Feedback talk:User/Raine Valen/Skill suggestions/Dervish

A Concept

As I was walking home, tonight, I had this idea fr a dervish profession model. The profession would rely heavily on maintained enchantments. Most of the time, they would be limited to one or two pips of natural regeneration, because these enchants would be as important to playing dervish as, say, Frenzy is to playing axe warrior. Further, all of a derv's scary-strong attacks (i.e. spike openers) would be energy-fueled. Additional attacks would be adrenal, to offset the energy penalty for maintaining enchants.
Mysticism would, in addition to providing energy when enchantments ended, reduce the cost of the derv's self-targeting enchantments. This makes ending maintained enchantments the profession's primary method of energy management, and it becomes necessary because the profession's kill power would be largely proportional to their available energy.
However, recasting these enchants comes with a price: cast time, the debilitating drawback of the profession's current design. The difference is that, in my model, the dervish isn't forced to recast enchants based on some time limit, but rather based on the amount of energy they can devote to an enchant at a given time while still being able to use their stronger attacks. In short, it promotes awareness and assessment far more.
I'll do a couple of drafts this afternoon and see how I like it. — Raine Valen 4:24, 5 Jan 2011 (UTC)

You would need a way to prevent Warriors abusing Dervish adrenaline skills (and vice versa). You'd also have to make sure a Focused Anger Dervish couldn't just rape face with adrenaline skills. The way this is done in other games is "has an additional affect if your <skillname> debuff is on the target"; making that work with GW mechanics would be tricky. (Attack skills that apply hexes and other attack skills that trigger off your dervish hexes on the target, go!)

The biggest problem I see with this idea (and a large part of why I never put it on my dervish page, tbh) is that you only get eight skills. Bar compression becomes super important when two of your skills are predetermined and you only get two pips of regen because of it. Oh, and while you're at it, you should try to make the dervish not feel too much like the warrior (who has to make the same juggling act). -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 07:20, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

What's wrong with dervs using war adrenaline skills? I mean, yeah, they'd be able to use Dismember, but then why not just roll war? And to make sure that a Focused Anger dervish can't rape face using just adren skills, I'll make sure that there are no adrenal deep wound skills (which is the traditional opposite of balance, hurr).

8 skill slots is a fine number: If one takes 4 attacks (KD, DW, Damage, Rupt) and res sig, they should be carrying between 1 and 3 enchantments (the IAS and IMS may/may not be enchantments; there will be viable stance options, too).

As far as "you get two pips of regen" goes, that's not entirely true: you have two pips of regen sometimes. When you drop an enchant, you'll gain big energy and get that pip back, so it does become a juggling act: "Do I need this enchant right now more than I need the energy?" should be an important consideration for Derv players, something in the forefront of their mind always. Otherwise, they'll find themselves without energy and, accordingly, unable to do shit like inflict Deep Wound.

Ideally, dervishes will be harder to play than warriors. They'll have more factors to consider and more counters, like the hybrid melee-caster class they were intended to be, but they'll also bring the benefits of both to the table (the ability to drop an enchant to put a spike assist on your target by yourself is amazing, in theory). On the other side of the coin, though, a derv who can't manage their enchants should never be as strong as a warrior. — Raine Valen 20:04, 6 Jan 2011 (UTC)