Sand Shards Build

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10051152

Profession: Dervish/Mesmer
Name: Sand Man
Type: Pve/PvP
Category: Spiker/Tank
Attributes: Earth Prayers: 12+3+1 Mysticism:12+1
Skill Set:
[Attribute] (Energy, Cast Time, Recharge Time)
[skill]Signet of Midnight[/skill]{Elite} Signet of Midnight [none] (0,3/4,15) Signet: You and target touched foe become blinded for 15 seconds.

[skill]Sand Shards[/skill]Sand Shards [Earth Prayers] (5,1,15) Enchantment: For 30 seconds, whenever you fail to hit with a scythe attack, all nearby foes take 5 damage.

[skill]Mirage Cloak[/skill]Mirage Cloak [Earth Prayers] (15,1/4,0) Enchantment: For 10 seconds, you have a 50% chance to 'evade' incoming attacks. When this Enchantment ends, all nearby foes are struck for 15 earth damage.

[skill]Aura of Thorns[/skill]Aura of Thorns [Earth Prayers] (5,3/4,12) Enchantment: All nearby foes are Crippled for 4 seconds. For 30 seconds this Enchantment does nothing. When this Enchantment ends, all near by foes begin Bleeding for 5 seconds

[skill]Heart of Holy Flame [/skill]Heart of Holy Flame [Mysticism] (10,3/4,20) Enchantment: All nearby foes take 40 holy damage. For 30 seconds, your attacks deal holy damage. When this Enchantment ends, all nearby foes are set on fire for 1 seconds.

[skill]Mystic Regeneration[/skill]Mystic Regeneration [Earth Prayers] (10,1/4,5) Enchantment: For 20 seconds, you have a +1 Health regeneration for each Enchantment on you. When this Enchantment ends, you lose one Enchantment.

[skill]Faithful Intervention[/skill]Faithful Intervention [Mysticism] (5,2,20) Enchantment: If damage drops your Health bellow 50%, Faithful Intervention ends. When Faithful Intervention ends, you are healed for 30 Health

[skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]Resurrection Signet [none] (0,3,0) Signet: Resurrect target party member. You may use this skill only once per mission.

Summary:
This build is BEST used versus grouped foes. You deal mainly AOE damage/conditions. Start off casting Faithful Intervention before the match begins. As you are on the battlefield pick out a melee character that blind will affect the most, I usually choose assassins or interrupters, followed by sand shards. Now that you are blind, yes you have to be blind for this build to be most effective, select your targets, prefably bunched together, 3 or more since scythe swings hit only your target and 2 adjacent foes to that target, run up to them and use Aura of Thorns to cripple them. Now start attacking them, with each unsuccessful hit sand shards deals 26 (near by) AOE damage. Follow through with Heart of holy flames t ordeal some extra damage and to have an enchantment cover sand shards. Mirage Cloak and Mystic Regeneration are for when you need to be defensive start with Mystic Regeneration to start Regeneration of your Life, or to counter out any Degeneration you may acquire, and Mirage Cloak if you have those pesky melee attackers on you. By now you will have to Re-cast Signet of Midnight, feel free to cast on a caster for it throws them off a little bit, and Sand Shards.

Notes & Concerns: I first created this build during the first Nightfall PvP weekend event, I had been trying to find use for Signet of Midnight. Little has changed from my first attempt, and I have over come the nerfs to the Dervish, though it may not be as strong as I was with the first build it still works great. Watch out for interrupters, always best to blind them, if they are Rangers, over most other characters, enchant strippers, best countered with Spell Breaker if you have a Monk in your party, and Knock Downers. Let the Monks in your party know not to remove your conditions because you will need them. And remember you can tweak this build some but I would advise keeping Signet of Midnight, Sand Shards and Mystic Regeneration.

Credit: Goes to Myself, One DthGvr, and Bored Inc.

Templates: To load a template go t your Guild Wars directory then the template folder and select the appropriate folder create a new text document copy the code and paste it in the document save then load guild wars open your skills/pvp equipment windows and click the picture of the disk now select load and choose the name if the file you just created if you cannot load it may be because you have not unlocked all the items on that template, contact the original poster for info on items you may be missing.

Skills: AaJyKzyjOw8ydvujX2b5VAA

Equipment: RmGC90d4Lp6lmicPLmmiMskkmiMc1lmiMsGmmi0T

in random arena most games it took the other team all 4 people 5+ min to kill me, when they had monks or ran around too much it was a draw game. In AW I took out the kurzick mines solo, killed any one i wanted to because they couldnt kill me, and just had fun swinging madly at anything that moved. In AW it took 2 or more people to kill me and it took them a while, with all the blinding, evading, and regen i had. this was the most fun i have had in months.

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that better? sorr but i had a long day and mostly just rambling.

interesting...this is a quite ingenious build. almost Illusionary Weaponry with no Illusionarry weaponry....nice thinking

i tried adding illousion weponary to it but it didnt work but o well

Wow, great build.

Nice job.

i came up with this build during the first pvp preview event didn't want to post it back then to keep it from getting too nerfed but i feel some what more safe now. it is an awesome build but it has its counters. For 1 is ant interrupt build, interrupt sand shards you will be cat without its claws you still can re-gen evade blind burn and hit with scythe but not for much damage. next is the enchantment removal, you have sand shards in the wrong lineup you are screwed so i try to cover it as fast as possible. knock down does hurt you but not as bad as it does most classes you still got that +10 re-gen, thus burning poison bleeding de-gen of any sort doesn't hurt unless stacked over -20 de-gen which takes a couple people.

Why not get Epidemic in there to spread the blindness to all enemies, making you almost impossible to hit?

i thought of that but havent tried it out

not bad its 50/50 scythe and caster. i like it except the condition of being blind. Serves the purpose and looks like steady dmg not to spiky though.

I'll have to try that one out. but isn't it nice having it take 3 people 4-5 minutes to kill you.lol

Hope we dont get nerfed to bad.lol

i was in RA on the luxon priest level took my opponents team 30 min to lose because they had a monk 2 warriors and an assassin trying to kill me i finally killed the melee then the monk ran around for 10 min b4 i caught him in a corner.

The hex spell Price of Failure would wipe a sand shards dervish out.

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ok I'm confused... 21x(1 to 3) damage every 2.5 seconds or like 1.7 when heart of fury is up... the enchants ok so you'll have.. you get blind... ok once every 15 seconds and the monk with MC is laughing at your damage...

The concept has been there.... I would personally run
Sig Midnight
Sand Shards
Heart of Fury
Conviction
Mystic Regen
Pious Renewal
Twin Moon Sweep
Faithful Intervention

God damn I wish they just reduced sand shards to like 5 damage because that sand shards A/D was just so much fun.

i have used the twin moon sweep b4 and it works great this is just a build i liked and it worked well versus groups of people
your assassin dervish used a scythe right?

Of course he didn't use a Scythe. The whole point of the old build was that when you used a Dual Attack (without an off-hand), you'd miss with both attacks and the Dual Attack would instantly recharge, giving you a constant two misses with every attack. Combo that with Sand Shards

i dont see how thats possiable then

Sand Shards Enchantment Spell. For 30 seconds, whenever you fail to hit with a scythe attack, all nearby foes take 5...21 damage.

well the skill used to be that when you hit with any melee attack. They semi-nerfed it to only be used for scythe attacks...

Yes I won the Hall of Heroes in my friends team using D/A Using Way of the Empty Palm, Sand Shards, and Exhausting Assault, Along with Aura of Thorns and Conviction for such ridiculous unblockable, unstoppable damage...

Probably our fault that it got nerfed...4 HoH in wins in 2hours....yeesh.

I had thought of somethin like this awhile ago, Using Signet of Midnight and Epidemic to blind all/most everything else will using Earth/Mysticism to keep your health up. But alas, I was beaten to the post.

Dervishes will be KINGS of AoE farming, I eagerly await October 28th.

Does Sand Shards activate 3 time since in theory you can hit 1 target and up to 2 adjacent targets, but if you're blind you missed or failed to hit 3 times. And of course does this trigger the AoE patch, for troll farming pOrpuses.

Yes it misses 3 times making 3 different aoe and i havent tested it in pve yet

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grrrrrrr wont let me just post ah or ahha

Nice build. Just a suggestion- i cant really test this though, but how about adding in heart of fury? +33% attack speed+ being blinded= more damage from sand shards cause u are attacking +33% faster and thus missing more often?

Yes I do add that from time to time. I also run Mystic sandstorm, Twin moon swipe < i think that is what its called> and a few other skills.

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lol Liam just pwned it up gj, i wish i had sig of midnight on my derv