Assassin or Dervish?

Quote: Originally Posted by milias

Quote: Originally Posted by milias

Anyone who says Dervish is useless has no idea how to play one...

Quote: Originally Posted by KvanCetre

I've played both an assassin and a dervish. Here are my personal opinions:

Assassin:
You can do a lot of damage and some decent conditions, but the concept is a bit fragile. Low armor, few defense options (and most of them are very clumsy) and you're going to have a lot of trouble since so many enemies in the game either have avoidance stances or will blind/cripple you. The attack chains can be devastating, but are easily cancelled and often require you to use 3-5 skills without any interruption. You'll feel great when you complete a chain and take down an enemy by yourself, and feel lame when the next 4 enemies mess it up and make you look useless. Can be quite powerful in PvP, but is definitely not among the most powerful PvE professions.

Dervish:
Has a lot of potential, being able to both put out scary damage, and tank quite decently. They can achieve great armor and crazy regen with just a few skills, and they have an innate "cleave" ability with a scythe which is very easily utilized in PvE. It's not difficult to make sure that most of your attacks hit two or three enemies, and the dervish has a lot of different abilities, ranging from condition spreading to healing, AoE damage, and good party support. Definitely my favorite of the two, and much more popular in both PvE and PvP.

And Nightfall is a much better campaign anyway.

Dervish Fo Sho dawg.

I've played both. Bottom line...

Assassins are not as good in PvE. They are more challenging to play. But they are very fun and I welcome the challenge. More difficult to benefit your team as they are a little bit squishy and they just damage/condition others. Unlike dervs, which could heal and are pretty self-sufficient. But if you mostly play with henchys and heros (say, through 90% of the game), then their weaknesses in PvE don't matter that much. At the end-game, they have their uses. Just remember that they are more difficult, less liked, but very fun to play. Shadowstepping is cool too.

Dervs are very powerful in PvE with the right build. Easier to play than sins. Also hard to get a group sometimes in the end game...and no one wants them for the Domain of Anguish areas, although that's just stupid because warriors are no better in that area. They are fun because a) they look cool (sins look cool too), b) capable of different roles and styles c) kick butt. Downsides are, as said, not as desired by other people (but more desired than sins), and to be really good, you need to micro-manage a lot of enchants. And not quite as interesting as sins.

I would say, for myself, my favorite classes are like this:
Mesmer>Derv>Sin>Ranger>Warrior>everything else.

If its just for pve I would go Dervish. With Avatar of Balthazar or Melandru you are less squishy than a sin. And in Factions you get all those puss bags exploding which kills sins even faster. Biggest design flaw in all of guild wars....

With a good build and figuring out how to play them Dervishes are one of the strongest PvE characters for henchies. It's been by far the easiest class to get masters in Factions with hench/hero. So far, I have not found a place that allows hench that I can not clear (and since I only have unwaking waters and after iin Factions left, I assume I can clear anything that currently allows hench).

Too many tried to play a warrior with a form - and that tends to suck royally. Using mostly Dervish skills I can easily tank Real of Torment enemies (in fact, I tend to die well after any warrior with me). On a single target my damage output is moderate - nothing great. You just have to look for (or learn to cause) clumps of enemies.

I can also farm quite a few different areas with a simple build and the scythe doesn't cause scatter. With the newer AI the dervish solo farms most areas quite a bit faster than almost any other build (for instance, one build clears the griffons, sand giants, scarabs, and dune burrowers outside destiny's gorge in the same time my warrior - standard griffon farming build - clears just the griffons).

Personally I like a d/w for wild blow or a dervish/paragon spamming "Go for the Eyes" (especially true with clumped up enemies).

I never really cared for an assassin. "Hit and Run" was difficult to do with hench and I didn't really enjoy doing that. Damage output was really nice, and the henchies do not care if I die often or eat up too much healing by just running into the middle of things so no big deal. If henching, I would suggest playing whichever seems more interesting to you - for me Dervish by far (right now, it ties with an Ele for my favorite class). For grouping with players, assassin is harder and you will not be a front line character.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kool Pajamas

Consider assasin a middle line in combat .Shadow step make them reach Enemy back line fast or get out of bad situation pretty qucik.
Sometimes assasin can do damage with out haveing to get too close.Thanks to deadly art skill.
Downside of assasin is they have to sacrifice self heal if they want to focus on dealy art.Due to healing skill only avalable withhin shadow art skill.

I really sucked at my asssassin but im doing great with my dervish.
as much as i say, it all comes down to skill and which one you can control better.

dervishes have a lot of self heals, defense, and mob skills making it a very nice thing to play.

assassins are swift, and fast attackers making a fast 1v1 kill.

Assassins are a PvP class, you'd be better with a derv, much more durable ^^

I play mostly pve and I played all characters and I gotta say that although my favorite character is still the Mesmer, I really too much fun playing a Dervish.
Its a really enjoyable class and does extremely well.

Quote: Originally Posted by Skuld

I like the Dervish's energy managment better...

Specially since I do alot of manual enchanment stripping. I never run out of energy and i use the Hand of the Forgotten. Also the AoE damage they do is sort of fun. Specially with Earth Prayers. And that their normal attacks are an energy free cyclone axe.

Also I like the versitilty of them, you can go as a AoE nuker, a tank, or a healer wihtout really changing your secondary. Assassains pretty much are that, assassins. Not that theres anything wrong with that, but they do have just one roll.

Plus I like tanking more with my Dervish instead of my warrior, I think its the +4 energy recovery to keep my enchanments on and off that helps alot in that.

PVE:

Anything > Sins >> Dervishs.

PVP:

Sins and Dervishs are good classes to play.

The downsides to Dervishs in PvE is the self enchant strip can be hard to manage, if someone casts a life saving enchantment on you, you may strip it by mistake, and the same in PvP really.

DERVISH....With all the form buffs you can be almost undefeatble (recomend dwayna) and assasins do minimum dmg per hit like theres a ELITE skill that only does 30 dmg when ur at 12 dagger mastery. Dervish can do 40 wihout any skills....plus forms loook unbelivabley cool ......dervish has many builds that can solo many things and assasin has 1 plus

assasin is mostly noobish

Spirit of the sea
...stupidity gets you nowhere in life


In Pve

I say any warrior that isnt W/mo is worse then a derv tank
Dervs can last really long, you see this in pvp where its all about spiking, if you can survive spikes you can tank...pve

Sins just werent used properly, and they were seen squishy because of those freaking explosive enemies (I want to kill the designer for that!)

however bring a sin in nightfall with shadow of haste and dash, with high shadow of haste with Expose defenses and Bls you cant be evaded and can go half across the map to safety, and a person who warps in and warps out (not to damage but to lure enemies) is great in pve aswell


pvp
Sins
With expose defenses the only protection against them are enchantments and blind, blind and enchants are taken care of by expose enchantments and signet of malice, ergo sins have a skill for anything that counters them (to bad you cant fit them all)

Dervs
Chilling victory + deep wound...add victorious strike and mystic sweep...its all good




Ergo, for a first time pve go Dervish, just because its has a faster learning curve

but when your good go sin, lots of benefits