Curse

Cuilan · May 28, 2010, 04:03 AM // 04:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magragoc

Going by every PuG Dervish I've played with; yes.

Then you should help them out by pinging them a better build with Zealous Vow and explain to them why it's better. Surely they're looking for improvement...

thewindinthewillows · May 28, 2010, 04:43 AM // 04:43

All this talk of how relatively weak and pointless Dervishes are is really depressing me... I made a Dervish and I'm title-ing on it; it's my main character. Now it seems like I made the wrong choice!
...say it ain't so?!

Magragoc · May 28, 2010, 05:23 AM // 05:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan

Then you should help them out by pinging them a better build with Zealous Vow and explain to them why it's better. Surely they're looking for improvement...

I've tried, believe me I've tried. But like all of my Warrior Guildies married to their Defy Pain + Endure Pain + Healing Breeze bars, they either don't have the skills, or it's not "survivable enough".

It's depressing.

@TheWindInTheWillows - Don't worry about it. A Dervish can get through pvE easily, and find PuG's too. Yes, Warriors and Assassins do more damage, but only the worst PuG's would ever drop you because you weren't one of them. With Heroes that synergize with you, there isn't anything in the game that's H&H-able that you can't do.

Bloody Dominator · May 28, 2010, 08:57 AM // 08:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by thewindinthewillows

All this talk of how relatively weak and pointless Dervishes are is really depressing me... I made a Dervish and I'm title-ing on it; it's my main character. Now it seems like I made the wrong choice!
...say it ain't so?!

Silly

Dervs are awesome, all u need to do to convince ppl is INSIST on taking him everywhere from UW to Urgoz, then they'll see how awesome they are (worked for me

)

Gabriel of Ravn · May 28, 2010, 10:25 AM // 10:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Do A Barrel Roll

Excuse me, but....
Shadowform any1?

Seriously Shadowform is 1 thing I try to avoid and yes I have a sin and yes I've done uwsc, fowsc, soosc, and kathandrax sc. It's becoming way too common seeing sins everywhere I got bored of mine I just want to see more dervishes so a change to just anything on them that would make them a better tank would be nice even if it does taken advantage of and used for speedclears which I doubt anet would make such a change to buff dervishes to that point.

Axel Zinfandel · May 28, 2010, 07:15 PM // 19:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bloody Dominator

Silly

Dervs are awesome, all u need to do to convince ppl is INSIST on taking him everywhere from UW to Urgoz, then they'll see how awesome they are (worked for me

)

I insist you play critscythe or WE scythe and give my one reason why I should use a dervish over that :P

reaper with no name · May 29, 2010, 07:34 AM // 07:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magragoc

Reaper, I don't always agree with you, but you've made an excellent post here. This section, however, makes very little sense. There is no way that a maintainable Heart of Fury would suddenly make a Dervish better than a Warrior with a scythe. Remember that Warriors also have access to a plethora of maintainable 33% IAS skills, and they'll still have the AP from Strength, which adds a considerable amount of damage.

When playing my Dervish, I just use Frenzy. You're going to have Prot Spirit on you anyways.

That said; you did a good job stating how fiddly any buffs would be without breaking the game.

Do the math, and you'll find it to be true. As it turns out, it's not the AP from strength alone or the superior IAS that overcomes the higher scythe mastery, but the combination of the two.

PS does not completely mitigate the downside of Frenzy. Remember those wanding attacks that monsters love to do? They do less than 10% of your max health in damage until you put on Frenzy. And they add up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Catchphrase

I strongly discourage any changes to be made to skills that are commonly used in dervish builds. Rework should be done on obscure skills so that people can evaluate whether the 'buffed' skills are ideal to their current strategy. A good example to illustrate my point would be how changes were made to Shatterstone and Mirror of Ice to bring some damage to water ele builds without diminishing it's utility.

And we shall have caster professions spamming enchantments. Seriously no. If we were to have strong cast upon and ending effects for dervish, we might as well buff earth/fire elementalist PbAOE spells. Instead we should make the enchantments' PbAOE damage trigger when the dervish targets foe with melee attacks, just like how Chilling Victory's cold damage is being dealt out. This way dervish will have the clear advantage over other melee profession, which is they are still able to deal damage even though their physical attack is blocked/miss. This will also reduce out the magnitude of disadvantage dervish had when blinded compared to warriors or sins, since daze also had an adverse effect on dervish too. In addition by revamping the enchantments' complimentary damage (e.g. struck for XXX damage.) effects to be in effect by number of attacks and not duration, mysticism will be triggered more often as players will recast it on recharge and utilise it fully before self expiration to fuel energy for other skills.

An example to illustrate this would be:
Grenth's Fingers
15 Energy ¼ Activation time 15 Recharge time
Enchantment Spell. "All adjacent foes are crippled for 5..13 seconds. For 10 seconds, your next 1...3 melee attacks which target a crippled foe, that foe and all adjacent foes are struck for 15...51 cold damage."

Also I don't believe lowering energy cost of enchantments is a good idea since there is always a possibility of other professions abusing it. The energy cost obstacle can be overcome by having skills either interact with mysticism exclusively or boosting dervish's max energy temporarily since the dervish max energy is too paltry.

Eremite's Zeal
5 Energy ¼ Activation time 10 Recharge time
Enchantment Spell. "For 2 seconds, this enchantment does nothing. When this enchantment ends, you gain 2 energy for each adjacent foe (maximum 2...5 energy). (50% failure chance with Mysticism of 4 or below)."

Zealous Renewal
10 Energy¼ Activation time20 Recharge time
Enchantment Spell. "All adjacent foes are struck for 15...51 holy damage. For 3...15 seconds, you gain +10 maximum energy. When this enchantment ends, you gain 1 energy for each successful hits while under the effects of this enchantment."

Lowering energy costs is a requirement. Otherwise, the dervish will either not be able to afford them or Mysticism will have to be buffed to obscene levels (opening up potential for abuse). The trick is, to make their power come from being spammed. Since Dervishes would be for the most part recycling their energy and other classes wouldn't, only the dervish would be able to afford this. Also, it would be essential to split up the damage between not only the enchantments themselves but also the attacks that remove them. In fact, the attacks should do far more damage (and will have to in order for this style to ever hope to be useful for melee AoE, seeing as how melee damage is so overpowered compared to caster damage, and the major buffs that make it so only affect attacks, not spells).

Higher max energy != energy management. If it did elementalists wouldn't need all those energy management skills in Energy Storage.

Also, having the dervish do less damage than other melee characters yet be less affected by anti-melee would not help them much, seeing as how there isn't that much anti-melee in PvE (and in areas where it is, you don't bring as much melee to begin with). Furthermore, none of that would address the issue of other classes using the dervish's skills better than it does.

Since people seem intrigued by enchantment juggling, here's some preliminary stuff to illustrate what I'm talking about when I say that the buffs required are insane:

Grenth's Fingers
Dust Cloak
Staggering Force
5 energy, 1/4 activation, 3 recharge, damage is armor-ignoring

Needs to be 5 energy for mysticism to fuel spamming of them (if they can't be spammed, there is absolutely zero chance of competing with conventional melee AoE). Needs to be short recharge for same reason. Needs to be short casting to increase dps (despite that and being armor-ignoring, this part of the enchantment-stripping-attack paradigm is still a huge drag on dps).

Pious Assault
5 energy, 1/2 activation, +20...60 dmg, removes 1 dervish enchantment, instant recharge if removed

One thing I worry about is this 5 energy cost, which when spammed (again, a requirement to compete) will quickly burn through a derv's energy (since it won't be affected by mysticism). A zealous scythe would likely be necessary. In any case, ridiculously high +damage and short activation is needed just to compensate for the low dps of the enchantment before it.

Mysticism
1 energy per 2 ranks when dervish enchantment ends on you

At 10 mysticism, you'd be able to fuel 5 energy enchantments.

Sadly, if you do the math and throw in AoHM and Asuran Scan, you'll see that this will still not even match what a scythe sin can pump out, despite the obvious overpoweredness of it. Now, you would have blindness, weakness, and cripple spam, too, but I think I've gotten the message across of how insane these buffs would have to be just to even be "useful", let alone good enough to be part of the meta.

Dervish Kid · May 29, 2010, 05:50 PM // 17:50

Dervishes would actually be the best melee class is we didn't get nerfed..(obvious)

VoS(strength) needs to get rebuffed to its old usage.
Avatars need to be buffed and actually useful.
If we can't get a skill buff, give dervs more energy for those high energy enchants.
/nuff said.. my main char is a derv, but im starting to regret it. 18 max titles FTL

NerfHerder · Jun 04, 2010, 08:22 PM // 20:22

Just throwing this idea out there. What if Mysticism gave you 1 energy for every 3 ranks every time you successfully strike with a Scythe?

There is plenty of melee hate out there to counter it and would only be usable by dervishes.

Bloody Dominator · Jun 05, 2010, 10:58 AM // 10:58

Mmm, could be interesting, kinda like Critical Strikes for the sin, no? That could work, but if u hit 3 enemies at 12 myst would then get 3 * 4 energy or still just 4? cuz 12 energy seems like alot to me

NerfHerder · Jun 05, 2010, 08:05 PM // 20:05

I have thought about getting a possible max energy gain of 12-15. But unless you get a chance to ball up foes this will probably only happen in the beginning of a fight. With Zealous Vow you can easily get 18-21 energy that way. However, in PvE your going to be keeping up AoHM, Asura Scan, and Possibly HoF, thats 25 energy right there. If you take a Zealous Vow build and adjust your attributes to give you 5 energy gain vs 6, you can really tell a difference. Although, you have to take into account Zealous Vow gives you -3 energy regen, and under a Mysticism rework you would still have +4 energy regen. I think I just talked myself out of my own proposal.

If thats too overpowered, how about 1 energy gain for every 4 ranks per hit?

Myotheraccount · Jun 05, 2010, 08:26 PM // 20:26

Everything.

There is nothing right with the Dervish, other classes can do the same jobs better by taking it as a secondary.

I I Dreamweaver I I · Jul 20, 2010, 12:13 PM // 12:13

On the official Guildwars website they state that

" Dervish balance. We are also working on changes to the Dervish, with both PvE and PvP in mind. This is our second priority, and it may or may not be ready at the same time as the GvG changes.
"

personally i think that they should get there act together and read this and a few other threads and they have it sorted, mysticism is a definate buff i think, the sin and war's strength and crit strikes are what give them there damage advantage when all we get is slight energy management that still requires other energy management skills.

Haligator · Aug 08, 2010, 11:11 PM // 23:11

I'm new to Guild Wars and new to the Dervish. I played AoC for a year or so, as a Herald of Xotli. Now, AoC was fubar the moment it left the gate, but many people said that the HoX was the most fun that they had had playing any character class in any MMO. In that huge debacle that was AoC, Funcom got one thing right, and that was the HoX.

Now that I have come over to Guild Wars, I can see just how much the HoX owed to the Dervish. But, the Dervish is not the psycho melee mage that the HoX was. The HoX avatar was available about every two minutes, and it gave you 30 seconds or so of wtfpwnage. Even running around in just cloth, people feared the HoX because who knew if the cooldown was up, right? It was better to just run.

Knowing how much fun that was, and how valuable a HoX was considered to be in the hands of a good player, I'd have to throw my vote in with the idea of buffing the Avatars. Make Mysticism benefit the Avatars, and buff the Avatars. We need one that makes our scythe the best scythe on the field. One for aoe damage. One for healing. One for tanking. One for speed. Or combine effects so that we can choose from packages of abilities. I really think the Avatars are the key.

fr.aodhan · Aug 21, 2010, 03:51 PM // 15:51

I've never played purely melee characters and saw Mysticism as an invitation to use enchantment juggling to create a different kind of caster. Sure, I had a weapon attribute but my primary attribute concerned enchantment loss - nobody complains if an Ele doesn't spec into everything.

This was back when Vow of Piety healed a random party member on loss, Meditation gave you energy for removal, etc. Combined with Mysticism, a Dervish could spam random but cheap party healing. Along with the Interventions and Imbue Health, it looked like the Dervish might be a viable healer. Let someone else handle condition and hex removal - I have infinite energy. Or I could load up PBAoEs and have fun with Mystic Twister, Mystic Sandstorm, Winds of Disenchantment.

In other words, there are a large number of skills which suggest roles that don't work - it turns out that the Dervish is just a vehicle for the scythe. I initially understood the Dervish as the master of the PBAoE, whether harmful or beneficial, but that's simply not the case. It's a failure of the idea of the class that the mystic can't be a viable caster.

The Dervish is the woman across the room who keeps on winking at you but just has something in her eye. To ArenaNet's credit, they've made some of those skills less attractive. The Dervish can spend less time fascinated by subpar (but fun) uses. Pity, though.

SpiritThief · Aug 21, 2010, 04:35 PM // 16:35

First off Vow of Strenght changed back.

More choices besides Wounding Strike. Really there's no real reason not to use that. Its so powerful and everything else isn't as good.

Not saying take away what works. But I would like to use something else besides wounding and not feel like a fool for leaving it behind.

Onslaught should be a party buff. +25% speed, attack speed, casting speed. The Derv can't attack or use attack skills while its in use.

I like the avatars the way the are. Last forever in pve and they work nice. Pointless in pvp. I think that should be what they focus on the most. PVP versions for the avatars. That is the big selling point of the class anyway.

Arcane Zeal and Pious Renewal are pretty useless too.

And a Dervish should be able to use a scythe better then everyone else.

Burjis · Aug 24, 2010, 07:15 PM // 19:15

The most laughable thing about Mysticism is it's health gain (1 per rank). 13hp at rank 13. In a game where hundreds of health points are gained and lost in mere seconds, 13 health is quite a formidable *jokes* amount to be gained when you lose an enchantment! It can be, when you have 8 enchantments on you all getting stripped at the same time giving you an enormous 104 hp!! *cough* But good luck having that many enchantments on you in the first place unless you make a build with all slots spent on enchantment spells! Ever wondered why so many Dervish builds use a staff?
I always laugh when someone says "Mysticism gives you health and energy when an enchantment ends on you!"
Solution? Who cares? Just remove that health gain altogether from Mysticism, it's embarrassing.

The problem with Dervish? Let me get one thing straight first: I believe Dervishes are far from "useless", "incompetent" or anything like that. Everybody agrees that they need a tweak and that they are not suited for specialized tasks but to say they are utter useless is a great disfavor to this profession.
Problem: In PvE, by the time I cast my enchantments to enter battle, all the mobs are dead!
Problem: In PvP, by the time I cast my enchantments to enter battle, I am dead!

A more serious version would go like this:
Many vital Dervish enchantments and self healing skills take too long to cast (yes 1 second is too long) and they are prone to getting interrupted. This is natural but most of the builds rely too much on those enchantments (HoF for one).
Again, some of those vital enchantments are too expensive to cast and having 2 or 3 of them on you would mean sacrificing your entire energy.

Enough of my nonsense. I hope whatever they do with the Dervish doesn't cause the working builds for this class to become broken.

edit: corrected a typo: HoF

Nechrond · Aug 25, 2010, 02:18 PM // 14:18

Arcane Zeal is not useless, I use it a lot. It's one of only two Dervish elites that I consider good. The other one, of course, would be Wounding Strike.

AryaBladedancer · Sep 01, 2010, 01:50 PM // 13:50

My biggest problems when playing my dervish are:

1. Energy - I usually have 3 enchants up with my build but I spend more energy attacking than I get back when those enchants end. I bring a prot monk who buffs me and it does help but I always seem to be low.

2. Casting - I spend 3-4 seconds casting buffs before I even get to fight, then I have to constantly re-cast those buffs which takes a lot of time away from attacking.

There's already a lot of good ideas here but those are my main issues with Dervish playing.

Burjis · Sep 01, 2010, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by AryaBladedancer

2. Casting - I spend 3-4 seconds casting buffs before I even get to fight, then I have to constantly re-cast those buffs which takes a lot of time away from attacking.

Trust me that's everybody's problem with the Dervish. 3 to 4 seconds before each battle is a long time for a front liner which has to charge in first. But hey! The dervish can hardly do that because it has to get its enchantments first, then wait for its energy to recharge before doing anything useful (of course this is not a best case scenario).