Guild Wars 2

Chaba.5410:

Gbok, it is the same, not different. There is no stopping a grenade toss, grenade barrage, or the 10x hits of ft 1.

I also play ranger, and have nearly met my demise barraging zergs using retaliation. He means that when you have channeled barrage it attacks several times over the course of several seconds. The damage and retal from grenades all occur at once, while the barrage occurs over many seconds. The difference here is that the ranger likely realized that what they did was a mistake by the first volley of arrows, but there is literally no way to stop the rest of them if they’ve channeled the skill. The difference is slim, but whereas an engineer can throw one volley of grenades and stop, and ranger must sit there and hope their heal is off CD.
It’s simply the difference between receiving retal all at once from a mistake or being unable to stop attacking and receiving retal in pulses long after you realized you should stop attacking.
The outcomes are generally the same, but saying that the actions are the same is not totally correct.

BigEvs.6971:

Chaba.5410:

Gbok, it is the same, not different. There is no stopping a grenade toss, grenade barrage, or the 10x hits of ft 1.

I also play ranger, and have nearly met my demise barraging zergs using retaliation. He means that when you have channeled barrage it attacks several times over the course of several seconds. The damage and retal from grenades all occur at once, while the barrage occurs over many seconds. The difference here is that the ranger likely realized that what they did was a mistake by the first volley of arrows, but there is literally no way to stop the rest of them if they’ve channeled the skill. The difference is slim, but whereas an engineer can throw one volley of grenades and stop, and ranger must sit there and hope their heal is off CD.
It’s simply the difference between receiving retal all at once from a mistake or being unable to stop attacking and receiving retal in pulses long after you realized you should stop attacking.
The outcomes are generally the same, but saying that the actions are the same is not totally correct.

In a standard grenade spam, by the time, the first wave of grenades hit, you have thrown 3 sets of grenades and a grenade barrage. These grenades are mid-air, there is no way to stop them and they all will eventually hit.
Barrage = 7 grenades with 3 targets each = 21 targets, the 3 sets of nades = 3 sets of 3 nades with 5 targets each = 45 targets. total: 66 targets.
Let’s say, the average retal damage is 300 to make it simple.
300*66=19800 damage. And that is only, if you immediately realize, what you did.

The guardians are right, we should encourage more skillful usage and timing in this game.

Therefore we should change retaliation to only have a ~2 second duration so they learn not to spam it mindlessly and time it for when the multi hit attacks are coming.

Given what Anet has said over the past year, when they nerfed retal durations the first time, this is actually how they envision it to play out as a counter anyway.

I like the 33% damage return idea. Even as a guardian user I don’t like the mechanics of retal and confusion. However, retal damage was originally built into the classes damage calculations and gave bunker guards a way to fight back. Over the past year I have seen retal duration reduced to about a quarter of what it once was, and the damage reduced to about half. These changes have hit guardian damage hard, especially bunkers, in many types of play. I think this is where the development team began to notice a lack of damage output on guards. I just hope that if retal is changed (and it probably should be) that the guardian class as a whole is also taken into consideration.

BigEvs.6971:

Chaba.5410:

Gbok, it is the same, not different. There is no stopping a grenade toss, grenade barrage, or the 10x hits of ft 1.

I also play ranger, and have nearly met my demise barraging zergs using retaliation. He means that when you have channeled barrage it attacks several times over the course of several seconds. The damage and retal from grenades all occur at once, while the barrage occurs over many seconds. The difference here is that the ranger likely realized that what they did was a mistake by the first volley of arrows, but there is literally no way to stop the rest of them if they’ve channeled the skill. The difference is slim, but whereas an engineer can throw one volley of grenades and stop, and ranger must sit there and hope their heal is off CD.
It’s simply the difference between receiving retal all at once from a mistake or being unable to stop attacking and receiving retal in pulses long after you realized you should stop attacking.
The outcomes are generally the same, but saying that the actions are the same is not totally correct.

Grenades fly so slow that the engineer realizes his mistake after one toss and cannot stop them, cannot dodge out of it, just watch and resign oneself. Literally, you can toss one set of grenades at range and the target can see them long before they hit and has enough time to put up retaliation. You just bend over and kiss your kitten goodbye.

I like Retaliation because it rewards me for simply receiving a Boon from an ally. I especially love it when a Mesmers uses Feedback on a zerg with Retaliation.

Nokaru.7831:

I like Retaliation because it rewards me for simply receiving a Boon from an ally. I especially love it when a Mesmers uses Feedback on a zerg with Retaliation.

…which is another way of saying, it rewards you for simply standing there and taking a beating.
Not much active play involved there…

Retal damage already got nerfed. Any more and it is pretty much useless. If you don’t want to take retal damage from 3 targets then don’t spam AoE…

My thief and Necro both have very rapid attacks and retal has never been an issue for me.

I don’t really understand how retaliation is designed so poorly. It’s like no one on the design team learned anything from the past 2 decades of MMO damage shields mechanics. Or read any of the beta posts about mechanics without cooldowns, percentile returns or active play (not passive boon blasting, omg).

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Ooh, look how close that is to 450. All my damage number estimates were between 200 and 450 per strike. 200 being very close to the base damage, and 450 being very close to the highest damage obtainable damage.

Yes, and now test it in WvW. You won’t hit 450. Why? Because retaliation has already been nerfed in WvW. Of course you wouldn’t know this, because you are just a zergling who wants to sit at the back of his zerg spamming his grenades getting as many tags as possible so you can get your petty little WvW ranks or whatever it is you are looking to gain out of WvW.

vinceftw.5086:

It’s funny how Guardians are defending their Retaliation. Engis are already not wanted AT ALL for zergs, just like rangers and now people want to make it a little better for them and that’s not allowed?

If people actually tell you what you can or can not play in a lolpugzerg I would be amazed. If you actually listen to them doubly so.

But then again if you think suiciding by throwing a stack of grenades at a massive zerg you know has 100% retal uptime I could see why people would complain.

Lol.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I laughed. Everything an engineer has that can give conditions hits multiple times, is AoE, or hits fast. Meaning THERE IS NOTHING AN ENGINEER CAN DO SHORT OF STOP ATTACKING COMPLETELY. Ranger has this same problem too with most of our weapons. Retal absolutely wrecks both classes completely.

Maybe if you stepped out of your zerg for just two minutes you would realize what an amazing counter to Guardians that grenades are. Spammable multi conditions that are practically ignored by our aegis’ and blinds.

Go home, EFWinters. You’re being highly disingenuous by trying to defend your zergling tactic of spamming a passive boon that requires little thought. At least with grenades someone has to put thought into when and where to throw them. If you were truly sincere about the issue, you’d bring something constructive to the conversation.

Chaba.5410:

Go home, EFWinters. You’re being highly disingenuous by trying to defend your zergling tactic of spamming a passive boon that requires little thought. At least with grenades someone has to put thought into when and where to throw them. If you were truly sincere about the issue, you’d bring something constructive to the conversation.

I am not a zergling like the people I quote, sorry (yes I think this applies to quoting you too).

Trikki.5803:

All this talk about “countered” and “rock/paper/scissors” doesn’t mean a thing in large scale WvW. A FT Engi will just suicide in just a few seconds. FT spec is the closest thing we have to a heavy melee set and its completely useless in the situation that it was built for. Large groups is the only place the FT damage is even viable yet every large group in WvW has Retal.

Toolkit is more melee than flamethrower.

YES! REWORK or NERF Retaliation. Its an OP mechanic currently that is the direct counter (and an abundant easy passive ability) for the playstyle of the 3 weakest classes in the game; Ranger, Ele and Engi. AoE or weak frequent attacks.
Maybe tweak it so it can only do something like 25% of a players HP over 5 seconds.
It stacks in intensity up to 3 or 4 then stacks in duration.
It scales off of condition damage not power.

EFWinters.5421:

I am not a zergling like the people I quote, sorry (yes I think this applies to quoting you too).

Zerglings defending their mindless boons that don’t even require any #1 spamming effort. GG!

Mindless boon spam having a completely uneven affect on different classes and builds is a failure of only designing for tpvp or pve, and never applying large scale engagement experience to combat mechanics.

Wvw deserves it’s own balance team if anet is serious about keeping it’s playerbase when an alternative is released. Retribution in large scale, it’s uptime and it’s uneven affects and the on crit heal changes from a year ago, all should be part of the priority list along with mitigating changes to guardians and blasting light fields etc.

Retallation is something poor mechanic so that you get full damage back even if you hit 1 dmg. Retalaltion shouldnt exceed the damage recieved imo.

Bad wvw retaliation design is one of the primary causes of blobbing.

retaliation is about the one thing that could kill me when defending an object in wvw as an engineer. A few grenades and my health is down from 22k to 14.
I always hated this mechanic, from when Duncan had it in gw1 or whole champ group in diablo 3 have reflect damage.

Retaliation and confusion both need to be removed from the game.

Straegen.2938:

I don’t have the statistics but seems retaliation is a counter to AoE spammers. I think eliminating or toning counters down to relative uselessness would give rise to even more AoE skill spam. WvW is already 90% AoE spam.

People that are smart enough to use retaliation should have a definite advantage over ones that dont. Use AoE at the right time.
IMO AC spammers should be punished. If they die to retal then its their fault for abusing siege by pressing the 1 key over and over again.
If you hate retal because it doesnt award active play, why dont we just remove all boons and conditions then? Who decides what should be kept and thrown out? The people that abuse AoE or the ones receiving it?