Guild Wars 2

I’ve noticed more and more guilds are pushing for perma retaliation in larger fights. Now, personally, I’m not a big fan of zerg combat, and I loathe this new guardian/necro meta, but I do want to help out my guild in some of these fights. With the current meta, it’s getting harder and harder to play as an engineer in these situations. I think it’s unheard of that by throwing 1 auto attack of grenades, I actually hurt myself more than anyone I’m attacking. Obviously, it’s a mechanic to deter spamming, but at this point we can’t even throw any grenades at all. I literally get hit back for twice the damage I put out per grenade, per hit. Forget using barrage or traiting coated bullets. The class can be really fun to play, but I guess at this point I should just join the bandwagon and play my necro in big fights? I just hate that this is a ranged aoe class, that can’t actually aoe at range. As it stands, I can toss a few grenades, then focus on the squirrels on the outskirts of the fight, which does nothing to help my guilds push. Anyone else have any feelings about this?

/rant

inb4 l2p qq.

Cuz Anet meant for you to never use the skills they designed for you, right? /sarcasm

Because watching for retal and then stop spamming multi hit attacks is called playing the game with some amount of skill.

Sure in small fights that’s true. In 20v20+ we should just reroll since our main ranged attacks hit for less damage than we’re being hit for by a buff that guardians can keep up permanently? Yes, it takes much more skill to passively have a buff up. That’s why every zerg is all guardians and necros now, so much skill. I guess I’ll just stick to roaming, then swap to my easy mode facerolling necro when running in guild groups.

use omnomberry compote and make sure you deal enough damage.

Raghnu.1049:

Because watching for retal and then stop spamming multi hit attacks is called playing the game with some amount of skill.

If you are running a grenade/FT/bomb build then all of your attacks are multi-hit attacks. Basically, what you’re saying is “stop attacking.” Which is fine if you’re 1v1 and can play strategically. But the OP is talking about zergs and large scale combat. If everyone has Ret that means you’re effectively reduced to….throwing elixirs?

This is why I’ve switched to primarily running a Rifle/SD build. Seems to be one of 2 single-target builds that Engi has (HGH Cond).

Complaining about WvW zerg balance…Sigh

What is the world coming to.

Trust me I hate blob vs blob zerg play and 80% of my time in game is spent roaming either solo or in small man squads where this is less of a problem. What I’m trying to say is that retaliation is not balanced very well against our kits. The grenade kit is an aoe ranged damage kit, but it can become useless in situations where aoe ranged damage is required. If retaliation were to kick back damage based on a percentage of damage done, it would be much more balanced. It should be much more like the gw1 buff of the same nature. I feel it should be ~20% damage kicked back. Then, it would punish all users equally across the board. Instead as it stands, I often take double the damage back that I put out. It negates the whole point of having a multi-hit skill. But, I get it, the horse has been dead and beaten enough at this point.

OP is right. Engineer is in a very bad place atm for guild vs guild or zerg vs zerg. It’s not because engineer could not have any use – but for the current meta, engineers are a weak spot in your team.

I wonder if Anet could hard cap retal damage for gk and ft to 5 players instead of the 15+ we currently get from one attack? I mean the true source of the problem for engineer in regards to retal is having unique aoe that is capable of hitting more than 5 targets in one attack. I am not sure I would want them to implement a 5 target cap for engi aoe though since it would take away that uniqueness. Gah, ok they just need to give us a better source of stability and let us use bombs heh. Having said this, since I don’t find zerg combat overly thrilling myself either it’s not a huge problem for me but I can see how it frustrates others.

Sounds to me like you’re having problems with your team moreso than retaliation itself. Boon stripping should be an important aspect of blob play. I’m not saying you do it, because engi has relatively poor boon stripping compared to other classes, but there’s plenty of other classes that can strip that retal right off. If they’re perma-stacking retal, chances are they aren’t very skilled and are looking for the easy way out and so they’re not rotating retals, nor are they burying them with cover boons. Whenever I see tons of retal pop up, first of all I stop spamming attacks…then I call for boon strips and the necros and mesmers usually make short work of that retal. Yes they can put it back up, but you usually have a solid window to drop plenty of people before they do (and if they managed to strip the guards causing all the problems even better because a guard without boons drops to the floor faster than stephen hawking in a mosch pit). Work with your team to get better communication and roles going. Spamming autos and hoping for the best isn’t gonna cut it.

I know your pain. Lol @ people who haven’t played an engi and are telling us to l2p because we were actually designed to take 3x the damage from retaliation with our main anti-zerg weapon. Against an equally coordinated guild/group just asking for boon stripping isn’t going to cut it. The grenade/FT are great kits but are too dangerous in large groups. I’d be perfectly fine with a high risk/high reward, but I don’t think the damage is high enough on grenades to warrant that much retaliation damage.

Imho this game’s retaliation is bassackwards. It should penalize those who do lots of damage….so they stop attacking….not those who attack quickly. GW1 had it down, GW2 does not.

Some skills haven’t been updated as the game has changed – Eng’s multpel attack forms being the classic example.

The high attack rate of grenades and Ft #1 made sense when most on-crit effecs didn’t have ICDs. But now almost all on-crit efects have ICDs, eliminating the advantages of those high attack rates, while leaving the disadvantages unchanged.

Now what’s really needed is to reduce the rate of some of our attacks and adjust their damage accordingly. This will leave them at the same level of overall effectiveness, while balancing out the loss of their high on-crit effects.

I’ve actually been experimenting with pistol/shield in zerg fights, though I’m not using the common builds that utilize them the best. I also run Rocket Boots and Elixir B/409. The blind/knockback/stun works decently, though I miss seeing the big white dmg numbers from FT. I rarely die from retal, even when using FT, though I agree that it seems to hit us the hardest.

Retaliation in WvW is simply broken. Its a trash boon thats so easy to maintain, infact in a zerg its harder to not stack retaliation. It utterly kittens over AoE and multi-hit attacks to the point thakittens suicide, and you should essentially not attack.

Which is just, downright, ugh, retarted. AoE is suppose to punish enemies grouping up, instead using aoe on groups of enemies is being punish. Severely. Thats just rediculous.

To be honest, given how AE is usually the default answer to zerg combat, I like how Retaliation works in regards to that.

What is not ok is that Grenade is the only far-reaching kit. Rifle base-range 1200 and then having the trait do something else would be a better solution.

I’m of the opposite opinion. I hate zergs and feel that they should not be rewarded for blobbing up. I feel that ranged aoe and to a higher extent pbaoe should break up zergs. This game already has the stupid notion that aoe can only hit 5 people, thus it’s much safer to just blob around since the majority of the people in your zerg will be safe from the damage. At keeps, arrowcarts help break these zergs up since they’re immune to the retaliation. In open field, our grenades should behave like that. If they have to add a small cooldown to keep them from being spammable, then so be it. Although, they’re already so slow and easy to avoid.

Place a range mod to retal making it so you only receive the full damage of retal at melee range (and less the farther out you are).

Yup something about ret needs to change. There is a big difference between…

- Penalizing someone for using multiple attacks quickly.
-Instakilling and engineer someone for hitting a group of perma retaliation players with 1 or 2 grenade tosses.

Some suggestions:

Reduce ret damage base

Some way of countering ret damage. Runes that reduce its damage? traits?

Introduce some sort of cooldown, either
1. Can only take 1 tick of ret damage per skill use, per person. Example: 1 grenade auto attacking hitting 5 people with retaliation = 5 procs of ret damage taken, instead of 15.
2. Can only receive ret damage once per target, on a short cooldown like .5 seconds. This would mean your aoe skills like grenades could be usable, but wouldn’t take off half your HP per throw. Ret would still serve its intended purpose, but wouldn’t be game breaking vs skills like grenades and flamethrower.

Anet claims to dislike zergs. Yet they incentivize it heavily with an AoE cap and perma retal blobs.

Seetoo.9316:

Place a range mod to retal making it so you only receive the full damage of retal at melee range (and less the farther out you are).

I’m sorry but I don’t agree with this idea. Melee players already have a harder time for the most part. They shouldn’t be penalized more for being closer while ranged get to easy mode in the back. (No I don’t play melee)

Retal base damage already was nerfed in WvW. I wouldn’t reduce it anymore because it’ll become pretty useless in smaller fights. Besides, that isn’t the core issue, which is how retal procs on multi-hit AoE skills like FT #1, Grenades, Barrage, Meteor Shower, etc.

Chaba.5410:

Retal base damage already was nerfed in WvW. I wouldn’t reduce it anymore because it’ll become pretty useless in smaller fights. Besides, that isn’t the core issue, which is how retal procs on multi-hit AoE skills like FT #1, Grenades, Barrage, Meteor Shower, etc.

Not saying the damage of Retaliation procs need to be nerfed.

It need an ICD so it doesnt proc 40x on a single ability.

Then we can even look at boosting the Retaliation-proc damage.

Forestnator.6298:

OP is right. Engineer is in a very bad place atm for guild vs guild or zerg vs zerg. It’s not because engineer could not have any use – but for the current meta, engineers are a weak spot in your team.

Theory crafted a Perplexity, 3x Turret, Bomb Kit (for BoB). Used it in Zerg, worked great. As far as I can tell, Confusion damage doesn’t come back to you on retal.

I don’t think our class is the problem, I think the problem is that perma-retaliation is so easy to get in large groups. It doesn’t just affect our class when someone decides to use a cheese strategy like this.

Personally I’m much more unhappy about being a pretty much all-ranged class. Reflects work unbelievably well against us, an effect that’s just as rampant as retaliation.

Oh, and the high-CC aspect of our class is also countered to a large extent to random AoE stability from guardians.

Tyaen.5148:

Forestnator.6298:

OP is right. Engineer is in a very bad place atm for guild vs guild or zerg vs zerg. It’s not because engineer could not have any use – but for the current meta, engineers are a weak spot in your team.

Theory crafted a Perplexity, 3x Turret, Bomb Kit (for BoB). Used it in Zerg, worked great. As far as I can tell, Confusion damage doesn’t come back to you on retal.

3x turret in zerg? Are we playing the same game? BoB against stability? What’s so great with it? Also our most occasions for interrupts are close range or melee range – mesmer can stack confusion with much more ease.

Maybe he’s traited for Accelerant-Packed Turrets… That’s how I’ve used them before trololololo!

Forestnator.6298:

Tyaen.5148:

Forestnator.6298:

OP is right. Engineer is in a very bad place atm for guild vs guild or zerg vs zerg. It’s not because engineer could not have any use – but for the current meta, engineers are a weak spot in your team.

Theory crafted a Perplexity, 3x Turret, Bomb Kit (for BoB). Used it in Zerg, worked great. As far as I can tell, Confusion damage doesn’t come back to you on retal.

3x turret in zerg? Are we playing the same game? BoB against stability? What’s so great with it? Also our most occasions for interrupts are close range or melee range – mesmer can stack confusion with much more ease.

Deployable turrets + Accelerant Packed Turrets + 6xPerplexity

The build I made had 7 AoE interupts. If you need me to explain how OP that is, you need to work on your theory crafting.

Oh, and I promise you, I can put 20 stacks of confusion on someone in my current build (not the turret build) way faster than a Mesmer.

Tyaen.5148:

Forestnator.6298:

Tyaen.5148:

Forestnator.6298:

OP is right. Engineer is in a very bad place atm for guild vs guild or zerg vs zerg. It’s not because engineer could not have any use – but for the current meta, engineers are a weak spot in your team.

Theory crafted a Perplexity, 3x Turret, Bomb Kit (for BoB). Used it in Zerg, worked great. As far as I can tell, Confusion damage doesn’t come back to you on retal.

3x turret in zerg? Are we playing the same game? BoB against stability? What’s so great with it? Also our most occasions for interrupts are close range or melee range – mesmer can stack confusion with much more ease.

Deployable turrets + Accelerant Packed Turrets + 6xPerplexity

The build I made had 7 AoE interupts. If you need me to explain how OP that is, you need to work on your theory crafting.

Oh, and I promise you, I can put 20 stacks of confusion on someone in my current build (not the turret build) way faster than a Mesmer.

GG stability in any zerg. And more stability in guild vs guild… Yes I know how perplexity works. But tell me your non-melee interupts excluding magnet and elite. You throw mine? And still mesmer is faster because he can use perplexity too!

Shield 4 OC, Shield 5 OC, BoB, FT #3, 4 Turret explodes, Magnet, Elixir X, Supply Drop, Mine (since that’s off the top of my head, there may be more).

But, you’re right everyone has 100% stability up time so why bother running any CC on any character at all?

Most of engineers CC is melee range or close range. And I am not sure what server rank you are playing but in zerg vs zerg every commander calles for stability. And guild vs guild is not better.

I don’t say engineer is bad. But there is a reason why top guilds do not use engineers in gvg. Because he is a weak spot.

My signature is pretty clear what server I’m on.

Terrahero.9358:

It need an ICD so it doesnt proc 40x on a single ability.

Then we can even look at boosting the Retaliation-proc damage.

I don’t truly see the issue. If I use an ability which procs 3 5-target AEs, I’d bloody well expect the game to behave as if I am causing 3 5-target AEs, because that’s what I do.

Anything else would be obfuscating game-mechanics, which is never a good thing (see: MWO ghost heat mechanism).

Now what I would agree on is that grenade kit shouldn’t be so spammy. More meaningful, slower, less mass-AE attacks.

Carighan.6758:

Terrahero.9358:

It need an ICD so it doesnt proc 40x on a single ability.

Then we can even look at boosting the Retaliation-proc damage.

I don’t truly see the issue. If I use an ability which procs 3 5-target AEs, I’d bloody well expect the game to behave as if I am causing 3 5-target AEs, because that’s what I do.

Anything else would be obfuscating game-mechanics, which is never a good thing (see: MWO ghost heat mechanism).

Now what I would agree on is that grenade kit shouldn’t be so spammy. More meaningful, slower, less mass-AE attacks.

I somewhat agree about not changing the mechanics. The problem I have is that the actual retaliation damage kicked back is more than the damage the grenade puts out. As it is now, retaliation punishes small multi-hit damage way too much. Do you think a backstabbing thief thinks twice about backstabbing someone with retaliation up. He knows his 7k backstab is going to only kickback 350 ret damage at the most. He takes 5% of the damage he puts out on that backstab. Whereas, 1 toss of a grenade may hit 1 person for 600dmg, but I’ll take 1050 in return. So the high hitting deadly abilites take 5% damage back but low hitting fast abilities take 175% damage back. If that’s not a skewed mechanic, I don’t know what is. There should be no time in a game that a basic passive defensive proc should out damage an autoattack. Especially one so easy to keep up like retaliation.

Hrm.

Ofc, just making it “per button pressed” is iffy because then it’s a boon 1-to-1 copy of the condition Confusion. Seems pointless to me.

Maybe if Retaliation was in general lower? I mean, Blindness only truly punishes slow and hard-hitting abilities. It’d be ok if Retaliation only really works against fast multi-hit attacks (and then does “normal” damage, while doing extremely little against slow attacks), right?

Retaliation just needs to return a % of the damage caused.

If it’s too high (50%), then it is an effective deterrent against all attacks, slow spikes and fast jabs. The problem lies then in the massive graveyard that will result constant zerg-wide retaliation vs constant zerg-wide retaliation.

If it’s too low though, then nobody will care and will just attack through it. Which I’m more ok with because then it acts like a DoT attack rather than a shut-down skill. It’d be almost like a DoT shield. Maybe give like necro a trait to boost % of ret dmg returned for condition-based builds. Not Guardians tho!! Only clothies.

Therein lies the problem. Too much whining would happen if you had big attacks being hit back for 50% from retal. Really the only whining you get now is from engy’s, and maybe rangers. Why change anything based on a class that’s played by 10% of your fanbase when it will anger the other 90%. I decided to take the “if you can’t beat em, join em” approach. I needed to level up weaponsmithing and huntsman for the new ascended weapons. Thus, I used my exp. scroll and a couple more crafts to get my shiny new guardian to 60. I’ll continue to run engineer most of the time, but if the guild is doing anything zergy, I’ll run guardian or necro like a good little sheep.

Carighan.6758:

Hrm.

Ofc, just making it “per button pressed” is iffy because then it’s a boon 1-to-1 copy of the condition Confusion. Seems pointless to me.

Maybe if Retaliation was in general lower? I mean, Blindness only truly punishes slow and hard-hitting abilities. It’d be ok if Retaliation only really works against fast multi-hit attacks (and then does “normal” damage, while doing extremely little against slow attacks), right?

The damage return on fast-hitting/aoe attacks matches or even (greatly) exceeds the damage dealt. You can litterally kill yourself quite easily.

This is not on par with Blind punishing slow-hard attacks. Because Blind doesnt return 100% or more of the damage of that attack to the person Blinded. I’d just waste an attack, not kill myself.
Blind is also far more obvious. If im blinded the game gives me plenty of visual feedback. Not so with Retaliation untill i am already taking damage.

However further nerfing the Retaliation procs is also absurd. Right now you’re balancing the proc damage between two extremes. On one hand you have several dozen instant procs stacking together, on the other side a single proc on a hard-hitting attack.
That is a damage ranging from 300 to 12000.

With an ICD you can actually look at Retaliation in terms of DPS. And you can bring both ends of this wide spectrum closer together. And then adjust the damage proc accordingly. Fast-hitting attacks will still proc Retaliation a bit more then focussed burst attacks, but the difference will not be so enormous.

Another awful thing about Ret with grenades: You have 1 target selected. Target is 1100 range. You see the boons. No Ret. You let loose a barrage of grenades, your toolbelt is unleashed, poison grenades tumble through the sky, fiery pain is imminent….and then your target pops an aoe Ret. You now have nearly a dozen grenades in the air about to crash into an evil grin. They hit. Your target staggers, coughs, heals, looks through the dust….at your corpse.

Long range, slow moving, multi-hit, aoe attacks = death

Seras.5702:

Another awful thing about Ret with grenades: You have 1 target selected. Target is 1100 range. You see the boons. No Ret. You let loose a barrage of grenades, your toolbelt is unleashed, poison grenades tumble through the sky, fiery pain is imminent….and then your target pops an aoe Ret. You now have nearly a dozen grenades in the air about to crash into an evil grin. They hit. Your target staggers, coughs, heals, looks through the dust….at your corpse.

Long range, slow moving, multi-hit, aoe attacks = death

^^^ This every single darn time LOL

Pshaw! L2P! Can’t you read minds yet? /sarcasm

Yeh, my guild doesn’t even allow Engineers in our WvW group.

timidobserver.7925:

Yeh, my guild doesn’t even allow Engineers in our WvW group.

first off, lmao, engineers bring alot to the table, multiple blast finishers, great survivablity, and can roam especially well with other classes. But i won’t tell you who can and can’t play in your guild.

Side note, you know what hits harder than gnade barrage in a zerg with all retal? superior rune of mad king elite activation, it does like easily 12k back to you just from retalition.

Bones.5762:

first off, lmao, engineers bring alot to the table, multiple blast finishers, great survivablity, and can roam especially well with other classes. But i won’t tell you who can and can’t play in your guild.

Hint: he probably wasn’t telling the truth!