Guild Wars 2

Hey guys…. was just thinking about this and wanted to know if I am missing something. It seems like confusion is WAY more powerful than retaliation for 2 reasons

1. The damage caused by confusion is much higher
2. Confusion does not require that you hit anything, let alone the person who confused you

Am I missing something here? Or is it a balance thing and if retaliation hit higher, it would be OP?

Not sure why you would state confusion hits higher I never seen a confusion hit me more then 400 a tick,
Retaliaztion makes my own attacks hit me back which can be 11k Damage at a time …

Retaliation does no such thing, THACO.
The damage of retaliation scales solely with the applier’s level and power, nothing to do with the strength of the attack.

I think it’s mostly that boons are a lot harder to strip than conditions, retaliation can be used as an AoE to an extent, retaliation stacks with duration not intensity, and is much easier to apply.

From wiki:

Retaliation

Damage dealt depends on the level and power of the retaliation’s source. At level 80 this is:

198.45 + (0.075 * Power)

Retaliation is not reduced by the target’s armor.

Confusion

Damage from confusion is given by:

PvE and WvW: 10 + (1.5 * Level) + (0.15 * Condition Damage) per stack
sPvP: 65 + (0.075 * Condition Damage) per stack

So a guardian with 2000 power will cause 348 damage per retaliation hit (stacks duration) while a mesmer with 1000 condition damage will do 280 damage per confusion hit (stacks intensity). I think those are reasonable figures for power/condition damage for the respective classes but they could be off. Anyway, the real difference is that confusion stacks intensity (so you can have 5 stacks of confusion doing 1400 damage) while retaliation stacks duration.

THACO.7021:

Not sure why you would state confusion hits higher I never seen a confusion hit me more then 400 a tick,
Retaliaztion makes my own attacks hit me back which can be 11k Damage at a time …

Sorry but … everything you said is wrong.

Confusion is “condition damage” dependent and stacks in intensity. It’s 130 damage per stack. That means every action you do -even self heal- punishes you for 1300 damage if you are under 10x confusion. (damage are halved in sPVP). Punishment every time you hit a key.

Retaliation is “power” dependent and stacks in duration. It’s 200 damage every time you hit the target (even when blocked). So punishment every time you hit. (nothing to do with a reflection of damage like Thaco said)

Let’s say you launch 100B on a mesmer who is under retaliation while you are under 10x stacks of confusion: you are punished once because of confusion (1300 damage) and you are punished 8x times because of retaliation (100H hits 8x) so that’s 1600 damage.

Now some facts:
1) Confusion is harder to get than retaliation. Especially 10x stacks. Because it stacks in duration Confusion is quickly off. It’s totally to get nearly perma Retaliation on while it’s impossible so far I know to maintain 10xConfusion more than a few seconds.
2) Confusion is a condition. Every classes can easily remove conditions. Retaliation is a boon. Some classes have trouble removing boons on their enemies.
3) Confusion is easy to notice (purple edge on your screen) while Retaliation can often be missed if the target has many boons at the same time (typically Guardian)
4) In situation of multi hits skill use (like 100B) retaliation >>> confusion
5) Confusion is often limited to one target while retaliation affect all of them
6) And last but not least: play a confusion mesmer in PVE. You’ll get why confusion isn’t OP.

Both are pretty insignificant in most content imho. Retaliation is a nice to have side effect and can be situationally useful in pvp. In pve it is almost worthless due to the fact that you should generally try to not get hit as often, except in very easy content, which you should faceroll anyway.
Confusion is horribly bad in pve, due to similar reasons. In pvp it is probably even worse, the uptime is much too low to really have an impact, which in turn means you won’t have as many stacks as you would need to put pressure on your enemy.

THACO.7021:

Not sure why you would state confusion hits higher I never seen a confusion hit me more then 400 a tick,
Retaliaztion makes my own attacks hit me back which can be 11k Damage at a time …

Actually no, that’s reflection, it’s rare against ranged and so far as I know there is no melee reflection.

Retaliation deals damage to any enemy who damages the carrier based on the power of its caster, usually caster and carrier are one and the same. Blinds are terrible when combined with retaliation, because it is dependent on their hitting you and dealing damage. Whereas interrupts are useful because you can interrupt their large attacks and take the smaller ones. And damage mitigation is great because it lowers their DPS but not your retaliation. Additionally retaliation stacks in duration.

Confusion deals damage to the carrier based on the CONDITION DAMAGE of the caster each time the carrier uses an ability. Blind works great with confusion because you want people to attack but you don’t want them to hit you, damage mitigation also works well. You do not however want to use too many disables with confusion because if they aren’t using abilities you aren’t dealing damage. Confusion stacks by intensity.

They’re actually really different.