Dervish update preview please

Simple changes I'm hoping for:
-Mysticism triggering off hexes ending as well as enchantments.
-Number of scythe targets tied to Scythe Mastery - 2nd target at 9, 3rd at 13, 4th at 16. Secondary scythers can't get higher than 12.
-Dimishing returns for weapon mastery attributes over 12 changed to normal returns. Scythe suffers more from this than other weapons, because it's more reliant on weapon damage instead of just skill damage.

All of these would help the Derv without helping secondary scythers. One of these would slightly harm secondary scythers.

That last one would pose problems for PvP. The others provide very minimal benefits. Honestly, hitting 3 targets is hard enough; 4 would be about as likely as 5 or 6.

Really? How? A tiny increase in the normal, armor-respecting part of an attack is only really relevant for scythes. Crit chance would end up slightly higher which might give Assassins slightly better e-management, but damage-wise it would, again, only be truly relevant for scythes.
Because hex-spamming doesn't ever happen?
If this weren't relevant, it would never have been restricted to 3 in the first place now would it? Play a game of AB with a Derv and then tell me again whether or not this would be relevant.

I forgot to post a fourth point by the way:
-"When this skill ends it is disabled for 15 seconds" instead of "This skill is disabled for 120 seconds". Avatars need lower downtime.

How often do you have 4 enemies in front of you in PvE? In my personal experience, the answer is "very rarely".

The only way better innate (or any, really) energy management can help the dervish on it's own is if it provided so much energy that zealous vow was no longer needed, thereby freeing up an extra skill slot for the dervish that a scythe warrior would not have. In other words, unless mysticism can consistently provide 15 energy every 5 seconds, it won't matter; you'll still need zealous vow for attack skill spam.

You want to make warriors do even more damage in PvP? Really? Keep in mind that the entire game is balanced around their damage before you answer.

But if you COULD hit that many, you might pay more attention to positioning, so that you'd have more opportunities to do so. Also, this would harm secondary scythers (2 targets instead of 3 is more relevant than 4 instead of 3), clearing the way for minor buffs to scythe attacks.

Or be able to spam just a little less, but free up your elite slot. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

The damage increase would be totally insignificant for sword and axe warriors. A normal return instead of a smaller one for perhaps 2 attribute points over 12? You'll never notice it. Hammers? Perhaps, that remains to be seen. But I don't think it will matter much. Dervs though, with their free +25HP, can more easily spec their weapon mastery to 16 AND have a more damaging weapon AND benefit more from crits, because scythes have a wider damage range.

There is no diminishing return for crit rates due to weapon rank.

And replace their elite slot with what? If they're spamming a little less, they can't very well bring another attack skill. What would they do? Bring Wounding Strike instead of a standard attack skill? It takes only seconds for a zealous vow dervish to overcome the initial DW spike.

All right. Fine. Lemme do some math for sword and axe warriors to see what would happen if there were no diminishing returns. Just for laughs, I'll see if that would be enough to help dervs, too.

*number crunching*

Ok, by my math, removing diminishing returns on weapon masteries would give the dervish about a 7 dps advantage over a warrior (still wouldn't bring them anywhere near the scythe sin, though).

And what do you know? It also means a 7 damage per hit (too lazy to consider attack speeds) increase in the power of sword autoattacks (which is slightly more than a 20% increase in autoattack power, since it's going from 30 to 37).

And also a 7 damage per hit increase for axes, as well (once again, about a 20% increase).

Make of those numbers what you will.

Based on an attribute of 14 and foes with 60 AR:

The difference for scythe auto-attacks, not considering criticals, is 8.33 damage per attack.
The difference for axe auto-attacks, also not considering criticals, is 5.66 damage per attack. I must admit that's more than I would have thought, though.

Then again, the difference at an attribute rank of 15 or 16, which Dervs are more easily able to afford HP-wise, would be even greater, because of the exponential formula for auto-attack damage. This would definitely help Dervs far more than any other class.

EDIT: I'll need to rethink this point. The effect on scythe crits would be over the top, since crits are based on max weapon damage and +4 attribute. With 16 Scythe Mastery and a way of guaranteeing a crit (say, Wild Blow or GftE!), Dervs could give sick spike assists. Wild Blow would deal 232 damage. Wild Blow on a scything Warrior would deal 164 damage, not factoring in Strength.

They should have removed that instead of putting in eternal aura to begin with.

In my opinion they should change avatars like this

Avatar of Balthazar-You attack 33% faster and you take -15 damage/you deal +15% damage. No holy damage...

Avatar of Dwayna- Each attack you do heals you for X and you lose 1 hex and condition with each attack skill

Avatar of Grenth-Get rid of cold. Make attacks unblockable in general. Up the Life steal a tad.

Avatar or Lyssa-I would change the +20 energy part for steals 2 energy from every foe per attack.

Avatar of Melandru-This Avatar in my opinion is pretty good. Get rid of the stupidly high energy cost and the earth thing and it'd be pretty nice.

This is just my idea and there have probably been better ideas made. But something in the ballpark of this I think would make the Avatars more desirable.

Nice ideas. I don't agree with AoB removing holy damage, because he's shown as a holy type, however:

Grenth is a Necromancer. Necromancers use hexes that generally only trigger on physical damage- so why is the Avatar of Grenth being so... Contradictory?

Avatar of lyssa as a frontline version of Channelling would help alot with energy.

Getting rid of cold damage in AoG is like eating a bowl of cereal...without the cereal.

Grenth is the God of Death and Coldness....keep it that way.

I've always thought drinking a glass of milk to be far more efficient anyway.

I really dont think the functionalities of the avatars need much changing at all (with the possible exception of Balthazar - it might be nice to give its functionality something in place of the useless speed boost). Imo, just give all the avatars a manageable energy cost (5-10) and make them maintainable without eternal aura. Then, they would be just fine. Im all for keeping holy damage on balthazar, ice damage on grenth, and earth damage on melandru since those types of damage seem to be special to those gods. Maybe there should be more normal skills in the wind, earth, and mysticism lines that have an effect that activates on cold, earth, or holy damage (respectively).

33% IMS means you deal damage to kiting foes, rather than 0 DPS.

Well enemies rarely kite in PvE but i guess i can see where you are coming. They do kite occasionally.

Meh even if they do relate to the Gods I think it tends to weaken the skills overall. Unless they do what you suggest and have more skills that activate on the damage type then I'd be fine with the damage change.

It might also be interesting to make people resistant to the damage type rather than deal the damage type.

Yea but there are plenty of IMS skills for dervs. There are fewer IAS's and they are either elite or subpar. That's my reasoning for Making Balth increase attack speed rather than movement speed.

You know what, I don't even care -- break the heck out of Dervs. I'm an Assassin main, and I love Critscythe as much as the next guy. But Dervs deserve to have their chance at glory. Make the avatars insanely strong, change Eternal Aura to a ridiculous Derv-only buff, do whatever.

At this point, even if Dervs make it into GW2, we know for a fact that scythes won't. Give them a last hee-haw before the mass migration to GW2 in a year.

Geez !! If i were at work and it took me 4 months to do my job i would be fired by now. I think when Anet staff go to work they just sit around AFKing all day.

Yea because testing, tuning, and spitting out updates take just as much time as mopping the floor.

*With 4 people (I think it's 4).

I thought it was 5?

Regardless, still a bloody small amount.