ArenaNet talk:Skill feedback/Dervish/Avatar of Melandru

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Hikan Trilear's Discussion

...Yes, I'm a ninja. -- Armond Warblade 22:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

only dervish elite used in gvg u say? gogo nerf it already --Cursed Angel 22:49, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

If this is the only one seeing use in GvG, buff Grenth, imo. Also, only immune to cripple, blind, and weakness means you're not immune to poison and disease, both of which are common enough to make me want them on the list. -- Armond Warblade 22:51, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

The reason why I put blind, cripple, and weakness on there is because those are some primary melee shutdowns. Melandru dervishes are virtually immune to degeneration is the problem. --Hikan Trilear 23:00, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Disagree with suggestion. Melandrus are good because you can't cripple, blind, DW, or weaken them, and therefore the only viable way to slow their damage (other than the usual kiting/blocking) is with hexes. Someone posted a good suggestion in the old pages about how Melandru should be like dwayna, where you lose a condition whenever you use a skill. This way, blind and cripple would be usable against them, and spiking them would be possible. ~Shard (talk / Nerf List) 23:44, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

melandru's is fine the way it is , it already has a huge energy cost , and only used avatar in GvG? lol , balthazar and grenth's are being used more than melandru dervs , dwayna and lyssa that are never used in gvg 189.70.157.91 00:39, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

HA is full of Lyssa and Balth dervishs these days <.< 169.231.5.83 01:39, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

no lyssa actually 24.141.45.72 01:40, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd recommend changing the functionality from immunity to -50..80% duration. This way, deep wound still works, as well as some longer-lasting degen, but for the most part, blind, cripple, and weakness have must less potency if any at all.--74.14.50.155 07:03, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd support that - if it's in need of a nerf at all. I'm still not convinced it's nerf-worthy. -- Armond Warblade 07:12, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

This is the kind of skill that won't see play unless it's overpowered like it is now. It's almost impossible to kill, it can spam Deep Wound with very high DPS, you can't cripple or blind it. It's just incredibly rediculous, but it has a huge flaw that all Dervishes share. No Stonefist Insignia. Being overpowered makes up for the severe lack of utility. It's used with the intention of abusing all these things. No one would use it if it was a fair skill. That said, I think it should be nerfed, but I don't think it can be viable and fair at the same time simply because it's a Dervish, again, no Stonefist. GG. --TimeToGetIntense 09:36, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I personally would like to see this form be retooled to be similar to how Avatar of Dwayna functions with hexes. Conditions would be removed whenever the player uses a skill while using this form. If that's not enough, instead on skill use, it would remove conditions whenever the player successfully lands a hit with this form. That way it would still be immune conditions except blind. When used with an attack skill, it would remove the condition after the attack does it's effect so the Wearying Strike + AoM would still be viable. If such changes were implemented, reducing the cost to 15 energy would balance it out. --SavageX 10:06, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Wearying spam is one of the biggest problems with this skill. -- Armond Warblade 19:03, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

All Avatars should become Enchantments without disable time for the skill itself, with only a 1 second casting time, with a duration of about 10...60...75 seconds and an recharge of about 25 seconds. Afterwards they should decrease energy costs to fit into the new mechanics (Melandru and Grenth about 10 energy, and the rest only 5 energy) and give Grenth's Avatar its old functionality. Now you could better deal with them, but they still would be usefull (maybe). Dervishes couldn't use own skills that withdraw their enchantments and could be easily countered... (but maybe it would be too easy - dunno!) A. von Rin 21:21, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

That would make the avatars essentially unusable... The moment you run into a mesmer you lose your avatar, and when you try to put it back up you get interrupted. -- Armond Warblade 21:23, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You could give them then a 1/4 casting time to prevent interrupt and set recharge to only 20 seconds. Don't think this would be "unusable", but maybe there would be a larger variety than now... A. von Rin 21:28, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

stupid idea User 24.141.45.72 21:49, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Permanent Melandru ftw? -- Armond Warblade 22:40, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

It's been said before, give it the "lose a condition when you use a skill" Prokiller88 22:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

This suggestion might be better and not that aggressive like mine. But if it would be changed this way, you have to decline energy costs to 5 or 10 and increase the duration a bit. Otherwise this skill would be useless compared to "Avatar of Dwayna" (which provides healing + hex remove). A. von Rin 23:17, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

@ Savage: If you change it to take effect like the "Avatar of Dwayna" it will take effect before the attack skill triggers ("Avatar of Dwayna"). Reducing the costs to 15 energy wouldn't be enough. It would still be (with Grenth - who knows why -.-), the most expensive Avatar with an equal (or less) effect than Dwayna's (which only costs 5 energy)... I think 10 energy which such an debuff would be ok. A. von Rin 01:19, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Very simple to solve this one, really. Make it so that you deal 25% less damage under this skill, fixed. No more team detonations, no more insane pressure, but good DW and immunity.

Dervs have no utility tbh. They just spam AoE DW and have high DPS. They cannot train defensively, they are not the greatest on a split, and they require huge amounts of outer disruption. Just don't ball up (you shouldn't be doing this anyways), and you already have an advantage. --Readem 23:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

People use both Balthazar and Grenth over this in GvG now, since they spike so fucking hard. — Skadiddly[슴Mc슴]Diddles 17:15, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

This is pretty balanced, Shock Axe owns this anytime anyways. --Usual 00:29, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I think immunity to Rangers' poison/cripple, bleeding/deepwound/cripple from warriors, and blind from Air elementalists and Ineptitude Mesmers is pretty strong. If anything, condition removal needs to be when a skill is used instead of complete immunity. --Life Infusion «T» 04:31, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I stand by what I said earlier. Make it do that you do 25% less damage while under this skill. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:78.176.238.123 (talk).

I think that the best option is to make it something like Avatar of Dwayna, as it has already been suggested, lower the energy requirement and maybe buff something else to make up for the lost condition immunity. Krothal 12:56, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

SavageX's discussion

I like it. --Life Infusion «T» 15:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Dervs are fairly underpowered in GvG as is because this is the only viable elite, and even then half the time they're great, half the time they suck greatly. The energy cost, duration-to-disable ratio, and uselessness of the Dervish when not in this Form makes this skill balanced pretty damn well. Nerfing this will only serve to make sure Dervishes don't get seen in GvG. 76.89.81.150 18:08, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

It's broken beyond believe. You're an invincible bomb with the skill up, useless with the skill down. That's incredibly broken and what needs to change. If forms are going to be the focus of Dervs and their class 'thing', they need to be toned down in power considerably while in form (or at least melform the others aren't much of a problem), while getting more and better use out. But for some reason it 'creates an interesting flow of combat' and does not need a nerf. 62.163.61.246 17:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Lann's discussion

Burning is not enough to nerf it. -- NUKLEAR IIV 16:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

It would be for elementalists. --Lann 03:24, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Nerfing a single broken skill so it becomes vulnerable to a single another broken skill is bad logic. -- NUKLEAR IIV 08:58, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean a single, another broken skill? How many eles you see using rodgorts invocation? Searing/Tenai's? A tree can't burn? THIS IS MADNESS! --Lann 20:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Burning is not enough damage. The blinds, the DW, the cripple still are unaffected, and said dervishes would ram their pretty scythes at pretty burning eles. -- NUKLEAR IIV 19:11, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I would support allowing Burning, if only because it makes more sense flavour-wise, and even if it wasn't enough it would help (does seem kinda inbalanced in favour of eles, though). Maybe you could also allow, say, Disease to affect them too, and maybe something else. The immunity to the blinding and crippling would still allow them to be very effective attackers but if they weren't immune to everything they would at least be able to suffer a bit more pressure.

The problem is...

...that Dervishes have no utility at all. A dervish can't KD, a Dervish can't interrupt, no sort of punishment ability. What do they get in return? Assloads of damage output. I think what needs to happen, in order to make STEPS toward balancing the class, is:

• +10 AL. Seriously. They're squishy frontliners. 80 AL would make them a *bit* harder to simply WTFown with a hammer.
• Nerf some elites, and buff some non-elites. Put some utility in the class so they can actually be worth something without OP elites like AoM and WS.
• Add some skills for Dervishes, Assassins, Ritualists, and Paragons. Why do the new classes have such little utility? Partly because the core classes just have SO MANY MORE SKILLS. Because of the limited number of choices, fewer viable builds exist for the non-core professions.
  

Like I said, these are just *steps* in the right direction.

Compare Conjure Axe (warrior's utility + conjure for damage) with Distracting Strike Scythe (scythe damage + warrior utility).

• Conjure Axe has a higher DPS with the Conjure, faster attack rate, and Armor Penetration from Strength.
• Conjure Axe has +10 AL (+20 v Physical, though this is usually moot because of weapon swapping) from armor and another +16 from a shield.
• Conjure Axe has only two pips of energy regeneration, but most of their skills adrenaline-based, anyhow.
• The Scythe has the ability to hit up to three adjacent foes, but this, again, is usually moot.
• Mysticism gives the Dervish energy when enchantments like Patient Spirit or Reversal of Fortune end on them.
• Conjure Axe uses Bull's Strike as a snare, while also doing high damage in the process. The scythe equivalent would be Crippling Sweep (if any), which is easier to use, but not quite as rewarding.
• The dervish likely carries Wounding Strike; nothing needs be said about that.

In a lot of instances, the warrior has the ability to outclass the derv in the only thing that dervs are really great for: damage. Buffing the class as a whole would make them more viable in PvP, and they wouldn't need Wounding Strikes ore Avatars of Melandru in order to be taken into consideration. Raine - talk 05:52, 13 November 2008 (UTC)