Curse

Grim Lich · Apr 16, 2011, 09:09 PM // 21:09

I dunno about anyone else, but after the update I've been dramatically less interested in the scythe mastery attribute, or the skills themselves. I mean with earth prayers I can do large amounts of spike damage that aren't dependent on my scythe damage, wind prayers gives me a ton of life steal really easily, and hell with mysticism I can light someone on fire and disease them by simply juggling enchantments.

So I find myself only using scythe attacks as enchantment removers, and that's it. I dont even look at the elites there ( though honestly Reapers sweep + rending aura does interest me) cause I find that I can do a lot more aoe damage with my enchants.

Is this just me? Or does anyone else think the same? Or am I missing something?

( just in case you are wondering I'm speaking for both pve and pvp)

Bandwagon · Apr 16, 2011, 09:26 PM // 21:26

As a frontliner most of your damage is going to come from your weapon, though jumping from 12 SM to 14 SM yields less of a damage increase then the climb from lets say 11 to 12, its still useful, however if you can meet important break points in Earth Prayers or Mysticism, I wouldn't be afraid to lower my SM down a tad.

Since I mostly use Pious Spam, I only add points to SM and Mysticism, just as a Warrior primarily puts pts into Str and < Insert Warrior Weapon> Mastery/manship for the majority of their pve builds.

PvP, most of the high end derpvish builds use avatar of balth, scythe damage is the paramount source of damage and as such it is almost always maxxed out because you gain more return from making your (auto swing) scythe attacks hit 1-4 more damage then you would for gaining 2-4 extra damage on Dust Cloak / Staggering Force or gaining an extra second on Fleeting Stability.

If all you do is bomb stuff with VoS + Sand Shards, then yeah, you oughta sub out pts in SM for a few extra pts in Earth Prayers.

In the end the entire dervish tool kit is so flexible that your really not losing or gaining too much from moving 1-2 pts from Earth/ Wind and Scythe.

LifeInfusion · Apr 17, 2011, 12:14 AM // 00:14

A few more damage on scythe auto-attack versus a few more damage from Balthazar's Rage, Heart of Holy Flame, etc every 5+ seconds. It's worse with armor-reduced stuff like Earth Prayers and Wind Prayers.

I'd take scythe any day, assuming you haven't pumped it to 13 yet and your mysticism is reasonably high (10+ due to needing 9 for 10 energy flash enchantments to be 6 energy and accounting for weakness). 13Scythe=103.5% vs 12 scythe, 14Scythe=107.2% vs 12 scythe. If you run 14 scythe with pious assault you get 48 damage instead of [email protected],52 vs 47 on Reap Impurities, and 14 scythe is the breakpoint for +7 energy on radiant scythe.

I'd do 12+1+1=14scythe, 9+1 mysticism, 9+1 earth/wind or 11+1+1 scythe, 10+1 Mysticism, 10+1 Earth/wind.

It really boils down to if you are using an Avatar or if you're using Ebon Dust Aura / Vow of Strength. You can sacrifice a few points of autoattack damage for a few points of damage on every attack with AoE (VoS) or armor-ignoring (EDA) properties.

Sand Shards, while good, causes scatter and so does Mystic Sandstorm. Sand Shards loses only about 40-50 damage over its 10 recharge, which is roughly 4 armor-reduced damage unless you run Avatar of Lyssa to reduce recharge to have it up for every swing, which makes it ~10 armor reduced DPS. Dust Cloak/Staggering Force don't warrant gimping your scythe because 8+ earth will net you the same blind unless you pump 13 earth.

There's nothing stopping you from pumping 12+1+1 scythe, 10+1 earth/wind, 8+1 Mysticism if you don't use flash enchantments much. Hell if you can take a small hit to HP (due to free HP just for being Dervish), run a major for 12+1+1 Scythe, 10+2 earth/wind, 8+1 Mysticism.

FoxBat · Apr 17, 2011, 12:46 AM // 00:46

Scythe should be maxed even on VoS build. Each point of earth only nets you 1 more slashing damage, scythe points net you more than that. The damage from sand shards or any other flash enchant is miniscule compared to either because it only has a few proc per its recharge.

Mysticism doesn't actually increase the effectiveness of balth/grenth conditions. It does help life steal, but max scythe is still better than 1-2 life steal points. It's really only worth doing to pump Dwayna healing.

For Pious Spam, 13 is the breakpoint for the 5e skill you're spamming, and the energy return on that build is excessive anyway. Again, scythe mastery.

Lithril Ashwalker · Apr 17, 2011, 02:46 AM // 02:46

honestly i dont glance at Reapers sweep....i dont see how the hell your supsoed to actually get to the adrenaline needed .... other than a spear or bow and a handful of skills....quote me if theres a great buidl with it xD

Kunder · Apr 17, 2011, 03:38 AM // 03:38

You have the highest base damage weapon in the game and you have to question whether actually using it is worthwhile?

I don't know whether to take this as a joke about the overpoweredness of Derv skills at the moment or the final nail in the coffin to my personal estimation of the player base's intellect.

pingu666 · Apr 17, 2011, 05:49 AM // 05:49

to be fair to the op, alot of the skills for sythe dont have +lots damage

high base damage and low + damage is more of a issue in hardmode due to the high armour :/

reaper with no name · Apr 17, 2011, 06:56 AM // 06:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grim Lich

I dunno about anyone else, but after the update I've been dramatically less interested in the scythe mastery attribute, or the skills themselves. I mean with earth prayers I can do large amounts of spike damage that aren't dependent on my scythe damage, wind prayers gives me a ton of life steal really easily, and hell with mysticism I can light someone on fire and disease them by simply juggling enchantments.

So I find myself only using scythe attacks as enchantment removers, and that's it. I dont even look at the elites there ( though honestly Reapers sweep + rending aura does interest me) cause I find that I can do a lot more aoe damage with my enchants.

Is this just me? Or does anyone else think the same? Or am I missing something?

( just in case you are wondering I'm speaking for both pve and pvp)

I hate you.

Well no, not really. It's just that your post more or less forced me to go do a crapload of math.

Anyway, I tried to test your hypothesis (that more wind/earth prayers > more scythe mastery). I decided to do this by making the best builds for those two attributes that I could and compare them to Pious Spam. The wind ones all failed, but I was able to make an earth one that beat it (though it required two superior runes, sacrificed FGJ and WS to do it, and only managed it because it could inflict cracked armor and Pious Spam couldn't, the application of which should be the necromancer's job).

Now, what does this have to do with your hypothesis? Nothing, on it's own. But then I started playing around with the attributes to see whether more earth/wind was better or more scythe was better. It turned out that no matter what build I tried (including the ones that couldn't beat Pious Spam), more scythe mastery always resulted in more damage (it wasn't very much, but it was definitely more).

The main reason for this is the recharge times of the enchantments. Unless you are using a Pious Spam build (remember, Pious Renewal has no AoE of its own), most of the time you are going to be autoattacking. So scythe mastery ends up being more important.

That said, I need to thank you for inspiring me to create yet another Pious Spam variant. When I discovered that one of the builds I had made could outdamage Pious Spam because it could inflict cracked armor (and I assumed that there wasn't someone else in the party inflicting it like there should be), I wanted to see what would happen if Pious Spam had the same edge. A couple skill changes later, Pious Spam was on top of the damage heap again.

Disclaimer: The above statements refer to PvE. Reaper does not do math for PvP.

IronSheik · Apr 17, 2011, 04:19 PM // 16:19

If you're running in dropping 2 hits for sand shards and throwing up a mystic twister, yeah, drop SM.

Depends on your build

Haggis of Doom · Apr 17, 2011, 05:16 PM // 17:16

^If you do that then you probably don't have enough credibility to state that Scythe Mastery is less useful :P

Grim Lich · Apr 18, 2011, 03:24 PM // 15:24

Haha. Well reading all of this does allow me to say " I was wrong" thanks for the math and analysis guys, I appreciate the help : ) gonna put some points in there and start swinging away!