Dervish Update

The problem I see with dervish energy is that it sucks when they're by themselves, but they can have infinite energy with a monk.

Another problem is their survivability. Not including insignias, warriors have 96-116 al while dervs have 70, so a derv'll take about double damage from physical sources. I'm not advocating the increase of derv al, but they should definately give them better ways to survive other than self-heals and the minor gain from mysticism. Bad survivabity means they'lll pretty much never be important in high-end PvP unless they have way more utility or damage than other options.

Another problem is enchantment removal. Derv enchantments are usually fairly long with long recharges, so enchantment removal pretty much screws them. Shorter durations, short cast times, and shorter recharges would be a nice way to protect against enchantment removal while encouraging enchantment juggling.

Another problem is self-enchantment-removal. This skills are supposed to be effective with things like Dust Cloak, but they're counterproductive if you have prots, which is pretty often in both PvP and PvE. If some of them removed only dervish enchantments or if they set derv enchantments as the priority for removal by these skills, it would make many of their enchants less useless.

Another problem is utility. Frontliners need to be useful for multiple things. Warriors have awesome knockdowns, awesome survivability, and good deep wound. Derv deep wound is through WS, which is awesome but restricts elites; Pious Strike, which got nerfed to shit; and Wearying Strike, which sucks unless you have some condition removal or prevention. So, derv deep wound is mediocre and they don't really have much else to offer; they have enchantment removal, but none of it's very good; some AoE, but nothing very strong or viable due to the problem with self-enchant-removal; some heals, but frontliners are usually just wanted for offense and control and none of the heals are very good; and some random, unhelpful things.

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In PvE, just nerf other scythe-users. Doing other stuff would be good, too, but that's all that really needs to be done for dervs to be useful.

i really think that all they would need to do to put dervs at an even level for attack spamming is tie AoHM to mysticism. asuran scan won't do nearly as much without that.

but in general, i disapprove of how they made the dervish class. when i first heard about them being like holy warriors, i was thinking either a warrior type class that can actually use spells or a designated tank profession that has skills that it can use to hold aggro without all of your allies being out of range. but instead ANet tossed out this class that has been nerfed to near uselessness

i really think that they need to change a lot of skills in earth prayers, wind prayers, and mysticism because a lot of the enchants are just dupes of each other with a different condition when it ends

I believe there are two main problems with the dervish.
1. Alot of the attributes are pointless at the moment. wind prayers mainly consist of all cripple/ims spells. Both of which aren't of any real use in high-end PvE. Earth prayers is only good for tanking/heals and doesnt do anywhere near as good a job as it used too. Also the energy gain from Mysticism is useless (dont even get me started on the at most 16 health gain) since most spells have long recharge times.

2. The dervish has very little if anything that allows them to be of any real use elite areas. As Mexay said, you don't see any dervishes around "pro" areas. My main is the dervish so its really upsetting that I cant join any groups to do UW, FoW, Dungeons, or anything else.

As long as the update makes dervs a more viable choice in high-end PvE I'll be satisfied.

Your dervish can do all of those with Physway.

Come on, people, how many times do we have to go over this? Buffing mysticism's energy gain alone won't do jack, because "good" (and I use the term loosely) dervish builds already use 15 energy every 5 seconds and require every slot on the derv's bar. You will never have so many enchantments ending on you that you can afford this via mysticism, even if it were as powerful as SR. Nothing short of zealous vow, warrior's endurance, expertise, or critical strikes can provide this.

The only way the dervish will ever be useful is if it can provide some combination of offense and defense that no other class can match.

To be truly honest, when the derv update does roll out, I expect the following changes:

PBAoEs: some recharge decreases and they could possibly become armor-ignoring. Won't matter because the casting times won't change and the recharge times and energy costs will still be too high. Casting these will remain a waste of time that you could have spent killing something with a scythe.

Pious Assault: Reverted. Won't matter because it will be too slow and will do about a third of the +damage that it would need to do to justify the time wasted casting an enchantment. Plus, there won't be any enchantments worth stripping.

Mysticism: Reverted. Won't matter for reasons already discussed.

Other Earth Prayers changes: Buffs to defense that will not matter because the majority of defense in PvE comes from prot. Furthermore, good dervish builds have zero free slots for defense.

Wind Prayers: Seemingly random buffs and new functionalities, and some increases to self-healing. All in all, useless.

Avatars: Will either be buffed in meaningless ways or become less selfish (ie, give the party some benefit). Will probably still be useless.

IAS: Needs a buff for PvP and PvE, unlikely to get one, seeing as how Anet seems to think that this is a balancing feature of the class (when in fact it simply prevents them from using their own weapon effectively).

Wounding Strike: Unaffected or nerfed for PvP. If the latter, bye bye PvP dervs (the few of you that exist). Even if it was buffed, there is no way that it could ever compete with modern zealous vow builds (unless it did +100 damage or something, but even that would barely be enough; the difference in dps is that huge). And even if it could, it would just get abused by assassins and rangers.

Aura of Holy Might: linked to mysticism so that only primary dervishes can use it. This will be the only meaningful change, and will solve the problem (in PvE, anyway), by making dervishes the ultimate general melee AoE.

Honestly, Anet should forego the other changes they plan on making and just give us that last one. The problems with the dervish are so deep that Anet is highly unlikely to put forth the time and effort (or take the risks) that would come from addressing the real issues, especially when this simple change would be enough.

Dervs are not as bad as people say, but I'd like to see 2 things happening for them:
1) Mysticism triggering off hexes as well as enchantments. This would increase its value greatly, but, since it's reactive rather than proactive, wouldn't offer opportunities for abuse.
2) Derv could use a 20-sec cooldown attack skill that said "Attack target foe twice for +x..y.z damage. You lose an enchantment. Removal effect: This skill recharges instantly."

EDIT: Oh, and let weapon attributes over 12 give normal returns instead of diminishing ones. This never made sense anyway and hurts Dervs more than other classes, since scythes depend more on normal weapon damage than other weapons do.

It has been 2 months. Any news on when this will be done, or how changes might look like? No intentional leaks yet preparing us psychologically?


I for one fear that they'll make avatars imbalanced and leave the rest like crap.

The main problem I found with Dervish is that you can't cast spells and attack at the same time. If you're not attacking, you lose damage. Say, if with 1 autoattack I'd do 100 damage, and 1 enchantment will do the same for 10 energy, what's the point of casting enchantment? Swing away.

As far as we know it's still just a "we're working" on it thing sadly, here's hoping we get a preview soon.

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