Pious Renewal Dervish

Every time I use this build, I realize the damage it dishes out make other build look diminutive while you get awesome utility. Here's something people may not have caught onto yet.

Twin Moon Sweep costs 7 adrenaline and requires an enchantment. This hit each foe twice and benefits from scythe AoE effect. If you hit 3 foes with it, it will pretty much charge itself with Furious mod or other methods. This means you can use it on literally every attack. Pious Renewal allows you to actually use TWS every attack. Aura of Holy Might triggers when an enchantment ends, so every time you use TWS, it activates. Pious Renewal also allows you to use Pious Fury. This gives you access to an unconditional, maintainable IAS that triggers AoHM. Now you can stick in Strength of Honor, which adds 22-26 damage to your attacks. This bonus is applied twice when using TWS. We can also put in Splinter Weapon. We have another convenient attack for triggering Splinter Weapon; Eremite's Attack. The thing to point out however, we can already hit 6 foes at once, triggering SW, using Twin Moon Sweep.

Given the usage of TWS, using a Vampiric weapon would be a perfect use. It's an extra 5 damage each hit twice, on every hit. Usually, dervish builds can be energy intensive if we want to spam attacks on recharge. This involves using a Zealous scythe for a majority of the time. When using Pious Renewal, you will never have to use a zealous as PR provides your energy management. If you use adrenal skill such as Wearying Strike and Twin Moon Sweep, you gain energy using attacks.

Another aspect of using Twin Moon Sweep and Pious Renewal is the health gain. Frontliners should avoid bringing self heals, but when you use PR, the healing is built in and quite powerful. Pious Renewal heals you a small amount when it ends, 26 health at 13 Mysticism, and TWS heals you for 113 health at 14 Scythe Mastery. You get healed for 139 health every time you use TWS. Given your IAS and the fact you are using a Vampiric weapon, that is enough to survive against small mobs on your own. This makes it extremely useful in 4 man areas and some nice utility in other areas.

There is the issue of not being able to hit multiple foes, either because you don't ball the up or they're naturally spread out. Don't worry, we've only covered half our bar. Pious Renewal gives the ability to spam Pious Assault. This is simply not possible on any other build except Avatar of Lyssa. Even with Avatar of Lyssa, you can't spam Pious Assault and TWS at the same time. Pious Assault can be used every 3 seconds with Pious Renewal. It deals nice damage and the teardown bonus deals ~30 damage to adjacent foes. This means when you use it, you automatically deal ~50 AoE damage to adjacent foes with triggering AoHM. Pious Assault doesn't even need to hit for the teardown to take place. You can be permanently blinded or blocked, but you'll still be pumping 50 AoE damage every ~4 seconds.

This establishes another great point about Pious Renewal Dervish, you shrug off melee hate. Blocking stances aren't much of an issue because TWS and PA hit through them, but previously you needed to bring Wild Blow to remove stances. This is no longer true since you can use Irresistible Sweep, the teardown form of Wild Blow. This provides pretty strong damage and provides another teardown for the AoHM engine. This is on top of the normally restrictive ability to remove stances.

There are a few other advantages teardowns give you that can only be viably accessed using Pious Renewal. This includes spamming Wearying Strike, using Contemplation of Purity or Pious Restoration to remove hexes from yourself, and Pious Haste as your IMS. Pious Renewal is a flash enchantment and serves as a cover for Aura of Holy Might. Enemies need Strip Enchantment or otherwise to remove AoHM. This also means enchantment removal isn't a counter when you use this build. As your adrenal teardowns provide energy management, you can use normally cost prohibitive skills like EBSoH and "You Move Like a Dwarf!" All these teardowns will be triggering Aura of Holy Might. AoHM deals holy damage, so you can instantly deal ~180 AoE damage with Pious Haste-> Pious Fury-> Pious Assault.

What do other dervish builds or even melee professions have to offer over this?

PR Dervishes (With TMS and PA etc) aren't new, they have been around pretty much since Day 1 of the Dervish Update back in Jan/Feb 2011.

Other Dervish builds pretty much cannot compete with PR Dervishes in PvE because of the fact that PR gives so much damage, so much utility and is still physical (taking advantage of orders), any other setup is pretty much for flavor as it would take overly contrived examples and skill interactions to outdps PR dervs using the same skill set.

Warriors have a lot a bit more variety since they have three weapon types. Most often warriors just have utility (they don't need to go /W to bring SY! as an example). Endurance Axe is probably the closest warrior build out there that is "meta" in PvE given its effectiveness, Hundred Blades is also beastly assuming the conditions are right.

Sins have Jagged > Fox Fangs > Death Blossom. Nuff Said.

Both take advantage of melee buffs.

PvE is beatable with any three of these, some may offer advantages over certain situations than others but at the end of the day, if you want to beat all of PvE, they all work, and they all work well.

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