Magnus Takes A Look At The New Classes:Paragon and Dervish

[Magnus Cobalt]

im here to lay down wat i saw from both of the new classes, and to give my opinion on their future usefulnesses as builds.

Dervish:
i played the dervish. i played both of its premade primary builds. i also played the a/d premade build. and i tinkered with it myself a lil bit afterwards.
when i played the dervish i took it on the isle of the nameless and played around with its close range aoe skills. on the isle they felt strong, fast, high dmg, and very easy to use. when i took them out into RA,TA, and/or AB i noticed and discovered sumthing a bit different.
without being sum1 who plays all day and night(sum1 i am not) there is no way in...heck...that any1 could find a solid use for this class. i hated it. tho in a setting where the targets dont attack, dont heal, and dont move the close range aoe skills of the dervish can have amazing effects. in a real battle situation they r of little effectivness. sure, it had a nice sound to it. use the heal enchant at the beginning to set urself up for a safe and long attack run. then charge head long into battle, kick in your aoe enchants, and start droppin your attacks that make them where off to add extra effects(burning, bleeding, cripple etc.). but in the end the targets i wanted to use them on werent noobs that stood there and tryed to heal their way out of it. no, they were smart and moved away!!! ZOMG I CANT BELIEVE IT!! THEY RAN AWAY FROM MY AOE ENCHANTS!...cept for a very noobish spike team i dont see any use for them in pvp, UNTIL, i get a better look at them.

Paragon:
as it was with the dervish, i played both of the paragon primary premades. i played a premade r/p. and again, i tweeked all 3 of those builds trying to do sumthing cool/effective in battle. and again i was dissapointed. but with the paragon i atleast found sum redeming factors that i would like to share with u. but, before i do that lets go over wat went wrong with this class.
firstly, this class felt like a ranger that delt less dmg. the only real difference between a rangers skills and a paragons skills were the duration of the "shouts" (rangers preperations), the fact that u could stack them( unlike preperations), and they could effect your allies as well. tho the stacking and the effecting your teammates was a huge help, the fact that most only lasted for 10seconds did seem to limit their usefulness. also, the paragon(like the dervish) didnt seem to have any HUGE dmg abilities. u kno, skills/attacks/spells/anything at all, that could be used to finish off the opponent. that is sumthing i have a problem with seeing as i genually see the need for every class(whether it be used or not) to have a high dmg skill/spell/SUMTHING, that can in one fell swoop knockout a fow and finish the fight.
"well wat about the good?" u may be asking yourselves right now. well, lets see. the paragon did live up to its name, being the "commander" of the battle feild. it could help all around it deal more dmg, and add effects on to that dmg. and i liked the spear idea.(dont get me wrong scythes r cool too, but they felt like sharp hammers, if u kno wat i mean.)

now, that was just a small amount of my massive ego showing how little i kno about this game im sure. but in the end it is my opinion and mine alone. dont take this to heart, as it doesnt matter wat i think. + im probly gonna buy this game anyway just to see how everything has come together in the final moments.

i would like to apologize for any/all spelling errors.

with luv to anet and my homies,
Magnus :fortuneteller:

[critical vengeance]

nice perspective, really the problem people have with the dervish seems to be close to touch rangers, they have to be close to do anything.

[Goldfish God]

I like Dervish, they're health tankers to warrior's armour tanking (though warriors can health tank to some degree also). Even the basic dervish armour gives health. Personally this makes them alot easier to handle compared to the assassins hit&run teleport-combat.

They have a lot of flow across their skills, mysticism+enchantment+enchantment removal skills/ enchantment-enhanced skills gives them a certain build-up & unload style. Attackwise over a longer arc than assassins (teleport-combo spike) but a shorter one than warriors(tank-adrenaline spike).

An off-shoot of this are the skills which have almost completely different effects based on whether you are enchanted or not (e.g. A stance which provides health regen when not enchanted, but armour bonus when enchanted). You could see Dervishes only running a single enchantment allowing them to flick between the two different effects.

Being Enchanted is not always what you want to be. It becomes a choice on your skills as opposed to what an opponent has. Mesmers and Necros used to be one of the few reasons not to have enchantments.

Dervish have at least 4 speed buffs (elite form, 3 stances). The stances actually require enchantments to gain the speed buff, putting more in the enchantment synergy again. Some of their enchantments can cripple (one on cast, one on end) as well as a cripple attack which relies on enchantments. Effective kite/anti-kite skills.

Personally the scythe was a much better (and active) form of attack than CoP spike/offensive enchantments. And the sycthe attacks which remove enchantments were a perfect synergy between the two branches, at least as a new game mechanic.

Using the two other melee classes (warrior and assassin) as secondaries open up a lot of variety. An AoE Skullcrack is quite fun since u can then intterupt any of the Dazed targets with subsequent swings without having to switch targets. While assassin's similar mix of caster+melee adds a larger selection of combat viable enchantments.

Overal, no matter how much people want to get out of your way, and not bunch, there will always be instances where multiple targets will be within your scyther sweeps or enchantment AoE. The most obvious example which appears from RA (rarely) to GvG is body-blocking walls (such as HA relic runs). Dervish may well be ANets attempt to make a more manuverable wall-breaker compared to Ele or Necro AoE spells.