Guild Wars 2

Does anyone know what happened to the dervishes from Nighfall? Did they just cease to exist in GW2? I see a lot of references to the old sunspear order but nothing about dervishes.

It’s hard to say, and we don’t have any solid answers. The dervishes were faith-based, even more than monks, so it’s likely the silence of the gods had the same effect of largely breaking the profession’s identity. The monks went on to remake themselves as guardians. We don’t know if the dervishes were able to accomplish something similar.

Either way, I expect we’ll hear at least something about them in PoF.

The dervishes went to the same place paragons did.

Rognik.2579:

The dervishes went to the same place paragons did.

Into guardians? Possibly, but there isn’t really a lot dervish-related in the guardian except Whirling Wrath, and spinning attacks are commonplace nowadays.

I have a suspicion that they might rather have gone the way that ritualists (outside Cantha) seem to have gone – parts of their traditions remained to be absorbed into other professions while the core profession disappeared. Reapers behave a lot like Grenth dervishes, for example, and the weaver might be seen as a kind of expanded dervish using a more practical weapon (they’re said to be inspired by djinn, but djinn in Nightfall and EOTN were often dervishes).

Ultimately, though, this may be a question that gets answered – one way or another – in PoF.

I can’t remember which dev exactly it was that said it but it was confirmed that we will see some reference to the Dervish in PoF.

Whether it’s just a nod to the class somewhere, an NPC, or some other way of finding out what happened to them we don’t know yet but there will be something somewhere.

I always thought Dervish traditions were absorbed by modern professions, particularly Guardians, but to a lesser extent all humans. Dervish trademarks were using enchantments for protection, Fighting with scythes, calling on the dessert sands/winds for protection, and wearing the forms of their gods in battle.

Many of these are seen in Guardians, who have been describe thusly in GW2 novels:

“It’s a pile of Elonian protection magic, mixed with a little monk training, wrapped up in some crazy ritualist hoo-ha from Cantha. A real grab bag of “you can’t hurt me”. They’re called guardians, and simply put, they mean trouble."

That all being said, Reaper’s Shroud has a number of scythe skills bearing the named of old Dervish skills.

Also, any member of the human race can now learn to use Avatar skills, available in the for, of Avatar of Melandru and Reaper of Grenth.

There’s an older reference to guardians being a merging of monk and paragon, so the “Elonian protection magic” could be coming from the paragon side. Whether dervish is also included is… ambiguous.

While on the topic of skill names coming from the dervish, though… a lot of the spellbreaker skills do. In fact, for all they’re describing the spellbreaker as mesmer through a warrior’s lens, it’s probably actually closer to an enchantment-hate dervish in behaviour, particularly if you use a greatsword…