Dervish update preview please

For Mysticism: Add adjacent holy damage when a Dervish enchantment is cast and/or released, or tone down +damage boosts on scythe attacks and replace them with holy damage based on Mysticism. Probably wouldn't stop crit scythe, but it would be a step in the right direction.

Unless it helps make enchantment juggling more powerful than attack skill spam (and I can guarantee that it alone won't do that), such a change to mysticism would not make one bit of difference. The other one could potentially help somewhat, but you're right that it would be unlikely to help dervs against critscythe, since it doesn't rely as much on spamming attack skills as other scythe builds.

It is worth noting, however, that dervs don't necessarily have to beat assassins with a scythe. It would be nice, sure, but if dervs can beat warriors with the scythe and still use SY, that would technically be enough to give them a niche in the game, since those are the only two profession combinations that can do both of those things at once.

Dervs do have their niches:
1) They're better at using Victorious Sweep and Chilling Victory, because they have more HP.
2) They're better at pressure healing than Monks in small teams (RA, AB), because they've got easy infinite-energy combos.

PvE. PvE. PvP is a whole different animal, where many different tactics and strategies that would never be needed in PvE can work.

True. But my point about Victorious Sweep and Chilling Victory is true for PvE as well as PvP. Frontlining with Victorious Sweep I am so close to immortal that I can usually safely get away and res all other team members after a near-wipe. When you're PuGging instead of teaming up with guild mates, that's a valuable asset

Crazy thought here, but I also think in PvE it would be nice if the "victory" type skills based damage on the number of dead foes in the area, sort of like a reverse IWAY!. Considering the high health of enemies in HM, those skills are kinda sub par.

id like is to see the avatar cast time reduced (like 1 sec) for pve and get rid of the silly 120 sec disable.

earth prayers does little past minimal aoe damage, inferior condition applying, sub-par farming skills including defensive skills. the aoe damage needs to be armor ignoring or buffed.

i agree that you cant buff attack skill or weapon damage without buffing scythe sins. and if they buff earth prayers they have to buff mysticsm too. if an assassin can do the same thing and do more damage.... why not?

...


I'm going to assume here that you're joking and move on, because there are so many things wrong with this that my head would explode if I took it seriously.

I'm actually not joking at all. Although I don't PvE much, I did get my Legendary Survivor title on my Derv and Victorious Sweep was by far the most valuable skill I used. The damage is not bad, you can use it every 4 seconds and if you ball your enemies up properly it gains you about 250HP every time.

Then I have to wonder how on earth you managed legendary survivor, considering

A) Conviction will provide more protection
B) A rez skill on a frontliner (instead of something more useful) may explain why you needed self-heals in the first place
C) If the party wipes, the frontliner should be the first to go, not the last (demonstrating an inability to hold aggro, which contradicts your assertion that you survived via Victorious Sweep)
D) Self-healing is never the answer; better monks and more damage is

And even if you were right, Endure Pain would then say hi.

*head explodey*

It's not as if both, or even either, are elite.
This would have made sense if you'd argued that wasting a slot on a res instead of something better was the only reason I needed to res. Is that what you wanted to say?
I could usually hold aggro quite well, but if a PuGgy over-aggroed, I preferred letting everyone else die and ressing to losing my title.
Healing myself for more HP than WoH while hitting foes for bonus dmg for a mere 5 energy sounds like a pretty decent answer to me.

And also say goodbye after 17 seconds.

Cheers.

If you want to get Survivor, I'd suggest using a Monk.

Oh so you want it to be maintained all in one slot.

Do you like to be spoon fed too in real life btw?

I build Motorbikes for a living. thats Designing engineering, Building testing tuning. and going through all the proper channels with safety and emmisions standards and what not.

Thats gotta be harder than throwing a dart at the dervish skill dartboard and thinking "Hmm yeah that one needs work lets add bleeding to it"

Stick to your job of building Motorbikes. Because you clearly don't know what it takes to make big updates with the small team Anet has.

It's not as easy/simple as you make it sound...

Ok, let's say you have 600 Hp and 3 enemies are balled up on you. Let's say they hit you once every second. Let's say that you have protective spirit on you (and no healers, since we're talking about a near-wipe situation here). That means that every second you're taking 180 damage. A 249 Hp heal every 4 seconds will not save you (or even keep you alive for long). And the lower your Hp is to begin with, the less likely it is that you'll be able to qualify for the heal anyway (which is what I meant with the endure pain comment: more chance for triggering it, making warriors better suited to using victorious sweep's healing potential). And while having fewer enemies on you would mean less damage taken, it would also mean less damage healed, so the result is the same (most likely, death before Victorious Sweep can even be used).

The point I'm trying to make here is, Victorious Sweep does not make a dervish some kind of super tough melee character that can also do lots of damage, and it certainly is not powerful enough to give the dervish a niche in PvE, which is sort of what all this is about. No one in their right mind thinks the dervish isn't good enough to get through the game. The problem is that there's always something better you could take.

Wow how do you have such an intricate knowledge on how anet produces updates?

Didn't you know? Ignorance means you're always right!

The avatars are all terrible compared to the sustainable DPS of almost any other halfway decent physical build. If Dervish wants to be competitive, it needs to be able to deal damage without a crapload of setup, ie a 2 second cast Avatar and another mostly worthless PvE slot. That not only robs from bar compression, but steals an essential skill slot to keep your elite worthwhile more than half the time.

You must be a big dervish player, and therefore enjoy playing a terrible profession that is outclassed in every way by the other physicals and even Ranger. Being competitive isn't being spoon fed. Balance isn't a crutch. So get the hell out until you learn what those things mean.

I wouldn't go that far...

change a few of the enchantments that if stripped would totally defeat the builds to skills only. that would fix a ton for dervs. may not be what they intended, but i doubt they intended dervs to ever be this bad at any point in this game's life cycle.

So you want to take 2 bad skills just to maintain one of the bad skills?

Do you like to be anally fed too in real life btw?

na, better off taking 8 dervish and spamming victorious sweep according to this dude

monks are dumb

I feel like that's a poor metaphor...

way to bring nothing constructive to the thread.

You're too harsh. Now THAT is unconstructive : Too bad the poor boy forgot to mention that was called taking some pressure off the monk.

Yeah. It's only the two other melee physicals that do it. Dervishes can beat Rangers in straight out dps.

The best way to take stress off a monk is to kill whatever it is that is applying the stress. Victorious Sweep is not the best way to do it.

By a longshot. But if they were dealing the same amount of damage you'd know that somethings wrong. Either rangers were dealing WAY too much damage or Dervishes were dealing WAY WAY WAY too little.


This is true but the skill is decent. I mean it won't save your ass in a fight but there are far worse things you could bring.

Sadly, it's not by very much. It's been a while since I did the comparison, though.

Agreed. I'd call Victorious Sweep maybe the 4th best nonelite scythe attack, the 3rd being Protector's Strike (yep, even at 0 strength...it's that good).

Protector'sstrikesomeleeattack?

I know what you mean, just thought I'd be unconstructive.

Eh when I use my derv he generally deals more damage with his scythe than a ranger does with his bow. Then again if I give my ranger a scythe he tends to deal around the same damage...

Any one second cast time attack skill is excellent just because of that.

Our survey said, ehh awww! Nope, I have no Dervish.

You misunderstand me. I just wanted to point out that going primary Derv does have some advantages over secondary. I never meant to say that it's a better choice - but it's not all downsides either. And some of the advantages, though valuable in AB (which is what I play most), are minor in PvE - but that doesn't mean they're not there.
And yes, I would like to see some buffs for the Derv as well. I did suggest some.

@Whoever said I forgot to mention that Victorious Sweep takes pressure off the monk: Not so much forget, just that that's pretty much the point of self-heals in PvE.

Why do people keep bringing up that point as if it's an excuse? It was Anet's[0] decision to take almost all of the devs off of the live product in favor of "the next big thing" which MIGHT be out next year (what's that, like 2, 3 years late?). It's a perfectly legitimate complaint to call them out on the consequences of that decision.

[0] Most likely management, not the devs themselves.

Yes because I'm sure everyone would rather have 4 people working on Guild Wars 2 and have the rest of the staff working on a game that's on its last legs anyway. That way we can look forward to having Guild Wars 2 sometime between our colonization of Mars and the Universes eventual demise.

I hate to do it, but I agree. I'm not saying its Anets fault. If it were up to ANet Im sure they would have more people working on GW1, and not sacrifice GW2 developement. I blame NCsoft if anyone, whats the point in belonging to a large corporation if you cant use thier resources? They have deep enough pockets to get more help for GW1. And they should understand that the current state of the game will be reflective on potential customers in the future. Also, to make sure dedicated fans(like myself and most people in this forum) are confident about Anet's ability to keep a game fresh and exciting. Judging by the current state of GW1, 1-2 years after the release of GW2 the game could become stagnant because they are working on the next expansion.

OT: This talk of scythe skills makes me want dervishes to move away from generic attack spamming. Assassins can do that better and I dont mind if they do. One option would be to make enchantment juggling a viable option. However, reaper and others have pointed out what an uphill battle this would be to compete with attack skill spamming. How about turning some(mostly in the Mysticism line to prevent exploitation) of those enchantments into undefined or untyped skills? Then you could minimize casting times and aftercast delays associated with enchantment juggling. With some intelligent skill tweaking this could allow the Dervish to deal PBAoE spikes comparable to an attack spammer.

When your spikes can only compete with the competitions' dps, guess what? You're useless. For spikes to be useful, by definition they have to provide considerably more dps than dps for at least a little while. It's probably not the best way to do it. DPS is king in PvE.

But the idea has floated around in my head before. The real advantage of removing cast times and aftercast delays (regardless of how you do it) is that you don't need to make the numbers nearly as high to get the same results (which would make it more palatable). However, it also means that everything has to be even more spammable.

I know that attack spam is king in PvE, and tons of people are suggesting that we nerf how other people use the scythe to even things out. I say that's a bad idea, and instead suggest ways that the Dervish can be better without nerfing older builds. Please note these are all PvE buffs:

First up, scythe attacks:

Eremite's Attack - This skill recharges instantly if it hits a foe and you have Mysticism greater than 4.

Mystic Sweep - This skill recharges instantly if if it hits a foe and you have Mysticism greater than 4.

Irresistible Sweep - Now removes one Dervish Enchantment. Recharges instantly if a dervish enchantment is removed.

Reaper's Sweep - Lower recharge to 2. Deep wound at 75%.

The 3/4 attacks are now the best on the Dervish, as they instantly recharge when they hit. It's still susceptible to blind and block, so it's the player's choice if they want one or both of the attack skills on their bar. Irresistible is a good choice for "instant recharge on Dervish Enchantment removal" which will fuel enchantment juggling on a newly buffed Earth Prayers line. Reaper's is now in line with Wounding strike, as it does plenty of damage, and the enchantment removal is very useful in PvE.

Next is IAS:

Onslaught - Increase IAS and IMS to 33%, lower recharge to 5, lose 10 energy if you have Mysticism 4 or lower.

Pious Fury - Increased duration to 3..10. Renews itself whenever an enchantment ends on you.

This gives a good damage boost for the Wind Prayer line. Onslaught is more ready and stronger, but not impossibly out of reach of other professions. Pious Fury now is recharged with any ending enchantments and a longer recharge instead of stripping them itself for a set duration. This will help enchantment-juggling by speeding up the spamability of strip-attacks, with it renewing itself.

Next up, Avatars:

Lyssa - Also when striking attacking foes, it's an automatic critical strike.

Balthazar - Attack skills cause burning to all nearby foes for 0..3 seconds.

Grenth - Life steal increased to 5..35.

Dwayna - When an enchantment ends on you, the party gains 5..15 health.

Melandru - When an enchantment ends on you, your party loses one condition. Lower cost to 10.

All these effects are in addition to their current forms, for PvE-only. Skills cast too fast in HM for Lyssa to be effective all the time, so crits are rewarded to hitting attacking foes while bonus damage is still awarded to landing hits on casting foes. Balthazar gives a good amount of damage with a nearby burning, which is pretty spammy too; a welcome addition to any group. Grenth gets a boost in damage to match the other avatars. Dwayna can heal the party through juggling, and Melandru does the same with conditions. A lower cost makes it more approachable.

My other non PvE-only suggestions can be found here:

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

Let me know if I'm crazy.