[MERGED] Balancing Dervish Profession

Actually there's a 3rd you add for 30 energy and another 8 second recharge, Heart of Holy Flame. And of course all these have effects on the way out.

And you mention enchantment loss as a negative effect - how so when they heal, get energy, and have an 'on the way out' effect to boot? That's the thing, they went crazy.

So a typical CoP chain with intervention already on tap was

these 3 AoEs all nearby and chain casted very quickly
CoP
BIG health return, BIG energy return, all conds off, all hexes off, enemies burning, crippled, your ready to resume shortly.

I think it's a bigger gaff than the D/A miss attacks myself, but good they fixed that one quickly. They *really* have to address this though.

Quite frankly as these new primaries get sweeter and sweeter it'd be nice if they look at a couple of the ones that simply aren't like strength and energy storage. Interesting how many of the cores have to work pretty hard on energy management while tools seem to be getting easier and simpler (and even health to boot for the Dervish, a first!).

There's a reason you saw sword or axe + energy, offhand focus D/Mos running around anywhere - current classes could only dream of the damage, energy return, and health return these guys were getting.

get 6 warriors around one, SS+Empathy+insidious parasite=GGKKIMANOOBTHXBAI

Greetings,

Having played the dervish premade Melandru's Prophet in both Random Arenas and Alliance Battles, I felt the need to chime in on this topic.

The first topic to discuss is Contemplation of Purity. That skill removing ALL enchants is just simply way too abusable with the dervish (and any future enchants that trigger on ending).
n my mind's eye, I see a dervish's skillbar containing 6 enchants, CoP, and res sig. The dervish simply cycles 3 enchants, CoPs, does the next 3 enchants, CoPs, rinse & repeat.
The idea that I have to support is for the CoP enchant removal to be based on Divine Favor ranks. Now, as far as the actual numbers, that requires more understanding of the interaction of all skills than I have. However, I'll go ahead and put forward a number as a starting point:

Contemplation of Purity 5e 1/4cast 10cycle
Skill. Lose 1 enchantment for every 2 ranks of Divine Favor. For each one lost...

This would still allow a typical monk using this skill to have the use of 4-8 enchantments (8-16 Divine Favor), depending on that monk's build.
Now, as I hinted earlier, I don't claim to have a full understanding of the interaction of all skills, but this seems like a fairly balanced change to CoP. Also, I'm not aware of any other monk secondaries that use CoP as a standard part of their build. If there is, then my idea might need further tweaking.

The second topic I wish to touch on is the Mysticism attribute. I don't see a problem with this attribute giving health and energy. If taking into consideration the fact that dervishes channel, and imbue themselves with, the very essence of the gods (ref. the Avatar elites), it makes sense to me that the same essence leave its mark on the dervish. The essence fills the dervish and rejuvenates them. This is represented as a health and energy gain.
Now, as for the actual numbers of how much health and energy the dervish gains, I'm not too sure about. Certainly, it might seem overpowered, but is that because of Mysticism alone, or is it because of the skills that each dervish was using? My bet is on the skills. I say that the number gains from Mysticism be left alone.

Let's keep up this thread of ideas about the dervish. Also, perhaps, start up another thread about Paragons to discuss their pros/cons too. I'm sure that amongst all the dervishes, there was enough people playing Paragons for a decent discussion to take place. If we present enough well-thought ideas, supported by reasons, then ANet will more than likely pay attention and incorporate the ideas into the balancing of the two new classes.

Merry meet, merry met, merry meet again,
Wyldchild777

Hello everyone,

I'm kind of new to the forums but I had a thought about the enchanment AoE which seems to be what everyone is worried about. What if instead of changing anything else they simply make it so that the AoE damage only hits for max if it expires completely. In other words make it so that the damage done is directly proportionate to the amount of time the enchantment is on them. I haven't done the math but it seems to me that it would balance things quite well without totally destroying it's usefulness. Let me know what you guys think.

Ahh god. I love Lingering curse... And scourge healing... and then ench remover. boy they get SO friggen mad.

Hmm, Dervishes deal high SPIKE damage, use CONDITIONS to help them kill, and have to ENCHANT themselves...

Now let's see, where did I put that brain of mine... Oh there it is.

Try this; Monk spamming Protective Spirit/using Protective Bond, Monk or Ritualist spamming Martyr, and a necro using Well of the Profane, Desicrate Enchantments and Defile Enchantments.

Now I see a group that is unaffected by the high damage, never has conditions on them for longer than 5 seconds, and keeps enchantments off the dervish while dealing lots of damage when they are enchanted.

So don't tell me that there are no good counters to Dervishes.


That being said, I do think that Derivish's Primary Artibute needs some reworking. It seems to be the most powerful and useful Primary of all. Imagine if Necromancers got energy AND health every time something died. Or if Elementalists could raise their max energy AND health. Maybe monks should get healed by divine favour everytime they cast somthing on an ally.

It would probably be best to make Mysticism ONLY give the Dervishes energy, seeing how no other profession can gain health out of "no-where".

Alot of people are going to broad on their balancing...You Don't Balance a problem, you Balance the cause of the problem.

The problem lays in the fact that the Dervish Enchantments are too good...

I mean a monk could already stack enchantments on herself and CoP them off to clean all conditions and hexes, and go back to full health...But what would it Do other than that? It isn't a practical move because it adds nothing to the battle..

A dervish on the other hand, wihle doing this, is Spreading conditions like a madman, and doing loads of Armor Ignoring AoE Dmg...

Look at Balthazar's Rage for a second...104 AoE Armor Ignoring dmg on a 3/4 cast and 5 recharge...

With that extra hp chest and +40 armor/33% movement speed close to half the time with an unstrippable elite form, that'd just have them at 100...

I don't think it's the armor, it's really the mechanic of what they can do with enchantments. Big damage, fast casts, cheap costs, effects on the way out on top of their primary on top of synergies of their own skills or, most obviously and abusively, with CoP.

Guess we'll see.

But right now they seem to be really too good at too many things.

So, somehow your Monks' enchants aren't affected by Well of Profane, yet the Dervishes' are? I think not.

Not to mention you can't Prot Spirit everyone. And the Dervish damage is AoE; and not a small AoE... it's pretty large radius. It only takes 3 different AoE chains (Balth's Rage, Grenth's Fingers, Heart of the Holy Flame) to kill pretty much anyone, as your stacked with like -9 degen at the end of it, as well.

Nerf the class too much and they might as well just not include the class in the first place.

Contemplation should be reworked, but other than a few minor tweaks, the Dervish skills should be left as it is.

I generally think its better to buff what's weak rather than nerf what's good. Balance can be created in both a high powered playing field and a low powered playing field, but the high powered playing field is so much more fun ^^

I got to say that everything in your post is so true.

PEOPLE remember this was only a BETA TEST & not the final release. And the next Preview(Beta Test) will be for PvE, where we all will see what changes Anet has start doing.

Then when Nightfall is released, we all will see how different the changes where from the PvP beta to PvE beta to final game.

So please stop with the nerfing chants, & wait an see what Anet does.

Wells are allied. Why would anyone ever use Well Of Power and Well Of blood if it healed the enemy?

Well, I certainly didn't mean to start an up roar with my comments on CoP. Trust me I know just how useful this skill is when playing a monk.
So I have another suggestion that may help that issue, but it would not help the issue mentioned by Lyra Song.
This is kind of out there but, what if Anet could implement a system in which skills/spells from one class's PRIMARY attribute could NOT be used by another class. Now, without being able to put points in there anyway most people shouldn't be running these skills, at least not effectively. So by restricting that class's primary skills to only that class, you could solve a portion of the problem.

Wow, that just might be one of the BEST if not the BEST idea i have heard..IF i'm understanding it right.

Balthazar's Rage activates the 88 armor ignoring damage at the beginning of the enchantment.

however i think that idea works fine specifically for the enchantments that affect only after they end.

I have not seen alot of threads focusing on paragon except alot of threads are firing at dervish because they got beaten badly in arenas by Dervishes, but Dervish and paragon definitely need a few minor modifications.

I wonder why paragon's armor has 80 def with 10 ele def and 10 fire or cold def, and dervish armor got only 70 def? Paragon is a backline supporter for sake. it is capable of dealing damages, healing others and dealing conditions. Why paragon needs 80 def anyway? Monk is a backline supporter also. Does that mean monk's armor need to be 80 defense with ele def too?

Dervish works wonderfully in number similar to smiting monks, but with or without an avartar skill and with 70 def armor, Dervish would be like an assassin (useless profession). It will get interrupted while trying to use a skill. Eventually, Dervish would be a sitting duck during recharge time. Dervish's def armor should be 80 plus 10 ele def and 10 fire def or 10 cold def since dervish will be the frontliner up against monsters and any things.

Definitely Dervish and Paragon are hot hot hot

deleted double post.

The Mysticism attribute is really all that needs to be nerfed, imo. It should only be 1 mana for every 4 ranks and 2 health per rank (or a % basis like Ranger Expertise).

CoP in general does need another 5 second increase in the recharge time.

For Paragons those spears should go a bit slower for attack speed. Lightning Spear was also ridiculous as well with a 2 second recharge.

Sadly I think that most people on here think that if you make the dervish not broken, then you've made them useless. That's why you'll see them defend any part of the dervish that makes them highly abusable.

One, I don't know who said it, but the Avatars are fine. It's pretty much the only elites that they have as of yet, and outside of melandru most of them are just two other skills merged into one with a massive recharge. (120 seconds)

As for the AoE enchants, I think it would be fine to cut the damage in half. 40 or so damage, + conditions or healing when they come off. Before this weekend, people would have loved to get their hands on such a skill. But of course now people will think that's taking nerfing too far.

Lastly, either the point requirements for Mysticism needs to go up alittle bit (lessening the healing and energy gain) or the recharge on many enchants needs to go up. So that the removal and reapplication of them is Useable, not ABuseable.

On top of that, increasing the energy cost of the more effective ones to 10 would be useful. For a class that regains energy, an increase in energy cost is nothing. People think it's okay that their skills pretty much cost nothing? 5 nrg skill that removes an enchant, effectively giving 5 nrg + health?

Why not tie CoP enchantment removal to the number of conditions/hexes on the caster? So if a dervish has no hexes or conditions on them, CoP would remove nothing.

This would preserve the utility of CoP for monks for self preservation without jumping through hoops to recategorize Dervish enchantments.


On a different track, modify dervish enchantments do that they only do the expiration effect when they are ended by a dervish skill, enemy removal, or by naturally expiring. Much more difficult concept to understand and code, but it would keep the concept of a dervish intact while removing the CoP abuse.

My friend wanted to test the dervish against me, so we took out my warrior and ranger.

He had me hit him to about 40% health. Then he did 2 things: Vital Boon, then signet of Piety and he was back to full health.

Vital boon costs 5 energy. When he removed it with signet of piety, Vital boon gave him at least 135 health (i dont know the exact number because i dont know his rune setup, but 114 is at 12), signet of piety gave him at least 114 health, and then mysticism bonus of at least 6 energy (at 12 mysticism) and another 18 health.

thats at least 267 health for the cost of nothing o.O, in fact you gain energy!!

And you can do this every 8 seconds. x_x


I think the enchantments really should only take effect when the end "naturally", but maybe thats too much of a nerf?

Its like illusion of weakness right now, except much much more powerful.

There have been a few suggestions for Mysticism to keep the energy gain, but lose the health gain, and I think this is backwards.

The Dervish should keep the health gain, but lose the energy gain. The class already has 4 energy pips, and we already have classes where the primary attribute is essentially "Have more energy" (Elementalist = have more energy, Ranger = use less energy, Necromancer = get energy when things die, Assassin = get energy on critical hit, Paragon = get energy for using shouts).

Without the energy gain from losing the enchants they'd have to be a little more careful with them, wouldn't be able to spam through them like mad, but would still be able to pop them for extra health they wouldn't otherwise have.

Enough with the energy management primary attributes. They're different and make for different playing styles, we know energy is important, we get it. But do something different.

ChAnGiNg DeRvIsH EnChAnTmEnTs WiLl ScReW MySt.

for whatever reasons, I have not seen alot of threads focusing on paragon except alot of threads are firing at dervish. They are still at beta testing stage. Definitely Dervish and paragon need a few minor modifications.

I wonder why paragon's armor has 80 def with 10 ele def and 10 fire or cold def, and dervish armor got only 70 def. Paragon is a backline supporter for sake. it is capable of dealing alot of damages, healing others and dealing conditions. Why paragon needs 80 def anyway? Monk is a backline supporter also. Does that mean monk's armor need to be 80 defense with 10 ele def too?

Dervish works wonderfully in number similar to smiting monks, but with or without an avartar skill and with 70 def armor, Dervish alone would be like an assassin (useless profession). It will get interrupted while trying to use a skill. Eventually, Dervish would be a sitting duck during recharge time. It can't tank like warrior can. Dervish's def armor should be at least 80 plus 10 ele def and 10 fire def or 10 cold def since dervish will be the frontliner up against monsters and any things.

umm no.....

Dervishes have massive self heals, and do massive area effect dammage. And you want more armour for him?

paragons may be backline supporters at times, but they've also got frontline chants, where they need to get into the thick of things for the warrior to hear and benifit from. Paragon armour is fine, if they can do a little tanking then so be it.

Heres the problem. A class who can cast AoE damage, remove all enchants and cause side effects, heal itself and manage energy all at the same time. No class has ever had this advantage! Remove enchants? Why should they care if you do! That's what Dervs are all about. Mysticism should give health per rank and a fixed amount of energy dependant on rank like 1-5 instead of the actual form or health and energy up to a limit of popped enchants (for every 1-4 removed enchants you gain X health and Y energy)

Their enchants should have longer recharge or deal less damage.

thats exaggerating. i agree that dervs have a few balance issues, but then again I was pwning dervs ALL WEEKEND with backfire + SS... so maybe people just need to rethink their lame strats (which is a positive thing for a game like this... whats the skill of running a cookie cutter hoh build for 2 years straight... sounds boring.

Thats an ignorant, immature comment. Whoever cant beat a dervish needs to be fired... A dervish is no match for the right kind of Mesmer, and never will be. GG.

Way to go on owning all the unskilled players that were playing a D/Mo. If you had actually run into one that had the slightest idea how to PvP, then you would have spent 30 energy on SS and backfire only to see that player do nothing until the next recharge on CoP (sometime within the next 10 seconds) for a mere 5 energy that gave the player back much more energy. You lose 30 energy, they gain energy and are free to enchantment rage your team again. Losing proposition if I've ever heard of one...

Great, so you've got an experienced player on dom mesmer with gale, blackout and diversion. You can completely shut one D/Mo down in a 1-on-1 situation, but you will never kill him. Throw this player into a 4 man team setting for TA and come up against a team with 4 D/Mo. Now, you've got a D/Mo shutdown while the other 3 enchantment rage your team. I seriously hope you enjoy kiting....a lot...while crippled.

Better idea, bring 4 dom shutdown mesmers with ether feast to self heal and the plan of not actually ever killing anything and hoping your opposition just eventually ragequits. Just like watching paint dry. It's certainly better than your SS + backfire idea...

Well said, Divineshadows. Well said.

I'd like to add my opinion that CoP shouldn't be the thing that's nerfed. CoP in the current game is not a problem, and fits in well with the rest of the game. The Dervish itself is the problem with the massive self-heal and massive AoE damage. Anet has got to realize this, and restrict the corrective actions to the Dervish.

It's kind of funny. Take 7 D/Mo in with one Mo/Me this weekend, and you could austensibly win 85-90% of your GvG matches. Try that sometime with 7 W/Mo and one Mo/Me.

redo mysticism so at max it is 5 or 6 energy

that wouldn't really do much. Most people only put enough into mysticism for 5 or 6 energy anyway.

-Make high damage skills do fire damage instead of holy
-Increase recharges (most recharges are insanely low, like 0-20 sec)

CoP is a problem in the current metagame, just not quite so large. CoP is one of the lynchpins keeping boonprot dominant in the metagame -- it makes the boonprot monk extremely resilient to hate. It is very difficult to hate out a good monk with CoP, not impossible but difficult. Mesmers have worked around it, yes, but without it the boonprot would be even closer to the quality of other possible monk builds.

With Dervishes, though, CoP goes from keeping your defense impeccably clean to keeping your offense impeccably clean. When you're staring down 5-6 D/Mo's who you can't cripple, you can't SS, you can't blind or hex down, you'll come to agree that CoP is quite overpowered.

A class has to have counters. CoP not only keeps D/Mo's from being counterable it FEEDs their energy, allowing them to operate unhindered and to feed the fire of their offense. Quite simply it's gotta go.

the dervish as a scythe build is powerful and well rounded a bit powerful but not outragious.

The dervish/Monk aoe spikes was rediculous. Tward the end i saw some anties being made that got it where 3 could take you down before you healed and killed them but usually they ran and if not they died.

I propose these balancing options.

Mysticism: make 2 points of health per point if attribute and 1 energy gain per 3 points in attribute. making 32hp gain instead of 48hp and energy gain to 5max from 8. mysticism bonus should only pay out on enchantments you cast.
This will efectivly stop a monk acting as battery and cut the energy gain to close to half as well as reducing the healing considerably.

Make all the enchantment spikes 10-12 sec recharges.
reduce the healing from bathazars rage by 1/3.

I would prefer making the enchantment spikes a 50/50 aoe. ( half being aoe and half being single target )

I recomend making balthazar rage single target. Leaving wind spikes burst aoe will fit the dmg style of wind. Plus it lacks the defense capabilites of earth.

making scythe dmg a little lower and more consistant. ( IE 12-38 instead of 9-41 )

make all other ( strip all enchantment skills on self in all classes to 15sec minimum )

this should eliminate all massive enchantment spikes and not hurt the scythe dervish, healer dervish, to much leaving the enchanter about equil.

I ran a D/MO during the preview and well.... ty for the 250k kurzick faction in a day and a half. LMAO.

Love the class though cant wait.

paragon only need the spear spikes reduced slightly. Good leader class for PvP.

I think a skill/ attribute adjustment and second test is in order.

Im going to wait patiently for ANet to take 15-20 damage off Balth Rage and Heart of Holy Flame and maybe, just maybe, add a sec or two on the recharge and for people to suddently start claiming that Dervishes have become obsolete. I'm more concerned with the rate at which RoF can feed Dervishes energy than CoP with its 10s recharge. Yes, Dervishway was broken during the event. But lets not overreact, it's just a beta. Be constructive and keep the drama aside.

I got three glad points this weekend, only did ra, a waste I know, I could've gotten a ton of fame. Only one of those games had a monk, one had three D/X's using aoe skills (I was the only D/Mo) and an me/n degener. We might've kept on going that game but the mesmer suddenly dropped out of nowhere, so we just quit.

I like the dervish, but it needs to be toned down a bit, like 5-15 damage points on holy damage, and a bit of a buff on non holy stuff...Call me crazy but those were pretty weak.

Well i havent read all the posts here, but I used and really liked my dervish, I say maybe the nerf they can do is make a limit to how many can be in certain matches (hoh, ra, ta).

That's the dumbest things I have heard in a while.

On the side note CoP doesn't seem to be the problem as such. Remember that dervishes have their own CoP with 4 sec recharge, that removes 1 enchant and removes 1..3 hexes. Also signet of piety removes enchant, heals for 110+ and recharges instantly. What we need is recharges on those things and less powerful mysticism.

limiting the number of dervishes in a group only admits they're a broken class.

Here's just one tiny example of what makes the dervish so horribly unbalanced:

Heart of Holy Flame. Enchantment Spell. All nearby foes take 40...88 holy damage. For 30 seconds, your attacks deal holy damage. When this Enchantment ends, all nearby foes are set on fire for 1...3 seconds.

Now compare this to Judge's Insight (a very powerful spell btw). Yeah, same energy cost (10) for both spells, but look how much better Heart of Holy Flame is in almost every respect:

1) Activation times of 3/4 instead of 2 for Judge's Insight
2) Recharge time of 8 instead of 10 for Judge's Insight
3) 30 sec duration regardless of skill points in Wind Prayers, vs. 8...20 for Judge's Insight (Smiting Prayer)
4) 40-88 AOE holy damage vs. no AOE for Judge's Insight
And to add insult to injury:
5) Foes set on fire for 1...3 seconds.

I mean, sheesh, why not make it resurrect all fallen allies too, while we're at it? If this skill is allowed to remain as is, I'm taking dervish as my secondary for all my warriors and rangers if only for the insane benefit of having 30 seconds of holy damage without any attribute points in wind prayers. Totally ridiculous.

Oh yeah, the dervish is fine hahaha....lmao.