Guide to playing as a dervish

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Contents

[edit] Overview

Dervishes are renowned for their ability to frequently deal quick, massive damage to multiple foes with powerful scythe attacks like Wounding Strike and Mystic Sweep. However, in rarer cases, dervishes are also used to fill roles as tanks, utilizing protective enchantments like Armor of Sanctity; runners, most notably on the "Droks run", using skills like Enchanted Haste, Fleeting Stability, and Vow of Silence; and even as healers, using Signet of Pious Light and Imbue Health.

[edit] Basic knowledge

A good dervish needs to understand the game elements described in these articles:

For PvP, especially, it is also recommended that a dervish be familiar with the following:

[edit] Understanding the Profession

[edit] Melee

The primary role of a dervish player is to deal damage through melee as frontline. Their playstyle is dictated by their weapon of predilection, the scythe. Scythes have the highest base damage of any weapon, but also has a very large damage range and a rather slow attack speed. In addition to that, scythes are able to hit up to two additional foes adjacent to your target. This is an innate ability of scythes that works both on regular attacks and melee attacks. Effects that trigger on hit, like energy gain from a Zealous mod or the health gain from a Vampiric mod, but also negative effects such as Insidious Parasite triggers for each enemy you hit. To maximize the damage you deal, it is recommended that you try to position yourself so as to take advantage of your weapon's AoE. Keep in mind though that scythes are two-handed weapons, disallowing the use of a shield. The lack of shield combined with an armor rating of 70 makes the dervish typically less resilient than a warrior.

Dervishes also differ from other melee professions in that many of their skills are dependent on enchantments: for example, Wounding Strike inflicts a Deep Wound only if the user is enchanted. Signet of Mystic Speed only grants a speed boost (IMS) if the user is enchanted. The Windwalker Insignia, an optional dervish armor mod, gives additional armor depending on how many enchantments the user has.

The final characteristic that separates the dervish from the other frontliners is their lack of disruptive abilities: dervish skills don't cause knockdown or interrupt, which limits them significantly. However, it is not uncommon for a Dervish to use their secondary profession for disruptive skills like Bull's Strike, Distracting Blow, or Iron Palm. Due to their lack of disruptive skills, the dervish's playstyle is often characterized by rapid target swapping to avoid blocking or prots on their targets.

[edit] Enchantments

Enchantments and their effects are a dervish's best friend. Unlike enchantments from other professions, many dervish enchantments have an effect both when it is cast and when it ends. For instance, Balthazar's Rage deals holy damage to all adjacent foes when you activate it and when it ends you gain health proportional to the amount of hits you did to the enemy while enchanted. Vital Boon boosts your max health while on you and it heals you when it ends. Heart of Holy Flame causes holy damage then sets adjacent foes on fire when it ends.

With the use of removal of enchantments, the Dervish has access to many different combos that can be used depending on the situation. Many dervish skills have additional or more power effects when an enchantment is removed. For instance, Twin Moon Sweep allows two attacks and a minor self-heal only if an enchantment is removed. Combined with the end effect of many dervish enchantments as mentioned above, this allows for many interesting and powerful combinations. Optimally, try to time self-removing enchantment skills when the enchantment is about to run out (remember that such skills remove enchantments last cast on you). An 8 skill bar slot can quickly become so much more with the right combinations.

[edit] Recommended Equipment

[edit] Weapons

For playing as dervish you'll ideally need multiple scythes. Due to the abilities of scythes, Vampiric and Zealous mods are often sought. A zealous scythe lets you quickly regain energy while facing multiple enemies, and vampiric mod increase your overall DPS. Some might consider a Sundering mod instead of vampiric, but vampiric deals more consistent damage than Sundering. Useful suffixes for scythes are typically Fortitude and Enchanting. Fortitude mod increases your health, obviously something you want as high as possible. Since dervishes rely on many enchantments, an Enchantment mod lengthens their duration which is often very helpful. For the same reason, some people prefer to use a Guided by Fate inscription rather than the more traditional Strength and Honor if they think they will be permanently enchanted. If doing PvP, remember to always have a defensive set ready (1 handed weapon and shield of Fortitude) if you are getting spiked.

[edit] Armor

Like every other class, try to get max (in this case, 70 AR) armor. The choice of your headpiece's attribute depends on your build, but in 99% of cases it will be Scythe Mastery. Follow general guidelines about runes (i.e, try not to rune suicide, try and get the best vigor rune you can afford). The choice of insignia's is mostly up to the player's choice, although Radiant or Survivors are to be preferred. If running many enchantments, Windwalker Insignias can be an attractive alternative.

[edit] Playing in a Party

As with most melee classes, don't overextend. Even if you are able to survive with enchantments, someone might remove them. If your monk(s) need(s) to heal you, they need to run, and a running monk is a monk that doesn't heal.

Adjusting your build to your team is also a good idea. Although there are some all-purpose builds, it is usually better to adjust your build to your team. For instance if you are teaming up with another Dervish who insists on using Wounding Strike, try to bring an alternative elite, as having 2 copies of that skill in one party adds little benefit.

Follow targets, but only if you have an IMS (increased movement speed) skill. without an IMS skill you'll be wasting time and damage that could have been dealt to another foe.

[edit] What to avoid

  • Consuming enchantments which would be more useful if they were left active.
  • A good hint is to not use spells that take up all or most of your energy as it leaves you in a vulnerable state.
  • Recasting enchantments before they end, losing the energy gain from Mysticism, unless in some farming/tanking builds.

[edit] PvE

Warning: This key section of the article is incomplete. You can help the Guild Wars Wiki by expanding it.

In PvE, Dervishes are generally found in a melee role. Due to the nature of scythes, Dervishes are ideally suited for PvE, as you often tend to face bunched up mobs. As a melee class, your main focus should be to deal damage. Even if skill from the Earth Prayers line seem attractive for self healing and damage mitigation, they are generally not favored as healing you and your party is what dedicated healers are for. Try to focus your build on taking down mobs efficiently.

[edit] Mysticism

Mysticism is the dervish's primary attribute, meaning it is only available to primary dervishes. Like many other primary attributes, mysticism is the dervish's energy management, although alternate (usually more active) forms of energy management can also be found in the Wind Prayers line. It gives back 1 health for each point in mysticism when an enchantment ends, and more importantly 1 energy per 3 ranks in mysticism when an enchantment ends. Mysticism benefits from not only enchantements you cast on yourself, but also from those cast by others on you. If you can, try to meet the breakpoint for energy on mysticism (multiples of 3, typically 9, 12 or in rare cases 15). Useful skills from Mysticism include some form of IAS with (preferably) Heart of Fury, or Pious Fury at the cost of an enchantment. Bringing an IAS is highly recommended since by increasing your attack speed by 33%, you end up in fact doing 50% more damage over time. Long lasting enchantments such as Watchful Intervention or Faithful Intervention can be used to fuel other skills needing an enchantment to work and can be used as an additional buffer of health in emergency situations. Dervishes' Avatars are unique to them and also tied to the Mysticism line. They both change your appearance and provide a variety of benefits at the cost of your elite slot. Out of the five Forms, 2 stand out particularly in PvE:

Big increase in damage due to life steal and ability to go through enemy Guardian or Aegis
To take in condition heavy areas, especially Blindness. Additional health is always nice. Synergies with Wearying Strike. Be sure to mind the high energy cost, you might want to carry a +energy staff to be able to recast it as necessary.

Note that it is useful to bring the PvE skill Eternal Aura or Air of Superiority to be able to keep up Forms indefinitely.

[edit] Scythe Mastery

Scythe Mastery is the line where all your scythe attacks come from. As much as possible, you want to have a high Scythe Mastery to not only increase the damage done by your scythe skills but also increase your rate of critical hits, very attractive on a scythe. Builds centered on Scythe Mastery elites tend to be very potent damage dealers. Reaper's Sweep in addition to doing massive additional damage also doubles up as a source of Deep Wound or as enchantment removal. Wounding Strike, while not having any additional damage, has both a lower recharge time and the Deep Wound is covered (meaning that bleeding "covers" the deep wound so that if an enemy uses a condition removal skill, the bleeding will be removed before the deep wound). Please remember that Wounding Strike requires an enchantment on you to inflict Deep Wound. Other useful non-elite scythe mastery skills include Chilling Victory for massive damage and AoE, Victorious Sweep as another source of fast recharging + damage and a free self-heal, Eremite's Attack and Mystic Sweep are used mostly for their faster activation compared to a regular autoattack. Also consider Wearying Strike if using a Avatar of Melandru build for a quick recharging source of Deep Wound with additional damage and no drawbacks.

[edit] Wind Prayers

Wind Prayers is a line that deals with IAS, IMS, energy management and party healing. While some builds use the latter with some degrees of efficiency (these tend to be builds already centered on a supportive role, an orders spammer for instance), most offensive builds do not benefit much from party wide healing (again, best to leave that to your healers). Best to look at Wind Prayers for skills that aid you in killing enemies as fast as possible.

[edit] IAS

The IAS of choice for dervishes is actually found in the Mysticism line (Heart of Fury), but at high specs Wind Prayers IAS can be equally effective. Skills like Onslaught or Whirling Charge also double up as an IMS and allows for more bar compression.

[edit] IMS

While not as important in PvE as in PvP, an IMS can be useful in certain situations. Wind Prayers offers a multitude of different IMS, each with their own benefits. Generally, those preferred in PvE tend to be Enchanted Haste for it's ease of maintainability even at medium specs, and Signet of Mystic Speed for a free, potential 33% speed boost.

[edit] Energy Management

When Mysticism is not enough or your team lacks enchantments to be cast on you, one can look at Wind Prayers for energy management skills. In that domain, one skill really stands out, Attacker's Insight. Even at low Wind Prayers specs (breakpoint for 2 attacks is 5), this can make your 2 next attacks free. Due to its long lasting duration, it is optimal to cast it prior to battle to have it recharged when you need it. Used properly, this skill can eliminate most of your energy problems. Try to use it in conjunction with high energy skills such as Chilling Victory to maximize its effect.

[edit] Earth Prayers

While not ideal for general PvE use, Earth Prayers lends itself well to solo farming builds. Survivability is key to successive farming, and Earth Prayers offers many skills in that direction. A good example is the use of Mystic Regeneration in the popular 130 hp dervish build. Using multiple superior runes to lower your maximum health to 130 and combining it with the monk spell Protective Spirit reduces the damage you take to 13. Since you typically have a large amount of enchantments on you, Mystic Regeneration provides large amounts of regen. Other skills such as Armor of Sanctity can be used for similar purposes. However, in certain situations, particularly if facing a physical heavy area, the elite skill Ebon Dust Aura can be used to effectively shut down multiple melees with a swing. Be prepared to lineback a lot.


[edit] Unlinked and PvE skills

There are only two Unlinked dervish skills, both of them dealing with enchantment removal. However, their drawbacks (high cost, long recharge, loss of enchantments) make it so that it is best to leave enchantment removal to other professions (most notably Necromancers and Mesmers)). As for PvE skills, Dervishes are lucky enough to have 2 outstanding ones, namely Eternal Aura (linked to your Sunspear Rank) and Aura of Holy Might (linked to your Allegiance rank). Eternal Aura does massive armor ignoring PBAoE damage upon casting, doubled against minions and undead. In addition to that, it recharges all other Dervish skills (including Avatars) when it ends. To maximize its benefits try to cast your long recharging skills/enchantements before it ends to have them recharged. With proper timing it is for example possible to maintain Heart of Fury up 100%. Aura of Holy Might is a staple skill for any Dervish build. In addition to providing medium armor ignoring damage both on cast and on end, it increases the damage you inflict with a scythe. As of now, the wording of the skill is misleading/incomplete: the damage increase is not added as a percent; instead, it is added on to your effective damage rating. So, an increase of your damage rating by 21 (rank 1) increases base damage by approximately 43%. Also, although not in the skill description this skill changes your damage type to holy (so do not use this skill in conjunction with a Conjure or Orders). With an Enchanting mod this skill only has a 1 second downtime.

[edit] PvP

Warning: This key section of the article is incomplete. You can help the Guild Wars Wiki by expanding it.

Dervishes provide much damage, and can stay alive for long periods of time, but if any other character has enchantment removal skills, the Dervish is of no use, because most builds include enchantments. A good idea is to bring Avatar of Dwayna, since it removes a hex and heals you whenever you use a skill. The Dervish is a versatile profession, but in PvP it is recommended to bring healing spells such as Mystic Regeneration and enchantments, such as Mystic Vigor, combined with Vital Boon and Faithful Intervention to stay alive and have massive amounts of regeneration. Also, bring attack skills such as Mystic Sweep to deal much + damage, and if you take Avatar of Melandru, take Wearying Strike, such as the condition won't be applied to you, and if you take AoM, bring skills that transfer conditions from allies to you, to control some part of degeneration.

[edit] Choice of Secondary Professions

Guides for all Professions
Core: Warrior Warrior • Ranger Ranger • Monk Monk • Necromancer Necromancer • Mesmer Mesmer • Elementalist Elementalist
Factions: Assassin Assassin • Ritualist Ritualist        Nightfall: Paragon Paragon • Dervish Dervish
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