My dervish build is:
Avatar of Blathazar
Imbue Heath
Watchful Intervention
Chilling Victory
Crippling Sweep
Mystic Sweep
Eternal Aura
Sunspear Rebirth Signet
Can you guys/girls help me improve it?
Improve my build
flammingfarr
reaper with no name
Is this for PvP or PvE? Either way, there's a lot of room for improvement, but it'll help us narrow down possible improvements.
NerfHerder
What are you trying to do? Do you want to be primarily damage, defense, healing, or balanced? do you want the build to revolve around Avatar of Balthazaar?
Chthon
Your current build consists of 5 terrible skills, 1 mediocre skill, and 1 good one. Rather than "fix" it, toss it out and start over.
I'll give you a hint: Dervishes suck under the current skill balance. There's precisely one decent build. Learn it; Use it; Get bored with it; Go play another class while waiting for the fabled Dervish update.
D/W
Asuran Scan
Save Yourselves!
Mystic Sweep
Ermite's Attack
Protector's Strike
Frenzy (Whirling Charge if your party has a bad backline that can't support Frenzy; Conviction if your party has an awful backline)
Ebon Battle Standard of Honor (Aura of Holy Might if your team is hopelessly disorganized and has no intra-team synergies going.)
Zealous Vow.
I'll give you a hint: Dervishes suck under the current skill balance. There's precisely one decent build. Learn it; Use it; Get bored with it; Go play another class while waiting for the fabled Dervish update.
D/W
Asuran Scan
Save Yourselves!
Mystic Sweep
Ermite's Attack
Protector's Strike
Frenzy (Whirling Charge if your party has a bad backline that can't support Frenzy; Conviction if your party has an awful backline)
Ebon Battle Standard of Honor (Aura of Holy Might if your team is hopelessly disorganized and has no intra-team synergies going.)
Zealous Vow.
reaper with no name
Ok, first off, Whirling Charge? HoF is far better. You only need 6+1 wind prayers for zealous vow. That means more than enough points left over for mysticism to fuel HoF.
Second, this guy is clearly still in NF (otherwise he'd have at least AoHM), so giving him builds relying on skills from other campaigns won't help him.
Third, you're not telling him what is wrong with his build.
So, let's address the third problem first.
AoB is a bad elite. Why? Well, first off, you have to waste a skill slot for Eternal Aura to maintain it. Second, all the skill gives you is armor, IMS, and a damage conversion. Single-target IMS is worthless. The damage conversion does more harm than good in organized parties. And armor is unnecessary.
As a dervish, your job is to do damage, and lots of it. If your monks are any good, you won't need any defense or self-healing whatsoever. And if your monks suck, bringing those things won't save you. The best way to take stress off your monks is to kill whatever is applying the stress. The other avatars also suffer from huge design problems like this, so don't bother with them.
A better elite for you would be Wounding Strike. It's simple, provides a nice Deep Wound spike, and doesn't take a lot of skill slots. Sadly, without access to Asuran Scan or other damage-boosting skills, I doubt zealous vow would really be worthwhile.
Don't bother with skills that heal other players. Your job is to kill stuff. You wouldn't want the monks to be bringing melee attacks, would you? Then why would you want to bring healing skills? Faithful Intervention is the only self-heal you should consider using, and not even because it's a heal, but because it has no duration and serves as a great trigger for Wounding Strike and other such skills.
You're a frontline melee character; you don't have time to resurrect people. That's the midline's job.
Your current build also lacks energy management. Sadly, due to various things which I won't get into, dervishes are terrible with energy management. The only decent non-elite energy management the class has access to is in Wind Prayers (Attacker's Insight). At 4 or more Wind Prayers, it's great for fueling attacks like Chilling Victory.
Since scythes are slow, you need IAS (increased attack speed). Unfortunately, dervishes don't have a lot of good options for that. The best they have is Heart of Fury, a mysticism skill.
Crippling is not necessary in PvE (which I'm assuming your build is for). Death is the ultimate snare.
So, at the end of the day, you should have a build that looks something like this:
Scythe Mastery 12+1+1
Wind Prayers 6
Mysticism 11+1
Heart of Fury
Wounding Strike
Attacker's Insight
Chilling Victory
Mystic Sweep
Faithful Intervention
Optional
Optional
Second, this guy is clearly still in NF (otherwise he'd have at least AoHM), so giving him builds relying on skills from other campaigns won't help him.
Third, you're not telling him what is wrong with his build.
So, let's address the third problem first.
AoB is a bad elite. Why? Well, first off, you have to waste a skill slot for Eternal Aura to maintain it. Second, all the skill gives you is armor, IMS, and a damage conversion. Single-target IMS is worthless. The damage conversion does more harm than good in organized parties. And armor is unnecessary.
As a dervish, your job is to do damage, and lots of it. If your monks are any good, you won't need any defense or self-healing whatsoever. And if your monks suck, bringing those things won't save you. The best way to take stress off your monks is to kill whatever is applying the stress. The other avatars also suffer from huge design problems like this, so don't bother with them.
A better elite for you would be Wounding Strike. It's simple, provides a nice Deep Wound spike, and doesn't take a lot of skill slots. Sadly, without access to Asuran Scan or other damage-boosting skills, I doubt zealous vow would really be worthwhile.
Don't bother with skills that heal other players. Your job is to kill stuff. You wouldn't want the monks to be bringing melee attacks, would you? Then why would you want to bring healing skills? Faithful Intervention is the only self-heal you should consider using, and not even because it's a heal, but because it has no duration and serves as a great trigger for Wounding Strike and other such skills.
You're a frontline melee character; you don't have time to resurrect people. That's the midline's job.
Your current build also lacks energy management. Sadly, due to various things which I won't get into, dervishes are terrible with energy management. The only decent non-elite energy management the class has access to is in Wind Prayers (Attacker's Insight). At 4 or more Wind Prayers, it's great for fueling attacks like Chilling Victory.
Since scythes are slow, you need IAS (increased attack speed). Unfortunately, dervishes don't have a lot of good options for that. The best they have is Heart of Fury, a mysticism skill.
Crippling is not necessary in PvE (which I'm assuming your build is for). Death is the ultimate snare.
So, at the end of the day, you should have a build that looks something like this:
Scythe Mastery 12+1+1
Wind Prayers 6
Mysticism 11+1
Heart of Fury
Wounding Strike
Attacker's Insight
Chilling Victory
Mystic Sweep
Faithful Intervention
Optional
Optional
NerfHerder
Wounding Strike builds are a good way to start. If you having trouble staying alive due to low level heros/hench I would suggest something like Wounding Strike. I gave that build to a friend of mine when she was having trouble staying alive with her Derv early in NF, and it worked well for her playstyle. She finished all campaigns with it, but its not my favorite build.
For optimal damage you would want something like Zealous Vow. I prefer adding 6 in earth and bringing Conviction on this one. You must have good heros or players healing you for this one.
But, if your dead set on using an Avatar you should look at D/any_General_PvE_Avatar. I would take Zealous Sweep over Zealous Renewal as renewal usually give you energy when you dont need it, and try to use sweep when attacking multiple foes at once. Even still, your likely to have energy trouble.
None of these builds are set in stone. Find what works best for you and make it your own.
For optimal damage you would want something like Zealous Vow. I prefer adding 6 in earth and bringing Conviction on this one. You must have good heros or players healing you for this one.
But, if your dead set on using an Avatar you should look at D/any_General_PvE_Avatar. I would take Zealous Sweep over Zealous Renewal as renewal usually give you energy when you dont need it, and try to use sweep when attacking multiple foes at once. Even still, your likely to have energy trouble.
None of these builds are set in stone. Find what works best for you and make it your own.
Nechrond
Also: Don't go anywhere without a protter. They trigger your Mysticism with all their spammable enchants. Even a henchie protter is better than a healer when you're a Derv.
TheodenKing
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Originally Posted by Nechrond
Also: Don't go anywhere without a protter. They trigger your Mysticism with all their spammable enchants. Even a henchie protter is better than a healer when you're a Derv.
^That, or a smiter with Reversal of Damage, Strength of Honor, Judge's Insight, Smite Condition, Smite Hex.
Nechrond
Xenomortis
Quote:
Originally Posted by reaper with no name
Heart of Fury is in Mysticism, takes 1.5 seconds to use (aftercast delay really matters for physicals) and has a 30 second cooldown.
There is no reason to spec into Mysticism with Zealous Vow, ever.
With 12 in Wind Prayers you hit a breakpoint for ZV, netting 6e per hit (meaning fueling two 10 energy skills whilst spamming attacks is never an issue) and you get 13 seconds on Whirling (65% uptime compared to HoF ~55%*). Whirling Charge also acts as an IMS as well as an IAS. The increase to movement speed is incredibly useful.
The only thing HoF has going for it is that it's an increase of 33%, not 25%, but it's still terrible; you're better off taking Frenzy if you want a 33% IAS.
I don't have the time to pick through the rest of your post.
Edit:
Time has been found.
Quote: Originally Posted by reaper with no name
And armor is unnecessary.
Unless you are maintaining Protective Spirit on yourself (sometimes this does become a near necessity) then armour is necessary. I'm not defending Avatar of Balthazar; the effects of the skill are all reproducible and the result is usually superior.Quote: Originally Posted by reaper with no name
A better elite for you would be Wounding Strike. It's simple, provides a nice Deep Wound spike, and doesn't take a lot of skill slots.
Reaper's Sweep is a better spike and in the end, more damage. Spamming deep wound everywhere isn't really worthwhile since the healing reduction is not worth the trouble in PvE.
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Originally Posted by reaper with no name
Whirling Charge is worthless as IMS because, again, single target IMS is worthless. The enemy should be dead before they ever get a chance to run away.
I have now firmly reached the conclusion that you are not capable of rational thought. Either that or you do not attempt anything above the mid difficulty vanquishes in the game.
Both Whirling Charge and HoF stink. Frenzy is far superior if your backline doesn't suck. If your backline does suck, then Whirling Charge is marginally better for the reasons Xeno points out. Any further effort exerted in arguing between the two skills would be better spent teaching OP how to build a decent backline that can support Frenzy.
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Second, this guy is clearly still in NF (otherwise he'd have at least AoHM), so giving him builds relying on skills from other campaigns won't help him.
Probably so.
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How is that the case? It does not matter when Deep Wound goes down. If the enemy can be killed in two hits, then Deep Wound is unnecessary regardless of where it comes from. If the skill can help me kill an enemy at below 50% instantly, then it's useful.|
Third, you're not telling him what is wrong with his build.
True. Sometimes I'm just too tired. Especially when it comes to bad dervish builds. You're right that explaining why his choices all sucked would be more productive than simply telling him that they suck. Quote:
I want to get Deep Wound off at most, once per enemy. Usually I don't care too much about that and having the more potent spike for harder to kill enemies is more valuable, especially for weaker players.
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If you use it before the enemy is at half-health, it's wasted.
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An IMS absolutely does matter for a frontliner. Since there are 4 AoE IMS skills in the game, two of which are elite and all of them have a high cost to bring (/P or /W secondaries or worse, primaries on heroes) they are truly seldom worthwhile. There are almost always better options to bring.
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