Dervish Skill Balance

In this forum, I hear about the Dervish being one of the least used professions along with Mesmer and Paragon. My opinion is that the Dervish is very close to where it should be in the game. Only problem is that the Warrior, Assassin, and Ranger are just as effective with a scythe if not better in PvE.

While the Paragon might need alot of work, it seems to me that the Dervish can be made more useful with only a few skill changes. For an example in PvE, giving the Dervish something like Critical Agility.

I would like to hear what everyone else thinks could help make the Dervish become more effective, but not over powered, in PvP and PvE.

they do need some help. my view on that - limit classes' efficiency to their type of weapon. if a sin uses a scythe, he should be less effective with it than a dervish. if a warrior uses daggers, he should be noticeably less effective with them than an assassin.

Dervishes E-Management is all screwed to hell. If played correctly like any other character they can be good but the reason that other types are better with scythes then dervs is becuase they cna manage energy in a mroe effective way then mystycism can on a dervish.

Dervishes however unlike paragons are still all around viable characters if you are original about it.

A paragons complete existence revolves around having a party with him, which makes him a force in general PvE but thats about it, no farming, no real use outside of area with 8 or more party members.

At least dervs dont have that issue.

i´d say only things derv got going is some farm builds
(and i'm not even sure if those aint nerfed yet..)

tbh lately i've been seeing clannies run vow of silence dervies, i'm not even gonna want those in my party. frontliner who can't be selected by heals or weapon spells? pass

None of their skills even look apealing or perform something others can't. (aside of avatar of melandru that one is ok- ish ;o)

they could be a ok class but many of the things they excel at others can do better.
wich is frankly worse then mesmers >...>

I find the main problem with Dervishes is there primary attribute, It only gives enegry back when an enchant ends on you. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't help you with scythe damage one bit. If Mysticism was tied to extra scythe damage in some way it would balance it out more.

(Sorry wrote this while half out the door)

They just need proper energy managment. That's the key thing that makes other classes more/as effect as a normal dervish.

Thats well noted, my warrior can do way more damage with the scythe than my dervish. And more constantly. And, with more armor.

Maybe Mysticism could add 1 point of armor penetration, per point on the attribute when enchanted and half of the bonus when not enchanted. That would surely increase damage output of Dervishes without messing directly with scythe mastery.

It could also increase attack speed at the same rate. Or maybe scythe mastery could add attack speed for levels over 12, so no one but Dervs could do it.

All above would be a helluva of buff for them.

And yes, their e-managent is poor, only compensated with a zealous scythe and multiple enemies.. for a buff, they could get some minor bonus to energy regen when they are enchanted by Derv enchantments..

But then again, it could lead to some new flavor, just to be nerfed in the next update...the only way to know is testing..

IMHO, Mysticism needs some real reworking to make primary Dervs more reliable.

i think thy would be etter if dervishes could maintaoin god avatars without the stupid other skill, even then it would be bad seeing as the derv avatars are pretty awfull, anyways my way would be better e management and make it so derv primarys can hit moe than one person with a scythe and they hit all adjacent foes not just those infront of them.

I've been working on my derv a bit over the past few weeks, and the most effective energy management I've gotten was with a /Me secondary with Lyssa's Aura and Asuran Scan.

So basically, for efficient E-Management, I needed to take all my points out of Mysticism, drop it into Inspiration, and then take an Elite skill. This shouldn't be how it's done.

Would be more efficient if Mysticism gave extra pip of energy gain for every 2 or 3 enchants on the derv. As it is, pound for pound attack spamming, the derv has nothing to compete with Warrior's Endurance (War), Critical Strikes (Sin), Expertise (Ranger). +3 energy every ~7seconds on average 'aint s***, yo.

For the record, there is NO GOOD JUSTIFICATION FOR TYING SCYTHE DAMAGE IN WITH MYSTICISM. I've heard it before, and it's a downright stupid idea that doesn't fit with anything else that's been done in GW. However, tying in Aura of Holy Might with the mysticism attribute, thus making it unfeasible for /D secondaries to run it, should have been done years ago. I mean hell, it's been done with Critical Agility, so wtf ANet's taking it's sweet time on the derv is beyond me.

It's been suggested before, but linking AoHM to Mysticism could balance it out a little. Something like "Lasts for 5 seconds and 2 more seconds for every rank of Mysticism". A bet a dervish with AoHM will do a lot more damage than a critscythe without AoHM. However this doesnt address the issue of Dervs being outclassed by other melee in pvp.

Mysticism definitely needs sorting out, but will be a pain to balance. Energy needs to be gained when an enchant is renewed as well as ending, its a pain having to wait for an enchant to end before you can recast it. Also having the health and energy gain when an enchant is applied, as well as ends, could be an idea for fixing dervs energy problems.

Maybe adding in something like "your attacks deal 1% more damage for each rank in mysticism"
Or "Your attacks gain a 1% chance to have 10...25...30% armour penetration for each rank in mysticism"
Mysticism is supposed to be help from the gods afterall isnt it?
but these might be overpowered

The dervish was designed to be a close combat caster with melee capabilites, not a close compat fighter like the warrior or assassin, therefor it's natural that both other classes are better melee fighters than a dervish, even with his own weapon. A simple change like giving dervish something like Critical Agility won't change that both other professions are still better melee fighters.
The problem is that the dervish PBAoE enchantment and Mysticism have been heavely nerfed after the Nighfall preview weekend and cannot compensate his lack of melee capabilites. Due to power creep (Aura of Holy Might, Great Dwarf Weapon, "By Ural's Hammer!", Asuran Scan, Ebon Battle Standard of Honor, Strength of Honor) the game has shifted from caster damage to physical damage even more, a simple revert to those skills won't be enough.

My ideas to make the dervish more in line with the warrior and assassin, but preserved the original playing style of the dervish:

Mysticism (Maybe PvE only)
Gain double energy amount if a dervish enchantment ends on you.

Aura of holy Might
No longer converts the damage to holy damage, fix the bug with the damage bonus, changed functionality to:
10 / 3/4 / 25
All nearby foes take 40...50 holy damage. For 20 seconds and 2 second for each rank of Mysticism, you deal 20...32% more damage with your scythe. All nearby foes take 2...3 holy damage for each rank of Mysticism every time an enchantment ends on you.

PBAoE enchantments: (PvE only)
Increase the damage of PBAoE enchantments by ~20% and add an additional 20% damage when they end, decrease recharge time by 20-25%.

The idea behind this changes is to make the casting abilites of a dervish stronger and make it possible for allies to buff the dervish in a dervish like way. Of course the numbers can be shifted.



Regarding PvP:
The dervish is too easy to play well, therefor he will be overpowered the moment he is as strong as a warrior. Unless you make it harder to play a dervish well it's better if he never returns to PvP.

You know there's only one stupid elite that makes W/Ds better, it was destroyed in PvP for good reason. It's also one stupid PvE-only skill that makes A/Ds particularly stronger. Or the third route is to make AoHM good by removing damage conversion, but also requiring mysticism. Would be vastly easier to fix the problem these ways, but alas, we know "nerf" is not part of PvE vocabulary anymore.

The problem with dervish is that they're generic attack spammers and no longer have any sort of enchant manipulation. They do and nobody's stopping you from using it, but it blows. AoHM needs to be adjusted to work on dervish a bit better than it works on others.

I like that idea its short, sweet, and sticks to Derv basics. I dont think it would over power, and you could get in a few more attack skills or whatever. It would be nice to get some of that energy back when the spell is cast, but that might be pushing it too far. I guess thats what Arcane Zeal is for. Personally, I would be ok if they got rid of the health bonus all together in exchange for more energy.

For AoHM I was thinking of this change

Aura of Holy Might
Enchantment Spell. All nearby foes take 40...48...50 holy damage. For 10 seconds plus 1 second for each rank of Mysticism, you deal 20...30...32% more damage with your scythe. When this Enchantment ends, all nearby foes take 40...48...50 holy damage.

That way Warriors and Assassins couldnt QQ because they can still use it half the time. Of course I would be happy with for 2 seconds for each rank in Mysticism and only let Dervishes use it. But that might actually balance something.

I believe the addition of a maintainable IAS could really help. I think if they changed Heart of Fury to

Heart of Fury
Enchantment Spell. (10...23...25 seconds.) You attack 33% faster. End effect: inflicts Burning condition (1...3...3 seconds) on nearby foes.

With an enchantment mod the skill would be almost maintainable, and still has the drawback of being interrupted or stripped and cost 10 energy.

The D/A Runner is pretty good so I dont think many people would mind if Avatar of Balthazar were changed to

Avatar of Balthazar
Elite Form. (10...74...90 seconds.) You gain +40 armor, you attack 33% faster, and your attacks have 10% Armor Penetration. This skill is disabled for 120 seconds.

Your most likely to have AoHM in PvE so the holy damage will still be there. It would be nice to have 20% AP but here again I think thats pushing it. I think this change wouldnt be much different than the change that was made on Dwarven Battle Stance. So I dont think it would be over powering.

I dont think the skills have to be this way. Just a rough idea. Maybe someone from the Test Krewe will read this thread and take it into consideration.

five easy steps:

1. Bring back Enchantment Juggling*1
2. Change AoB to offensive
3. Nerf Critical Agility and Warrior's Endurance*2
4. Fix AoHM and Tie to Mysticism
5. Tweak Mysticism*3

*1= Revert Pious Assault and give skills that function like Grenth's Fingers a slightly lower recharge(10-12s) and perhaps 1/4 or 1/2 CT.
*2= Without killing the skills for primaries. For instance, with Critical Agility, Remove the armor bonus, and even the IAS to 25%. For WE, add a more hindering downside to the skill.
*3= Probably not needed if the aforementioned are done right. Nixing the health gain and adding a small bit of life steal is an idea that has grown on me.

What if they made mysticism like expertise, but for enchantments? Like it reduces costs for enchantments on the same scale expertise does for touch skills and ranger skills. This would let dervs spam more enchants and use the other effect, to gain energy when spells end, more efficiently in combination with their other attack skills, especially stuff like pious or twin moon. Stuff like zealous renewal, mirage cloak and such would be more viable for a derv primary.

Aura of Holy Might
Add +5..8% chance of critical hit for every rank in Mysticism.

Everlasting Aura
While active, all Dervish skills recharge +5% faster for every rank in Mysticism.

And also these changes:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedb...date_-_Dervish

Vow of Strength
10 ¾ 45
Elite Enchantment spell. "For 15..60 seconds, while wielding an earth weapon, your scythe attacks deal +5..20 damage and you attack 25% faster. This enchantment ends if you cast a spell."

Mystic Sandstorm
10 ¾ 15
Enchantment. "A sandstorm is formed around you, striking adjacent foes for 15..45 earth damage each second for 3 seconds. If you are not near an ally when you activate this skill, this skill recharges 50% faster."

Staggering Force
10 ¾ 20
Enchantment Spell. "Target touched foe and adjacent foes suffer from weakness for 5..20 seconds. For 20 seconds, your attacks deal earth damage. If this enchantment lasts longer than 20..5 seconds before ending, any nearby weakened foes are knocked down when this enchantment ends."

Dust Cloak
10 ¼ 15
Enchantment Spell. "Target touched foe and all adjacent foes are blinded for 1..5 seconds. For 20 seconds, your attacks deal +2..10 damage to attacking foes. When this enchantment ends, nearby attacking foes are struck for 25..85 earth damage."

Mirage Cloak
10 ¼ 15
Enchantment Spell. "All nearby foes are interrupted. For 20 seconds, you have +5..24 armor while moving. When this enchantment ends, adjacent foes are dazed for 0..1 seconds for every 4 seconds this enchantment was active."

Aura of Thorns
5 ¾ 15
Enchantment Spell. "Target touched foe and adjacent foes are crippled for 1..7 seconds. For 20 seconds, your scythe attack skills cause bleeding for 1..7 seconds. When this enchantment ends, nearby foes suffering from a condition take 15..60 piercing damage."

Aura Slicer
5 6
Scythe Attack. If this attack hits, you deal +10...22...25 damage. If target foe has 4..2 or more enchantments, that foe loses one enchantment.

Grenth's Aura
5 ¾ 15
Enchantment Spell. "Target touched foe loses one enchantment. For 20 seconds, your attacks do cold damage. When this enchantment ends, nearby foes lose 0..1 enchantment for every 10 seconds this enchantment was active."

Lyssa's Haste
5 ¼ 15
Enchantment Spell. "For 5..20 seconds, Dervish skills you use recharge 33% faster. This enchantment ends if your energy drops below 50%."

You guys are aware that nearly everything in this thread has been suggested before and shot down, right?

What is the dervish supposed to do?

It was meant to be an enchantment-based melee class that took advantage of the end effect of it's enchantments and stripped them to fuel powerful attack skills.

Every aspect of what the class was meant to do currently sucks.

As of right now, it is a self-buffing melee class specializing in the scythe. It sucks at that, too.

If you want to make the dervish an effective melee class, you can either:

A) Nerf the competition
- Flail is perhaps the most overpowered IAS in PvE. It is a maintainable 33% IAS linked to a great attribute that is a stance (rather than an enchantment) with no activation time and is fueled by adrenaline. It's only weakness (movement penalty) is meaningless in HM because monsters already can outrun you regardless due to their innate IMS. Heck, at least Critical Agility requires a PvE slot.
- Warrior's Endurance allows warriors to spam scythe attacks all day. Remind me again why there is a split for this skill? Remove the PvE version. The inability to use Flail and WE together would help significantly.
- Critical Strikes is overpowered when combined with anything other than daggers, because you still get the crit rates offered by weapon masteries. Furthermore, higher crit rates also mean more energy via critical strikes. A/Ds can beat dervishes without even using an elite slot.
- No, you know what? Critical Strikes is just overpowered period. Great energy management AND a big combat boost? Who the heck thought of that?
- And of course, linking AoHM to mysticism in some way that nerfs non-dervishes would help.

B) Buff the dervish
- The dervish doesn't necessarily have to beat the assassin at scythery to be good, because scythe sins don't have access to SY. It does, however, have to beat the warrior. If Heart of Fury (which is not only an enchantment, but is located in a crappy attribute and cannot be maintained) were maintainable in PvE, the dervish would be able to just barely beat the warrior with the scythe. The nice thing about this fix is that it would make the dervish stronger than warriors with the scythe without killing Enduring Scythe outright (since warriors would still have more armor).
- Mysticism's energy is a difficult thing to balance. It's the sort of thing that is either overpowered or underpowered. The only way a flat buff to mysticism's energy would allow a dervish to beat a warrior is if it gave so much energy that a dervish would not need zealous vow. If not, the dervish would still lose out to the warrior, because he'd still have to devote as much of his bar to energy management as the warrior. But such insane energy from mysticism would make the attribute ridiculously overpowered.
- The number of targets a scythe can hit is currently capped at 3 regardless of any factors. This can be changed.
- Mysticism offers no synergy with the scythe whatsoever. Get rid of the health gain on enchantments ending and replace it with something useful. The problem with this option is that it may unbalance the dervish in PvP.
- Again, AoHM is a possibility. By making the skill give an additional damage bonus for each rank of mysticism, one can fix dervishes without nerfing anyone else.

But, what if you want to make the dervish do what it was originally intended to do? Well, now you run into the following problems:

1) HM armor makes the damage of enchantments laughable.
2) The recharge times of said enchantments are prohibitively high.
3) The cast times on the enchantments lower dps even more (to say nothing of the 3/4 sec aftercast delay).
4) Removal of the enchantments cannot be done quickly enough.
5) Enchantment removals also suffer from inexcusably long recharge times (save for Signet of Pious Light).
6) The end effects of enchantments (as well as the effects of the removal skills) are nowhere near powerful enough to justify removing the enchantments.
7) By using enchantment removals, you run the risk of removing important enchantments that have just been cast on you by your allies (or if an enemy removes your enchantment right before you do, you could accidentally remove an important enchantment that was already on you).
8) Mysticism is woefully insufficient to fuel enchantment stripping.
9) The only type of enchantment dervishes have that could potentially be effective (Sand Shards when combined with EBSoH) has to hit multiple times to do any real damage, making scatter that much more of an issue. To a lesser degree, this problem exists for all PBAoE enchantments.
10) Somehow, all of this would have to work for PvE without utterly destroying PvP.

To make dervishes good at what they were originally intended to do, one would have to solve ALL of these problems. Thanks to power creep, even a full revert of all the skills involved in the old enchantment juggling builds would not make the dervish more useful. Those builds were vastly inferior to even modern dervish builds.

So, good luck with that.

Buffing Mysticism misses the point; Dervishes already have essentially infinite energy when supported by Monks; with Guardian, Patient Spirit, RoF, etc. ending on you every few seconds there's absolutely no reason you should ever run dry. Self-supported Mysticism is actually counterproductive for a melee character, because time spent recasting low-duration enchantments is time not spent hitting something. There's a good reason why warriors run on stances and shouts.

Enchantment manipulation is a weak mechanic. Removing enchantments on enemies is useless for most of PvE, and self-removal is a liability more often than not, particularly when the rest of your party is carrying buffs and prots. Worst of all, skills that incorporate self-removal don't have particularly strong effects, making them even worse than should be. Think: would Pious Assault be overpowered in PvE without the self-removal? Would you prefer Pious Assault with or without self-removal?

In reality, reworking just a few skills is unlikely to fix Dervishes, because most of their skills are plainly unsuitable for the PvE meta; to wit, skills that don't maximize your DPS should rarely, if ever, see play. As such, you can pretty much write off the entire Earth Prayers and Wind Prayers lines, as well as most Mysticism and Scythe Mastery skills. And lack of good, reliable IAS is just funny.

For Mysticism to provide enough energy to allow a dervish to not need zealous vow (with the current functionality), you'd have to have an enchantment ending on you probably once every two seconds at least. Prot monks can't do that, and neither can Orders builds. The only thing I can think of that can is an ER healer that does nothing but spam shield guardian on you.

Unless they've changed Mysticism since I stopped playing, I don't see why this would be the case. The entire discussion surrounding Mysticism and Dervish emgt puzzles me frankly, because I can't remember D/W ever facing any real energy pressure.

The focus on Warrior's Endurance is misplaced also. W/D must give up the elite slot to take emgt; the fact that people don't seem to think this is a big deal means that scythe elites aren't strong enough. Consider: if Wounding Strike had 1/4s activation, inflicted 20s Deep Wound, Blind, Daze, and was always a critical hit, I don't think anybody would be complaining about W/Ds.

Regardless, the rest of my point stands. TL;DR: almost all Dervish skills suck, and enchantment manipulation is a liability - worse than useless.

Interesting changes, but keep in mind that every skill that has touch range is affected by Expertise (yes, even if the skill is an enchantment spell), therefor some of those skills can be abused easily by a ranger. Increase the casting time overall, e.g. a offensive skill with only a 1/4 activation time so that it's uninterruptable is just stupid. Grenth's Aura is way overpowered.

Since we have pvp/pve split, there is no reason why avatars can't maintainable without using eternal aura, it's obvious that perma avatars aren't even close to being overpowered, it would be cool to finally make useful heroes dervishes with different forms.

Im using repetition until something happens Obviously Im not the only one that feels this way

If your talking about the D/W Crit scythe and Zealous Vow builds. They are really less effective versions of the W/D. Ive used both builds. I find the Crit scythe does great DPS, but thats all it does and is kindy squishy. And you have to admit, using an Elite from your secondary is kinda cheesy. Its ironic these builds are some of the better builds, at least according to wiki. Because they operate like a Warrior build, not like a Dervish. The downside being you dont have much room for something like conviction or more enchantments to add the armor/defense needed for tanking. Not to mention you dont get a armor penetrating or critical strike bonus.

Most professions use thier primary attribute to some degree. But none of the high DPS Derv builds do. I think they should.

Im sticking to my guns. A small buff to Mysticism, A viable IAS, and fixing AoHM would go a long way and make alot of Dervishes very happy. It wont be perfect, but I wouldnt want it to be.

I'll say it again if it wasn't clear: scythes already rule PvE. Who cares about mysticism or enchant juggling. Just either kill the two problematic "pve" skills on dervs/sins, or change AoHM to be good and derv-only, and we are done.

i really think some of these ideas aren't to usefull:

2. Balth avatar is mostly used for the survivability imo, and holy dmg a bit. i wouldn't recommend tweaking it to much to offensive to the point where it could loose said survivability.

3. nerfing either of these matters not, w/d can easily use drunken blow/desperation blow + anti kd for pretty much same effect as that dervish elite skill. problem lies in the fact that these atk skills trigger on all melee weps and affect all 3 foes hit with scythes wich makes it powerfull. And crit assa is powerfull enough without the speed boost, tough the armor boost certainly helps.

__


some of my own suggestions:
Mysticism:
Improved healing at least, maybe energy gain improved as well, but with 4 regen they shouldnt really need that. maybe adding dmg to their enchantment spells.

Enchantment juggling:
while many of the ideas behind stacking up derv enchantments and releasing em are nice, most of these combo's deal poor damage.
A solution would be to increase their damage or make them do armor ignoring damage. (and possible extra dmg of mysticism)

Enchantment removal:
Would be nice if the enchantment removal skills would only remove the dervish enchantments for their effects. this way they don't loose enchantments others cast on them. and monks wouldn't see protting them as useless

Dervs and their scythes:
Make mysticism needed to hit 3 enemies with scythe attacks?
not sure, since all i can come up with this seems rather dual edged as it kills use of scythes for other proffesions >..>

My suggestions to give a whole lotta shakin onto primary devs:

Mysticism: For every point in this attribute, the Dervish gains 1% attack speed and armor penetratrion to attacks and skills when enchanted by a Dervish enchantment, this bonus stacks with any amor penetration provided by other means. Also when enchanted by a Dervish enchantment he gains +1 regen for health and energy.

Maybe this can become imba when sinergizing with other skills, but..

Yeaaah... 10 mysticism + drunken stance = over a minute of 33% IAS and increased movement speed for next to nothing. It would be a lot better than Strength that only gives AP.

Why not change Mysticism into almost a skill.

Whenever an enchantment ends on you, you gain 1 energy and 15 health per second for every rank of Mysticism

So have 10 Mysticism use 1 enchantment gains you 150 hp and 10 energy over the 10 seconds.

Maybe the figures i have put are too .... "imba" but you get the idea.

Yea but, Strenght gives passive armor penetration bonus, wich cannot be stripped.

Since is easy to remove enchants and the bonuses I propose are conditioned to Dervish enchantments, I believe it will be not that overpowered. Even if it is...theres always the PVE/PVP splitting..

I really think Dervs need a buff..

Flail is not the problem. Messing with Flail messes with Warriors as a whole in PvE.
Because before, as a stance, it was useless because it forbid you from bringing IAS. WE's downside isn't even a downside, since most Warriors only have a base of like.. 20 energy. It needs to have a DIFFERENT downside that downplays it's synergies, like dealing less damage, like Flurry does (off the top of my head). Or for instance, only make the energy gain trigger on attack skills, and reduce the energy gain to 2 instead of 3

No, stop right there. Building your entire argument around SY! Is silly and stupid. SY! is not needed to beat the game. Aside from the fact that it could use a hefty nerfbat, SY! is and should never be the focal point of choosing a secondary/build, let alone should it be used as an argument of how to balance primaries in general. SY! is an issue all it's own. It it is nerfed, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. problem solved.

The problem with AoB is that it is bar compression, and a crappy one at that. +Armor is outmatched by Conviction, Holy Damage by AoHM (but due to power creep of orders and the like, it's ussually unwanted anyway), and no one gives a crap about IMS in PvE other then getting from one battle to the next.

I'm talking about giving it a complete overhaul to support a dedicated melee dervish.

Though I haven't played derv in awhile, I think it would actually be somewhat easy to "fix" them.

Heart of fury for 1-20 secs you attack 33% faster, when this enchantment ends you gain 10 energy

5e, 1/4 cast, 10 sec recharge


Heart of Holy Flame, for 1-15 secs your attacks deal holy damage and you have 10% armor penetration. When enchantment end you gain 10 energy

10E, 3/4 cast, 10 sec recharge



Avatar of Balthazar, For 1-69 secs you gain +40 armor, you move 33% faster, You and all nearby allies have +10% armor penetration.

10e, 2 sec cast, 60sec recharge


Avatar of Dwayna, for 1-69 secs you and all nearby allies gain 0-40 health and lose one hex whenever you use a skill.

10e, 2 sec cast, 60sec recharge


Avatar of Grenth, for 1-69sec you cannot be blocked, you and all adjacent allies attacks steal 1-16 health

10e, 2 sec cast, 60sec recharge


Avatar of Lyssa, for 1-69 secs, you gain 5e whenever you use a attack skill, you and all adjacent allies deal +0-30 damage to foes activating skills

10e, 2 sec cast, 60sec recharge


Avatar of Malandru, For 1-69secs , you have +100 health and are unaffected by conditions. Allies in the area lose two conditions whenever they use a skill.

10e, 2 sec cast, 60sec recharge

For the most part all your suggestions are grossly OP'd. The needle of making the Derv beyond viable and actually desirable is hard to thread because of the inherently high damage potential of the scythe. However, I do like the general idea that Avatar effects will benefit other party members and not just the Derv. My suggestions on your suggestions:

-Energy Return is OP'd. All you need to do is make Heart of Fury maintainable at about 15 Mysticism
-For Heart of Holy Flame, again the energy return on end is OP'd. Drop it and increase the armor pen to 20%.
-AoB's IMS should be changed to 33% IAS for PvE, the Armor Pen idea is great.
-Change Dwayna's healing to adjacent. Alternatively increase the area of effect and decrease the healing.
-Keep the unblockable attacks, but I'd suggest taking off the cold damage and instead adding the lifesteal to PvP.
-Instead of gain on attacks, keep the energy increase from Avatar of Lyssa. Otherwise this would just be a more powerful Mysticism version of Zealous Vow.
-Your AoM is way OP'd. As people have suggested, make it like Dwayna in that every time you use a skill you loose one condition. Push the energy cost up and change it so that you and adjacent allies loose one condition when you use an attack skill.

In general, the problems with the Dervish as I see it:
1.The large damage range which provides can potentially provide ridiculously high damage or painfully low damage.
2.Mysticism as a primary attribute adds nothing to make the Dervish a melee character, which allows the scythe to be used better by Sins and Wars.
3.Mysticism's skills aren't useful overall, and Avatars have only niche uses.
4.Lack of a large skill pool/build options compared to the classes which have been around longer and have more options.

Now how to deal with these...

1(a).Crit Agility's 33% IAS is made to only work while wielding daggers. Sins can still use Crit Agility with scythes and have the extra armor, but do not gain the IAS when they do.
(b).Ideally, normalizing the scythe's damage by increasing the minimum damage and decreasing the max would be a good thought, but would be too difficult to code this late in the game.

2(a).AoHM is tied to Mysticism.
(b).I think that the healing gain from Mysticism should be dropped and replaced by an additional 1 holy damage per rank in Mysticism on all melee attacks. This would not make attacks deal holy damage, only the extra damage from Mysticism will be.
(c).Alternatively (either this or b.) drop the health gain and add 2 holy damage per rank in Mysticism to all adjacent enemies when an enchantment on you ends.

3(a).In general, the effects of Avatars need to be increased for PvP since your elite will be disabled for a significant amount of the time. See some of Ryder's/my suggestions on this. Anet may like the "ebb and flow" that avatar effects create in PvP, but because of the amount of nerfs to these skills players simply stopped using Avatars (and basically stopped using Dervs) in high end PvP.
(b).Arcane Zeal is terrible Emanagement and a waste of an elite for a class that is primarily melee and secondarily caster. Arcane Zeal has limited to 0 play uses. It needs a complete overhaul.
(c).Pious Renewal same as arcane, weak effect with very limited uses unless you've actually seen a useful Derv bomb.
(d).Extend Enchantments has some uses, but causing it to end all enchantments at once forces you to take too much time from attacking to recast enchantments. I'd remove its beginning and/or end effect of stripping all enchantments and restricting the extension of enchantments to Dervish enchantments, like Deadly Paradox.

4. Adding new skills won't happen. Anet is too busy balancing what they have to do this, with GW on the decline. And GW2 will apparently have less skill options which makes me sad. However, it's nice to dream. My skill ideas about what to add to give Derv's greater diversity in effective build choices are here.

Keep in mind all my ideas are Pve only. Also meh maybe I just want to see the game head in a different direction where all classes are desirable, not just viable

Arcane Zeal
5 15
Skill. For 3...10 seconds, your enchantments deal 15%...40% more damage and recharge 33% faster if removed prematurely.

Zealous Renewal
5 ¼ 10
Enchantment Spell. All adjacent foes take 15...51 holy damage. For 10 seconds, this enchantment does nothing. When this enchantment ends, you gain 1...2 Energy for each successful hit while under the effects of this enchantment.

Pious Fury
5 10
Stance. For 2...7 seconds, you attack 33% faster. Pious Fury is reapplied whenever a non-monk enchantment ends on you.

Bring back the old Pious Assault .

Did not see that, but with some of the toning down they could and should be made to be PvP as well.

This is exactly what I said I was trying to do with my suggestions. But in a game where many areas are 8 spots while there are 10 classes something is bound to be left out for a "better" choice. And the fact is that often there are multiples of one class so more than just 2 professions are left out. The idea is to give Dervs a niche that they currently don't have and an efficiency that can at least match other melee characters so they'll at least be useful in a particular spot/area for high-end PvE and PvP.

@Catchphrase:

Arcane Zeal will definitely have more uses in that form, but it will still be limited because Dervish enchantments are not meant to be their primary dps source. And because it would be most useful in conjunction with other professions' enchantments, you would surely see alot of farming abuse.

Zealous Renewal is certainly more useful too, but that would be extremely overpowered mostly since it would cycle every 10 seconds at only a 5e cost. and could be continually renewed. The current version isn't useless enough to warrant this.

For Pious Fury, change it to renews whenever a Dervish enchantment ends on you and its golden.

Do you deny that Flail is overpowered in PvE? You say it should be untouchable, but not SY? The same argument applies to both. Mess with SY, and you mess with both paragons and dervishes. You'd also mess with a couple of good builds for warriors, assassins, and rangers.

Now that would be a good downside for WE. Two thumbs up.

If we ignore SY, then the problem of balancing the dervish scythe-wise becomes even more difficult, because now they have to not only out-scythe the warrior, but also the scythe sin. I don't think that could possibly be attained without nerfing the scythe sin to hell and back. If you want to do that, it's fine by me, but for the record, I prefer not to nerf people unnecessarily.

As for your suggestions for enchantment juggling. Most of them are obvious ones. However, reverting Pious Assault alone would not be enough. It would also need a shorter activation time than it did back then. Making the damage of PBAoEs armor-ignoring would also not be enough. Remember, at the very least this method of combat would have to beat the AoE capabilities of a scythe. So we're talking something like 80 or more AoE dps just to have a prayer of being worthwhile (remember, scythes do more primary target damage than adjacent target damage, so only doing slightly more than their adjacent target damage isn't enough; have to beat it by a lot). And dps is not the same as damage on hit thanks to cast times and aftercast delays (unless you're going to have all PBAoEs cast in 1/4 sec).

But yes, the removing only dervish enchantments part is important. It's something I've considered. However, there's also an alternative idea that I've thought of. What if, instead of making enchantment juggling as good as other form of melee with no risk of removing important enchantments, you make it better but leave in the risk? You run the risk of RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing yourself over, but you also deal more damage than anyone else in the party. Just throwing that idea out there. Either way works, really.

You've hit the nail on the head as far as Mysticism. Hence why that problem is such a...well, problem. The current functionality can seemingly only be either underpowered or overpowered.

Being forced to use a snare just to be effective? Yeah, that's gonna make the dervish wanted. Besides, unless the recharge times on your enchantments are so short you only need one or two, you're not gonna have much space on your bar, which will limit your options.

You're also ignoring the fundamental point I was trying to make. Are these changes possible? Quite possibly. But how many skills are you going to have to change to do it? Is Anet willing to put forth that much effort (and take that much risk with so many skill changes at once) and split that many skills just to fix the dervish, when most dervish players don't even realize their class sucks to begin with (and the class could be made "useful" with the scythe with comparatively few changes)? Honestly, I don't think they are. I'd love to be wrong on this, though, and I'd certainly support any suggestions that can make the dervish useful in the way it was meant to be, but I'm not holding out much hope in it actually happening.

The modern high DPS scythe builds for both the warrior and the dervish require a crapload of energy in order to spam scythe attacks. Dervishes simply cannot afford this without zealous vow (which is also an elite skill, denying them any hope of having an advantage). Of course, to be fair, I should have mentioned (slipped my mind at the time) that even if WE were nerfed, warriors would simply take zealous vow as well, since it's in wind prayers (why I don't know; it clearly belongs in mysticism, since that's meant to be the energy attribute and every other skill with "zeal" in the name is there save for zealous sweep).

Even your potential super WS's usefulness seems dubious to me, simply because sacrificing zealous vow means losing a ton of dps. As it stands, the deep wound of WS and RS is meaningless. The difference is that great.

I agree with most posts here..but 1 thing I certainly would like see is original Vow of Strength. It supported dervish casters and werent too OP. I used it in my all builds.

The problem with PBAOE at the moment is the same problem eles struggle with. HM makes armor-dependent damage really bad. A second problem they have is the speed at which they are executed. To deal damage with one enchant, the derv has to run up (like any melee), add the enchantment, then strip it (leaving them with absolutely nothing gained but damage and positioning). In the meantime, most melee's will have gotten 3 or more attacks in (leaving them with adrenaline . Compare the damage and it's clear that dervs fall way short in terms of Maybe they can change a few of the PBAOE enchantments to do armor ignoring damage and/or remove an enchantment. That way one can "juggle" the enchantments by adding and removing enchantments (and in the process inflict conditions and deal damage) at the same time.

Well I didn't say it, but it was meant to be assumed seeing how this is a Pve forum for the most part