Curse

Paperfly · Jul 28, 2006, 11:34 AM // 11:34

OK, so it's a crazy, crazy time of the year right now, and none of us know which Dervish skills are going to be any good in the long run.

...Having said that, as I was standing by the Priest of Balthazar reading spell descriptions, this little beauty caught my eye:

Mystic Healing 5/1/2 Wind Prayers
for each enchantment on you, one party member is healed for 89(@16 Wind). No party member will be healed more than once. (<- paraphrase)

..."Zounds", I thought, "if only the Dervish class enjoyed stacking on four enchantments to guarantee a full Heal Party in the Arenas! And if only there were some kind of prefabricated build that used 80% of the skills I wanted anyway, so I wouldn't have to unlock much!"

You get the idea. Only three skills away from the Melandru prefab, I made:

12+4 Wind Prayers
10+1 Mysticism
8+1 Scythe Mastery

Crippling Sweep 5/0/15
Wounding Strike 10/0/3 <-
Mystic Healing 5/1/2 <-
Balthazar's Rage 10/0.75/5 <-
Heart of Holy Flame 10/0.75/8
Grenth's Fingers 10/0.75/8
Faithful Intervention 5/2/20
Resurrection Signet

Zealous +5E Scythe of Defense
Crippling +5E Scythe of Defense (standby swap option)

(the three skills marked with a "<-" are the ones that don't come built in)

Find a target - he doesn't even have to be the top priority, just someone who needs pressuring. Run right up to him and spout off the three damage enchantments in a row - if they hit so much the better, but if they don't you don't mind too much. Then just watch your energy bar tick up and fire off a Mystic Healing whenever it'd be helpful. Your enchants will wear off eventually - Balths' at the 20 second mark, the other two at 30, and Intervention whenever you get badly hurt - but will refund a fair bit of their own energy cost when the time comes to replace them.

On top of the highly delightful 89-point Heal Party every three seconds or so, the build brings three high-impact close range damage spells with non-insignificant effects when they wear off, and the ability to place a Cripple or Deep Wound fairly consistently on any target.

...And at worst, you can just stand and pummel for some acceptable Scythe damage.

My testing so far has consisted of about six hours' RA and TA (two Gladiator points, yay!), and I've come under various kinds of hate... And by and large pulled through quite well. When it comes right down to it, you're not a squishy and most of your spells have a low recharge - the two in conjunction mean you don't just plain wilt at the first sign of enchantment removal.