On my derv I usually run a bar with 3 attacks (usually wounding/reapers, mystic, eremites), Heart of Holy Flame for IAS, Asuran Scan, Zealous Renewal/Zealous Sweep for E-manage, AoHM and SY!. As a frontliner, you don't really need conviction..your healers should be healing/proting you. And FGJ has too large of a cooldown to be used for purely adrenal gain from attacking (as opposed to adrenal spikes such as from D-Slash).
I've never used Discordway, so I can't comment on that, but I've heard good things about it.
For my scythe, I use Zealous so I can spam attacks more, 15^50% since if you're under 50% health you'll either be healed soon or die, and +30.
You don't really need +2 for scythe mastery (unless you mean +1 helm and +1 minor rune, which is great). For armor, I'd probably say Survivors is best, especially for HM where there's a lot of armor-ignoring damage.
Other than that, research into the area before you vanq it, so you can bring builds to counter the enemies, etc. And if possible, drop the hench and make a friend