Curse

Lishy · May 24, 2010, 11:20 PM // 23:20

Simple questions. Needing long answers. A bit of a survey here.

What are the current problems with the Dervish you can see? And how do you think they can be fixed?

But most of all, what role do you see it has in Guild Wars compared to the other melee classes?

This is mainly PvE oriented, but PvP oriented responses are welcome too.

Watermelon Tacos · May 24, 2010, 11:34 PM // 23:34

Dervishes are weaker, squishier, and less flexible versions of warriors and assassins. This means that there is no reason to take one over a warrior or assassin. The only niche the dervish fills is running which is not very worthwhile and they are barely better at it compared to warriors and assassins anyways.

Gabriel of Ravn · May 25, 2010, 12:07 AM // 00:07

I wouldn't mind seeing a functionality change for VoS to where enemy spells can't target you but allies can cast spells on you and you are still able to use spells. This could provide dervishes as a viable role as a tank if they stack the right enchantment spells on top of VoS. This could really provide loads of new builds with just a minor change.

silv3rr · May 25, 2010, 02:05 AM // 02:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gabriel of Ravn

I wouldn't mind seeing a functionality change for VoS to where enemy spells can't target you but allies can cast spells on you and you are still able to use spells. This could provide dervishes as a viable role as a tank if they stack the right enchantment spells on top of VoS. This could really provide loads of new builds with just a minor change.

Sounds like Spell breaker.

Gabriel of Ravn · May 25, 2010, 02:30 AM // 02:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by silv3rr

Sounds like Spell breaker.

Yeah pretty much but since it's divine favor other classes can't use that effectively and same thing with the VoS if done that way since it's mysticism only dervishes would be able to put it to use effectively.

Cuilan · May 25, 2010, 03:49 AM // 03:49

Damage is lower with the scythe due to advantages of primaries of others. Not against other professions using the scythe well, but not where it's so poor when it's on it's home profession.

All dervish have is attack spam and some run builds. Complete lack of synergy between skills and its primary attribute. I made a dervish for casting spells as they are a spell caster profession. Their only decent build is D/W Zealous Vow attack spam which feels more like you're playing an assassin, but I'm not saying they shouldn't have that ability.

You have a couple high cost attack speed increasing skills, but if you're going to pay 10 energy you either better have the energy or have a really useful effect to go with it.

That's pretty much all that's to it which has been reposted in the countless other threads that could have been read instead of a new thread.

Tenma · May 25, 2010, 06:11 AM // 06:11

The advantage that other melee classes have over the dervish is simple. Their primary attributes give them a damage increase. It's obvious that the devs want to present the dervish as a user for enchantments, which they try to force by using the mysticism bonus. The reward you get for spending your attribute points to mysticism is so small that no one really relies on it and that it's actually useless. A simple solution would be (keeping in mind that enchantments play a role, although they probably shouldn't) giving the dervish an increase of damage per second while maintaining enchantments, or when each enchantment ends

Do A Barrel Roll · May 25, 2010, 11:42 AM // 11:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gabriel of Ravn

I wouldn't mind seeing a functionality change for VoS to where enemy spells can't target you but allies can cast spells on you and you are still able to use spells. This could provide dervishes as a viable role as a tank if they stack the right enchantment spells on top of VoS. This could really provide loads of new builds with just a minor change.

Excuse me, but....
Shadowform any1?

reaper with no name · May 25, 2010, 05:13 PM // 17:13

The dervish was obviously meant to be the best melee AoE class. Originally, it was intended to do so by putting enchantments on itself (possibly PBAoEs) and stripping them to fuel very powerful attacks. This was nerfed into the ground, and thanks to power creep, only the biggest buffs in the game's history would be able to make that playstyle useful again.

The dervish's other option for melee AoE is to pretend to be a standard melee class and use the scythe. However, it suffers from having no actual synergy with it's own weapon outside of runes. It also lacks a maintainable 33% IAS (a necessity to effectively use the slowest melee weapon in the game). Most of it's good attack skills don't scale very much with higher scythe mastery (Mystic Sweep and Eremite's Attack). By default, it is squishier than other melee classes (the assassin would be just as squishy were it not for Critical Agility, which every scythe sin in it's right mind carries). And since bringing defense at the cost of offense is suboptimal in PvE (a paradox, really, since all it does is reduce stress on the monk, but by doing less damage monsters live longer and deal more damage to the party, putting more stress on the monk anyway).

It's primary attribute is a joke that would be more suited to a caster than a melee class. Critical strikes provides better energy management while offering a huge combat boost. Mysticism also does not provide energy until after it is generally needed. Furthermore, it encourages stripping of enchantments (a poor mechanic, since the only enchantments worth using are too important to strip, and the benefits of stripping them are minor), and even with a superior rune, the best one can hope for is to break even on a 5 energy enchantment. Heck, it's basically a crappy SR for enchantments.

The avatars are useless (and not just because of the need for a PvE slot to maintain them). Blocking is rare in PvE, and enchanted blocking even more so. That leaves AoG with lifesteal (that is, healing and damage). The healing I've already went over, and the damage is not enough to be worthwhile. AoL's higher energy doesn't mean much, as it doesn't actually increase your energy gain, and the bonus damage does not trigger often enough to be worthwhile. AoB has armor (again, the melee defense paradox) and IMS. The only benefit of IMS in PvE is being able to get between mobs faster. But a party can only move as quickly as it's slowest member, so single target IMS is worthless. AoM's condition immunity is either not needed or doesn't help very much because it only affects one person (and the +100 thing is the melee defense paradox again). AoD's hex removal and self healing suffer from the same problems.

Another problem is that the best way to use the scythe currently is through spamming quick activation attack skills. Doing this requires insane amounts of energy and lots of skill slots. Even if the dervish's passive energy management were buffed up to the level of SR, it would not be enough to fuel these attacks (we're talking about 15 energy every 5 seconds here for the attacks alone). This plays to the strengths of the Warrior class's primary attribute, much as the weapon itself plays to the Assassin's (the latter of which can beat the dervish with the scythe without using an elite slot).

As for how to fix it, strangely enough I was just talking to someone about this over PMs. I'll copy what I said there:

There are many methods to fix the dervish, but it ultimately depends on what your objective is:

1) Make the dervish better at the scythe than the warrior (ie, make them not completely redundant as a class)
2) Make the dervish better at the scythe than everyone else (ie, best class for general melee AoE)
3) Make the avatars worthwhile (ie, make them useful in a unique way)
4) Make enchantment juggling worthwhile (best class for melee AoE, again)

1) is easy to do. Just make Heart of Fury maintainable in PvE. This would be just enough to make the dervish better with the scythe than the warrior. Assassins would still be better with the scythe, but they can't go /W for SY and still use the scythe. I like this one because it's easy, doesn't mess up anything else, and doesn't remove other builds from the meta unnecessarily. Another way to achieve this would be to give AoHM a +dmg bonus for each rank of mysticism (or even just give mysticism itself that bonus) when using the scythe.

2) is most easily done by linking AoHM to Mysticism, so that only primary dervishes can use it effectively. This would make dervishes the best scythe users almost by default. I'm not as fond of this one because it would kill critscythe and enduring scythe.

3) By buffing the avatars so that their effects are actually meaningful and making them party-wide, the dervish would gain it's own unique niche in the game. Imagine if AoG gave lifesteal to the whole party, or AoM made the whole party immune to conditions. As it is, the avatars are not worth the trouble compared to other builds (the ones with damage are inferior to zealous vow builds, the defense is not worth it, and the other factors are not worthwhile because they only affect you).

4) Make enchantment juggling useful. This is the ideal solution, but also the hardest and riskiest in terms of potential collateral damage. before the mesmer buffs, I considered this a pipe dream, but now I believe Anet might be willing to put forth the necessary effort. The question is, if they do it, would they do enough to actually make the dervish useful, and could they do it without messing up other parts of the game?

In order for enchantment juggling to be useful, it has to do one of two things:
A) Do more damage than other forms of melee AoE
B) Do almost as much damage as other forms of melee AoE while providing something useful to the party that other forms of melee AoE can not (for example, Critscythe does more damage than Enduring Scythe, yet Enduring Scythe is still useful because it has SY and Critscythe does not).

If it can't do one of these two things, it won't help the dervish, because it would still be in the same boat it is in now.

What is required for enchantment juggling to work? Quite frankly, the biggest buffs in the history of the game. Thanks to power creep, the enchantment juggling from the NF beta (before it was nerfed) would be pathetically underpowered in today's meta. So, this is what you'd have to do:

- Make PBAoE enchantments ignore armor (or buff their damage enough to do an equivalent amount of damage to HM foes)
- Reduce the cast times of PBAoE enchantments considerably (or remove their aftercast delays)
- Reduce energy costs of PBAoE enchantments
- Reduce recharge times of PBAoE enchantments to almost zero
- Revert Pious Assault, and give it both a quicker activation and way more damage
- Buff Mysticism's energy gain
- Do all of this in such a way that only primary dervishes can pull it off (or at least do it better than anyone else)
- Do all of this without creating problems elsewhere

Remember, we're talking about competing with scythes here. That's like 60 or so dps to secondary targets and about twice that for primary targets. That's a tall order. And if you don't beat it, you've gotta offer something they don't. Based on the way PBAoEs and PvE currently work, that means defense for the party. With enchantments like dust cloak, a dervish could potentially spam blindness and weakness, but let's remember that Scythe Warriors get SY, which affects both melee and spells. So even then, you have to beat what Enduring Scythe can put out to really be useful.

saint666 · May 26, 2010, 03:18 AM // 03:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by reaper with no name

With enchantments like dust cloak, a dervish could potentially spam blindness and weakness, but let's remember that Scythe Warriors get SY, which affects both melee and spells. So even then, you have to beat what Enduring Scythe can put out to really be useful.

I don't see why a derv can't slap on SY while condition spamming if they do decide to buff enchantment juggling, unless they decide to attach SY to Strength. Mesmers don't have to beat ele's in dmg as long as the provide something that ele's don't have, ie, aoe shutdown. If a dervish can spam decent PBAoE dmg in adition mass conditions(anyone faced Mandragors?), I think that would make them plenty viable already. Buffing enchantment juggling and mysticism while making it viable without making it op is a challenge. You can potentially end up with a char that has SR on demand and extremely difficult to shutdown.

NerfHerder · May 26, 2010, 11:53 AM // 11:53

I copied this from a post I made a month ago and added some.

All these ideas are geared toward PvE

Mysticism
Whenever an Enchantment ends, you gain 1 Health for each rank of Mysticism and 1 Energy for every 3 ranks of Mysticism. Energy gain is doubled for Dervish Enchantments.

For AoHM I was thinking of this change

Aura of Holy Might
Enchantment Spell. All nearby foes take 40...48...50 holy damage. For 10 seconds plus 1 second for each rank of Mysticism, you deal 20...30...32% more damage with your scythe. When this Enchantment ends, all nearby foes take 40...48...50 holy damage.

That way Warriors and Assassins couldnt QQ because they can still use it half the time. Of course I would be happy with for 2 seconds for each rank in Mysticism and only let Dervishes use it. But that might actually balance something. And its the EASIEST fix for the Warrior vs Assassin vs Dervish with a scythe scenerio. Im pretty sure even w/o AoHM a Scythe Sin could do about the same amount of damage as a Zealous Vow Dervish plus they can use Wounding Strike.

I believe the addition of a maintainable IAS could really help. I think if they changed Heart of Fury to

Heart of Fury
Enchantment Spell. (10...23...25 seconds.) You attack 33% faster. End effect: inflicts Burning condition (1...3...3 seconds) on nearby foes. Reduce cost to 5 energy.

With an enchantment mod the skill would be almost maintainable, and still has the drawback of being interrupted or stripped.

Remove "This skill is disabled for 120 seconds" from Avatars. And keep in mind these are suggestions, pay more attention to the idea than the stats.

Avatar of Balthazar
Elite Form. (10...74...90 seconds.) You gain +40 armor, you attack 33% faster, and your attacks have 10% Armor Penetration.

Your most likely to have AoHM in PvE so the holy damage will still be there. IMO this would also make the skill more worthy of the name.

Avatar of Dwayna
Elite Form. (10...62...75 seconds.)Whenever you successfully hit a foe all party members gain 5...10...15 Health. You are immune to hexes.

This one probably needs alot of work. But the idea is to allow the Dervish a more diverse role and provide party wide healing. There are many ways this could be done.

Avatar of Grenth
Elite Form. (10...74...90 seconds.) Enchanted foes cannot block you. Your attacks steal 5...17...20 life and you gain 3 Energy when you successfully use an attack skill.

Nothing says god of justice better than stealing health and gaining energy with a successful strike. This could also allow a little more potential to spam attack skills.

Avatar of Lyssa
Elite Form. (10...74...90 seconds.) You have +2 energy regeneration. Your attack skills interrupt target foes action. If a spell was interupted all other party members gain 5 energy.

When I think Lyssa, I think energy and interrupts. Energy regeneration is much better than simply having more. And some conditional party wide energy gain could make them more useful to a group.

Avatar of Melandru
Elite Form. (10...58...70 seconds.) You have +40 Armor against Elemental Damage, you are immune to conditions, and your attacks deal +5 damage for each Earth Prayer enchantment on you.(not equipped, enchanted by)

The +40ar vs Ele Dmg would help against ele spikes, conjure weapons, and even other dervishes to a degree. Immunity to conditions is great but I dont think its enough to devote an entire Avatar. And the + damage for earth prayers, well it is Melandru and any +dmg benefit could help dervishes.

To me if you want to make the Dervish what it was meant to be, then youll have to buff the hell out of most of the Dervish enchantments(like reaper said). An Enchantment based Melee is still a good idea, but it will take alot of work to find a happy medium between a Warrior and Assassin all the while keeping thier overall DPS in a similar range.

FlyMoto · May 26, 2010, 03:16 PM // 15:16

As others have said, the problem is the fact that their core mechanic is badly designed. The enchantment-based idea is simply either going to be overpowered strong (like NF beta) or weak (like it is currently). For a melee to sit back and cast enchants when they could be running in is already bad. Spend your time using an Avatar first, too, and by the time you are ready to fight the rest of your party has either won or been wiped. On top of that, the bonus's you got were not exactly spectacular - all that precasting only began to make you on par with warriors or assassins.

Also, some of the best effects of dervish involve stripping their enchantments.

The big thing to watch here is that the things that are necessary to make dervishes worthwhile in PvE need NOT be brought into PvP, where they'd be too powerful.

Suggestions:
Design enchantment skills to specifically have use for being stripped, meaning they cost 5 energy, have 1/4 cast (or potentially no cast time), and quick recharge, and possibly remove aftercast delay. They need strong ending effects. Potentially more attack skills using enchantment-ending effects.
This should involve massive, sweeping changes to earth, wind, and mysticism.

Focus on secondary effects on skills - give dervish utility. Since disruption isn't a dervish thing, AoE conditions might work better. More team support options might work too.

Dervish needs a more reliable IAS.

Heavy relying on mysticism or else warrior and assassin will still make better dervishes.

Avatars: I support two ideas:
1 - A less radical change would simply be to take some of the conditionality of the skills away, and give them stronger (either offensively or in the form of team support, depending on the avatar).
2 - A more radical form would be to make the avatars work by changing your bar to a new set of skills (similar to the Norn Forms). The hard part with this would be ensuring that they are both balanced and useful.

Magragoc · May 26, 2010, 03:32 PM // 15:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by reaper with no name

1) is easy to do. Just make Heart of Fury maintainable in PvE. This would be just enough to make the dervish better with the scythe than the warrior. Assassins would still be better with the scythe, but they can't go /W for SY and still use the scythe. I like this one because it's easy, doesn't mess up anything else, and doesn't remove other builds from the meta unnecessarily. Another way to achieve this would be to give AoHM a +dmg bonus for each rank of mysticism (or even just give mysticism itself that bonus) when using the scythe.

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.

-Makai- · May 27, 2010, 07:56 AM // 07:56

Critical Agility: This skill ends after using a non-dagger attack skill.

Silvance · May 27, 2010, 01:42 PM // 13:42

Mysticism is in definite need of an improvement. I think the first step would be to increase the energy gain from it without making it give too much energy. Maybe 1 energy per 2 ranks. The second thing would be to replace the health gain with something useful. Someone in another thread suggested 1-2 holy damage per rank pbaoe whenever an enchant ends. It sounds like a good idea, but the more I think about it, the less I think it would ever happen. I'm still at a loss for what else could be done.

Now, to make mysticism actually useful, we would have to change how dervish enchants work.

Quote:

What is required for enchantment juggling to work? Quite frankly, the biggest buffs in the history of the game. Thanks to power creep, the enchantment juggling from the NF beta (before it was nerfed) would be pathetically underpowered in today's meta. So, this is what you'd have to do:

- Make PBAoE enchantments ignore armor (or buff their damage enough to do an equivalent amount of damage to HM foes)
- Reduce the cast times of PBAoE enchantments considerably (or remove their aftercast delays)
- Reduce energy costs of PBAoE enchantments
- Reduce recharge times of PBAoE enchantments to almost zero

This is the way to go. The damage from all pbaoe enchants should be armor ignoring or holy damage. pbaoe enchants should have shorter cast times (1/4) or none at all. Removal of the aftercast delay is also a good idea. Energy cost should be reduced to 5 for most pbaoe enchants. I don't think reducing recharge times to near zero is really necessary, maybe in the 5-15 second range would be fine.

End effects for enchants should be actually worthwhile. If it's a condition, it's duration should be increased. The health and energy gain enchants are ok.

I also think that enchants that change your damage type to elemental shouldn't. Heart of Holy Flame can stay the same, because that's sort of the point of the skill, but I think its burning duration needs to be increased. This would also mean that AoHM would no longer change to holy damage.

Speaking of AoHM, tying its duration to mysticism should have been done from the start, like Critical Agility and There's Nothing to Fear. I don't think it really needs changing otherwise.

Quote:

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.

I agree, having Heart of Fury be maintainable is not the way to go. If mysticism was changed so that dervishes got decent energy back from enchants, then what you want is for enchants to be ending all the time. Heart of Fury is no different. What if it was changed to 5e 1/4 cast 12 sec recharge and 10 sec duration?

This way, it could be maintainable with an enchant mod if you wanted, but otherwise you'd be getting energy back relatively quickly. It basically fuels itself, and you've got a little leftover.

Now, to make enchantment stripping actually useful, the skills that strip them should be more useful.

Everyone seems to like the original version of Pious assault, and I wasn't around to use it, but just reading its description it didn't seem that powerful, except that it had pretty high damage compared to most scythe attacks. What if it was changed to something like this:

5e 6 or 8sec recharge Functionality: You lose one enchantment. This attack strikes for +10..+25 damage. If an enchantment was removed in this way, you strike for an additional +10..+25 damage. Or possibly the second part could be If an enchantment was removed in this way, all nearby (or adjacent) foes take 15..50 holy damage.

Dervishes don't really have a means to end stances. I use wild blow myself, but I think that functionality could be added to irresistible sweep. Something like this: Lose one enchantment. If this attack hits it deals +10...+26 damage. If an enchantment is lost in this way, Irresistible sweep cannot be blocked and any stance being used by your target ends.

I think Twin Moon Sweep is fine as it is.

I agree that the disabled for 120 seconds for avatars needs to go, but I don't really have any other suggestions to make them more useful.

saint666 · May 27, 2010, 03:19 PM // 15:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silvance

Speaking of AoHM, tying its duration to mysticism should have been done from the start, like Critical Agility and There's Nothing to Fear. I don't think it really needs changing otherwise.

Speaking of which, they should tie SY to strength also, it's too powerful to be abused by every other class other than a warrior.

NerfHerder · May 27, 2010, 04:47 PM // 16:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by saint666

Speaking of which, they should tie SY to strength also, it's too powerful to be abused by every other class other than a warrior.

I almost agree with you. But then that would take away the one build paragons are good at.

Catchphrase · May 27, 2010, 06:29 PM // 18:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by NerfHerder

<snip>

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlyMoto

Suggestions:
Design enchantment skills to specifically have use for being stripped, meaning they cost 5 energy, have 1/4 cast (or potentially no cast time), and quick recharge, and possibly remove aftercast delay. They need strong ending effects. Potentially more attack skills using enchantment-ending effects.
This should involve massive, sweeping changes to earth, wind, and mysticism.

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."

NerfHerder · May 27, 2010, 09:52 PM // 21:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Catchphrase

I strongly discourage any changes to be made to skills that are commonly used in dervish builds.

Are you saying that Avatars are commonly used?

Magragoc · May 27, 2010, 11:23 PM // 23:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by NerfHerder

Are you saying that Avatars are commonly used?

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