Guild Wars 2

One thing that strikes me about retaliation is that punishes skills that generate a lot of small, quick repeating, attacks far more than single big strikes: mesmer’s blurred frenzy, engineers flamethrower and grenades, thieves unload, warrior’s offhand axe, etc.

The original design of the skill was “reflect a percentage of the damage back to the enemy”, but with the current implementation (flat damage on hit, based on player power) the punishment seems unfair for those skills, considering that one blurred frenzy or unload can output similar damage to a warrior hammer stun and get punished 6-8 times more.

Applying the skill damage multiplier (per hit) to the retaliation damage would be more in line with the “reflect a percentage of the damage” design goal, could create a more level playing field for all classes and allow for more build variety.

You forgot what I’d consider the worst of them all, Ranger’s Barrage. You can easily kill yourself when you tap that skill off.

My ranger is only lv 29
I checked the wiki and yes, barrage sounds awful for retaliation damage.

It’s perfectly fair how it is. You hit more times, you get hit more times back.

Sawnic.6795:

It’s perfectly fair how it is. You hit more times, you get hit more times back.

I have to admit. I’m biased. Retaliation is my least favorite boon/littlekittenyellowtag in the game. I very much enjoy staff Ele, despite all of the complaints attributed to it, and there simply isn’t enough boon removal in the game to effectively counter Retaliation, and Eles have none available to them. Even the Sigil of Nullification is ineffective due to its internal cooldown.

However, I will return to the topic and offer an example:

A warrior or thief that can make a single hit for 5k gets hit with Retaliation once for let’s say 200 damage.

To inflict the same amount of damage, you have an Elementalist or Ranger that MUST hit 5 times at 1k each, gets hit with Retaliation 5 times for 1k damage.

So, in this scenario you have burst builds taking 4% of the damage they’re dealing in return, compared with steady DPS builds taking 20% of the damage they’re dealing. Admittedly, the numbers are rounded so we don’t hurt our brains with math, but it is representative of how the current system works, at least as far as I understand it.

That honestly doesn’t seem ‘fair’. IMO, Retaliation damage should directly correspond to the amount of damage inflicted, not the number of hits.

The only argument that makes sense that I’ve heard in favor of the current on-hit implementation is that condition builds would almost entirely bypass retaliation if it was based on a percentage of direct damage. However, that just seems like an effective counter-build to me, rather than a reason to keep the status quo.

Vick.6805:

Sawnic.6795:

It’s perfectly fair how it is. You hit more times, you get hit more times back.

I have to admit. I’m biased. Retaliation is my least favorite boon/littlekittenyellowtag in the game. I very much enjoy staff Ele, despite all of the complaints attributed to it, and there simply isn’t enough boon removal in the game to effectively counter Retaliation, and Eles have none available to them. Even the Sigil of Nullification is ineffective due to its internal cooldown.

However, I will return to the topic and offer an example:

A warrior or thief that can make a single hit for 5k gets hit with Retaliation once for let’s say 200 damage.

To inflict the same amount of damage, you have an Elementalist or Ranger that MUST hit 5 times at 1k each, gets hit with Retaliation 5 times for 1k damage.

So, in this scenario you have burst builds taking 4% of the damage they’re dealing in return, compared with steady DPS builds taking 20% of the damage they’re dealing. Admittedly, the numbers are rounded so we don’t hurt our brains with math, but it is representative of how the current system works, at least as far as I understand it.

That honestly doesn’t seem ‘fair’. IMO, Retaliation damage should directly correspond to the amount of damage inflicted, not the number of hits.

The only argument that makes sense that I’ve heard in favor of the current on-hit implementation is that condition builds would almost entirely bypass retaliation if it was based on a percentage of direct damage. However, that just seems like an effective counter-build to me, rather than a reason to keep the status quo.

The point you’re missing entirely is it’s not about the target’s DPS that is done to the object with the boon. It’s how many time the object with the boon is hit.

You’re turning it into something it’s not.

Sawnic.6795:

It’s perfectly fair how it is. You hit more times, you get hit more times back.

You are just saying that the current implementation works the way is meant to work, but it’s not “fair” if some classes/abilities are punished in an unbalanced amount considering the damage dealt.

One hammer stun (or backstab, etc): inflicts 3k damage, receives 300 damage from retaliation.

One blurred frenzy (or unload, etc): inflicts 3k damage, receives 300*8 damage from retaliation.

Even considering the multiple hits have a higher chance to proc on-crit sigils (that then go on cooldown, so on the mid term it evens out), it’s not fair

So, if I’m understanding OP’s point, he’s saying that retalliation doesn’t reflect incoming damage, it procs damage? In other words, no matter how hard you hit someone, it only procs X amount of damage, which I’m assuming he’s saying is based on the target’s DPS.

If what OP is saying is true, then yes, that’s definitely broken. If it’s not what he’s saying, then I think he doesn’t understand how retaliation works. If it is working correctly, it should proc a percentage of damage based on the amount of the attack. So, if you do 3k damage, it shouldn’t matter how many times you hit the guy, the total percentage of damage would be the same whether it was 1 hit or 298374234 hits. The smaller hits should just retaliate less damage because the individual attacks are smaller.

Hello quakeroatomeal, just check the retaliation page on the wiki … at the moment is a flat damage on hit based on retaliation source’s power (so if you get if from a guardian with 2k power, scales on that).

That is indeed a ridiculous mechanic.

The tooltip still says it reflects damage. Guess that was the original intention but too hard /expensive to implement…

Really it shouldn’t be called a reflect. It should be called Thorns and described as a damage proc.

quakeroatmeal.4829:

That is indeed a ridiculous mechanic.

The original design made sense (reflect a percentage of the damage back), the current implementation is… not very balanced.