Guild Wars 2

How does this Boon or whatever works does it reflect some of the damage i think or does it make me take no incoming damage(besides Condition) for its duration.

I think it reflects a set amount of damage, based on level.

The wiki says: “Retaliation does not reduce damage taken by the affected player, but damages anyone who hits them”. Therefore, as far as I understood, “reflection” is not the best term for this. The character will take full damage, and a part of it will also be inflicted on the character that attacked the character with Retaliation.

alrite thanks for the info based on the bit of testing i did enemy takes 1/10th of the damage too. then again there might be factors that afect damage.

Yeah the amount of damage returned is pathetic, it makes this boon pretty weak compared to what it possibly could be. Apparently people say power affects the amount of damage returned but I haven’t seen any noticeable massive gains with adding more power. The only gains I have noticed was changes in level, but even then it scales very poorly and is not a very good counter for much of anything other than very weak, fast hits, and if something is hitting you that weakly, then you don’t need a damage counter skill to begin with anyway. It also does not hit off of confusion damage done to you, even though it should, I’ve also seen it not hit off of lifesteal in several occasions, but haven’t watched it close enough to make that a definitive claim. In fact it doesn’t hit off of any condition damage now that I think about it.

As far as I’m aware, it does NOT return a portion of the damage received, it returns a set amount that scales with power.

Silver.8023:

As far as I’m aware, it does NOT return a portion of the damage received, it returns a set amount that scales with power.

I would agree with you because the entire boon is finnicky and the mechanics are not clearly laid out, but I have seen different variations of the damage returned based on what I was receiving. It’s really hard to say for 100% because the combat log won’t record it so you have to try to pick out the numbers flying through the air.

Retaliation is not really that useful in PvE, to be honest.

retal is in to the game to make engineers (flamethrower / grenades) and rangers cry.

seriously, what other classes can do tons of hits?

I haven’t seen different numbers, I haven’t had a close look though but remember, the numbers would change if you were down-leveled or under the effects of differing amounts of might.

I use retaliation all the time, I actually really like it, it’s a great supplement to my otherwise somewhat lackluster damage output.
I stack it up when I’m fighting those toy soldiers and they smash themselves. Have you tried doing a long duration whirl attack such as Guardian’s Whirling Wrath or Warrior’s Whirling Axe against the toy Ventari’s? They use a really long retaliation and you can easily kill yourself against them!

@insanemaniac – To answer your question, Necromancers, Guardians, Warriors, Elementalists, Thieves and Mesmers.

Silver.8023:

@insanemaniac – To answer your question, Necromancers, Guardians, Warriors, Elementalists, Thieves and Mesmers.

Exactly, Retaliation is useful against a certain style of attack (fast hitting but weak attacks). Every class can be built to use this style.