Skill UpdatesApril 21, 2011
Developer Notes

This update makes some small balance changes to the heavy Dervish GvG metagame.

Dervish Skills

Aura of Thorns seems about right in terms of Cripple duration relative to recharge. This small increase in Energy cost is intended to put a little more Energy pressure on players.

We were originally worried about interrupts making Avatar skills useless, but after observing a lot of games, there didn't seem to be much meaning to interrupting them because of their short recharge. We increased the recharge slightly to give a larger window of weakness when one is interrupted.

With a five second Burning duration, Avatar of Balthazar made it a little too easy to apply near-constant Burning to foes. We reduced that duration a bit so that it takes more effort to keep foes on fire.

Dust Cloak was a little too good at reducing damage from melee. We increased the recharge to increase the windows of opportunity for damage and to encourage more careful use of this skill.

As a skill that could constantly Cripple a moving foe, we felt the duration for Harrier's Grasp was a little too long. The shorter duration gives a snared foe a better chance to escape.

The interrupts on Lyssa's Haste are very powerful and disruptive, especially on teams with multiple Dervishes. Increasing the recharge will reduce the frequency of this disruption.

Other Skills

We are also making small changes to some key skills on other classes to fix a few other balance issues.

We are looking into some buffs to non-flagger party-healing options. For now, we are reducing the recharge on Divine Healing and Heaven's Delight to make them a little more usable.

While the previous change to Fevered Dreams resulted in a decline in this skill's use, Fragility is still fairly powerful when combined with a Dervish and a Blood Necromancer. We increased the recharge in order to limit the number of foes on whom this can be maintained at the same time.

Blinding Flash was already a pretty good skill, but with the heavy emphasis on melee characters, even before the Dervish update, we felt it could be buffed a little to make it easier to use.

Grasping Earth was, for its cost, a little too effective at snaring foes for a long duration. We made some adjustments to the duration to bring it more in line with other snare skills.

Conclusion

While we recognize that Dervishes are seeing a lot of use in PvP of late and that some players would prefer larger balance changes to remove them from play, we feel this would be inconsistent with our reasons for improving Dervish in the first place. We'll continue to make adjustments to this class as necessary in the coming months.

  • Note: All skill ranges are for Attribute 0...12...15.
  • Aura of Thorns: increased Energy cost to 10.
  • Avatar of Balthazar: increased recharge to 20 seconds; decreased Burning duration to 3 seconds.
  • Avatar of Dwayna: increased recharge to 20 seconds.
  • Avatar of Grenth: increased recharge to 20 seconds.
  • Avatar of Lyssa: increased recharge to 20 seconds.
  • Avatar of Melandru: increased recharge to 20 seconds.
  • Dust Cloak: increased recharge to 10 seconds.
  • Harrier's Grasp: decreased Cripple duration to 2...8...9 seconds.
  • Lyssa's Haste: increased recharge to 25 seconds.
  • Blinding Flash: decreased Energy cost to 10.
  • Grasping Earth: increased Energy cost to 10; decreased duration to 5...17...20 seconds.
  • Fragility: increased recharge to 8 seconds.
  • Divine Healing: decreased recharge to 12 seconds.
  • Heaven's Delight: decreased recharge to 12 seconds.