Anyone think this class is too high-maintenance?

[Bugboy]

I didn't spend a lot of time playing the dervish during the Preview (was mainly playing a Paragon), but from what time I did spend, I found the class to be anti-intuitive, and I found myself spending almost all my time either activating or stripping an enchantment from myself, and not being able to simply enjoy the game.

Now, it was certainly a million times better than the assasin despite suffering from the same armor limitations, but I have to say, it just didn't flow naturally to me like the Paragon did, and I spent more time in intense concentration trying to make sure I activated the skills in just the right order so I didn't get killed, and couldn't even look at the screen very much to see what was going on.

I don't know. Different strokes I guess; my favorite and easiest-to-use class is the Ranger, which is probably the one the Paragon is most like, and I also love playing all the caster classes except for the rit. On the other hand, I've never had a problem with the warrior, and enjoy playing it as well. I just had a lot of trouble getting used to the dervish. Anyone else have a similar experience?

[Servant of Kali]

Actually, even a well-played Paragon is very complex. You need to be aware of when shouts end on allies, so that they re-apply, and many other things.

Dervish is NOT a simple class to play. If you find it too complex i'd stay with warrior or ranger, which will do just fine. Dervish as well as Paragon is a tactical class, and it requires practice. Assassin as well requires practice and battle awareness.

The professions get more and more complex with each chapter. I assume chapter4 will bring a caster-like profession which will do similiar stuff as an elementalist, but under perfect conditions better. Except that you'll need to practice more with it to get better results (while ele is very easy to play). Ritualist channeler was a step in that direction, a bit more conditional ele, but with a nice potential. The only problem was that ANet waited almost half a year to make a step towards balancing chapter2 classes. Sad.

[I Orca I]

I happen to agree with bugboy on this, I am fine playing characters which need a lil more attention than other builds. But the dervish seems like you need to be constantly casting to just survive the most situations where a war can tank it out and heal everything over with healing breeze. Sure thats comparing how to play a dervish to a war which are obviously different playing styles.

But obviously a dervish is a hp tank, which means casting, but such a vast amount of casting is required to survive. When do you ever intend to use that pretty scythe of yours. With the rather heavy nerfs to mystacism and the PBAoE enchants aaaaand.... well just about everything else Im really REALLY sceptical about how pointfull a dervish is going to be over another warrior in the party or much else for that matter.

I may end up making a dervish purely for the image and the hope that some of the nerfs are lessened or removed alltogether. But I may be forced into making a paragon which i never really intended, just so I can play a class people will actually want in a party.

[Mr Panda]

I happen to agree with bugboy on this, I am fine playing characters which need a lil more attention than other builds. But the dervish seems like you need to be constantly casting to just survive the most situations where a war can tank it out and heal everything over with healing breeze. Sure thats comparing how to play a dervish to a war which are obviously different playing styles.

But obviously a dervish is a hp tank, which means casting, but such a vast amount of casting is required to survive. When do you ever intend to use that pretty scythe of yours. With the rather heavy nerfs to mystacism and the PBAoE enchants aaaaand.... well just about everything else Im really REALLY sceptical about how pointfull a dervish is going to be over another warrior in the party or much else for that matter.

I may end up making a dervish purely for the image and the hope that some of the nerfs are lessened or removed alltogether. But I may be forced into making a paragon which i never really intended, just so I can play a class people will actually want in a party.

It's a question of balance. You can either go all out glass cannon and swing the scythe and watch heads roll, but die when someone coughs near you...or...you can go down the whole immortality thing, and be practically unstoppable. And do zero damage. Warriors have a similar issue, the more they devote themselves to tanking, the lower their damage becomes, and vice-versa. Dervishes have the option, but its not fair to expect a glass to be extremely surivable and have amazing damage output. It would be balanced, and it sure as hell wouldn't be fun. If you want damage, play your dervish like a sin should be played; let the tank take the heat while you cut people up.

[Progor]

If you don't like the constant recasting, you might want to look at some of the builds in the Dervish Extender thread a few lines down. The idea is to use Extend Enchantments to make all your enchantments last 20-25 seconds, and cast everything all at once. Use enchants that have an effect (preferably protective) while they're up instead of at the beginning and end. If you stick to 1/4 second enchantments, with maybe one or two 1 second casts, you can spend about 3 seconds prepping and 22 seconds unleashing heck every cycle.

[trafalgar-zero]

I didn't spend a lot of time playing the dervish during the Preview (was mainly playing a Paragon), but from what time I did spend, I found the class to be anti-intuitive, and I found myself spending almost all my time either activating or stripping an enchantment from myself, and not being able to simply enjoy the game.

Now, it was certainly a million times better than the assasin despite suffering from the same armor limitations, but I have to say, it just didn't flow naturally to me like the Paragon did, and I spent more time in intense concentration trying to make sure I activated the skills in just the right order so I didn't get killed, and couldn't even look at the screen very much to see what was going on.

I don't know. Different strokes I guess; my favorite and easiest-to-use class is the Ranger, which is probably the one the Paragon is most like, and I also love playing all the caster classes except for the rit. On the other hand, I've never had a problem with the warrior, and enjoy playing it as well. I just had a lot of trouble getting used to the dervish. Anyone else have a similar experience?

I felt the same way when I first jumped on the Dervish in the preview event. Granted they only gave us a few skills, maybe it was the fact that the skills didn't synergy very well.
It can be said about every build that it can be "anti-intuitive" The Mesmer was that way when Guild Wars was first released. It just takes time looking at the skills and visualizing how the class might be played until it is actually released.
I would say every class has a sort of gimic for it. Like the Warrior tanking (for the most part), Mesmers shutting down people etc. The Dervish I think takes the title of Enchantment Master, they just use them anyway possible to get the job done.

My two cents.

[MaximumSquid]

Each second you aren't fighting is basically a second that you are helping the other team.

Some maintenance skills are important, but most will just hinder your builds performance.

I know you can make a Dervish that has a low upkeep, but I haven't seen any yet that have impressed me like a good Enraged Lunge {e} build.

[trafalgar-zero]

Each second you aren't fighting is basically a second that you are helping the other team.

Some maintenance skills are important, but most will just hinder your builds performance.

I know you can make a Dervish that has a low upkeep, but I haven't seen any yet that have impressed me like a good Enraged Lunge {e} build.

What do you mean by low upkeep? Just very little downtime? I will probably post my build soon, the Dervish forums are lacking in them right now.

[Longasc]

1. Vital Boon to increase your max HP, reduce aggro
2. Conviction - armor or some +3HP reg.
3. Spam Scythe Attacks

PBAoe enchantments are not really worth it most of the time, too much energy. Heart of Holy Flame vs Undead should be a no brainer though.

You must not always spam enchantments, and those who you should cast to gain boni are low recharge low energy most of the time, like Vital Boon. Maybe this needs some time to get used to, but you do not necessarily need to spam and cancel enchantments over and over, you can keep them up for some 20-30 seconds and then recast.


Playing the Dervish in the preview event was very easy and fun, but well. Do not say Paragon or Rangers are easier to play just because they are usually the least to feel the heat once things go south due to their ranged attacker nature.

[Servant of Kali]

Come on guys, most Dervish spells cast really fast. With each enchantment you are stronger, but with each enchantment you waste more time on casting than fighting. Sounds balanced to me. Besides, it's a class with mostly spells and NOT attack skills. Expecting the Dervish to act like a warrior ... that's bad. Warrior uses tons of shouts and stances which dont require him to stop; he can continue smacking someone. Dervish is different, he wont attack as often, but when he does i see him doing more chaos than warrior can ever dream of. Still remains to be tested IMO.

[MaximumSquid]

trafalgar-zero: Yeah by Upkeep i'm just refering to skills that need to be re-applied before the fighting in your build can continue.

Ele attunement is a great example, but skills like apply poison also would fall into this category.

A little maintenance can go a long ways in some builds, but it's also very easy to have too much.

[Progor]

Look at the skills faithful intervention and watchful intervention. Faithful lasts forever until your health drops to 50%, and watchful lasts 72 seconds or until your health hits 25%. Both heal when they end, and give you the benefit of having 2 enchantments up for enchantment dependent skills, and can be cast in between battles since they last so long. In battle, cast Heart of Fury for an IAS and Mystic Regeneration for a maxed out health regen (or Mystic Vigor if it suits you). These take a total of 1 second to cast and last 24 seconds. Throw in Conviction for a no cast time armor buff, and maybe grab "Watch Yourself!" from your warrior secondary to really pump up that armor some more while attacking. Throw in a now maxed out Mystic Sweep for +40 damage every 4 seconds, and a rez or another attack like Lyssa's Assault or Chilling Victory (if you have a zealous scythe).

What that build would do for you is give you only 1 second out of 24 in battle that you weren't doing damage, but still give you access to the enchantment dependent healing and damage skills. Sounds pretty low maintenance to me. You can also replace Watch Yourself and/or Conviction with more attack skills if you want more bonus damage to throw around.

[lavenbb]

IMO paragons have higher upkeep.. it's like a bonder monk except there's no way for you to keep track on who has which echo unless they tell you it's off.. might be fine when it's a 4 player team.. but.. 8 players? gg..

I find the dervish class to be quite flexible, you can create builds that require a lot of micromanaging, but if you want a simpler build you can do that too. Their strength lies in their generally fast cast time. Gives you a slightly larger margin to respond to changes in battle.

[Bugboy]

Prog: thanks for both those posts, very helpful. In the Preview, with the skills available, I just couldn't seem to make a low-maintenance build, primarily due to the fact that you gained as much benefit from removing ench'ts. on yourself as putting them on to begin with. So I was constanly putting on an enchantment, using an attack skill that removed it, putting on another one, etc. It just got to be burdensome after a while.

Good to know it doesn't have to be quite that intensive. Thanks to everyone else too, this has given me some definite ideas about how to proceed.

[Slizarus]

It seems like it's a bit more micro management.. but a bit less than a Rit/N Exploding MM which requires an almost constant awareness of Minions and the amount of corpses you got on hand..

But as the matter for both classes.. it comes down to the fact you get used to it quickly enough.. the feel for when to cast the next spell, when to strip the right enchant and where to position yourself.. Knowing which minion is likely to die first, getting the bone minions out in the thick of the battle with your explosion, and as they die soon after, quickly casting death nova.. It becomes second nature, and eventually you get to see more of the screen rather than just your skill bar..

I just started this game less than a month ago.. I'm a fair hand with the Above Rit.. and I'm not a bad Ranger :) But no matter what class I played at first.. Heck, Ranger being my first character until I decided to make my Rit..
I spent nearly all of the battles for the first week and some looking down at the damned bar since battle awareness wasn't really prime.. Tab-Spacing is easy, but as much as I wanted to spend time watching the action on my gorgeous Imac, I couldn't, learning the cooldown for skills hadn't sunk in yet..

Some classes are a bit more difficult to get started than others, especially as we progress through the chapters as Someone earlier pointed out, as classes become more specialized and tactically sound in their usage..
As if These were more of "Prestige" classes.. Familiarizing yourself with them will take time, but I'm sure if you put the effort into it, you'll find it quite a bit easier and even intuitive after a while, Seems like a powerful class to me with even more apparent possibilities than the Rit I play and love (though that class is quite a hidden gem in itself)

Sorry If I rambled..
Good hunting, this should be fun :)

[Offatwork]

Each second you aren't fighting is basically a second that you are helping the other team.


This is false. When you have offensive skills that can be activated instantly, the whole idea on what Squid said goes out the window. Sure something like that is true for a Warrior that needs to build adrenline through attacking but not for a Dirvish. Ask yourself this, the choice to fallback or to keep fighting when a monk points out that he is low on energy which one would you choose? I would think you would choose fallback, because it will make a whole lot of a difference when people are saying they are ready to go back on the offensive instead of, "How much DP do you have?"

I imagine the Dirvish will try to pick out groups of enemies and hit them with their natural AoE attack. This will lessen the effectiveness of spike teams and will scatter enemies that need to be stationary and in close proximity in order to work. The presence of quick casting spells allows the dirvish to use those spells while in melee range of enemies. That's pretty much it.

Now to tell you the truth, I think the Dirvish Sythe skills will be par or less than par to Warrior skills, regarding damage. This is because of the AoE effect so A.Net might want to balence this with average or slighly below average damage.

[I Orca I]

If you don't like the constant recasting, you might want to look at some of the builds in the Dervish Extender thread a few lines down. The idea is to use Extend Enchantments to make all your enchantments last 20-25 seconds, and cast everything all at once. Use enchants that have an effect (preferably protective) while they're up instead of at the beginning and end. If you stick to 1/4 second enchantments, with maybe one or two 1 second casts, you can spend about 3 seconds prepping and 22 seconds unleashing heck every cycle.

I saw that build which potentially could be fine, but I just want to use that pretty scythe soo bad.

Someone else posted that you only need vital boon+ conviction and then spam scythe attacks.

a) I doubt that will hold up long even a zealous scythe wont allow much spamming unless you ARE getting 3 hits every single swing.

b) And even with that defence, how are you going to heal yourself without removing enchants and basically making yourself a assasin in the middle of a whole lot of pain.

The point squid and I are putting foreward is that to live as well as is required on the frontlines you need to keep up your hp, because more than likely the casters/rangers/paragons on the backlines will still get nuked from timed to time. Even with a warriors AL you can still take ALOT of damage from the higher level mobs and if you want to stay alive you need to spam either healing spells or defence spells. So sooner or later you will die run out of energy or wont even actually kill anything.

But I guess that idea of playing a dervish as you would play an assasin is going to be the ONLY way to play a dervish properly now, and if the PBAoE spells arnt brought up to speed then I guess theyre out of the question unless you are going against undead.

Servant of Kali: It seems like that would be a possibility, but the thing is the damage range is rather large. If you get a max hit sure, it will hurt, but 9/10 times you wont hit an amazing amount and dont think warriors dont dish out damage just because they only hit one target at a time. Because they really do hurt when set up correctly.

[Offatwork]

The sooner people will learn that base armor level: 70 characters are ment to be mindline characters, the sooner Guild Wars will be a more diverse game.

[Servant of Kali]

Servant of Kali: It seems like that would be a possibility, but the thing is the damage range is rather large. If you get a max hit sure, it will hurt, but 9/10 times you wont hit an amazing amount and dont think warriors dont dish out damage just because they only hit one target at a time. Because they really do hurt when set up correctly.

9/10? How sure are you? Chasing a running target = critical hit each time you hit. Using Wild Blow = critical hit every 5sec if u can keep it up.

Dervishes also have bigger synergy with other classes while warriors are more standalone. Smite monk + Dervish vs Warrior + who? ... what u think has higher dmg?


The sooner people will learn that base armor level: 70 characters are ment to be mindline characters

..the sooner people realize armor isnt everything, the sooner we will see less Paladins in RA and PvE.

In PvE my 70armor Dervish will own if all goes good and no major nerfs. In PvP, i have few suprises in the sleeve :)

[MaximumSquid]

Offatwork: I'm really confused why you quoted me there and then went right into talking about offensive skills. . .

Wouldn't you be still fighting when you use offensive skills? :confused1:

also. . .

I think bringing up team tactics like when it's good to fall back is irrelavent in this discussion.