User talk:Raine Valen/Learn 2 Play/Dervish

Could it be useful to add that Earth Prayers can help the Dervish to fulfill a tanking role in absense of a Warrior, in PvE? 145.94.74.23 08:52, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Or he could bring wounding strike and kill stuff. In PvE. -Auron 08:54, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this fine article. I look forward to the Ranger version: Interrupt and Condition Shit. :P Arshay Duskbrow 11:15, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

And split on shit, and blow shit's face up, and blow it up some more, and when you're bored with that, remove 8 enchantments for fun. Rangers are absolutely ridiculous, and thanks to the recent retardbuffs, ridiculously easy to play. Top 50 rangers spamming interrupts means something is wrong with the game. -Auron 11:33, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

@145: The only Earth Prayers skill that makes things die is Vow of Strength, and I'm not going to include that.

@Auron: I PvE with 3 SF eles with dual Heats and Meteor Shower. If I'm with my bf, he brings 3 necro heal/prot/cursers. It doesn't matter what I do in PvE, it's PvE. Raine - talk 20:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

@Arshay: I recently found out that a lot of people that I don't know look at my page. Hi, nice to meet you.

I may not do Ranger and Mesmer myself; there's someone else that wants to work on them for me. The thing about doing those classes is that the pages are going to be several times longer than this one (or possibly split into several different pages) because other classes have what this one doesn't: utility. That means that they can do several different things, which is going to take more to document. For example, the Ritualist page is going to take explaining as a primary healer, offensive support, flag runner, support healer, spirit spammer (that one's going to be easy)... As a class can do more and more things, it's going to take more and more explaining. Two-dimensional characters like Dervishes, Monks, and Eles are easy.

However, I expect that some of the later ones won't take quite as long to finish because some of the information will be repeated; the entire section on melee hate and target selection will be much the same for Dervishes, Warriors, and Assassins, and to a lesser extent, even for Rangers and Paragons. Of course, the information will have to be changed slightly (Blinding Surge is a much bigger problem for a Dervish or Assassin than for a Warrior, simply because it's directed at Dervishes and Assassins that much more often).

I think I'll probably have them finished in this order: Dervish, Monk, Paragon, Assassin, Elementalist, Warrior, Necromancer, Ranger, Mesmer, Ritualist.

Also, in addition to how to play each class, I plan to include such leadership (leading a team is a lot more than calling targets and deciding what happens), management (though the leader should be doing this, too, they're not necessarily the same thing), support (followership, among other thing), communication (Vent raving)... things that make good players that aren't tied to specific classes.

Thanks, though, for the feedback. =) Raine - talk 20:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

@Auron: I totally expected "blow shit's face up" to be "blow shit's face up". Raine - talk 20:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Auron's just jealous. ;D Arshay Duskbrow 00:15, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, to my experience, it can be useful to be able to survive shit too, especially when you're in the frontline taking the heat. But I suppose I expected too much (seeing as you call Elementalists 2-dimensional...Fire, yes. The rest...no...). I know you can do better than that Raine, you're smart. 87.210.150.58 15:23, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I was referring to Fire Eles, but for the most part, Water Eles are really the only ones without a set "you should be doing this in every situation" type of job. Well, I suppose Air Eles, too, to a lesser extent. Earth is a little harder to play than Fire, but not by much.

As far as survival goes, it's honestly your Monks' job to keep you up, as long as you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. If you find yourself dying a lot and you're not doing anything wrong, your Monks are bad. True, you have 70 AL, but as long as you're not epic overextending, you shouldn't be taking any more deaths than a Warrior. When someone dies, it's usually the result of (1) pressure being too heavy (which can indeed be caused by players doing stupid things) or (2) someone simply screwing up (whether another player or a Monk).

As frontline, your job isn't to keep yourself alive. As long as you're not making it hard for your Monks to keep you up by overextending and such, you're doing everything you should be in that regard. If it really comes down to it, if your team cracks that easily, put more defense on your midline. But not the frontline. Raine - talk 23:24, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

But how about skills like Mirage Cloak, that can deal both damage and help you defend yourself? Or Aura of Thorns, that snares your foes so you can keep following them more easily when you're damaging them? Are they that useless? 87.210.150.58 09:44, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Mirage Cloak is a 15e 10-second 50% block that then deals ~80 PBAoE damage. A monk can Guardian you for a third of that, it lasts almost as long, and you can keep your focus on dealing damage. Furthermore, if you're running Mirage Cloak and you have good monks, chances are that they're going to Guardian you anyway, meaning that someone's wasting time and effort, energy costs aside. As far as the damage, you can do a Chilling Victory and a Mystic Sweep for that energy, with no Insight. Earth prayers aren't offensive, on a class that's best suited for pure offense.

Aura of Thorns works as a snare, sure. Crippling Sweep generally works as a better one. Again, it's not that Earth Prayers are useless, it's just that they're not the best for making things die. Raine - talk 17:27, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Aura of Thorns is interesting in that it's 'nearby', but you've got to spec too much into Earth to get a reasonable cripple duration out of it. And it seems to be somewhat rare when you can really put that range to use.

Lol

"As a Dervish, you cannot pressure." i can tell you're an absolutely terrible player from your first sentence lolololol. if you didn't know, WS dervishes are MADE for pressure. lololol observe some HA matches and see what kind of builds use them. then change your "guide" accordingly to keep yourself from looking like a total fuckhead. - 70.15.5.28 15:53, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

You have no idea what you're talking about. Come back when you have more than 25 fame and maybe you'll have learned that dervishes are 321spike characters and always have been. - Auron 03:42, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

lololol read the sentence after that and see what it's saying. Then change your post accordingly to keep yourself from looking like a total fuckhead. 99.150.239.70 04:54, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Pointless profanity makes me cool too b.r // talk 04:58, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

You have to swear lots when you're completely and totally clueless. It makes some people ignore your lack of argument, experience and evidence. - Auron 06:58, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

lol Auron. How much fame do you have, shitter? You have a good 100? Stop talking, Wounding Strike isn't only a spike skill, it's complete pressure in itself. You have no idea what you're talking about. It's people like you that make wiki's a joke. Get off your ass and learn how to play this game, failfag. 70.48.13.232 19:10, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

8000. What about you?

When a dervish attacks a target, Guardian counters everything. He can't hit for big damage if half his attacks don't hit. Warriors can do reasonably well hitting only 50% of the time - if you absolutely need to kill a monk on split, for example, you aren't going to switch targets when he puts up guardian. You can still try to nail him with a bulls, and if it lands, you will most likely finish him off.

Dervs can't do that. You cspace all day and kill the targets with no prots. All your crits trigger SB or are reduced by PS, and you do nothing against a target with wowarding or guardian (or DA or aegis). Yeah, you can wounding strike a target from full HP, but guess what that does to the other team? Fuels huge RC heals. Grats on helping the enemy monks redbar more efficiently.

Since dervs came out, they have spiked and only spiked. From teleporting mels dervs to grenth dervs with five attack skills, dervs have always been used to 321remove a character from the game. The buff to wounding strike made that replace mels (since most shitters were too terrible to manage energy with a 25e elite, even though it made you simply invincible), but guess what people did with wounding? 321 wounding mystic, 321 wounding eremites. - Auron 03:24, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Less of the NPA plz. ~PheNaxKian Talk 19:12, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Come on Auron, You think that a dervish is only meant to spike? what the hell? LoL I can spread Deep wound and bleeding to 3 things at once in a short period of time, and the keep it up because I have infinite energy. If your only using your dervish skills on spikes your a terrible player, Continuous bleeding and a covered deep wound dont count as pressure? Good fucking Joke.--128.211.248.24 19:13, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

PheNax, no one gives a shit about the wiki. The only people that care are retarded, and terrible at game. Plus, im on a router, so if i get perma banned i go reset it and I get a new ip. no one gives a shit about rules.

I fail to see the logic of the first 2 sentences...~PheNaxKian Talk 19:17, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Shitters helping shitters. There's no use for a wiki. That's the logic.

(faulty logic aside)If you feel this wiki's so shit feel free to leave, no one's forcing you to stay, just hit the "X" icon in the top right corner, or alt+F4, Ctrl+W, or even Ctrl+Alt+Del and end task if you prefer, take your pick. ~PheNaxKian Talk 19:29, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Deep Wound was totally made for pressure. And people wonder why I call it overhyped...DW is good, but a lot of people (won't name any) don't know how to play it. That's the same reason why Frenzy is great...on other players. 145.94.74.23 22:21, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, so all the top players using deep wound for spike are wrong. Fuck me, what universe have I been living in? --Riddle 22:29, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Look, anon. If you want to argue, let's do it the right way.
Since you clearly didn't read the whole thing, let me sum up some parts for you:

• Dervs cannot pressure; everything they do should be a spike.
• "Spammable, covered Deep Wound is... a spike in and of itself, and every time you get it off it means ten Monk Energy used Dismissing conditions and a 20% Healing reduction until they do. If your target is already suffering from a condition... this covers it twofold. Use Wounding Strike on anything and everything."
• "In general, pick the target that you believe you have the best chance of killing, or attack the target that you believe will give your team the best chance of killing something."
• "[Using Wounding Strike on a target] does a few things... this gives their Monk something to deal with. Deep Wounds are always serious; a Monk will typically put Energy into removing it."
• "If at any point your target... becomes harder to kill... reconsider your choice of target."

Please reconsider your argument, and if you still believe the guide inaccurate, please state why.
Thank you for your attention, anon. 99.150.239.70 05:58, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

HAHAHA. Most of the funny stuff I find on this wiki is linked to other people's talk pages in the form of NPA warnings. I have to confess, I like watching people argue about something obvious and be completely wrong about it. It makes me feel better about myself when I've had a bad/boring day. Dervish...pressure...lawl. The best pressure a dervish can cause is to go D/N and bring rotting flesh... I don't even consider dervish physicals. Oh wait, that's because they have no armor, 4 regen, a big energy pool, and a PA based on spells. ~Shard 20:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The top players aren't wrong Ribble, the masses are...especially the ones that think they're top players. 145.94.74.23 13:06, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Well said, 514.....--Riddle 13:30, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, sorry about that. d=b 145.94.74.23 18:22, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, and you invalidated your point. The top players use DW as a spike, and -->THIS<-- is why. You don't build up 8 adrenaline just to go "lolDeepwound spam" because it will just end up working against you. As a Derv with WS, you don't go around just hitting people with it, because you're not accomplishing anything by just trying to spread deep wound to all your enemies. The Deep Wound is an instant 100 health gone, and a damper in healing. Why not follow up with a kill if you've all ready done that much amount? --Riddle 00:16, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Dude, I know it's only good in a spike because of RC monks. I have been saying that for like, I don't know, months. Which is why I don't understand why people choose Wounding Strike over Reaper's Sweep, especially now. Too bad you didn't understand the sarcasm of my earlier post. And yes, I know that sarcasm doesn't work on the internet. However, regard that as a compliment: I deem you guys intelligent to catch sarcasm when it's used. 145.94.74.23 13:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I didn't write this exclusively for GvG and HA. Writing a Dervish GvG guide would be like writing a guide to farming Ridgeback Skale in the Ebony Citadel (I just disgusted myself by knowing that much about PvE). And HA follows completely different rules than every other form of play.

You pressure with Deep Wound not by putting it on everything on the other team, but by putting it on everything you attack. If you see it getting RCd off right away, common sense dictates that you should use it when it'll score you a kill (dead people can't get RCd).

I've been running RoJ spike in AB (the good one, not the crappy imitations), I'll use that as an example. The way it works is, I call Earthen Shackles, then one monk Gales the target while the other two RoJ them. Then the gale monk and I follow up with two more Rays. Lastly, I'd Scourge Healing the poor schlob so we could do some passive damage to the monks in the process, and prevent monks from healing themselves. Basically, target foe takes 180 Holy damage per second for 5 seconds and they can't move if pulled off correctly (yeah, it's pretty much guaranteed death). But we ran into problems with one smarter monk who would tank some of the damage to Cure Hex himself after the KD (most would try to heal themselves before worrying about the hex, and so die as the damage stacked way faster than they could heal), then kite out of the small AoE. It was enough to keep him alive; we weren't killing anything going about the spike like we had been.

So we adjusted. I had been using Scourge Healing for damage and as a (bad, due to casting time) cover hex. I Scourged one of the monk's teammates, then called a casti sig spike on them, worked like a charm. The monk healed the poor guy who was in no real danger, then removed the hex, like most monks would. Of course, with no hex removal, the monk got blown the fuck up, and then the rest of the team.

Ah, sweet success!

Point is, you don't follow procedure like robots, you make adjustments. If target monk is Cure Hexing (Restore Conditioning) your Earthen Shackles (Wounding Strike) every time, then stop burning it and find an opportunity. I'm assuming that you're all smart here; think.

Being an awesome player isn't about getting really good at playing a build one way, it's about being able to play one (several) build(s) well in many ways. This guide should be read with that in mind. Raine - talk 23:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you wrote, but I don't understand how that fits your statement: "Kill Shit.

That. Is. All." That doesn't sounds so flexible to me. 145.94.74.23 08:26, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Dervishes kill shit, using the 8 skills on their bar. HOW they use those eight skills to kill shit in the best manner possible is very, very flexible. Raine - talk 10:06, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually sometimes a warrior fakespikes with eviscerate to drain some energy away from the monks then youre not purely 321 though Lilondra *gale* 18:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Enchantment removal

Dervishes have one form of utility: they can remove enchantments from enemies. Should that be added to your article, or is Dervish enchantment removal so bad that it's not worth mentioning? 145.94.74.23 13:08, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

None of the viable Dervish enchantment removal skills are better used by a Dervish, so I think not. Vili 13:23, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

What about Rending Touch and Reaper's Sweep? 145.94.74.23 18:21, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Why would a Dervish use Rending Touch? That's just masochistic. And Reaper's Sweep means not having Wounding Strike. Raine - talk 18:56, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to retract that statement after playing RS today. RS is a decent skill now (though still no WS). However, it's not broken enough yet. In order to seriously compete with all the other elite scythe attacks, I propose:

• 5 4 Elite Scythe Attack. Deals +however much damage and removes 1 enchantment. If target foe was above 50% Health, this attack cannot be blocked. If target foe was below 50% Health, the bonus damage is doubled and it inflicts a Deep Wound for however many seconds. If target foe was below 50% Health, this skill takes twice as long to recharge.

As it is, it's just not absurdly OP enough.

Oh, and Rending Touch is still masochistic. Raine - talk 00:48, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

With high Mysticism, it can also cost you no energy...! Also, RS I kinda like just because it actually has bonus damage, strips annoying prots like Mark of Protection, and spikes down for a kill at <50%. WS lets you spike and cover from full health, and is more spammable, but won't do anything against those prots. Reaper's Sweep is kinda like bar compression, I guess. Vili 06:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I view Reaper's more as "annoying". I'll put up a prot and then wonder where it went ("I could've sworn I just put up SB... yeah, it's on recharge so I must've us-- Oh. Goddamn Reaper's Sweep."), but that's largely just because I keep forgetting about the buff. I mean, that's not exactly a small thing, but compared to watching a WS derv plow through a party ("Fucking dervishes! Fucking Nightfall!"), it just isn't really impressive. Raine - talk 23:10, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey

Approval: Congratulations this guide is totally 1337 and is one of the best guides for the dervish, and is recommended by Halogod35

-- Halogod35 21:40, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

This guide

is absolutely brilliant. It has the benefit of being totally hilarious, too. Summary: JUST KILL SHIT. Thought honestly, anyone who really had trouble figuring that out and playing as a Dervish at the beginning is possibly beyond help. :P Green Arrow 03:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

/agree, this guide rocks. I couldn't figure out how to play a dervish, cuz I am used to having everything have some form of utility, now that I know how dervs are meant to be played, I actually do well with em. Roflmaomgz 06:19, 13 May 2010 (UTC)