Curse

Lishy · Sep 07, 2009, 08:48 PM // 20:48

This thread is more of a discussion on Eternal Aura's for damage more than anything.
Firstly, I would like to remind people that it is a 90 damage, armor ignoring AoE with nearby range. Similar to Cry of Pain. The difference? You have to move into nearby range. This DOES put the Dervish at a disadvantage of fragility.
However, Eternal Aura recharges all your Dervish skills but itself. This made me come up with a new build idea that the Dervish, and the dervish only might excel at doing:
Echo Eternal Aura!

I haven't made an actual build yet and it is mostly just a concept.
But using a combination of Echo+Eternal Aura, and Mystic Sandstorm all fit together for a really great nuke. The problem? Energy management, of course!
This is where you take advantage of the inspiration attribute.

In a build with skills constantly recharging, Auspicious Incantation works wonders. So this should solve any energy management problems.

A choice of weaponry would usually be a staff in a build like this, but because it is a frontliner, I might recommend a casterset if you can manage the energy.

Anyways, with a build like this, and an unorganized post like mine, let's analyze what we could put as a build:

Echo
Eternal aura
Mystic Sandstorm
Auspicious Incantation
Aura of Thorns
Sand Shards
Aura of Holy Might
Conviction/PvE skill/Another enchantment/whatever/

The obvious strategy here is to invest as much as you can into Earth Prayers.
Personally, I prefer 12+1+2 so that you total up to 15 earth prayers.
An appropriate amount of Mysticism after that would be 11+1 or 10+2 (Whichever you have the most confidence in) then the rest into Inspiration Magic.
With the combination of Mysticism and Auspicious Incantation, this is quite the energy management. Wouldn't you agree?
This energy management allows one to continuously spam a constant renewing set of high damage, AoE nukes.

I didn't test this ingame, but I've strategized this for awhile. Hopefully someone could test it, as it could be just the thing to bring the Dervish into the metagame.

zelgadissan · Sep 07, 2009, 09:18 PM // 21:18

This looks like it'd be fine for NM, but I would really have my doubts about HM. I'll be the first to say I haven't tried it first hand, but I'm also curious about your definition of "high damage, AoE nukes".

Mystic Sandstorm is earth damage, Sand Shards is earth damage, Aura of Thorns is cripple+bleeding...the only armor-ignoring damage is from Eternal Aura and Aura of Holy Might, which is a maximum of 200, but the chances of hitting multiple enemies at cast of AoHM, cast of Eternal Aura, and removal of AoHM is relatively low. The rest will maybe add up to ~100 damage once you account for retarded amounts of enemy armor (HM of course). Even with Echoing Eternal Aura, you'll have at least 6-7 seconds of getting all your enchantments back up before you can do anything remotely productive again.

I'll give you that no other profession could do this as well as a Dervish...but hoping for meta shifting seems a little extreme.

Lishy · Sep 07, 2009, 09:39 PM // 21:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by zelgadissan

Mystic Sandstorm is earth damage, Sand Shards is earth damage, Aura of Thorns is cripple+bleeding...the only armor-ignoring damage is from Eternal Aura and Aura of Holy Might, which is a maximum of 200, but the chances of hitting multiple enemies at cast of AoHM, cast of Eternal Aura, and removal of AoHM is relatively low. The rest will maybe add up to ~100 damage once you account for retarded amounts of enemy armor (HM of course). Even with Echoing Eternal Aura, you'll have at least 6-7 seconds of getting all your enchantments back up before you can do anything remotely productive again.

Sand Shards is armor ignoring, last I checked. Or am I wrong?
Aura of thorns cripples the enemies, forcing them to stay inside multiple sand shards. Plus the bleeding helps.

True, Mystic Sandstorm is earth damage. But it's purpose is just to sacrifice the enchantments.
I do see what you mean by the 6-7 seconds of having to get everything up though.

This is just a concept I have. If anyone has ideas to improve upon the idea, do not hesitate to post!

Cuilan · Sep 07, 2009, 10:01 PM // 22:01

Sand Shards is not armor ignoring. It does 0-10 damage per in hard mode. You'll see a lot of 0s.

Ccat · Sep 07, 2009, 10:36 PM // 22:36

EDIT - This doesn't work. Tried it and it doesn't recharge itself. The description is that it recharges all other dervish skills...bit misleading, but sorry, no dice.

reaper with no name · Sep 09, 2009, 06:06 AM // 06:06

That's why you echo it.

Bloody Dominator · Sep 09, 2009, 11:22 AM // 11:22

I gave it a try against a suit of 100 armor and the damage output wasn't all that great: 10 dmg from the sand shards and about 40 from mystic sandstorm.

So i decided to put in ebon battle standard of honor to increase the dmg a bit. It worked, but i noticed the +12 dmg bonus i get from the standard didn't apply to Eternal aura and Aura of Holy Might.

I also run into another (minor problem). When u finish the third cycle the echoed aura will have run out and your original aura hasn't recharged yet. So to start a forth cycle u have to wait for about 3-4 sec, in which u are basically just standing there, probably getting killed (unless three cycles is enough to kill everything, i don't know)
And like Ccat said, the echoed aura DOESNT recharge the original one, which is a shame.
I wouldnt use this in HM, but in NM it could be fun and maybe if u put a shadowstep in the last slot u could use it to nuke shrines in JQ. I'll see how that goes.

Edit: On the plus side, this build has great e-managment, due to the high mysticism and auspicious incantation, u basically get all ur energy back after each cycle

Dazzen · Sep 09, 2009, 01:52 PM // 13:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bloody Dominator

I wouldnt use this in HM, but in NM it could be fun and maybe if u put a shadowstep in the last slot u could use it to nuke shrines in JQ. I'll see how that goes.

you can't use eternal aura in PvP, so no refresh of those nuking AoE...

Lishy · Sep 10, 2009, 01:50 AM // 01:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bloody Dominator

And like Ccat said, the echoed aura DOESNT recharge the original one, which is a shame

I'm not going to be able to log on guild wars for awhile, so I must just give this tidbit a huge "

"
Thanks for confirming though.
But hopefully this concept may give build ideas.