Curse

Great_Harvester · Jun 05, 2007, 06:57 PM // 18:57

Hello. I have been working on this Vow of Strength dervish build and so far its been both fun and effective. The skills/attributes spread are as follows:

Dervish/Rt

13 Scythe Mastery, 10+3
13 Earth Prayers, 11+2
10 Mysticism

Skills:

Vow of Strength: frees up skill slots with attack skill restriction.

Heart of Fury: synergizes well with vow of strength.

Mystic Regeneration: allows the build to tank (useful in RA especially).

Vital Boon: works marvelously with Flesh of my Flesh and Imbue Health.

Pious Concentration: Prevents interupts when using 4s cast Flesh of my Flesh.

Imbue Health: Quick heal to take some pressure off monks (extremely useful in RA).

Pious Haste: Cancel stance for Pious Concentration after you get the res off to prevent you from losing more enchantments and a speed boost.

Flesh of my Flesh: Hard res, very nice when you get stuck with people who don't bring res signets.

This build is pretty much a cross of a generic Vow of Strength Dervish and a Melandru Dervish. Instead of using Melandru to have high health for imbue/res I'm using Vital boon, primarily because I don't like the gimmikiness of Melandru with its short duration. Naturally without Melandru you're far more suceptible to conditions, which is the main problem I have with this build. I like Vow of Strength in this build because it lets me maintain high damage while having a great deal of survivability from the rest of the earth prayers line. For Example, I have seen hits as high as 222 on elementalists while still maintaining roughly 668 health cap and max regen.

Comments/criticism?

EDIT: Apparently I can't add, I had the hp cap wrong.

ArKaiN · Jun 05, 2007, 11:05 PM // 23:05

Meh. You get tons more damage from Mystic Sweep+Eremite's Attack, as has been mathematically proven elsewhere tenths of times.
If you go D/Mo you can get both a hard res and a way out of blind.

Great_Harvester · Jun 05, 2007, 11:51 PM // 23:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by ArKaiN

Meh. You get tons more damage from Mystic Sweep+Eremite's Attack, as has been mathematically proven elsewhere tenths of times.
If you go D/Mo you can get both a hard res and a way out of blind.

The point isn't to pump out the best damage, the idea is to be a balance between defense, support and offense. The only monk res that matches Flesh of My Flesh in terms of speed at 4 seconds is Vengeance. Flesh of My Flesh gives me a fast 0 recharge res that still returns players to a good health total.

Great_Harvester · Jun 06, 2007, 03:42 AM // 03:42

11 hours and only 1 reply...I was hoping for a little more feedback

.

XvArchonvX · Jun 06, 2007, 04:18 AM // 04:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Great_Harvester

The point isn't to pump out the best damage, the idea is to be a balance between defense, support and offense. The only monk res that matches Flesh of My Flesh in terms of speed at 4 seconds is Vengeance. Flesh of My Flesh gives me a fast 0 recharge res that still returns players to a good health total.

I personally don't think that the support you provide from this build makes up for the lack of damage. Replace VoS with Reaper's Sweep and put in an attack skill and you'll have more damage as well as Deep Wound for a good finishing spike. Taking Pious Concentration for the sole purpose of ressing also seems like a waste of a skill slot to me. There are very rare instances where there's any point into bringing a hard rez in RA since your team is probably too weak to get a glad point if one rez per person isn't enough. Flesh of my Flesh isn't really a bad choice for a rez, but in RA you will probably want some utility to counter the massive amounts of blind and hex hate designed specifically for melee reliant type builds such as yours. Mending Touch and Holy Veil are strong choices for a dervish that can also be used to support teammates, both at a lower cost than Imbue Health.

With the rest of the build aside, I think the problem still comes down to the fact that VoS is simply a weak elite.

ArKaiN · Jun 06, 2007, 05:45 AM // 05:45

I agree.
And also, what's the point in taking an elite that says "You do more damage" if you're not trying to pump out big damage?
Wanna play support? Run EDA. Those are awesome.

Anarion Silverhand · Jun 06, 2007, 11:15 AM // 11:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by ArKaiN

I agree.
And also, what's the point in taking an elite that says "You do more damage" if you're not trying to pump out big damage?

My thoughts excactly. If you're running Vow of Strength, set your attributes to maximize it's effect. Its not worth it otherwise.

Great_Harvester · Jun 06, 2007, 12:58 PM // 12:58

Thanks for your replies everyone. You guys seem to not like vow of strength, both because its a mediocre elite and:

"And also, what's the point in taking an elite that says "You do more damage" if you're not trying to pump out big damage?".

The reason for vow of strength is to free up skill slots in the build. Sure, Vow of Strength may not by itself outwiegh the benefit of having attack skills, but it gives me more room to include everything. If I were taking attack skills, lets assume 3 (what my guild has me run when I gvg on melandru dervish), what 3 would I take out? Vow, mystic regeneration and boon, at which point I have 0 survivability. What about taking out pious concentration, flesh of my flesh, and imbue health for those atack skills? Well that puts me at 0 utility, and theres no point to walking around tanking a whole match.

The overall damage on vow of strength may not match up to certain attack skill combinations, but it still pumps out a very respectable amount of damage while letting me do other things. People always run away when I start attacking em, and with pious haste up it's free criticals for nearly 140 dmg every swing. Thats not bad at all. Better still is when I find something softer than a paragon and hit nearly 200.

"There are very rare instances where there's any point into bringing a hard rez in RA since your team is probably too weak to get a glad point if one rez per person isn't enough."

I don't go to RA to get glad points, I do it just for fun, probably why I have so few glad points to begin with

.

EDIT: Just so you know, I probably won't post in here for awhile as I have to leave soon, so don't freak out on me or anything, I'll be back.

Great_Harvester · Jun 06, 2007, 09:26 PM // 21:26

"Mending Touch and Holy Veil are strong choices for a dervish that can also be used to support teammates, both at a lower cost than Imbue Health."

Imbue health is a 1/4s 10s recharge heal that will go off for 200+ each time (thats why I wanted tanking skills, to keep hp high for imbue and flesh of my flesh). Flesh of My Flesh is one of the fastest resses in the game, and boasts a nice hp level to your target. Now, how is a 5 energy -1 regen enchantment with 12s reuse better than either of those? It seems to me that hex removal is best left to the monks/flagrunners/EleMo since they can carry things like divert hexes and invest the poitns required to make it worthwhile (not to mention an ele has a massive energy pool to support high energy secondary class skills). Mending touch certainly isn't bad, if I were /mo instead of rt I would certainly take emnding touch, but again, how is removing 2 conditions better than a 1/4 second 200+ heal and one of the most reliable resses in the game?

ArKaiN · Jun 06, 2007, 11:40 PM // 23:40

For one, if there are spikers on an opposing team and they have half a brain, they can very well target you and wait until you cut your life in half to blow you away in a second.
Same with imbue health. You did notice those skills have a drawback, didn't you?
Also, Holy Veil is not -1 energy. Learn how to use skills.

Great_Harvester · Jun 07, 2007, 12:16 AM // 00:16

"For one, if there are spikers on an opposing team and they have half a brain, they can very well target you and wait until you cut your life in half to blow you away in a second.
Same with imbue health. You did notice those skills have a drawback, didn't you?
Also, Holy Veil is not -1 energy. Learn how to use skills."

There is really no need to be so hostile. Holy Veil has an upkeep of 1, hence, -1 energy regen. If I'm ressing/imbuing, its because someone was spiked or is getting spiked, meaning I'm not, its perfectly safe to use imbue/flesh of my flesh. You seem to be under the impression that imbue is like the monk version, which it isn't. The dervish imbue doesn't subtract from your hp. Please, don't post again if you are going to be insulting and rude, constructive criticism on the other hand is welcome.

Coloneh · Jun 07, 2007, 02:32 AM // 02:32

yes the skill holy veil has an upkeep of 1 energy regen, but you have to a complete idiot to maintain it on someone.

1. ally hexed
2. cast veil on them
3. dawanya's kiss if you have it/they need it
4. remove veil

-1 energy for at maximum 1 second

Great_Harvester · Jun 07, 2007, 02:52 AM // 02:52

Holy veil is a great skill for a monk, just not all that great for a dervish. It's pretty counter productive for a primarily melee class to need to stop to take care of hexes. Thats why I like imbue health, 1/4 second cast time is nothing and leaves me with plenty of room to catch back up to the target with pious haste; I'll have only missed one swing maximum.