Ways to beat Dervish(CoP needs adjustments and I thought of a few)

[Virtuouschild]

I’m getting straight to the point.
Dervish without a secondary can easily be defeated, poor healing, poor handling of hexes EVEN with Mysticism and their claimed all powerful AoE attacks that people are complaining about, although in my opinion, the only close-up all powerful AoE attack is a Me/E and Elementalist/Whatever.

Warriors fear the fact that dervish can run-up on them and face them a duel combat and if they don’t have the skills set to defeat a dervish they know they will lose. Just like the Touch Rangers, till this day if you don’t make the build to face a touch ranger, you will simply die or keep running for your life.

I agree with many CoP is a serious issue, it needs a recharge of 20seconds just like Mesmer’s inspired hexes. I would leave the remove all enchantments because the whole point of CoP is that each enchantment the monk has removed is to remove the hexes as a form of equation.
Dervish only has 25energy: Diversion, mind wrack, energy burn, energy surge, power block, power leak, signet of weariness, shame, energy drain, energy tap, and 25energy is nothing to leech down, but CoP made it much harder to. I can name many that still can hurt any dervish basically any class with low energy easy, fast and efficient. (IF CoP gets the nerf bat up to 20-25seconds recharge)

Now it’s quite frankly that leeching or stripping their enchantments to defeat them is quite a silly tactic; fighting a dervish means (change of old strategy). Dervish is close range semi-aoe battle warrior, *KITE* is needed, just like the warrior, just like the touch ranger and just like the THUMPER build. So if you’re a Ranger, do your job; conditions, crippling and interrupting! They attack slow, and they cast slow. If they are about to use Avatar ANYTHING, interrupt them (crying out loud use your dazing skills)!

Dervish is a class to scatter mob team builds, just like E/A who warps in and drops the bomb and warps out.
Sword (You have a daze skill use it! No more lazyman tactics) and Axe Warriors simply need to use interrupting skills more often than ALL out damage, and hammer warriors need to knockdown often (counter knockdown works! Go to the Isle of the Nameless and see how a professional does his business.) Know when to run! Unless you have a monk supporting you with less pressure or just make a better healing system warrior(like I have, nothing beats a warrior who can heal himself well-figure of speech). I’m glad to see two classes that now make you think than 1,2,3,4 key smashing tactics(know when to engage the enemy and disengage for healing) especially those shock warriors. Time to make a build to face classes, Anti-Caster or Anti-Melee or Anti-Condition like the rest of classes.
Illusion Mesmers just got to kite them down. Curse Necros can use SS, Wither, you have a lot of energy and health damaging and draining skills to play with.

Domination Mesmers also, Backfire and Empathy should always be used when anti-hex skills are used first (If CoP was 20-25seconds allot of problems would be solved).
All these classes I called above I’ve beaten Dervish players with, the ones that gave me a hard time but we eventually win if there’s no Touch Ranger, Warrior, Thumper, Mesmer, necro, or Monk around to make it more pressuring to focus 1v1 on a Dervish if not 2v1 on a dervish was the CoP builds.

All of the other complaints about their AoE is being too powerful is a lie, Ele does a better AoE than they do, their AoE takes up allot of their energy since they only have 25energy and with an energy leech around they won’t get a chance to stack anything(However CoP has made it difficult since it superbly helps their primary skills within a short matter of time), and if they want conditions to apply after, they have to wait a FAT 30seconds or use another skill that removes the enchantment or some nice opposing player who wants to help them by removing the enchantment.

Since CoP does so much good deeds by having the best anti hex ability in the game for enchanting classes all-around, it should have a juicy 10energy cost and 25seconds recharge instead of 5energy and 10seconds!(wow only 5 energy and I just need to chuck on two-three enchantments?) OR, “Lose all MAINTAINED enchantments, for each enchantment lost this way, you lose 1 hex and 1 condition”, and keep the 5energy and 10seconds recharge OR (80% Failure chance with 4 Divine favor or less) I wish ANET pays close attention to solve simple solutions like this because to me it works.

[critical vengeance]

the thing is we don't want to ruin the skill for monks, just make it so dervish can't abuse it

[Nekretaal]

Some comments to the above:

1. Dont write off enchantment strippers: a gaze of contempt cound be used offensively (it gives you about 2 seconds to spike a dervish without the dervish's own superior healing kicking in), and defensively (Gaze of contempt prevents that character from spiking for 10 seconds). Problem with Gaze of Contempt is that the recharge is awful.

Honestly, Lingering Curse should be looked at an alternative/ addition to Gaze of contempt. Expunge enchantments, lyssas balance, order of apostacy, anything that can remove a lot of enchantments or has a short recharge, has potential, with the proviso that enchant strippers are, in almost all cases weaker than enchantments because of their energy costs, cast times, and long recharges.

2. I dont believe that e-denial will work. On a coordinated team, the target of e-denial could call out his energy, and, from there, every "reversal of fortune" cast on the target is a mini "Offering of Blood."

3. I dont believe that Diversion will work. The enchantments all cast faster than diversion, and diversion will never hit contemplation of purity in the hands of a good player, so all it does is delay one spiker a couple of seconds. Since only 2 spikers are needed to kill sombody, no big loss.

4. I dont believe that wither will work. In COP-spike, scythes were optional, and this means that the dervises have the opportnity to take weapon swaps that get rid of wither for free. they dont even have to contemplation of purity it.

5. I dont belive that Kiting will work. The dervish is not a touch ranger who has no deep wound and cannot spike, and whose impact can be removed by running away. You will be caught with a spike. This will happen ever 10 or seconds. The Nearby AoE means you wolnt get away either.

6. Daze, and the possibility of Skull crack are interesting possibilities. Daze does not work against contemplation of purity, hardly works against reversal of fortune, and dedicating an intterupter means another indivitual who can be spiked (plus the existence of guardian and reversal of fourtune on teammates to fual contemplation of purity)

The only real counter to the dervihes were paragons using their anti-spike capabilities..

EDIT:

I am personally fine with runing contemplation of purity for monks. They have been abusing the skill with mantra of recall for for too long. Mantra of Recally ought to be switched to a shout or a skill now that those categories have been created (and because it cant be the stance that it should be for obvious reasons)

If it is switched to "remove monk enchantments only" and boon prots have to go back to using offering of blood or boon signet or energy boon any of the other superior energy management, then I am fine with that change...

[Corsaire]

...erased... dupe

[Goldfish God]

I am personally fine with runing contemplation of purity for monks. They have been abusing the skill with mantra of recall for for too long. Mantra of Recally ought to be switched to a shout or a skill now that those categories have been created (and because it cant be the stance that it should be for obvious reasons)

Shouts and Skills have existing since the first game, Shouts are insta-cast, while Skills are immune to spell intterupts, and both are unstrippable. If monks are really abusing MoR/CoP (I don't think they are since prematurely ending MoR puts u out of step with the recharge), making it either a shout or skill would make it even more powerful for a minor loss of the CoP triggered effect.

[Bobross]

I’m getting straight to the point.
Dervish without a secondary can easily be defeated, poor healing, poor handling of hexes EVEN with Mysticism and their claimed all powerful AoE attacks that people are complaining about, although in my opinion, the only close-up all powerful AoE attack is a Me/E and Elementalist/Whatever.


Umm poor healing? Perhaps you didn't notice these skills?

Signet of Piety
Lose one Enchantment. Target is healed for 30-135 Health. If an Enchantment was removed in this way, this signet recharges immediately. none 1 20
Earth Prayers. Increases health recovered. Signet

Vital Boon
For 20 seconds, you have +40-100 maximum health. When this enchantment ends, you are healed for 75-150 Health. 5 1 8
Earth Prayers. Increases maximum health and health recovered. Enchantment Spell

Pious Renewal
For 8 seconds, whenever an Enchantment ends on you, you gain 0-2 Energy and 0-25 Health. 5 1/4th 3

Mysticism. Increases Energy and health recovered. Enchantment Spell


Thats only a handful, there's more heals...Lets not forget that with mysticism you get health every time an enchantment ends anyway -so those heals actually heal for about 40 pts more...Vital boon actually gives about 200 health, and if you stripped it with signet of piety, thats a 350ish pt heal! You can do this every 8 seconds and gain energy while doing it...or you can split the heal and use sig of piety on someone else. Monks don't have anything as powerful, when it comes to healing themselves...and if it is, its got a high energy cost, or a high recharge time. With pious renewal, and sig of piety, you can spam 200 pt heals every 3 seconds....still think they've got bad heals?


poor Hex removal? Did you see this skill?

Pious Restoration
Lose one Enchantment. You gain 30-90 health, if you are still under the effects of an enchantment lose 1-3 hexes. 5 1/4th 4 Wind Prayers. Increases Health recovered and number of Hex removed. Spell

You gain 90 health, and lose 3 hexes. You can even cast it through backfire and only lose like 20 health.


Now it’s quite frankly that leeching or stripping their enchantments to defeat them is quite a silly tactic; fighting a dervish means (change of old strategy). Dervish is close range semi-aoe battle warrior, *KITE* is needed, just like the warrior, just like the touch ranger and just like the THUMPER build. So if you’re a Ranger, do your job; conditions, crippling and interrupting! They attack slow, and they cast slow. If they are about to use Avatar ANYTHING, interrupt them (crying out loud use your dazing skills)!


Ok so crippling vs a pure Dervish, assuming no melandrus form (or you interrupted it) will work...but with CoP so easy...its not hard to remove...also did you notice all of the great speed buffs that Dervishes have? This is assuming a lot...people often bring secondaries for the sole purpose of condition removal...so nothing to count on.

Pious Haste

For 5-10 seconds you move 25% faster. When this Stance ends, you lose 1 Enchantment. 5 none 12 Mysticism. Increases duration. Stance

Enchanted Haste

For 5-20 seconds, if you are under the effects of an Enchantment, you move 25% faster. 5 None 25 Wind Prayers. Increases duration.
Stance

Lyssa's Haste
For 5-11 seconds, you run 25% fafster. While moving, you gain 1 Energy each second but lose 20-11 Health each second. 5 1 15 Wind Prayers. Increases duration, decreases Health loss. Enchantment Spell

Whirling Charge
For 3-10 seconds, you move and attack 33% faster than normal. This stance ends if you are not under the effect of any Enchantments. 15 None 15 Wind Prayers. Increases duration. Stance

So Kiting without a cripple isn't necessarily that easy, even against a pure Dervish, with a cripple, you have to ensure that they never get in touch range, or they can perma cripple you. And hex based snares wont work well either, because of the great hex removal.

Also the thing about interrupting...first theres an enchantment to prevent interrupts, which removes an enchantment every time you would be interrupted...lets imagine thats not an issue - you've still got most skills casting in under 1 second, with some casting in 1 second, and the forms casting in 2 seconds (which you will have to interrupt repeatedly, as they recharge relatively quickly...and thats the only way to prevent them from happening).

This is more than just me listing counters to your counters - I'm showing you a very realistic set of utility skills that could easily be combined (not all skills together, but many) with a build that does high amounts of AoE damage in addition to being very versatile and survivable. Even if you could snare one of these Dervishes, I doubt you'll be able to kill them, with all of the great quick self heals.

[Akirai Annuvil]

To do really high amounts of damage as a Dervish you need at least 4 DAMAGING Enchants, so that remains 4 skills for other purposes which at the least includes CoP. So that means 3 remain, and if they remove enchantments/cost high amounts of energy (10+), they either make the spike less effective or make the Dervish run out of steam very soon.and if you can snare them it'll end in either a stalemate or your victory depending on the other players quality.

By the way I disagree that CoP needs such heavy nerfs but indeed a nerf like: "To use this skill you need a Divine Favor rank of 4" doesn't seem all too bad.

[Akirai Annuvil]

In another thread (CoP end of GW as we know it?), many people have listed some counters, and in my last post I made my contribution in a build of my own devising and some skills I'd choose for each class to counter Dervishes in the hopes of showing to soem people that there were indeed counters. I'll post them below (by the way yes some of these are from personal experience no not all of them are. But most.):

I promised a build to stop most Dervishes in their tracks so I will deliver.

The build is a Ranger/* and build around the idea that with most De/mo's that their spikes are based on spells and can thus be interrupted, and that they are most effective if they all focus on one character. Because they're melee they also travel in packs and very near to each other, so Choking Gas would interrupt all of them.

Expertise -- 13 (+2)
Marksmanship -- 12 (+1+1)
Wilderness Survival -- 12 (+2)

Armor +5 :) Shortbow of Fortitude

Practiced Stance {E}
Choking Gas
Concushion Shot
Throw Dirt
Storm Chaser
Snare (not just a snare but the trap Snare which causes cripple)
Nature's Renewal
Debilitating Shot

Alrighty, keep NR up at all times, the same goes for Choking Gas. Snare your healer/prot monk (or whoever is the most important to snare), and keep Throw Dirt ready at all times to blind the occasional melee fighter (be it an assassin or a warrior or your accidental melee Dervish blind him when necesarry). Throw Debilitating Shot out at enemies who rely heavily on their energy (monks, mesmers, dervishes, asassins, other rangers, one debilitating shot wastes 20-33% of their energy in some cases even 40%). Use Storm Chaser either to regain your energy or to flee, and concushion shot to interrupt that vital spell while causing dazed.

Don't forget that NR causes their enchantment spells to have a double casting time so it takes two seconds to cast such a spell. Which is the same as the attack time of a shortbow. Convenient no :)
It doesn't rely on conditions, enchantments or hexes to stop them so CoP nor the forms are a problem to the build.
I might be able to make up other builds which would be good against the Dervishes with other classes, but most of my PvP experience comes from using a Ranger (plus they have the natural advantage of having high-elemental armor and not terrible physical armor). Other skills which might be good against the Dervish:

Necromancer: Spoil Victor, SS, Soul Leech, Mark of Subcersion, Desecrate Enchantments, Plague Touch, Well of the Profane

Mesmer: Shatter enchantments, all the slow down skills, all the energy draining skills, all the shutdown skills (in particular Power Block + Diversion), Feedback

Elementalist: Maelstrom, Unsteady Ground, all snares, Ward against Elements/Melee/Harm, PBAoE (Point blank area of effect) spells (look in the fireline e.g. Starburst, Double Dragon, Flame burst etc.), Armor of Earth (dangerous though; do not think of running away)

Monks: Protective Spirit, Reversal of Fortune, Spirit Bond

Warriors: (Not that many ideas to be honest, I'd flee but I'm bad at melee :) hamstring, other slow down skills, Riposte, Triple Axe, other PBAoE attacks, possibly some stances, Watch Yourself

Assassins: A more complicated class so a longer explanation; your best bet seems to be to just teleport in and out. I'd say go in either with Dash and then return with Return (pun unintended) or use Recall or Aura of Displacement. for the rest do your damage dealing things ;) Death Blossom shines thanks to loads of adjacent foes.

Ritualist: Shelter, Union, you are ill-suited for taking on many enemes at once, Mighty Was Vorizun, Wanderlust+Earthbound, Generous was Tsungrai, Vengeful Weapon

[lavenbb]

Part of the problem with the dervish spike, as oppose to elementalist spikes, is the fact that their pbaoes are enchantments, that does not have the pbaoe aftercast penalty like elementalists have, the fact that all the damage is dumped in one go, as oppose to DoTs, and the fact that most of them have nearby range, comparable ele spells only hit adjacent targets.

so either buff eles or nerf dervishes.. it's sorta inevitable..

[SuXxorz]

People forget, dervishes has no knockdowns nor interrupts... Elementalists are ranged too versus a dervish who has to get close...

Nature's Renewal really hinders Dervishes tremendously...

In a 1 v 1 situation maybe live vicariously ( not like this isn't already useful right now ) would benefit melees more... For warriors, Fear Me, it really messes up a dervish...

And Dervishes honestly has no spells to cripple anyone permanently, their cripple duration expires quicker than their recharge... the only way to cripple permanently is to use the scythe attack skill, which isn't the build people are complaining about...

The reason people had problems during the weekend event was because many wanted to try the dervish and many were "Using" similar builds...
Maybe 4 mesmers with energy surge, or 4 elementalists w/ meteor and whatnot (with certain glyphs, maybe even wards to slow dervish), maybe spike rangers... maybe 3 of a type plus 1 monk...

I've seen balanced groups lose to 4 melees ( basically warriors and thumpers)... That's a problem when these balanced groups only have 1 guy to deal with a specific enemy. The problem arises when the enemies are all the same and now the other counters are useless...

Note- Still thinks Dervishes could use some tweaking( But I'm starting to think the dervishes are even less overpowered than I did before )... but I'm going to post when I feel like people are overexaggerating...

[katya]

True. I just saw Aunti I post some wise words in the Paragon forum; so I'm going to echo them here.

Just a friendly reminder that in all likelihood things are going to change before Nightfall is released. So far we've only seen 59 skills. Most likely there will be about 75 skills. It's also likely that some of the skills we've seen won't be the same when we see them next. Part of the reason they run these tests is to see and judge the interactions.

Please keep in mind as you discuss these things that you are not working with complete information. Don't get too invested in how something worked during the PvP preview. It'll probably change!

That said! Keep it up! I'm fascinated to read how you guys experienced it. There is also a thread here (http://forums.gwonline.net/showthread.php?t=414406) with interesting suggestions and discussion on how to adjust the Dervish for some of the obvious weaknesses / buffs that people experienced over the PvP preview. (CoP springs to mind)

[Arutima]

Since i mostly play as a necro:

desecrate/defile enchantements works very good against dervish.Since they have tons of enchantments on themselves (did some 150+ dmg desecrate on dervish in the random arena,during the pvp weekend)


Well of the profane is funny

chiblains too

lingering curse and malign intervention will see their usefulness increasing

[neoflame]

Talking about 1v1 with a Dervish is pointless because that's a situation that will simply never occur - or at best once in a blue moon in RA; in any case it is doubtful that either competing build would be optimized for the situation anyway.

"Abusing" CoP with MoR? Please. With Divine Boon CoP'ing MoR means you net +3e from it; without Divine Boon you will almost certainly have better choices for elites anyway (WoH, HLight, and BLight come to mind for starters.) CoP isn't the real issue anyway, it's the utterly broken mechanic of Mysticism.

[SuXxorz]

1 v 1 happens alot... There's this thing called strategy. If you see 2 guys on you and you effectively kite, then your team gets the advantage of 3 v 2... if all 4 on you and u don't have a monk, you would kite correct? (I've seen a warrior beable to survive easily with the protection of a monk against 4 dervishes... that's y split tactics is better)

IMHO, Mysticism is hardly broken, it's when used with monk skills that causes the problem, like RoF, Guardian and CoP and maybe others... Mysticism is fine for Dervish skills. If a dervish were to use scythe along with his magic, he would likely use Balthazar's Rage ( 10e) and pious assault ( 5e), that would be a net cost of 15 energy for probably 7e (14 Mysticism) back at most( unlikely to have 16 mysticism if using a scythe along with other magic )... Every Dervish skill/attack is based on energy, and it drains them alot.

And if a dervish decides to purely use spells...well there's counters to those already...The only reason conditions like daze doesn't work against a dervish is because of CoP... So the problem does stem from the combining of monk skills...

[Akirai Annuvil]

Quote from: Suxxorz
IMHO, Mysticism is hardly broken, it's when used with monk skills that causes the problem, like RoF, Guardian and CoP and maybe others... Mysticism is fine for Dervish skills. If a dervish were to use scythe along with his magic, he would likely use Balthazar's Rage ( 10e) and pious assault ( 5e), that would be a net cost of 15 energy for probably 7e (14 Mysticism) back at most( unlikely to have 16 mysticism if using a scythe along with other magic )... Every Dervish skill/attack is based on energy, and it drains them alot.

And if a dervish decides to purely use spells...well there's counters to those already...The only reason conditions like daze doesn't work against a dervish is because of CoP... So the problem does stem from the combining of monk skills...

So if Expertise would also work on normal spells, and reduce the energy cost of elementalist spells, the problem would lie with the elementalist spells and not expertise? But that hardly matters. This is about counters and solutions.

The simplest solution assuming that your correct at what is the source of the Dervish imbalance would be to say that they cannot be monks secondary. Oh and that they cannot party with monks. Or seconday monks. For they could cast RoF and Guardian on them and could remove conditons with Mend Ailment. While even healing them! THE BAST****! ;)

Or you could say we change Mysticism around. And after we've done that, it won't mean that monk enhcantments on them are overpowered anymore and they won't have to be restricted in anyway on who to take into their party, or what to take as a secondary.

[SuXxorz]

You can fix Mysticism so that you only get energy back from Dervish Enchants... And change CoP around a bit.

The Dervish line alone is fine, reducing it would mess up the dervish line and now everyone would end up playing D/mo because that becomes the only way to be even with other classes...

[critical vengeance]

So if Expertise would also work on normal spells, and reduce the energy cost of elementalist spells, the problem would lie with the elementalist spells and not expertise? But that hardly matters. This is about counters and solutions.

The simplest solution assuming that your correct at what is the source of the Dervish imbalance would be to say that they cannot be monks secondary. Oh and that they cannot party with monks. Or seconday monks. For they could cast RoF and Guardian on them and could remove conditons with Mend Ailment. While even healing them! THE BAST****! ;)

Or you could say we change Mysticism around. And after we've done that, it won't mean that monk enhcantments on them are overpowered anymore and they won't have to be restricted in anyway on who to take into their party, or what to take as a secondary.

that is quite a different story there :wink: It's really just the synergy with CoP that causes the problem, you didn't hear about "o no a scythe is too powerful" it was the CoP spike. So instead of nerfing the entire primary, why not simply change up CoP because at the moment as you know it is linked to divine favor. For 0 in a primary attribute it does a lot, and right now it is too much, they need to change it while buffing it just slightly for monks so it isn't useless by any means, but not being abused.

Think of it like this. People think touch ranger is an abuse at expertise. It really is technically not, and will not be changed be anet loves them and they are "not broken"

So if you nerf this synergy too much, than why not the "abuse" in the touch rangers?

Fix the CoP problem, don't change the entire class.

[Death Sigma]

One way to change CoP IMO would be to attach on a "50% Chance of Failure with Divine Favor 4 or less" What monk uses 4 or less Divine Favor? A few specialized builds maybe, but what else? This way, Monk's don't have the skill ruined for them but it would reduce the healing potential CoP gives Dervishes.

[neoflame]

1 v 1 happens alot... There's this thing called strategy. If you see 2 guys on you and you effectively kite, then your team gets the advantage of 3 v 2... if all 4 on you and u don't have a monk, you would kite correct?
What, exactly, does this have anything to do with fighting 1v1?

[SuXxorz]

As a result, as 2 are chasing u ineffectively, one returns... Now it's one on one...>.>...It happens in RA, just tick someone off and run...(Blindbot works sometimes)

Well I get warriors chasing me alot with my E/A who uses blinding flash, gale( wish I had proph for shock instead), falling spider, horns of the ox, moebius strike, conjure lightning... Then I just use my combo of 3-4 KDs to kill em... So see, I run if there's 2+ guys chasing me, and only fight when there's 1-2 tops and many times its 1 v 1 battles...

okay, I guess it's cause the builds I create and some unthinking persons who chases my touch ranger...So I get alot of 1 v 1... P.S. I hate assassin builds with shock, falling spider, twisting fang <--- it's weak for RA/TA...

[Yezah]

Part of the problem with the dervish spike, as oppose to elementalist spikes, is the fact that their pbaoes are enchantments, that does not have the pbaoe aftercast penalty like elementalists have
This is a big problem. PBAoE with no aftercast penalty is overpowered, change this to be more like Ele's and D/Mo wouldn't be as powerful.

One way to change CoP IMO would be to attach on a "50% Chance of Failure with Divine Favor 4 or less" What monk uses 4 or less Divine Favor? A few specialized builds maybe, but what else? This way, Monk's don't have the skill ruined for them but it would reduce the healing potential CoP gives Dervishes.
This is a nice idea too. Very simple and doesn't affect the use of the skill as a monk.

You can fix Mysticism so that you only get energy back from Dervish Enchants... And change CoP around a bit.
This could work, but it might ruin the potential of dervish combinations with other classes.

Since the only really overpowered Dervish build I saw was CoP D/Mo I think the best solution is to add aftercast penalty on some/all the PBAoE enchant spells, and increase the rechargy of Heart.otHF, Balth's Rage and Grenth's Fingers. I disagree with CoP being the big problem, I think it is mainly these 3 skills. Perhaps the healing gained from Mysticism could be nerfed though...

[critical vengeance]

the problem is those 3 skills being removed at once for spike damage, not the skills alone.