Debilitating Shot - Will it evade the nerf bat?

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Quote: Originally Posted by Linkusmax

Quote: Originally Posted by dgb

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.

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

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

Quote: Originally Posted by Evilsod

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

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.

Quote: Originally Posted by Evilsod

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.

Quote: Originally Posted by dgb

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.