Link Number of Scythe Targets to Mysticism

Dervs suck, but so do A/D and W/Ds using scythes. Its not like you see those in the GvG meta either. The point is, not only do A/Ds and W/Ds need to be nerfed, but the Dervishes also need to be buffed. Just nerfing A/D, W/D builds won't suddenly make Dervs "good." Just buffing Dervs won't make them better then the alternatives. You need to do both.

/notsigned

No real reason, and if you were to add it to the already 3 max, may aswell go AoE bomber.

It's not changing mysticism, it's changing energy problems.

And cool it with the freaking "Dervs suck, change it" threads, Bajebus Rice!

I'll stop it when there's a real reason to play my favorite class.

Btw, even if dervishes could spam attack skills as often as W/Ds and A/Ds, they still wouldn't be as effective, because those classes get strength and critical strikes. Hence, why nerfing those two is a better solution. At least then it would work it making dervishes useful.

Or you could make the Primary Attribute more of an energy-mangement role, like it should be. (Without adding external skills/modifications to the arguement).

Saying slap a zealous mod on wont be beneficial, it doesnt need a zealous mod to work with Energy strorage, soul reaping, ect.

Most roles have e-management primaries, but that's where it belongs.

Mesmers, Warriors, and Monks are the only ones I know that dont really have a good e-management primary.

Ex. Warriors strength may affect counter attack, but the attribute itself (compare to soul reaping) isnt pure energy.

Every other class has energy mangement.

Believe it or not Rits do in a way. The longer the weapon spells and binding rituals last, the more energy they regenerate, (based on default settings, like no upkept enchantments).

Myst should have a better effect than "energy on end effect". More like each enchantment cast, or more pips of regen you get, something along those lines.

I don't understand why people think mysticism is at fault for dervish's mediocrity. And scythe is still as fine as it should be on a dervish as dervish is not a true martial profession at all unlike warriors and assassins.

And you don't think a profession not having a good incentive to use its primary attribute is a bad thing?

If you're not using Mysticism, why not use Warrior's Endurance instead (and thus spec into Strength rather than Wind Prayers) and get the extra armour of a warrior?

I strongly disagree on this one. The energy is quite useful for getting all the enchantments you want down (AoHM, HoF, Eternal Aura - note that with the latter, the previous two are almost maintainable) and having energy to follow up with attack skills. As for the skills - just pick a target that's going to be using skills, and you'll catch them mid-skill often enough.

Which is why you put a poll up? I personally mentioned doing this in a topic about Dervishes being outclassed by other classes. However, I did so at random, without putting thought into it, or considering balance issues. I figured most people would laugh at the idea and never want it.... it was not made as a suggestion to be used. I am not claiming to be the first to have thought of this, but I have not seen discussion of doing so very often. And although I think Dervish could use some help, it doesn't need very much. Most of the people I see asking for Dervish to be buffed make it sound as though the class is not worth using at all. That is wrong. Some builds may be better on another class, but the same could be said about lots of classes/builds. And putting in a dual attribute requirement for a weapon would be BAD for the game.

I don't want to be required to use Scythe Mastery AND Mysticism both just to use a scythe effectively. If so, Axe/Sword/Hammer should require Strength, Bow should require Expertise, Spear should require Leadership, and Daggers should require Critical Strikes.

And Evasion?

"Most roles have e-management primaries, but that's where it belongs.

Mesmers, Warriors, and Monks are the only ones I know that dont really have a good e-management primary.

Ex. Warriors strength may affect counter attack, but the attribute itself (compare to soul reaping) isnt pure energy.

Every other class has energy mangement.

Believe it or not Rits do in a way. The longer the weapon spells and binding rituals last, the more energy they regenerate, (based on default settings, like no upkept enchantments)."

Ritualists have Spawning Power. I will argue that increasing the duration of weapon spells is energy management, and Spawning Power does not increase the duration of Binding Rituals, it provides them with more health, which MAY allow them to last longer if under attack. Since Monks primarily use enchantments, they have enegry management outside of their attributes by your logic. A 20% Enchanting weapon mod gives them energy management.

Elementalists do not have energy management. More energy does not manage the use of it. I have seen MANY Ele's run out of energy because they don't know how to manage it, even when they have 13 Energy Storage.

So Warrior, Mesmer, Monk, Elementalist, and Ritualist are without energy management primary attributes. That is half the classes in the game. Dervish could be added into that list easily, as you gain energy when enchantments end. It may not be as good as other classes have, but it isn't the only thing it does.

I have no idea what this would do to the balance of the game, but what if you made Mysticism to Dervishes what Expertise is to Rangers? For each rank in Mysticism, shave energy off of either Enchantments, Attack Skills, or both. Then just raise the energy cost of whatever skills' energy comes down with Mysticism.

I apologize I don't really know much about Dervishes, but on this thread alone I have seen Dervishes being out-scythed by other professions, energy management, and Mysticism being a worthless attribute. This seems to help all those issues as well as not make it impossible for other professions to still use the weapon to hit multiple targets.

Hope this helps.

Sorry for the double post, but just saw this:

In a way, the OP is trying to make the scythe on the level of other melee weapons. All melee weapons besides the scythe are just straight damage producers, nothing special. BUT, by spending in to the primary attribute, they become more effective (warrior weapons get armor penetration with strength, and sins have a greater chance to do critical hits). The OP, if I am reading it right, is trying to make the Scythe a straight damage producer with hitting multiple targets as the special ability gained by spending in the primary attribute. That way, armor penetration with a melee weapon becomes unique to the Warrior, just as increased critical strikes with melee weapons becomes unique to the Assassin, and so the OP is trying to make hitting multiple targets unique to the Dervish, rather than the weapon. Its pretty obvious that based on the attack animations, spinning attacks that hit multiple targets was envisioned by ANET to be a unique Derv attribute, but for some reason they tied it to the weapon instead of the profession.

The problem is, hitting multiple targets at 100% damage is way more effective than a small percentage of armor penetration or a small increased chance at a critical hit. The earlier idea of diminished damage over multiple hits -- which can be boosted by mysticism -- I think is a good way to even out the gains from Strength and Critical Strikes with that of Mysticism.

Another idea might be to give a scythe an inherent chance of hitting multiple targets (say 50%) and then for each point in Mysticism, add another 3% or something.

The OP is right that their is an incongruency between Warriors, Dervs, and Assassins with how their weapons and primary attributes interplay.

Alternatively, Anet can lower high end scythe damage (while raising low end damage), so there is no reason for a sin to run a scythe. If you think strength actually adds anything meaningful to warrior damage, you really have no idea what you're talking about. Mysticism, although pretty horrible, adds more to Dervish damage than Strength does to a Warrior's. Crit strikes, on the other hand, is pretty rediculous with a scythe, but that is more of a problem due to the 120 damage crits thanks to Anets wonderful idea to implement a weapon with retarded high-end damage capable of spamming DW attacks.

Because strength is not my Dervish's primary attribute.

I am playing my Dervish.

Mysticism adds nothing to scythe damage.

Strength is the difference between a DR of 2 against a 60 AL target and a DR of 1.8. Pretty significant when paired with their energy management.

Perhaps tweak the numbers in Mysticism a bit. Instead of 1 health per point and 1 energy per 3 points, make it 3 health per point and 1 energy per point. At 12 Mysticism, that would give Dervs a +36 health/+12 energy bonus whenever an enchantment ends. That would provide better energy management than the existing version and making a primary Derv more effective without doing anything to scythes, thus allowing secondary Dervs to still be effective as well.

What E-management? You can run WE, but then you don't have an IAS. Mysticism does add to scythe damage, there is this wonderful enchantment called Heart of Fury which happens to be the best IAS available to dervs.

Strength does not add much to warrior damage. When people started running a 14/13/3 split on their axe bars instead of 14/10/9(or 10)/3, things didn't magically start taking huge damage and dying more. The only reason you spec into strength is for shield, skills in strength, and sentinel's if you are running 14.

I'd personally enjoy seeing the Dervish's casting abilities strengthened - perhaps if Mysticism became some form of energy management (enchantment spells give high energy percent return, standard spells give very small percent energy return), and Dervish spells were looked at, reworked as needed. This enabling the Dervish to function more as a close-quarters caster with melee abilities (which is what it SHOULD be, and is something I'd love to see and to play), instead of a melee class with a bit of spellcasting support (because that's more the Assassin's role). Strengthening the Dervish's scythe abilities or weakening that of other classes is not the way to go; it still leaves the Dervish redundant and, probably, inferior. Strengthening and reworking the Dervish's caster abilities would be the thing to do.

In short:

Current dervish - melee class with a bit of spell backup, but loses out completely to Warrior and Dervish.

What it should be - a caster class. But a caster class with higher armour, its own melee weapon and melee line, and a host of close-quarters spells. Having the ability to do spell damage, or scythe damage, at enemies, from close range - rather than just scythe damage slightly augmented by spells.

Wands, staffs, and foci for Wind, Earth, and Mysticism would help in turning it into a proper caster/melee hybrid.

Regarding the effect of the Strength primary: Back when Tactics was good, it was common for Strength to simply be the stat that gets whatever is left over once the weapon attribute, Tactics, and any secondary attributes are filled out. The penetration only applies to attack skills, and with most such skills having their bonus damage ignore armour anyway, the passive Strength effect is the weakest in the game with the possible exception of Spawning Power. Strength is popular not because of the 9-13% armour penetration it grants only when using attack skills, but because it's associated with good skills.

(Admittedly, the passive effect probably is also more important now, but that's because it's easier to spam attack skills than it used to be.)

But what are you getting for doing so? Shouldn't you get something more out of it compared to the Warrior than some small boosts to your attributes?

I was re-reading the thread, and I noticed that I somehow missed this post:

Holy mother of donkey f***ers! You are a genius!

This would give primary dervishes a reason to be used without nerfing dervish secondaries in any way! It's perfect! Everybody wins!

Breakpoint 14 Scythe Mastery would be better, any non-primary scythe user would put 12 anyway and then it's just using a consumable.

Great idea, you kinda overlooked the thing that you only hit foes adjecent to your target, so hitting 4 is already possible, just very very implausible.

However, I do not see the problem with R/D or W/D or anything other /D (besides Mo/D. Not sure if Mo/D are still around, because I sort of quit guild wars a good year ago, but they were OP, they just took 0 damage from melee. But that was simply poor skill balancing, not a problem with dervishes in particular.)

Aug 17, 2009, 01:48 PM

Jul 21, 2010 03:36 PM ...there's a major Dervish buff in progress.

Why would you do such a thing?

P.S. This isn't a thread about Necros... owait

In a sense it is because the derv is seen as a martial profession with protection capacities (the later are seen as useless on a melee) And Mysticism isn't a martial attribute. Scythe is still as fine as it should be on a dercish, but dervish should have more to them than a scythe, which they don't.

Truth is, it's not the problem. In every body's view, it is the problem for perfectly legitimate reasons.
Beleive it or not, but that was the original concept of the class, and hopefully the dervish update will bring it back to power.

wtf, OP. No.

i am in favour of buffing the dervish instead of weakening other scythe users.

I'd like to see some viable purpose for the primary attribute. Turn mysticsm into an energy management attribute. Move some attack buff skills into the mysticsm line/and or change the functionality of some mysticsm skills to make them more compatible with a melee attacker.

eg. zealous renewal: for 30 seconds you gain 1 energy everytime you hit with a scythe attack. (or some shit like that..basically a miniature zealous vow) balthazar's rage: for 20 seconds you steal 10 hp everytime you hit with an attack. bla bla bla etc

pious fury is rubbish and so is eremites zeal. buff please.

Zzzzzz, won't fix A/D but other than that, most /D gimmicks take the plunge. Ok change, but there's probably a better option out there.

I don't know if any of you know this, but this thread is long past it's expiration date. All the relevant discussion has already been had, the suggestion died, and there's really no point in continuing. Can we have a mod close this or something?

Someone made a similar suggestion, which meant this thread needed to be re-opened I guess.

In that case, it might be better to dig up the suggestion I made after this one. The reason this thread died was because I decided to make a slightly different one in response to ideas from this one.

Then again, the political climate surrounding the dervish has changed (many of the ideas people bring forward today are things that I and others thought of long ago), so who knows?

Mods closed my thread and linked to this one, that's why this one is given new life. If you don't like it, you can take it up with the mods.

Imo themain problem is that the Derv lacks its role on the battlefield.
The question what does the derv do? What is unique about the derv to take him in a party instead of a war or a sin???

that is the question my friends...

Sin does insane dps /tank as shadow form/
War has great armor/ kd/ survivability
Paras are party oriented

Derv?
where is his place?
Do more DPS than a Sin?
Have better survivability than a War?
Be more party oriented than a Para?

so derv would take their place?

NO
the problem is that they have to invent another significant category at wich the derv is the best

Agreed, i feel the derv is underpowered in terms of party slots. Warriors survive better, Sins deal way more damage, and sorry but Paragons suck, id rather take a Derv over a Paragon (unless its Imbagon)

In any case, sorry for being off topic.
Can we please close this thread, like the guy above already said, all relevant discussion has already been had, close this.....

You know what I think, make the Scythe hit targets that are adjacent to the player, NOT adjacent to the target. Positioning would be so much more key and would give the Dervish more flexibility. I too would like to see number of targets increased due to Mysticism.

PBaoe and conditions. Not effective enough ? welcome to the club , interrupters and condt spreading rangers say hi.

They should boost some ench effects on them and boost mysticism so they gain energy and hp everytime they gain/lose an ench/hex/condt .

The role the dervish is supposed to have is the one role you failed to mention: general melee AoE. That role is currently jointly occupied by warriors and sins (with sins having the most damage, and warriors sacrificing a little of it for SY). Neither of them need it, as you illustrated.

Changing scythe is bad idea - long time ago anet decided to change mystic regen for numerous reasons which in turn killed a wide range of /d builds - 55 monks lost the /d for quite a while.Now if you mess with scythe and make it only viable for a derv then again lots of diff builds who use a scythe and non derv primary will die out and cause huge amount of complaints.
What next - making sure each weapon can only be used by a primary proffession of its type ? Make all skills primary profession only ?
Gw has a great thing called diversity - our chrs can diverse in what builds and weapons they use making the game more enjoyable - d/a runners .. would you like them nerfed as all sin skills are sin only ?.
Ive never yet seen a major outpost without an dervs - ive not yet seen many team builds that dont include dervs and im sure as hell pvxwiki and other sites with builds have an empty derv build area.Dervs seem to be played regardless of how often their skills are buffed or nerfed.
Thats my rant over and when gw comes back online i`ll be joining my guildies on my a/d crit scythe sin and fighting alongside them with their dervs ( they dont complain im a a/d nor i use derv skills and a scythe ).

Don't see team builds that don't include dervs?

I've never seen a single one that does.

Say what you will about this particular idea (I abandoned it a long time ago), but there is no reason to ever use a dervish in PvE. There is always some other class that can do it better.

Also, making primary dervs better than secondary dervs does not harm build diversity. It actually increases it, by giving an entire profession a use. Making other professions less effective with the scythe does not harm their diversity any more than they currently harm the dervish's. And unlike them, the dervish is actually supposed to be swinging the scythe around.

Also, you are failing to comprehend how the secondary profession system is supposed to work. The secondary profession is supposed to complement the primary profession, not the reverse.

Bad idea. How is gimping other classes making dervs better, all it does is making everybody else worse. How bout leaving the scythe as it is, but making the crappy dervish skills usable as a start. Most of the dervish enchantments are useless, for a supposed enchantment driven class, lets start there. Then maybe dervishes can actually have decent builds instead of the sub par builds they have now.

You fail to comprehend what the dervish's problem is. It's not the other classes that are better at being a dervish than a dervish, is that the dervish is bad at being a dervish. There are no penalties for anyone using daggers and assassin skills but assassins remain the best at it, anyone can pick up a axe and use warrior skills, but warriors are still the best at it, that's because their primary actually complements their skills. The dervish has terrible synergy between it's primary and skills. It has no synergy with attack spamming which is what people try to turn the dervish into, terribly bland. The enchantments(ie. pbaoe, your "melee aoe") are terribly underpowered for anyone to want to use them, even if anyone wanted to use them mysticism can't even generate enough energy to sustain them. Is it because of mesmers that eles suck at nuking? no eles just bad.

Do you have any idea how large the gap is between the dervish and other professions? It's big. Too big for some marginal buffs to fix.

Do you have any idea how much buffing it would take for anything else in the dervish's arsenal to compete with attack skill spam? Huge, gargantuan buffs.

To make the dervish better than the alternatives with only buffs would add to the power creep in a way that NF would envy. We're talking about the biggest buffs in the game's history, with no guarantees that they wouldn't have unintended balance consequences elsewhere. Nerfing doesn't have that drawback. More importantly, it's unlikely Anet would go for something like that.

There is no difference in terms of class balance between nerfing the overpowered and buffing the underpowered. So, yes, it's equally true that Elementalists make bad nukers because other classes nuke better as it is that Elementalists don't nuke well. What's "good" or "bad" is not determined in a vacuum; it is determined by comparison to the alternatives. We say something is good when it is better, and bad when it is worse.

Another huge issue is the question of how one would go about buffing mysticism in a way that would make dervishes better than it's competition.

Increase the energy gain? Even SR can't fuel attack skill spam. Any scythe build worth using requires around 3 energy per second. Even if Mysticism could provide this under it's current functionality, the fact that it would require monks to build around you and focus on you would prevent the dervish from ever being the "best" scythe user.

Have Mysticism increase damage with the scythe? I suggested that one once. The idea died. But even if it hadn't, it wouldn't have allowed the dervish to beat out the scythe sin.

Have Mysticism increase crit rates? Without the crit-enhancing skills in Critical Strikes, it wouldn't help.

Add AP? Without better IAS, it wouldn't help. Never mind that it would make Strength redundant. And even if you threw in better IAS, sins would still be better.

Decrease recharge times? That might make dervishes better than warriors, but sins would remain at the top.

But let's say you didn't buff Mysticism as an attribute. What if you buffed it's skills? The avatars offer only three things: offense (not enough), defense (paradoxical on a frontline melee character), or utility (which is not worthwhile). The energy management skills are useless (and even if they were as powerful as zealous vow, the dervish would still be using the same number of skill slots, and would still be inferior as a result). Heart of Fury is the only decent IAS dervishes have, and even if it was buffed to full maintainability (which, really, it should have always been, seeing as how it forces you to waste half your attribute points on mysticism), the dervish would still not be able to beat the scythe sin.

What if you buff Earth and Wind Prayers? The dervish has no need of defense, IMS, etc. Making enchantments worthwhile would require a ridiculous amount of buffing that is about as likely as us getting 3 more Gods' realms. Vow of Strength is inferior to zealous vow even if the enemy never has a condition. And if any of this did become worthwhile, we would just see more secondary abuse.

oh i guess the buffs to rits and mesmers were minor and insignificant. FYI eles were bad nukers since HM came out, not because of mesmers, but until recently ppl had no other choice but eles. It's like saying if warriors sucked, assassin's would great when factions just came out? And notice it did not require any other classes to get gimped for assassins to be buffed. And why don't you ask even though sins can use axes why are warriors still better at it? That's because their primary attribute and skills actually has synergy with their attacks. As of now any class with enough energy management is better or good as a dervish, is it because they are too op with a scythe? No it's because how hard is it to be beat some1 with a primary attribute and skills that doesn't even function properly. It's not the weapon it the skills behind it. The skill set under Mysticism is pathetic, yeh it gives energy, not even enough, dps? lol. If you want dps you gotta spec into scythe mastery, but the dps is unimpressive cause the other half of dervish dps for the supposed "enchantment fueled class" are spread all over wind and earth prayers, not that they are impressive anyways under their current form. Offensive enchantments need to be moved in to mysticism so you can have dps and energy at the same time not one or the other. Earth prayers should focus on protection and healing for a tanking tree, like shadow arts with more tanking and less utility. Wind prayers should be a utility tree, kiting, snaring, debuffing.

you've probably seen this, feel free to play with any of the numbers till you feel that it's sufficiently op or balanced.

Mysticism - For ranks in Mysticism gain energy whenever an enchantment on you cast by you ends, you gain 2 energy at ranks 4 and above, 4 energy at ranks 7 and above, 6 energy at 10 ranks above, and 8 energy at ranks 13 and above. In PvE, each rank of Mysticism decreases the recharge time for your Dervish enchantments by 4% (maximum 50%).

Asuran Scan

Wounding Strike
Scythe Mastery
Elite Scythe Attack
5e cost
3/4s activation
4s recharge

If this attack hits, target foe suffers from Bleeding for 5...17 seconds. You lose 1 dervish enchantment if this attack hits. If a dervish enchant was removed this way you do +5...20 damage and target foe also suffers from a Deep Wound for 5...17 seconds.

Pious Assault
scythe mastery
Scythe Attack
5e cost
3/4s activation
12s recharge

You deal +5...10 damage. You lose 1 dervish enchantment if this attack hits. If a dervish enchantment was removed this way you do +5...10 damage, gain 3 energy and Pious Assault recharges in 4 seconds.

Heart of Holy Flame
Mysticism
Enchantment Spell
5e cost
1/4s cast
10s recharge

All adjacent foes are set on fire for 1...5 seconds. For 10 seconds this enchantment does nothing. If this enchantment was removed by a dervish attack, your attack does +5...20 more damage and all adjacent foes to your target take 10...60 holy damage.

Aura of Holy Might
Allegiance Title
Enchantment Spell
5e cost
1/4s cast
10s recharge

All adjacent foes are weakened for 5...10 seconds. For 10 seconds this enchantment does nothing. If this enchantment was removed by a dervish attack, your attack does 90...100% more damage and all adjacent foes to your target take 50...70 holy damage.

Heart of Fury
Mysticism
Enchantment Spell
10e cost
1/4 cast
40s recharge

All adjacent foes take 10...40 holy damage. For 10...20 seconds, you attack 33% faster. When this enchantment ends, all adjacent foes 10...40 holy damage.

Conviction

Save Yourselves

I've commented on these ideas in the other thread.

Yes, assassins would have been great when factions came out if warriors had sucked by comparison.

For the other things you said, I refer you to my previous post. Adding synergy to the dervish with the scythe won't do diddly, unless you add so much that you increase the power creep to ridiculous levels (like +5 damage with the scythe per rank of mysticism or something like that). That's how big the difference is between dervishes and assassins.

Really if warrior suck it would of stopped assassins from blowing up every second, wow how come I didn't think about that. Have you even played factions when it came out? Gimping scythes will not make dervishes any better, the preferred physway melee is WoTA not crit scythe. If you make Scythes stronger incomparison for dervishes by gimping other classes, you're not actually making dervishes stronger, you're just making them comparable to other classes that were gimped. And guess what WoTA will still smoke you. And synergy does not mean adding +5 damage per rank, it means making the skills and primary actually work off of each other. There will be power creep with anything if it's not balanced properly, you remember SoS?

There was nothing wrong with assassins at Factions' release. The problem was that bad players were using them. As proof, consider the fact that Dervishes are just as squishy as assassins, yet they have no such reputation.

If every other scythe user was nerfed, Dervishes would become the preferred general melee AoE class overnight.

Scythes are bad for physicalways no matter what class uses them, because when buffs come into the picture, speed becomes more important than power. And scythes are slow.

Now you're just trolling, let see at release assassins had no maintainable ias, no armor buff, no heals, most of it's attack skills had at least 8 second recharge, so all it took for assassins to be good as warriors was a little nerf to daggers so no one else can double strike. And what proof, you mean vital boon, Signet of Pious Light, conviction, Watchful Intervention, Faithful Intervention vs Shadow Refuge? There's no problems with dervishes ever, it's only bad players playing them.

They still wouldn't be preferred anything. Fact, dagger, axe, sword and hammer mastery are very powerful. Nerfing scythes for other classes would only grief other players, it does nothing to actually fix the dervish itself. Dervishes will still be doing crappy damage, while sins and wars are pumping out loads of damage with their inherent CS and STR attributes and it's powerful skills. Even if dervs were the best with scythes they're still weak. It not scythes that make Wars, Sins strong, it's their primary attribute and skills makes every weapon they pick up strong. If you attach AoHM to mysticism and make scythes do 1 damage with lower than lvl 5 mysticism, then you will see how pwnage dervishes are with scythes. Scythes are fine dervish skills and mysticism fail.

daggers are the same foe everyone so anyone can pick up daggers and use them, whats stopping you. Daggers don't do anything special for assassin that it doesn't for anyone else, maybe it's because CS and it's skills actually work.

/notsigned