Remove Dervish Avatar Activation Time

I've been doing a lot of RA lately, and I can't but notice how absolutely worthless the Avatar skills are. Now, they're somewhat balanced by energy cost, duration, and narrow usage, as well as the obvious two minute effective recharge. So then, why are they so vulnerable so a single interrupt?

I've been playing a lot of Ranger and Mesmer lately, and it's just pitiful to see how easily these skills are shut down. Except for the popular but largely worthless Avatar, these are pretty balanced except for the activation time, so why is it there? These skills need to be instant activation, at least in PvP where Eternal Aura cannot be used, for them to be of any real use.

Dervishes are already weak in PvP, and are limited to using Reaper's Sweep, Wounding Strike, or Onslaught if they want to be of any use to their team. I know someone is going to bring up how "rigged" Avatar of Melandru builds are, but consider this. Any half-decent AoM bar is going to take full use of the condition immunity, and bring skills such as Wearying Strike, in order to maximize their effectiveness and be able to inflict Deep Wound without dealing with long recharge and high energy cost alternatives. So, they're pretty buff while AoM is up, but when it goes down, the player is limited in their usage. Now, is AoM is interrupted easily for the two-second activation it boasts, the Dervish loses the effectiveness of half their skill bar. Simply put, in the current system, Avatar builds are as fragile as a gimmick, yet do not provide sufficient advantages to merit usage. Also keep in mind that Assassins are better with Reaper's Sweep and Wounding Strike in terms of damage output anyways, so Dervishes have very little going for them.

Let the "are you insane?" comments begin.

Only decent avatar in the arenas is Dwayna anyway.

You may as well remove activation for all elites, yes, it is the whole basis of the bar, which is bad in itself, but keep in mind of the huge effects these avatars hold: No conditions, +40 armor, +damage on skills, Remove Hex+Health, no, it can't be upkept all 120 seconds, but it can get around 2/3.

Avatars are worthless because it's Pvp, a lot of skills used in Pve just aren't good in pvp.

/notsigned

Maybe just make it uninterruptable,it needs a cast tiem as you're calling on a gods power...

Or maybe the players need to be smart enough to put it up before the agro.

Because all matches last EXACTLY the amount of time the avatar does.

/facepalm

I don't see it being a problem if they were buffed, or left alone. Still inferior to other skills imo, so I don't see why not.

/whynotsigned?

/agree. they have a 2 second casting time to give people a chance to interrupt them if someone is too dumb to not put it up outside of combat. You can't remove avatar effects in any way, so if you remove casting time from forms, you may as well remove the "disable this for 120 seconds" clause and add a "remove faith" skill (removes form)

Pre-cast.

12chars

Ding ding , and he wins the thread. GG on using an essential skill when you know you will be interrupted ....... ofc

/notsigned

Interrupts aren't TOO hard to avoid. As mentioned you can cast it outside of aggro of anyone who may have an interrupt ready to use. But you can also start and cancel the activation to trigger the interrupt and then use the skill when the interrupt has been used. If you are in the middle of a fight and want to use an Avatar form, either risk the interrupt, take a skill to prevent the interrupt, or move to a safe location to use the skill.

Don't see a reason they should be instant. If anything they would have at least a 1/4 second activation, but anything less than 1 second is overpowered, and even 1 second is pushing it for what they offer.

Pious concentration is an imba anti-interrupt for derv, but as everyone else said, pre-cast

Or don't run melee in RA, especially a derv.

Call me sarcastic but I believe that there's a single, very simple answer to your question. The balance is screwed. Introducing a new viable feature to the game (moreover, used by a forgotten class) will cause more problems than Anet can handle.

That's why Ritualists, Assassins, Paragons and Dervishes aren't being reworked in PvP. Anet ignores the problem because they don't have the means to deal with it. It doesn't bother them as much as it should because most of the population is apparently cosisted of PvE players, where these classes just got a buff.

I think that the above proves my point, but I honestly don't really believe that many care. So don't expect any changes there.

In response to the bolded:

Dwayna fares alright in Random Arenas for the same reason Defy Pain warriors "work". Great without a healer, but otherwise not that useful. Lyssa is great for the extra damage, particularly in D/A Dagger builds, and Melandru's is just all around good. Blind immunity AND spammable Deep Wound is good for a frontliner.

You clearly misunderstand my point in your second bolded statement. Sure, they are extremely powerful skills that are intended to have downtime, however, getting zero uptime due to a single competent Ranger on the other team is kind of lame. This hinders creativity and diversity in builds, which is simply a bad thing.

I'm not suggesting that every single skill be buffed to be effective in PvP, just some very important ones for a profession that has very few options due to a limited skillset. Read my comments on Wounding Strike, Reaper's Sweep, and Onslaught in my OP.

This would be fine, except that Dervishes already suffer from activation time problems of other skills compared to other frontlines, since most useful IAS/IMS skills are enchantments (ie Heart of Fury and Onslaught) and between the casting time and aftercast, your foe has likely kited far away from you. This is an inherent problem with the Dervish's reliance upon enchantments, however, the avatar's activation time is an easily balanced fix, while reworking enchantments gets messy.

Terrific advice for the pre-battle phase. Now you're in the heat of the battle and it has just recharged, what then?

[QUOTE=MagmaRed;4752626]Interrupts aren't TOO hard to avoid. As mentioned you can cast it outside of aggro of anyone who may have an interrupt ready to use. But you can also start and cancel the activation to trigger the interrupt and then use the skill when the interrupt has been used. If you are in the middle of a fight and want to use an Avatar form, either risk the interrupt, take a skill to prevent the interrupt, or move to a safe location to use the skill./QUOTE]

The solution presents itself, or does it? Canceling the skill works fine for a number of skills in the game, but not the Avatars for a Dervish simply because most of them cost too much energy. Dervishes have a hard enough time taking care of their energy in the smaller formats, and already need to heavily rely upon skills like Attacker's Insight. Moving to a safe location doesn't really work in RA or TA, since there is little emphasis on tactical positioning, and the Ranger (Mesmers don't need sight) can just follow you around the corner. Furthermore, this takes you out of the fight, which means you aren't pressuring or spiking, so you're not doing your job.

Interrupt prevention skills are somewhat problematic for the Dervish. Mantra of Resolve is straight out, simply because of the energy cost between its activation and the penalty for being interrupted. Pious Concentration seems good at first, but as a Dervish for RA or TA, you need to be heavily relying upon your enchantments for your IAS and additional longevity, as well as other roles. Stripping these just costs more energy, and takes you out of the fight even longer while recasting key enchantments. The only skill I would consider using is Mantra of Concentration, but that requires a little speccing to be effective, can overwrite useful stances limiting your effectiveness until they are recharged, as well as dictating the player's secondary profession thus further limiting options.

I am surprised no one has mentioned blocking (for Ranger interrupts), but the only real options Dervishes have are bad and worse. Shield Bash is great, but its long recharge makes it less useful for the Dervish than a Monk for general use.

This is part of the problem. There are not enough viable melee builds to counter the ridiculous anti-melee meta in RA right now. I don't think that every profession should be equally suited for each PvP format, however, blanket melee not being able to be useful is a problem.

Obviously the balance is screwed. Apart from insane skill combinations, the fact that the game was never meant to be balanced for 4v4, and the fact that an A/D crit-scythe is better for nearly all situations, everything is fine. The purpose of this thread is not to debate whether changes should be made to these unbalanced professions, but rather what changes should be made if any changes are implemented. The reason ANet hasn't fixed rampant problems is simply because there are too many, and too few developers to come up with fixes and implement them. That is why Sardelac occasionally is useful, when threads result in good ideas ready for implementation from an unrefined idea with holes in it. Saying that no changes are going to made so stop caring doesn't help.

-----------------------------------

Dervish forms are the one thing they have going for them, as Ritualists have Spirits, etc. Otherwise, nearly everything they do is better done by someone else

So we have to balance the game for RA? Um, what about attunements, you think those should be instant cast too? Dervs need a buff in many areas, but this is not it.

/notsigned because the recharge is 30 seconds only anyway, so unless it gets diversioned, the most that'll happen is you need to wait 30 seconds before retrying. Avatars having 1 second cast time or less is too good, bro.. soz. Be skillful and hide behind something before casting, or simply cast just outside of the rupter's range to commence whooping their booty.

You say dervishes are limited to only three elites, but aren't nearly all professions? It's the meta of PvP. You don't see a warrior running decapitate because it's just bad in mainstream Pvp, they themselves only have about 5 skills that are worth using in arenas. Just like avatars are bad, even with instant cast time, they're still not going to be better than wounding strike or reaper's.

I'm not suggesting we balance RA, GW2 would come first. As for Attunements, and other key skills, clearly you do not understand my points illustrated in my last post. Elementalists have an easier time of utilizing interrupt-preventing skills than Dervishes due to the way they use their energy. It's completely different, which is why you'll never see me advocating for such a ridiculous change. Consider the possibilities for Dervishes in PvP with this change, perhaps we'd even see Dervish flag runners with Avatar of Balthazar, who knows.

Depends how creative you are. Just because a build isn't on PvX or in the meta doesn't mean it isn't good. For example, I've been running different Melandru's Resilience Monk builds for years, and have even had success with it in TA. Standing in lava for energy management is strong. I've seen a couple Monk builds with Kinetic Armor, Boon Prots with Offering of Blood, even Shield of Judgment builds that work well when played right. I've also seen Warrior builds based on Rage of the Ntouka among other "worthless" elites, that far outclassed the meta warrior builds in our circumstances. Also, comparing Avatars to Wounding Strike in terms of which skill is "better" is ridiculous, they serve entirely different roles.

Be creative.

I'm not saying they aren't good, It's RA, anything can be good. But you have to look at the basic thing the class is trying to do, damage? Unless you have a ele spamming meteor shower that dies to a lyssa dagger derv, it isn't the best to use.

I've made it to 34 wins using echo-imbue healer on a derv, but without hex remover, a standard WoH could've done it better most of the time.

I've used scavenger's focus as energy management in RA on a monk, anything can be good, doesn't mean it'll always out perform the meta

The whole point of activation time is because certain skills are very "powerful". If you were to summon a meteor from the heavens, do you not think that would take some time to preform?

The point of making Avatars have activation time is to show the "dedication" dervishes have to worshipping the gods. Guild Wars is a game in all aspects, AreaNet wants to make the gameplay feel "real". If you were to take the form of a god in real life, do you think you would just do it instantly? I think it would take you some time to prepare that kind of power. As far as interupting it goes...to take the form of a god would take ALOT of concentration. In my opinion, Form Skills should be as easy to interupt as traps.

Are you serious ? do you really need someone to tell you how to make sure you dont get interrupted when you use a skill when you KNOW who is able to interrupt you ?. I really hope the answer is no ....

Dervishes are intended to be mainly physical damage dealers with a different sort of survivability than warriors, by utilizing enchantments and other skills instead of shouts and signets. Also, you'd be surprised at how much damage a D/A with AoL can do to Elementalists and Mesmers. Dual Striking during a spell is ridiculous.

I agree with you 100% on the notion that these skills require activation time to make sense within the context of the setting, however, gameplay is more important than setting for a game so heavily invested in PvP.

I have already covered this in previous posts, please read the entirety of the topic before posting...

120sec cooldown... read the skill description!

He's talking about if it gets interrupted, you only have to wait 30 seconds to retry. Most of the time, at least.

I think the biggest difference of opinion here between you and those of us disagreeing with you is the idea of avoiding interrupts. Most of us posting against the idea feel that interrupts are a FAIR way to counter the Avatars, and avoiding the interrupt may not be easy at time, but it is possible. Due to the ability to bring an anti-interrupt skill, cancel cast the form, and 'hide' you certainly have options available. And due to the power those forms offer (condition immunity is a HUGE benefit, extra damage from Lyssa is insane, etc.) then you have to balance it. The down time of the forms is one way they are balanced, but preventing the form from being used is still something that needs to be available. Remember how overpowered Paragons were before they got nerfed? Shouts with instant activation and no removal options were WAY too strong for PvP. An Avatar form with no activation time and no way to remove it is WAY too strong.

Being interrupted sux ? welcome to GW , shit happens. No matter what you say , its just a "i dont want this skill to be interrupted so buff it" thread. Once you have it , you cant remove it and have impressive effects , thats why its an elite , thats why that elite and many more can be interrupted. For anything else , masterc.... erm what MagmaRed said.

RANGERS AND MESMERS CAN INTERRUPT ME, NOOOO
MAKE MY INTERRUPTABLE SKILL UNABLE TO BE RUPTED THANKS

please, have you heard of things called cancel casting?

whatever next... NOO, MY WORD OF HEAL GOT RUPTED, MAKE IT UNABLE TO BE RUPTED..

/notsigned

Since the death of VoD and shadowsteps, a number of the derv forms remain over-nerfed for the gvg meta that wouldn't want them anyway. Melandru's could stand not costing 25e (just try to cancel cast that), or having better uptime with a less imbalanced ability (like say, 75% reduction of condition durations)

Current incarnations of avatars and shadows steps are fine oh, and shadow steps and avatars were not just nerfed for VoD reasons.

The problem isn't that there aren't options, it's that most of the options are terrible. I feel that the skills would be balanced without activation time because of the existing factors such as high energy cost, and the fact that they have significant downtime even when successful.

Paragon shouts were largely "balanced" by increasing their recharge time, and other skills such as Harrier's Toss were adjusted to reduce spike capabilities. While they may have overdone some of these nerfs, many of these skills are still powerful without being rigged, despite having instant activation time, and can even be used while knocked down. The Dervish Avatars already have an excessive recharge time, and while minor tweaking would help their balance regardless of my proposed change, would not become overpowered without activation time.

There are many other skills that cannot be removed by opposing players that have impressive effects. Consider Weapon Spells, Shouts, Signets, and regular Skills. While powerful, they have factors that balance them in comparison skills, such as the differences between Guardian and Weapon of Warding. Guardian lasts longer per amount of recharge, particularly with a 20% enchantments mod, than Weapon of Warding with 10 Spawning Power, and WoW costs more energy to boot. Yet, both of these skills see play, showing that neither one is exceedingly powerful. Yes, both of these skills can (and should) be able to interrupted, however, these are entirely different kinds of skills compared to the Avatars.

Perhaps I'm not being clear, or people simply aren't reading everything before posting (ding ding!). I'll not comment on cancel casting since I already have, however, I'll restate what I said in my opening post. When I RA or TA, more than half of the time I am playing a Power Block Mesmer, or some Ranger usually with Cripshot or some amusing self-made Gimmick. I have a pretty good idea about interrupts, and was shocked to see your comment on Word of Healing, because when I'm not on my Mesmer or Ranger, I'm playing Monk. If you honestly feel that WoH and the Avatars are a good comparison, you should be re-thinking your position. Word of Healing (ignoring its post buff healing amount) is balanced, and its powerful heals in tandem with short activation time and recharge are balanced by interrupts, skills like Diversion and Shame, etc.

I agree, the Avatars really do need tweaking. Avatar of Balthazar is terrible, even for everything but running in PvE, Avatar of Dwayna helps with pressure but not spikes, making it only moderately useful in anything but RA, Lyssa is terrible with scythes, Grenth is somewhat useful at first glance, but unless you're running a gimmick team of AoG Dervishes, you're probably going to have to remove blocking skills before spiking anyways for the other physicals. Avatar of Melandru is great, except that to maximize its efficiency you need to fill up on skills like Wearying Strike, that simply are not effective during the downtime (which is balanced!) but are made worthless overall if AoM is interrupted.

The problem is, nobody but you (currently) finds there to be a problem with the current balance of the Avatars. I wouldn't even want instant activation in PvE, and PvE allows overpowered crap.

The main reason you played dervish (aside from AoG's brokenness) was vod splinter farming or teleporting scythespike (but preferably both). The current heavily nerfed melandru's saw play right up until those things were removed. Despite the absurd damage dervs can put out, they are seriously gimped as true frontliners due to their lack of disruption/KDs.

People are having the same silly argument about mindblasters being OP'd right now. A one-dimensional bar like that is not going to kill good players as well as a more versatile bar, but it exists primarily to exploit the current tiebreaker condition, and that threat forces the enemy to react in disadvantageous ways.

The point of PvP is to use strategy in order to be better than your oppenents. Therefore, use a strategy that will prevent your Avatar skill.

/not-signed
I love it when people say "cast it out of aggro range". Do you see monks pre-Aegis in the past? Fact is it is a long recharge skill coupled with disabled time length, henceforth you would want to fully maximize the duration when the avatar is active. While I definitely want to see some substantial use in pvp, I believe removal of activation time is the wrong route to take. They should instead water down the inherent abilities and shorten the recharge time to compensate. Until a reasonable rework is sorted out, I think avatars should be left as a 'PvE-only' skill.

Some people are so afraid that their avatars will be interrupted that they use them before the battle even starts. Then again, they also use it 15 seconds before the gate opens, so maybe they're just retarded.

The problem I see is that a no-activation time for dervishes would probably make them overpowered. Think about avatar skill-synchronization, especially in large PvP groups. The other team would have a high chance of being raped on the spot as the Dervishes wade in and then activate their avatars.

/notsigned

Already been discussed.

The Avatar abilities do need some re-working (see FoxBat's earlier post), but the problem with the skills in their current form is not disable time. These skills should not be able to be maintained, and a lot of their strategic use would be lost if they were watered down but nearly maintainable or fully maintainable. Perhaps the solution is to reduce the recharge time (not disable time) to something small like 5 seconds, so that an interrupt can delay the use of the skill and cause trouble for the opposing team, while not preventing it from going off for extended periods of time. At the current recharge of 30 seconds, it's easy to look at the timer and figure out when you need to interrupt the skill again, while trying to interrupt every five seconds is a waste of time, but interrupting once or twice could yield a strategic advantage.

I thought we didn't talk about the people that waste 10-15+ seconds of avatar time by using it before the gate opens. As for the second bold, quite possibly, however, none of the Avatars are well suited for spikes any more than other elites, so I doubt this would happen. Hypothetically you could essentially ignore a BSurge Ele's blind spam by using AoM before a spike, or AoD for getting rid of Blurred Vision, but really there are better ways to go about this. There are better ways to reliably spike, and I don't see the added pressure being much different from how it is now.

120 second cooldown AFTER HAVING BEEN CASTED. If casting is not complete, it cycles through it's standard recharge of 30 seconds.

Yeh , big issue those 30 sec waiting . Only "big" if someone D-shots you , but if you get D-shoted , you deserve the 50sec punish .

/notsigned
As people do say, cast before entering battle. But if you're in the middle of battle this could be a challenging obstacle to avoid an interrupt.
But Avatars do have a generally long duration, if it were any shorter I would vouch for a one second casting time on them.
But if two seconds is much too long for an avatar, I would like to vouch a one second casting time on Healing Signet, that skill is far too dangerous to use for two seconds.

Since you refuse to see common logic, look at it this way:
Assuming you get the form off every time, on the high-end duration forms you have a ~70% up-time. VERY few skills have this much up-time. Even on the low end, you still have over 50% up-time.
Forms need their cast times and recharges to bring them statistically in-line with other skills. They also need to be rather underpowered, just because they are a bad mechanic in general, and never should have been put in the game in the first place.

And just to beat a dead horse, so maybe you'll listen: cast times are there so skills can be interrupted. Cast times and interrupts are what make this game what it is. This is made obvious by the extremely small pool of instant-cast skills.
Positioning in such a way as to not interrupted adds depth to the game.
If you can't deal with that, I think you should find a new game.

Avatars are pretty useless in RA, yes. So are many skills. The game isn't balanced around RA, and buffing a skill to make it useful in RA isn't going to happen. Making them an instant cast for PvP is just going to make them very strong in competitive. No thanks. Just cast it before you run into the enemies.

I believe you are missing my points entirely. Please re-read my previous posts, as I have discussed all of your points already.

Arky, I'm not suggesting this on the basis that Dervish Avatars should be buffed for the sole purpose of Random Arenas. They're fine for PvE because of Eternal Aura, but they don't see any play in any competitive format. I'm not suggesting that every skill that is worthless or otherwise ignored gets a buff, the difference here is that most other professions have hundreds more skills, dozens more elites, and the Dervish lacks the utility needed to perform well with its current skill set. Furthermore, the Avatars are tied closely to the profession, more-so than most elites. It isn't just a matter of tying skills to the primary attribute for balance, the Avatars embody the Dervish profession.

Dervishes don't have knockdowns, so they instantly cannot compete with Warriors for their traditional utility roles. The only thing that Dervishes can do is a lot of damage on spikes, and that is only aided by three elite skills. Assassins spike better and have unblockable attack chains as well as moreutility. The profession as a whole needs major adjustments, as do all of the non-core professions, but changing the Avatars to be made useful for PvP is a step in the right direction. Even if the activation time is not instant, changing it to prevent it from being able to be interrupted, or giving it an increased aftercast would also work, although not as well imo.