Curse

Taurohtar · Sep 24, 2006, 02:40 PM // 14:40

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 · Sep 24, 2006, 02:46 PM // 14:46

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` · Sep 24, 2006, 03:54 PM // 15:54

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

Skuld · Sep 24, 2006, 03:58 PM // 15:58

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 · Sep 24, 2006, 04:01 PM // 16:01

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 · Sep 24, 2006, 10:04 PM // 22:04

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

Linkusmax · Sep 25, 2006, 03:26 AM // 03:26

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 · Sep 25, 2006, 03:40 AM // 03:40

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 · Sep 26, 2006, 05:48 PM // 17:48

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 · Sep 26, 2006, 08:15 PM // 20:15

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 · Sep 27, 2006, 12:53 AM // 00:53

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

Maria The Princess · Sep 27, 2006, 12:54 AM // 00:54

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

Kwisatz_Haderach · Sep 27, 2006, 01:12 AM // 01:12

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 · Sep 27, 2006, 01:25 AM // 01:25

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 · Sep 27, 2006, 04:31 AM // 04:31

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 · Sep 27, 2006, 03:08 PM // 15:08

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 · Sep 28, 2006, 01:41 AM // 01:41

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 · Sep 28, 2006, 02:27 PM // 14:27

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 · Sep 28, 2006, 06:38 PM // 18:38

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 · Sep 28, 2006, 10:49 PM // 22:49

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.