Grughar's 31 Dervish

I've had several people request that I make a guide for how I play Dervish during my raid streams, so here we go. Note: I am not a normal guide writer so forgive me if this isn't exactly how you'd like it written.

The build I use is the 31/4/4

Buffs
Font of Savagery
Zephyr

Macros

This is the macro to use once you are at 100 cunning, as such I call it my Cunning Macro
#show Whirling Dervish
suppressmacrofailures
cast Whirling Dervish
cast Lashing Wind
cast @self Spiritualism

This is the macro to use once you are at 100 fury, as such I call it my Fury Macro
#show Earthfall
suppressmacrofailures
cast Earthfall
cast Tectonic Spike
cast Seismic Smash
cast Subduction
cast Aftershock
cast @self Spiritualism

Individual Abilities
Primal Avatar: Wind Serpent
Air Cutter (damage)
Savage Twister (dot)
Fury Blast (dot)
Squall (lethal buff if needed / pull)
Scirocco (interrupt)
Rockslide (charge that doesn't suck anymore)
Shifting Wind (amazingly OP defensive cd)

Concept

Here is a link to our first Pagura kill on release week for a raid breakdown so you can see why you should argue your right to play melee / not hybrid. This week I had a very similar breakdown but was #1 dps with 125k total dps and 66.5k into the boss; the only person that did more dps to the boss than me was a 61 Harb that pulled 72k. Sorry, I don't have a screenshot for that one because I dced during Arak and lost my parses. It's worth noting that I do not have BiS dps runes, dream orbs, and I am wearing tank pants for hit, because I'm a main spec tank that did not get enough guard gear from HK before t3 release. Those dps numbers (for all players) will of course go down considerably depending on how well your tanks kill nests / if they try at all.

This is where I stress that I'm not a math guy that strategically builds the perfect theory build. This is a raid tested rotation that is effective and feels right for me, so if you are looking for #1 Dervish Theory Spec look at other guides. This is to give people that are struggling with current Dervish options an alternative. Note that when I say right for me, that's coming from someone who mained as a Warrior from beta to Primalist release. So, it feels more warrior-y than Vulcanist.

What I do differently is prioritize Air Cutter 0s casts, so a lot of this rotation will be based off of getting the Quick Breeze proc and using them. Whirling Dervish and Earthfall are to be used on CD, making it almost possible to perfectly maintain your Cyclicism buffs without the mastery. Due to mechanics and the like I still recommend using it, though, cause the alternative is a stun that's not super raid useful unless specifically needed.

Rotation

Depending on how fast your raid puts up raid cds I recommend opening using either:

Seismic Smash > PA OR Tectonic Spike > Air Cutter > Seismic Smash > PA

During PA I'm a fan of abusing the 0s cd.

PA > Cunning Macro (Whirling Dervish channel) > Savage Twister > Lashing Wind > Air Cutter spam x7 (8 depending on latency) > Fury Macro (Earthfall channel) [PA buff is done here] > Air Cutter > Fury Macro > Air Cutter > Savage Twister [this will be done after every Earthfall to avoid clipping Savage Twister]

This puts you at Harmony with Savage Twister up, from here we want to get to 100 Cunning.

Fury Macro (Tectonic Spike) [20] > Air Cutter [10] > Fury Macro (Seismic Smash) [30] > Air Cutter [20] > Fury Macro (Subduction) [60] > Air Cutter [50] > Fury Macro (Seismic Smash) [70] > Air Cutter [60] > Fury Macro (Aftershock) [80] > Fury Macro (Tectonic Spike) [100].

Depending on how fast you are / any delays in the fight, the order of those abilities will change but the concept won't. You'll still have to double tap Fury Macro twice at the end for 100 Cunning without ignoring Whirling Dervish.

That looks confusing, for a visual I have Air Cutter on 1 and Fury Macro on 2, so it's 2121212122. If you continue the back and forth all the way to 100 whirling dervish remains available too long, but this is viable if you know a cleaving situation is only seconds away, or a phase change.

From here we want to go toward 100 Fury for Earthfall.

Cunning Macro (Whirling Dervish Channel) [0] > Savage Twister [0] > Air Cutter [10] > Cunning Macro (Lashing Wind) [50] > Fury Blast [10] > Cunning Macro (Lashing Wind) [50] > Cunning Macro (Lashing Wind) [90] > Cunning Macro (Lashing Wind) [100] > Cunning Macro (Lashing Wind) [100] > Fury Macro (Earthfall channel) [0] > Air Cutter > Fury Macro [10] > Air Cutter 0 > Savage Twister

For me this looks like

Note: IF your latency/mechanics work in such a way that Earthfall is off GCD already, ignore the second [100] Lashing Wind, it's just filler. Alternatively, you may find yourself forced to wait on using Earthfall, in which case you'd use your Fury Macro and get an Air cutter in before another Lashing, or if you're really delayed you can use another Fury Blast (without clipping the original) and Lashing.

From here you're waiting for PA to be off cooldown, so spam Fury Macro > Air Cutter back and forth until both PA and Whirling Dervish are off CD, it doesn't matter what your Cunning is at because it will go to 100 once you use PA and the whole thing can begin again.

Rotation starts over from the PA block.

If a mechanic forces you to mess up your rotation timing, you can spam Fury Macro > Air Cutter (use Savage Twister if you know it will fit well) to "waste" some time waiting for stuff to line up again.If this happens when you can use Earthfall don't forget about your Fury Blast to avoid messing up that cooldown.

Conclusion

I understand that there are holes that can/should be optimized, but this is effective and has a good flow to it if you're OK spamming a lot of Air Cutter. I encourage all players to pursue builds that work for them as well as builds that achieve the necessary numbers, so if you have a Dervish build that parses higher / smoother for you, I am not trying to win you over with this.

Ultimately, I just hope I didn't typo anything / miss something. That'd be embarrassing.

Cheers for reading.

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Grughar's 31 Dervish