Guild Wars 2

Heh, I honestly have always thought Flash Grenades should remove boons, but until Grenades are no longer on top of the viability spectrum for Engineers it’s hard to suggest such a thing.

Teamkiller.4315:

Replace confusion with retaliation, and you’ll see what I mean.

Except we have a lot more ways of dealing with confusion. Formula 409 gives us multiple routes to clearing confusion off and we have a dedicated elixir that removes all conditions and additionally gives a toolkit ability to remove another one. If confusion is causing you problems there are a lot of things you can slot to deal with it.

If retaliation is causing you problems then there’s not much you can do about it. Even Phineas’ suggestion of “use different attacks” is pretty laughable because engineers don’t have any particularly slow-speed, high-damage attacks, such as warriors, guardians and thieves can access. We don’t have good ways to clear retaliation such as necros get. The mine is our only boon removal, and it only removes 1 boon, and pretty well sucks as a skill. If we could trait a better boon removal or if the elixir gun’s #3 would remove boons, that would be different.

Bottom line, engineers have ample ways to deal with confusion.
Our best way to deal with retaliation seems to be “stop attacking and die slower”.

Slamz.5376:

Even Phineas’ suggestion of “use different attacks” is pretty laughable because engineers don’t have any particularly slow-speed, high-damage attacks, such as warriors, guardians and thieves can access.

Uh, wow. Really? The Tool Kit says hi.

But even if you didn’t want to use it:

Incendiary Ammo
Flame Blast
Blowtorch
Blunderbuss
Jump Shot
Overcharged Shot
Big Ol’ Bomb

All great non-spam, high damage options. Never mind the fact that Condition Damage doesn’t proc Retaliation, and we are one of the best condition spreaders in the game.

I’m still 100% convinced that this is a L2P problem.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Slamz.5376:

Even Phineas’ suggestion of “use different attacks” is pretty laughable because engineers don’t have any particularly slow-speed, high-damage attacks, such as warriors, guardians and thieves can access.

Uh, wow. Really? The Tool Kit says hi.

But even if you didn’t want to use it:

Incendiary Ammo
Flame Blast
Blowtorch
Blunderbuss
Jump Shot
Overcharged Shot
Big Ol’ Bomb

All great non-spam, high damage options. Never mind the fact that Condition Damage doesn’t proc Retaliation, and we are one of the best condition spreaders in the game.

I’m still 100% convinced that this is a L2P problem.

Then you’ll never be convinced otherwise. Sorry friend. Stubbornness doesn’t promote good discussion.

What you’re suggesting is that you run a sub-par damage dealing build or substantially limiting your damage on the basis of retaliation. That is not the right thing to do. I’m pretty sure no one believes that the answer to counter a zerg with retaliation is to run into the middle of the zerg with full zerkers and drop a big ol’ bomb. As manly as that prospect is, it’ll get you a quick trip back to your keep.

The entire point that I’ve been trying to make is that retaliation does not make any sense in how it works. There has been no balance discussion or good reasoning regarding retaliation. In my opinion that’s caused by the fact that most classes (outside of WvW zerging) aren’t nearly as effected as bad as engineers are.

Muffling a discussion about a boon that has particularly large implications for one class on the basis that you can “run something else” is ridiculous.

Ostricheggs.3742:

I’m pretty sure no one believes that the answer to counter a zerg with retaliation is to run into the middle of the zerg with full zerkers and drop a big ol’ bomb.

Please do not misrepresent me.

I listed Big Ol’ Bomb as an example of a high-damage attack that Slamz claimed we do not have, not as a one-and-done solution to Retaliation.

Fact is, this is not a “class” issue. This is a “Flamethrower and Grenade Kit” issue. I am not telling anyone to run something else. I’m, actually, not telling anybody to do anything because I don’t see the problem.

I am saying that if you don’t like managing Retaliation in WvW, there are other options. I use the Flamethrower anyway and I do not see what the reason for all the QQing is.

Linking a couple screenshots from sPvP showing Retaliation is the number one thing you died to is not convincing that something needs to change. I’m not rank 40 in sPvP but I’ve played it enough (rank 10) to know that I can comfortably handle just about every class in a 1v1 situation. Something has to be able to kill us—effectively. That’s what defines class balance.

If you can’t tolerate this, then use the Rifle or Tool Kit.

You can’t list an attack with a 30 second timer, whose main feature is not damage but blowback, and expect us to take you very seriously. Although flamethrower and grenade kit suffer most, the engineer as a whole does less damage per hit than most other classes.

Rifle hip shot: base 251 damage
Warrior hammer: 333/333/444 damage chain
Guardian hammer: 296/333/370 damage chain
Dagger/dagger thief spamming heartseeker: 336-672 base damage as long as init holds out
Thief sword: 269/269/437 damage chain

These are the regular hits these classes can do non-stop and it makes them better able to counter retaliation than engineers — the hammer hits slower but it hits harder, which is what you want (even the thief 1H sword hits harder than our rifle). Plus the fact that engineers can’t swap weapons means you are effectively saying that we should all be pigeonholed into 1 weapon, just because of retaliation.

The bomb kit, damage-per-hit, is one of the best options but I think we all know the limits of the bomb kit, particularly when we’re talking about WvW where running around the enemy horde dropping bombs is a good way to find out where the nearest respawn point is.

You really don’t have a leg to stand on when talking about the impact of retaliation on engineers. The numbers don’t support your argument.

Slamz.5376:

You can’t list an attack with a 30 second timer, whose main feature is not damage but blowback, and expect us to take you very seriously. Although flamethrower and grenade kit suffer most, the engineer as a whole does less damage per hit than most other classes.

Rifle hip shot: base 251 damage
Warrior hammer: 333/333/444 damage chain
Guardian hammer: 296/333/370 damage chain
Dagger/dagger thief spamming heartseeker: 336-672 base damage as long as init holds out
Thief sword: 269/269/437 damage chain

These are the regular hits these classes can do non-stop and it makes them better able to counter retaliation than engineers — the hammer hits slower but it hits harder, which is what you want (even the thief 1H sword hits harder than our rifle). Plus the fact that engineers can’t swap weapons means you are effectively saying that we should all be pigeonholed into 1 weapon, just because of retaliation.

The bomb kit, damage-per-hit, is one of the best options but I think we all know the limits of the bomb kit, particularly when we’re talking about WvW where running around the enemy horde dropping bombs is a good way to find out where the nearest respawn point is.

You really don’t have a leg to stand on when talking about the impact of retaliation on engineers. The numbers don’t support your argument.

I like how you didn’t say one word about the Tool Kit.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I like how you didn’t say one word about the Tool Kit.

I like how you didn’t either, because if you took 60 seconds to look up the damage numbers, you’d see it’s still on the low end. Only the 3rd chain hit actually hits hard. The first two hits of the chain are only a hair better than the hip shot. I hope you plan on fighting NPCs because most players will find ways to interrupt your chain attacks.

And it’s melee range, which means it has the same fundamental problem as the bomb kit: you are taking a class not known for its awesome bunker builds and putting it front-and-center as a melee in WvW. The thief, warrior and guardian can use their harder hitting melee and live to tell about it because they have the tools to survive it. Engineers CAN show some survivability but front line melee with the tool kit is not our specialty and hardly a good answer to retaliation.

What else ya got?

Slamz.5376:

Phineas Poe.3018:

I like how you didn’t say one word about the Tool Kit.

I like how you didn’t either.

I did, actually.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Slamz.5376:

Even Phineas’ suggestion of “use different attacks” is pretty laughable because engineers don’t have any particularly slow-speed, high-damage attacks, such as warriors, guardians and thieves can access.

Uh, wow. Really? The Tool Kit says hi.

Slamz.5376:

Only the 3rd chain hit actually hits hard. The first two hits of the chain are only a hair better than the hip shot. I hope you plan on fighting NPCs because most players will find ways to interrupt your chain attacks.

I’m confused. When was this about out-damaging Thieves? I thought the issue was Retaliation and that you think the Engineer has no hard-hitting attacks even though Flame Blast, Thwack, and Pry Bar are exactly that. How many do we have to have?

Slamz.5376:

And it’s melee range, which means it has the same fundamental problem as the bomb kit: you are taking a class not known for its awesome bunker builds

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Full stop. What?

The Engineer is not known for awesome bunker builds? Says who?

Slamz.5376:

Engineers CAN show some survivability but front line melee with the tool kit is not our specialty and hardly a good answer to retaliation.

Three of our five kits are melee range or close to it. The Rifle and Pistol both work most effectively at close range. Half of our gadgets are used from point-blank range.

Not sure what class you’ve been playing, but in my experience the Engineer spends plenty of time at the front line and the Tool Kit is certainly a specialization one can take at the moment—and is a good answer to Retaliation and all classes in the game with its 5-stack of Confusion with 3-second immunity.

It’s easily the most powerful kit we have in WvW at the moment. You’re foolish not to use it.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I’m confused. When was this about out-damaging Thieves? I thought the issue was Retaliation and that you think the Engineer has no hard-hitting attacks even though Flame Blast, Thwack, and Pry Bar are exactly that. How many do we have to have?

Can you maybe list an attack that can be done back to back? Hitting someone with a single moderate-damage attack and then going “la de da” for 15 seconds is not really helping your case. The point of the comparison to other classes is that even thieves utilizing 1-handers do more damage in a single hit — hits that can be done over and over back to back — than we do, which makes them more effective when dealing with retaliation. I didn’t take the time to break down all of the classes but then I can’t do everything for you. Do a little research.

As has been stated by pretty much everyone other than you, we are one of the worst if not the worst class when it comes to dealing with retaliation.

I get the feeling you are defending your level 80 guardian’s prime ability moreso than you are actually thinking about engineers. I’m guardian/engineer too and as much as I love decimating people with AE retaliation, I’m not too proud to admit that it really screws over engineers and I recognize it’s an ability with few real counters.

Thieves are also a class that specialize in single-target DPS (i.e., ganking).

Of course Retaliation is not really an issue for them. You’re really distracting this conversation from the real issue here, which is that you totally misunderstand how the Engineer class is played. No bunker builds? Inability to be at the front-line? Pry Bar doing “moderate” damage?

And if you think I’m here to “defend” the Guardian you really don’t know who you’re talking to. I’ve made maybe three posts between Guru and the official forums in Guardian-specific folders. Compare that to my track record regarding the Engineer.

Retaliation needs a rework.

It makes grenadier engineer’s not that useful in WvWvW. Logically grenade barrage should be among the best weapons against a big enemy blob, now it is a good recipe for suicide. Just throwing a grenade barrage + few other grenade skills onto an enemy zerg ball, which has been stacking retaliation, can produce crazy amount of damage in 1-2 seconds, enough to take down an engineer from full health. Retaliation should have some internal cooldown or reflect part only a reasonable percentage e.g. 10-40% of the original damage. Now e.g. let’s say each grenade does 250 damage and hits up to 5 targets, each provoking retation, the engineer takes back 350 retaliation damage from each hit. The engineer can take 3*5*350 = 5250 damage just merely using grenade skill #1, which hits each enemy roughly for just 250-500 damage. Conclusion: Retaliation does many times more damage onto the engineer than the engineer did into the its targets.

Suggested fix to retaliation:
1. Retaliation should trigger only once per skill activation, not multiple times. The current implementation favors zerg balling and makes the meta more boring (= retaliation shared with your zerb ball mates makes you extremely powerful defense against enemy AoE)
2. Retaliation should be proportional to the damage inflicted, not a fixed amount E.g. reflect back 10-40% of the original damage (scaling with power).

In my opinion that’s caused by the fact that most classes (outside of WvW zerging) aren’t nearly as effected as bad as engineers are.

Have you tried spam 2 shortbow to a retal zerg as a thief?
Have you tried fire 1 as ele?

Logically grenade barrage should be among the best weapons against a big enemy blob,

No it should not, if the people TOOK CARE AND BUFFED THEMSELVES.
What do you think all those buffs would be needed for if it starts to work your way?
But if you would take a couple of so-not-needed-on-the-www necros and just put wells before zerg, i.e. STRIPE PREPARATION, THEN, LOGICAL grenade barrage would be very good.

I totally agree with Phineas:

(1) most engineers missunderstand the class. It’s a mid range skirmisher as anet told us: we have lots of melee skills which hit hard and our usual movement should be from close combat to range combat – back to close combat and again range… and so on.

Compared to a typical range class which just move in circles or pitch cicrles this is an important difference.

(2) grenadier wins zerg vs zerg with this aoe conditions. This is just not famous because ppl are not sure what the engi is made for. But yes, even in close numbers, grenade engineers win zerg vs zerg. And this needs a counter and retaliation is one. And the only one.

(3) finally it’s definitly a L2P Problem: why no just stack vitality up to 25k+ health to counter retaliation? Why not say to you and your friends: hey let’s use boon-removing sigil? Why not asking your friend the necro for aoe boon remove? Srsly – I got about 20k kills in wvw and have no problem with retaliation in high tier match ups but yes, I noticed retaliation.

it’s not a learn to play problem in tourneys. Over 4k games on engi and I’ve seen it all. Retal is definitely one of the biggest killers for no real definitive reason.

There is literally no logical justification to have mutli-hit abilities outside of ability diversity. I believe a-net decided to add retal to “counter” fast attacking classes but then decided to make some of the most powerful abilities in the entire game single hit. If anything, retal should punish AoE, that’s completely ostensible. What is not is the fact that no consideration was taken with regards to how retal effects certain classes and specs.

There should be a reworking of retal. In its current state it does nothing but punish very specific types of abilities, multi-hit AoE attacks. Again, the only class that uses multi-hit AoE’s a large majority of the time are engis. There is no specific reasoning behind this. It’s completely arbitrary and does not compensate for anything except multi-hit AoEs triggering things like aegis and blind and continuing on.

If retal was reworked, so should aegis and blind. These things need to be considered. It’s not just a problem with engis either, it’s just that the problem is skewed to hurt certain engi specs for no particular reason.

It’s not as if the devs said “oh, flame jet is incredibly strong! We need to add an ability to counter its multi-hit capabilities to limit its powerful, multi-hit AoE”. It works out like that though ;\

Not that I disagree with you about Retalition Ostric and that it need a change!
But I allways thoguht the reason Engineer’s got Grenade kit and FT dealing multi attacks was to have it scale very well with all our stuff like Sharpshooter, and other stuff with: “on hit” or “on crit”, to stack more conditions that way!? So I do think there is a reason for why they do multi Hit’s, it’s just appear they didn’t think about how Retalition would affect that sometimes?

Thank you Amadeus and Ostrich for your input. The rest of the 2nd page is just borderline strawmanning. I find it rather dubious that there are still very vocal individuals who think it’s perfectly sound to have rock-paper-scissors style “counters” in a game without healers. Confusion is already particularly nasty to deal with with all the incoming damage, and Retaliation punishes grenadier hardest. That’s downright stupid given how grenades work. If all the abilities were a single grenade with larger area of effect and all the damage baked into one kaboom, then Retal would be sound, and in line with how it affects other AoEs in the game. I’ve even tried to adapt to Retal by running with Mesmer and using Sigil of Nullification, but to no avail. It’s simply too easy to reapply, and the most annoying kitten guardians also stack might to further exacerbate the problem.

Imagine the amount of whine and buttclench that would ensue if e.g. Meteor or Thief abilities as a whole were just a series of really fast small multi-hit attacks. That would defy the laws of internet stupid. This kind of stuff has to be a design oversight, there’s no reason why there’s disparity in class mechanics to such an extent that one single boon has the potential to disable a whole build for a time. In addition, poop like Confusion trigger on dodge bomb is just meh. I recently trolled a guildie about that, and he spent 9 minutes and 45 seconds rationalizing a clear bug and a design oversight. The world is filled with people who will claim black is white and that grey is actually an illusion.

Oakwind.6187:

I find it rather dubious that there are still very vocal individuals who think it’s perfectly sound to have rock-paper-scissors style “counters” in a game without healers.

I’m confused. Are you suggesting that there should be no counters in this game? Because there are plenty already: Condition Damage is a counter to high Toughness, for example.

Healers really have nothing to do with it.

Oakwind.6187:

If all the abilities were a single grenade with larger area of effect and all the damage baked into one kaboom, then Retal would be sound, and in line with how it affects other AoEs in the game.

You do understand the entire advantage to running grenades is Grenadier, right? By having three grenades thrown every half-second, Shrapnel (plus three every Shrapnel Grenade) makes the Grenade Kit our best bleed-stacking weapon—if not the best in the game. Take that away and it’s no better than the Pistol or Elixir Gun. Never mind how it would additionally affect Vulnerability stacking, which is a huge role we fill in DPS groups like CoF p1.

This is, again, a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Oakwind.6187:

I’ve even tried to adapt to Retal by running with Mesmer and using Sigil of Nullification, but to no avail. It’s simply too easy to reapply, and the most annoying kitten guardians also stack might to further exacerbate the problem.

What you’re facing then is a Hammerdin with Vengeful and Boon Duration runes that can sustain Retaliation on themselves.

Symbol of Protection → Mighty Blow.

The way around this is to interrupt their rotation by not allowing them to Mighty Blow their Light field. Use Air Blast. Use Magnetic Inversion. Throw Shield. Overcharged Shot. Personal Battering Ram. Throw Mine.

We have counters to this! Oh, but wait. You don’t believe in counters, right?

Oakwind.6187:

The world is filled with people who will claim black is white and that grey is actually an illusion.

The only ones talking in absolutes here is you and others that demand Retaliation be changed because it affects you in a way you don’t like.

Why is it that Grenade Kit Engineers are at the center of every controversy regarding this class? Patch after patch, there’s just something new for you guys to complain about.

bromi.7809:

In my opinion that’s caused by the fact that most classes (outside of WvW zerging) aren’t nearly as effected as bad as engineers are.

Have you tried spam 2 shortbow to a retal zerg as a thief?
Have you tried fire 1 as ele?

Thief shortbow is one of the worst weapons to use against retaliation, this is true. However, thieves really worried about facing retaliation can keep a sword in their secondary weapon set and swap to it when needed — it’s better against retaliation builds than any of the engineer weapon choices. Even if you refuse to go sword you could go dagger and rely more on heartseeker.

Not sure which “fire 1” you meant for elementalists. Staff fire #1 is one of the better choices in the game for having to face retaliation. It has a slow attack speed but one of the hardest hits for a spammable attack. Fire dagger #1 will get you murdered but still, at least elementalists have a weapon choice that’s not overly vulnerable to retaliation. Engineers don’t.

That’s the real point here: there is no engineer weapon set that’s tolerable when having to face retaliation builds. The only really hard-hitting option we have is the bomb kit, which mostly nobody uses because it’s probably the worst, most difficult to use melee-range option in the game. Good against NPCs but not players.

The only really hard-hitting option we have is the bomb kit, which mostly nobody uses

I’m sorry but if you look around this forum for most succesful www videos, you would be proven very wrong.

Phineas Poe.3018:

You do understand the entire advantage to running grenades is Grenadier, right? By having three grenades thrown every half-second, Shrapnel (plus three every Shrapnel Grenade) makes the Grenade Kit our best bleed-stacking weapon—if not the best in the game.

Take that away and it’s no better than the Pistol or Elixir Gun. Never mind how it would additionally affect Vulnerability stacking, which is a huge role we fill in DPS groups like CoF p1.

What you’re facing then is a Hammerdin with Vengeful and Boon Duration runes that can sustain Retaliation on themselves.

I do sometimes do CoF p1 speed runs. I have never seen any such group looking for an engineer. And I can imagine the reason: a zerker warrior does more dps.

It is true that a properly specced grenadier engineer can put impressive stack of vulnerability + bleed on multiple targets, but when it comes to bleed damage, I would say it is nor as good as a bleed stack warrior:
sword #1 does bleed, so does rifle #1
5 point adept trait precise strikes gives 33% chance of bleeding with critical hits
10 point adept trait bleeding cuts gives 50% more duration to bleeds
25 point grandmaster trait attack of opportinity does 10% more damage against bleeding foes
couple this with some condition duration runes, sup. sigil of earth and you can easily do 1-3 bleed stacks with auto-attack and sword #4 and #5 do impressive over 7k+ bleed dmg/hit. With food buffs + investing points into condition damage you can do even more. In fact the condition build would be overpowered if the conditions would not be so easily removed (bleed warrior lacks cover conditions, so it doesn’t matter if she can do 1k-3k bleed/s, it gets removed fast). Logically a warrior should actually be doing better damage in this case as the sword attacks are melee range and grenades can hit up to 1200/1500 range, thus the damage output should be a bit less.

Interrupting guardian’s key skills on a big zerg fight in euro tier #1 is simply not a realistic option. The lag is often so severe that you cannot even use the grenade kit at all (yes, ground targeting + hitting the skill key doesn’t activate all.. and I very much dislike the fast ground targeting option), healing skill #6 fails to activate even 1 minute in a row, supply crate doesn’t trigger even after 5-10 minutes of trying. Even if you are far from the actual mega fight, but just on the same map, the skill activation delay is usually at least 0.5 seconds, often long enough to make interrupting more or less a random game. The mega lag is of course hurting the others.

I still stand my ground: it doesn’t make sense that just activating one grenade barrage (toolbelt skilL) at a big zerg with retaliation buff can trigger around 10k retaliation damage. Retaliation needs to be reworked.

We already have way too much big blobs and zerging and I would really want to see game design changes making them less powerful / viable.

This is becoming more and more of a problem as I advance in rank and mmr in tpvp. Its not that I don’t like retaliation, I use it with elixir B, its just that I feel some classes can just keep this buff up add a little damage here or there and try to out tank me with retaliation doing all or most of the work. Here let me tell u a little story:

Im running condi nades in this match, I roam between home and mid point. I cap home and go try to give some range support at mid while keeping an eye on home. I notice a guardian running for our home point so I start to intercept. After a long intense knock down drag out fight, it ends with both of us on the ground spamming downed skills at eachother. Im thinking “WOW what an awesome fight, look how evenly we are matched, that was so much fun” his buddy come in and finishes me off (which I have np with, its part of the game, his friends got there before mine could). I look at the damage meter…. 12k in retaliation damage, 4k burning, etc.
The point here, I had to land every nade, cleanse every condition, dodge every knock down, and basically play perfectly in order to even reach a draw with this guy. He just popped retaliation and threw out a burn here and there. I just feel like my skill does not matter in this situation. Its just such a hard counter to how I apply my conditions that no matter what I did in that situation, there was no way I could win. There should be a way to win that fight.

I have 19k hp, I took 12k in retaliation damage. On his end its the same skill level as a hs spam thief, only I cant counter it with confusion.

The reason why retaliation procs should be on cool down is that our crit procs keep getting nerfed with cool downs mitigating our ability to create high-synergy builds. There is not as much use to having tossed 3 grenades and increase our crit chance if they don’t do very much on procs besides crit damage (which statistically would be more towards the center of the damage bracket).

Why not just throw 1 grenade? If it crits, then bam, big damage… AND it might trigger one proc not on cooldown, if not, keep tossing. Might as well be the same as what we have now with a few traits as exceptions. Even better, less retaliation to deal with.

With food, runes, and sigils all with cool downs (I was pretty mad about Omnom Ghosts-it isn’t like it was a TON of healing, come ON) the people at ANet seem to be more interested in “balancing” us into low-focus builds, ostensibly more “fun” to play.

Instead of propping up the abilities and ideas that COULD really shine, they force us into Zerker’s gear and pretend that there are tons of excellent builds… I only assume there is a picture of that turret Engie from the promo vids somewhere in the dev teams office taped to a dartboard.

How many more nerfs of focused builds is it going to take before they really examine why so few people still play Engie? For example, the nerf of Kit Refinement, an entire tree of builds built around ONE TRAIT. You think Static Discharge isn’t next?

Retaliation is just another thing that the devs aren’t going to look at seriously, like the half dozen or so traits of ours that DON’T WORK, but instead, they will “balance” the last few builds we have so we will ALL have to play turrets.

Guy, don’t bother trying to argue with Phineas Poe, he’s here to argue against everything anyone says. Just look at his post history.

He’s the kind of guy that urinates into a hurricane just to defy it and wonders why he gets wet.

This is a legitimate issue that 90% of people feel needs to be addressed, don’t let one troll get in the way of a discussion. Just ignore him.

Trikki.5803:

Guy, don’t bother trying to argue with Phineas Poe, he’s here to argue against everything anyone says. Just look at his post history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

It doesn’t make his arguments any less legitimate

He’s the kind of guy that urinates into a hurricane just to defy it and wonders why he gets wet.

And you’re the kind of guy that tries to shut down one person who is arguing against everyone who says that a certain boon is OP because it hard counters their many-hit-low-damage attacks, which is of course what retaliation is supposed to do. That is its very JOB.

This is a legitimate issue that 90% of people feel needs to be addressed, don’t let one troll get in the way of a discussion. Just ignore him.

It’s really easy to call someone a troll on the internet “Oh he disagrees with me so he’s a troll”. No, I’m afraid he doesn’t really fit any definition of troll I’ve ever come across.

As a closing point, there’s really only three ways to get area retaliation. The first is through “Stand your ground”. 5 seconds of retaliation to 5 allies in range. The second is to use the signet of judgment. About 3 seconds of retal to 5 allies in range. The third is blasting light field. 3 seconds of retal to 5 allies in range.

It is NOT possible to keep this up permanently unless you are fighting against multiple guardians. Most guardians do not blast light fields because it’s a waste of time, and popping their signet of judgment makes them lose out on 10% damage mitigation, this is coming from a guardian main.

Most guardians use SyG, and usually that is ONLY for the stability, not the retal. So unless you are fighting against 5 guardians or 3 guardians with max boon duration, there will be generous windows where they don’t have retal. If you expect to be lazy and win with your aoes without having to check whether or not retal is up, or if you just think you can ignore retaliation despite dishing one of the fastest proccing attacks in the game, then I vehemently disagree with you.