Guild Wars 2

These three things in its present form can turn a good pvp build into zero.

Blind aka perma aegis.

Problem
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Blind-needs-to-go-back
You certainly run out of the smoke of the field. But you still a very long blind.
Possible fix
Very simple and correct solution to the problem of blind limit the duration of 1 second(with +50% condition duratation 2 sec). And remove Stacking.

Retaliation

Problem
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Retaliation-is-TOO-OP/first
1 Cluster bomb or 1 Pistol whip can eat 6-7k damage from Retaliation.
Engineer can suicide in 1-2 second from Retaliation when cast grenade.
This strange mechanics kill a lot of builds that pretty strong in PvP.
Possible fix
But you just need to add a 1-second cooldown and reflect on attack (not each hit: clusterbomb etk) . This is not reduce defense mechanism. But correct the situation when the attacker receive more damage than target.

Stealth

Problem
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/4-sec-Revealed-and-Permastealth/first
Perma stealth has no counterplay.
Possible fix
But it is easy to solve add cd “Infusion of Shadow” or remove stacking stealths.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion_of_Shadow
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth

/discuss
for trolls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZXHsNqkDI4

Retaliation should be changed to Toughness-dependant percentile damage.
Placeholder formula would be a simple 5 + ( 0.01 * Toughness ) % as damage reflected.
The only problem here is that it wouldn’t be very effective at lower levels, but the formula can be modified to correct that.

True, +1 to this.

Most of the blind applying skills have long CDS, the ele and mesmer aoe blinds have 20-30 sec cds.

The main offender I think is the passive thief trait that applies AOE blind every 3-4 secs ie: whenever they stealth.
You can move away from the smoke field and still get blinded from the stealth proc as they heartseeker through it towards you.

A 10 point trait passively applying aoe blinds at such a short CD should I think have an internal cooldown to bring it in line with other AOE blind skills.

Agree with Lifewaster about blind. Disagree with OP about retaliation. However, I do believe that retaliation needs to be telegraphed better. Retaliation is designed to be the counter to burst specs; if you take that away then it becomes next to useless.

The problem is that Retaliation doesn’t counter power damage, it counters NUMBER OF ATTACKS. IE conditions and the flurry-type attacks.

Don’t touch blind. Touch thief’s access to blind. Maybe guardian too.

Lifewaster.5912:

Most of the blind applying skills have long CDS, the ele and mesmer aoe blinds have 20-30 sec cds.

Blind should be active defence not aegis. 1sec enough for any situation in pvp.

Atlanis.6597:

Disagree with OP about retaliation. However, I do believe that retaliation needs to be telegraphed better. Retaliation is designed to be the counter to burst specs; if you take that away then it becomes next to useless.

lol
retaliation hit 270-400
1 thief cast 2 pw aganist 3 targets.
2 pw 2×9=18 hits each target
18×3=54 hits total

270*54=14580
400*54=21600

2 pw thief dead

it’s very very bad passive mechanic.

The Boz.2038:

Retaliation should be changed to Toughness-dependant percentile damage.
Placeholder formula would be a simple 5 + ( 0.01 * Toughness ) % as damage reflected.
The only problem here is that it wouldn’t be very effective at lower levels, but the formula can be modified to correct that.

Bad idea.

Some classes (i don’t want list) could run full rabid, and spam protection + retaliation + condition and become unkilabe.

Thieves alredy tons of escapes and defencives resources. A good idea are reduce his access to blind for prevent blind spamm.

Just auto attack blind off and don’t stand in blind fields.

Atlanis.6597:

Agree with Lifewaster about blind. Disagree with OP about retaliation. However, I do believe that retaliation needs to be telegraphed better. Retaliation is designed to be the counter to burst specs; if you take that away then it becomes next to useless.

Currently retaliation is absolutely worthless against the biggest burst hits though.

Backstab takes 1 hit of retal
Eviscerate takes 1 hit of retal
etc

The skills punished most are things weak as heck like the Engineer’s flamethrower auto attack that pulses 10 attacks over 2 seconds. You can easily eat 2-3x the damage you do with the FT in retaliation damage.

It needs to just be a % of the damage taken is reflected, which is pretty much how the wording sounds like it would be.

VidurrRedhands.1964:

Just auto attack blind off and don’t stand in blind fields.

Blindness: Fixed an issue that caused blind to be removed when an attack was used while not in range of any targets.

s/d, d/d and another melee fighter cant hit by reason of blindlock.
You get out of the smoke field with 5 + seconds of blindness
now blind>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>aegis

Blind mechanic is fine. Certain abilities that apply blind continually or with too short a cooldown need adjusted.

Retaliation is supposed to punish high frequency attacks. That aspect of it works fine and should not be significantly changed. However, some abilities, especially those that apply retaliation to an area or to nearby allies, need the duration of the boon lowered. Many of the durations are a hold-over from beta when retaliation did less damage per attack but over a longer time.

JETWING.2759:

The Boz.2038:

Retaliation should be changed to Toughness-dependant percentile damage.
Placeholder formula would be a simple 5 + ( 0.01 * Toughness ) % as damage reflected.
The only problem here is that it wouldn’t be very effective at lower levels, but the formula can be modified to correct that.

Bad idea.

Some classes (i don’t want list) could run full rabid, and spam protection + retaliation + condition and become unkilabe.

…because conditions are totally not a thing in this game, right?

Velron.3729:

Atlanis.6597:

Agree with Lifewaster about blind. Disagree with OP about retaliation. However, I do believe that retaliation needs to be telegraphed better. Retaliation is designed to be the counter to burst specs; if you take that away then it becomes next to useless.

Currently retaliation is absolutely worthless against the biggest burst hits though.

Backstab takes 1 hit of retal
Eviscerate takes 1 hit of retal
etc

The skills punished most are things weak as heck like the Engineer’s flamethrower auto attack that pulses 10 attacks over 2 seconds. You can easily eat 2-3x the damage you do with the FT in retaliation damage.

It needs to just be a % of the damage taken is reflected, which is pretty much how the wording sounds like it would be.

I agree that they should change it to that; it’s really painful playing a FT engi vs a team with a couple guardians constantly granting retri. However, I think that retri as a mechanic would be good if it were telegraphed better.

Stealth Revealers can probably be on niche stun breakers. That way there is a way to counter it but you have to make the choice between securing a kill or defending yourself, it will also make niche stun breakers more used.

JETWING.2759:

Thieves alredy tons of escapes and defencives resources. A good idea are reduce his access to blind for prevent blind spamm.

Can still hit a thief in BP, just don’t stand near the circle when hitting him as a melee, does wonders in WvW (haven’t had the chance to do it in sPvP cause I don’t see many x/p thieves.

Osi.3504:

JETWING.2759:

Thieves alredy tons of escapes and defencives resources. A good idea are reduce his access to blind for prevent blind spamm.

Can still hit a thief in BP, just don’t stand near the circle when hitting him as a melee, does wonders in WvW (haven’t had the chance to do it in sPvP cause I don’t see many x/p thieves.

Good thieves cast BP on top of you not away from you.

Zenith.7301:

Osi.3504:

JETWING.2759:

Thieves alredy tons of escapes and defencives resources. A good idea are reduce his access to blind for prevent blind spamm.

Can still hit a thief in BP, just don’t stand near the circle when hitting him as a melee, does wonders in WvW (haven’t had the chance to do it in sPvP cause I don’t see many x/p thieves.

Good thieves cast BP on top of you not away from you.

Good players move out of it, they don’t stand in it to allow themselves to be blinded multiple times in a row.

Osi.3504:

Zenith.7301:

Osi.3504:

JETWING.2759:

Thieves alredy tons of escapes and defencives resources. A good idea are reduce his access to blind for prevent blind spamm.

Can still hit a thief in BP, just don’t stand near the circle when hitting him as a melee, does wonders in WvW (haven’t had the chance to do it in sPvP cause I don’t see many x/p thieves.

Good thieves cast BP on top of you not away from you.

Good players move out of it, they don’t stand in it to allow themselves to be blinded multiple times in a row.

They don’t need to blind you multiple times. They need it to mitigate damage while positioning a backstab or they drop it on you when you’re chasing them.

You can step out of it but once you’ve got that blind on you you’ve already been forced to waste an attack before the next lands.

There seems to be a dichotomy that people are missing between blind, Aegis, blocks, and retaliation. Let me explain.

There are a series of skills in the game that are affected by the number of hits that are dished out, and not the damage itself. This includes Aegis, single use blocks, and blind. For you see, blind and Aegis only work against one attack. But when there is a skill that sends out multiple attacks at once (for example, Life Transfer), then suddenly blind and single target blocks are completely useless as a form of mitigation. It goes right through those skills!

So, a defensive mechanism that works contrary to how blind, Aegis, and single-use blocks is Retaliation. Retaliation ticks for damage against any hit that is incurred, so where mulit-hitting attacks normally breeze right past blind and Aegis, Retaliation is an offensive measure against it, discouraging players form using multi hit attacks.

Unless this has changed since I last checked.

Now, the only class that I think blind may be a problem in is thieves. Pretty much every class has access to a blind or two on medium length cooldowns, making the use of blinds highly tactical. Thieves, however, have access to blinds on a near permanent basis via two methods:

#1: Black Powder. For initiative, this makes a smoke field that applies blind to anyone inside of it. This blind has a fairly decent length, and this makes fighting thieves difficult, so many that spam black powder also build themselves with good initiative regeneration abilities.

#2: Cloaked in Shadow. This skill emits a blind when a thief enters stealth, and every 3 seconds they are in stealth. As it happens, thieves are capable of entering rapidly, over and over again, spending the majority of their fights invisible. This makes it so Cloaked in Shadow applies a blind every 3 seconds in an AoE, AKA spams blind.

Now, without these two skills thieves will have a lot of access to blind, but it won’t be on nearly as much of a “spam” level. So, by fixing these you can deal with the blind issue quite succinctly. Here, I’ll make a suggestion:

Cloaked in Shadow: Cooldown of 20 seconds.
Black Powder: Now only pulses once every 2 seconds. Applies a 1 second blind when it pulses.

Retaliation needs a 0.5-second inner cooldown.

Lopez.7369:

Retaliation needs a 0.5-second inner cooldown.

ok 0.75 sec cd

Lopez.7369:

Retaliation needs a 0.5-second inner cooldown.

Where do you get this information? I’ve seen nothing to support that claim, and if it were true skills like fiery rush wouldn’t be so suicidal.

edit: I tested it by rushing against a wall while somebody popped retaliation and stood on top of me. I took 52 hits of retaliation over 4 seconds, so there definitely isn’t an internal cd.

Also, a duration of 1 second seems pretty low for blind. For pulsing blinds or ones that can be constantly be reapplied it might be okay, but many blinds outside of thief skills aren’t like that.

Navzar.2938:

Also, a duration of 1 second seems pretty low for blind. For pulsing blinds or ones that can be constantly be reapplied it might be okay, but many blinds outside of thief skills aren’t like that.

mb only smokefield blind 1 sec
nerf
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Powder
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Smoke_Bomb_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Smoke_Screen_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Darkness

retaliation Is currently in a good position. Many people are concerned/complaining about AoE spamming currently in a PvP environment that requires them to group on a node that is basically the size of most AoE spam. Retaliation is currently not a defense against it, but it now creates a risk/reward situation for AoE spammers and nukers. They must decide if they are prepared to sacrifice HP in order to keep spamming, or hold off spamming until it’s effects have worn off. The retaliation boon icon is clearly visible and the largest provider of group retaliation comes from the guardian, particularly the utility skill where they vocally call, “Stand your ground.”

Currently you are making it sound like the engineer/thief/ele/necro uses one innocent cluster of grenades or AoE skills and dies as a result. After the initial attack, if you missed the icon and the shout, you’ll get large deep orange damage bubbles appearing on you…that is more than sufficient prompts to warn you it is in effect. If you persist spamming AoE after all three of those indicators, it is your choice. If you get downed as a result of it, it is basically your fault for ignoring all the numerous prompts that it was in effect.

Retaliation in its history has already received multiple nerfs. The mesmer has been limited to 5 seconds, the warrior now only gets brief windows of it, the engineer only gets brief windows of it and guardian has to appropriately skill/trait/weapon select in order to chain for time frames longer than a brief window. Currently it is the only true counter to make AoE spammers have caution about firing and forgetting and for zerg groups to use some caution on racking and smacking.

What is being stated in regards to retaliation is more an argument in some ways for the announced up coming skills/traits additions to include a form of silence that strips boons provided by shouts or boon strips that remove boons of the same kind from multiple targets in a given area. This concept was explored in guild wars with necromancers causing conditions to shout based commands, mesmer being able to strip enchants that are the identical and paragons being able to remove shot buffs and ritualists being able to extend the duration of shouts. It was addressed in similiar skills like ’don’t touch me’ that negated all touch based skills. I think this would provide better strategic/thoughtful use of skills in situations where en masse blinds/stealth and retaliation are in effect.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

retaliation Is currently in a good position.

270-400 passive damage = 2-3% thief hp for just 1 attack
1 pw = 20-30% thief hp
it’s megaopbuff

Retaliation never gets to 400 damage. First of all its capped at something like 329 damage but even that may be the pre pvp retal damage nerf numbers. Its been awhile since I tested it but it seemed like 220-240 with about 3000 attack power. I have two accounts and I went to custom arena and just had my one account wail around on my guardian with retal up. By the way that would make 27 hits or so to get to 6-7k damage. Im no expert on thiefs but there is no attack in the game that hits 27 times in one use I dont think. I’ll test it later but 220-240 is pretty much seared in my mind regardless of the speed of the attack is what retaliation returns per hit damage wise.

I definitely don’t think retaliation is in a good position when it comes to low damage single target skills. It just deals far too much damage in those situations, but a simple 1 second internal cd (and maybe a slight buff in exchange) would fix that.
After all, it’s only supposed to reflect back a portion of the damage, not all of it.

That’s exactly why I’d like it to be toughness based percentile damage, not power based flat.

Kwll.1468:

Retaliation never gets to 400 damage. First of all its capped at something like 329 damage but even that may be the pre pvp retal damage nerf numbers. Its been awhile since I tested it but it seemed like 220-240 with about 3000 attack power. I have two accounts and I went to custom arena and just had my one account wail around on my guardian with retal up. By the way that would make 27 hits or so to get to 6-7k damage. Im no expert on thiefs but there is no attack in the game that hits 27 times in one use I dont think. I’ll test it later but 220-240 is pretty much seared in my mind regardless of the speed of the attack is what retaliation returns per hit damage wise.

If a guardian pop retaliation in a group situation and the thief do a pistol whip (shame on the thief) and he hit three people with all the hits, that would be 9*3=27 hits. That’s a really bad situation for the thief, but nothing to worry about. We can stop the channel at any time and we can chose to not attack with that skill. I’ve never had any problems with retaliation, so I really can’t see the fuzz about it..

The only thing about blind I find strange, is how do you miss an PBAoE/TGAoE attack? Ex. A blind downed guardian creates a bubble around him, he don’t target anyone, yet he misses everyone around him.

PBAoE shouldn’t miss in my opinion, only your next targeted attack.

LOL, I want my BUNKER doing the BEST damage of the game if he can’t blind or retaliate.

1- Blind solution: go find condition removal.
2- Retal solution: go find boon removal.

3- It’s already in game, you can change condition duration in your build (hoelbrak and others… runes).

4 – It’s a simple mechanics and it help having shout Builds (see ranger, guard, warrior) and 5- Necro into your team to survive those problems.

If you can’t find that, you can have 2 sigils that procs on 60% chance crits to remove 6- boon or 7- condi.

You seems to have a hard time trying to find real solutions to your problems, but I assure you that they are many more way to get rid of those problems. More you can stack all those solutions against it.

If you’re going to give blind very short duration like 1-2 seconds, then players under blind should miss ALL their attack until blind is off. Because, as it’s mentioned above, there are many skills that deals damage with like 9+ hits and if 1 hit misses – its just nothing.

Retaliation should have X seconds cd and reflect % of damage dealt.

And yes, disbalance between retaliation or blind applied to strong skills with1 hit and with X hits is obvious.