Guild Wars 2

Is Retaliation acting as a damage shield? Which means every time you get hit you will damage your opponent (Retaliation reflects damage based on level and scales with power, increasing damage by 1 for every 13.4 power. At level 80, base damage is 267. taken from Wiki), or will it reflect the damage and not get hit at all?

You still take full damage when something hits you. However, for each hit, you’ll also inflict damage on the attacker.

Note this counts for AoEs and single target abilities. So, say a guardian uses a blast finisher in his light field to give area Retaliation to 5 allies, and someone smacks an AoE over all of those enemies, they’ll get 5 retaliation strikes against them. Pretty cool in WvWvW.

I see, still the description is faulty : it sais “Reflect incoming damage back to the source” while in truth it should be “Inflicts damage back when hit”.

As in the good old “damage shield” buffs.

There is actually at least a “real” reflect effect in GW2, that is in the Warrior class, when traited the shield upon block will reflect the full incoming damage, back to the source, while you get none of it.

"Magnetic Aura" for elementalists (staff, earth-attuned, skill 3) also reflects projectiles and causes you to take no damage, for what it’s worth.

Mesmer’s utility skill "Feedback" will also do this for any enemy within its area of effect.

So perhaps "Retaliation" just needs a slight edit to not use "reflect", as these skills reflect and prevent the damage.

@Synk: In regard to “feedback” you are mostly but not 100% correct there, an enemy trying to shoot from outside the bubble to someone in the bubble, or evne on the other side of the bubble, will also get his shots reflected, while if both the one shooting and the one getting shot at is both inside it wont reflect anything. IN short it reflect both ways on the actual perimeter of the skill

Oh, embarrassing. Of my various characters, my mesmer is the one I’ve played the most. You’d think I’d realize that Feedback works like that and not just on those within it.

seithan.4823:

I see, still the description is faulty : it sais “Reflect incoming damage back to the source” while in truth it should be “Inflicts damage back when hit”.

I disagree, incomming damage ins’t incomming damage if it isn’t hitting (no hit means no damage). So this description is actually right. You make an attack the same as damage.

synk.6907:

Oh, embarrassing. Of my various characters, my mesmer is the one I’ve played the most. You’d think I’d realize that Feedback works like that and not just on those within it.

Pro-tip: If you have the Medic’s Feedback trait in the inspiration line you can use it every 10 seconds and it creates a feedback bubble around you and the person you are resurrecting (as well as anyone inside it).

What I like to do is wait till the NPC that usually accompanies you in dungeons is dead then rez him a tiny bit every 10 seconds so you can essentially use feedback every 10 seconds that way. (Great for the Kholer fight in AC for example).

Of course doing that it’s very limited and situational and you have to rely entirely on a dead NPC near you during the fight for it to work but that tactic has come in handy a few times before.

As for retaliation yes, as far as I’ve observed you still get damaged but any skills the enemy uses on you will damage himself. In a way it’s kind of similar to confusion with confusion being the condition you apply on the mob where as retaliation you apply on yourself.

But both still makes it so you take damage yet both rely on the enemy to use abilities that will damage itself in return.