Guild Wars: Restarting Again

So I sampled the latest Guild Wars expansion with a trial key only to have some black hearted person give me the actual game. We are, of course, no longer speaking.

Still, that means I've had to start all over again with yet another new character. Although during the trial I played a Paragon, I decided against playing one with my main account. Not that I think the Paragon is a bad class, mind, but it's just not very well suited to me. Just too much micromanagement and a little too indirect. So, instead, I rolled up a Dervish (Again, feel free to buddy me. “Sausaletus Rex” is my main character but this one's known as “Oreon Rex” which, I think, pretty much gives the game away.). Which is working out for me so far.

Currently, I'm through everything I did in the trial – knowing where everything was and what to do made progress much faster. The Dervish, as I expected, is pretty easy to play. Very effective in melee and being able to strike multiple enemies is awesome. The first thing I did, once I was able, was to head out to an EA, grab a bounty, and just pave creatures until I had enough Sunspear points to rank up. Only heading back into town when my inventory was full (I generally salvage everything, if I can, I know I'd probably get more money now by selling it off but, for me, the important thing is to spend as little time heading back to town as possible.). Killing off pretty much everything in sight while working on some quests gave me enough points to unlock the second mission – and get my extra 30AP which help immensely. And enough XP to get my secondary profession. As you might expect, I went with a Dervish/Paragon. Purely for the unlocks, you understand. So far, Paragon is proving almost as useless to my Dervisher as Dervish was to my Paragon. All the shouts and such I'd want to use take time away from attacking and my skill bar is pretty well packed. By this point, I've bought up all the Dervish skills available in the newbielands but the only Paragon skill I've bought has been their rez – pretty much for the same reason the only Ritualist skill my Assassin/Ritualist made use of was the rez. The Sunspear rezsig is nice but it's single use only and, in PvE, what I'm really worried about is a wipe where I'm the only one left standing and there's nothing I can do because I'm fresh out of rez. So, something multiple use is what I want even if it's strictly speaking an inferior rez because, although there are a few situations where combat rezzing is important, for the most part rezzing in PvE happens when there aren't any enemies around so it doesn't matter how much health or energy get restored or how quickly it happens.

The build for my Dervish looks like this currently:

Oreon Rex (lv10)

Mysticism – 9
Scythe Mastery – 6+1

1. Ermite's Attack
2. Pious Assault
3. Twin Moon Sweep
4. Signet of Return
5. Aura of Thorns
6. Heart of Holy Flames
7. Zealous Renewal
8. Mystic Vigor

And, yes, if you're counting that's a whopping four enchantments. And I use them all. The high Mysticism really helps – I'm planning on eventually running at 12/12 Mysticism and Scythes. The idea here is pretty much an AoE/degen bomb. Precasting Mystic Vigor – which gives me health every time I attack and I much prefer to Vital Boon. I get up in a cluster of enemies and pop off Zealous Renewal, Heart of Holy Flames, and Aura of Thorns (Which is in an off-attribute but I don't really care about the duration on things so much as I do care about adding a bit more degen to things while having another cheap enchantment to fuel things). That's a quick burst of 80+ AoE damage. If anything's still standing, then it's time to start attacking. Pious Assault is my default attack and it lets me churn through my enchantments in rapid fashion while dealing some pretty good damage – and as my enchantments get lost my targets start bleeding and burning which is really lethal at low levels. Twin Moon Sweep is there for the healing because not only does it have a built in heal it swings twice to trigger Mystic Vigor twice. I'm not too happy with Ermite's Attack – although the ¾ second casting time is great it's just hard to get the bonus damage to trigger because by the time I'm using it the field's pretty clear - and I'd like to find an alternative but my idea there was to have an attack that wasn't dependent on being enchanted in case I run into some hate. I'm seriously considering Rending Sweep but haven't made the switch because my party isn't using any hexes yet. The fact that Dervishers remove enchantments on themselves to attack is an interesting mechanic. I like it, for now, but I'm not sure how viable they'll be if there's any serious enchantment hate around (Like, I don't know, Nature's Renewal or something.). It's pretty fun to play with this sort of build because there are numbers flying everywhere. Each sweep of the scythe there's healing and damage and energy.

Just like in the trial, I've picked up a trio of Henchmen so far (I've also unlocked another with a PvP character) who I'm still going to call by their nicknames – Carson, Dunk, and Mel. And I was again sailing through things until I hit the second mission, Jokannur Diggings, and the end boss, Apocrypha. Again, I went down to ignominious defeat. Heading into my first try, I had Carson as a disruptive sword guy – W/Mo for Rebirth, again. Mel pretty much copied my build except I had her using Vital Boon in favor of Zealous Vigor and the one skill she has that I don't, Mystic Sweep, in favor of Pious Assault (I don't want her churning through her enchantments willy-nilly the way she seems to when I give her too many enchantment removing skills). And Dunk as a power healer with a Mesmer secondary for energy management.

Koss

Str – 2
Sword – 6
Tactics – 5

1. Savage Slash
2. Sever Artery
3. Gash
4. Final Thrust
5. Rebirth
6. Auspicious Parry {E}
7. Distracting Blow
8. Healing Signet

I'm a big fan of Auspicious Parry, by the way. Extremely effective and just cranks up any adrenal build especially in PvE when you'll actually be targeted in melee. Combined with Dunk's sweet, sweet, healing it lets Carson survive pretty easily – monsters go after me and Mel more, anyway, because of our lower armor – and still be effective offensively. There's the standard Sever+Gash+Final combo of bleeding, deep wound, and massive damage. Carson's still rocking a sword because I haven't found anything better for him yet – I'm a bit hesitant to give him a Victo's Blade or something because he'll probably kill himself with it. Or drain Dunk's energy dry. What, I think, is a bit unusual is that I have two disrupting skills in Savage Slash and Distracting Blow. I like my Warriors to be packing some interrupts and since we were going to be facing Apocrypha my plan was for Carson to nail it casting and relieve some pressure. Mel and I had no interrupts so I wanted to load up on it.

Meloni

Mysticism – 6
Scythe Mastery – 5
Earth Prayers – 2

1. Mystic Sweep
2. Twin Moon Sweep
3. Ermite's Attack
4. Rebirth
5. Aura of Thorns
6. Heart of Holy Flames
7. Vital Boon
8. Mystic Vigor

Pretty much a copy of my build (The attributes are lower because the Heroes apparently don't get the extra AP that I've earned.) except with a bit more healing because Mel tends to get hammered. But I figured that two AoE bombs going off would be a load to handle, even if Apocrypha wouldn't suffer much from the degen. I knew he was going to be a tough nut to crack but I didn't want to get too crazy about planning solely to beat him - there were plenty of other enemies and the less time I spend changing things around for low-level critters, the better.

Dunkoro

Divine Favor – 4
Healing Prayers – 5
Inspiration – 5

1. Orison of Healing
2. Word of Healing {E}
3. Dwayna's Kiss
4. Mend Ailment
5. Rebirth
6. Inspired Enchantment
7. Revealed Enchantment
8. Power Drain

Originally, I had Dunk as a prot-bot but without more AP to make his energy management work overtime he wasn't doing so hot. If and when I can get another Monk in the group one of them will be going Protection because that'll mean just more enchantments around for any Dervishers to make use of. Here, though, I went with straight power healing. Word of Healing's great, of course, (And I love having access to elites for my Heroes while I'm still struggling with a very limited skill set, by the way) and Orison's there for self-healing, mostly. The big heal, though, is Dwayna's Kiss which although it doesn't help Carson much, works really well on me and Mel. So that's a few heals that can recover around 100+ even at those attribute levels. And I threw in Mend Ailment for condition removal. The Inspired/Revealed Enchantment pair is there for Apocrypha because while Carson was handling the interrupts, I figured I'd have Dunk handling the enchantment removal. Power Drain's great for energy management with NPC AI – although it won't really shine until Inspiration can be raised higher. There are a few glaring weaknesses here, however. First, Dunk's ability to heal himself is extremely weak. If he gets targeted he's usually in trouble – I should probably have Healing Touch instead of Orison. The other is where Apocrypha nailed me – no hex removal.

He nailed my team with his hexes in Mesmer form and we had no way of dealing with it. Combined with some nasty AoE of his own which just chewed up all three of my melee fighters we didn't last very long. After a bit of retooling I've since beaten the mission but the siren song of PvP has called out to me and I've spent most of my time lately in the Snowball Arena. I'll get to all that later, though.