Skill balances and Dervish builds...

Couple interesting things I noticed here as far as builds are concerned.

Firstly, the Pious Assault ... buff? It's hard to say for sure, but it does now cause deep wound (a good one too), is non-elite, and doesn't hurt you so much. Well, except it rends and costs 10 energy.

However ... there are ways to get around that. If you have say an Intervention or Vital Boon cast, and high Mysticism, it'll only cost you about 6 energy and heal you in the process, for instance. Perhaps it could be useful in a handful of builds now?

There is one other thing I notice. Sight Beyond Sight can be kept up most of the time now without being a Ritualist. Perhaps that would open the way for Avatar of Dwayna + Sight Beyond Sight in PvP to counter most shutdown skills that people can come up with?

people were already using sight beyond sight + extend enchantments. you dont really need extend enchantments now. I still wont use pious assault, rending is baed.

Rending isn't automatically bad if you WANT to rend the enchantment, but ... it does limit build options somewhat and that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Quote: Originally Posted by Sirius-NZ

Vital Boon, Dust Cloak, Aura of Thorns, Staggering Force and Grenth's Fingers

Quote: Originally Posted by blurmedia Vital Boon, Dust Cloak, Aura of Thorns, Staggering Force and Grenth's Fingers Quote: Originally Posted by Coloneh

Dervishes desperately needed another deep wound alternative that wasn't an elite or wearying strike and this answers it (albiet a bit late.) The cost is steep but fits well in line with other deep wound maybe. I'd like it better if it was 5e myself since the recharge is 12s anyway but I do think it's a step in the right direction.

Augury of Death and "Finish Him!" and still better

Finish Him is 10/0/15, it's basically a slower, more-expensive Reaper's Sweep without taking your elite slot. I like it, but not on a Dervish. You already have good ways of causing DW, use them!

As for the new Pious Assault, it's looking nice. In PvE, Aura of Holy Might is often worth running, so if it's on top of your stack, bummer.

Pious Assault is simply not usable with a standard damage-dealing build, that's the problem. You need a cover enchantment you'd actually want to remove - IOW one less skill slot, because Eternal Aura doesn't recharge enough - or a build with no enchantments you want to keep at all. Which isn't very good for dealing damage, because it means no AoHM.

So... Pious Assault doesn't look terribly good for PvE, unless you're running some Earth Prayers as well in which case you can take Dust Cloak or something.

For PvP it'd kinda-sorta work if you had say Faithful Intervention cast on you (other one is better but it doesn't work if you rend it). The problem is, an AoM build is still better. As freaking always.

The other problem is when it removes something you don't want it to remove - say, the monk's pre-prot.

It would be really hard to run this skill because like Burst Cancel mentioned even if you have an enchantment on your bar you want to remove right at that moment a monk might cast a protection enchantment on you and you would end up removing that instead. On my current bar the only enchantment I would want to remove would be Eternal Aura which has quite a long recharge so I wouldn't be using Pious Assault very often. I dunno...I suppose it's nice to have a non-elite dw but I doubt I will find room for it on my bar.

I'll stick with wearying strike and getting weakness removed on me. Less energy, less recharge. The 10 second deep wound is still good, because your enemy will most likely be dead in the 10 seconds, and if not you can reapply it before it ends.

Pious Assault + Burning Speed and Conjure Flame = win

The burning covers the deep wound.

I'm personally not liking the change; dervishes have multiple ways to apply deep wound, and pious assault was a unique and fun skill already. It was a staple attack skill in pve.

On another note, if you aren't stripping your enchantments and selecting your skill/enchantment combinations to synergize with being stripped (stripping your own enchantments is a fundamental part of being a dervish) then you might as well play a warrior. You'll have more armor with a tighter damage range, and won't have to worry about stripping your own enchantments.

Actually, people figured out early on that stripping your enchantments isn't any more fundamental to Dervishes as 'tanking' is to Warriors. The reality is that many of the most effective Dervish builds (Mel, Lyssa, etc.) don't utilize the mechanic at all. Also, note that tighter damage range isn't necessarily a boon - Dervishes have ridiculous criticals due to high maxes on scythes.

Quote: Originally Posted by Great_Harvester

Quote: Originally Posted by Great_Harvester

Quote: Originally Posted by Great_Harvester

Sorry for the overgeneralization, it was a staple attack for me. When combined with earth prayer and the two aoe dmg enchants, dust cloak and something-force, you could get two aoe damage spells followed by two +dmg attack skills that trigger aoe weakness and blind.

Yes, the dervish is a dps powerhouse, but unless you don't want to use many of the dervish skills, you'll need to use a skill that strips enchantments, might as well make it benificial. In my opinion, one of the most important dervish skills (anytime you are not in organized pvp, i.e. aspenwood, AB, RA, etc) requires you to already have two enchantments and strip one. I *never* ra without pious restoration.