Yes, in theory you can squeeze much more sheer damage out of Dervish. During my experiments I was looking at almost 130k sheet dps at some point, but the character ended up lacking many core stats, so I had to tone it down a bit.
Dervish also can do dps while kiting due to his ability to stack poison on the enemy.
Honestly, between Blademaster and Dervish I enjoyed Dervish more. When farming as Blademaster I had to often skip trash enemies because my AoE was mediocre, but as Dervish I just Shadow Strike into the crowd, use Ring of Steel with Tainted Eruption, followed by ABB with Scorpion Sting, and move on, most weak enemies will just die from this combo shortly after.
If it isn’t about hardcore then Dervish is a perfectly fine choice to go with. For hardcore Blademaster is a better starting pick, because he’s more durable due to how things aligned. I’m 100% sure Blademaster would had survived that one encounter.