Dervish



The Dervish is a profession available in Guild Wars Nightfall. The class has been described as "a scythe-wielding holy warrior".

General
The Dervish is a close range fighter wielding a scythe capable of hitting multiple opponents and utilizing enchantments to deal damage, cause conditions, and protect and heal itself. Many of its abilities strike multiple foes, allowing it to be a fierce combatant on the battle field.

The Dervish also has the ability to temporarily transform into 'the physical embodiment of a god'. This consists of 5 Elite Form skills, each referring to one of the five Gods of Tyria. These are incredibly useful in combat, but can only be used for short periods at a time. The scythes deal a very impressive 9-41 damage, the highest of any weapon in the game. Dervishes also have skills that allow them to be fair healers of themselves and others. They also have other abilities to add damage or conditions to their opponents, such as crippling them or making them burst into flames. With a strong offense in spells and damage, along with healing spells supplemented with the ability to turn into the avatars of gods and strike multiple opponents, the Dervish is a powerful profession.

One must remember that most of the Dervish's skills only affect those Adjacent to him or her. Thus, movement and location upon the activation of a skill are incredibly important.

The Dervish armor consists of robes, which include bracers for the hands and hoods that symbolize their humility to the gods. The armor has the same base AL as that of a Ranger or Assassin (70), in addition to also providing extra HP by default.

The Downside to Dervishes
While the Dervish can use enchantments to topple opponents fearlessly, professions adept at interrupting, stripping, and preventing the casting of enchantments, can shut them down. Necromancers with skills such as Well of the Profane or Chilblains, Interrupt Rangers, Mesmers and other Dervishes are foes to watch out for at all times, especially in PvP.

Additionally, although a Dervish's protective enchantments and Forms can be used to make them very difficult to defeat, without them a dervish's AR rating of 70 does not allow them to tank on anywhere near the same level as a warrior. Like Assassins, Dervishes must exercise more caution than warriors when charging into battle.

Attributes

 * Mysticism (Primary) : Whenever an Enchantment ends on you, you gain 1 Health for each rank of Mysticism and 1 Energy for every 3 ranks of Mysticism.
 * Mysticism skills
 * Scythe Mastery : Scythe Mastery increases the damage you do with scythes and your chance to inflict a critical hit when using a scythe. Many skills, especially scythe attack skills, become more effective with higher Scythe Mastery.
 * Scythe Mastery skills
 * Wind Prayers: No inherent effect. Many Dervish Spells, especially those dealing with movement or cold damage, become more effective with higher Wind Prayers.
 * Wind Prayers skills
 * Earth Prayers: No inherent effect. Many Dervish Spells, especially those dealing with defense or Earth damage, become more effective with higher Earth Prayers.
 * Earth Prayers skills

Profession Combinations
See Secondary professions for a Dervish

Related Articles

 * Skills quick reference
 * Skills by category
 * Armor types
 * Armor crafting quick reference
 * Collector armors
 * Collector weapons
 * Unique items quick reference
 * Scythe
 * Form
 * Effective dervish guide
 * Dervish dance information
 * Dervish quick references (category)
 * Dervish elite skill locations

Trivia

 * The Dervish may be inspired by Sufi Muslim ascetic orders, roughly equivalent to monks, better known by the Persian name Darvish. For more information, see the Wikipedia article Dervish.


 * The Dervish of the Mevlevi order are sometimes referred to as "whirling dervishes" due to their practice of whirling as a ritual. This act is similar to the in game dance of the female dervish. This is made reference to in the musical production The Sound of Music.


 * Much like druid, monk, knight and paladin, the word dervish has acquired certain connotations in the context of roleplaying games that have diverged from the word's original meaning; more specifically, RPG dervishes are generally agile warriors.


 * The area-of-effect damage of the Dervish was originally going to be a Factions Profession that was scrapped in favor of the Assassin's chain attacks.
 * The appearance is likely based on the Grim Reaper's hood and scythe, and a Persian dervish's clothing all combined. The feature also loosely resembles Zasalamel.