Guild Wars 2

I think this can extend to other defensive procs as well (chaos armor confuse builds).

After seeing this in the patch notes it made me think :

“We are moving towards retaliation being more of a counter to taking many hits rather than a general boon to keep up all the time. "

I completely understand the whole “moving retaliation away from being a passive thing” idea. However, I’m not sure I see why Retaliation (and reactive procs like it) should be be a counter to fast multi-attack hits while also being arguably useless against slow massive hits.

Attacks such as Necro Axe/Dagger channels, Engy Flamethrower, Unload, Ele Lightning Arc, etc. are punished severely against Retaliation or other nasty reactive procs while not actually being stronger in any other way for it to need that counter.

Sure they may be able to activate offensive procs more often, but nearly EVERY offensive proc now has a cooldown and outside of ultra low chance procs, there won’t be a huge difference in overall procs versus average speed attacks.

As much as I love “proc” effects, it really does make things more interesting, I don’t think it’s quite balanced. It’s super exciting when you see someone using a high multi-hit attack against your Chaos Armor, seeing them stack up 10+ stacks of confusion, stacking 30+ seconds of Regen/Protection/Swiftness, etc, and then conversely have someone using big slow burst attacks and suddenly you barely get any effect. Same thing with Retaliation, Ele Auras, hell even Necro Spectral Walk/Armor life force gains.

I can’t be the only one that feels it’s a bit out of whack.

I honestly thing it should be balanced around a maximum per second output to a single person. Maybe tweak the damage from what it’s at now based on that assumption, but Retaliation can get rather ridiculous when you are dealing with AoE situations and Multi-Attack situations.

Ayestes.1273:

I honestly thing it should be balanced around a maximum per second output to a single person. Maybe tweak the damage from what it’s at now based on that assumption, but Retaliation can get rather ridiculous when you are dealing with AoE situations and Multi-Attack situations.

IMHO I think they should just make it a flat % dmg reflect with restricted uptime, or find a way to make multi-hit attacks worth it. I wouldn’t mind a balanced counter-counter with procs.

There are some hilarious scenarios with retaliation where it’s just, ridiculous though. Minion Master necro applying retaliation to all their pets, anyone using aoe just explodes.

Mesmer iDefender with retaliation trait doing procs to anyone using aoe on anyone it’s protecting, which can then stack on top of aoe retaliation given to everyone. I’ve done it before, shatter/heal for retal, pop signet to spread, spawn defender, double aoe retaliation, people explode.

At the same time though it feels like such a waste of effort on anyone not using fast hits, pretty much useless.

Have you ever seen what a Chaos Armor build does to shortbow/quickness rangers (pre-nerf)? They get 10-15 stacks of confusion in 2 seconds and die INSTANTLY.

Multi-Attacks do have an advantage, in that they tend to do higher total damage and have multiple chances to proc sigils. The Sigil cooldowns have softened that a great deal, but it’s advantage that remains withstanding nonetheless.

I don’t agree with a Flat damage type of deal. Retaliation I think should serve a purpose on bunker style builds, but it’s uptime and fringe cases of excessive damage need to be tempered.