comtemplation of secondary for the new professions....?

As you see on the left i have a character for every profession and when NF comes out i plan on making a character for each of those as well. I always think ahead about my characters before and while i am making them. I have been thinking about what I am going to choose for a secondary for each of the new professions. I have read the skills for each of the new profs and i am thinking about making the following;

D\W-use scythe mastery, earth prayers or mysticism(not sure yet), and tactics.
The latter so i can use healing sig without consuming energy for healing and possibly Bonetti's Defense. I didn't play in the PvP preview weekend because i just started playing GW again after a period of absence right when that happened and i wanted to play factions(doh!), so i don't know whether or not the dervish has an energy problem.

P/R-use spear mastery, beast mastery, and wilderness survival.
Beast mastery just because its nice having a pet to help out that can do some decent dmg(i may or may not use 1-2 skills for the pet but probably not) and tank a little dmg plus i like having the "elite" pets and i know that theres gonna be one for the game there has been so far with previous games. ill use apply poison and troll unguent from the wilderness survival attribute and then whatever spear mastery skills i have that are good.

Has anybody else thought about this subject or am i the only analitical freak that plays GW??

LOL, trust me, there are threads like this one. In fact, there was a thread called "What profession will you play in Nightfall?"

D/Mo seemed most popular, although I'm gonna try a D/Ele. Glad to see you're trying a D/W.

I'll probably make a P/W, (Tactics and shouts), although P/Ra is very tempting, now Tiger's Fury is nerfed, not so much.

I might make a Ra/P though...

well, you can obviously never go wrong with a /mo...however when I make my dervish I will probably go /E...there should be some earth spells that would compliment dervish attacks nicely...however, I do believe that an energy problem may result....what would be nice is if Anet made the elem attunements work for all types of spells/attacks with that element, but as of right now that wouldn't work. from what i remember, dervishes have very little energy.

/signed analytical freak

bonetti sounds good, but there are is a dervish signet (a frew skills actually) that give self heals. I saw one Vimway Dervish go apeSh** on like 3 tanks in the pvp event.

and not to sound like im giving you a hard time, but if you went r/p you spear attacks would cost less (although only maxed 12) and your beast would be tougher... remember paragons' leadership ability is dependant on shouts&allies

of course its really anyones' guess how itll all play out before retail release... I plan to roll and reroll a bunch of times next weekend... and I would agree with you that either of those combinations will be deadly in pvp.

I thought Dervishes had mid-energy (like Rangers). Paragons have low energy (like Warriors).

Earth, Water, Fire, Air will all help Dervish.

Earth for armor, attacks; Water for armor, speed, slowdown; Fire for armor (Burning Speed?), PBAoE attacks; Air for Gale, Shock, etc.

I'm thinking the same thing. Even though you lose Leadership, you still have chants and shouts to buff your pet, too. Plus, you have more Energy.

It's all about whether you want to make your Beast Mastery or Spear Attribute higher...

Remember that enchantments tend to get off from dervishes really fast.

Support enchantments from Ele might not be so useful after all.

Though, skills like aftershock and crystal wave might be awesome due to their splash potential.

Right, but you gain Health and Energy from these Enchantments, too (hopefully).

Basically, you can play a /Mo and get self heals, protection enchants, or smites; or you can play /Ele and get armor/speed enchants, AoE damage, and knockdown effects.

Both should be good.

heres a couple of things for anyone to chew on.


me/d > d/me for illusionary scythe?

rt/d or d/rt with wailing weapon (aoe interrupt on attackers/)


or what about this (kind of funny) idea for a team battle...

get a few assassins to cast recall on your dervish. the assassins stay back, and the dervish runs in, using pious strike to remove recall and "summon assassins" with 3 insta-recharged pious strikes...?

I don't think that would work... usually skills that inflict more damage don't effect Illusionary Weapon, correct? (if I'm wrong, my bad)

LOL. That's cute, but usually you want to use Recall to get you out of trouble, not into it!

yeah the assassin thing is kind of a joke, but it would be some good psychological warfare....

heck "summon w/a" even

I think I see what you mean on the me/d... I keep forgetting how SLOW scythes are.

As far as that R/P thing goes I already have a character with ranger primary so i can easily change his secondary and make that. The point i was trying to get accross in this thread was what is the best possible secondary for the new professions.

I like the idea of more people poping in on with the return skill, heres my twist on it D/A or E/A and make them all pop in and have them know in advance that as soon as you pop them in they should all hit their AoE skills....3-4 D or E all doing AoE in the same spot= massive dmg to those who were unfortunate to try to gang bang on a lonely dervish.

On the Nightfall prerelease available yet? thread, someone claims he's doing massive damage with IW and Scythe! Of course, he's also claiming to be dishing out 40 dam with a Ranger and scythe...

I made a p/w during the pvp event and really liked it. I'll probably start out with that.

D/E for, get this, water magic. Conjure frost and armor of mist/frost (which actually will work really well with that CE Icy sychle of enchanting). You get self heals when those enchantments end and with all the dervish enchants you'll have plenty of cover enchats.

(sorry if this is a double post).

Doesn't really matter. You don't need point in scythe mastery to use it for IW. So Me/Ws with flurry might start using scythe's in theory, but they wouldn't have to go dervish secondary to use it effectively.

It's going to depend on how Dervs and Paragons are nerfed.

Going D/E for earth spells is likely to be redundant, because as of the PvP weekend the Dervish PBAoE spells were *much* stronger than similar ele earth skills. They had 'nearby' area of effect (instead of adjacent), normal aftercast delay, and they were all enchantments that powered mysticism and inflicted additional effects like blind, burning, etc. when they ended. If you went D/E it would probably be for utility spells like wards and water hexes.

D/E
D/Me
D/Rit

Thats what I see becoming popular.

melandru avatar + burning speed works well

D/Me for Arcane Mimicry. Isn't that so cheap it hurts? Pick up a copy of Assassin's Promise or your team mate's Avatar to keep yours up constantly.. or have two D/Mes with arcane for constant forms. You could also do an Avatar and copy Vow of Silence.. combine with Arcane Echo as needed.

Why use secondary dervish to use a scythe? My IW Me/Mo is currently using a scythe for the AoE attacks. She does 42 dmg to everyone around her.

Personally I think I'll try a D/Mo, because it was very strong on PvP the other weekend. Would like to see how it compares.

Also a P/W. know it sounds trivial, but the synergy is there

Erm yes I did. Obviously in presearing, a lvl 7 dishes out mass damage on a lvl 0 :P I was averaging 32 dmg with the sycthe (but peaking at 40+) and 20-ish with the spear

Before this, I was using the factions preorder staff. 10/10 and +5 energy were pretty handy for a R/Mo

I'm contemplating picking up Dervish as my secondary on my Warrior. Conviction is Mending in stance form, which I find more reliable than enchants in PvE. I'm intruiged in the idea of a N/P that uses shouts on his minions. A/D could put out some seriously hurting crits, and on multiple people too. And as mentioned, IW + Scythe = mass pwnage.

I'm initially going to make a (PvE) P/Me running multiple condition-inflicting spear attacks, something like this:

P/Me Spreading Spear:
````````````````````
16 Spear Mastery
11 Leadership
9 Illusion Magic

{e} Fevered Dreams 10/2/10
Barbed Spear 3A
Merciless Spear 6A
Anthem of Flame 5/1/10
Aria of Power 25/1/45
Leader's Comfort 5/2/8
Distortion 5/0/5
Resurrection Signet

Fevered looks like absolute gold - attack three times for adrenaline, then cast Fevered Dreams -> Anthem of Flame -> Barbed Spear for some fun mass degen.

Can anyone spot the flaw in this plan? That's right, Fevered Dreams is a Prophecies elite, and it can't be capped until the Ring of Fire. That's OK, I'll just have to run Epidemic instead until I can manage a Droks run.

Dervishes are extremely self-sufficient*, meaning that the choice of secondary is both easy and hard - easy because it won't matter much, and hard because you still wanna optimise.

To be honest, I think I'll avoid D/Mo-for-res because it'll be the most common build early on and people will think you're a scrub (seriously, I saw this a lot with Assassins when Factions came out). Run something like D/Me just so people think you've discovered some kind of awesome unknown combo and accept you into parties more freely.

The problem with D/E is the large recharge on Elementalist enchantments - heck, that's why Earth tanks aren't (and never have been) viable; one enchant strip and it'll be fifteen seconds before you can replace it.

I strongly recommend a caster secondary for both classes. It looks like Dervishes will be as effective as spellcasters as they will as scythe-fighters, so it's a good idea to take a secondary with access to wands and off-hands for an energy boost. Similarly, a quick change to +energy sets means you can run effects like Aria of Power, which is utterly broken in its current incarnation but requires a painful energy commitment, on your Paragon.

*obviously, I can't count any hypothetical nerfs

something to think about:

Order of the Vampire DERV! thatd be great with the aoe attack healing you past the amount of health sacced! plus when it ended you would get the energy and health!!! i would love to try this one out.

As far as I know Arcane Mimicry cannot be used on Dervish elite forms, they disabled it during the pvp weekend, and I'm sure it will stay that way when Nightfall is released. You can't steal them, you can't copy them. You can however disable them. Dervish elite forms seem to belong only to the caster.

aw i hope not, cause i was gonna make a D/Me myself...

i aint sure on my paragon's 2ndary... hmm i know p/w seems like a good choice but nah, more experimenting, i may go with.. hmmmm P/N
see if i can lead some minions...

if not, ill go with P/A as soon as possible, signet of malice <3

I considered making my Mesmer Now just for Illusionary Scythe, glad to see it works, I wasn't sure if It would.

I was going to Play D/Rt, but chances are I will go D/Mo simply because of the number of possible enchants available, I will have to see how Mysticism turns out.

I don't know a secondary for my P, maybe /W since shield bash would be a working skill, and just be some sort of shout master?

I'm probably gonna be a P/W, with 0 Tactics and Watch Yourself! to keep my godly Mending Refrain on everyone.

I foresee D/W and D/P being popular. Scythes are ridiculous for building adrenaline.

I'm probably going D/W or D/N,

The dervish seems to have extremely powerful attack skills, and plenty of healing to tank/stay alive so monk secondary seems kinda useless. Warrior just to use Frenzy. I am not under attack? FRENZY SCYTHE *evil grin* Might go D/Mo to try out vigorous spirit and that remove all enchants skill, forgot the name.

D/N, Mark of pain, curses. It would just be too cool to use avatar of grenth with a scythe and use necro skills... GW 666.

I"m not going to make a dervish right away but during the preview event I'm going to make a P/D just so I can unlock as many skills as possible during that limited time but when I get the real game I'm making a P/W for the tactics. (Full support Paragon)