R/ and A/ out-Dervishing the Dervish.

^ Which is why I propose buffing end effects of short enchantments. Dervish should never be viewed as pure damage profession whereby their threat presence is felt by their damage alone. Their offense should comes in two forms: their attack skills and the end effects of their enchantments. Effects like daze, interruption, KD don't deal damage but they can inflict high amounts of pressure for a short time on opposition. So while they don't do as much damage as warriors, they are harder to be shutdown since they have alternative means to inflict pressure.

Secondly the "ripping" style of play aren't exactly overpowered as it required an enchantment and a "ripping" skill to trigger the effects. This allows opposition to have ample opportunity to interrupt the chain. Whats more, the desired enchantment to be ripped has to be on top of the enchantment stack which the opposition can rend before the dervish is adjacent to his target. This in turn enforces tactical play focusing more on positioning and timing of enchantment removals.

Mysticism used to be a lot stronger in its passive effect. Enchants as such used to have much faster recharges and stronger effects. But anyone that played during the Nightfall beta will remember just how terrible this can become.

I don't know how much was broken and fixed before we saw the open beta, but an alpha group that couldn't catch something like that would seem to be an alpha group that doesn't understand the game. By the time the beta came out there wasn't enough time to redesign dervishes, so by and large all of the enchantment based attributes (earth, wind, mysticism) were toned down to the point that they were practically unusable.

Looking at the recharge now, they seem fine (or could use a couple seconds shred off). I think the trouble lays within the casting time and usefulness of said enchantments.

Perhaps if the enchantments had a 1/4th second cast time, and useful effects WHILE they are up (Damage buff, other utility).

Another problem is that most of the dervish attack skills do not remove enchantments, or do not require removal, AND the recharge difference between attack skills and said enchantments do not mesh, so players are not able to fully rely on the one enchantment. Maybe if more attack skills relied on enchantment removal (but were buffed to compensate), and the recharge and effect of some enchantments were made more friendly to use with the attack skills.

I like the concept of enchantment-fueled attack skills, but only if I were able to use say, one dervish enchantment for every two attack skills...and I'm not talking mechanics, I'm talking recharge. say two attack skills have an 8 second recharge. I would want to only have to use say one enchantment with say a 4 second recharge. I don't want to have to choose which attack skill I want to use just because the enchantment has such a long recharge

This is counteracted by the fact that a significant portion of Dervish enchantments either apply damage or conditions to surrounding foes when used, so you get the damage back that way. Plus, Dervishes don't have adrenal skills, so unless you're going /W or /P you don't need to worry about losing damage through casting enchantments rather than attacking (although multi-attack with a scythe does help a lot if you DO want to use adrenal skills, you're probably better off as a W/D or P/D if that's what you really want to do).

The numbers may render the playstyle uncompetitive at the moment, but the principle is sound.

Of course they are fine now, their recharge had been increased by 3-4 times and the effects about halved. We know that these skills can reach a terribly imbalanced place if they are buffed enough, so let's buff em

The enchant stack/removing is really going to be worthless or overpowered. There so very little room for it to exist in a balanced state. Trying to find and hit that perfect little spot, by buffing/reworking current dervish skills, is just begging for trouble.

Dervishes have needed a complete rework since the very beginning, though this is just something that they are not going to get.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't mind breaking earth and wind prayers, because if something is equally broken for multiple professions, then there's still balance. This is basically what PvE "balance" comes down to currently, anyway; everyone gets broken stuff.

However, dervishes currently don't have a lot of broken stuff. And the few broken things they do have (a very good weapon, AoHM) are equally abusable by other professions, while they get to take advantage of their broken stuff that a D/X can't get. So, give the D/X (and ONLY the D/X) more broken stuff to level the playing field.

Or, better yet, give them a niche. Make it so that D/Xs have something that no A/D or W/D can get; something that will give them a place in any party. Make Vow of Silence a usable skill. Rework the other avatars to have utility effects like AoM and AoD (maybe change AoB to just give 75% block chance, and AoG just inflict random conditions with each attack, and AoL just steal 2 energy per hit). Make Mysticism give an innate chance of hostile spells against you failing, or something (hmmm...you know, I'd definitely trade energy management for a 2% chance per rank of hostile spells failing against me). Anything, so long as it's something that makes you go "wow, the only way I can do that is if I go D/X". That's the key.

nothing Is stopping a Dervish from going /W and using the Only maintainable IAS in the game in fact it is a no attribute skill

Embrace the Majesty that is frenzy

PVE side Anet gave us all a maintainable IAS?/IMS with drunken master nothing stops a dervish from using it

Nothing stopping the dervs from running Flail either.

EDIT: Didn't realize they changed the scaling on Flail.

I think Dervishes are maybe too hard to balance... the whole enchantment thing used for energy and side effects of enchantments seems way too far out to me. I've never tried it, but as a general rule, do you usually WANT your enchantments removed? And if you weren't a dervish, you would never end up using those enchantment removal skills either. Then factor in Monks maybe messing up that chain.

The bonus Mysticism gives is fine. It needs no buff ( does anyone remember the NF beta? Holy f**king sh*t. ) What dervs need is a buff to many Mysticism skills, because a lot of them suck *cough* Arcane Zeal *cough*.

IMO All the forms should be split into PvP versions that are slightly weaker but perma-maintainable. Forms act too much like World of Warcraft skills IE Big effect but significant downtime making them lame.

Apart from the fact that without a Strength investment, Flail now only lasts for a second.

Regarding Frenzy... Frenzy is generally bad in PvE since any frontliner is probably going to be attracting some kind of firepower often enough to make it dicey to use, and if you use a cancel stance, you're using two skill slots (unless that's a stance you want to have anyway, of course, but that requires having another stance you want some of the time but not all of the time).

Drunken Master might be a better option, especially if you're working on the title simultaneously, but since most dervishes carry AoHM and Eternal Aura then that pretty much ties down your PvE slots.

well except for that whole one second duration at 0 str thing

Frenzy is fine in pve just learn to frenzy

the fact remains that for balance reasons all IAS skills carry a strong drawback (except for the lame PvE ones) they are either not on demand and carry something like an ends if X condition is met require investment in a Lousy attribute point (read DPS loss) and those that are on demand carry such harsh personalty as Double damage received and self snare or reduction on base damage by 25%)

Bareing this in mind giving the dervish the Kind of IAS they are asking for would give the dervish an unfair advantage over other Melee classes.

I am going to dare say the Dervish is Fine, the fact that the assassin and the ranger outshine the dervish in scythe usage (even at lower invest in the weapon attribute) indicates an issue with the other classes not the dervish. it is expertise and critstrikes that needs addressing

Expertise should be reworked so it only effect ranger bow attacks, ranger skills and self targeted touch skills (this would end the ranger as the Gimmick platform de jour)

Critstrikes should only effect daggers skills that are contrary to this fact need to be reworked

Drunken Master technically requires consumables to be effective (of course, alcohol is dirt cheap, but still), and more importantly, it uses up a PvE slot that would have been used for Asuran Scan, Mental Block, or any of several other useful skills.

Giving dervishes a great IAS would not be giving them an unfair advantage because they are currently at a disadvantage. In fact, it's a disadvantage so large that even a perma-IAS with no downsides would still not be enough for a dervish to beat out a warrior or assassin at scythery. The dervish was given scythe mastery for a reason; it is supposed to be the best at it. But it isn't.

Besides, warriors and assassins have "unfair" advantages already. Critical strikes giving superior energy management to mysticism AND a big combat boost? Incredibly unfair. Warriors getting skills like Power Attack, that easily beat out the best attack skills a dervish can bring to the table? Unfair. Warriors needing only 1 armor-increasing skill to tank as well as an AoB dervish (who burns his elite AND a pve skill for armor)? Totally unfair.

But guess what? The dervish doesn't have any "unfair" advantages of his own to counteract the unfair advantages Warriors and Assassins get. So who really has the unfair advantage here?

Heck, RITUALISTS can use scythes better than dervishes. That's how much dervishes suck with scythes; a caster can beat them at it. This is inexcusable.

And that's why just nerfing critical strikes or strength is not the fix needed. Because there is not one but several professions that can beat the dervish at the very thing it was designed to do. It's much easier to buff one class than to nerf several (in this case, it would mean at least 4x as much tweaking and 4x as much chance for unintended side effects).

For all of their faults, at least Anet has given up on this notion.

Personally, I find Drunken Master to be quite usable even without alcohol. It may be a smaller boost, but that boost also comes with an IMS that can be useful in and of itself and which provides some bar compression. Of course, sometimes another PvE slot is simply more valuable... but sometimes it isn't.

Do you mean 'learn WHEN to frenzy'? At which point, well, you're probably not maintaining it anyway, although I'd admit it is a good way to punish the AI for going for the monk instead of you.

It costs only 5 energy every 90 or so seconds. Even without alcohol it is so damned energy/adren efficient. Anything else is just going to have a much larger cost.

Hell, we're talking about PvE, buy some damn consumables if you actually need one. My guardian/vanq build didn't even use an IAS, just 3 attack skills with activation times which acts like an IAS in itself.

Ok, fine, let's assume you have Drunken Master and have enough alcohol to keep it continuously working. Guess what? Warriors and Assassins STILL beat the dervish at using scythes. Easily. Shouldn't that say something about how underpowered the dervish is? Even when you stack the odds in his favor, he still falls short of other classes at his primary strength.

Seriously, I don't see how there's any argument here. Dervishes suck with scythes. Warriors, Assassins, Rangers, and Ritualists were not meant to be better at scything than dervishes, just like Assassins were not meant to be better at swording than warriors, and elementalists were not meant to be better archers than rangers, and monks were not meant to be better minion masters than necromancers. Therefore, something needs to be done to make the dervish the best scythe wielder. That's all there is to it. It's one of the more glaring balance issues in the game, second only to horrendous screwups like SF and ER.

wouldn't it make more sense to meld earth and wind prayers into more powerful support skills for scyth-ing? Like added damage or more effects.

Dervs can still deal out a fair amount of damage, probably more than an axe or sword warrior from my experiences of both.

The derv forms can make them pretty formidable in PvE although the lack of an IAS does limit them some what. Also the secondary attributes need to be made more useful to a dervish in general PvE, atm they don't seem to sync at all with scythe mastery and Mysticism.

Also if I was to have a ranger in my group I'd rather have them interrupting and condition spreading than using a scythe, and if I was to take a assassin...well actually I just wouldn't take one...ever

Only class I think uses a scythe better is probably warriors for many reasons.

The problem with buffing Earth or Wind Prayers is that D/Xs aren't the only people who have access to it. Any /D can use them. Buffing Earth and Wind Prayers would just leave the primary dervishes in the same boat as before, unless you made it so that there were key breakpoints at 13+ (like how there's a world of difference between Splinter Weapon at 12 and 14).

I don't know much about warriors, but I wouldn't be surprised if dervs do indeed outdamage sword or axe warriors (they don't get an AoHM-like skill). However, that doesn't change the fact that a warrior who picks up a scythe will use it better than the dervish.

3 out of the 5 avatars suck. Avatar of Lyssa just gives you extra max energy (which is NOT the same as more energy; it just means you can store more) and higher attack power. Energy is just a means to an end (staying alive, dealing damage, hindering the enemies, or helping someone else do the above). Unfortunately, even with the extra attack power, a scythe warrior still beats out a dervish. As for AoB, well, the IMS doesn't mean much for anything except running (it's not like it makes your whole party run faster like charge!, so you still have to wait for them). The holy damage is meaningless, since you'll already be doing holy damage due to AoHM. And the +40 armor is still not going to let you outtank a warrior. A warrior with Sentinel's Insignias and Conviction has 124 armor against almost everything (it's only 1 point out of strength). With AoB and windwalker's insignias, you can get up to 130. Too bad he can just add Lion's Comfort and laugh as he weathers attacks that would slaughter you. So AoB is pointless. And AoG...well, +17 damage or so is not enough to close the gap in power between the dervish and the scythe warrior. And he's gonna have more armor than you do, and there's still that pesky LC.

AoM and AoD are good, but they are one of the few options available for dervs, and they're technically niche builds (just like every other non-redundant dervish build). There are no "good" general PvE builds for the dervish. You have to design a build that's specially designed to do a couple of things. But never pure damage or tanking if you want to be good, because that's pointless, as there are other classes that can do the same builds but better.

Rangers are supposedly better at scything than dervishes (haven't run the numbers myself, so can't say for sure) because expertise allows them to spam scythe attacks like there's no tomorrow. Ritualists are better at using scythes than dervishes because of spirit's strength. Assassins are better at using scythes than dervishes because of critical strikes and critical agility (they're also tougher, too, btw). And warriors are better scythe users than dervishes because of their armor, strength, and warrior's endurance.

If those Earth and Wind Prayers skills are enchantments, however, the X/D doesn't get Mysticism synergising with them.

I haven't run the numbers against your baseline, but I find Lyssa makes for a good synergy with Radiant Scythe...

...and believe me, sometimes that energy does come in useful. If you're throwing a lot of enchantments, Mysticism will mean you probably have the energy to reapply them when they expire, but the deep energy pool can be useful in getting them all on in the first place.

This is my least favourite avatar, but for the sake of argument: If you're getting the full benefit out of Windwalker's Insignia, you could also be getting the full benefit of Mystic Regeneration and/or Mystic Vigor. Lion's Comfort gives up to 114 points for every 4 strikes of adrenaline, while Mystic Vigor gives back 25 points per hit - so 100 points in the time it takes to recharge LC. Plus, Mystic Vigor doesn't require spending as much time in skill activation, nor does it risk 'wasting' adrenaline.

Of course, survivability doesn't matter if the rest of the party is killed around you, unless you're using a farming build that CAN solo the zone.

That's 17 lifestealing, not 17 damage, which means it can get through things that damage can't... and also another 17 health per hit.

On the whole, I do agree with you that the Dervish needs a buff, but I don't think the avatars are at fault.

Scythe Warriors and Scythe Sins have more energy than they know what to do with, so synergy with mysticism is irrelevant.

The Mystic Regeneration applies to the Scythe Warrior too, though. He still wins in survivability.

+17 lifestealing is no different in terms of offense from +17 damage. The Scythe Warrior is beating the dervish by something like +30 or more damage from attack skills.

Make Aura of Holy Might scale duration with mysticism, like tntf does.

I've brought up the idea before, and somebody submitted it as a formal suggestion, quoting me in the OP.

What I learned from that thread (and this one) is that you can get away with QQing about dervishes sucking, but if you suggest nerfing other scythe users, people say to buff dervishes, and if you suggest buffing dervishes, people say you should nerf other scythe users. In other words, you just can't win.

Which, if I understand correctly, requires specific builds (scythewars need WE as their elite, for instance). If the prayers were more competitive, this added versatility may make the difference. (Frankly, in normal play, I find Mysticism is often enough, especially if the monks are using short-term prots. Once you've got enough, more is often unnecessary.)

True, but I ran the numbers on Mystic Vigor versus LC, so that argument still applies if we assume the scythewar and the dervish both have Mystic Regen as the baseline. Plus, if the scythewar is wearing the 13+Str insignia, that doesn't leave many attribute points to split between Earth Mastery and Scythe Mastery - with the cap on Regen the scythewar can probably afford not to have that many points in Earth Prayers if they're running three other enchantments, but they'll still need to be reapplying more often.

Actually, it is different, when the target has something that protects it from normal damage (lifesteal will get you over a Prot Spirit cap, for instance, or you can attack something that has immunity to damage without worrying about said immunity). And it gives survivability in the form of +17 health every hit.

More importantly, though, when you have a +17 baseline, you only need to get another +15 or so out of attack skills to match what you're comparing it with.

The fact that warriors need WE is the only thing that makes WS dervishes be considered good. It's the one thing they have over them (of course, the dervish needs to make use of their secondary to have something over the scythe sin).

11 str + headgear + 1 minor rune. 6 earth prayers is enough to maintain conviction.

Ok, fair enough on the lifestealing. But still, it's not enough to overcome the sheer offensive power the scythe warrior holds over the dervish.

!yes! that way the other classes are still better than the derv at everything! ..

the derv sucks, has average/weak attack power, no synergy with other classes that makes them more useful than the other class. Example! Ele's can heal like no other in PvP and PvE because of the skills they have. Rangers do damage more consistently because of there main attr, they can spam, spam, and spam away with no drawbacks. War's have armor pen linked to there main attr. Sins crit for massive damage. What does a derv have... well.. nothing.. cheesy elites, weak support skills, mediocre attacks, and an uberbad main attr line (almost as bad as the ele's)

i tried playing my derv, but everything outdoes it! War's do more damage, rangers spread conditions better, rit's, ele's, and necro's support better, and all these classes have either skills or attr lines that make energy so much easier to manage.

Derv's just don't cut it for me
They can be interesting in PvE for farming, running, and some weird tanking builds (lol, who tanks anymore for general pve?), but in pvp they are just straight up outdone.

Yeah I would agree that the new PvE AoG is a huge improvement. And that +17 damage goes a long way to replace Mystic Vigor as a self heal. When you hit three enemies at once your stealing 51 health, which is pretty damn impressive for a regular attack. (Then again, hitting 100s with AoL in PvP has always been impressive to me.)

I would actually disagree with other posts. Dervs would be amazing in pve and pvp if they simply reverted them to the start of nf.
In other words:
REVERT PIOUS ASSAULT AND BRING BACK ENCHANTMENT JUGGLING!!
If you're juggling enchantments, you won't be able to be a critical scythe and you won't have mysticism either to benefit.

Or make something else behave like Pious Assault used to. That change was supposed to be a buff (giving Dervishes another option for Deep Wound) but in practise it seriously hit one of the other Dervish builds.

Instant recharging fast activating pious assault was bomb.

Aye. Dust Cloak-Pious Assault. Staggering Force-Pious Assault. Heart of Holy Flame-Pious Assault. What's that? Everything nearby is blind, weakened, and most importantly of all, well on the way to being dead. Meanwhile, my Avatar of Dwayna-hood means that I've regained about 300 hit points and shook off 6 hexes in the process.

If I'd stuck to that for longer rather than experimenting with a Balthazar-based build, my Dervish would probably have kept Survivor for longer.

You can do it with other Pious skills like Pious Light, but Assault made sure that at the point the enchantment was stripped, the target would be within range.

It would be nice if Myticism's energy gain triggers when you reapply enchantments too, rather then having to wait for them to run out.

Aye. While you can always just wait until it expires before you reapply... sometimes you have good reason not to want to.

Expertise should only effect ranger skills and Critical should only effect dagger attacks. Solved problem.

Not the first time we do read this here. And no it's not the solution. As stated before the Warrior and Rit would still be able to be the 'better' scyhtwielder's (in pve).

As others I do see the main problem being the primary 'mysticism' (as discussed in length above) and of course the lack of frontline utility that makes our warriors such killing machines.

I don't know how many Monks I saw dropping by the force of Bull's strike (KD) with Stonefist insignia (3sec), Frenzy (IAS), Rush (IMS), Dchop (interrupt) and whatever Deep Wound was chosen; plus maintainable steady DPS at the tip toes of the backline (no time to rest). Having a war frenzy into you while you know his bulls is recharged wins just by psychological pressure...

Dervishes just ain't having those tools within their skill set and if they have they usually devote and awful lot to be as effective as their frontline counterpart in only one of those departments. Usually by being forced into using a secondary. And they tend to eat much more energy from their monks due to their low armor; plus HP just ain't cutting it under pressure.

tl;dr: To be effective in pve they need a ridiculous buff (pve / pvp split skills)
In pvp I don't see them coming back without a big overhaul (ain't gonna happen).

Ok, let's try to simplify this problem.

Problem: Warriors, Assassins, Ritualists, and possibly Rangers use the scythe better than the Dervish.

Reasons:
1) Warriors get strength and WE
2) Assassins get critical strikes
3) Ritualists get Spirit's Strength
4) Rangers get expertise
5) Mysticism offers no synergy with the scythe
6) Mysticism sucks as energy management
7) Dervishes lack a good IAS
8) Dervish has nothing he can use to buff his damage output that the competition can't abuse equally well (or better)

Possible fixes to each problem:
1) Nerf WE to not work with scythes
2) Nerf critical strikes to only affect daggers
3) Nerf Spirit's Strength in some way (though to be fair, the dervish still has more armor than the Ritualist, so it may be acceptable for the scythe Rit to exceed the Dervish in pure damage)
4) Nerf expertise to not affect scythe attacks OR make the dervish able to spam scythe attacks just as easily
5) Make mysticism cause scythes to be more effective, such as with an innate stackable IAS, life-stealing, or linking the number of enemies a scythe can strike to mysticism
6) Buff Mysticism's energy management, either by making it 1 energy per 2 ranks or (preferably) by reworking it so that it reduces costs of enchantments or causes energy gain upon a successful strike (perhaps a combination of the latter two would be best)
7) Buff Heart of Fury, Onslaught, or any of the other currently-crappy IAS skills the dervish has so that the class finally gets a maintainable +33% IAS
8) Modify the skills that scythe users use to boost damage output so that the dervish gets more benefit from them (this is the single easiest way to fix the profession; linking the duration of AoHM to mysticism, for example, so that only dervishes could keep it up for long would singlehandledly make the dervish the best scythe wielder and eliminate the need for any other changes, since no one else would be able to beat him at his role)

Weapon lines are not primary ones for a reason, so other professions can use them.

Looking at why the others are better comes from their primary line synergizing more with weapons in general, while the derv's primary adds no synergy at all with weapons.

Instead of asking that all the other classes be nerfed so that the derv can be the best, why not ask that the derv get some buffs and reworks to skills as well as the primary line so they don't suck as much.

That seems to make more sense than asking to make everyone suck at using the scythe just so the derv can be the best at it but still suck at it.

What makes this game fun is that you can synergize primary professions with secondary, the problem with Drevs is they only have synergy with in their own profession lines, and their primary is greatly lacking compared to the other melee classes.

What some of you are suggesting is to remove synergy from other classes so that the Derv can still suck at using their own weapon line. You're not removing that they suck at it you're just making the other classes suck more than the Derv does.

Mysticism needs rework as spawning power did , SP got a lil buff .... maybe they do the same with mysticism . What is never gonna happen is W , A and R getting nerfed so D can look a little less worse than now.