the truth about the dervish

To say that a Dervish can't tank is ridiculous. There are plenty of skills at his disposable to make hima damn good tank. 1. windwalker insignia's +15 armor W/3 enchants, which u should have on u at all times. 2. enchantments, faithful intervention(good because it stays on unless ur health goes below 50% and dmg+15% while enchanted weaps) vital boon, mystic regen, and maybe mystic vigor, i also use ebon dust aura when i know im gonna be fighting a tought boss. 3. conviction +24 armor is always nice 4. damage the max dmg on a scythe is almost double that of a sword warrior i use a 3 skill combo to take out monks in any area. Wounding strike(Faithful intervention on), chilling victory and victorius sweep, mystic sweep if necessary. usually enough to kill margonite high priests. i dont like using avatars i find wounding strike a lot better for spiking. a dervish positioned correctly can take out a group fast esp. with chilling victory. I love anticipating healing sig from margonite executioners and dropping a chilling victory on em while they have deep wound on half health to dead.

the reason i find behind why most dervishes die, is because of poor energy management. that is, recasting of enchants b4 they r up and not getting mysticism bonus, not anticipating when they r gonna need to reapply enchants and making sure they have enough energy(mystic regen is 10e ) if you can keep those up and conviction combined with windwalker insignia's u got 109AL which is more than enough to tank. Mystic regen will give u 9 pips of regen which can negate most degens u may encounter(not including other enchants monks may give u) My dervish has 600health and with vital boon has about 680. he is a damn good tanker and damage dealer.

The dervish has the same problem the assasin did: too amny were made when the game was released and too few knew how to make one. Too few still do know how to make them good. And if I see one more dervish claiming Avatar of Melandru is great, I'm gonna scream. Don't get me wrong its a good skill, but 25 energy is all ur energy and if u die u cant use it, and if you think wasting valuable insignia spots for radiant insignia's is worth it, then your also wrong. You have to sacrifice so much in terms of defense(no windwalker insignias), health(losing vitae rune slots), and energy to make that skill worth using as your elite. Use balth and the +40 armor is just like having +150HP. Anyways, from a spiker's point of view, not worth it. I'm jsut not a fan of the Avatars. They look cool, have great effects, and are damn good elites, just a matter of preference. I prefer getting in there and making the casters hurt bad, then cleaning up the melee baddies.

I have tanked FoW many times with a Warrior, and a few times with my Derv, and they both work great. In fact, I prefer the derv, for a couple of reasons. First reason is better damage output. I know tanks aren't there to deal damage, but hey, every bit helps, and with a high scythe skill and wild blow, I lost track of the number of times I did triple-digit damage. Second reason is ebon dust aura - man oh man do I love this skill. When a pair of abyssals are pounding on you, blinding them is nice, but unnecessary. However, if those abys decide to leave you alone and go after your nukers and monks, all of a sudden blinding them becomes really, really useful. I think a W/D build with EDA would work great too, but my Warrior isn't far enough in Elona to try it out yet.

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lol couldn't find thom's post that made trix say "you're dumb quit the game" which is a bummer. it's also hilarious how half the pages of this thread is nothing but full on flames. Nice henching Crom, I don't think I could bring a full hench group for missions, i need my heroes with me lol.

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There are only a VERY small handful of enchant removals a warrior can bring that really *may* hurt a Dervish. Corrupt Enchantment[e], Discharge enchantment (if the warrior also hexes you before hand). All of these are cheap enough for a warrior to use and have a short enough recharge that if the dervish didn't know how to use cover enchants it could work.

There are a few that I wouldn't like to see: Lyssa's Balance, Rend Enchantments, Gaze of Contempt, Rending Sweep (assuming the warrior hexes). These pretty much remove all enchants or can nearly effectively do so.

Those two classes are most likely going to be loosing simply because you spend all you time and all you energy trying to strip my enchants. Without disabling them I can recast them in a few seconds anyway and I *will* greatly outpace a warriors ability to strip them. Heck, one-on-one I would outstrip the ability of almost any profession that is just stripping them (a mesmer can throw in hexes to stop that though - but of course the memser is the God of one-vs-one).

There are a grand total of two that could shut down the Dervish enchants - Avatar of Grenth and Rending Aura. Amusingly enough those are two dervish skills, I do not think one will get much sympathy if they depend on on dervish skills to beat a dervish primary. Plus without Myst you AoG wouldn't last long enough to matter.

Shutting them down takes at least two characters. Either two that interleave enchant removal so that they effectively half the recharge time or paired with hexes that keep us from putting them back up (backfire, diversion, etc). I actually tend to more fear things like Desecrate Enchantments that add a lot of armor ignoring damage per enchant. But then, that takes a necro primary to use it with enough damage and other primaries have skills that cause a dervish to quake in fear also (such is life in a balanced game - every class has something that does that to them).

Remember that dervishes benefit from both the enchantment n the end of the enchantment (sumtimes strippin enchantment from dervishes r not such a good idea such as vital boon, the short recharge n the massive health gain when it ends) Also, the great thing about dervishes are that they can become other classes with their forms, although sum ppl think the recharge rate is long, but once the form ends, n before u knw it its redy for use again. Also forms r one of the best elites in GW.

Balthazar (+40 armour, u reduce dmg u take by nearly a half)
dwayna( hex n self heal, mesmers n necros worse enemies, sumtimes warriors too
Lyssa (Insane dmg to sumone activating a skill, when i was cappin lyssa i had to time my spells so tht she wont hit me when i do cast it)

So in the end dervishes r one of the best characters, but everyone can beat dervishes with the rite build n dervish can beat everyone wif the rite build. So there isn't actually a more elite class

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I found a skill in the dervish wind line that seems to help a great deal against most derv builds.

[skill=big]Rending Aura[/skill]

This is the only enchant strip I would use for the majority of dervish builds. My warrior now acts like a reverse Grenth.Hit me and lose an enchantment, don't hit me and you die. If anyone wants to counter a derv enchanment build, then look into the derv lines of skills to do it.

[skill=big]Test of Faith[/skill]

Even [skill=card]Empathy[/skill],[skill=card]Rending Touch[/skill],[skill=card]Drain Enchantment[/skill],etc. can be used to put some pressure on a heavy derv enchantment build. however, to kill a derv, I say look into the derv line.

BTW, I have beaten Dervs in and out of Form with my warriors, so it is very doable,save maybe against Mystic regenration with heavily layered enchantments. Then, the rending aura is my answer. Grenth would then be the counter, but once the Grenth form ends, the derv is in deep trouble.

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I'm not arguiing that dervish always wins 1v1 but I am saying that versus a warrior dervish wins at least 9 out of 10 times. That's without a form. Forms are useful but if you're going up against another straight melee class EDA owns their soul. EDA is the bane to every melee class. Blind is the single most devastating condition a melee char can get slapped with. It pretty much shuts them down. My offer is open though. If Age would like to try his warrior against my dervish in a 1v1 I'll be happy to demonstrate my points.

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I'm a bit confused about all this discussion of one-on-one fights. Are you guys talking about a PvP match where two people have gotten separated from their teams, or are the last two standing? Or do you mean an actual GvG match with only one player on each side? I had assumed the former, since that would at least make some kind of sense, but the more I read the more it sounds like you're discussing the latter. I've never heard of anyone staging one-on-one fights, unless maybe out of boredom, but intuitively I think it's pretty obvious that the winner would be the player who most accurately guesses what his opponent will bring, regardless of class.

On top of that, it seems like an arbitrary and pointless thing to argue you about. You might as well argue about the best way to solo Charr. There's no right answer, it's argument for the sake of arguing.

One-on-one are generally done through the guild thing. Never done one though.

As I said - there is one class that will *always* dominate in one-vs-one and that is a Mesmer. Empathy, backfire, blackout, diversion, and a few other spells make it so you can not remove a hex, attack, cast a spell, stand still, or do anything without taking huge damage. They are, without a doubt, Kings and Queens of one-vs-one - of course that is what they are meant to do (shutdown any one mob/character). At that point they could wand you to death - easily doable in eight skills and is a general build.

Given that, how one-vs-one relates to real world gaming is, well, not. A team of 8 memsers do not rule everything nor are they the strongest class out there. They just happen to be really really really good at attacking a single target.

Even if you assume the scenario where they just end up separated it *still* means nothing. With my heroes I have some really great builds. Armor of Sanctity with a Searing Flame ele and a Blazing "They're on Fire" paragon come to mind. Since my Dervish has absolutely no means to cause conditions it is a crap skill if I were to get separated from the two fire causing members - however with constant burning I get 52% damage reduction and -16 damage reduction - makes it really easy for almost *anything* to tank. So - is that a strong build or not? Since it clears any section of the game I've given a go (except DoA) I would say yea - but by herself the Dervish is somewhat crappy. You should never leave your team in that fashion anyway (flag runners do not - they do not engage in one-on-one fights to death with no team mates).

But then, this is the internet and some of us enjoy arguing so these threads go on even if they are mostly worthless(note that I sometimes like arguing and hence my posts on this subject).

I saw a dervish/ele with obsidian flesh take on 4 warriors in random arena and they could not out damage his regen. It was amazing then they just quit. Our other 2 players quit at the start and i was the monk. So we won after about 10 minutes of the complaining and calling him a noob. I spent most of the time running from the one warrior and not having to heal him a bit.

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Mystic Vigor, Mystic Regeneration, Conviction, Faithfull intervention, Zealous Renweal, Mystic Sweep, Generic Rez

Am I missing somthing?

I am talking about [skill]Strip Enchantment[/skill] from and if blind there is [skill]Mending Touch[/skill]

What really annoys me about the Derv is how they won't give up on getting an invite to a party especially the on in the Gates of Madness.When I played my Monk I casted Protective Spirit on the Derv more than the Warrior alas like the Assassin in Factions and I would still say if what you are saying is true and they can do the Droks and Warriors can't do the it then the Derv. is still in need of some balancing.

When playing in Faction and you didn't invite an Assassin they gave up as i have never seen such disorganised paries with say 3 Dervs on which I Monked didn't make it.It is different when you look at it through Monks PoV.

Good luck with energy management there, 10e to strip a *single* enchant and 5e for the blind one dervish can place on you every few seconds? Yep, that huge energy pool is going to be gone *fast* no matter what energy management scheme you use (well, except for the management of not casting them).

Plus 20 second recharge and strips *one*enchant and you think it can shut down a Dervish? Apparently you know VERY little about Dervish enchants. Heck, it takes 2 or three necro's with Chilblains (8 second recharge and strips two) to keep them stripped off and then they have to focus on doing only that, how this is expected too I have no idea. Without some form of e-denial or something like Diversion you can not even *hurt* my enchant process with this - about the only thing you could hope to slow down is my IAS (assuming I take it, as it actually has a long enough recharge to not want it stripped).

Yea, if you run into a stupid Dervish that takes all the long enchants and has no earthly idea of what a "cover" enchant is then you may hurt their enchants, but then only for a very short period of time. If you depend on casting then you are going to run out of energy *quick*, if you are an adrenaline build then you better be building it instead of trying to cast spells - either way you have no means of shutting down my enchants or keeping conditions off of you while giving damage.

I truly hope this is more of a troll post than someone who really thinks that this is an effective counter to a Dervish. There are Warrior builds I am sure can beat a Dervish (assuming both are relatively skilled players - idiots are pretty much always easy to beat) - there are definitely some spike builds that should be able to do it with a little bit of luck, but a warrior shutting down a Dervishes enchant system is - well - laughable. I would have more faith in a Hamstorm build killing me.

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