Guild Wars 2

I am wondering if I should trait to have retaliation for dungeons. It seems like you should be avoiding damage so maybe it is not really used in dungeons?

Not very useful. Enemies don’t hit that often.

In some cases it will work if enemy hits fast but you need to know those situations.

The only time I think it is useful is against those Godforged Hellstorms in CoF, because they simply melt themselves when they hit you and you have retal on.

If the enemy hits you very frequently (multiple times in 1-2 seconds), retaliation shines. However, many mobs in dungeons attack pretty slow. Some niche encounters I can think of are Kholer’s spin, CoF hellstorms, and risen berserkers. You may need to throw in some protection or something to survive the hits, though.

Don’t trait for it. It’s fine untraited for those niche situations if you plan to use it.

jazzllanna.1278:

I am wondering if I should trait to have retaliation for dungeons. It seems like you should be avoiding damage so maybe it is not really used in dungeons?

No. Mobs have a ton of hp so the damage to them through retaliation is trivial.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The only time I think it is useful is against those Godforged Hellstorms in CoF, because they simply melt themselves when they hit you and you have retal on.

This is a good example. Also, if you’re a guardian, and you equip the trait that burns foes on block, shelter heal is amazing.

Also another good place to use retaliation is the harpy/asura fractal, against the golem second boss. He just spins and hits everyone in the group and melts himself. If you’re using a hammer on guardian; autoattack symbol of protection + mighty blow = area retaliation.

Retaliation should show damage being done on your screen. I know its doing alot but without seeing the numbers, its hard to notice exactly how much it helps. (Dont think it shows up as DPS at least)

JJBigs.8456:

Retaliation should show damage being done on your screen. I know its doing alot but without seeing the numbers, its hard to notice exactly how much it helps. (Dont think it shows up as DPS at least)

It does show numbers to the player who applied the retaliation.

JJBigs.8456:

Retaliation should show damage being done on your screen. I know its doing alot but without seeing the numbers, its hard to notice exactly how much it helps. (Dont think it shows up as DPS at least)

It’s much more noticeable when something is hitting you more frequently. It’s similar to that of a condition damage tick. The mob hits are usually so slow that you can miss the damage tick by blinking.

BTW – shelter was stealth nerfed a while back – you only get 1 block and it goes away.

But yeah – retaliation is not always useful in dungeons in a spread out approach. When doing face tanking with guardian symbol support, engi bomb support, or warrior 100b fun it can be useful. Stack allows mobs to hit more with a single attack (if they have a multi target attack) and when you stack+retaliation vs elementalists it can hurt them badly (not to mention sometimes wipe you).