The Dancing Dervish

Let me start off by saying that I love the idea and concept behind this weapon, I think it one of the coolest items in the game currently. So I was really excited to give this weapon a shot in 2.3, unfortunately that excitement didn't last long after I started to use it. And I feel like this sentiment is likely shared by others, but feel free to prove me wrong.

I play a pretty generic Facebreakers build as a Raider, meaning I am focusing on scaling them through flat phys damage and physical nodes. All these things also help me while I am wielding the sword so that way I am not really gimping myself too hard no matter what I have as my weapon at the time. Originally I thought I could grab a bunch of jewel sockets and put minion damage in them to help scale up the sword, but eventually came to the conclusion that's probably too much of an investment for very little reward. The reason being is well, The Dancing Dervish as a manifested weapon is basically a cool looking wet noodle.

There are obviously some benefits to having the weapon manifested for the player such as the onslaught and rampage, so its not all bad. But those things are not the main draw of the weapon in my opinion. If I really just wanted to do more damage with Facebeakers, it would be way more sensible to just use a shield.

So the real thing I wanted out of the weapon was to fight along side it. But currently like I said, the weapon is very weak on its own, even with 6 sockets dedicated to it. It feels less like I am fighting monsters with a floating sword, and more like I am just running around with rampage as a less than optimal Facebreakers build. And the main reason I think I feel this way is because every time I take a brief moment to see what the Dancing Dervish is doing I am utterly let down.

Honestly if I had to break down its actions at any given time it would look something like this:

50% of the time it just does a standard attack
15% of the time it just stands there doing nothing next to a monster
35% of the time it does a short Whirlwind type attack through a monster or two

It isn't a very exciting minion to watch honestly, and just to give some frame of reference for the damage. It takes a few hits to kill a little beetle mob in Merciless Dried Lakes, this is with my 6 sockets all specialized to make it better at single target. Its really not even worth trying to make it melee splash because its damage is too low that your only real use is to try to give it enough single target damage to help kill a mob you missed and keep the rampage alive.

I feel like if The Dancing Dervish were to spend more time using its signature Whirlwind move, and less time just running up to a mob and hitting it with a standard attack, would help a lot honestly because that particular move seems to do a little more damage. Not to mention it would make the weapon way more fun to watch do its own thing, which is really what I feel is missing most currently.

In the end I was really just hoping for something flashy like the whirling swords that spawn from getting your rampage high enough, and currently The Dancing Dervish is just not there.

You know, it's possible to pimp up your animated guardian to do decent damage, however his godawful AI breaks the deal, been there, tried that. So that's the thing I feared most about this item, if the minion spends most of his time counting sheep it will flop.

Another ting is this - I bet they're repeating the same mistake they made with Unleashed. They're assuming anyone can just slap the sword on and get a 6link or in this case - a powerful minion, so they probably made the minion a bit underpowered.

That said, I levelled a char in flashback specifically for Dervish, I'll get back to you when I obtain the blade and give it a spin, if it doesn't work on him it won't work at all.

AI aside I may have a solution. Necromancer Facebreaker Low life or CI. i plan on trying it maybe using zombies or skeletons as tanks who knows. Probably going to flop but i'll let you know

Ok, got the blade, shuffled gear around a bit for unarmed and here we go. My impressions about the gearing process are that an unarmed build without a shield can have resist troubles, and mine sucked too as seen in few places at the video. It can be remedied with better jewelry or a few well placed points on tree, but looking for high phys rolls, life and reses can be tricky - or costly. I'll probably dig out something on my other chars but this was the best I could scrounge up at the moment. One other thing is if you're doing a hybrid like me you will think long and hard about the helm slot because it's very important to a summoner, I decided to skip helm dps for tougher minions myself.

The char is a melee/summon hybrid built on Champion platform using the taunt branch for better group synergy. Besides Dervish he has two spectres in a 4L, a support-equipped Guardian and a Stone golem (note the damage from multistrike slam in the video, too bad he uses it rarely).

https://youtu.be/bkYzCgWrHVI

Well, it's evident that Dervish can do some damage (it's a 7L minion after all), but you kinda have to give him the chance. If you make a real facebreaker build and just slap the sword on it you won't really notice much difference except for Rampage and Onslaught, and giving up your shield just for that doesn't strike me as terribly wise. However, if you balance your warrior and summoner aspects properly, you will get something that makes a bit of sense despite the lowish power level.

Well, you do builds like these for fun anyway, as long as it's fun for you and can kill a few zombies it's all good.

No luck with the necromancer approach. I tried everything. I thought I had a good theory but like I said I was expecting a flop. Mechanics were great and Dervish did well but my unarmed was just way too weak.

Fun usually isn't viable in this game so I'm not surprised.

Did you say FUN???

NERF IT! WAAAAH! No one's supposed to have fun except for me and my vigilant strike build!

I managed to build something half decent with it. Nice clearspeed once it's rolling and it scales with the map itself.

[2.3] Dancing Dominatrix - Dancing Dervish/Dominating Blow Melee Necromancer