...Holy *bleep*...

^ agreed. (except for the RoJ part, i dont think RoJ is good on any profession unless you have a huge snare.)

proper combination of gimmicks can be made into a very effective build.

RoJ Derv in FA/JQ says "Hi". Not so much anymore, as NPC's have been 'fixed' to realize that RoJ is AoE.

Not to mention onslaught will get stripped and your dervish will be running around with no IAS or IMS (aka useless).

You missed the whole point of why Onslaught is bad. It just do not have to last 10s+ for an IAS + IMS skill. The current Onslaught enforce the dervish to try to preserve it instead of self rending it to trigger off mysticism when situation calls. Enchantment cycling. Its duration should be ideally around 7s and recharge 12s at 10 wind prayers. The very reason why dervish sucks is because they can't fully utilise mysticism when most of their enchantments last unnecessarily long accompanied by longer recharge time to 'balance' it out.

Onslaught is bad because it's barely maintainable, an elite, and only has 25% IAS... not because of whatever you were trying to explain.

and, it causes you to stop for 1 second (.25s cast, .75s aftercast) every 20 seconds.

IT IS maintainable at 12. you just use a 20% enchant mod.......

but yea, wind prayers is extremely gimp as an attribute line. 7 increase movement speed skills, 4 cripples (when dervs already have 3 other crips, 1 earth, 2 scythe) out of only about 24 total skills. so the attribute is really redundant and has too many skills that have the same exact effect. a few standout skills in wind prayers, but as a whole anet needs to give it some love.

earth prayers on the other hand is extremely strong, one of the best attribs overall in the game imo.

should be a skill balance update this week or soon, hope wind gets some love sooner or later, but if anything they're just as likely to nerf it because of all the eles abusing dwaynas touch and featherfoot grace..

side note: this thread has been completely de-railed sorry

That's the whole point, nobody is going gimp themselves to invest 12 wind prayers to have it maintainable when your recharge is long. You are just going to focus on covering it from being strip rather than something else important. And if the 'solution' to make it viable is to make it maintainable at lower wind prayers, other professions will more likely to use it and dervish are more gutted than ever. Earth prayers isn't that strong; at 8 you will be getting the best of what it has to offer unless you are using VoS.

I think the point he/she is trying to drive at is that our current skill sets are forcing us to play like an elementalist would; [X Attunement -> AoR -> spell -> spell] [HoF -> Attacker's Insight -> AoHM -> attack -> attack].

How about a mysticism buff? +10% enchant duration (only dervish enchantments) per point in mysticism? Also maybe make the energy and health gain trigger when an enchantment is cast on the dervish instead of when it ends.

Fire away with 'broken' in pvp, etc, etc. Just throwing ideas.

Think of it this way, instead of recasting that 5 or 10 energy enchant, it could last more than twice as long which means you are saving more than 5 or 10 energy. Furthermore, I said that the energy/health gain should occur when enchantments are cast on the dervish (what I meant was straight after an enchantment is cast on you, you get the mysticism trigger), so you get your energy return instantly.

But yeah the only concern would be overpoweredness maybe, which tbh I don't really care about.

^ Sorry but I think you fail to see why dervish are a joke in pvp and inferior in pve. They just play out like an elementalist except they are more dependent on enchantments than an ele would which is extremely bad for a frontline physical profession. Mysticism is fine as it is and is definitely much better than some other professions' primary attributes inherent effects. I don't know why people are jabbing their fingers at it being the culprit when in reality most of the dervish enchantments are poorly thought out and barely compliment well with mysticism. A better suggestion to improve dervish would be to shorten recharge of skills if enchantments are removed prematurely for a start.

Uh i am pretty sure a derv has 70 Armor. And I think in your calculation you put 60 (looks at it upside down)

Stop bashing Dervishes. In PvE, overall performance of a Dervish can be much much better than Assassin. I'm not talking about theory here, I am not talking about statistical 5% higher dmg Assassin does or whoever. I am talking about how well I've performed with Dervish *in practice* compared to others and compared to what I've seen. I've rampaged through Nightfall in starter armor and almost finished the game like that (near the end I bought armor for the fun of it). With my near immortality with correct skills, damage was still higher than whatever warriors and assassin's in those days had.

When you PvP with Dervish, the playstyle and skills and attributes are very different. But in PvE, Mysticism can be great. So what if there's some enchantment removal in some areas? In 99,9% areas it won't matter a bit *if* you know how to play (if you play Mesmer or Monk, you should not have a problem reacting fast and being aware of what's happening on the field of battle).

Let's also not forget that Dervish FoW, IMO, is one of the best armors in the game. I feel so powerful running around with Dervish in that beastly armor Yes, fun is important. Don't forget why you play the game in the first place.



Now to problems of Dervish - the main problem with Dervish is not the performance. The main problem with Dervish is that, while it has huge amount of fun and interesting and different skills, the skills are so poorly balanced that these days most of them are just crap (granted, some are pure gimmick). That, and the fact that Dervish has less skills because it's 3rd campaign profession.

Bashing them? Why would I bash my own profession? I'm telling it like it is.

Enchantment removal is rare in PvE. But it's irrelevant.

Near immortality? A dervish is not nearly as "immortal" as a scythe sin or scythe warrior (critical agility, critical defenses, Lion's Comfort, and base 80-100 armor say hi).

What do you mean "in practice"? Is the dervish a special exception to the rules of damage calculation? Does he get a special +10 bonus to damage that we don't know about?

The problem with the dervish is that other people use his stuff better than he does. I don't know what the damage output of a sword and board warrior is, but I do know the damage output of a scythe warrior, and it's superior to a dervish. Same with sins.

"But wait, dervishes have earth and wind prayers!"

So does any /D.

"But dervishes have a free secondary they can use for anything they want!"

Yes, and it's the only thing non-avatar builds have going for them. Too bad the advantages tend to be fairly minor. Oh, look, you can take a hard rez or antidote signet. Whoopee. And there aren't nearly as many options as one might think. Most Elementalist, Mesmer, and Necromancer skills are useless to you unless you're playing some kind of pure caster build (in which case, you're usually better off being an ele or whatnot, defeating the whole purpose of doing so), because you can't cast spells and attack at the same time. You can't go /W or /A and call it "good" because the W/D and A/D will still make you completely redundant. Dervishes just don't have enough synergy with other professions to make their secondaries a big deal.

"But I look cool/have fun!"

Good. Having fun is by far the most important part of the game (everything else is a means to that end). It's why I play my dervish. But none of that has any bearing on how GOOD he is. Dervishes are subpar scythe-wielders that are squishier than other melee classes, but have just enough options so that you can make yourself not be completely redundant if you try. However, the fact that it's so hard to make non-redundant dervish builds is the very thing that proves they're underpowered. Doesn't mean you shouldn't play and enjoy them, though.

Only thing dervs have going for them is "SY!"

Overall performance of a derv DPS is outperformed by Warrior or Sin...Don't know about ranger, doubt it.

I play hard mode whenever possible and scythe sins can't handle casters. Assassin can do more damage than a dervish, but you sacrifice utility and survivability. Once you fix that, the dps goes shooting down pretty quickly.