My build, and help for it (general PvE build)

First off, before anything else, I will provide my builds template code: OgGikys8MgF3XlxL2FA/dLvA

Now, this is my first post here at GW guru, but I have been playing GW for about four years now. My main has been a dervish for about 3 years, and I had a good grasp on my build and the dervish meta before the big dervish revamp.
I took a long break off of GW, and now, after returning, I am a bit bewhildered and did not get back up on the dervish meta. I, however, whipped up a build that I thought could work, but am not quite sure if it's the best I can do.
I tend to prefer builds that are a bit more original, just to warn you.

Also, before we start, I probably have to say what this build is meant for. It is meant to be used as a general PvE build, used in missions and quests that don't require spesific kind of builds and general grinding too, of course.

My build now is a D/W WS dervish with both Mysticism and Scythe Mastery maxed (not counting equipment/rune bonuses). I usually run a zealous scythe (best quality, of course), but keep forgetting the name of that unique weapon I use.
So, the skills the build features are the following:
Chilling Victory
Heart of Fury
"For Great Justice!"
Heart of Holy Flame
Balthazar's Rage
Wounding Strike
Mystic Vigor
Faithful Intervention

Everyone knows what to do with Faithful Intervention, so let me start my short explanation of my plan after the general set-up:

I intend to cast Mystic Vigor and Heart of Fury in pre-combat when running to the opponent. Then, when colliding with the enemy I intend to use the damaging flash enchantments (in the order of HoHF+BR). As soon as possible, I use CV+WS. With the adrenaline I get from WS breaking BR, I immediately use CV again, then using HoF as soon as possible. When done, the flash enchantments should be almost ready, so after a few blows I can start over again.

In short, I spam Chilling Victory as much as possible with constant adrenaline and throw in a few wounding strikes to get conditions and break enchantments I want to break.

So, what do you think? Was I blown too much off track after the dervish revamp?

You don't need self-heals for general pve - that's what your (sos and n/rt, hopefully) heroes are for!

A better elite would be something like Pious Renewal, which then allows you to take powerful tear down skills, such as Wearying Strike (a good source of deep wound) or Eremite's Attack (completely AoE, as opposed to three targets in front).

That bar could use "Save Yourselves!" as you've taken "FGJ!" and it would be spammable if your scythe is hitting multiple foes.

Also "Aura of Holy Might" works well in builds that utilises frequent tear downs, as the holy damage from this particular skill is armor-ignoring (as are a lot, but not all, sources of holy damage).

Something like either of these two builds would be more effective; OgGiwypMJGudJd1cFgJ6N6BAA
OgGjwip8qSmXfbaXNX7g5iibxg

Okay, I'll see onto that in a few days, the next time I log on.

So the basic idea of constantly being able to spam Chilling Victory is okay?

Also, general PvE also features hard mode, just to clarify.

As heroes I use:
Sabway,
One divine favor monk,
One fire elementalist,
Two dervishes with the same build as I am using. The last four might be bad, who knows, but I will post details about them later, and in another thread in the right section.

Hi there. Firstly, I would just like to say that, looking at your build, it is useable in pve. Very much so. However, I think you probably also wanted some suggestions to your build? Though useable, I can see some improvements that could be made. Firstly, bar compression. I think you may have overdone it on the adrenline gain, even if you only have 2 skills for that purpose. One should be enough. As a dervish, I suggest Balthazar's Rage, or even get rid of both, plus WS and grab Onslaught. Furthermore, I feel it is a shame if you don't include Save yourselves! on most frontline builds/adrenaline builds in particular.

Secondly, chilling victory... I don't think it's worth the cost of its adrenaline. Cold damage, like every other elemental damage, is severely less effective in hardmode. Against some enemies, chilling victory may even end up doing zero cold damage. However, if you are doing normal mode, I think it's fine for it to be a focus of your build.

Thirdly, faithful intervention, I personally don't think it's worth a slot in most derv bars. Long recharge, 2 second cast time, all of which is for a heal that can be outdone by a healer hero using Spirit Light. Dervs are pretty sturdy, especially with the armor bonus granted from the new functionality of Mysticism. I don't really think you should be finding yourself at less than 50% hp too often, and if you are, perhaps improve your healing heroes?

Fourthly, and perhaps I should have linked this with faithful intervention as both are self heals. As a frontline, you should not be healing. If you are, what are your healer heroes meant to be doing? Exception to this rule is Avatar of Dwayna, because it is really just awesome.

So yup, those are really my suggestions. I hope they didn't come off as too scathing as your build is actually alright and useable in general/nm pve. If hardmode, you may want to incorporate a few of my changes...

Hope this helps.

Quote: Originally Posted by instanceskiller

Hi there. Firstly, I would just like to say that, looking at your build, it is useable in pve. Very much so. However, I think you probably also wanted some suggestions to your build? Though useable, I can see some improvements that could be made. Firstly, bar compression. I think you may have overdone it on the adrenline gain, even if you only have 2 skills for that purpose. One should be enough. As a dervish, I suggest Balthazar's Rage, or even get rid of both, plus WS and grab Onslaught. Furthermore, I feel it is a shame if you don't include Save yourselves! on most frontline builds/adrenaline builds in particular.

Secondly, chilling victory... I don't think it's worth the cost of its adrenaline. Cold damage, like every other elemental damage, is severely less effective in hardmode. Against some enemies, chilling victory may even end up doing zero cold damage. However, if you are doing normal mode, I think it's fine for it to be a focus of your build.

Thirdly, faithful intervention, I personally don't think it's worth a slot in most derv bars. Long recharge, 2 second cast time, all of which is for a heal that can be outdone by a healer hero using Spirit Light. Dervs are pretty sturdy, especially with the armor bonus granted from the new functionality of Mysticism. I don't really think you should be finding yourself at less than 50% hp too often, and if you are, perhaps improve your healing heroes?

Fourthly, and perhaps I should have linked this with faithful intervention as both are self heals. As a frontline, you should not be healing. If you are, what are your healer heroes meant to be doing? Exception to this rule is Avatar of Dwayna, because it is really just awesome.

So yup, those are really my suggestions. I hope they didn't come off as too scathing as your build is actually alright and useable in general/nm pve. If hardmode, you may want to incorporate a few of my changes...

Hope this helps. Thanks for the answer! There are, however, a few problems:
The problem with only having Balthazar's Rage is it's long recharge time. The point of the whole build is to be able to spam high-adrenaline skills, so should I just ditch the idea, if Chilling Victory is bad? Or should I just switch it to another high-adrenaline skill and keep the adrenaline pumping engine in?

I'll take the healing skills out, though I am still pending on good hero weapons...

Allso, the problem with Onslaught is that it's wind prayers, so I'd have to ditch some levels out of either attribute that is now maxed.

That is a very valid point about Balthazar's Rage. However, if you continued using your original build, then you would have had a 25 second downtime anyways waiting for "For Great Justice!" to recharge so you would have had to deal with BR's recharge eventually. From personal experience, I find BR's recharge very reasonable as you have an IAS in Heart of Fury which increases adrenaline gain by default anyways, and you also have to sift through your other skills on your bar, including, in the case of your original build, WS. This all makes the downtime on Br's recharge very reasonable.

Onto your point about high adrenaline skills though, I have also found from personal experience that it might be a good idea to replace HoF with the similar IAS, that lasts longer, and removes an enchant (a LOT of derv enchants would prefer you to remove them, e.g your BR and HoHF). This is because whenever you use an adrenal skill, it decreases the rest of the adrenal skills on your bar by one, which can be annoying sometimes and makes your build feel slower. If you do this, then you only have one adrenal skill so this would make BR's recharge seem better right? Oh but yeah, chilling victory is like elementalists using fire skills, good/great in nm, and unnoticed in hm. I think it's great you try to come up with your own original builds, so perhaps maybe you shouldn't entirely get rid of this build, but modify it and only it for normal mode?

As for whether you want to switch it for another adrenal skill, the best ones I think are Wearying Strike, Twin Moon Sweep, and possibly Reap Impurities. However, I can't tell you whether to stick with an adrenal engine or not as how you play the derv should be up to you. Dervs are very versatile now after their buff, so if you feel like a build devoted to adrenaline isn't your thing, then try other things. For now though, I will assume you wish to stick with an adrenal build.

Onslaught may be in the wind prayers, but I think it is quite common now for dervs to split attribute distribution three ways; either scythe, myst, earth or scythe, myst, wind. Try lowering enough to get wind prayers to 6 and get a +1 wind rune. At 7 wind, Onslaught will last 9 seconds, so a one sec downtime. You can try increasing it more though if you want it entirely maintainable. Truth be told though, I experimented with a Adrenal build for dervs once. I don't particulary like my derv being so adrenal based but I tried it out. I used Avatar of Balthazar because of it's longevity and maintainablity. It increases adrenaline gain by the same amount as Onslaught but doesn't have a built in IAS so you would need to have one. On the bright side, it means you wouldn't be forced to spec in wind. It also gives great synergy with Reap Impurities so maybe have a look at it.

As for hero weps, I find the eotn bonus weps are mostly all my heroes ever need, unless I give them fancy weps.

Again, hope this helps.

Okay, thanks again. I'll write more later, but just out of curioisity, could you post me some exact builds based on what you would suggest?

Sure and sorry, just reread my last post. I forgot to actually say what the better IAS was haha. Was writing that up a bit late. Anyways, the other IAS was Pious Fury.

While I experimented with a few adrenal builds, I didn't like the playstyle very much, so only kept the one that was more suitable for me/fun, and deleted the rest. Here is the only build that was left at the end of my experiments with adrenal builds: OgGjkurGLTuXihOXBYZijbYXxgA

I will just detail the build for you in slightly more detail though.
Skills:
Avatar of Balthazar (Elite)
Pious Fury
Reap Impurities
Wearying Strike
Shield of Force
Zealous Renewal
Balthazar's Rage
"Save Yourselves!"

Attributes:
Scythe Mastery: 11+1
Earth Prayers: 6+1
Mysticism: 12+1+1

Now, a note on the att distribution. Having looked and tried the build again (haven't used it for a while now...) I think it would be very acceptable to lower earth prayers to 3+1 and increase scythe to 12+1 for that extra bit of damage. This is because SoF still has a reasonable duration as does the weakness it causes.

The build focuses on spamming it's adrenal skills. Obviously you should always maintain AoB. Using the build is quite simple. Just follow these steps.
1. Cast AoB
2. Run into mobs (have a good backline to ensure you don't suicide)
3. Insta cast BR when surrounded by a single/couple/few foes and then insta teardown it with Pious Fury to get an insta 2 strikes of adrenaline.
4. You should find your adrenal skills should be almost ready.
5. when adrenal skills are ready, use your other flash enchants, (preferably SoH then ZR). Your opponents should be quick to be knocked down and are burning.
6. Reap impuritie them and follow with Wearying strike.
7. Spam SY when needed.
8. Improvise as needed.
9. Rinse and repeat.

You can definately try this build if you're pushing for high amounts of damage on the fronline - at the cost defense.

Grenth's Assault

Mysticism 11+2+1
Scythe mastery 10+3
Smiting Prayers

Weapon used - Life Stealing Scythe

Banishing strike
Radiant Scythe
Aura Slicer
Mystic Corruption
Pious Fury
Avatar of Grenth
Intimidating Aura
Strength of Honor

With your smiting prayers at 10, this would give you a +18 damage per hit.
pushing your mysticism to 14, wielding a vampiric scythe and using the avatar of grenth would allow you to hit for 75 holy dmg + 16 life stealing from Banishing Strike alone. with the added Disease and IAS from the feeder and teardown combo, you;d most definately take out the most toughest opponents down quickly.


Flame Dervish

Mysticism 11+2+1
Scythe mastery 10+3
Fire Magic 10


Weapon required - Fiery Scythe

Pious Assault
Reap Impurities
Mark of Rodgort
Pious Renewal
Pious Fury
Conjure Flame
Intimidating Aura
Mystic Vigor

Basically a flamer version of the Grenth build, this one allows you to deal constant burning while doing large doses of AoE dmg.

Cast Conjure Flame, Intimidating Aura and Mystic Vigor before each battle.

Hex your target(s) with Mark of Rodgort, run into the group. Cast Pious Renewal, strip it down with Pious fury for the IAS, cast Pious renewal again, strip it down once again with pious assault causing AoE dmg, and additional burning. Reap impurities to remove the burning to cause more AoE dmg. Continue hitting to trigger the burning effect again. Rinse and repeat till your targets are all burned to the bone.

Don't ever run Strength of Honor on yourself. Add it to a hero or have a different player bring it. The hero doesn't even have to be a monk hero, could be a Tease mesmer or ritualist, etc.

You already have the avatar, why would you have Mystic Corruption? Drop Intimidating Aura. And the flame build is just poor with your silly 10-15 energy skills.

Quote: Originally Posted by instanceskiller

Sure and sorry, just reread my last post. I forgot to actually say what the better IAS was haha. Was writing that up a bit late. Anyways, the other IAS was Pious Fury.

While I experimented with a few adrenal builds, I didn't like the playstyle very much, so only kept the one that was more suitable for me/fun, and deleted the rest. Here is the only build that was left at the end of my experiments with adrenal builds: OgGjkurGLTuXihOXBYZijbYXxgA

I will just detail the build for you in slightly more detail though.
Skills:
Avatar of Balthazar (Elite)
Pious Fury
Reap Impurities
Wearying Strike
Shield of Force
Zealous Renewal
Balthazar's Rage
"Save Yourselves!"

Attributes:
Scythe Mastery: 11+1
Earth Prayers: 6+1
Mysticism: 12+1+1

Now, a note on the att distribution. Having looked and tried the build again (haven't used it for a while now...) I think it would be very acceptable to lower earth prayers to 3+1 and increase scythe to 12+1 for that extra bit of damage. This is because SoF still has a reasonable duration as does the weakness it causes.

The build focuses on spamming it's adrenal skills. Obviously you should always maintain AoB. Using the build is quite simple. Just follow these steps.
1. Cast AoB
2. Run into mobs (have a good backline to ensure you don't suicide)
3. Insta cast BR when surrounded by a single/couple/few foes and then insta teardown it with Pious Fury to get an insta 2 strikes of adrenaline.
4. You should find your adrenal skills should be almost ready.
5. when adrenal skills are ready, use your other flash enchants, (preferably SoH then ZR). Your opponents should be quick to be knocked down and are burning.
6. Reap impuritie them and follow with Wearying strike.
7. Spam SY when needed.
8. Improvise as needed.
9. Rinse and repeat. I fell that would go too far from the kind of playstyle I prefer. I'm searching for a constant, fast and good enough damage output, that is smooth to use.

I don't think any other Dervish elite comes close to Pious Renewal in PvE. I've tried, but they all fall short.

Quote: Originally Posted by aatami

I fell that would go too far from the kind of playstyle I prefer. I'm searching for a constant, fast and good enough damage output, that is smooth to use. Sorry I couldn't help you in the end. All I can do now is suggest some skills which I think might suit your playstyle. You seem to like an aggressive and fast playstyle revolving around adrenaline. So, here are my suggestions:

Onslaught (Elite): This is the elite I think that would suit you best if you didn't like Avatar of Balthazar. It offers you great bar compression, and gives you speed and consistancy all in one provided you spec high enough for it to be maintainable.

Balthazar's Rage: Still a great skill that you should consider that actually does fit everything you are searching for.

Lyssa's Haste: If you use Onslaught, why not? It interrupts enemies instantly, and reduces the recharge of Balthazar's Rage to 7 seconds, thus giving it more consistancy.

Grenth's Aura: Again, only if you spec in wind for Onslaught. This just gives you a bit more survivability and gives you a guaranteed minimum damage from a weapon with such a wide damage range.

Eremite's Attack: This is a scythe attack that doesn't require adrenaline so can be used at times when you can't build adrenaline quick enough.

Zealous Sweep: This is another scythe attack that doesn't require adrenaline but can help you to build it.

Wearying Strike: This adrenaline skill is in my opinion, one of the better ones avaliable to the derv for it's easy to apply deep wound. It can also be used effectively without tearing down an enchant as the weakness it causes otherwise can be easily cured. (I find it so as I always bring a nec healer with Wep of Rememby and Mend body and soul, and sometimes Melonni with Avatar of Melandru).

Chilling Victory: Can be great for normal mode.

Pious Fury: Great IAS compared to Heart of Fury if you use carry other adrenal skills.

Heart of Fury: Great IAS if you don't have many adrenal skills and don't like tearing enchants too much.

"Save Yourselves": AMAZING skill in general. I find it stuck to most variations of every melee build I make.

Okay, well, I fooled around with skills and finally made up something like this: AaMiKyypKdBGgJGie19hdptFDC

It features:
Wind prayers 9 (with runes)
Mysticism 13 (with runes)
Scythe Mastery 12 (with runes)
Zealous Sweep, Wearying Strike, Pious Fury, Lyssa's Haste, Grenth's Aura, Balthazar's Rage, Onslaught, "Save Yourselves!"

What do you think? Could this work?

Yes, this build looks promising, but id highly recommend to replace pious fury with another skill - preferably Faithful Intervention or Intimidating Aura or Eternal Aura (for added survivability). You already have Onslaught as your attack speed booster, and its quite pointless to have another xD.

Additionally, you might want to review the flash enchantments Lyssa's Haste and Balthazar's Rage. They would be most beneficial if they're stripped down by a teardown skill. Unless you're stripping down these flash enchantments all the time, i would say they're taking up space for more useful skills- either damage dealing or survivability.

I have Lyssa's haste there to make my flash enchantments recharge faster.
Why is it pointless to have two IAS:s?

Onslaught already increases your ias by 25% and pious fury increases to the same amount... however IASs does'nt stack(from what i think), so its quite pointless :S

Quote: Originally Posted by aatami

Why is it pointless to have two IAS:s? Attack speed will only stack to +33%. Thus, both +25% attack speed boosts won't just multiply together like normal for a 56% attack speed boost.

Some more numbers, if you're interested:

IAS increases hit rate by 1/(1-IASpercentage).
Therefore, 25%IAS increases your hit rate by 33% and a 33%IAS increases your hit rate by 50%.
Therefore (taking into account the above point and my first statement), a second 25%IAS (i.e, Pious Fury) is only boosting your hit rate by an additional 1.5/1.33 = 13%. If you're happy to spend a skill slot on a 13% raw attack speed boost, go ahead and keep Pious Fury. Ditch it if not (obviously). I'm not up to date on modern Derv builds so I can't say anything on that myself.

woops. my bad - did'nt really notice it... hmm..

Quote: Originally Posted by aatami

Okay, well, I fooled around with skills and finally made up something like this: AaMiKyypKdBGgJGie19hdptFDC

It features:
Wind prayers 9 (with runes)
Mysticism 13 (with runes)
Scythe Mastery 12 (with runes)
Zealous Sweep, Wearying Strike, Pious Fury, Lyssa's Haste, Grenth's Aura, Balthazar's Rage, Onslaught, "Save Yourselves!"

What do you think? Could this work?
Firstly, like others have said, you shouldn't place two IAS on your bar as there is a cap on it as Marty has explained. This is probably my fault though for not reminding you about that, so sorry. Other than that, your bar is fine. While I agree with scoutct6's post about you needing to replace Pious Fury, I disagree with him strongly about what to replace it with. Don't replace it with Faithful Intervention or Intimidating Aura or Eternal Aura. Faithful Intervention and Eternal Aura can be considered if you really REALLY don't believe in the healing abilites of your healer(s) (though this situation is usually only encountered in bad pugs), in a group with a good healer(s) it is a complete waste of space. I find intimidating aura can be alright, though it is still average, but not just because it is also quite useless in the face of a good healer(s) but because dervs have quite good survivability anyways and I will talk about this in a bit. My suggestion would be to replace Pious Fury with another teardown attack skill like Irresistible Sweep or even Twin moon sweep. That combined with Wearying Strike should give you teardown consistancy. However, the only skill that would really like you to tear it down is BR. Lyssa's Haste and Grenth's Aura are optional but they provide good effects so take your time when tearing them down, and Onslaught should never be torn down. However, all recharge fairly quickly so it's not too much of a problem if you tear down one accidentally (or intentionally).

Back to my point about derv survivability. Since their buff, they have bcome more sturdier. This is primarily due to their mysticism buff, which grants a stackable armor bonus that doesn't count towards the armor bonus cap, and their now frequent use of enchants. Because of their use of enchants, Windwalker Insignia is a very good and in demand insignia, and for very good reasons. You could get a potential +20 armor from them, and a further + xx armor from mysticism which all stacks. So for this reason, I don't think you should personally try to use more skills for survivability and just ensure you have good healers. This gives you more room to go offensive which is what you like.

EDIT: Forgot to comment on your attributes. I think 10 Mysticism is alright for your build, so try lowering it to 10, and invest the rest to wind prayers to at least get wind to 11. If you do have any spare that is enough to increase myst or scythe do so. If you have a choice between the two, I would recommend scythe for that little bit extra damage