Guild Wars 2

do you intend to change retaliation, could it be reduce whit toughness because since the end of culling, i cant even attack a zerg whit my guardian i just do whirling wrath and i drop dead on the the ground i cant even touch them even if i have 2 200 toughness nothing can stop it as soon i enter in it. but when i just do in whit mace and shield to absorb projectile im good i run out when all Cds are used and i live. i just hate to think this will stay this way cause rigth now it looks like this WvW is more of a range fight you cant rush in do your thing and get out you cant survive hitting 30 people at the same time when retaliation is on.

just let me know if anything will be done or do i have to make a new character.

End of culling need people to rethink way of playing finally.

Monitoring enemy boons is always a good idea. OTOH, using WW inside enemy raid under retaliation never was one. WW does a kitten load of hits when you are surrounded so you get a lot of feedback from retaliation. Add might and confusion to the picture and you are killing yourself in an instant. Not to say that enemy is not staying still, they fight back.

As of melee, it doesn’t really matter with retaliation if it is melee attack or range. What does matter is a number of times particular skill hits.

Yaro.3251:

As of melee, it doesn’t really matter with retaliation if it is melee attack or range. What does matter is a number of times particular skill hits.

And this is what needs to change with retaliation. My Thief can BS for 8K and take 350hp from ret, My Eng can shoot same person for 450 crit and get hit with same dmg. This is stupid mechanic IMO. It should reflect back a % of the hit.

^ this
or increase damage againts melee

Moddo.7105:

My Thief can BS for 8K and take 350hp from ret, My Eng can shoot same person for 450 crit and get hit with same dmg. This is stupid mechanic IMO. It should reflect back a % of the hit.

Engineer can do 8k damage too, what’s your point? My is that you just do not use low/medium dmg skills with high hit rate on multiple targets under retaliation. With any class. Just simple logic. As you will not cc someone with stability.
It adds a intellect prerequisite to the battle, which I’m all for. Leap of faith right into the middle of the blob followed by whirling wrath is the worst idea ever unless you know that they are just a haystack of clueless newbies.

Retaliation is a stupid mechanic to begin with, as is confusion.

For many classes, the only real counter to it is to “stop fighting back”, which is a stupid counter to have to do in a game whose content is 99% about hitting things. As someone else said, the fact that a 9k thief hit and a 450 damage Guardian staff hit gets the same retaliation damage keeps it unbalanced.

Retaliation in particular is also just another “pro-zerg” element.

I’m not buying “stupid” argument and I don’t agree that PvP/WvW content in this game is about hitting things. This is a too narrow view to my taste and exactly an attitude I’m arguing against. What PvP/WvW content IS 99% about is positioning and timing.

Slamz.5376:

Retaliation is a stupid mechanic to begin with, as is confusion.

For many classes, the only real counter to it is to “stop fighting back”, which is a stupid counter to have to do in a game whose content is 99% about hitting things. As someone else said, the fact that a 9k thief hit and a 450 damage Guardian staff hit gets the same retaliation damage keeps it unbalanced.

Retaliation in particular is also just another “pro-zerg” element.

How about just removing the condition. Lol @ only “stop fighting back”

Yaro.3251:

Moddo.7105:

My Thief can BS for 8K and take 350hp from ret, My Eng can shoot same person for 450 crit and get hit with same dmg. This is stupid mechanic IMO. It should reflect back a % of the hit.

Engineer can do 8k damage too, what’s your point?

First off. No, Engineer doesnt do 8K single hits. The closest to this number might be Grenade Barrage but thats 8 seperate projectiles that all trigger Retaliation.

Secondly, certain builds/playstyles/weapons are utterly screwed by Retaliation. Any Engineer build for their FT to name one example. His default attack and by far prime source of damage is a rapid hitting ability. With Ret its not uncommon to harm yourself more then you do your opponent because of the numerous micro-hits.

Using a FT against an enemy zerg, in the big chaotic moment, from just hitting 3 enemies with Ret u you will ramp up over 10k dmg yourself in 2seconds. And you were never even attacked, thats all passively returned damage.

FT is just an example, Grenadekit also counts as seperate hits so ramping up 1k+ dmg from using an ability isnt uncommon. Thats two weapons rendered crippled all because of Ret.

Simply “not attacking” while retaliation is up. This is an admissal that Ret is overpowered. As the choice is, either eat unacceptably high amounts of reflected damage.
Or accept that while Ret is up, he is untouchable while he is still going to town on myself and i should run away.
Or use only abilities that do not proc Ret as hard, which results in such a massive damage reduction due to Ret that it makes Protection jealous.

moutzaheadin.4029:

How about just removing the condition. Lol @ only “stop fighting back”

…says the mesmer.

Not every class has a means of removing boons from an enemy. Even removing conditions from yourself is dubious in a WvW environment where your removal may have a long timer whereas the 40 enemies over there can stack you back up instantly.

If I’m on my engineer and run into a mass of people all running retaliation, “stop fighting back” really is my best option. I have no counter to retaliation.

You know that whole beam piercing effect they added to the Mesmer GS #1? Yea hitting a pack of guys that all have retaliation is a nightmare. That’s three hits of retaliation damage from every single person. It’s pretty deadly.

Terrahero.9358:

Yaro.3251:

Moddo.7105:

My Thief can BS for 8K and take 350hp from ret, My Eng can shoot same person for 450 crit and get hit with same dmg. This is stupid mechanic IMO. It should reflect back a % of the hit.

Engineer can do 8k damage too, what’s your point?

First off. No, Engineer doesn’t do 8K single hits.

How about double with jump shot?

Terrahero.9358:

Secondly, certain builds/playstyles/weapons are utterly screwed by Retaliation.

That of course is true. I’d just rephrase it by saying that certain builds are not optimal for certain situations. Like builds that rely on hits per second rather than raw damage against retaliation-heavy single or multi targets. However, “my build doesn’t work here” does not translate to “the world should change so I can has my build and pwn”. Get your own retaliation (own meaning your profession of your group/raid spec), spec for more raw damage build and boon removal, learn other profession skill rotations and effin boon timings. Do something.

Yaro.3251:

Terrahero.9358:

Yaro.3251:

Moddo.7105:

My Thief can BS for 8K and take 350hp from ret, My Eng can shoot same person for 450 crit and get hit with same dmg. This is stupid mechanic IMO. It should reflect back a % of the hit.

Engineer can do 8k damage too, what’s your point?

First off. No, Engineer doesn’t do 8K single hits.

How about double with jump shot?

Terrahero.9358:

Secondly, certain builds/playstyles/weapons are utterly screwed by Retaliation.

That of course is true. I’d just rephrase it by saying that certain builds are not optimal for certain situations. Like builds that rely on hits per second rather than raw damage against retaliation-heavy single or multi targets. However, “my build doesn’t work here” does not translate to “the world should change so I can has my build and pwn”.

Double jump shot would be 2 hits, which kind of supports your opponent’s argument better than your own. Landing a double jump shot is pretty rare so it’s hard to know for sure, but I think in full glass it could get up around 6k-8k with two crits.

I think retaliation was meant to be a counter to multiple small hits while blocking was a counter to single large hits. In practice, retaliation is more of a constant damage source than a counter to anything. Does a guardian say, “here’s a flamethrower engineer, better put up retal”?

Guardians do say “I’m out of position and that thief just stealthed, time for an aegis.”

It’s not that they’re bad mechanics, it’s that one is working as a counter and one is working as a damage bonus with a huge range of possible damage output, from adding a couple hundred damage all the way up to 1-shotting in certain situations.

Sounds like OP needs to run with more Necros

Yaro.3251:

Terrahero.9358:

Yaro.3251:

Moddo.7105:

My Thief can BS for 8K and take 350hp from ret, My Eng can shoot same person for 450 crit and get hit with same dmg. This is stupid mechanic IMO. It should reflect back a % of the hit.

Engineer can do 8k damage too, what’s your point?

First off. No, Engineer doesn’t do 8K single hits.

How about double with jump shot?

Terrahero.9358:

Secondly, certain builds/playstyles/weapons are utterly screwed by Retaliation.

That of course is true. I’d just rephrase it by saying that certain builds are not optimal for certain situations. Like builds that rely on hits per second rather than raw damage against retaliation-heavy single or multi targets. However, “my build doesn’t work here” does not translate to “the world should change so I can has my build and pwn”. Get your own retaliation (own meaning your profession of your group/raid spec), spec for more raw damage build and boon removal, learn other profession skill rotations and effin boon timings. Do something.

When a single boon, essentially nulls any build that has build into it multiple smaller hits, that is a serious problem. Saying we should just spec something else is utterly rediculous. Especially when, atleast as an Engineer, the options i have are very limited to begin with.
Not to mention the ease at which Ret is applied. Its not a boon that requires any thought it or special action. Its not a “okay NOW” boon. Its a fairly spammy boon that, due to the nature of combofields, finds itself with a high uptime on multiple allies.

No boon that requires such little thought of its user should shut down other builds so severely.

The solution to this has been mentioned time and time again. Reflect either a percentage of an attack, so it hurts everyone equally. Or give it an icd. Either way, slow hitters and fast hitters are equally afflicted by Retaliation. Instead of now, where Ret is a meaningless boon against slow, hardhitters, but an utter game breaker for fast hitters. There is a massive discrepancy.

Either of these two changes would also mean balancing Ret is going to be much easier.

Oh well, another Guardian mechanic the mob wants to be nerfed…

btw Retaliation uptime is pretty short in general. Light + Blast is 3 sec Retaliation against 20 sec of 3 stacks might for fire + blast. Dedicated Retaliation guardians sacrifice most of their damage output for + % boon duration.

/edit: I forgt something:

Guardians do say “I’m out of position and that thief just stealthed, time for an aegis.”

Only that blocking doesn’t put the thief out of stealth.

Terrahero.9358:

Saying we should just spec something else is utterly rediculous.

I rest my case.

If you are not willing to adapt to situation I have little to say. I have 4 different professions full exotics 80 with a lot of different equipment sets. I change builds and stat-builds constantly as situation dictates, as battle mechanics and threats evolve.

If you’d re-read the tread from beginning you’d see that I didn’t say a word regarding If i think retaliation is overpowered or not. That was not my goal to defend it. I was just disturbed by this attitude “I charge, I hit things as hard as I can, I die. Anet, FIX THIS!” that appeared in first post and continued throughout. That’s all.

Iavra.8510:

Oh well, another Guardian mechanic the mob wants to be nerfed…

btw Retaliation uptime is pretty short in general. Light + Blast is 3 sec Retaliation against 20 sec of 3 stacks might for fire + blast. Dedicated Retaliation guardians sacrifice most of their damage output for + % boon duration.

/edit: I forgt something:

Guardians do say “I’m out of position and that thief just stealthed, time for an aegis.”

Only that blocking doesn’t put the thief out of stealth.

I’ve wondered about that, too. The point was that blocks are a “counter,” used at a certain time for a certain reason. Retaliation is currently more of a damage add, which is why it feels so out of balance to professions that rely on fast hits or AoE to deal damage.

Between retaliation, every mesmer spec’ing into confusion, and the mass spam of feedbacks/reflect walls, I do more damage to myself in almost any encounter than enemies do to me. Positioning and superior movement be kitten when passive defenses are your biggest enemy. Retaliation’s definitely the worst of them though. As an engineer my best viable weapon options versus groups are grenades or the flamethrower. Grenades throw 3 projectiles at once and flamethrower’s autoattack counts as 10 hits. I wear vit on every piece of armor and I’ve lost 2/3rds of my health just by using grenade barrage on a group of enemies.

I’m not sure why they didn’t put an ICD on retaliation when they put an ICD on omnomberry pie healing. It was the only way I could actually continue attacking in these situations.

Iavra.8510:

Oh well, another Guardian mechanic the mob wants to be nerfed…

btw Retaliation uptime is pretty short in general. Light + Blast is 3 sec Retaliation against 20 sec of 3 stacks might for fire + blast. Dedicated Retaliation guardians sacrifice most of their damage output for + % boon duration.

/edit: I forgt something:

Guardians do say “I’m out of position and that thief just stealthed, time for an aegis.”

Only that blocking doesn’t put the thief out of stealth.

I don’t really want retaliation to go away…I actually think it’s a cool mechanic same as confusion but I think it just needs to be tweaked a little (again, same with confusion). Right now with just my auto attack (greatsword mesmer) it hit’s three times and doesn’t seem to be mitigated by my toughness, and now that my auto attack has some line piercing I auto hit anyone that gets in the way 3 times (up to 5 people right?). Not to mention my clones AoE exploding that’s even more retaliation damage. So in large zerg situations I can often hit anywhere from 3+ people with my basic attack and eat up to 15 hits from retaliation. Give retaliation a ridiculous duration which I have seen on some people and shared with a group then it basically nullifies my damage, unless I run some boon removal. Even with the boon removal though I can still kill myself in a few seconds with the above example if I’m not hyper aware of my enemies rocking retaliation.

Again, not complaining. Love that it makes combat more complex, but some tweaking needs to be done to make it so classes that use multiple smaller hits (DPS) aren’t being overwhelmed too quickly with damage as opposed to Burst DPS which doesn’t have to worry about it.

TL;DR: Normalize retaliation’s ability to be punitive for all types of direct damage and not overly punishing for one type.

shortcake.8659:

Between retaliation, every mesmer spec’ing into confusion, and the mass spam of feedbacks/reflect walls, I do more damage to myself in almost any encounter than enemies do to me. Positioning and superior movement be kitten when passive defenses are your biggest enemy. Retaliation’s definitely the worst of them though. As an engineer my best viable weapon options versus groups are grenades or the flamethrower. Grenades throw 3 projectiles at once and flamethrower’s autoattack counts as 10 hits. I wear vit on every piece of armor and I’ve lost 2/3rds of my health just by using grenade barrage on a group of enemies.

I’m not sure why they didn’t put an ICD on retaliation when they put an ICD on omnomberry pie healing. It was the only way I could actually continue attacking in these situations.

Here are a few counters to retaliation:

1. Condition damage
2. Single massive hits
3. Boon stripping

Any of these three are killers to a retaliation build. I understand you don’t want to change your build to deal with retal. But to say that you refuse to have any of these three options in it…is just lazy.

I haven’t specifically checked on this so this is more of a question. On my necro I can’t recall the last time I took a hit off retaliation in a big fight. Do marks bypass retal by chance?

And to the general discussion, I actually like the way retal and confusion both work. Too much of the game already feels like a build more powa dps race already. I miss GW1 mesmers for this reason specifically. There is almost no reason to ever stop spamming your ideal rotation during a fight short of not burning big hits on blocks etc.

Retaliation and Confusion counter fast attack builds, Blind and Aegis counter slow heavy attack builds. You’re being countered by skills that are meant to counter your attacks.

Snickers.9570:

Retaliation and Confusion counter fast attack builds, Blind and Aegis counter slow heavy attack builds. You’re being countered by skills that are meant to counter your attacks.

Granted, but it doesn’t mean the counter doesn’t need to be tweaked a little.

I hope they do not intend to change retaliation. It seems to be working as intended: a counter against multi-hit and (to a certain extent) AoE attacks. As others have mentioned, there are decent counters to retaliation builds – patience (it generally doesn’t last long or is restricted to a certain area), high damage single-hit attacks, condition damage, and boon stripping. Vitality also becomes a better defense against the boon than toughness (much like condition damage).

ArenaNET has said many times that skills are not meant to be spammed, they’re meant to be timed properly and I think retaliation (and confusion) are mechanisms which support this ideal.

Snickers.9570:

Retaliation and Confusion counter fast attack builds, Blind and Aegis counter slow heavy attack builds. You’re being countered by skills that are meant to counter your attacks.

^ Awesome point.

No matter the outcome of this post, there’s always a complaint. Even if Retaliation and Confusion are reworked, someone will find another way to be effective. Then more complaints come in.

Zerglings often think they can hide from damage because of the pure number of people in their group, and that’s a fallacy. Constantly tweaking your build is really important. I’ve got so many notes I have to keep variations of my build written down depending on what kind of group I’m running with that night. And even then swapping on the fly is common enough. (Especially when my 5-man camp team is called on to help defend a keep/garrison.)

bhagwad.4281:

shortcake.8659:

Between retaliation, every mesmer spec’ing into confusion, and the mass spam of feedbacks/reflect walls, I do more damage to myself in almost any encounter than enemies do to me. Positioning and superior movement be kitten when passive defenses are your biggest enemy. Retaliation’s definitely the worst of them though. As an engineer my best viable weapon options versus groups are grenades or the flamethrower. Grenades throw 3 projectiles at once and flamethrower’s autoattack counts as 10 hits. I wear vit on every piece of armor and I’ve lost 2/3rds of my health just by using grenade barrage on a group of enemies.

I’m not sure why they didn’t put an ICD on retaliation when they put an ICD on omnomberry pie healing. It was the only way I could actually continue attacking in these situations.

Here are a few counters to retaliation:

1. Condition damage
2. Single massive hits
3. Boon stripping

Any of these three are killers to a retaliation build. I understand you don’t want to change your build to deal with retal. But to say that you refuse to have any of these three options in it…is just lazy.

The problem isn’t “retaliation builds”. Retaliation is just everywhere. Between various AoE abilities that give retaliation, and Light+Blast finishers that very very often aren’t even intentionally done(tons of guardian abilities plus a very large amount of aoe attacks) throw the boon everywhere. If you think there’s any viable way to keep retaliation off of a large group for a sustained amount of time, you’re deluding yourself. I have and do use “massive hits” but my options there are more limited and mostly on longer cooldowns. A lot of autoattacks are punished far harder even though they do the same damage simply because they’re divided into smaller hits. And condition damage is like you’re just grasping for straws here. I have no way to apply conditions without.. hitting my target. Condition grenades? If you can explain how I can do that without doing the exact same retaliation damage to myself, feel free. Condition pistol? Sure, I can unnecessarily limit my damage to a small target base.

If you have any other bad advice, please feel free to type it up. Just stop posting on the forums and leave it in notepad.

shortcake.8659:

If you have any other bad advice, please feel free to type it up. Just stop posting on the forums and leave it in notepad.

One could say the same about your complaints.

If you don’t want to change what you’re doing to deal with retaliation, that is your problem, and you will continue to have difficulty with it.

EnRohbi.2187:

shortcake.8659:

If you have any other bad advice, please feel free to type it up. Just stop posting on the forums and leave it in notepad.

One could say the same about your complaints.

If you don’t want to change what you’re doing to deal with retaliation, that is your problem, and you will continue to have difficulty with it.

Say what you want, but he’s right though. Retaliation is given way too easily to be as strong as it is right now.

Yaro.3251:

Terrahero.9358:

Saying we should just spec something else is utterly rediculous.

I rest my case.

If you are not willing to adapt to situation I have little to say. I have 4 different professions full exotics 80 with a lot of different equipment sets. I change builds and stat-builds constantly as situation dictates, as battle mechanics and threats evolve.

If you’d re-read the tread from beginning you’d see that I didn’t say a word regarding If i think retaliation is overpowered or not. That was not my goal to defend it. I was just disturbed by this attitude “I charge, I hit things as hard as I can, I die. Anet, FIX THIS!” that appeared in first post and continued throughout. That’s all.

So you change your gear and build depending on what size group you come across in the borderlands? That sounds somewhat suspicious.

Retaliation is source of complaints, and always was (especially when one coudnt use siege weapons since they were destroyed by retaliation).

That said, for Engineer, the answer is – go for retaliation yourself. Eng have actually nice capabilities for that, and it works nice with tanky built with elexir gun/bomb kit.

Harbinger.9645:

EnRohbi.2187:

shortcake.8659:

If you have any other bad advice, please feel free to type it up. Just stop posting on the forums and leave it in notepad.

One could say the same about your complaints.

If you don’t want to change what you’re doing to deal with retaliation, that is your problem, and you will continue to have difficulty with it.

Say what you want, but he’s right though. Retaliation is given way too easily to be as strong as it is right now.

Everything in WvW is given way too easily because of the huge number of people, so I don’t consider that an argument against retaliation specifically.

bhagwad.4281:

1. Condition damage
2. Single massive hits
3. Boon stripping

Any of these three are killers to a retaliation build. I understand you don’t want to change your build to deal with retal. But to say that you refuse to have any of these three options in it…is just lazy.

So what you’re really saying is that retaliation makes this into a cookie-cutter game where many classes really only have 1 viable build available to them.

It’s not like you can deal with retaliation on the fly. I can’t say, “Oh these guys have a lot of retaliation. Looks like I need my conditions!” I have to build for them.

lettucemode.3789:

Everything in WvW is given way too easily because of the huge number of people, so I don’t consider that an argument against retaliation specifically.

I don’t count that as an argument against it either. Not everything is as powerful as Retaliation. They nerfed quickness for this very reason.

A small ICD to the damage output of retaliation would help balance it. I think the recent addition of an ICD to omnomberry pie made retaliation worse unintentionally, as any class without boon-stripping could use it with a crit build to mitigate some of the damage from retaliation.

Balancing is a constant process and we’re largely subject to PvE based balancing effects due to conditions in dungeons and DEs which are far different than large scale PvP.

Nerfing retaliation in PvE would make it pretty useless, and in sPvP it’s pretty easy to see your opponent’s buffs and deal with them effectively, so don’t hold your breath for a WvW retaliation nerf.

shortcake.8659:

bhagwad.4281:

shortcake.8659:

Between retaliation, every mesmer spec’ing into confusion, and the mass spam of feedbacks/reflect walls, I do more damage to myself in almost any encounter than enemies do to me. Positioning and superior movement be kitten when passive defenses are your biggest enemy. Retaliation’s definitely the worst of them though. As an engineer my best viable weapon options versus groups are grenades or the flamethrower. Grenades throw 3 projectiles at once and flamethrower’s autoattack counts as 10 hits. I wear vit on every piece of armor and I’ve lost 2/3rds of my health just by using grenade barrage on a group of enemies.

I’m not sure why they didn’t put an ICD on retaliation when they put an ICD on omnomberry pie healing. It was the only way I could actually continue attacking in these situations.

Here are a few counters to retaliation:

1. Condition damage
2. Single massive hits
3. Boon stripping

Any of these three are killers to a retaliation build. I understand you don’t want to change your build to deal with retal. But to say that you refuse to have any of these three options in it…is just lazy.

The problem isn’t “retaliation builds”. Retaliation is just everywhere. Between various AoE abilities that give retaliation, and Light+Blast finishers that very very often aren’t even intentionally done(tons of guardian abilities plus a very large amount of aoe attacks) throw the boon everywhere. If you think there’s any viable way to keep retaliation off of a large group for a sustained amount of time, you’re deluding yourself. I have and do use “massive hits” but my options there are more limited and mostly on longer cooldowns. A lot of autoattacks are punished far harder even though they do the same damage simply because they’re divided into smaller hits. And condition damage is like you’re just grasping for straws here. I have no way to apply conditions without.. hitting my target. Condition grenades? If you can explain how I can do that without doing the exact same retaliation damage to myself, feel free. Condition pistol? Sure, I can unnecessarily limit my damage to a small target base.

If you have any other bad advice, please feel free to type it up. Just stop posting on the forums and leave it in notepad.

I happen to know these are counters because I run a retal build myself and I know what counters me. Condition necros with corrupt boon, phantasm mesmers (especially the swordsman – that guy hurts!), even some pistol thieves who stack massive bleed repeatedly. Shatter builds can cause me pain if I’m careless. Really, there are many strategies to deal with retal. You should tweak your build to work with them.

shortcake.8659:

bhagwad.4281:

shortcake.8659:

Between retaliation, every mesmer spec’ing into confusion, and the mass spam of feedbacks/reflect walls, I do more damage to myself in almost any encounter than enemies do to me. Positioning and superior movement be kitten when passive defenses are your biggest enemy. Retaliation’s definitely the worst of them though. As an engineer my best viable weapon options versus groups are grenades or the flamethrower. Grenades throw 3 projectiles at once and flamethrower’s autoattack counts as 10 hits. I wear vit on every piece of armor and I’ve lost 2/3rds of my health just by using grenade barrage on a group of enemies.

I’m not sure why they didn’t put an ICD on retaliation when they put an ICD on omnomberry pie healing. It was the only way I could actually continue attacking in these situations.

Here are a few counters to retaliation:

1. Condition damage
2. Single massive hits
3. Boon stripping

Any of these three are killers to a retaliation build. I understand you don’t want to change your build to deal with retal. But to say that you refuse to have any of these three options in it…is just lazy.

The problem isn’t “retaliation builds”. Retaliation is just everywhere. Between various AoE abilities that give retaliation, and Light+Blast finishers that very very often aren’t even intentionally done(tons of guardian abilities plus a very large amount of aoe attacks) throw the boon everywhere. If you think there’s any viable way to keep retaliation off of a large group for a sustained amount of time, you’re deluding yourself. I have and do use “massive hits” but my options there are more limited and mostly on longer cooldowns. A lot of autoattacks are punished far harder even though they do the same damage simply because they’re divided into smaller hits. And condition damage is like you’re just grasping for straws here. I have no way to apply conditions without.. hitting my target. Condition grenades? If you can explain how I can do that without doing the exact same retaliation damage to myself, feel free. Condition pistol? Sure, I can unnecessarily limit my damage to a small target base.

If you have any other bad advice, please feel free to type it up. Just stop posting on the forums and leave it in notepad.

Which reminds me of a another option – use retal yourself. Today I was up against an engineer who caused me over 8k in retal! This is a good enough strategy also no?

Slamz.5376:

bhagwad.4281:

1. Condition damage
2. Single massive hits
3. Boon stripping

Any of these three are killers to a retaliation build. I understand you don’t want to change your build to deal with retal. But to say that you refuse to have any of these three options in it…is just lazy.

So what you’re really saying is that retaliation makes this into a cookie-cutter game where many classes really only have 1 viable build available to them.

It’s not like you can deal with retaliation on the fly. I can’t say, “Oh these guys have a lot of retaliation. Looks like I need my conditions!” I have to build for them.

What can I say? Some builds counter others. If you don’t have condition damage, then someone is going to take advantage of that.

Slamz.5376:

moutzaheadin.4029:

How about just removing the condition. Lol @ only “stop fighting back”

…says the mesmer.

Not every class has a means of removing boons from an enemy. Even removing conditions from yourself is dubious in a WvW environment where your removal may have a long timer whereas the 40 enemies over there can stack you back up instantly.

If I’m on my engineer and run into a mass of people all running retaliation, “stop fighting back” really is my best option. I have no counter to retaliation.

Cleaning Formula 409. Elixir C, Fumigate, Cleansing Burst, Antidote, Super Elixir, Toss Elixir R

bhagwad.4281:

Which reminds me of a another option – use retal yourself. Today I was up against an engineer who caused me over 8k in retal! This is a good enough strategy also no?

What makes me wonder about this thread is it feels like an engi started it. As an engineer you should understand one of your strongest abilities is near endless applications of confusion in stacks when traited properly. Combine that with Elixir B and see what happens.

Know your class.

Edit: Went back to the OP and it’s a Guardian, just hijacked by an Engi.

Yaro.3251:

Terrahero.9358:

Saying we should just spec something else is utterly rediculous.

I rest my case.

If you are not willing to adapt to situation I have little to say. I have 4 different professions full exotics 80 with a lot of different equipment sets. I change builds and stat-builds constantly as situation dictates, as battle mechanics and threats evolve.

If you’d re-read the tread from beginning you’d see that I didn’t say a word regarding If i think retaliation is overpowered or not. That was not my goal to defend it. I was just disturbed by this attitude “I charge, I hit things as hard as I can, I die. Anet, FIX THIS!” that appeared in first post and continued throughout. That’s all.

You picked 1 single sentence and completely ignored everything else i said.

So i’ll just hit you straigth with it.

Do you think its okay that a boon, that is easily applied with little to no planning or skill involved, completely breaks any build that uses fast-hitting attacks?

Also, the first post was the first post. It offends me how you narrowmindedly shave all posts based on the first post, and being unable to look at the real problem here. Focussing on the way the message is formulated, not what the message is.

So, you might want to pick up that case file again.

Yes Terrahero, that is ok.

If you have a build that does lots of small and fast hits and you neglect to take boon removal, you deserve to be punished.

That being said, you can’t effectively remove retaliation from my build for more than a couple seconds, but that’s another issue.

Also, the devs have said many times they won’t balance around wvw, and for a great reason. There are a lot of mechanics that start acting funky in situations with massive numbers of people, and retaliation is only one of them. You just have to learn to deal with it. When I drop feedback into a zerg, I know that I need to be at full hp or accept the risk of dying to retaliation, it’s just another consideration you need to make.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Yes Terrahero, that is ok.

If you have a build that does lots of small and fast hits and you neglect to take boon removal, you deserve to be punished.

That being said, you can’t effectively remove retaliation from my build for more than a couple seconds, but that’s another issue.

Also, the devs have said many times they won’t balance around wvw, and for a great reason. There are a lot of mechanics that start acting funky in situations with massive numbers of people, and retaliation is only one of them. You just have to learn to deal with it. When I drop feedback into a zerg, I know that I need to be at full hp or accept the risk of dying to retaliation, it’s just another consideration you need to make.

Because Boon duration is obviously abundant and widely available, which is why the devs said they are looking at ways to add more and… waaaait a minute… I see what you did there!
No seriously, you overestimate how much reliable boon removal this game actually has. And even more so, overestimating how much an Engineer has.

This is not an issue that related to WvW. This is a general balance issue, within the skill itself. Where on 1 end of the spectrum its an underachieving boon when dealing with slow hardhitters. On the otherhand it guts builds that centre around fast small attacks.
I’ll let you think about with it means for balancing Retal if this big disparity is resolved.

The guardian doesn’t fit any of their Class Balance Philosophies.

Instead, the Guardian puts a line and wall on the floor and tags people in a wide arc with the staff for epic WXP. That’s pretty much it.

Their ridiculously low HPs means they have to buy PVT gear simply to try to survive. I don’t feel powerful with boons, heavy armour does nothing, toughness does nothing.

Retaliation is one of the only ways to deal with a thief and there’s nothing we can do against a mesmer. Nice lines and walls tho – no doubt they’ll be nerfed soon.

Ok, if you insist

You picked 1 single sentence and completely ignored everything else i said.

I ignore everything else because it is irrelevant to what my message is. To reiterate, I’m not here to discuss if retal is op or not. I’m arguing against facerolling and lack of will to adapt.

So i’ll just hit you straigth with it.

Do you think its okay that a boon, that is easily applied with little to no planning or skill involved, completely breaks any build that uses fast-hitting attacks?

To answer this question directly – no, I don’t think it’s OK. Now, this question it is too broad to bear any sense regarding real situations.
1. 1v1 or XvX where x is small number. Boon duration and rotation plays a big role here. Boon removal and controlling boon timing are options to counter retal in these situations in addition to other options that were mentioned in this thread.
2. 1vMany. You can’t really argue that you have to have a chance in these situations regardless of retal.
3. Many vs Many. You get your own retal in roughly same amounts as opponent from your zerg mates.

Retaliation and confusion are dangerous beasts. If they kill you it only means that you are either as careless as OP or/and are not prepared build- and stat-wise.

Also, the first post was the first post. It offends me how you narrowmindedly shave all posts based on the first post, and being unable to look at the real problem here. Focussing on the way the message is formulated, not what the message is.

I’m not shaving anything. I was addressing specific point in OP’s message and continued to address same specific point in other messages. Whether retal should be tweaked/balanced – personally I don’t think so, but I will have no problem if it will be. I don’t really care because I’ve learned to counter and avoid it. Hard way, I might add lol. And on the other hand, I don’t have retal as base of my own builds. I ignore other points because I don’t care, OK?.

So, you might want to pick up that case file again.

This is not my case that you are trying to convince me to pick up. I rest my and wouldn’t pick up yours because I don’t have a case that is labeled “People vs Retal OPness”.

Make retaliation return a percentage of the damage dealt.

Its the reasonable thing to do in a game where class and build balance is the goal that you are aiming to achieve.

No buts, no ifs, no what-abouts.

Retaliation is fine as it is, I like using it to murder crappy glass cannons in a second, pistol whip thieves being my favorite. That said, as a guardian myself (its the only thing Ive played since the update since my thf is garbage now), and on a T1 server where zergs are 70+ people, I always dive head first into the heart of the enemy forces and whirl away. You just need to stop being a crappy glass cannon, toughness matters, HP matters, and sustainability through healing and boons matter. You’re most likely dieing to being hit, not retaliation, if you’re really jumping into a ton of people.

let’s just nerf every mechanic of the game so people that don’t understand and it will make everyone super happy and make this game super interesting and have a TON of depth ! We can start by deleting thieves because of stealth that’s obviously op and mesmers because they have many clones which is super super super op then we can get rid of guards because they’re too hard to kill and engies because they carry a gun and gw2 should be anti gun then we should get rid of rangers because of a robin hood copyright infringement and eles because they remind me of gandalf and gandalf is really op

in the end we should just all play warriors and siege should all be disabled so we can run into a giant group of each other swinging our swords because white dmg is the only thing that should be allowed in the game everything else is op

edit: they must be greatsword warriors or else you will be banned from the game

oh, and downed state is dumb because I once had someone rally in a fight against me … and he beat me so unfair!

Lol your complaining about running in and dieing due to retaliation of your OWN attacks. HILARIOUS. Try throwing out a feedback bubble and dying because retaliation damage, that’s a troll thing if i’ve ever seen it. I’ll sheild my allies from projectiles! and die because the reflect back to enemies with the retaliation buff apparently procs off of my feedback…