Guild Wars 2

It really is.

Skills have too long of cast times so by the time you need it, the attack you needed it for is already done and you took 5k damage to deal ~900 damage. The majority of traits are weak that grant it.

The only exception is Spiteful Spirit for the Necromancer because it’s granted when you enter Death Shroud so you can take damage at will, and it’s granted instantly.

It needs to be reworked. Make it deal a % dmg reflection. Not based on the # of hits.
The mere existence of it in it’s current form completely shuts out certain builds eg. S/P Thief.

I actually think retaliation is too strong, expecially against some classes that can attack very fast. As far as I know it also reflects the damage even if you block the attacks. Also, a guardian can have easy access to retaliation and exactly when he needs it.
Necro can, potentially, have a great retaliation uptime. I say potentially because I don’t think ppl wants to spend 30 points in Soul Reaping only to take Near to Death and couple it with Spiteful Spirit.
I agree with Jumper, if they would change retal like that it would become overall more usefull and in certain occasions less deadly. It would become, let’s say more balanced.

Retaliation is complete bullkitten in my opinion, i made a phantasm spec 2 days ago having never played mesmer before and i was killing pretty much everyone 1v1 with it, 1 of the resons being retaliation. By the time my oponents die they ussualy eat about 8k just from retaliation (the only skill needed here is choosing 1 minor trait which grants retaliation to my phantasms), my other dmg comes from phantasm atacks which deal 5k dmg on squishy targets and again dont really require any skill to do it (i can spawn 3 of them too ), all i have to do is spawn the kittens and try to avoid the atacks from my oponent and i win.

Why are people attacking your phantasm?

Its weak is it? tell that to my Honey badger flamethrower engi. Me trying to show some skills etc by trying different build and there goes my flamethrower dealing 10 hits per second ^^ Not cool.
And yes i know i could switch to my weapon set but certain classes have high upkeep of retaliation and i dont like being locked out of using my build’s main weapon just because it attacks every 0.1 second for 110 damage

Zenith.7301:

Why are people attacking your phantasm?

Phantasms in a phantasm build hurt very badly, as well as having very low hp. If you have the spike damage, it is extremely advisable to wipe them out quickly instead of letting them chew on you.

Edit: Also aoes/bouncing attacks will hit phantasms one way or another.

Retaliation in 1v1 is not really helpfull. It only comes huge in teamfights (e.g. Shout – Guardian).
So I wouldn’t say it’s weak.

And which ppl expect aoe-bursters (war, ele) attack phantasms? :O

yeah please remove retaliation. it sucks.

-a thief

Pyroatheist.9031:

Zenith.7301:

Why are people attacking your phantasm?

Phantasms in a phantasm build hurt very badly, as well as having very low hp. If you have the spike damage, it is extremely advisable to wipe them out quickly instead of letting them chew on you.

Edit: Also aoes/bouncing attacks will hit phantasms one way or another.

Or, you can easily dodge the phantasm’s attacks.

Ya, retaliation completely shuts down the only viable ranger wep (shortbow). The best part is there is no way to combat retal. You can condi remove confusion or most classes don’t have enough to maintain a large uptime but retal….theres lots of it everywhere. This can even allow a tank build kill a few builds.

It needs a rework or to be removed imo.

i played my grenadier engineer afew days back, was bombarding a point, i got ganked and do you know what the death list said? 10k retaliation dmg…
dealing 10k without even doing anything but get hit? weak?

let me emphasize, guardian stood there, did’nt even attack me and dealt 10k damage because i was hitting him.

that is anything but weak!

Jumper.9482:

It needs to be reworked. Make it deal a % dmg reflection. Not based on the # of hits.
The mere existence of it in it’s current form completely shuts out certain builds eg. S/P Thief.

I couldve sworn thats what Retaliation did originally, 33% of the damage dealt to you by a player was reflected back to them.

The effect retal has on grenades.

OP seems to forget that AOE fields that do direct damage also count as attacks, so some AOE specs just get demolished by Retaliation without being able to do anything about it.

Check out a skill like engineer’s Fire Bomb: pulses every second hitting up to 5 targets, hits 4 times overall. If all targets have Retaliation, it’s at very least 3k damage taken just from a single skill, and usually without the guardian even intentionally popping Retaliation to cause that effect. Or check Cluster Bomb. Or Pistol Whip. The list goes on.

Boons like this which require close to no active interaction to be effective are kitten and don’t promote skilled play. It was supposed to(?) be a boon version of confusion, but it’s stupid because it barely has any visual feedback aside from the UI and it stacks in duration sometimes resulting in way too long Retaliation uptime for the enemy to just wait until it’s over (while most confusions don’t last longer than 6s).

It’s clearly weak in some cases and strong in other cases.

However it’s stupid and annoying all of the time! Just remove things that require you to stare at buff bars on general principle….

Retaliation is the opposing defense for Aegis.

Aegis is great against a Hard Hitting Single attack.
Retaliation is great against Multiple Fast attacks hitting for the same amount.

Aegis is almost useless against the Multiple Fast attacks.
Retaliation is almost useless against the Hard Hitting Single attack.

MLieBennett.9031:

Retaliation is the opposing defense for Aegis.

Aegis is great against a Hard Hitting Single attack.
Retaliation is great against Multiple Fast attacks hitting for the same amount.

Aegis is almost useless against the Multiple Fast attacks.
Retaliation is almost useless against the Hard Hitting Single attack.

But aegis protects you while retaliation isn’t a defensive boon in any way. That comparison isn’t really valid.

retaliation and confusion used to tear my shortbow rangers face off in 2 seconds flat untill they nerfed the animation speed for shortbow. But retaliation is either too powerful on fast hitting classes or crap on more bursty classes.

Retaliation is just useless now unless you have 30% boon duration and all traits set up for only retaliation problem you sacrifice too much other things for it.
They nerfed wrathful spirits which had a bug that could make it last as long as 1 min supposed to be 10 seconds then changed it to 3 seconds. its so useless the only thing i know would a little hurt is a engineer with a flamethrower. but once every 40 sec and still not enough to make a difference its a weak boon indeed. it just need more uptime that’s all.

Aleth.9630:

But aegis protects you while retaliation isn’t a defensive boon in any way. That comparison isn’t really valid.

Like confusion, retaliation protects you from smart players and demolishes bad players (but unlike confusion, only some bad players). Looking at your foes’ boons is just as important as looking at your conditions. At lower-mid level play, it’s mostly incidental and not a problem too often; at high levels it’s a good control tool but only against certain builds.

If you notice an enemy using it, attack slower with more powerful attacks instead of spamming rapid attacks (like grenades, AOE, and Sneak Attack) or hit them with a boon removal.

@tom: Mesmer and guardians can have near 100% uptime with little effort, especially guardians (mesmers at least have to invest something in shattering, but who doesn’t these days?), but yeah, it can be hard for necros now except in big AOE situations.

To repeat Aleth: Retaliation means 100% of dmg get through but you get dmg for every single attack calculeted by the Attack-state. So actually you don’t really get hard dmg from it while your own dmg get 100% through… and ppl think that’s OP? Mabye read the explanation of Confusion!