Guild Wars 2

I take more damage on my ele and engi from retaliation than from any other source. I can practically kill myself from 1 meteor shower or 1 grenade barrage. The damage from retal also ignores armor.
sPvP and PvE this skill is totally fine.
There should be some cap on the number of targets that can proc retal. Our aoe skills suffer from aoe limits. The same should apply in the reverse sense.

yes, please make it so people can spam mindless aoe some more.

Maskaganda.2043:

yes, please make it so people can spam mindless aoe some more.

Am I supposed to just stand there not using skills because retal will kill me?

Play clever, I have never had trouble with retal. They nerfed the damage by 50% it is fine now.

MiLkZz.4789:

Play clever, I have never had trouble with retal. They nerfed the damage by 50% it is fine now.

Are you talking about playing aoe class like ele or engi, or your warrior (just assuming because of tag).
I can’t really like on each individual person and see who has retal and who doesn’t.

Retaliation has been nerfed severely to the point it’s only dangerous to stupid people who mindlessly spam skills. It’s not even a threat anymore. I’ve never been killed dropping meteors on a group. I have no idea what you could possibly be doing that it’s killing you. Even before the unnecessary nerf it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Nikkinella.8254:

Retaliation has been nerfed severely to the point it’s only dangerous to stupid people who mindlessly spam skills. It’s not even a threat anymore. I’ve never been killed dropping meteors on a group. I have no idea what you could possibly be doing that it’s killing you. Even before the unnecessary nerf it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Correct I am a stupid person that mindlessly spams skills…. -.-
So every high tier guild that stacks as much retaliation as possible before an engagement is doing it wrong?

Are you not able to see the retaliation debuff on your character? It’s not like it lasts indefinately.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retaliation

Quick Mouse.7635:

Maskaganda.2043:

yes, please make it so people can spam mindless aoe some more.

Am I supposed to just stand there not using skills because retal will kill me?

No, you’re supposed to use Tactics until the “Fist” icon (the one that gives the Retaliation buff to the player) to wear off. If you are unable to defend against it, then you need to move around more tactfully and avoid them until it wears off.

As a Thief I keep Malice up when I run with my Guild, so any Retaliation to me is fixed by heals per hit I do. When I don’t use this and am out soloing I still do not find it to do that much damage to me, but I try to work around it, too.

Crawford.4135:

Quick Mouse.7635:

Maskaganda.2043:

yes, please make it so people can spam mindless aoe some more.

Am I supposed to just stand there not using skills because retal will kill me?

No, you’re supposed to use Tactics until the “Fist” icon (the one that gives the Retaliation buff to the player) to wear off. If you are unable to defend against it, then you need to move around more tactfully and avoid them until it wears off.

As a Thief I keep Malice up when I run with my Guild, so any Retaliation to me is fixed by heals per hit I do. When I don’t use this and am out soloing I still do not find it to do that much damage to me, but I try to work around it, too.

That doesn’t really work when the enemy stacks 30+seconds of aoe retal using light fields + blast finishers. That would mean I have to stand there not contributing anything to my team damage-wise until the retal wears off.
Again this doesn’t apply to people not using aoe characters. A thief or warrior is not going to take much retal damage because they only hit 3 people on a cleave. One meteor shower will almost insta-gib a staff ele or a few nades for a nade enig.

Would be an ideal time to send in your pets no?

learn to read enemy’s buff….

azizul.8469:

learn to read enemy’s buff….

I know what retal is, I know what the buff looks like. In small encounters or in spvp it is not a problem to watch buffs.
I can’t look at the buffs of 50 people in a wvw encounter to see who has retal and who doesn’t in order to place my aoes so I don’t get hit for 10k from retal.
Again, this goes back to the question: am I just supposed to sit there until retal wears off, being doubly punished for being an aoe class (5 person aoe limit + massive retal damage)?

You don’t have teammates who can strip/corrupt boons? Sounds like you guys just aren’t very organized. You should have people backing you, either by removing boons or healing you, ready to deal with stuff like that so you can nuke safely. You can’t mindlessly shoot everywhere into a zerg. that’s what arrow carts are for. You’re there to CC the zerg and nuke them down, but your team needs to support you in that.

Nikkinella.8254:

You don’t have teammates who can strip/corrupt boons? Sounds like you guys just aren’t very organized. You should have people backing you, either by removing boons or healing you, ready to deal with stuff like that so you can nuke safely. You can’t mindlessly shoot everywhere into a zerg. that’s what arrow carts are for. You’re there to CC the zerg and nuke them down, but your team needs to support you in that.

Is the only aoe boon removal null field on mesmer? Corrupt boon I’m pretty sure is single target, wouldn’t really help in this situation.
This still puts me in the position of having to rely on another person using their skills wisely in order to even be able to use my skills.

You don’t really have much choice but to rely on someone else for that. And i’m not sure about corrupt boon as the only class I haven’t played yet is necro, so can’t help ya there. It was a lot better before all the nerfs to ele, You could nuke groups down with meteor before they became a problem. They would die before the retaliation hurt you much. But the geniuses decided to make the AoE cap only 5, and cut elementalist’s overall damage output by 60%. Now everyone complains about zerging. Eles were perfect zerg punishers before, had they left them as they were in beta it wouldn’t be so bad. But now you kind of need to rely on other people. From what you’ve said so far I guess you aren’t doing anything wrong. it’s your teammates who need to get their act together. You’re less effective by yourself now.

Solution: buff retaliation against aoe dmg

The problem with retal is that it’s the equiv damage of 3 stacks of confusion per hit. With an aoe or piercing shot you can easily take more damage than the max confusion cap.

Retal is very easily applied and hard to remove. At least with confusion you could avoid the application and remove it with the abundance of condition cleanses available.

I’ve been on both ends of it and it does too much for too little as it is right now.

Retal is def a pain in the kitten … in fact I can stand behind a gate while enemy is attacking it and have around 40s of retal with 5 others and dps the gate (to hit rams and anyone close to it) eles, engis, and anyone else with aoe like rangers and whirl on guardian etc take a TON of dmg. I’ve collected a lot of bags from that actually. It’s very hard to deal with. While I would say it is pretty strong even after 50% nerf – I wouldn’t want it to go away either or be nerfed further to the point where it’s completely useless. At the same time though, while it sucks for an ele – firestorm is still pretty strong and I think this is a fantastic counter to it. Because lets be honest – there’s nothing we can really do against firestorm except try to move out of it but in group battle there’s always more than one coming down and even with 3500 Armor it does a lot of dmg.

Maskaganda.2043:

yes, please make it so people can spam mindless aoe some more.

So I can position myself right, get a good aoe off on a stacking/regrouping enemy zerg, get hit by NONE of them and die. The spell(s) CONFUSION and RETALIATION that allow that to happen are whats mindless.
There will always be some retaliation sharing in groups, its easy and pugs commonly do it. Its still too op of a mechanic in its current state. Yes, please stack more and more people to mindlessly follow around a commander without fear of being hurt by an aoe spell while killing any who attack with a big aoe.

MiLkZz.4789:

Play clever, I have never had trouble with retal. They nerfed the damage by 50% it is fine now.

Go use an engi flamethrower on 2 guardians with retaliation. 8000 damage to yourself every auto attack….

My understanding is most organized guilds are running mesmers with Null field for this (among other things). Necros are also an option with several boon strips, one of which is Well of Corruption.

kitten

/dontaoeretalblobs

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

MiLkZz.4789:

Play clever, I have never had trouble with retal. They nerfed the damage by 50% it is fine now.

Go use an engi flamethrower on 2 guardians with retaliation. 8000 damage to yourself every auto attack….

thats the exact opposite of clever play. why would you ever use autoattack on flamethrower except for exploiting through keep doors, and why would you use it against guardians.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

MiLkZz.4789:

Play clever, I have never had trouble with retal. They nerfed the damage by 50% it is fine now.

Go use an engi flamethrower on 2 guardians with retaliation. 8000 damage to yourself every auto attack….

You are asking for it yourself if you use flamethrower engi. Same for whirling axe on a warrior. This is what I mean with play clever. Retal is the counter for fast hitting weapons. While those weapons have nice advantages too, like proccing sigils and skills enourmously often. Meteor shower, save that skill for the downed. You see 5 downed people? Drop it on them. Use higher damaging skills in the mean time. Learn to heal yourself up aswel. Eles can regen for tons of health in real short periods of time. Don’t run full zerker. Get good amount of health and you’ll do fine. You can always join a regroup of your team if you drop low and enjoy the health of all those shouts/waterfields.

Maskaganda.2043:

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

MiLkZz.4789:

Play clever, I have never had trouble with retal. They nerfed the damage by 50% it is fine now.

Go use an engi flamethrower on 2 guardians with retaliation. 8000 damage to yourself every auto attack….

thats the exact opposite of clever play. why would you ever use autoattack on flamethrower except for exploiting through keep doors, and why would you use it against guardians.

You mean because we can stand on the wall and toss grenades? Oh wait, we can’t do that because the the GIANT KITTENING NECRO MARKS.

Oh, maybe we can just AoE the Door… nope, they can operate the ram from 100 units back, out of range of all but 2 of our AoEs, and those might not hit for some reason… oh yeah, because of all the pets/minions/clones eating the 5 target limit.

Guess we should just get on an arrow cart, might as well roll a guardian.

And shooting though keep doors isn’t an “exploit” since about 11ty-kitten other skills ALSO go through it or act like it isn’t there. Nothing like getting hit with dragon’s tooth when you are on an AC inside a keep.

The point this poster was trying to make is that FT actually hits a retal’d target for LESS than the retaliation damage each tic. And with a 3 target limit and pervasive nature of light fields and blast finishers, it is VERY easy to eat most of your health by just auto-attacking 3 targets that are buffed and afk. Braindead? No, every engineer tried to use FT in wvw at least once. Most of us learn that is it basically useless, except for the push, and if you get clever with the blind.

I can show my work if you like, but this topic is approaching Egyptian Cotton status.

I don’t even play flamethrower engineer, it’s just an example of skills that need balancing so they can function in wvw. There is no reason why flamethrower should proc 10 hits every auto attack. If they lowered it to something like 3… it would be fine.

I guess “playing clever” is never using your auto attack with a weapon kit, ever, for fear that ONE person in that group of anywhere from 2-60 players might have retaliation. Or even better, be running a 100% retaliation uptime build. I’m sure that’s the way the game should work. End sarcasm.

I don’t concern myself with the opinions of tier 3 and 8 EU players on game balancing.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

I don’t concern myself with the opinions of tier 3 and 8 EU players on game balancing.

Don’t be to kitteny, many T1 guilds moved to lower tiers. So you better don’t base your opinion on the tier people are from. I have played on SFR for months, I have been on that server when it reached its ‘golden days’ when it was the absolute best server in skill level.

And I am saying retaliation is fine as it is. Flamethrower is a decent engineer weapen for small scale fights, altho it always had troubles with targetting and strafing. But some weapons are better than others in certain situations. So yea, it is plain stupid to use it on a zerg. Some weapons are better for PvP, others for WvW and others for PvE. You can call it a learn to play issue. But enough about the flamethrower. The thread started with retal on aoe. And again, you got to use your brain to see where to place your aoe.

MiLkZz.4789:

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

I don’t concern myself with the opinions of tier 3 and 8 EU players on game balancing.

Don’t be to kitteny, many T1 guilds moved to lower tiers. So you better don’t base your opinion on the tier people are from. I have played on SFR for months, I have been on that server when it reached its ‘golden days’ when it was the absolute best server in skill level.

And I am saying retaliation is fine as it is. Flamethrower is a decent engineer weapen for small scale fights, altho it always had troubles with targetting and strafing. But some weapons are better than others in certain situations. So yea, it is plain stupid to use it on a zerg. Some weapons are better for PvP, others for WvW and others for PvE. You can call it a learn to play issue. But enough about the flamethrower. The thread started with retal on aoe. And again, you got to use your brain to see where to place your aoe.

So… non-aoe/piercing/multi hit weapons should only be able to be used against zergs because of retal? That leaves very few attacks that are effective against large groups… and yet retal isn’t unbalanced? I disagree.

Dont listen to these people who are just afraid Retaliation will get nerfed more.

Retaliation is flat out broken in WvW. It returns rediculous amounts of damage on fast-hitting and AoE attacks to the point of nullifying certain weapons entire. As an Engineer this leaves you particularly boned because you litteraly only have AoE weapons or fast-hitting weapons.

All the while big hitting professions, like Backstabbing Thieves, dont give a flying kitten about Retaliation because the damage return relative to damage dealt is peanuts.

But the most arrogant “arguments” people use is that “you shouldnt mindlessly spam AoE”. What? While they mindlessly blob up in your AoE and stack up Retaliation automatically just from face-rubbing a gate? AoE is meant to punish stacking up, not the other way around…
Retaliation is an utterly braindead boon. Guardians litter the area with Light combofields, and anyone that sets of a Blastfinisher, or a Leap triggers (mass) Retaliation.
Its harder to NOT stack retaliation in a zerg.

Retaliation needs to be fixed. It needs an internal cooldown, to limit the return of multi-retaliation hits and rapid succession of procs.
This will bring the extreme ends of the spectrum for Retaliation closer together, and then ANet can actually tweak the damage numbers in a more sensible fashion, which very likely would mean buffing the damage it returns.

Terrahero.9358:

Its harder to NOT stack retaliation in a zerg.

This reminds me of all of the times that a guardian has dropped their swiftness symbol in the middle of a group trying to stack swiftness via static only to walk away with 30s of retal

It really makes our commanders mad xD

Retaliation should have internal Cooldown. It should be more like confusion. It will affect you only once.
Right now you can put mass confusion. But it will punish you only ONCE per skill. But retaliation may punish you 5 TIMES per skill. With AoE it may be 30 times per skill in the case of engi FT or 15 times with Engi Grenades (3 grenades*5targets cap).
So in case of FT, ONE USE of skill can steal you 12k healt. Even thief cannot do this with ONE skill.
And second problem is how easy you get retaliation stacked.

And third problem: retaliation was lowered, but it seems it is still bugger, because every day i can get 300-400dmg pops of retal

If a “team” is giving itself retaliation, you will need a team to remove it.

Get the timing down with your boon stripping teammates.

Drop a stun field. Next hit with Boon Stripping. Then you hit with Meteor Shower….Profit!

Actually it wont work. Boon stripping have mesmer the best – null field. But on CD and it will strip 5 people.
“team” can pop up retaliation much faster than you can strip boons.

Nikkinella.8254:

Retaliation has been nerfed severely to the point it’s only dangerous to stupid people who mindlessly spam skills. It’s not even a threat anymore. I’ve never been killed dropping meteors on a group. I have no idea what you could possibly be doing that it’s killing you. Even before the unnecessary nerf it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Yea, Spamming my Barrage Mindlessly, my 1 actual good AOE skill that will often do 15k damage to myself.

Hule.8794:

Actually it wont work. Boon stripping have mesmer the best – null field. But on CD and it will strip 5 people.
“team” can pop up retaliation much faster than you can strip boons.

Anyone who thinks you can strip Retal from a zerg is a moron, I mean really that’s being kind as well.

You cannot, I repeat cannot strip Retal from a Zerg… There is no counter play to it, It works in small mans yes, It works in 1v1’s, But you’re an idiot if you think you can remove a zerg of Retal.

So there is a good NA guild who gvg’s and runs open field with about 80% guardians. Its already the tankiest class with great sustain and aoe heals, throw retaliation into the mix and it gives that tanky class over the top offense. These guys are had to take down as a tank should be, but to die so easily just for attacking them… …cmon now … cmon. :P
It would be like running a group of the nerf magnet d/d ele’s, with constant fire auras up, but the burn would tick multiple times per second like retaliation and not all lame like the real fire aura. The burst heals of guards may not be as much as an ele but they do still heal really well plus the heavy armor, readily available stability, aegis, and boons they apply mitigate damage that an ele cannot.
The offense of retaliation is just broken and over the top for the best tank class.

The way retaliation is calculated is what makes it seem overpowered. If you have a ton of people in zerk gear, like the majority of zergs have, all with 25 stacks of might, of course it will deal a ton of damage. Retal deals damage based on the power of the person who has the boon on them. It should deal damage proportional to how much damage you inflict. If they changed it that way, doing something like blasting someone with a flamethrower wouldn’t kill you since it doesn’t hit that hard. and thieves would actually have to think twice about spamming backstab since they would take more damage for their bigger hits.

No, they should make Retal single target, Giving a version of a Reversed Confusion that has no ICD and is easily spam able is just silly.

Retal doesn’t kill you.
You kill yourself on retal.

So, you cant use a mass AoE skilln into a zerg as a ranger/ele/engi? Every one of my cleaving auto attacks triggers just as much retal as one of your attacks. Sure, you can’t stop a ranger LB 5 skill after the channel, like I can stop melee attacks, but I’m also in much more danger than you are from other damage. Risk vs reward. You are not a special butterfly. Yes I have killed myself on retal on my necro, ranger and mesmer multiple times.

Honestly, I would like to see retal stay where it is and take back the confusion Nerf. Melee
TraiNs are so boring.

In before the rage at my comments!

Omnitek.3876:

So, you cant use a mass AoE skilln into a zerg as a ranger/ele/engi?

That’s exactly the point.

Omnitek.3876:

Every one of my cleaving auto attacks triggers just as much retal as one of your attacks.

Wrong. Cleave hits 3 things. Each one of my meteors hits 5 things. And I drop 24 meteors from one meteor shower. If each one of my meteors hits 5 targets, and assuming retal damage of 330 (1800 power), that’s 39960 damage. And once it’s cast, I can’t stop it.

Maskaganda.2043:

yes, please make it so people can spam mindless aoe some more.

In all fairness, the AoE is there for a reason. It’s not meant to be some pretty little picture taking up space on your skill bar; it’s to be used. The problem (like the OP is saying) is one meteor shower or grenade can kill them off. That is not spamming.

Is this a problem? It’s a huge problem, it’s only a matter of time until it gets fixed.

Retail, for those that seem to not know, hits people with multi skills for each ‘hit’ of that skill wether it is aoe or not. Ele sceptre Air 1, P/P thief unload etc etc. Big burst hits are punished much less as the hit once and take 1 retal damage.

What if retaliation reflect 10-15% of the damage of 1 skill ( damage can proc only 1 time on a channeling but reflect on the total damage done ), and you can be affected by only 1 retaliation at the same time (or find a way to avoid to kill yourself on a Aoe channeling on retaliation’s foes)?
In an other side, it’s proved that boon stacking is really strong (that’s why Guardian/Ele perform that much), so why not given an easiest acces to boon rip to all professions? it will certainly solve the problem of the retaliation and balance much more this game, no?

Sorry for my poor English.

Omnitek.3876:

Retal doesn’t kill you.
You kill yourself on retal.

So, you cant use a mass AoE skilln into a zerg as a ranger/ele/engi? Every one of my cleaving auto attacks triggers just as much retal as one of your attacks. Sure, you can’t stop a ranger LB 5 skill after the channel, like I can stop melee attacks, but I’m also in much more danger than you are from other damage. Risk vs reward. You are not a special butterfly. Yes I have killed myself on retal on my necro, ranger and mesmer multiple times.

Honestly, I would like to see retal stay where it is and take back the confusion Nerf. Melee
TraiNs are so boring.

In before the rage at my comments!

Barrage hits 12 times, Per Target.

It hits a max of 5 Targets

12×5

60 Times, my 1 Barrage can hit 60 times

Which means that on average if I take 250 damage per retal hit

I’ll do 15000 damage to myself.

15000 damage to myself for using 1 ability..

Simple solution to this:

Only take Retal dmg from 2-3 sources at any given time. That way you aren’t getting 5x whatever when you AoE a Zerg.

I main a guardian, 218 highest retal dmg I give to any one, I have played Ranger and Engi and Ele, and I do agree the amount of dmg you get is annoying and unreasonable given you can’t stop the AoE once you’ve started it.
Guardians have next to no ranged efficiency, so let’s not do anything drastic and throw around Internal Cooldowns or dmg nerfs in any suggestion, because that kittens over the class.

Flamethrower and Tornado procc way too much, their no. of proccs needs to be changed flat out. I still think this is the best solution that won’t kitten off many if anyone.