Guild Wars 2

Zephyrus.9680:

GJ with hyperbole. If you’re too laggy or just don’t have the awareness to cancel your AoE attack that’kittenting 5 targets, don’t zerg.

Its not a hyperbole. Thats what you get if we actually follow your horribly flawed advice.
Retaliation is always up, on a lot of people, because of how easy it is to get. Guardians everywhere, and that means Light-fields everywhere. And in a zerg that means a metric kittenton of combofinishers proccing (AoE) retaliation.

And i am going to anticipate your next piece of “brilliant” advice, which no doubt will be something along the lines of “just use a different weapon” or “use a build that isnt aoe/fast hit”.
I play an Engineer, i’ve made a post about it, but here is the tldr.

ahem EVERYTHING I DO, EVERY WEAPON, EVERY BUILD, IS AOE. I LITTERALY DO NOT HAVE A SINGLE-TARGET WEAPON OR BUILD

Something so mindless, that it’s nothing but a side-effect really, should not hardcounter anything. It’s mountains more difficult to not stack Retaliation in a zerg.

Terrahero.9358:

ahem EVERYTHING I DO, EVERY WEAPON, EVERY BUILD, IS AOE. I LITTERALY DO NOT HAVE A SINGLE-TARGET WEAPON OR BUILD

This is not true. Engineer has a single target weapon called rifle. Its auto attack pierces, so using it against tightly packed zerg is a risk, but you can use Net shot (rifle #2). It is single target, flies slow as molasses and doesn’t do any damage (just immobilize).

Blunderbuss is good, it does max. damage at 100 range (smaller than melee range), when you traited it with rifled barrels trait. It is very easy to land those full damage blunderbuss hits in a laggy zerg battle.

And overcharged shot (rifle #4) will knock you down and also knock back one enemy if the enemy is close enough. Being knocked down in the middle of enemy zerg is good for your health.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rifle

Or you can use the auto attack from elixir gun, tranquilizer dart, it does HUGE damage!! (= same dmg as thief’s pistol, but slower firing rate. Thieves pistol #1 is so super dmg weapon, I heard it critting more than backstab ).

Problem solved! Retaliation is not overpowered and engineer rocks in zerg battles full of retaliation!!

/sarcasm

Deniara Devious.3948:

I voted it.

Thanks! My issue with the Boon’s interaction in WvW is that it shuts down many builds in WvW, leaving the battle-field stale and repetitive.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Terrahero.9358:

ahem EVERYTHING I DO, EVERY WEAPON, EVERY BUILD, IS AOE. I LITTERALY DO NOT HAVE A SINGLE-TARGET WEAPON OR BUILD

This is not true. Engineer has a single target weapon called rifle. Its auto attack pierces, so using it against tightly packed zerg is a risk, but you can use Net shot (rifle #2). It is single target, flies slow as molasses and doesn’t do any damage (just immobilize).

Blunderbuss is good, it does max. damage at 100 range (smaller than melee range), when you traited it with rifled barrels trait. It is very easy to land those full damage blunderbuss hits in a laggy zerg battle.

And overcharged shot (rifle #4) will knock you diwb and also knock back one enemy if the enemy is close enough. Being knocked down in the middle of enemy zerg is good for your health.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rifle

Or you can use the auto attack from elixir gun, tranquilizer dart, it does HUGE damage!! (= same dmg as thief’s pistol, but slower firing rate. Thieves pistol #1 is so super dmg weapon, I heard it critting more than backstab ).

Problem solved! Retaliation is not overpowered and engineer rocks in zerg battles full of retaliation!!

/sarcasm

I read it fast and almost did not notice the sarcasm, nice one!

Terrahero.9358:

Zephyrus.9680:

GJ with hyperbole. If you’re too laggy or just don’t have the awareness to cancel your AoE attack that’kittenting 5 targets, don’t zerg.

Its not a hyperbole. Thats what you get if we actually follow your horribly flawed advice.
Retaliation is always up, on a lot of people, because of how easy it is to get. Guardians everywhere, and that means Light-fields everywhere. And in a zerg that means a metric kittenton of combofinishers proccing (AoE) retaliation. […]

You misunderstood. I was saying attack through it until/unless you need to cancel your attack to heal. Then heal…

The thing about retaliation is it’s both untargeted and uncontrolled damage. It’s not even random damage. You control when you take retaliation damage which makes it very little actual threat, except combined with stupidity. It’s more a form of protection and easy to control this type of damage with AoE healing, regen, and your heal skill. The first 2 happen in a zerg all the time, even more than retaliation.

The OP said he took 8k damage in retaliation. So what?
Was it 8k on-demand damage? No.
Was it a serious threat? No.

It was 8k damage that made no difference. If it would have made a difference, he could have waited until he had to resources to deal with it.

Retaliation is the weakest boon, except maybe for aegis.

Zephyrus.9680:

Retaliation is the weakest boon, except maybe for aegis.

Are we playing the same game? Retaliation weakest boon? NA ladder sounds awesome for sure. Losing 20k hp to one boon is really weak yeah. Aegis is also a 100% damage mitigation, sucks hard

How the hell 8k “FREE” damage is not a serious threat? How poor is it to damage people doing nothing but having a boon on you?

Edit: nevermind, saw your youtube link, I can understand why you have no clue. Sorry!

Andy.9137:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Which is why they need to make it a set % of the damage dealt to the opponent by an attack (not condition). Why should I be taking 394 damage from retaliation when I’m only doing 232 damage to the enemy?

Because then warriors and thieves hitting for 10k would complain.

Meaning the glass cannons, who complain about getting shot down fast anyway.

I play a flamethrower engineer for WvW roaming (as well as tPvP sometimes). I have absolutely no problem with retaliation because I look at my enemies’ boons. Just like confusion, it’s something you can absolutely watch out for and change your tactics accordingly in smaller fights.

However, this simply does not work in larger fights. Both mindless zergs and especially organised guild groups very easily have extremely high retaliation uptime, and there’s nothing I can do except either stand back and be useless to my team (not much of an option) or accept that most of the damage I take is going to come from retaliation even if I’m not using FT.

I’ve seen a lot of suggestions in this thread, but there is something nobody seems to have mentioned (sorry if I’ve missed it). Much of the uptime for retaliation comes from guardians with Monk/Water runes. These runes are overpowered and were nerfed from +15% to +10% in PvP a long time ago. In PvP, it’s impossible to get more than 20% boon duration from gear, whereas many people have 40% in WvW before even considering unusual sources (e.g. food/giver’s/etc). Similarly hammer auto-attack creating a light field makes it too easy to get in mindless zergs while polluting fields in organised groups so should be removed.

The second problem is that retaliation is pro-zerging. It is very easy to counter in smaller fights and very hard to counter in bigger fights. This is completely unlike confusion which breaks the AoE limit via glamour entry/exit but you only have to watch your own conditions bar. And finally it’s also a profession-specific counter. While every class can mitigate it if they try hard enough, it’s inherently much stronger against engineers & elementalists than against warriors & thieves because there simply aren’t as many (or any) viable WvW builds with high per-hit damage.

So in the end my suggestions would be:

1) Revert the 33% damage nerf (and/or never apply it). The damage itself was fine!

2) Add a 0.5s internal cooldown on the attacker (no retaliation from any target for 0.5s). Makes it effectively more similar to confusion and goes from zerg-booster to zerg-buster.

3) Nerf Superior Water/Monk/… to +10% and Major to +8%. This is similar to current PvP balance. I’ve used these runes in many of my own builds and they always felt overpowered.

Drakh.3128:

Better yet, try being a confusion mesmer. I hit them for 65 with confusion then get hit back for 375 from retaliation. Yeah, that’s fair…..

Confusion Mesmer’s are dead.

Pryda.8257:

Zephyrus.9680:

Retaliation is the weakest boon, except maybe for aegis.

Are we playing the same game? Retaliation weakest boon? NA ladder sounds awesome for sure. Losing 20k hp to one boon is really weak yeah. Aegis is also a 100% damage mitigation, sucks hard

How the hell 8k “FREE” damage is not a serious threat? How poor is it to damage people doing nothing but having a boon on you?

Edit: nevermind, saw your youtube link, I can understand why you have no clue. Sorry!

I don’t think we’re playing the same game. Aegis is maybe 5% damage mitigation at best – it’s an afterthought in this game. Retaliation free?… No idea what you mean.

Also, speaking of clueless, I’m curious how you think p/d /sb (for zergs) thief + dagger storm or staff ele are somehow immune to retaliation. Lol.

Please, explain. You must have an expert explanation since I take tons of retaliation damage but have little problems dealing with it. Sometimes it limits my damage but, isn’t that working as intended?

Swiftness, might, protection, stability, fury — it would be a different game without these. Compared to the above, retaliation is almost just ‘there’. If all you can do is blindly press 1 in zerg fights like maybe half of the zerg-only player base, I still wouldn’t understand. Because then, why not argue water fields and regen are OP. They heal 50k (yea I can throw out random meaningless numbers too) – and on demand – which completely overshadows retaliation as a meaningful damage source. Actually, water fields are op. Retaliation, no.

It might be a good idea to change the retal damage to be based on % of damage dealt (scaling with power). Probably the same people would still be complaining + all the glass cannons. But it’s just not a big problem to deal with as is.

Zephyrus.9680:

Pryda.8257:

Zephyrus.9680:

Retaliation is the weakest boon, except maybe for aegis.

Are we playing the same game? Retaliation weakest boon? NA ladder sounds awesome for sure. Losing 20k hp to one boon is really weak yeah. Aegis is also a 100% damage mitigation, sucks hard

How the hell 8k “FREE” damage is not a serious threat? How poor is it to damage people doing nothing but having a boon on you?

Edit: nevermind, saw your youtube link, I can understand why you have no clue. Sorry!

I don’t think we’re playing the same game. Aegis is maybe 5% damage mitigation at best – it’s an afterthought in this game. Retaliation free?… No idea what you mean.

Also, speaking of clueless, I’m curious how you think p/d /sb (for zergs) thief + dagger storm or staff ele are somehow immune to retaliation. Lol.

Please, explain. You must have an expert explanation since I take tons of retaliation damage but have little problems dealing with it. Sometimes it limits my damage but, isn’t that working as intended?

Swiftness, might, protection, stability, fury — it would be a different game without these. Compared to the above, retaliation is almost just ‘there’. If all you can do is blindly press 1 in zerg fights like maybe half of the zerg-only player base, I still wouldn’t understand. Because then, why not argue water fields and regen are OP. They heal 50k (yea I can throw out random meaningless numbers too) – and on demand – which completely overshadows retaliation as a meaningful damage source. Actually, water fields are op. Retaliation, no.

It might be a good idea to change the retal damage to be based on % of damage dealt (scaling with power). Probably the same people would still be complaining + all the glass cannons. But it’s just not a big problem to deal with as is.

On your videos you are dueling or using single target spells.

Any explanation on how balanced is this? Why is everyone asking for guardians and warriors in their raid?
Aegis blocks an attack, I don’t see how it could be 5% mitigation.

Water fields op? It’s the only thing that requieres strategy and coordination in the game currently, better nerf it yeah.

Why someone should be limited doing damage by a BOON you can have ALL THE TIME and that triggers for a fixed amount even if you do 1 DAMAGE? Wake up dude. Once again it’s a pro-zerg bullcrap and forces people to stack specific classes.

On my videos… so what? Because I know how to roam means I don’t know what zerg vs zerg is? It’s no relation.

Every combo field is “pro-zerg bullcrap”. You need combo fields and blast finishers to keep retaliation up and the duration is still ridiculously short. If its a 50% guardian zerg they deserve to have full retaliation uptime… Until they meet a few necros. Combo fields don’t stack and blast finishers cost time and cooldowns. Compare 3 seconds of retaliation to 20 seconds of 3 stacks of might. It’s not really a comparison. Retaliation isn’t free and given it’s short uptime and being almost exclusive to guardians it’s really not that good a boon.

You don’t need a single field to keep 100% uptime on retaliation on your melee train, sorry. Guardian isn’t the only class that can do it.

Unfortunately shortcake, that does not work at all in zerg to zerg combat. You HAVE to AoE the enemies to take them out ASAP in order to avoid being overwhelmed. You need to L2P yourself if you didn’t remember that or didn’t figure that out.

Pryda.8257:

You don’t need a single field to keep 100% uptime on retaliation on your melee train, sorry. Guardian isn’t the only class that can do it.

Like I said, if its a 50% guardian zerg built around it, they deserve it. But the power there really comes from stability + super tanks. If you want argue certain specialized zerg compositions are overpowered, that’s a different topic.

For everything else it’s just not a big factor. Already nerfed, doesn’t need another.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Unfortunately shortcake, that does not work at all in zerg to zerg combat. You HAVE to AoE the enemies to take them out ASAP in order to avoid being overwhelmed. You need to L2P yourself if you didn’t remember that or didn’t figure that out.

your ability to identify sarcasm is uncanny

L2p retal is not hard to deal with at all. Just don’t attack the zerg and run away and you’ll be fine!!

Zephyrus.9680:

Pryda.8257:

You don’t need a single field to keep 100% uptime on retaliation on your melee train, sorry. Guardian isn’t the only class that can do it.

Like I said, if its a 50% guardian zerg built around it, they deserve it. But the power there really comes from stability + super tanks. If you want argue certain specialized zerg compositions are overpowered, that’s a different topic.

For everything else it’s just not a big factor. Already nerfed, doesn’t need another.

What don’t you understand in “not only guardians can run 100% uptime retal specs”? No point to argue with you, like I said first you have no clue.

The people who defend Retaliation in WvW are either keenly aware of or completely oblivious to how powerful it is. It’s hard figuring out which is which sometimes. There’s a reason Retaliation threads keep popping up. The Retaliation UI feedback has exposed the silent killer finally!

Uttar.2341:

1) Revert the 33% damage nerf (and/or never apply it). The damage itself was fine!

2) Add a 0.5s internal cooldown on the attacker (no retaliation from any target for 0.5s). Makes it effectively more similar to confusion and goes from zerg-booster to zerg-buster.

3) Nerf Superior Water/Monk/… to +10% and Major to +8%. This is similar to current PvP balance. I’ve used these runes in many of my own builds and they always felt overpowered.

You touch my build, I will cut you.

Other than that that’s the first ever ICD suggestion for Retal that I actually can agree with, my solution would be Attacker can’t take retal dmg from >2 targets whatsoever; flamethrowers and nades still need to be addressed, but other than that it’s fine.

Why are you jumping on my runes? let’s nerf both the mechanic and their ability to keep up boons of any sort whatsoever, despite any other class being able to do the same thing. Leave my runes alone or I’m gonn’ finnd you! Grrr, if I have to dip into my WvW player salary to get a new build because people are crying nerf then… Well I’ll be broke again, not enjoying the game anymore and probably stop playing for a while. Idk, my guild will find a new leader to bully.

Zephyrus.9680:

Like I said, if its a 50% guardian zerg built around it, they deserve it. But the power there really comes from stability + super tanks. If you want argue certain specialized zerg compositions are overpowered, that’s a different topic.

For everything else it’s just not a big factor. Already nerfed, doesn’t need another.

I should hire a large man with rippling muscles to punch you every time you talk.

However, in the spirit of retaliation, I think I should change the rate to one punch per syllable.

Immolator.5640:

Other than that that’s the first ever ICD suggestion for Retal that I actually can agree with, my solution would be Attacker can’t take retal dmg from >2 targets whatsoever; flamethrowers and nades still need to be addressed, but other than that it’s fine.

Well, I don’t know if maybe there was a misunderstanding, but my proposed attacker 0.5s cooldown was designed with those goals in mind It effectively limits it to 1 target for AoEs (the first hit would trigger the cooldown) and significantly reduces flamethrower (5/s to 2/s) and grenades (2-3/attack to 1/attack) retaliation damage even in 1v1. At the same time, it changes absolutely nothing for the vast majority of skills in smaller scale fights, and I do believe the damage nerf should be reverted.

Why are you jumping on my runes? let’s nerf both the mechanic and their ability to keep up boons of any sort whatsoever, despite any other class being able to do the same thing. Leave my runes alone or I’m gonn’ finnd you!

You already did, your entire guild rushed our borderland at 2AM a few days while I was playing To be fair, while I don’t approve of such a large number of people rushing an enemy borderland at that hour, our scouting was mind-blowingly bad given the number of people we had on the map, so you probably deserved those points more than we did… Anyway, moving on!

Grrr, if I have to dip into my WvW player salary to get a new build because people are crying nerf then…

First of all, let me say it’s the nerf I’m least attached with, but I honestly don’t think reducing boon duration builds from 1.7x to 1.58x is going to kill anybody’s build. What are people going to do, stop bringing guardians and/or boons to WvW? I’m sure nothing could possibly go wrong with that…

Heck, if you really want that boon duration, you could go for Chocolate Omnomberry Cream food. It gives 20% boon duration (and magic find! wee!) in exchange for 170 stat points (100+70) which is actually less than you’re spending for 30% boon duration on your runes (165 via 90+50+25 and then a lot in another stat; e.g. 100 in precision and two bonuses for Pack). Or you could go for something more interesting like +20% duration food with 6xRune of Fire, depending on your group composition.

I’ve played a healway guardian in the past. I know it’s a hard pill to swallow – nerfs are never fun when you’re on the wrong side of them (Elixir S nerf, how I hate thee). The problem with those runes is they aren’t just OP for guardians – they’re OP for lots of professions and lots of builds (including my own engineer roaming build).

On the other hand, if they did nerf those runes, I fear the answer in top tier guilds might just be to increase their ratio of guardians even further (e.g. 1.5x damage guardians without much boon duration replacing every existing boon duration guardian). If so that might make things worse, and it might require an increase in e.g. stability duration to compensate (or, this would be much better, add good sources of stability on other professions – e.g. can we please get rid of stealth on Toss Elixir S? It’s too different to be random with stability on the same skill).

Well I’ll be broke again, not enjoying the game anymore and probably stop playing for a while. Idk, my guild will find a new leader to bully.

Well, if you ever wish to parley, I’m sure I could exchange you a shiny new runeset for one of our keeps. What say ye, matey? Nay?

Lost my 17k health pool in 3 seconds after throwing my nades twice into a blop of zerg. It wasnt the actually impact of the nades that did it, it was my bleeds. 374 retal a tick from multi targets with my bleeds. And my bleeds do 108 per tick, a pretty nasty return i must say.

Lesson from this. Dont play with the zergs, just not worth it. Back to killing roamers.

Glog.4275:

Lost my 17k health pool in 3 seconds after throwing my nades twice into a blop of zerg. It wasnt the actually impact of the nades that did it, it was my bleeds. 374 retal a tick from multi targets with my bleeds. And my bleeds do 108 per tick, a pretty nasty return i must say.

Retaliation doesn’t trigger on bleeds. If it did trigger, then that’s a (serious) bug that I’ve never seen. If there was a delay between your last attack and when you got the damage, I’d be tempted to blame server lag.

With grenadier, you can launch 3 grenades each hitting 5 targets every 0.5s. That means in theory, you could trigger retaliation 90 times in 3 seconds. That’s 33.7K health with your claimed 374/hit retaliation (which would require 2340 power but never mind that). Honestly, as an engineer, I have no problem believing you took 17K damage in retaliation in 3 seconds if the enemy zerg had retaliation and was tightly grouped up.

Lesson from this. Dont play with the zergs, just not worth it. Back to killing roamers.

Yes, engineers are a very fun roaming profession, but as it is we’re simply not that good in larger scale fights (the same applies not just to zerging but also GvG afaict). Sure, we can get lucky and the enemy might not have much retaliation, but against guild groups that’s wishful thinking (and if you think not, you probably just don’t realise how much of the damage you’ve taken is retaliation).

And sure, we can stop attacking when we’ve taken too much retaliation damage, but then the total amount of damage we’ve done before we stop isn’t that impressive. It’s a shame really because grenadiers should be good zerg busters in theory…

^Could be Uttar, i didnt really get a good chance to pay attention. I just died so fast i just went – the hell, meh moving on. xD

If theres ever a next time, ill see if i can find an arrowcart.

And the main problem with retal is:
Its is boon, not condition.

Every class have a condition removal, but not every class have range boon removal.
If zerg is comming and you send there confusion, the big zerg will be punished by attacking. But in the way retal works you are punushed by defense. Why is that?

Because retal is significat problem only when fighting small group vs zerg. Like tower defense. Zerg in front of the gates and few defenders on the walls. And those defenders die because of retal more often than because of enemy hits. And this is the real problem.
Confusion is on you and you play only one character at a time and you see all those contidions you have. And You can remove them.
Retaliation is a boon and can be on every player attacking your tower. And you have no way how to remove it.

Uttar.2341:

Immolator.5640:

Other than that that’s the first ever ICD suggestion for Retal that I actually can agree with, my solution would be Attacker can’t take retal dmg from >2 targets whatsoever; flamethrowers and nades still need to be addressed, but other than that it’s fine.

Well, I don’t know if maybe there was a misunderstanding, but my proposed attacker 0.5s cooldown was designed with those goals in mind It effectively limits it to 1 target for AoEs (the first hit would trigger the cooldown) and significantly reduces flamethrower (5/s to 2/s) and grenades (2-3/attack to 1/attack) retaliation damage even in 1v1. At the same time, it changes absolutely nothing for the vast majority of skills in smaller scale fights, and I do believe the damage nerf should be reverted.

Why are you jumping on my runes? let’s nerf both the mechanic and their ability to keep up boons of any sort whatsoever, despite any other class being able to do the same thing. Leave my runes alone or I’m gonn’ finnd you!

You already did, your entire guild rushed our borderland at 2AM a few days while I was playing To be fair, while I don’t approve of such a large number of people rushing an enemy borderland at that hour, our scouting was mind-blowingly bad given the number of people we had on the map, so you probably deserved those points more than we did… Anyway, moving on!

Grrr, if I have to dip into my WvW player salary to get a new build because people are crying nerf then…

First of all, let me say it’s the nerf I’m least attached with, but I honestly don’t think reducing boon duration builds from 1.7x to 1.58x is going to kill anybody’s build. What are people going to do, stop bringing guardians and/or boons to WvW? I’m sure nothing could possibly go wrong with that…

Heck, if you really want that boon duration, you could go for Chocolate Omnomberry Cream food. It gives 20% boon duration (and magic find! wee!) in exchange for 170 stat points (100+70) which is actually less than you’re spending for 30% boon duration on your runes (165 via 90+50+25 and then a lot in another stat; e.g. 100 in precision and two bonuses for Pack). Or you could go for something more interesting like +20% duration food with 6xRune of Fire, depending on your group composition.

I’ve played a healway guardian in the past. I know it’s a hard pill to swallow – nerfs are never fun when you’re on the wrong side of them (Elixir S nerf, how I hate thee). The problem with those runes is they aren’t just OP for guardians – they’re OP for lots of professions and lots of builds (including my own engineer roaming build).

On the other hand, if they did nerf those runes, I fear the answer in top tier guilds might just be to increase their ratio of guardians even further (e.g. 1.5x damage guardians without much boon duration replacing every existing boon duration guardian). If so that might make things worse, and it might require an increase in e.g. stability duration to compensate (or, this would be much better, add good sources of stability on other professions – e.g. can we please get rid of stealth on Toss Elixir S? It’s too different to be random with stability on the same skill).

Well I’ll be broke again, not enjoying the game anymore and probably stop playing for a while. Idk, my guild will find a new leader to bully.

Well, if you ever wish to parley, I’m sure I could exchange you a shiny new runeset for one of our keeps. What say ye, matey? Nay?

Yeah what I meant was, I agree with your ICD, although it might be a bit long, maybe make it 0.25 instead.

Also are you completely sure it was my guild? As far as I know we never of arely ever nightcap anything, last time I was up at 2:00 we had maybe 5 online, so yknow. Also I need my mango pies, so can’t run around omnomberry-ing. Let’s not nerf everything okay? losing a lot of retal damage was bad enough, but if that new one goes through then I will seriously have to rethink my build, and which class I play; which presents lack of commander tag problems. You can see why I wouldn’t like it to come to that…

Glog.4275:

Lost my 17k health pool in 3 seconds after throwing my nades twice into a blop of zerg. It wasnt the actually impact of the nades that did it, it was my bleeds. 374 retal a tick from multi targets with my bleeds. And my bleeds do 108 per tick, a pretty nasty return i must say.

Lesson from this. Dont play with the zergs, just not worth it. Back to killing roamers.

This is nonsense. My FT Engineer (my main WvW toon at the moment) inflicts burns and bleeds on a regular basis and yet the only hits I get from Retaliation are from my direct damage attacks. I can tell this because the retaliation damage stops when I stop firing.

To be honest I think a simpler solution to the whole thing may be simply to change the effect of Light Field/Burst Finisher to something that isn’t Area Retaliation; since it seems to have little benefit in PvE and (apparently) a disproportionate effect in WvW.

binidj.5734:

Glog.4275:

Lost my 17k health pool in 3 seconds after throwing my nades twice into a blop of zerg. It wasnt the actually impact of the nades that did it, it was my bleeds. 374 retal a tick from multi targets with my bleeds. And my bleeds do 108 per tick, a pretty nasty return i must say.

Lesson from this. Dont play with the zergs, just not worth it. Back to killing roamers.

This is nonsense. My FT Engineer (my main WvW toon at the moment) inflicts burns and bleeds on a regular basis and yet the only hits I get from Retaliation are from my direct damage attacks. I can tell this because the retaliation damage stops when I stop firing.

To be honest I think a simpler solution to the whole thing may be simply to change the effect of Light Field/Burst Finisher to something that isn’t Area Retaliation; since it seems to have little benefit in PvE and (apparently) a disproportionate effect in WvW.

Light field is not a problem at all.

Pryda.8257:

Light field is not a problem at all.

Mass Retaliation is the problem, which can be resolved by changing the effect of the Light/Burst combo. Just take mass retaliation out of the game or at least make it a lot less common and the problem is solved. I don’t want to see any nerfs to light or Guardians, just a change to the effect generated by one combination.

It’s not light fields that provide most of retal sources, that’s my point.

Out of curiosity, if you spammed blind during your opening burst, would that negate all of the incoming retaliation/confusion?

edit. This isn’t directed at rangers.

Also, did anyone mention or suggest: Nulling?

That only works for one enemy katniss, the rest will still hit you with retaliation if you’re using an AoE skill.

I don’t want retaliation removed, made harder to apply, or anything like that- it just needs a cooldown so you can’t be hit for 20k damage from one passive boon skill within a 5 second time frame. At the moment it is entirely possible to have 20 rangers and engineers on a wall firing into a 40 man retaliation zerg and for all of them to die without the 40 man zerg lifting a finger against them and all within ten seconds. and without killing a single zerg member (unless one of them stepped out the water fields, protection, aegis and got unlucky with random hits to their 20k+ hp at 800-1k per hit)

380 damage to everyone in the area that is attacking every second would still be the most powerful attack skill in the entire game – and it’s a boon.

All it needs is an adjustment – after all, they nerfed the hell out of aoe skills (which was terrible, would be great to have it back!).

That’s all it needs to make it a useful source of damage without being stupidly overpowered in certain situations.

Just reading this thread reminds me so much of the older confusion threads, but kind of opposite. In the confusion threads, you had people saying “Nerf confusion, since the option not to attack is silly!”, and here you have people saying “If they have retal up, just don’t attack, it’s not OP”.

I think my 2 biggest issues with retal are: 1) It is a boon, so while people can more easily remove conditions from themselves, doing boon removal isn’t always easy (though for mesmers it is if they use null field..but then again the retal can just be reapplied fast enough), and 2) Retal works against reflection projectiles, which makes no sense. You put a wall of reflection up, the guy shoots into it with auto attack, and the person who put the wall of reflection up gets punished (sometimes more) than the person who shoots into it. (Now, some of you may say “Don’t use it against someone who has retal”, which is true in 1v1’s, or small fights, but in a ZvZ you rarely have time to check the boons of every guy charging to you!)

One thing I don’t understand is people saying they get hit for 20k damage by retal..I’m not sure how they can do that. If the retal damage is 350 per tick, that would require somehow hitting 57 people with 1 attack, ~28 with 2 attacks, etc…Even if you spread retal over an entire zerg, unless you’re just tabbing mindlessly with auto attack to get your tags in, it won’t get that much.

I see the retal problem almost the same as the confusion problem, and I think people would be griping less (like they do now with confusion) if anet did their jobs well and actually did the patch correctly.

Retaliation is worse than confusion. At least with the later you have a clear feedback and just need to remove the condition on yourself.

Removing retaliation from a zerg? Most classes cannot remove boons at all, let alone remove them from a zerg. Also it’s impossible to see if they have the boon up among the mass.

Handin.4032:

Just reading this thread reminds me so much of the older confusion threads, but kind of opposite. In the confusion threads, you had people saying “Nerf confusion, since the option not to attack is silly!”, and here you have people saying “If they have retal up, just don’t attack, it’s not OP”.

I think my 2 biggest issues with retal are: 1) It is a boon, so while people can more easily remove conditions from themselves, doing boon removal isn’t always easy (though for mesmers it is if they use null field..but then again the retal can just be reapplied fast enough), and 2) Retal works against reflection projectiles, which makes no sense. You put a wall of reflection up, the guy shoots into it with auto attack, and the person who put the wall of reflection up gets punished (sometimes more) than the person who shoots into it. (Now, some of you may say “Don’t use it against someone who has retal”, which is true in 1v1’s, or small fights, but in a ZvZ you rarely have time to check the boons of every guy charging to you!)

One thing I don’t understand is people saying they get hit for 20k damage by retal..I’m not sure how they can do that. If the retal damage is 350 per tick, that would require somehow hitting 57 people with 1 attack, ~28 with 2 attacks, etc…Even if you spread retal over an entire zerg, unless you’re just tabbing mindlessly with auto attack to get your tags in, it won’t get that much.

I see the retal problem almost the same as the confusion problem, and I think people would be griping less (like they do now with confusion) if anet did their jobs well and actually did the patch correctly.

I don’t want to have to put this example in every single retal thread, but I will put it here again for the cheap seats. I run damage armor, just to put this damage in context.

My Flamethrower ticks 10 time in around a 2 second cast, each tick hitting for between 150 and 180 pts, give or take. It can hit 3 people per tick, and is a conical AoE in front of the weapon. That is 30 procs per 2 second cast, ~180 per at the upper end with crits and is answered by retal at conservatively 250 points per. Which means if the targets all have retaliation, I will do:

30×180 = 5400 total damage across 3 targets for 1800 each.

I will get back:

30×250 = 7500 damage

I did cumulatively 24% of the damage to each person that they did back to me as a whole by just STANDING THEIR WITH A BOON. No real work, not hitting any skills except for “Stand Your Ground” or one of the other ways Guardians can share retaliation.

This is a conservative estimate considering how many armor sets have power, and that the might boon is conferred by Guardians as well.

Needless to say, I don’t run with a Flamethrower, because reasons. But OP classes want to keep their OP boons, so I doubt they will even fix the different maps any time soon, simply because there are more ANet employees playing Guardians than Rangers and Engineers combined.

It isn’t a L2P issue, it is a balance issue, most just won’t see it because of their bias.

Handin.4032:

One thing I don’t understand is people saying they get hit for 20k damage by retal..I’m not sure how they can do that. If the retal damage is 350 per tick, that would require somehow hitting 57 people with 1 attack, ~28 with 2 attacks, etc…Even if you spread retal over an entire zerg, unless you’re just tabbing mindlessly with auto attack to get your tags in, it won’t get that much.

Enough said. (By the way, this is tame compared to what Engineers deal with)

Nokaru.7831:

Handin.4032:

One thing I don’t understand is people saying they get hit for 20k damage by retal..I’m not sure how they can do that. If the retal damage is 350 per tick, that would require somehow hitting 57 people with 1 attack, ~28 with 2 attacks, etc…Even if you spread retal over an entire zerg, unless you’re just tabbing mindlessly with auto attack to get your tags in, it won’t get that much.

Enough said. (By the way, this is tame compared to what Engineers deal with)

Grenadier Engineer checking in here.

Grenade barrage throws 8 grenades, each can hit up to 5 targets with it’s explosion. At max traited range of 1500, several more sets of grenades can be thrown before the first lands, each extra set also hitting up to 15 targets per 0.5sec interval. It is not uncommon at all for my engineer to lose half or more of his HP by throwing a couple seconds worth of grenades. Against super tightly stacked coordinated enemies, I really can’t even attack, generally they are loose enough that each grenade only hits 1-2 players (even that hurts when I can toss 15-20 grenades before they start to land, and there’s no way to avoid the damage after that).

Funny enough, I’ve actually downed a mesmer before by throwing grenades AT a feedback bubble when I had retaliation up. With my condition/support build, regular #1 grenades only hit for 100-200 each, so throwing them at a feedback bubble generates more in retaliation damage to the mesmer than I take from grenades, especially if I have some might. Not sure if that illustrates how broken retaliation is, but it seems that way to me.

It seems like throwing grenades would be a reasonable response to a large group of enemies, but they are actually a much better 1v1 weapon due to the random spam and long duration of retaliation in groups.

Thrashbarg.9820:

It seems like throwing grenades would be a reasonable response to a large group of enemies, but they are actually a much better 1v1 weapon due to the random spam and long duration of retaliation in groups.

GW2 in a nutshell : AoE is for 1v1, single target skills for zerg fights

Pryda.8257:

Zephyrus.9680:

Pryda.8257:

You don’t need a single field to keep 100% uptime on retaliation on your melee train, sorry. Guardian isn’t the only class that can do it.

Like I said, if its a 50% guardian zerg built around it, they deserve it. But the power there really comes from stability + super tanks. If you want argue certain specialized zerg compositions are overpowered, that’s a different topic.

For everything else it’s just not a big factor. Already nerfed, doesn’t need another.

What don’t you understand in “not only guardians can run 100% uptime retal specs”? No point to argue with you, like I said first you have no clue.

You’re right I don’t understand that… What other classes/skills? I’m curious because I’ve never seen skills or traits that can keep retal up even close to 100% on other classes.

Feel free not to answer like you haven’t for any your other ridiculous claims.

Beside the point though, guardian is the only one that shares it — which is the whole point of the thread. So are organized guardian/warrior zergs the undefeatable meta now or something?

Because it seems like this thread is more a line of rangers and engineers who are having problems freely spamming their AoEs. That’s not an argument for a nerf as much as a possible rework, if anything, unless its actually every class getting destroyed by retaliation that’s somehow up on everyone all the time…

Zephyrus.9680:

Because it seems like this thread is more a line of rangers and engineers who are having problems freely spamming their AoEs. That’s not an argument for a nerf as much as a possible rework, if anything, unless its actually every class getting destroyed by retaliation that’s somehow up on everyone all the time…

And a rework is what people ask for. Rework in an internal cooldown, to avoid Aoe attacks from triggering Retaliation on everyone they hit. Not asking for a damage nerf, a nerf to uptime, a nerf to guardian or light combofields. But to the way Retaliation is applied.

Ranger and Engineer are hardly the only ones who suffer from this. Anyone with an AoE or fast-hitting attack, suffers from Retaliation. Greatly. But as an Engineer, i have no alternative because AoE and fast-hitting is quite litterally all i have.
And i find your stance on this quite disturbing “unless every class is destroyed”, the fact one class is destroyed by such a cheap and mindles| boon is okay to you?

This isnt just about Guardians, there are to many things adding Retaliation to a zerg. There are a ton of Light fields everywhere. And guardians are a big factor in this, but not the only ones. And with so many light fields around, combo-finishers are inevitable to go of and proc Retalation or Aoe Retaliation.
Something that is so incredibly common thakittens harder to not get Retaliation should not counter anything. What you’re asking for is a passive counter to certain builds, and even entire professions alltogether. That is just, beyond unreasonable, thats insanity.

Zephyrus.9680:

Pryda.8257:

Zephyrus.9680:

Pryda.8257:

You don’t need a single field to keep 100% uptime on retaliation on your melee train, sorry. Guardian isn’t the only class that can do it.

Like I said, if its a 50% guardian zerg built around it, they deserve it. But the power there really comes from stability + super tanks. If you want argue certain specialized zerg compositions are overpowered, that’s a different topic.

For everything else it’s just not a big factor. Already nerfed, doesn’t need another.

What don’t you understand in “not only guardians can run 100% uptime retal specs”? No point to argue with you, like I said first you have no clue.

You’re right I don’t understand that… What other classes/skills? I’m curious because I’ve never seen skills or traits that can keep retal up even close to 100% on other classes.

Feel free not to answer like you haven’t for any your other ridiculous claims.

Beside the point though, guardian is the only one that shares it — which is the whole point of the thread. So are organized guardian/warrior zergs the undefeatable meta now or something?

Because it seems like this thread is more a line of rangers and engineers who are having problems freely spamming their AoEs. That’s not an argument for a nerf as much as a possible rework, if anything, unless its actually every class getting destroyed by retaliation that’s somehow up on everyone all the time…

Mesmer with sword focus can keep 100% retaliation uptime by using focus #4 and sword #3 twice while standing on top of the temporal curtain. I don’t even think you need any kind of traits but I may be wrong, it’s been a while since I saw that build. Granted, this isn’t AoE retaliation being transferred to a whole zerg so it’s not as potent, but I felt the need to point out that his claim wasn’t ridiculous at all. Especially since I happen to know of one case off hand and I don’t claim to be a master of all builds and play styles.

As a former confusion mesmer I think that if Anet is going to stick by their guns then they have to nerf retaliation into oblivion like they did with confusion. Retaliation is just as powerful as (if not more than) confusion, not to mention more difficult to remove.

I don’t necessarily think they should remove it however. For one, if both zergs are using it, as is often the case, then it is balanced. If you have a balanced build, and are careful, it is not difficult to heal through. Then again, being careful seems to be just too much ask when facerolling is also an option. Secondly I was always against the confusion nerf. I have my own reasons for that but they aren’t pertinent to this thread.

Zephyrus.9680:

Beside the point though, guardian is the only one that shares it — which is the whole point of the thread. So are organized guardian/warrior zergs the undefeatable meta now or something?

guardian,mesmer,engineer,necro can share it with light fields. Stand Your Ground is 5 seconds of retaliation with a long cd. Most of their retaliation come from light fields and blast finishers. its not unbeatable just don’t throw you’re meteor shower in there.

tom.7468:

its not unbeatable just don’t throw you’re meteor shower in there.

By there, do you mean here?

Drakh.3128:

Better yet, try being a confusion mesmer. I hit them for 65 with confusion then get hit back for 375 from retaliation. Yeah, that’s fair…..

Confusion also stacks in intensity, retal only duration. Also retal doesn’t injure you for trying to use a heal skill / non-direct damage move or utility (i.e. block, stun breaker, etc). To modify a quote all the confusion defenders said a few patches ago “if you see someone with retaliation, just don’t attack them!” Sounds a little silly doesn’t it?

You can work around retaliation in zerg situations…like if you know throwing a large aoe skill into a zerg is going to hurt, just make sure you have enough health to survive it. Also dodge rolling / other evades avoid retal damage iirc. Another option is having the sigil of nullification if you have high crit chance; it removes the highest stacked or longest durationed boon 1st. So if people are retal stacking then with 1 crit proc it’ll disappear real quick.

Setun.4368:

…like if you know throwing a large aoe skill into a zerg is going to hurt, just make sure you have enough health to survive it.

AKA stack enough vitality that your AoE attacks do even less damage in comparison to Retaliation. Good plan.

Setun.4368:

Also dodge rolling / other evades avoid retal damage iirc.

No.

Setun.4368:

Another option is having the sigil of nullification if you have high crit chance; it removes the highest stacked or longest durationed boon 1st. So if people are retal stacking then with 1 crit proc it’ll disappear real quick.

That will remove 1 boon with a 10 second cool down. Assuming we are fighting the most inept Guardian in the universe and they ONLY have retaliation up, and there are no other Guardians in the vicinity, they we could maybe peel that boon off and go back to actually fighting, but that sigil REQUIRES THAT WE BE ATTACKING TO PROC.

Circular logic is circular.

Just make retaliation’s damage from condition damage instead of from power, which most guardians stack anyway. If guardians want to abuse retaliation (like mesmers allegedly could with confusion), make them work for it—provide a zerg wide field but can’t really do much outside that beside be an already extremely solid class with respectable AoE, not counting the massive might stacks they already get.

Retaliation scaling with power is dumb. It just encourages an already stupid form of play. Honestly, I’d rather have confusion mesmers back than keep the retaliation crap the way it is, at least with confusion mesmers you could cleanse yourself and others (most professions have an AoE cleanse, not even counting things like soldier’s runes) or if you were feeling spunky, you could wait the three to five seconds for most of the confusion stacks to wear off.

I forsee the next trap Anet releasing be a strip boon trap, with retaliation as the top priority.

I have a guardian and my opinion is the damage aspect once the bl issue is fixed should be fine however it’s not the damage itself but the multiple sources from many players in a zerg that’s the killer the only professions and builds safe are those focused on single target DPS.