1. All of the new awesome enchants only brought tons of enchant hate. It seems like every time you throw any enchant on, it gets instantly stripped...so I decided to work around that a little bit.
2. Dervishes need to find their place, and quickly. This class can easily turn into the next Assassin with how easy it is to rush in with no shield and get murdered after your enchants are stripped. If this happens often, people will see D's as garbage and not invite them to groups because "All Dervishes are noobs".
-= The Build =-
Attributes:
Scythe Mastery: 12 + 1 + 3
Mysticism: 11 + 1
Tactics: 6
Skills:
Eremite's Attack
Banishing Strike
Victorious Sweep
Distracting Blow
Watch Yourself!
Bonetti's Defense
Avatar of Balthazar
Sunspear Rebirth Signet
Usage:
Eremite's and Mystic Sweep are the fastest swinging Dervish attacks, very easy to gain an HP advantage or Adrenaline with these, I chose Eremite's for it's easily met damage bonus condition. Eremite's takes advantage of that with a bonus of 10 for each adjacent foe (max +30), and with a recharge of only 4 seconds, you will be hard pressed to find yourself sitting around waiting for recharging skills.
Banishing Strike is a nice attack with an amazing conditional damage bonus. You're seeing a lot of spirits dropped now, with Rit's and Ranger's being in just about every group of mobs you encounter. Some of the spirits don't really affect you that much, but can screw you over if ignored. Banishing Strike will do some heavy damage to anyone hanging around the spirit (some mobs just sit on top of the spirit if in the middle of combat when casting it). It's got a short recharge time, and only 5 energy to cast, which is why I feel this is a very valuable attack skill.
Victorious Sweep is a fast health recharge if you've got any kind of positive gain on the battle. It's easy to take splash damage or condition damage, this will knock that out easily, especially with how often mobs are grouped up. If you've got a decent healer in the party, you won't have to make him over extend himself to keep your scythe swinging self healed the entire fight, as Victorious Sweep can heal you for 80 points for each foe struck who has less HP than you do. This is such a good attack skill, it's almost unfair.
Distracting Blow: target + adjacent interruption for only 5 energy? Yes please. I don't know how many times i've interrupted signets, heavy nukes, or heals with this damn skill. So amazing.
Watch Yourself! is great because it half-replaces the defense you're losing from not wielding a shield (granted, if you had a shield you'd have 16 more al, but no aoe melee) and it's very quick to charge with how many foes you're striking at once. Your party members will all very much appreciate the defense bonus, too...which always helps
Bonetti's Defense is so sick. With Dervishes being introduced into the game with this chapter, mobs get the same advantages we do. They hit multiple foes at once while wielding scythes. When you're next to the tank, you don't have to worry about gaining little adrenaline while not being the target anymore, since you're probably getting beat up too. With Bonetti's, you can easily recharge your energy after exhausting it blowing skills up. Very, very nice.
Avatar of Balthazar wins. +40 Armor and +33% faster run speed. It lasts for over a minute, and currently the Avatar's sometimes recharge faster than their expiration text says it should...if you're paying attention, you can chain the skill and stay in form for 2+ minutes. Not always, but it happens often enough to be noteworthy. This + Watch Yourself! = 60 armor. That, on top of your base 70 gives you 130 Armor. That's insane. This easily makes the Dervish a replacement tank in a pinch, without sacrificing a squishy class while trying to get the tank back up.
Extra notes:
There are no enchants in this build. Yes, I too love the new enchants that were added...but I hate the fact that seemingly every class has a handful of damaging enchant rips now. I got fed up with being killed because a necro would rip my enchants and damage my entire party because of it. Or seeing that happen in groups. I don't like relying on something that isn't always there.
Yes, if a mesmer throws Spirit Shackles on you, you have no energy gain...but you can at least throw Bonetti's on, take a couple hits then use a skill or two before draining yourself again.
There are counters to everything, basically. The point of this build is to throw people off, since you aren't rushing in and casting 50 enchants before actually hurting anyone.
-- Hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do!