Debilitating Shot - Will it evade the nerf bat?

Taurohtar

Academy Page

Join Date: Sep 2006

I've been spectating a lot of Val games lately and in most of them there is a lot of talk about Debilitating Shot taking a hit from the nerf stick. 2 Rangers using it is overpowered to some. While others argue that it will not be nerfed because 2 E-surge Mesmers hits the target harder.

Other theories are thinking it will be linked to the Expertise attribute line, which wouldnt be too much of a whack for DS Rangers.

What do you think?

Legendary Shiz

Legendary Shiz

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Apr 2006

lol doubt it gets nerfed. There are far too many pressing issues, and they are trying to balance the new skills + dervish and paragon skills. D shot's been the same for quite some time, not sure why it would get nerfed now of all times. And to be honest, if they changed the skill it probably would NEVER get used ANYWHERE.

Carth`

Carth`

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Apr 2006

I never thought it was that good until I had 3 rangers shooting me with it.

Skuld

Skuld

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Sep 2005

Thousend Tigers Apund Ur Head [Ttgr]

A/

I suggest making it linked to marksmanship and giving it 3..8 or something, that would dull it down for cripshots and trappers and stuff

Thomas.knbk

Thomas.knbk

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jul 2006

Esurgers Should hit the target harder than ds rangers for the simple reason that esurge is elite and ds is not. nuff said imo

chichory

chichory

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jan 2006

R/W

Its already been hit atleast once if i remember correctly, use to be like 5 recharge i think.

Linkusmax

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Sep 2005

Hell Eburn hits harder than this. No need to nerf it, it only does so well because 3 rangers are doing it at once.

dgb

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Sep 2005

Mo/Me

Quote:
Originally Posted by Linkusmax
Hell Eburn hits harder than this. No need to nerf it, it only does so well because 3 rangers are doing it at once. -10 energy every 10, vs -8 and 80 damage every 20? The damage from simply getting shot, especially if it's a MA ranger will often mean that the damage is taken out of the equation and it has over double the -energy.

I prefer to have a surger on me as a monk. I can dodge their surges pretty easily, this thing comes up so damn quickly that you're going to get hit when you have energy quite a few times.

Evilsod

Evilsod

Banned

Join Date: Mar 2006

England

Lievs Death Squad [LDS]

Quote:
Originally Posted by dgb
-10 energy every 10, vs -8 and 80 damage every 20? The damage from simply getting shot, especially if it's a MA ranger will often mean that the damage is taken out of the equation and it has over double the -energy.

I prefer to have a surger on me as a monk. I can dodge their surges pretty easily, this thing comes up so damn quickly that you're going to get hit when you have energy quite a few times. That doesn't even make sense. How can you dodge E-surge/burn? And not be able to dodge DS? When you can dodge un-missable spells and not arrows i begin to wonder...

Bloodied Blade

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jan 2006

R/

Well, DS actually has been nerfed once...used to have a 5 second recharge, which translated to something like 6 energy degen with just 1 guy using it..and it didn't actually do a degen, so the e-denial wasn't capped. I would love to see a ranger skill that did like 1..2 energy degen for x seconds in something like expertise though.

@dgb: if you look at it, DS is -3 energy regen if there's a ranger camping on the target spamming every 10 seconds, always having energy, and never missing. A surger using surge + burn whenever they pop results in slightly over 2 pips of energy degen. If they're also spamming things like Signet of Weariness and Ether Feast, the degen is ~equal. The main reason I think that DS does more is just that the surger's bar can't miss, whereas things that are common in gvg/hoh now like Displacement and evasion/block make DS fail to hit.

The pressure people are feeling is just like if you had 2-3 surgers camped on you, people are just used to 1 surger and not getting mass e-denial from rangers.

Maria The Princess

Maria The Princess

Forge Runner

Join Date: Mar 2006

Aequitas Deis

PLZ delete this thread before ANET reads it and decides its time to nurf it

Maria The Princess

Maria The Princess

Forge Runner

Join Date: Mar 2006

Aequitas Deis

PLZ delete this thread before ANET reads it and decides its time to nurf it

Kwisatz_Haderach

Kwisatz_Haderach

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Oct 2005

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evilsod
That doesn't even make sense. How can you dodge E-surge/burn? And not be able to dodge DS? When you can dodge un-missable spells and not arrows i begin to wonder... i think is this best reason why ds should not be nerfed.

If you want to mitigate its effects JUST strafe!!!

cant strafe because of fw?

just blind the rangers with your blinding flash/hp spammer!!!

too many rangers?

get a warrior to bring sheilds up!!!!!

the point is compared to e burn/e surger this is way to conditional to be considered being nerfed.

yesitsrob

yesitsrob

Elite Guru

Join Date: Sep 2005

Manchester, England

SMS/Victrix

I think if anything should be changed about it, then it should be making it aligned to an attribute, probaby marks. I think it has a fair amount of practical counters, but at the same time think it's a very powerful ability to be able to deny 10 energy without really having to spec into anything except expertise to make it worth it. You can put this on just about anything with a bow, which is a _little_ silly..... So maybe spec it to marksmanship, but nothing too out of hand

dgb

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Sep 2005

Mo/Me

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evilsod
That doesn't even make sense. How can you dodge E-surge/burn? And not be able to dodge DS? When you can dodge un-missable spells and not arrows i begin to wonder... Swapping into -sets is equivelant to taking the burns and surges out of the game and they come so intermittently that once you get into the rhythym of them you can pretty easily dodge them with this swapping. Debilitating comes up so frequently that to hide in -energy from it will stop you casting entirely.

Fundamentally, my issue with this is that it lets you acheive the energy denial efficiency of a surger, without any attribute spec and using only one skill. That makes it way to easy to put on any ranger, it's not uncommon to see three of these things going around. Meanwhile when they aren't shooting you with debilitating, they have the rest of their time, skill bar and their elite skill to do whatever they want.

I've got nothing against rangers being an effective e-denial character. I've got everything against them being that by near default and then being able to do everything else on top of that.

Make it scale with marksmanship and 15e cost. It's still a viable skill but you start having to think about how you're going to run this character with debilitating rather than it being autopilot to e-denial.

Evilsod

Evilsod

Banned

Join Date: Mar 2006

England

Lievs Death Squad [LDS]

Why is that a viable reason? Just becuase it comes around more often than an E-burn/surge so you can't focus swap doesn't mean anything. Rangers can't bring Mind Wrack, remember that.

dgb

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Sep 2005

Mo/Me

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evilsod
Why is that a viable reason? Just becuase it comes around more often than an E-burn/surge so you can't focus swap doesn't mean anything. Rangers can't bring Mind Wrack, remember that. Mind-wrack is self defeating. The amount of energy you put into it means you can't effectively do anything other than e-deny. It's more of the same, you've now devoted nearly the entire bar and almost all of the mesmers energy to surge, burn and mindwrack the monk, while the ranger is getting the same returns for just one skill slot.

It's not that rangers e-deny, it's that they do it by default because of how good DS is. The ranger description should read

"This class has one less skill slot than all others, however it by default has the best e-denial ability in the game".

Ruby Lightheart

Ruby Lightheart

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Jul 2005

Clan of Elders

R/Mo

They wont nerf this skill. That particular shot is fairly easy to defend against. As stated before, a warrior with Shields Up or a Paragon for that matter, could easily defend his party against much of this attack. Also, bow shots for the most part can be blocked, evaded or interrupted by any profession if they know what they are doing. Whether youare pvping or pveing, you should always take some sort of blocker with you. Its not just good against rangers , but other classes attacks as well.

As a primary ranger, I myself carry a blocker skill/spell so I know just how effective they can be.

Evilsod

Evilsod

Banned

Join Date: Mar 2006

England

Lievs Death Squad [LDS]

Quote:
Originally Posted by dgb
Mind-wrack is self defeating. The amount of energy you put into it means you can't effectively do anything other than e-deny. It's more of the same, you've now devoted nearly the entire bar and almost all of the mesmers energy to surge, burn and mindwrack the monk, while the ranger is getting the same returns for just one skill slot.

It's not that rangers e-deny, it's that they do it by default because of how good DS is. The ranger description should read

"This class has one less skill slot than all others, however it by default has the best e-denial ability in the game". You do realise if they put this skill on a sliding scale with Marksmanship you'd only end up with rangers running 16 Marksmanship and Seeking Arrows maybe with Practiced Stance, so you'd be even more screwed than before since now you can't block/evade the arrow either.

Falconer

Falconer

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jan 2005

This thread has some poor analysis of the skill I've seen yet. And some very poor suggestions.

The skill right now is already linked intimately to expertise. Furthermore, if you're playing 'energy wars', have you accounted for the fact that the ranger has only 75% the energy regeneration of his target the vast majority of the time. So it's not just '4' energy, it's more like 5 1/3 compared to a monk or mesmer (your typical target). At 5 energy expertise, it's more like 6 2/3, at 6... it's 8 energy equivalent. That should very quickly show that the skill is not usable without extremely high expertise investment (at least 12). I don't feel this is a broken measure by comparing to other raw energy users, because rangers don't have adrenaline to fall back on.

So given *14* expertise (surge/burn mesmers go for 14 domination I'll point out). You end up spending 4 energy to MAYBE get 10 of the targets. The damage is irrelevant, the skill adds no damage, that ranger will get the bows damage if he fires debil or just fires a normal arrow and saves the energy for something else such as a cripshot. The skill is a 'pure' skill in that aspect. The only purpose to spending energy on/bringing debilitating shot is to attack the targets energy.

Surge/burn on the other hand are dual purpose skills. Much like life siphon and similar, they both debilitate AND damage. Some of the problems with mesmers domination is that they have so many domination skills to attack energy. 80 armor ignoring is not to be shrugged at, especially with surges large AOE. Then don't forget there is a 3rd skill in domination, signet of weariness w/ the same domination spec, AOE with no up front cost and undodgeable since it's a signet. Energy tap/drain suffer from the same problem, they're both denial and management tools, so they often get judged inadequate on both grounds.

To give an example of how easily the skill is currently countered. Consider shields up/aegis/guardian none of which are uncommon, blocks 50% of the arrows. If only every other shot is hitting, now you have a circumstance where the ranger with high expertise is spendig 8 for every 10 debilitating, which after regeneration differences are accounted for is more like, 10.67. Spectating iQ in the last tourney you'll notice their cripshot was blinded very quickly every time he tried to go after the enemy monks with debilitating shot. So while in terms of raw potential, yes it can be cause of concern, it's much easier to counter because it is an attack and subject to all the accompanying benefits and weaknesses.

Furthermore, we don't see surge/burn mesmers not showing up because this skill is too strong. That lends me to believe that debil rangers aren't out of balance with surge/burn mesmers in the current game. Yes they go do difference purposes in a build, but this is one aspect on which can accomplish similar goals by vastly different means.

Evilsod

Evilsod

Banned

Join Date: Mar 2006

England

Lievs Death Squad [LDS]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Falconer
This thread has some poor analysis of the skill I've seen yet. And some very poor suggestions.
Your whole frigging post makes no sense!

Quote: The skill right now is already linked intimately to expertise. Are you sure your talking about the same skill? It looks directly linked to nothing to me. Just because expertise reduces its cost means nothing...

Quote: Furthermore, if you're playing 'energy wars', have you accounted for the fact that the ranger has only 75% the energy regeneration of his target the vast majority of the time. So it's not just '4' energy, it's more like 5 1/3 compared to a monk or mesmer (your typical target). At 5 energy expertise, it's more like 6 2/3, at 6... it's 8 energy equivalent. That should very quickly show that the skill is not usable without extremely high expertise investment (at least 12). I don't feel this is a broken measure by comparing to other raw energy users, because rangers don't have adrenaline to fall back on. Again, wtf? A ranger having 3 regen means nothing, a Paragon has 2 regen (i didn't even notice and i played one!) and practically NEVER run out of energy if played properly. Either i can't understand because i've had too much alcohol, this sentence makes no sense, or both.

Quote: So given *14* expertise (surge/burn mesmers go for 14 domination I'll point out). You end up spending 4 energy to MAYBE get 10 of the targets. The damage is irrelevant, the skill adds no damage, that ranger will get the bows damage if he fires debil or just fires a normal arrow and saves the energy for something else such as a cripshot. The skill is a 'pure' skill in that aspect. The only purpose to spending energy on/bringing debilitating shot is to attack the targets energy. If your gonna be comparing things, at least be realistic.... rangers don't run 14 expertise unless trapping.

Quote:
Surge/burn on the other hand are dual purpose skills. Much like life siphon and similar, they both debilitate AND damage. Some of the problems with mesmers domination is that they have so many domination skills to attack energy. 80 armor ignoring is not to be shrugged at, especially with surges large AOE. Then don't forget there is a 3rd skill in domination, signet of weariness w/ the same domination spec, AOE with no up front cost and undodgeable since it's a signet. Energy tap/drain suffer from the same problem, they're both denial and management tools, so they often get judged inadequate on both grounds. Fair enough... domination mesmers run domination skills... what did you expect? A ranger to run pure Wilderness Survival? Its unlinked, course a rangers gonna have a more varied skill bar.

Quote:
To give an example of how easily the skill is currently countered. Consider shields up/aegis/guardian none of which are uncommon, blocks 50% of the arrows. If only every other shot is hitting, now you have a circumstance where the ranger with high expertise is spendig 8 for every 10 debilitating, which after regeneration differences are accounted for is more like, 10.67. Spectating iQ in the last tourney you'll notice their cripshot was blinded very quickly every time he tried to go after the enemy monks with debilitating shot. So while in terms of raw potential, yes it can be cause of concern, it's much easier to counter because it is an attack and subject to all the accompanying benefits and weaknesses. 8 and high expertise? Wha??

Quote:
Furthermore, we don't see surge/burn mesmers not showing up because this skill is too strong. That lends me to believe that debil rangers aren't out of balance with surge/burn mesmers in the current game. Yes they go do difference purposes in a build, but this is one aspect on which can accomplish similar goals by vastly different means. Thats what blind is for... SB is a slightly extreme method of countering E-denial in comparison to Blinding Flash.

Bloodied Blade

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jan 2006

R/

You can blind the ranger using DS and you can block/evade/obstruct. It's even interruptable. You can't block/evade/obstruct a surger, and blinding them is a waste of energy. There are very few ways (comparitively) to stop a surger.

EDIT:

@Falconer, since it appears that you're replying to me (since I posted figures for pips of e-denial etc.)- You really overshot what I was saying. None of that was ranger energy management. It was all about the amount of e-denial done by spamming DS when it's up. It results in 3 pips exactly (negating travel time of the arrow and animation time). When combined with Oath Shot, it does almost 6 pips of e-denial, fluctuating between 6 and 3 (every 20 seconds it spikes breifly to 6e-denial pips, otherwise it's 3).

Falconer

Falconer

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jan 2005

Evilsod: I don't see what you're getting all huffy about... the comment about poor suggestions was directly aimed at the 3..8 marksmanship scrapheap level nerf someone stated w/ no argumentation, no rationale why it should be changed.

During the BWE's long ago, debilitating shot in it's current form was listed as an expertise skill. Dual shot IIRC was listed as marksmanship at the time. The only thing about the skill which has changed since then was it took big huge nerf in recharge (5->10s) and disappeared from common use for a long time. I'll leave it for you to puzzle out why it's attributeless now. (Hint: a lot of prophecies skills were changed to attributeless between the BWE's and release w/o changes to the skill/spell themselves!).

Just because the skill doesn't have a X..Y field does not mean it is not intricately tied to the primary attribute. The skill could read. Pay 10..4 energy to fire an arrow which will remove 10 energy from the target if hits (expertise). The effect would be exactly the same.

Of energy and classes:
Right now there are two common models for energy. 4 pips straight which is what other energy only casters have. And what I like to refer to as the split rail (2 pips plus adrenaline).
Rangers do not have adrenaline and they're the only class which doesn't fit this mold, so you need to compare their costs directly to the 4 pip classes to get a good idea of their balance. Simplified, a 15 energy ranger skill is roughly equivalent to a 10 energy spell after expertise reductions and energy normalization for balance purposes. Normalized most ranger skills are roughly 3-4, 6-7, 10'ish, or 15'ish cost compared to other energy only classes.

Of expertise and domination:
14 is fairly common breakpoint for rangers packing 10 energy skills. Not only trappers. If you have a cripshot running 15.. he's still over that breakpoint, just as a dom mesmer running 15 has invested more in the attribute than he needs to get the maximum effect out of surge/burn/SoW. The point is it illustrates roughly equivalent levels of attribute investment.

Of domination:
Debilitating shot does one thing and one thing only. You spend energy to maybe remove more energy from the target, you get the damage no matter what you do provided you fire an arrow any arrow. Current domination skills are 'half' skills in comparison. Half of their effect is the energy denial, the other halve is something extra. If we had a domination skill which was in effect, spend X energy, remove Y energy from target foe and that's it. Then it better be roughly equivalent to the mold of savage shot/power leak.

Actually here we do, signet of weariness (often paired with mantra of inscriptions). Which is a spend 0 to remove 8 from foe and nearby unavoidable (net 8 to net 6 for debil). It's on a 30s recharge, which makes sense... if you consider nearby to hit 3 people (2 AOE grades over single target)... that's 24 energy lost, for 0 energy cost.. every 30s. Even at only two targets hit, they're roughly equivalent (16net every 32s, vs. 12net every 24s)

Surge/burners don't simply hit a target with surge/burn to debilitate their energy, they do it for damage as well. Sometimes surge/burners hit a target not to debilitate it, but to spike it for the kill (they're after the armor ignoring damage). Sometimes they hit the target to debilitate it, knowing the damage is inconsequential and will simply be mopped up by heal party. Sometimes, they can use the skill for both reasons at the same time. It's a half skill. The arguments I'm seeing for nerfs are based on the balancing of the half skills, the reason I feel it necessary to point this out. Not only that they simply can't be blocked/evaded/blinded... but because they are fundamentally different skills.

Bloodied Blade:
No not quite. It's actually less than 3 pips. Because lets say we have a shortbow, 2s firing time, 10s recharge. The actual cycle time is more like 12s. At 12s, it's only 2.5 pips denial roughly provided you never miss and hit it religiously. This puts the skill not too far above other skills such as malaise.

If you're out to debilitate a target heavily... then there's always oath*-echo*/debil/SQ which used to be common. In fact, that combo would commonly also include Signet of Weariness back when pure energy denial was running rampant. Oath shot, took a signficant nerf in terms of using it to fast cycle already faster cycling skills when it recently had it's recharge changed from 20->25s.


To me the real question for many skills and not just Debil Shot is this. How much of a premium do they recieve for being piggybacked on 'attacks'. Because attacks are some of the easiest to counter. Right now the game is predominated with warrior hate (which by extension is also largely ranger hate), just how effective is debil shot going to be when you have a me/elly tossing blinding surge every 3-4s and zapping anyone wielding a melee/bow/spear he can see? Lets put this in another vein, why can I savage shot every 5.5s, but only power spike every 12.25?

some guy

some guy

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Jul 2006

SPAWN CAMPING YOUR HOUSE

We Speed Clear H O H [ HsC]

4 rangers shooting at you=basicaly you are dead.

lennymon

lennymon

Forge Runner

Join Date: Nov 2005

Seattle

Odin's Hammer [OH] - Servant's of Fortuna [SoF]

R/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evilsod
If your gonna be comparing things, at least be realistic.... rangers don't run 14 expertise unless trapping.
I do it frequently, I run 16 for cripshot as well as my standard pve build (spike/interrupt) ...and touch... but admittedly thats not 14. And someday I promise to run 14 expertise instead of 12 on my trapper build

oh by the way, your post was very lucid Evilsod, so Im gonna have to go with, its not the alcohol, its the sentence

MelechRic

MelechRic

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jun 2005

RA

[ODIN]

N/Mo

Ah... I pine for the days of the 5 energy DS. I used to spam that bugger in RA all the time. Every caster I met either ended up cursing me or crying for a nerf.

Anyway... I don't see a need for a change. Sure, it's potent when 4 rangers use it on a single target, but the same can be said for a lot of other skills.

Evilsod

Evilsod

Banned

Join Date: Mar 2006

England

Lievs Death Squad [LDS]

Quote:
Originally Posted by lennymon
I do it frequently, I run 16 for cripshot as well as my standard pve build (spike/interrupt) ...and touch... but admittedly thats not 14. And someday I promise to run 14 expertise instead of 12 on my trapper build

oh by the way, your post was very lucid Evilsod, so Im gonna have to go with, its not the alcohol, its the sentence Now ask yourself, why do you run 16 Expertise? Running 16 Expertise means you MUST use a major along with the sup expertise just to reach the 8second breakpoint in Cripshot. If you don't have 8 seconds... why are you using it? You may aswell play like a Snarling Driftwood (and how would ever want that.... they suck!) with the awesome 2/3 second cripple. If your gonna run Cripshot as elite... you might aswell at least make it the highest it could be.

Just because it costs less to spam doesn't mean you'll be in range all the time or even need to reuse it. Apply Poison covers it for a reason. Running 16 expertise just limits you doing anything else. Running 11 expertise 14 marks (think its 12 WS) has been working fine for me, no need to overly spam Cripshot.

And i'm pretty sure it was the alcohol...

mathijn

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Jan 2006

holland

[PIKY]

R/

16 expertise rocks^^

DS+echo is also very funny with 16 expertise

Linkusmax

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Sep 2005

Cripshots usually 13-14 expertise.

dgb

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Sep 2005

Mo/Me

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evilsod
You do realise if they put this skill on a sliding scale with Marksmanship you'd only end up with rangers running 16 Marksmanship and Seeking Arrows maybe with Practiced Stance, so you'd be even more screwed than before since now you can't block/evade the arrow either. And that's exactly the point. If they want to do that they can, good for them. Then they can't afford to do everything else. That's a perfectly acceptible solution to me, rangers can do energy denial but they actually have to sacrifice something for it.

Black Ops Ranger

Black Ops Ranger

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Jul 2006

South Carolina

Heroes of Thermopylae

R/Mo

Its an good skill, the reason it isn't nerfed is b/c not many people use it

dgb

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Sep 2005

Mo/Me

Quote:
Originally Posted by Black Ops Ranger
Its an good skill, the reason it isn't nerfed is b/c not many people use it Watch observer mode much? Every ranger in GVG has it.