Guild Wars 2

I’ve often wondered why this was the case. Why is a defensive boon so dependent on an offensive stat? Wouldn’t it make better sense for retaliation to be based on the toughness stat since it requires you to get hit to have any benefit?

I understand that ANet is now looking into diversifying stat combos people use. I feel it would go a long way in improving that by changing retaliation to be dependent on the toughness stat, and would give defensive builds some ability to deal a small amount of damage at the same time.

Retaliation is already skillless enough as it is. Are you suggesting Anet should tweak it so that semi invulnerable builds can deal heavy damage based on their toughness?

If that happens, I’ll start asking Anet to increase my HP based on my critical damage stat.

Retaliation is something I think should be based on Healing Power.
its a clear Support Buff, so it should also scale with a Support Stat and that is Healing Power.

thus Support gets more important here and becomes more equal to Damage in importancy. I found Retaliation always already in WvW way too powerful due to the fact, that is scales with Power and thus trivializes the Support aspect of that Buff and turned it just into a Buff Version of basically a similar working Confusion …

From my perspective Retaliation as listed is fine, but only if it actually worked as it is listed.

Reflect incoming damage back to its source; stacks duration.

At present time it does not reflect incoming damage at all. Instead it basically counterattacks with damage disproportionate to the damage that was being dealt:
198.45 + (0.075 * Power)

As such, I feel that this formula should be removed and Retaliation changed to something more akin to Retribution from the original Guild Wars.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Retribution

This would change Retaliation to simply deal a portion of the actual incoming damage back to its source.

EXAMPLE:
Retaliation – Reflect 25% of incoming damage back to its source; stacks duration

• 10 little hits of 200 damage each (2000 total) would deal 25% (10×50=500) damage back to its source.
• 1 big hit of 2000 damage would deal 25% (1×500=500) damage back to its source.

With such a change the effects of reflected damage are equal across the board and do not punish players that have attacks with multiple small hits compared to players that have attacks with single big hits.