Curse

TheOneMephisto · Jul 30, 2006, 12:59 PM // 12:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warskull

We are running

16 Myst
13 Wind
3 Prot

Balth Rage
Grenth's Fingers
Heart of Holy Flame
RoF
Faithful Intervention
CoP
Avatar of Balthazar
Rez Sig

Why is RoF in taht build?

H2BH · Jul 30, 2006, 01:30 PM // 13:30

Well Ive been playing as an E/Mo and thankfully I havent had any trouble with dervishes at all. They seem mostly weak to alot of elemental damage, mist form all but makes them useless. Ice spike hits the avg dervish for around 70 a shot....takes about 4 casts of ice spear and a frozen burst and they're down.

fb2000 · Jul 30, 2006, 02:10 PM // 14:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Why is RoF in taht build?

RoF = 5 en spammable enchantment. when it ends, u get +8 energy and +54hp (? or something) from mysticism. its a really good energy management/selfheal..

H2HB, you have obviously not experienced being GANKED from ~7 dervishes, each hitting (actually, AoE armor ignoring relatively big range..) with like 100holy dmg per sec. think what happens when they block you..

H2BH · Jul 30, 2006, 02:37 PM // 14:37

Nope, most of my experiance has been in TA or RA in which case its only been 4 at once....which i imagine is alot more tolerable, and so far I havent really even had a dervish deal me any damage due to mist form....seems like 90% of thier damage is melee attack based making them pretty easy to deal with using my build.

But seriously that RoF energy regen combo makes me cry...that a rediculous combo....basicly its like saying im going to spend 5 energy to gain 3 and not only negate any damage you might do to me, Im also going to gain like 30hp doing it.....oh yeah and btw i can do this non stop every couple of seconds BOO_YAH ----lame

Warskull · Jul 30, 2006, 03:19 PM // 15:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by H2BH

Nope, most of my experiance has been in TA or RA in which case its only been 4 at once....which i imagine is alot more tolerable, and so far I havent really even had a dervish deal me any damage due to mist form....seems like 90% of thier damage is melee attack based making them pretty easy to deal with using my build.

But seriously that RoF energy regen combo makes me cry...that a rediculous combo....basicly its like saying im going to spend 5 energy to gain 3 and not only negate any damage you might do to me, Im also going to gain like 30hp doing it.....oh yeah and btw i can do this non stop every couple of seconds BOO_YAH ----lame

You have clearly never played against the D/Mos being run in that screenshot. They don't use Scythe damage, they use PBAoE spells that ignore mist form. They would just walk up to you and kill you without heed to your enchantments.

H2BH · Jul 30, 2006, 03:39 PM // 15:39

Nope, as I said Ive only played in RA and TA and apparently everyone there is to retarded to coordinate anything like that i guess. I havent played as a dervish cause i really didnt care so i have no idea what spells they are using that acctualy work, i was just saying from what i could tell from TA and RA, most everything ive seen from a dervish has been melee based damage, or they simply havent been able to get close enough due to roots and dieing so rediculously fast from ice spear. Not sure but as far as I can tell in 4v4 dervish is no problem.

Im sure its different if u were immobile stuck between 7 guys all using a holy AoE and sythes ontop of it regaining energy and hp, but for the most part if nightfall releases and suddenly end game pvp is all "D/Mo looking for dervish group" and people are running around 8v8 with all dervish only teams Anet might catch a clue and solve the issue

Is there even any type of aromr the resists holy? holy damage ignores all armor reguardless whether its AL form your equipment or AL from a spell, and holy doesnt quailife as elemental damage correct?

Drewfense · Jul 30, 2006, 04:03 PM // 16:03

Really I blame Warskull for all of these broken builds. If anything goes wrong in Guild Wars it is normally his fault.

neoflame · Jul 30, 2006, 04:40 PM // 16:40

Every skill that mentions enchantments in the game will be changed to mention "non-Dervish enchantments", and millions of players will quit in disgust.

Lt.Crumpet · Jul 30, 2006, 08:00 PM // 20:00

idk exactly, but paragons have what, 2 pips of energy regen? energy burn/whither/mailaise/energy surge/whatever you want seems like it could shut down a primary paragon pretty quick. with no energy to cast shouts n whatnot they cant gain energy from em.
and dervishes rely on enchants rite? so how bout well o tha profane, lingering curse, or God help me if this starts up again, a NR spammer. if ya plant it rite, sure it would give em a huge health/energy boost at the begining, but it would slow em down alot after.

just my observations.

fb2000 · Jul 30, 2006, 08:03 PM // 20:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by H2BH

Nope, as I said Ive only played in RA and TA and apparently everyone there is to retarded to coordinate anything like that i guess. I havent played as a dervish cause i really didnt care so i have no idea what spells they are using that acctualy work, i was just saying from what i could tell from TA and RA, most everything ive seen from a dervish has been melee based damage, or they simply havent been able to get close enough due to roots and dieing so rediculously fast from ice spear. Not sure but as far as I can tell in 4v4 dervish is no problem.

Im sure its different if u were immobile stuck between 7 guys all using a holy AoE and sythes ontop of it regaining energy and hp, but for the most part if nightfall releases and suddenly end game pvp is all "D/Mo looking for dervish group" and people are running around 8v8 with all dervish only teams Anet might catch a clue and solve the issue

Is there even any type of aromr the resists holy? holy damage ignores all armor reguardless whether its AL form your equipment or AL from a spell, and holy doesnt quailife as elemental damage correct?

well go to TA, chances that ure gonna run into 4 d/mos is very large at this moment. We played some TA with friends before. before the dervishes got popular there too (I think they firstly showed up on a massive scale in HA) we had long winning streaks (basically a balanced team, didnt lose anything..).

then then dervishes came, you basically strive to do anything, coz you keep on running, and even tho ure kiting ur ass off, the dervish uses CoP near u and u get Burning Crippled on u, and guess what happens next..

in HA its the worst it can possibly get.

2 of the enchantments do Holy Damage, the other 2 skills do cold dmg (or at least these are the most commonly used ones). I cant really begin to imagine why anet would do the skills as they are currently, no character has ever done that kind of armor ignoring AoE dmg before. Also another amusing thing, the +hp armor for dervishes boasts with about 2 time more hp than the same for the other classes.

as for the future, they will be nerfed (anet cant allow that not to happen..). I just have issues with them ruining the weekend

Neo-LD · Jul 30, 2006, 10:13 PM // 22:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

The Dervish is a bit puzzling, and I haven't found its niche yet. An awful lot of its skills are DDs or conditional self-heals (universally bad in PvP.) The avatars look great until you realize that you can only keep them up 50% of the time, which makes them a pretty crappy basis for a build. Overall, I didn't see any skills in the Dervish tree that make me want to bring them over another character.

I realize that was written before the power of the D/Mo was discovered and abused, but I still feel I have to respond to it.

While it makes sense that a class full of "Direct Damage spells and Self Heals" would be bad, the Dervish in its current state is obviously not bad at all. Exhibit A, the teams of mass D/Mos that are currently rolling through the top of the ladder. It reminds me alot of triple smite, only it is more overwhelming and unstoppable in almost every way possible.

First, to address the PBAoE DD spells and why they work where all other DDs fail. Lets look at all the factors that make PBAoE and DD normally bad. Casters are limited by the fact that DDs often cost too much, have too long of a recharge, which basically menas that a DD based caster cannot sustain offense or pressure for any medium/long period of time. Also, specifically to PBAoE, there is a miserable extra aftercast which makes them impossible to chain and use maximally.

Now lets look at why D/Mos using PBAoE DD are actually quite devastating. Mysticism ensures a steady supply of energy (also health, but that is irrelevent here). Also, the DD spells that D/Mos use have very short recharges (8s). Therefore, being limited by neither energy or recharge, Dervish DD actually does quite well: Dervishes do not have any problems sustaining their offense. One other thing, since the D/Mo PBAoE spells are actually enchantments, they do not suffer the extra aftercast penelty of normal PBAoE. So theres another advatage.

D/Mo offense is further strengthened by the fact that ALL of their spells have a fairly large AoE, deal quite a bit of damage relative to other DDs, and leave a variety of conditions on nearby enemies when the D/Mo uses CoP. Add to that, D/Mos can heal themselves to full at will by using CoP, and (half of the time) travel faster than sprinter warriors and have more than 100 AL.

And that, in a nutshell, is why the metagame has been temporarily been taken hostage by PBAoE DD spammers.

Wasteland Squidget · Jul 31, 2006, 01:13 AM // 01:13

Pretty good analysis, Neo. I admit that my first assumption upon seeing the high number of Dervish DDs was that they would be crap, because all other DDs in Guild Wars have been crap. Obviously passing over these skills was a bad idea.

Looking over the D/Mo build, I think the problem comes back to Mysticism. Mysticism outstrips every other primary attribute by allowing both massive energy management and self-healing with relatively few drawbacks. It's similar to Expertise in that it allows you to run a lot of useful Dervish self-enchantments without any energy management on your bar. That combined with the health gain from constant enchantment spam makes the D/Mo with DDs simply too strong. It's constant AoE with no drawbacks, insane self-healing, and very difficult to shut down. We elected not to play GvG after friday night simply because it's just D/Mo vs D/Mo and there really isn't any point.

Basically, I think the Dervish needs to pick a basic role and stick to it. I think a damaging spellcaster would have an interesting effect on the game, but being able to deal massive damage needs to come with drawbacks. Their magic should be easier to shut down than it is currently (more 2s cast times would be good), and as a soloing character they should be comparable to warriors - able to gank some NPCs, but not able to kill most flag runners or skirmish-specific characters like rangers and eles. Right now the massive healing of Mysticism allows a Dervish with CoP and Reversal to win almost any 1v1 or 2v2 as well as contribute to the battle field as damage that's incredibly hard to mitigate.

I'll be interested to see what Anet puts in after this weekend. Removing the heal from Mysticism would be a good start. Without that, the D/Mo build is like IWAY - scary pressure, but drops quickly if your team is competent and doesn't panic.

Guillaume De Sonoma · Jul 31, 2006, 06:43 AM // 06:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lt.Crumpet

idk exactly, but paragons have what, 2 pips of energy regen? energy burn/whither/mailaise/energy surge/whatever you want seems like it could shut down a primary paragon pretty quick. with no energy to cast shouts n whatnot they cant gain energy from em.
and dervishes rely on enchants rite? so how bout well o tha profane, lingering curse, or God help me if this starts up again, a NR spammer. if ya plant it rite, sure it would give em a huge health/energy boost at the begining, but it would slow em down alot after.

just my observations.

My guild has ran Paragon spike in Halls and done very well with it. Aria of Power works extremely well for Paragons.

Patrograd · Jul 31, 2006, 07:12 AM // 07:12

Seems to me that the main issue with the D/Mos is the abuse of CoP. Seems that no-one on the dev team made this link, or realised how overpowered it was

Secondly, Avatar of Balthazar is just silliness - it gives up to 43 seconds of +33% speed and +40 armour for 5 energy (I think). When combined with PBAoE cripples and massive PBAoE damage, ridiculous energy management and huge self healing thats just, well, madness.

I saw something like 10 battles on obs mode last night, and every single one featured at least 1 D/Mo bomb squad, and their opponents were also almost exclusively "gimmick" teams, either ranger spike or blood spike or SBRI. I think i only saw one balanced team all night, and rather ironically they won against a shockingly poor team running D/Mos who had somehow managed to get to rank 92:-)

Further worth noting that alot of the teams in the top 100 after this weekend aren't usually ranked anything like so high.

D/Mo's overpowered? Never.

Wasteland Squidget · Jul 31, 2006, 07:20 AM // 07:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

Secondly, Avatar of Balthazar is just silliness - it gives up to 43 seconds of +33% speed and +40 armour for 5 energy (I think). When combined with PBAoE cripples and massive PBAoE damage, ridiculous energy management and huge self healing thats just, well, madness.

I actually think Avatar of Balth is fine. It provides a pretty nice effect, but the downtime makes it extremely hard to build around. If your build requires you to be up close a lot then you're just going to get spiked while Avatar of Balth is down. The other avatar spells run into similar issues.

The main problem with the D/Mo build is that their massive self-healing from all the enchant stacking makes them nearly invincible. The extra armor from Balth magnifies the power of the self-healing, but the root problem is the Mysticism health, not the armor.

Byron · Jul 31, 2006, 07:22 AM // 07:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

Cruel spear (I think its called that) which adds a deep wound to a moving foe for 7 adrenaline and is non-elite looks like a very tasty skill imho, and I had alot of fun with it last night. Easy deep wounds are always ftw

The P/W build I Was trying friday night was incredibly fun. It mostly abused "Coward!," as getting a KD at range with adrenaline is just fantastic, and that Paragon attack elites are lacking. With coward, getting the deep wound attack is also easy, since the KD stops them from moving. Otherwise, a P/W can pack the typical frenzy/rush/healing signet, and spam frenzy from a relatively safe distance.

That said, I don't think paragons are any replacement to warriors. I can see 2 warrior/1 paragon teams becoming an effective balanced frontline, though.

Ka RaTae · Jul 31, 2006, 12:07 PM // 12:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by H2BH

Nope, most of my experiance has been in TA or RA in which case its only been 4 at once....which i imagine is alot more tolerable, and so far I havent really even had a dervish deal me any damage due to mist form....seems like 90% of thier damage is melee attack based making them pretty easy to deal with using my build.

But seriously that RoF energy regen combo makes me cry...that a rediculous combo....basicly its like saying im going to spend 5 energy to gain 3 and not only negate any damage you might do to me, Im also going to gain like 30hp doing it.....oh yeah and btw i can do this non stop every couple of seconds BOO_YAH ----lame

Then you got lucky, because the team areans is where we developed and proved to the rest of the guild they should dump the R/P build and dominate the weekend with our build. We went 90-2 in the TA's the first day. With 76 of them being flawless while running 4 D/Mo's. Finally we got or guild onboard and promptly won the Hall of Heros. After that we tried and destroyed in GVG. WHAT an AWESOME WEEKEND of fun!!!!! Something GW has been lacking for a while...FUN....IMO.

BrutusV · Jul 31, 2006, 02:43 PM // 14:43

Went against Derway in HA and our starburst spike just got rolled over. IMO Mysticism is just plain broken with the enchant spamming that heals and returns energy. Even Ether Prodigy wasn't this broken before its nerf.

Thinking of all the other professions, with the exception of Monk, there is no profession that people would consistently run at maximum primary attribute.

To fix this, in addition to removing the auto-heal from Mysticism, I suggest moving all skills out of the attribute line. Similar to how Energy Storage and Soul Reaping had almost no skills related to them in the beginning of GW. This forces a choice between having actually useful skills or investing in energy management.

Divineshadows · Jul 31, 2006, 05:32 PM // 17:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ka RaTae

destroyed in GVG. WHAT an AWESOME WEEKEND of fun!!!!! Something GW has been lacking for a while...FUN....IMO.

Destroyed GvG is exactly what Spearmen did. Had Spearmen not done it, some other guild would have discovered the combination and done the same. While the fault is squarely on A-net for releasing a beta that wasn't even anywhere near ready for beta, your guild solidified itself a tainted image among the GW community and destroyed the fun of many guilds trying to run more typical (i.e. pre July 28th) builds.

I believe the majority of the player base reading these forums would agree with me that the D/Mo build just makes me want to throw up and that the end of the weekend felt like it did not come soon enough.

Ka RaTae · Jul 31, 2006, 05:45 PM // 17:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

Destroyed GvG is exactly what Spearmen did. Had Spearmen not done it, some other guild would have discovered the combination and done the same. While the fault is squarely on A-net for releasing a beta that wasn't even anywhere near ready for beta, your guild solidified itself a tainted image among the GW community and destroyed the fun of many guilds trying to run more typical (i.e. pre July 28th) builds.

I believe the majority of the player base reading these forums would agree with me that the D/Mo build just makes me want to throw up and that the end of the weekend felt like it did not come soon enough.

Please...the Spearmen did exactly what ANET needed. We showed them what flaws were out there. Stop trying to act like the Spearmen killed GW. Would you rather broken stuff make it to final release? As far as guild rank goes....all these supposed elite guilds and their snobish attitudes got what they deserved in my opinion. GvG is supposed to be a war....in a war you need to adapt or die. If you can't counter it...copy it...if you didn't copy it...and went with your I'm too good to run that attitude, then you lost, and deserve to loose. Play to win! There are no rules in war. Unwritten rules aren't rules at all.