Buff mysticsm

The way I see it, there are 4 potential paths open to the dervish, each with a different approach required.

1) Enchantment spam - Ie, cast and strip away a lot of enchantments to fuel powerful attacks and potent offensive/defensive/utility effects from the enchantments.
Requires:
A) Lots of enchantments with short recharge so they can be spammed (doesn't have)
B) The energy to spam and strip said enchantments (doesn't have)
C) Spammable methods of stripping enchantments (once had, now does not)
D) Enchantment stripping attacks and/or enchantment effects that are potent enough (offensively, defensively, or utility-wise), that they are at least somewhat better than the alternatives (otherwise, there'd be no reason to use them).
E) Doing the above without being overpowered (ie, eliminating the purpose of playing another profession, as the Warrior and Assassin currently do to the dervish)
F) Doing all of the above better than dervish secondaries

This is probably the "best" way of fixing the profession. It would provide the dervish with a viable and unique niche that would offer a lot of room for viable builds. However, it would be difficult and time-consuming to do, because it would require a complete overhaul of most of the profession's skills. And if done incorrectly, it could easily still not be enough (or even result in the dervish becoming overpowered).

2) Melee AoE - Simply put, make the dervish the best scythe user; able to deal more damage to more foes in melee than anyone else.
Requires:
A) The ability to use scythes better than other professions (doesn't have)
B) Scythes being an optimal (though not necessarily the only optimal) method of melee AoE (could be argued as more effective than MSDB when attack skills are considered, but only against a couple of foes)

This is by far the easiest way to fix the dervish, and wouldn't negatively affect game balance. However, it doesn't leave much in the way of build variety, and many currently bad skills would remain unused.

3) Gimmick Melee - Melee with certain gimmick skills that make it unique from it's competition (Ie, more skills like AoM, AoD, and Vow of Silence).
Requires:
A) Multiple support/utility skills that are useful enough to potentially (not not definitely) justify a dervish's inclusion into a group over a Warrior or Assassin (a couple of builds have this, but not nearly enough)
B) The dervish must be the only profession able to make use of these gimmicks (fortunately, the dervish is the only profession able to use it's "gimmick skills")

This would only require tweaking a few skills in the mysticism attribute to have unusual and unique effects. However, it still leaves something to be desired with regards to build variety, and again, many unused skills would remain unused.

4) Power Spike Melee - A melee profession whose power is weaker overall than that of it's competition, but uses enchantments to temporarily increase it's power beyond that of other melee professions (a "power spike").
Requires:
A) A fully-buffed dervish to be more powerful than any other melee (lol, yeah right)
B) Enchantments to not be spammable in order to prevent power spikes from being power creep (already exists)

This is probably a worst way to go about fixing the dervish. It could have huge balance effects (especially in PvP, where spikes are all the rage). However, it's hard to deny that this wouldn't make dervishes useful.


Of these possibilities, (1) seems to be a great but difficult solution, (2) and (3) seem like easy but ok solutions, and (4) is just bad all around.

Well here is what I posted in my other thread.
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Alright, first off, I believe the problem with the dervishes as they are right now is that they can do a lot of things just fine, but don't excel at anything.
They can scythe things, aoe things, and inflict conditions on things, but they aren't very good at any of them.

I'd like to propose a few things. 1 = a change to mysticism, 2 = a new kind of dervish "enchantment" type spell, 3 = rework earth and wind prayers to allow pbaoe's and also maintained enchants.

1. Mysticism

Currently, the problem with mysticism is that it doesn't buff dmg at all, nor does it give enough energy to support casting. This causes a problem because dervish primaries can't support enchant spamming (nor have any reason given the quality of most dervish spells) nor can they effectively melee things compared to other classes.

I personally don't believe that mysticism should buff scythe dmg, because the strength of a dervish should come through his enchants. Mysticism's job should be providing enough energy to keep the enchants flowing. If the piddly health bonus were removed from mysticism and the attribute instead gave the bonus energy when an enchantment ended AND when it was cast, it would give just enough energy to keep a dervish casting.

Keep in mind the energy levels might need to be changed, because with 5E whenever you casted an enchantment and 5E when it ended, this could be abused badly.

2. New Enchantment Types

This might get flamed because it has the potential to cause some OPness in the dervishes, but things can always be tweaked. I'm just talking about main concepts here.

I think that GW should introduce a new type of buff unique to dervishes. These could be called auras. These skills would be the dervishes source of pbaoe's and they would replace the current pbaoe's (because right now, the fact that they have both start and end effects make them very impractical to use). It would work like this.

The skill would enchant you for 5 seconds, when it ended, you would be effected by "Aura of __" Auras would last a long time, but would only have end effects and would not be able to be stripped by other players. (This is why they would take 5 seconds to affect the player. It gives the enemies time to strip the enchantment and also creates at least a 5 second window between spikes. Purely for balance).

Dervishes would be able to stack these auras, which would last for a decent amount of time (say 30 seconds) and then would be able to remove them and unleash all their effects.

3. Earth/Wind Prayers

At the moment, earth prayers are all about staying alive/inflicting conditions and wind prayers are all about healing/controlling move speed. These attributes need to be more defined. If earth was narrowed down to dmg/conditions and wind was changed to healing/team support, the dervish would be more versatile and also more useful.

Both attributes would be given auras as well as maintainable enchantments.
Earth auras would have things such as "when this aura ends, enemies in the area are crippled and begin bleeding for X seconds" or "when this aura ends, enemies in the area are knocked down."
Wind, on the other had, would be more like "when this aura ends, you and allies in the area are healed for X health." or "when this aura ends you and allies in the area are cured of X hexes."

The maintainable enchants would be left in the game, auras would just a part of it. You would still have earth enchants that gave health regen and you would still have enchants/spells that increased move speed and such in wind prayers.

To wrap all of this up, the focus of each attribute would be made unique. Mysticism skills would be focused on melee dps and energy management. Earth prayers would be focused on sudden spikes of conditions and causing chaos. Wind prayers would be focused on healing allies and taking some pressure off backliners. And scythe mastery would be focused on actually being useful to a dervish primary.

And if you managed to read this far, please don't post negative comments without reasons or constructive criticism because I think that these changes would help dervishes finally be welcome in groups and actually fun to play.

*SNIP*

That was the point I was trying to address with mysticism. If they were to add skills to mysticism that boosted your dps with a scythe I don't think the dervishes would feel so gimmicky. The "enchantment-spam" was for the pbaoe's. You would spam enchantments as your primary form of damage. Not to support scythe damage.

If the MAINTAINABLE enchantments all had casting times under 1 second and lasted for 20~ seconds, you would have no problem buffing yourself, getting in a good 10 swings and then having to rebuff. If you have a good 1-2 damage boosting enchants on you, that would be fine.

If the dev team changed the maintainable enchants to have very small casting times and relatively long durations and then made the pbaoe's the ones that required a lot of casting and setup time, the dervish would be a force to be reckoned with; and not something that my water ele can kill without even glancing at his health bar. (This is evidence that the dervishes are underpowered... they use the most damage-dealing weapon in the game, and yet when I play pvp, they are the only melee class I don't have to worry about in the slightest. I could have three of them wailing on me, and I could still go after the monk without worrying about hp. This is very wrong my friends, very wrong.)

*SNIP*

Here is an example. I will use the current Staggering Force as a start point of how the enchants could be changed.

"Aura of Force" Aura Spell. For 5 seconds, nothing happens. After 5 seconds, you are affected by Aura of Force. For 45 seconds, this aura does nothing. When this aura ends, all foes in the area take 15-50 damage and are weakened for 5-17 seconds.

The auras have a 5 second, interrupt/spike delay window and then they affect the player. During the 45 seconds, they can't be removed and just sit on the player waiting for him to strip them. When he does, their effects take hold. Also, the damage might have to be tweaked in order to prevent teams in TA making unstoppable spikes.

You would use a certain skill to strip them and here would be an example of that.

"Divine Combustion" Spell. Lose all auras. All foes in the area begin burning for 3-5 seconds and an additional 3-5 seconds for every aura you lost. You begin burning for 3-5 seconds.
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Take from that what you will. And for the love of your mother, please quit flaming and requesting locks in all the dervish threads. If you don't see the dervish as a problem then whatever, stay out of it. But if you want to flame every dervish thread simply because we have "too many," then you might as well flame every Guild Wars thread on this site, because we have WAY too many threads about Guild Wars.

As I understand it, this was actually the idea behind avatars - a period of super-strength followed by a period of weakness in which the enemy could regain ground. Apparently ANet decided this didn't work for PvE and introduced Eternal Aura.

To be honest, that's what I thought the dervish was supposed to be too. It's one of the reasons I chose it as my first profession. But I've long since decided that such a thing isn't the best idea for the game.

How about a new elite in Mysticism that is a knock-off of Warrior's Endurance? Call it Mystical Endurance & make it cost 5e. "For 5...29 seconds, you gain 3 Energy each time you hit with a melee attack. Mystical Endurance cannot raise your Energy above 10...22." Having it based in Mysticism (rather than in Scythe Mastery where it might seem to belong logically) would give primary dervishes an edge that they can't get from WE.

Dervishes have their own WE
It is called "Zealous Vow"
Problem is that it is in Wind Prayers which is generally not used, and a dervish lacks things a warrior has such as a reliable IAS and Strength.

Anyone have any comments on my ideas?

Ah, Wind Prayers. That's probably why I never used it. It really needs to be in Mysticism so it's only available to dervish primaries, then.

Then again, I've always wondered why ANet didn't use adrenal skills for dervishes. Adrenaline is basically alternate energy management for melee, anyway. Even those damn miniskirt-wearing paragons have adrenal skills, and they're midliners.

I really like the aura idea. It's annoying to have a profession built around enchantments, when there are several professions with skills that can basically remove them all with hardly any effort. Auras would be easier to implement than nerfing all those other skills.

I also like the idea of dropping the health bonus & adding a second energy bonus to the Mysticism skills, but I'm fairly certain you'd hear a lot of pissing & moaning from other professions. It would be hard to pull off without making dervishes the new perma-sins. (I'd be okay with that but others might not.)

I would play warrior if I liked adrenaline or the warrior play style, but I don't.

Bring back pious assault to NF release /ninja

Then i could care less if mysticism is buffed, buff the earth/mysticism enchants that do nothing until they're stripped.

This coupled with vanilla pious assault would make me use my main more.

They probably didn't give Dervishes adrenal skills because they figured that combining a 3-hit weapon with adrenaline mechanics was something that should require locking in your secondary profession for.

I can answer that. Because it's redundant.

For lols, I recently made a character named The Hammersin. Three guesses what he's about. One of the things that immediately became apparent was that the combination of adrenaline and high energy regen made for stupidly insane spammability in attack skills.

Besides, adrenaline doesn't make much sense for dervishes. Warriors are more physically passionate; more reliant on their bodies (much like a D&D Fighter or Barbarian). A dervish, however, relies on their own mystic powers and the powers granted to them by the Gods (like a D&D Paladin). Assassins...well, honestly, since they focus on skill and precision rather than magic power, they really shouldn't have as much energy regen as they do (their energy regen and energy management should be more like that of the Ranger's). But, because of the playstyle they were designed for (spamming attack skills in combos) and the cost of their skills (Anet seems to have something against the idea of a 3 or 4 energy skill), there wasn't much choice.

Here's an idea: For each rank of mysticism, every time an enchantment ends on you, you deal X holy damage to all nearby foes.

It would probably have to be a pretty large number, though to compete with MSDB even if dervish AoE skills were buffed.

Why would anyone run MSDB when they can just jagged -> fox -> DB faster and leave open their elite?

Hey, I don't know sins (well, I know a little bit about scythe sins, but whatever). I just know that MSDB is 80 armor ignoring AoE damage every 1.78 sec.

Thats because an elite+skill combo , has nothing to do with Critical Strikes or whatever so you cant use a top combo for DPS damage of a DPS class to set the standarts of another prof main att , no ... no way in hell .

Move armor of sanctity to mysticsm.
And scale its weakness duration so that you need invest some to work.
Current sanctity just make casters way too good against melee imho.

Actually revert Wild Blow (recharge) will help dervish a lot since other melee class do not use it often.

or

Make Irresistible Sweep a scythe attack instead of melee attack.
Function changed to:
Deal +... damage. This attack cannot be blocked. If you are enchanted, this attack remove target's stance also.

Fox still has a 3-second recharge - the MSDB assassin can get in another DB in that time and be ready for a third around the time the jagged-fox combo is ready to do it a second time.

ANet, if you're reading this thread, know that most people posting are simply contributing ideas to buff Mysticism, not necessarily conveying their opinion that it should be changed nor do the player posting here reflect the general consensus. Odds are if someone thinks Mysticism is fine, they'd either write a brief post saying it's fine as it is or they'd simply not write here at all.

With that said, of course I don't think Mysticism should be buffed and I'll tell you my reasoning. Take all primary attributes from all professions. Which are the best and the worst? Among the best are almost surely Expertise and Critical Strike. In fact, there are a wide variety of builds which simply utilize Ranger and Assasin simply for their primary attribute. Among the worst, well perhaps you won't agree with me, but I happen to think that Leadership and Spawning Power happen to provide the weakest passive effect and you see that in any builds whose skill components don't require above 12 points in their attribute to be effective belonging to the Paragon and the Ritualist.

Mysticism could be a lot worse. Most people consider it weak simply because it doesn't enhance damage and the energy-gains aren't equal to that of the superior Critical Strike attribute. For the Dervish profession, the passive effect matches the profession brilliantly. I think the whole point behind providing the bonus when the enchantment ended was to encourage enchantment stripping for more bonuses (pious skills), though obviously there's no advantage if the build isn't used that way. If anything, I would only recommend that the energy be gained not at the end but the beginning as to also be more well-rounded with other professions.

Don't make comparisons to Critical Strike. It's one of the better primary attributes of the game, and if you wanted to buff Mysticism to surpass it, you'd only be unbalancing the entire game.

Recharge time on Moebius is 2 seconds at least read the skills.

Over a long period of staying on the same target MSDB can put out more blossoms. But if you stay on the same target for more than two death blossoms, then something in the rest of your team build is horrible, because that target should be long dead. In actual play you just will not regularly be able to get off death blossoms much more often than once every 3 seconds, as such it makes no since to devote 4 skills including your elite (I assume lead + exhausting + MS + DB) when 3 skill not including your elite will perform at the same level.

Wait, it is? I thought...

Oh yeah, duh, MS doesn't recharge itself. Probably why I ignored the recharge last time I looked at it. But like I said, I don't know sins. Heck, my sin swings a hammer.

The majority of the game's playerbase still believe that monks are the best healers and protters, even though ER eles can beat pure heal monks and pure prot monks at their own games simultaneously. Clearly, then, the majority is not necessarily always right.

The idea behind mysticism would have been good if the enchantment-stripping mechanic had worked properly and if it gave back enough energy to be worthwhile. However, neither of these are true, so as it is it sucks.

It can be compared to critical strikes. Both give energy. However, critical strikes gives more and offers a significant combat boost at the same time. Yes, critical strikes is one of the better primary attributes, but what does that have to do with the fact that mysticism sucks? Your argument actually seems to support the idea that mysticism needs to be buffed.

As it stands right now, dervishes are possibly the most underpowered profession in the game (although one could argue Paragons are worse off). Assassins are arguably one of the most overpowered. You're telling me a buff to mysticism is going to reverse this? I highly doubt it. The gulf is just too large for such a simple change to bridge.

Well, unless they do something like "for every rank of mysticism, you deal 10 holy damage to whichever enemy you happen to be targetting when an enchantment ends on you".

In each post I've read, there's only one line. 0.o
I agree. I have a derv and it used to be my main char, but now, there seems almost no point to play that char. I propose that new skills, higher effects, and higher healing/energy are in need of play. Come to think of it, I dont really use mysti.- Which is why it should be buffed in some way.
/signed

Then by that logic, I think lions would make great babysitters. I'm clearly do not represent the majority opinion, but the majority is not always right, therefore my logic is sound, right?

Then that's a problem with the profession mechanics, not just Mysticism. I think putting a fat label that reads "It's my fault, k thx. --Mysticism" is a little premature if even your own reasons for bad performance with dervishes involves other aspects. It'd be like insisting critical strikes get a buff and provide more energy on a critical because you don't like how shadow stepping mechanism works. Whether Mysticism provides enough energy or not is subjective, but remember that it is not and never will be a substitute for energy management.

My point is that a dervish can cast 5 energy enchantments and with enough points in Mysticism can get 100% return in energy and as good as critical strikes is, if an assassin tried to put on more than 2 enchantments, he ain't doing so hot with energy. The bonus is completely different and therefore its advantage is fundamentally different. If you want to prove why dervishes would do far better with a primary attribute similar to the assassin because it hits multiple targets, I could just as easily demonstrate a build in which Mysticism would excel as it is already and an assassin would bomb with. What's my point? Mysticism and Critical Strikes can't be compared. Other than providing energy, there are no other relevant similarities.

I didn't mean that, but rather that balance is far more complex an issue than simply which profession is better than which other profession and therefore radically changing how a profession works will have radical balance issues for every other class.

I'll assume that was supposed to finish your second to last sentence. Point is the same though.

Let's do the maths, shall we? Let's assume the use of Critical Agility (giving an attack every 0.89 seconds, which I'll round to 0.9), that both builds use Jagged/Fox to get in, and start the count after the first DB has completed (so Fox Fangs has been recharging for 0.9 seconds.

Without Moebius Strike, you then have to wait an extra 2.1 seconds for Fox Fangs to recharge (Jagged can be dropped at any time during that recharge period), so your second DB isn't going to be ready until 2.6, and will complete at 3.5 - and that's assuming the attack skills don't have any after delay. Meanwhile, Fox Fangs will have started its recharge at 2.6, so it won't be ready to go again on your next target until 5.6.

With Moebius Strike, in the worst-case scenario (when the target has >50% when the Moebius lands) you land the Moebius at 0.9s, requiring a 1.1s wait until DB is ready again... which then completes at 2.9. Your combo is complete 0.6 seconds faster than when you have to go through the Fox Fangs bottleneck, possibly allowing you to get the area damage off again before it dies or to finish it off before a big heal or prot arrives, and if you need to, you can keep repeating one second faster and with 5 less energy each time (which may or may not be important depending on your energy management and other skills being used). More importantly, when you get that second DB off, Fox Fangs is recharged and ready for you to start over again on a new target (after Jagged, of course), which it won't be without Moebius. If the target has <50% when the Moebius hits, of course, this works even better (but, for the record, Fox Fangs has still recharged by the time you want it on a second target).

Of course, this analysis assumes perfect conditions - spread-apart opponents, slower attack rates, and not using skills as soon as they're ready. However, while Fox Fangs does make Moebius less required and makes other possibilities more viable by comparison, I don't think it's clear that using another elite instead would actually be improved.

Only if you're not including the Imbagon build.

Going straight off the top of my head, I'd probably list the strengths of primaries (in PvE) in the something like following order:

Soul Reaping (passive effect)
Energy Storage (passive effect and skills)
Critical Strikes (passive effect)
Expertise (passive, some skills)
Strength (skills ONLY)
Divine Favour (passive effect, some skills)
Leadership (passive... LOTS of energy!)
Mysticism
Fast Casting
Spawning Power

Now, this order hasn't been calculated by scientific means and there are a lot of spots I'm not sure about, but I am certain that the seven skills placed above Mysticism in the power order belong there.

Unlike other expansion professions, dervish is the only profession to date to introduce a new method of utilising pre-existing skill types and mechanics instead of bringing new skill types / mechanics (save for the gimmicky and largely redundant Form skills). This method in question is our very own unique trait to be able to strip our own enchantments at our own whim. Yet it is not happening since most of the enchantment we use currently are considered have lengthy recharge and there are zero incentives to remove them prematurely. Would you strip your HoF for a 3-4 energy gain? How many of the current enchantments would you bring along and strip prematurely? I think I can total them up in one hand with two of my fingers amputated.

We can safely conclude Mysticism is suffering the Zealous Renewal syndrome; the active effects of our viable enchantments far outweighs the ending effects that we end up trying to prolong it as much as possible, resulting the energy gain kicking in at the most inopportune time. Tweak the duration and recharge of the supplementary enchantments (e.g. HoF), rework the end effects of complimentary enchantments (e.g. Grenth's Fingers), then perhaps we can see some productivity squeezed out of Mysticism.

tbh give Dervishes a viable IAS and they'll be balanced. or lower the recharge time of heart of fury.

Even if dervishes had a permanent 33% IAS, they still wouldn't be as effective as scythe warriors or scythe sins at using the scythe (which is what I assume you're referring to there).

I fully agree. In fact, I said as much in my other posts in this thread. Fixing mysticism alone won't fix the dervish. But unless a buff to mysticism is part of the solution, then it won't matter, because dervishes simply won't have the energy to do the enchantment stripping thing.

How many 5 energy enchantments are worth using? Besides, with the sin's energy management, I'd argue that yes, he can do just fine with enchantment juggling. Certainly better than the dervish can currently, at least.

The problem is not how much energy but why isn't Mysticism being triggered as much as it should be? Even if you buff Mysticism to give 10 energy per enchantment ends, they will still run out of energy since they have small max energy pool.

That list is so out of order.

My dervish builds tend to have a 2-3 energy management skills, but I'm fine with it as long as it also helps my goal in other ways (damage or other). Lower recharge and a few tweaking would be nice with mysticism skills...they seem less fun.

True, but a couple 10 energy enchantments thrown in will only cost you 10 energy overall. Unlike other melee classes, dervishes have the energy regeneration of a caster and with a little energy management in their builds can afford it.

Would you put anything I put above Mysticism below it? That's really the important question.

Pretty much. Really, unless Mysticism is buffed, it's given better skills, or its effect is made more important (or some combination of the above) it's going to have Spawning Power Syndrome and the Dervish will get progressively pushed aside in favour of other professions running Dervish secondaries.

In other words, there are only 2 skills that work for enchantment spam; a 5 energy one that heals you on end, and a 15 energy one that causes a crappy earth AoE on end (whose blocking effect is arguably far more useful than the AoE).

Also, assassins and warriors have better energy management.