Let's buff the Warrior to Dervish levels!

i am maining a ranger since factions (was on necromancer before)

i'd say let' buff rangers instead

give us thackeray skill bar (one hit kill bow attack, ultra spammable interrupt that gives deep wound etc)

make barrage kill everything in an 5 square kilometer area. And magebane shot to blow up your opponent's computer

@title: why?

Obviously everyone wants dervs nerfed, but I still don't get why. More room for builds with no frontline? I took a break over summer (winter for most of you) but I heard there were 2 or 3 viable all caster builds around. More 30 minute matches? I can understand that some people might prefer that I guess.

We got by for about 5 out of 6 years with no variety in the frontline, why the sudden need for it now? I'm genuinely curious. I mean, what outcome are people hoping for?

Because dervs today are like warriors, only more powerful and requiring absolutely no skill.

Firstly, spamming should never be equal to skilful play but with a dervish you aren't playing it correctly unless you spam; there is no distinction between mindless spam and skill.

The warrior may not be as diverse as other professions but it is more varied than the dervish which is just AoB dervs and basically nothing else.

I suddenly had the mental image along with the associated music, of learning to play "chopsticks" on the piano when i was a kid...

I'd sit at the end of the bench, and rap my knuckles on the black keys and then with one finger punch out the inbetween white keys...

Now I WANT to play a dervish, just so i can post a youtube video with the music playing and skills one through 8 being activated exactly to the music of chopsticks as if played on a keyboard while still killing everything in sight.

Pondering... some few activation times may mess with the rhythm, i'll just play the dervish 1-8 skills at half speed and then speed up the video to accomplish the same feel.

This came up in another thread, and I'm still wondering how nerfing is the answer to a lack of depth in the dervish playstyle.

if dervish is OP, play a dervish. buffing other professions to the dervish level isn't going to help. If you want the dervish to be less OP, try making a thread that suggests helpful ways to balance the dervish instead of one trolling anet's poor balancing decisions.

As all the fun of keeping this silly has now bled out I'll give a serious response:

Your question presumes two things.
1.) that the current dervish play-style needs to be changed. (i agree)
2.) that the current dervish skill-set power is acceptable and not
in need of balancing with existing alternate profession mechanics.
(I disagree)

While a lot of "fun" has been had in this thread at the expense of Dervishes, most reasonable players in pvp and pve have no hatred for the profession, merely the execution in current meta.
To clarify, while gimmick builds in HA and GvG spring up occasionally due to skill revisions such as the current Dervish Catastrophe, real players usually agree that the most satisfying method of play is when a team's variety balances each member's weaknesses. These teams prove to be the most effective and versatile.
I wager: None of these players wants to see dervishes relegated to uselessness by the "death of a thousand cuts" slowly whittling away at the "power" of dervish skills to the point where each of the skills becomes useless. What we wish to see is a powerful foe or ally, who while able to accomplish a small variety of tasks well, really shines at one feature. Thus, this profession can now be a piece of the puzzle that is "the perfect team".
The current Dervish, is trying, very successfully in many cases, to be the whole team.
Step 1.) decide on the primary tasks a profession should fulfill in a GROUP.
*crowd control? snares, kites, interrupts, minions, spirits
*pressure? damage, degen, conditions, hexes, minions, spirits
*healing? primary or secondary? direct or mitigation/regen
*splitter? objective runner, kite etc.
*spiker/nuker?
Each profession should be able to do at least one of these things
excellently, and usually 1-2 more well or passably

A-net never made it past step 1 with the dervish overhaul.

Realize that just because I need a healer doesn't mean my sin with a 40/40 set can or should attempt it. Now we're creating a profession, we've decided which things it should be good at and what it should be great at. (note: current game a dervish can do every one of the above well, and several great to absurdly well) the next step is to balance the skills to accomplish our goal

-Skipping some steps for brevity-

Step 5.) Ensure your new profession's skills have synergy with each other and increase each other's effectiveness or combine to be more powerful together than separately (prevents off prof abuse almost as effectively as primary attribute) This is where A-net began and ended with the overhaul

Step 6.) Force choices. IAS or IMS, skill. High Energy, Low Recharge or Low energy, Higher recharge. Increased damage output or inceased survivability? High single target damage or lower damage AoE? This is what we call "downsides" It starts with forcing a choice... doesn't have to be life or death, but a choice needs to be made. No cake AND icecream... you gotta pick one. Every profession except Dervishes has them and many ARE life and death. A-net never made it past Step 5 where they incorrectly started.


Summary: To answer your question, ideally they'd start back at Step 1 with the current skill set and ask themselves the question: "What do we want the dervish to be BEST at. Leave these skills entirely untouched at current levels. Next, What do we want them to be "Good" at. Add detractors to this pile of skills. Last, What should be the Dervish's Achilles heel... where are they weakest? adjust apropriately.

So, instead of having a variety of characters I should just see dervishes everywhere and instead of winning through skill it should just be a race to see which team wipes first. It'll be like having the bugged Signet of Ghostly Might again.

I agree Mr. Angry pants... with a tiny portion of what you said. Underlined above.


But seeing as the current Dervish meta is "good" *cough* at everything, how about you tell us what their primary task should be? See my above post... Step 1.

Oh and before you go stomping out Mr. Angry pants... I expect this homework to be waiting on my desk when I return. Thanks, you can go now.

I've started playing this game 26 months ago and paid 50 bucks for all campaigns. I played it for 5,733 hours in total. So I'm playing for less then 0,01 bucks/hour. The game had several big updates. Some I really liked, some I didn't like.

The people making those changing are living from the money we paid when we bought the game. The owners of the company also have to make profit out of it.

Personally I'm really happy with the amount of work they still are putting into this game though I would say they should put more effort into bringing out GW2 a.s.a.p. (but thats personal preference).

I'm lmao in a sarcastic way how people troll the live team for new updates and troll them again on every point they don't like when an update is out.

It is ok to give feedback to them. Point out what they did good and might have done better. Give solid constructive ideas for improvement. But please don't treat them like this for the hard work they are doing with a reasonable small team.

Myself I want to thank Anet for doing your best to still improve this game and adding fresh new things to it.

To make a small suggestion: Try to think bout the people who enjoy playing PvP. I know the numbers aren't what it was used to be, but PvP has always been an important positive point on guildwars. So when adding new fresh things to the game, think bout the PvP-er as well so PvP gets some nice impulse, attracting new players to it without annoying the devoted people that has always been loyal to this part of the game.

I enjoyed playing PvP before the dervish update.

That argument is a bizarre one to make. Most major updates have left the game in significantly worse shape than before they were released. What's the point of their "hard work" if it's actively deleterious?

As for feedback, Izzy back in the day and the Live Team since the founding of the Test Krewe get quite a bit of it from credible sources. Most of it is disregarded.

Dude, in all seriousness, you are absolutely right. The problems really are minor in the long run and will get unwrinkled.

but now i feel like an ass, what started out as trolling other players, I took too far

great, now i'm mr sad pants.

Well part one is implicit to the question, being that the question itself is a response to a statement that the dervish playstyle is flawed. Part two is not actually assumed, it simply highlights that the playstyle response to my original question assumes it. So I guess my response to you would be to refer to my original question.

Your answer seems to be that dervs can do too much? The meta bars pretty much just pressure and spike (as frontliners always have), with aura of thorns being a very notable exception.

So again, what is the desired outcome? To what purpose are people asking for dervish nerfs? What is it about having high powered frontliners that makes the game no fun? What problems does it cause that people are trying to correct? I suggested some possible answers, and someone else suggested a different one, but those don't seem to be it? Is it a combination of all of them, something completely different, or both?

This is kinda wrong. They are now living off the money that comes in when new players buy the game , as well as costumes. Having good PVP balance does not increase either variable, thus one would devote less time to it.

the pricing model is of no relavance to this discussion

the problem is that any character or skill that is OP, is it makes the game boring, the good thing about GWs pvp is the choices and situations that occur, the responces and tactics that happen, these things make the pvp interesting, so a class that just dominates cause it's overpowered means no need for intelligence and experince, and this is why people who are not just interested in fame and shiney emotes are frustrated because it doesn't matter what you do, you know you can be defeated by a lot of numbskulls in a dervtrain

bbway put me off HA unless i was pm'd, dervs everywhere have made me never play it, all i do now is a bit of RA and a bit of GVG, though for me dervs have spoilt that too

I'll do this line item:
1.) what is the desired outcome: balance.
2.) to what purpose.. nerfs? balance.
3.) why is dervish being high power front line that makes the game no fun? because they are IMBALANCED
4.) what problems does it cause? oh, i don't know, it could have something to do with an entire party of unkillable dervishes with warrior level armor spamming unstoppable unblockable medium to high damage skills, physical attacks and spells that heal themselves, snare all foes, remove conditions from themselves, stack conditions on all foes, both at range and within melee and otherwise make the game entirely unplayable unless you are a dervish? no, that can't be it. because then every idiot would be playing as a... oh.(/facepalm)
5.) suggested... someone else suggested... can't be it? Well, when you are trying to pin down a single frustrating attribute of a class that can do everything well... you're going to hear a whole lot of answers. and in most cases they are all true. The trick is: Isolating a few and saying this is what we need to make the dervish BAD at. And leaving the rest alone.
6.) is it a combination of all of them? yes.
7.) something completely different? no.
8.) combination and something completely different. no.

The problem is this. The dervish doesn't really have a weakness per se. As melee it can wade into enemies while shrugging off traditional anti-melee protections. It casts 0 activation time spells which do AoE damage AND apply conditions/snare entire groups for low energy. All while protected by warrior level armor and protective enchants providing sustainable self healing and damage mitigation superior to any profession.
a.) That is why you are seeing so many pressure spiker builds.

Additionally however, they have good energy regen, condition removal, additonal armor and energy management from mysticism, and ranged snares, enchants, etc. and make good healers, ranged damage,
b.) They CAN FILL ANY ROLL, just because you've only seen the Balth spike pressure builds in meta doesn't mean thats all they can do... READ THE SKILLS ON WIKI. I'm not going to type them all here for you, and slowly explain to you why invulnerability with low energy costs for everything and the ability to generate adrenaline and use it effectively is a bad thing for other players/professions.

the only things i've killed a dervish with 1 on 1 (while in something silly like JQ or FA at the time, were my mesmer, and my assassin.) mesmer only lived because i caught his avatar when he didn't know i was there, and proceeded to watch him kill hisself with backfire using his flash enchants instead of just autoattacking me to death. My sin only won because the build I was running at the time was WotA with WoP and Critical Defense at 15 critical strikes and 13 dagger mastery running the unblockable combo.

again, this wasn't rocket science level pvp... both times it was not a skilled player, and the persons skills were not complimentary. on at least one of these occasions i think i recieved an outside heal where he had none and on both occasions i barely survived twice, verses good dervishes I typically die unless i kite them to allies who will maybe with 3 of us (and not standing like idiots shoulder to shoulder in front of him) may be able to kill one good one.

So there's no warriors in PvP anymore nowadays, right?

And i'm done. spent. last post in this thread. The troller got trolled. lol.

It's really hard to figure out what is making people upset when they're so upset they can't communicate properly

What are we supposed to be balancing dervs against?

Warriors? Why has there been no outcry to balance warriors against other damage dealers at any point in the last six years?

Melee counters and healing? How do we determine when it's balanced? When the mean average match length is 28 minutes?

I guess you need to define your terms, particularly balance and imbalance, as they are relative terms and I'm not at all sure what reference you are using them in.

If the questions are annoying you as much as they seem to be please just ignore me though. As I said, I'm genuinely curious. I really am looking for answers, not a haranguing.

How do you balance warriors against other professions when they have been the frontline for the past five or six years? You can't balance a warrior against an ele.

Warriors don't need a buff, dervs need a (slight) nerf.

Why the hell would you waste your time changing one thing, when you know for a fact that something else is what caused problems

I am new topvp so be kind, I feel that when ever I have gone into the pvp HA thing its allways either a team of sins, warrors or now derv's that own it out right and I cannot understand why instead of bothering fixing the Builds as such why not just fix ha.

Simple really limit the team so that only your main class is accesabel and limit the amount of classes so that u get 1 derv, 1 warror ,1 sin, 1 mesmer,1 monk so forth or 2 per team set up limiting the overpowerfull team build so it really does come down to the skill of the players

or if all else fails just give everyone in pvp the apirl fools day build and may the last man standing wins lol

ohh and ty i play monk and they killd my 600 days so deal with it and adapt its just a game have fun

cheers

There's skill involved in this? Cooking is a skill. Woodworking is a skill. Kung Fu is a skill. Programming is a skill. Pushing buttons in response to triggers is something lab animals do. In fact I would go so far as to say that given the right interface I could teach a lab rat to PvP or PvE for that matter. I'm more or less sick of seeing the word skill even brought into these arguments, which invariably pop up every time there is a major skill update because everyone gets butthurt about their favorite class no longer being useful or necessary to the newly established meta.

Every class gets their day on top of the heap. It's part of the development of EVERY game like this. It happens in WoW. It happens in Aion. It happens in Guild Wars and it will happen again in Guild Wars 2. The only way any MMO PvP will ever achieve anything approaching balance is to zero out every class. Take away everything that makes them unique. Give everyone the same base stats and damage and let it be entirely based on positioning, connection speed and pure luck. Or you can give every single class a valid and readily available counter to every other class thus making PvP more like a giant game of Paper Rock Scissors. Neither one sounds terribly appealing to me. So it seems the only viable option, short of stroking out in a fit of nerd rage, is to roll with the punches and adapt your playstyle or, God forbid, roll one of the newly buffed classes. Otherwise what all these arguments boil down to is, "I like playing a sub optimal class in the new meta and mean old Arena Net won't buff my sub optimal class or change the meta so I can play how I want to play."

TLDR: There is no skill required to play this game and stop crying about warriors and just roll a dervish or quit.

Lame answer but quite right knowing their updates for a few months now....At every update i'm more convinced that the PvP would be better if they didn't do any single skill update ever.... Ah well , good old days when GW wasn't a farming factory....

Everyone can play a dervish well, even a guy that just bought the game.
Now try playing a warrior well.

Magebane Shot (PvP): 10 Energy, 5 second CD.
Magebane shot overheats your opponents graphics card causing his computer to melt down and catch on fire. If this shot intrupts a spell, the two opponents nearest to your target also suffer from "OMG my computer is on fire help I dont have anything to put the fire out HELP!".

ban sins/rits/paras/dervs from pvp and revert every skill before factions got introduced.
fixed

I would vote for that.

can someone move this to the Gladiator's arena, too many people are posting who clearly aren't pvpers, and if they are i'm sure they'll find it in the Gladiator's

Slightly off-topic but you think playing as a monk or ranger has no skill attached to it? We can't all be as bad as you and have some blind belief that success in Guild Wars doesn't revolve around communication and skill (learning to kite properly, weapon swap efficiently, learning to position and follow damage, using skills effectively, pre-protting). Have you even played PvP or at least higher-end PvP?

Have PvP consist of just dervishes is fun? But then your beloved N/Me would cease to exist.

I vote for that too. Game was much better balanced before all the new profesions and skills madness.

But all updates have slowly created a huge power creep and slowly weeded out skills that would have been beneficial against these new Dervs, such as DA or Shield of Deflection, or even the old Aura of Faith, maybe even bonding (the power creep of ench removals have made them absolutely pointless in any format).

The team maintaining GW1 is about 5/6 where one of these is only their co-ordinator/manager who makes no contribution. The rest of Arenanet are hard at work on GW2. So you shouldn't really be worried about that and how this is relevan to the Dervish issue, I have no clue.

The team has been fairly busy bringing out all these changes plus gearing up for Winds of Change and 6th Anniversary. But as you say earlier, Guild Wars has always prided itself on a good PvP system. So in fairness, the team should take extra care in trying to balance and maintain the updates much better than they have been doing for the past 3 years. They have consistently created flavour of the month builds with no intention of fixing them for up to 6 months (they have been quoted on this already) in order for the builds to run their course.

Personally, the derv update has taken it a step too far. Ok, Invoke Lightning turned into a spike which actually required co-ordination, but the Derv train has ruined gameplay. As someone has already mentioned, more and more are forced to fight fire with fire and roll Dervs as well. I'm sorry but that is not balanced gameplay at all. that is being forced to play identical builds just so then you have a /roll chance of winning.

Seriously?

Yeahwhatevergz4u.

This made me Trololol. The people who have posted here and the people who have made sound arguments on this thread ARE PvP players. with the mindset that GW imagined their players to have; people who want equality for all professions and reward players for being skillful with what they do in-game. This dervish update has only attracted the new breed of 2011 braindead players who think there are only 3 maps in Heroes Ascent.

The positive points PvP brought to Guild Wars wasn't the simple player-versus-player theory, it was the purely tactical methods of winning, fps style co-ordination and a simple ratio of skill and reward, as mentioned before (e.g. random bulls/landing bulls).

@Urcscumug: You still see some warriors in certain builds with Dervs where the players wants to bring some KD into the mix.


That would ruin spike teams, and as a playerbase where we've seen many spike builds come and go, it would be horrible to see them become banned from gameplay.
HA itself is unique. It was originally coined "Tournament" by Anet because of the progressive style of the maps that were in rotation. Nowadays, you pretty much only see Underworld and Fetid, then you jump to Halls. Sometimes you'll get Shrines. The several different map objectives (annihilation, KotH courtyard, capture points and relic run) meant that several skills have to be integrated into your team in order to be effective at all objectives, which is why you see Song of Concentration (KotH), Make Haste (relic run) and snares (relic run, capture points) as required skills in order to get anywhere in HA.

These new Derv builds have brought on pressure builds and the only way to counter is to use more pressure, cancelling out any spikes or even balance teams because even a 3-man backline (Rt, 2 monks) will eventually struggle versus 3 dervs and 2 migraines. The gameplay is so negative I can't stop mentioning it here on Guru... Le sigh.

That doesn't seem right, if you can't balance one class against another, what are we discussing?

-_-

Team. Based. Gameplay... You balance frontline professions with other frontline professions. Each profession can't compete for each role. A monk can't do a warrior's role and vice versa (As much as you'd try, it's pointless).

What he was saying is that the problem isn't to power creep warriors to the Dervish standard; in regards to the OP. Warriors have been the staple frontline for a very good reason, and even more for skilled players who know how to use their utility skills to maximum effect. This is in contrast to the wildly spammable new Dervish which sees them outclass a warrior in all fronts without even breaking a sweat.

Warriors, tbh are the only balanced for PvP profession simply because of it's utility. Other frontliners rely on OP combo chains - removing utility, or spammed skills that have no drawbacks. Sure you can spam bulls strike, but you won't see any benefit from it. All warrior skills come with a cost. Dervish skills have no procc and no drawbacks for bashing your head on your keyboard.

Hope this was simple enough for the PvEers to read.

Well this was the original response I got, but no one responded to the question it leads to, which is 'how is nerfing dervishes the solution to a lack of depth in their gameplay?'

I can't read your posts, use smaller and more simple wording please.
It won't, so perhaps that's why it was ignored.

Dervish get pretty hurt in hard mode PvE when there is enough enchantment removal or not enough covering. A Shatter Enchantment is a pretty large spike if it hits a skill like Eternal Aura. The profession is very much a caster, so it would be natural that it wouldn't be just like a warrior.

Spam isn't the opposite of "skill" since a spam build could require some level of skill and a build of a different kind may still not require skill. The word skill is being thrown around a bit much in this thread.

Nerfing dervishes is the solution to a lack of depth in dervish play.

Do you realize this discussion is in regards to PvP?

If you introduce drawbacks to certain, probably many actually, dervish skills you encourage smart play not to just spam your skills because that is currently the only way to play a dervish. For example, while not a dervish skill look at Frenzy. Powerful effect with powerful drawback which means you cannot perma-IAS unless you want to explode in two seconds. Increasing the recharge and adrenaline costs of certain skills means they cannot be spammed but must be utilized accordingly to maximize their effects. Other skills require a rework so that you can't perma-cripple someone or use instant rupts (whoever thought this was a good idea borders on the extreme of the human mind in my opinion).