Feedback talk:Developer updates/20110217

Yikes, this is nerfalicious

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Goddamn...

What the heck you done with dervish and pve-only skills?!? Dervish is completely unplayable for me now...
--The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Dewbi (talk).

then relearn and adapt. I can finally play the dervish now. my greatest complaint is that I already ruined my armor before this update Ocren 08:25, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

My current dervish build is now unplayable, I don't think a single one of my skills stayed the same. But that doesn't mean the entire class is unplayable. It's going to be a while before I have the motivation to create an entirely new build from scratch (especially since dervish was the one build I wasn't planning to re-do) but after that for all I know it could be even better. Play around with creating some new builds and you'll probably find something you like. 86.164.165.69 09:50, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Think of it as a new start, ive played my derv for 3 years and have been bored for 2 of them, being able to make new build is great, ive got 5 already, avatars will help loads in pvp, UW can finally be solo'd properly now!--DeathsSon 12:42, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to go and assume that the people saying they can't play the dervish only used to play the Generic scythe spam builds with zealous vow that i hate so much... because thats the only way you can see this update as making the dervish unplayable, the dervish was always more than that and now is even more so, you have to use your head, ttime your enchantments well to fuel your attacks and keep yourself and others alive. --Dinsy 13:13, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't assume anything - you couldn't scythe spam much after the nerfs to Eremite's Attack & Mystic Sweep - now nigh upon 95% of the Dervish's skills require enchantment removal. This makes them an easy target of Mesmers (Enchanter's Conundrum), Necromancers (Chilblains, Desecrate Enchantments, Pain of Disenchantment - to name but a few) and any other high enchantment removal. Sorry but this profession is dead. Time for the autopsy - death by overkill nerfs. (My best (I say 'best' he probably can't even do HM now) character is a Dervish, if he didn't have so many titles he'd be deleted by now) --92.235.32.216 21:12, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

On a second look it's not as bad as it seemed. The biggest change for me is that Mystic Sweep is now mysticism so I need to either find a new main attack or re-do attribute points, which will probably mean swapping earth enchants for mysticism ones, and I need a new elite (Reapers Sweep) because I hate dealing with adrenaline. In total 2-4 skills changed to keep the same overall functionality (PBAoE). 86.164.165.69 17:18, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

It took me a year to find a Dervish build that I could live with. My Dervish had become my primary character, and I was having tons of fun with her. I can't understand the reasoning for the change. I can't even play the Dervish now, the new versions of the skills make the Dervish worse than a Warrior. IMHO--Warzog Watch your six! 20:31, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

If you play the derv as a warrior you are doing it wrong, if you play it like the pre-vamp you are also doing it wrong, if you play it using the new mechanics you will own big time. Learn how to effectively use the new skills, at first sight they may seem worse but when you use them as they should be used you can deal a massive ammount of damage in a very short time and still have the skills to keep yourself alive. Damysticreaper 14:58, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Viability of Niche Stuff

Making Asuran Scan and By Ural's Hammer useless pretty much destroys the viability of niche builds. I used to use Glass Arrows with Asuran scan to do high single target damage in PvE... and now that just won't be the case. And in fact most of my Ranger builds that used non-barrage elite skills are now useless because they were only made viable by these PvE skills boosting them to the point where they could compete with boring meta stuff like spiritspam and splinter/barrage.

Why are you guys even nerfing stuff right now? You should be trying to RETAIN players and keep them interested potential GW2 customers. Not be having people scream bullshit!

I Liked playing with Glass Arrows, I Liked playing with Expert's Dexterity. Hell, I even Liked playing with most other elites, providing there were these skills to actually boost them to hardmode viability. Guild Wars has always been a game about DIVERSITY, and that's what I loved about it. You could play non-meta builds. There was plenty of room to experiment. Nerfs like this just push towards the boring homogenisation of games like WoW. Just remove all the skills that aren't in Sabway, discordway, spiritspam or the various uw/fow/doa speed clears and be done with it if that's what you want for your game. But I won't be playing.

And really, if you wanted to nerf speed clears... you should have done it YEARS ago. And not now when you're only hurting the people who missed the boat. Or just buffed the enemies in those areas. --Poobah 11:51, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Quit moaning, the point is to balance would skills that buff damage to silly amounts, the game should be difficult in places, whichs its not when you can drop everything in seconds because of silly dps buffs. --Dinsy 13:15, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

How is your diversity dependent on one skill? - Helgan Iceglow 62.131.64.223 13:41, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

How? One skill... which makes other, less powerful skills... more powerful. Therefore more viable. Duh. --Poobah 23:26, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

For example, if my derv runs into a 100 armor enemy and smacks him three times, he used to do 100, 150, with aura of holy might, and 200 with asuran scan up. Now without any of them he gets lucky to hit 50. AoHM and Asuran Scan were the things that made single target damage at least comparable to necros, mesmers, and eles aoe damage. How many meta teams have you seen (minus manlyway, where the entire run relies on anet's poor judgement calls on 100b) where meele exist. I bet you can count them on one hand. Vald [Citation Needed] 14:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

You like 100b? try this on your derv! OgGjkurKrSXgjhMX7gibmXfb7XA <dervish 100b with the volume turned up. 108.75.73.62 16:45, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

PS: bring a para with go for the eyes to add high crit chances as well that also adds damage to your very sad story. 108.75.73.62 16:46, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Read harder, he just called 100b" poor judgment" on Anet's part. Meaning--uh Duh, he doesn't like it. Plus it's not the Warrior who's doing the damage there (outside of stupid ass raptor farming which shoulda been fixed years ago)... it's the Team that makes it work: like the Shadow/Obsid Tank who's balling everything up, followed by the 19 attrib in Curses (buff & consumes) Necro tossing on Marks that gets triggered multiple times per pip by 100b + Whirlwind. A Rit helps a lot too. Infact you barely even need more than 1 warrior to make it work since they're only there as a catalyst for a bunch of other broken mechanics. --ilr 23:44, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I'm not the big expert on diversity but I do know, that it is not taking this one or two skills in every bar to get the biggest amount of damage in one hit. If you depend on this skill to play the dervish, it was high time they fixed it. The point of a scythe is that it swings round and hits multiple foes, thereby doing that lowely 50 damage to 3 foes and there: you hit for 150 damage (I leave this as an exercise to the reader). I read two replies where it is stated that a dervish does not do enough damage anymore, both compared to an entire team of tank and nukers. Helgan Iceglow 62.131.64.223 15:39, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Except that that's still less damage per target, and that's going to be even less in HM, where enemies have health over 1000 and such small damage per target is practically useless. --Nathe 17:57, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

True, but now it's comparable to what i do with my ele. I hit NM foes for about 80 damage in some areas with a attr.20 Rodgorts (155 damage). Why should a dervish do more than that? Maybe the dervish can fill a different role and put pressure on the enemy team with spreading damage and/or conditions. Easy speedbuffs and crippling skills make for an excellent anti-kite build. - Helgan Iceglow 62.131.64.223 14:51, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I really don't find that argument compelling. Most people seem to agree that eles need a serious HM buff because HM foes just have armor so high the ele dmg tends to shrink so much as the be close to insignificant in many cases. I've seen spells where my ele using a chaos dmg wand did better dmg than the actual spell. To make dervishes more like eles in terms of HM dmg is a truly bad idea. That being said, dervs can still dish out more than eles after the nerfdate, although now it is more costly to do so, and requires usage of the cumbersome tear-down mechanic. -- Captain Bulldozer 17:21, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

The Tear down mechanic

I for one really appreciate the time and energy that went into this update. At this point in the game an update of this magnitude is no small thing. I like quite a few of the new skills and feel I understand the reasoning behind the changes in general. However, I must say that I feel the devs seriously missed the mark when it comes to the tear-down mechanic. Instead of focusing on the fact that enchantment cast time slowed down the tear-down idea, I think it's more likely that the reason a lot of people weren't using the tear down skills is that the mechanic itself is annoying and counter to many players' playstyles. The updates have focused majorly on the tear-down idea, making it very hard to realistically avoid now. As a melee character, the derv must relentlessly be using attack skills to combat foes. A general foe may require 3+ attacks skills to take down. When so many scythe attacks now require tear-down to be realistically effective (especially for HM), and the fact that we count on lessened scythe damage (due to the changes to Aura of holy Might and scythe critical dmg) the scythe skills now feel like they need to be charged before every use. Admittedly, you can stack some tear-down before a fight, but not nearly enough to last the entire battle. Flash enchantments were a good idea, but they don't feel powerful enough to make up for the losses. While the issue of secondary dervishes being better than primary dervish has been largely dealt with, the net effect of the update feels largely like a major nerf to the primary dervish, which is certainly not what the player-base wanted. The best dervish builds that are currently emerging seem to be one that rely very little on the scythe, but instead on some of the mystic spells... a strange direction for a martial class. I know that there's likely to be a lot of rebalancing done in the future with this update (after all there were definitely some serious problems introduced...), so I would hope that the devs would reconsider the tear-down mechanic especially.... I'd say this is just my two cents, but I know for a fact that quite a few other players feel this way. -- Captain Bulldozer 17:19, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Read the manuscript entry on the Dervish again and suddenly realize it is not at all that martial as players point it out to be. The Dervish is not *just* a scythe user, it has scythe mastery to make them masters of scythes (post-update), but it is only one out of four of their attributes. - Infinite - talk 19:23, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

To say a character that just had its primary attribute buffed to include warrior level armor is not all that martial makes me think you've missed something. Would you say assassins aren't a martial class because only one of their attributes is dagger mastery? If so we'll have to amicably disagree. -- Captain Bulldozer 01:03, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

"Flash enchantments were a good idea, but they don't feel powerful enough to make up for the losses. " --definitely agree with this. I'm just not interested in repathing all my rote memory on how I played dervish the last 3 years just to get a slightly smoother but ultimately less viable version of what I already had. These mechanics require paying closer attention to your buff bar than a monk pays to an entire party bar while the pay offs are obviously designed NOT to synergize with any other profession skills. It's a smart approach but at the same time, very self-defeating in a game where the only reason people get together in PVE is to run cross-profession gimmicks. You can change their skills but you can't change their motives --ilr 23:59, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Dervishes are better than they were before. Seriously. I thought that removing enchantments was going to suck; it doesn't. In fact, it's pretty awesome. Some of the recharges could use a nerf or buff, but, overall, I'm very pleasantly surprised. — Raine Valen 0:20, 19 Feb 2011 (UTC)

I'm not philosophically opposed to tear downs, but I have never enjoyed that playstyle. As it stands its quite difficult to use a scythe effectively (especially in HM) without them. The scythe attacks that don't require tear-downs are either quite low in terms of damage, quite high in terms of recharge, or both. Some of those powered by adrenaline have potential, but with a scythe clocking in at around 1.5 sec per attack building adrenaline is painfully slow. One could use AoB for extra adrenaline, but this of course it geared toward to tear-down mechanic. There's also also Onslaught, which as an enchantment is itself vulnerable to tear-down. There are a few non-elite options, the best of which is Zealous sweep... which itself has a recharge of 10 seconds and is unlikely to grant more than a few extra adrenaline. I would love to see the tear down mechanic go, but if its going to stay, I'd like to at least be able to reasonably play without it. -- Captain Bulldozer 01:03, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Mystic Sweep and Victorious Sweep are still bread-and-butter damage skills. The only thing you can't do without a teardown is, again, Deep Wound. — Raine Valen 1:13, 19 Feb 2011 (UTC)

The dervish's status was elevated... that much is true... mainly accomplished by nerfing non-dervish primary scythe wielders and their ability to do insane physical damage using asura scan, aura of holy might, etc in PvE. The teardown gameplay is interesting and can be fun, but overall... underwhelming. The best I can get the dervish now is a DW and cracked armor spammer to help damage dealers kill enemies faster in HM. It's better than before in a way, but if I ignore conditions and try pure damages or pure support or even a hybrid, then the dervish is again another meh character that can be done better by every other profession just like before. As it stands now... I still don't think there is another profession that is as effective as the dervish to spam DW and cracked armor... but that doesn't seem to really have changed much from before (other than cracked armor), just that now the dervish does it better than other professions because scythes are nerfed nearly to death in other professions. PvP, that's a different story, and i guess we'll see how many more iterations of skill changes will happen in the coming weeks. --Lania 08:19, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Every scythe using build was nerfed with the change to AoHM. Non-Caster builds was nerfed due to the change to Asuran scan. Sin's using scythe's were nerfed due to the changes to dervish attack skills. What didn't change (barring the nerf to pious assault) was the warrior's 1337ness with scythes, bcs they rely on strength skills for their scythe damage. Warrior's still do better damage with scythes than dervs. Overall the update benefits Dervs in PvP more than PvE, as "pressure" in pve is a rather moot strategy. I don't want a dervish in my party for HM or elite areas now bcs they don't have the dps and raw AL ignoring damage ability other professions have. --76.181.167.16 18:02, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Those are some excellent points. I'd also add this to it... --ilr 22:34, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Those are not excellent points but some flawed points. You guys are comparing the attack style of the dervish with that of a warrionr, single attacks just to deal damage to a single target. The Teardown function has been added to give the dervish a unique way of attacking and in a method different that the warrior or the assassin. Because of that you cannot compare them anymore. The warrior still has it's focus on a single target even with the scythe while the dervish has it's focus on AoE damage and in a method that can only be used by a dervish. Altough warriors are better with damage for just one target the dervish is better for multiple targets even if the damage is lower the deal damage to more foes at once. So stop comparing 2 melee classes with eachother while they have a completely different role. And about old builds being useless, ofc they are now useless not only because the play style has changed with the new function but also because current teardown builds are stronger and more effective than the old builds. You don't need AoHM or AS anymore to kill your target. AoHM in it's old function especially would not fit into the style of the dervish anymore. And i for one am glad with the updated teardown mechanic. I wasn't a big fan of it either before the change because of the casting time and aftercast of the required spells but with the new flash enchantment mechanic it is finally a playable method again. If you don't like it because it sucked before try it out now because it is a very fun and effective way of fighting now, much better than just dealing damage with attack skills to a single target. Say so yourself who doesn't like overloading your enemies with conditions. Damysticreaper 12:17, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

@Damysticreaper The comparison is between two classes that fulfill very similar roles, no completely different ones. As frontliners, both of them are used to output damage while also providing an easy target for enemies, that will be able to negate much of the damage taken. I like the function of the new teardown mechanic. Previously cast times made teardown skills nearly useless, flash enchantments are an excellent fix. I do feel that too much emphasis was placed on the concept though. Scythe skills feel very underwhelming outside of mass condition application. (bleeding deep wound, and cracked armor from two attacks while also causing enchantment end effects? Count me in!) the one advantage warriors maintain is their access to knockdown, though reapers sweeps provides this to dervishes on a full three second basis.134.71.135.160 19:30, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't like the new implementation of dervish. The previous dervish spells did a good job defining the profession's ability. It (used to)gets aggressively costed abilities, offset by drawbacks. When applying the teardown mechanic, these drawbacks could be circumvented. A perfect example would be pious haste + fleeting stability. Both skills are low cost to cast, had positive abilities stronger then most professions, and when the teardown mechanic was applied, you would negate the negative effect of fleeting stability. With the new implementation, teardown mechanic is an afterthought. Instead of having aggressively costed spells by default, they're only aggressively costed when teardown mechanic is being activated; which is much weaker design. Also, with the previous application of teardown, if an opponent was stripping enchantments off you, you were in a terrible position. With the redesign, it's more of a "well, whatever, I guess I just don't get the supersized version of the skill". The final problem with this is flash enchantment mechanically is equivalent to a shout, except it now counts as an enchantment. If the point was to make give dervish a unique mechanic, why give it a mechanic so similar to the paragon or warrior? With skills like 'Enduring Harmony' a shout that increases shout duration, the mechanics are just getting more blurred and less defined. When GW2 comes out, please when you define a mechanic such as enchantment, you don't mess with it's context 4 or 5 years after the game has been released.

Thank you!

Although I am saddened that my 1v1 "unbeatable" build is flawed, I'm kind of glad that this update was done. I am tired of hearing people moan and groan about how Dervish is a useless class. My main is and always will be Dervish, and I don't like being left out just because people decide they won't use me because I don't fit in their perfect team. Maybe now Dervishes will be accepted into teams. I am excited to get back into the game and learn the new mechanics of my character. I still love my Avatar of Dwayna, so I might make a build around her. I'm glad I can heal party members now, instead of just me, with her. --Lustre Of Havoc 話 07:01, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Hear, hear! Same thing for me. My self-made AoB tanking build is rubbish, but that's alright cause my skills now have so much synergy it makes my head spin thinking of the possibilities. Thanks for putting the time and effort into this update, it really made my day : ) Also I think that making an AoB tank is quite feasible now...174.115.128.216 23:55, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd just like to add my voice to those who are really digging this update. The flash enchantments and teardowns have really mixed things up and made my derv more fun to play. And the new Asuran Scan helped me H/H Shards of Orr in hard mode, so it's a win all round. -- Hong 17:32, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure anyone can tell that the Derv spread conditions (how great time)and so on but the on my point of view i see that derv is the second warrior or uses some rangers abilities and so on. Truth dervs can attack more than one enemie but cand deal AoE damage more than splash damage(AoE not exist anymore on derv). Yes derv could be more funny right now but dont know if it was someones main charr still found that funny. All that i have see until now its Derv stoped exist anymore if someone believes something else lets take 3 heroes and 4 hench and try to VQ some areas (before someone just run on the area). Still i believe that the effect from the nerf is that the derv dont got any idi that want to give such as nuker or minnionmaster. The only idi that gets is i wanna be like ranger and warrior.... Thank anyone that will read this MSG

...Considering my main is a derv and as mentioned this update threw my old library out the window, I can still say you're wrong. Yes I was upset that I had to relearn my main class all over again, but this lasted all of three instances when I made a build which I am using as I am typing this. Skills change, power creeps, power seeps. Learn. Adapt. That's what Guild Wars is all about. Besides this update rocketed the dervish from an almost after-thought profession to a serious contender and threat. AoE conditions, multiple hits and improved enchantment system all suddenly made this class an awesome and viable option. Also VQing is easier than ever and dervishes are finally masters of their scythes (take that sins :P)...So what was your point again? 142.51.215.118 06:45, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Warrior < Assassin & Dervish // The PvE case

First of all, nice and complex update, some fresh air for the meta... In pvp I've noticed myself a lot of changes, dervish replace in a lot of builds the typical warrior in this case its balanced IMHO, hammer - KD, Assa/derv pressure/conditiondealing. (Forget about the conditions when playing war again, just hammer works IMO) Tripple melee now is grenth melee... in HA grenth overloads... whatever. U gonna nerf it soon I guess.

In PvE warrior now suck as hell, nobody needs a tank position anymore in a pure damage overloaded PvE. In hardmode you can spike mobs with mesmer extreme easily (armorignoring damage). (Just try Frostmaws/Rragars HM with 5 Me/1 Nec MM/2Mo Life Sheath AP+UA team (6 KI heroes), 2 secs per mob, with a simple cry of frustration/every Mesmer a different elite skill) 100+armorignoring dam caused per sec by mesmers on the whole mob vs. 25 dam through Elementalist skills with castingtime of 2 on mobs in frostmaw... loled hard, sry :/.

Tankposition is taken by SF assassin + maybe bonder for elite areas. Melee-AoE (Melee Damage Dealing) just works on scythes that are much more useful on dervishs with 10 energy enchs (too expensive for war 'cause no energy/ench management). Assasins also have a much higher DoT/AoE output, with "Critical Agility" + "Death blossom" vs. 2 hammer, 2 Axe, 1 Sword skills (much too low dam output in HM with 100B, cyclone + Tripple Chop same suck, Whirlwind Attack the only alternative but not for warrior, in this case derv, assa also rock much more on this skill, yeti+crude just forget about them; 'cause of no life/def with missing shield-set). Same crap on "Save Yourselves!", Imbagon + Locust's Fury Assasin can maintain this warrior skill, war also suck in this IMHO...

I would suggest to rebalance some things, the core classes (ele + war in this case) are without a competition extremely bad in Hardmode. --Kali Shin Shivara 06:53, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Normally I'd point out that wars still have a mainstay as manly spikers, But they're currently getting muscled out by VoS Spikers. Gotta agree with above poster, Wars are now completely and totally obsolete.--BriarThe Spider 07:07, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yep, thats right, forgot to mention, that VoS is a better copy of 100B same as "Charge!" vs. "Incoming!" at paragon :/ --Kali Shin Shivara 17:07, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

[Edit Conflict] Wars would still make more solid "Tanks"... And yes tanks are still needed. But yeah, SF or Obsid are preventing that. You NEED something to Ball all those mobs up before you can ManlySpike but nothing beats real spell immunity for tanking. If it was just Derv VS War here, then VoS(silence) would technically be inferior to DefyPain on a full team b/c it compromises too much. But SF & Obsid hardly give up anything to replace both Dervs and Wars at real Tanking & balling. War can't complain too much tho, they used to be the Obsids too. --ilr 04:52, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I love how you hop from tanking to spiking when both of those builds center around 2 different elites. at least in today's meta.--BriarThe Spider 04:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Maybe Have a little patience next time?...

@ilr: The point is... Warrior don't have any real functions in PvE anymore, low damage for AoE, same as elementalist in HM. also: the worst of the 3 melee classes, bad energy management (unflexible for other classcombos like bow-war or dagger-war), easy to shutdown, especially with cracked armor that is now dealt a lot more with the derv buff. Obsidian or SF Tanks work way better then a defy pain war as you said. Maybe the solution is to bring a new mechanic with teambuffs like banners in GW2, in this case tactics in COMBINATION with strenght (else other classes pwn the war again) may work well. Warriors aren't very unique ingame anymore, since derv use adrenaline too :/. Its also possible to increase the buffs on strenght a little more in pve (+max Health on Strength up to maybe 30 points, additional IAS for about 10%, or additional +armor -x points of damage). In Elite Areas, wars are nearly unplayed, for elementalists, just lower the monsters resistance for hardmode OR boost Energy Storage in PvE (every point in energystorage lowers monsters resistances a few % up to at max 80 armor vs elemental dam). Also possible: to rebalance underused skills like "Ether Prodigy" or "Elemental Attunement" with additional "lowers foes resistances" --Kali Shin Shivara 06:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I can still tank The Deep in an efficient way with my Warrior. But that's it... -- Large 13:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

The ironic thing is your proposed elementalist "fix" would make all high armor classes less useful in pve, and would hit warriors wishing to tank the hardest. Elementalist foes in pve don't need another damage buff, and high armor is one of the better ways to mitigate their damage (other than spiking them all dead instantly). making everyone have 80 armor vs them (because almost all of them have high energy storage, if not all), or 60 armor cracked, would not be a good change for the game.98.24.14.45 13:24, 27 May 2011 (UTC)