do amazing acts of bar compression and most Necromancer Elites aren't really much better. It's 20 or 25 energy over 12 seconds for the cost of 1 energy and a chunk of health that's quite irrelevant thanks to the huge amounts of party healing and Dervish Infuse Health.

jensyea · May 05, 2011, 05:03 PM // 17:03

Thanks lex! seems like a proper fun build to dust kahmu off and see how razah handles a scythe

I'll change alot but definetely use the concept. good work

Mashiyu · May 05, 2011, 05:12 PM // 17:12

Interesting idea, I'll give it a try if I have connection problems^^

I have only one question: Why do you remove your character name, but not the names of your merch heros? :P

mortenya · May 05, 2011, 05:20 PM // 17:20

razah? why not just use melonni?

SongOf · May 05, 2011, 05:27 PM // 17:27

nice build Lex, no major suggestions here because I use something similar (will post later)

I wish we could see more all-in-one builds like yours

LexTalionis · May 05, 2011, 05:28 PM // 17:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mashiyu

Interesting idea, I'll give it a try if I have connection problems^^

I have only one question: Why do you remove your character name, but not the names of your merch heros? :P

Because most of my mercs don't really exist, they're deleted PvP characters. The few that do, I don't play often. The only reason I removed my name is because I've gotten weird solicitation tells after some other posts with my character name there.

@jenysea: You're welcome! Let me know if it doesn't work out too well for you and I'll do my best to see if I can fix it. Razah as a Dervish... well, 2 Ritualists isn't really a must, but Splinter weapon at 16 is very very nice. You could always use it at 12 on someone else!

I also posted this in another thread, but here's another example of Dwaynaway being silly:

Chthon · May 06, 2011, 03:51 AM // 03:51

It seems that this build is fit for its purpose -- function effectively even when the player is disconnected. The one thing I foresee might cause you trouble is a lack of concentrated damage for dealing with the few, but highly annoying potent monster healers.

LexTalionis · May 06, 2011, 11:47 AM // 11:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

It seems that this build is fit for its purpose -- function effectively even when the player is disconnected. The one thing I foresee might cause you trouble is a lack of concentrated damage for dealing with the few, but highly annoying potent monster healers.

Hence the eventual inclusion of Backfire. Not a perfect solution, but it works pretty well. Lyssa's Haste is also there for a reason - as an interrupt with no casting time, I've seen heroes use it to stop 1/4 second casts like Vow of Silence.

Try it, you might like it - It's quite interesting! I can't say it's the BEST BUILD EVER (it's not), but it's fairly refreshing to play with a frontline as opposed to the traditional all-ranged hero teams + melee player and has a lot of hidden strengths. (Avatar of Dwayna is quite immune to Scourge Healing, for example)

mugen · May 06, 2011, 09:11 PM // 21:11

I like the "player afk" concept - i will try with a 5 dervish version -
btw totally agree about bip = good

in a lot of build i ve tried, heroes (specialy mesmer & the defense rit) are easily going out of mana in many situations .. even viru ele with half bar of energy managment skills can run out of mana .. with bip it rarely never/happens making the teams far most effective.

If you kill very fast big balls of monsters // bip can be useless .. but in other situations bip is helping a lot. Damage & party defense.

Julia Gg · May 07, 2011, 03:13 AM // 03:13

Great build Kills Margonite's in a snap Thanks Lex 2 thumbs up

Kunder · May 07, 2011, 04:19 AM // 04:19

I've been playing around with an AoD hero-based build. Its not really all that similar, but its close enough in general idea and setup that I don't think it deserves a separate thread.

I chose D/P with spears because it keeps the dervs in a much better position to heal the entire party. They aren't using attack skills and I don't really trust the AI to get in the right position for Sand Shards all that often anyways. It also lets you use sup mysticism runes on them, because being a midliner with nearly 100 armor and immunity to hexes means you definitely aren't the one in danger of dying, which further increases healing output.

MMs are standard OoU fare. I found that with the dervs healing you could actually disable the vamps and AoD healing alone kept the minions up perfectly fine with almost no BotM needed in battle and making the OoU sac irrelevant. Which was nice, to say the least. I have to highly discourage MBing builds since half the fun of AoD is that it heals the minions too, which directly benefits MMs while not helping or hurting MBers. The low level minions eat up your ST's spirits like mad too...

Next two characters are fairly normal. Moar Splinter weapon > PvE mobs. I bet the mesmer can be improved a bit, it feels somewhat funky at the moment even though its performing fine. I'm also on the fence about switching it out for an orders, but I figure some kind of spell damage is best to throw in for general usage.

ST rit is IMO completely optional for the 95% of PvE that doesn't include elite missions or a few HM dungeons. But it is a fall back for players who aren't confident in their positioning, because otherwise your entire spike prevention depends on having the minions take the hit. Only take Shelter because all you need is spike prevention, union/displacement is just redundant pressure relief. If you don't want ST, go with another mesmer, an orders necro, or even another spear chuckin' derv.

The build is fairly nice in and of itself, but I made it specifically for my AP MoP necro who is going through EotN at the moment. The 2 Derv-thralls ready to spam my MoPed target instantly with IAS-ed spears buffed by splinter weapon and EBSoH and extra deep wound on top is like heaven. Nevermind what the minions are doing to it, of course...

LexTalionis · May 07, 2011, 05:01 AM // 05:01

@Kunder

That's actually a fairly interesting concept - you focus on AoD's ability to keep minions up and alive in the middle of high pressure.

Question though: How well does it perform against elementalists and mesmers in HM? You're not running much caster disruption. Maybe it's not necessary, I'm rather paranoid. One splinter weapon user is usually enough to keep it up on two targets, but I guess you're using an extra for minions.

I'll have to do tests with channeling, it's one of those overlooked skills.

By the by, scythes are fine for party healing as long as you keep Dervish heroes on "Defensive" mode. This ensures they'll never run out of earshot range of you, unlike melee henchmen which are locked on "aggressive".

Edit: Doing further testing with Dwaynaway today - Please note that if you do use Banishing Strike, you might need to use energy management like Eremite's Zeal or Meditation and decrease the rate of teardowns by removing pious restraint. Damage jumps quite dramatically though.

mortenya · May 07, 2011, 07:08 AM // 07:08

been running these dervish heroes today while questing, i like it, provides easily enough healing. i'm running quests in EotN normal mode, so i haven't tried HM yet. i'm running my own flavors on everything else, but using the heroes like they were while i'm doing Pious teardown. i'll see about trying banishing strike, though right now, for normal mode i don't really need more damage, i added extra condition and hex removal since i'm just like that.

thanks for this, i'd been trying to find decent builds for my derv heroes, these are better than any other teardown build i tried. i'm actually considering running one as melandru so i can just ignore extra condition removal.

@kunder: have you watched your Necro heroes to see if they're casting "Find Their Weakness!"?

Boogersnot · May 07, 2011, 07:23 AM // 07:23

I just tested this in Sparkfly, which I would think is a pretty diverse area except for hexes.
The only time I wiped was when I aggroed the warrior boss, angorodons, and raptors. xD

Pretty insane build so far.

Ah, and all I had was AP, Assassin support, YMLAD, and FH

Elnino · May 07, 2011, 07:41 AM // 07:41

@Kunder: Are you're derv heroes staying at range from foes? I've noticed that they tend to walk up into melee range to use the enchantments that deal initial damage/condition even if they are using spears. With skills like Heart fo holy flame, armor of sanctity and I'm guessing Mirage cloak too, they use those skills at melee range and will remain at melee range.

Also, I think you can swap out channeling for another skill. I highly doubt that the mesmer will be in the area of enough foes to make that skill worthwhile.

shanaya · May 07, 2011, 07:44 AM // 07:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by LexTalionis

UPDATE: After some concerns about the DPS, I'm happy to report that you can switch out Aura of Thorns and/or a copy of Signet of Pious Restraint for Banishing Strike and/or Whirling Charge, both of which increase DPS by quite a bit (Banishing far more than Whirling Charge)

Uh, surely you mean 'Veil of Thorns'? I don't see 'Aura of Thorns' in the build.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LexTalionis

Preamble: The concept of Dwaynaway is extremely simple. Soul Twisting reduces damage on your entire Team to very small packets,

Surely you mean 'Shelter' reduces damage on the entire team. 'Soul Twisting' reduces the energy cost and recharge time of binding rituals.

Anyway, I've tried the build on my vanquishing/mapping ranger and it looks very good indeed so far. Well done for trying something a bit different.