Guild Wars 2

How does Retaliation work?

1) Does it reduce incoming damage?
The description says it “reflects” which may imply that you don’t take the part that is reflected.

2) How does it interact with blocking?
Consider I have both retaliation and aegis active (or any other means of blocking). If the next hit is blocked, is a part of the blocked damage still reflected or will retaliation not be triggered?

Answer summary
adapted from MaximusAwesomus.1784:
“Retaliation deals damage to foes who successfully hit you. The damage dealt is independent of incoming damage and is a fixed value that scales with power.”

Additionally:

• does not reduce incoming damage
• requires to be hit so retaliation is not triggered if you block

Let me try and reply in a non vague way…

No, the reflect word is wrong and needs fixed.

An accurate description would be “Retaliation deals damage to foes who attack you while active. This damage is independent of incoming damage and is a fixed value that scales with power.”

it’s not ‘part reflected’, it deals damage scaled with your power. So you may reflect much more than you recieved.

" Damage returned is fixed and scales with power. " – says wiki

So it works like thorns from WoW? It does not reflect, just strikes the attacker with additional dmg.

Luke.6420:

So it works like thorns from WoW? It does not reflect, just strikes the attacker with additional dmg.

Yes

Technically it is still reflecting damage as the damage it does requires you to be hit first. It just doesn’t reflect the actual damage done to you, but a fixed amount based on your power (for balance).

Its very nice to know that you take the full amount of damage, even though it has the word “Reflect” in the description.

Does retaliation still deal damage if your opponent misses due to blind, or is blocked?

Vargs.6234:

Does retaliation still deal damage if your opponent misses due to blind, or is blocked?

According to my current understanding (see answer summery above) : no.

I can confirm that retaliation does not deal damage if you block or the enemy misses.

Kind of a bummer considering how many Blinds, Blocks and Aegis the Guardian has, but it only makes sense that way.

Retaliation also isn’t affected by your opponent’s armor.

Hassohappa.9278:

Retaliation also isn’t affected by your opponent’s armor.

Very important detail.

Also I agree the word “reflect” is misleading.
It should read “Causes X damage to attackers when hit.Ignores armor”

What I don’t understand is when a thief uses backstab and I have retaliation up, I rarely see them get downed from the sheer amount of dmg dealt. How does the retaliation dmg get dealt?

Retaliation deals a set amount of damage every time you are hit and is based on your power, rather than the damage you took by the attack. This means it will deal the same amount of damage if you took 8000 damage from an attack as you would if you took 5.

The actual damage formula if you’re interested is 198.45 + (0.075 * Power) according to the wiki.

Note you can look something up in game with the following chat command:
/wiki _______

Also as a note if your the enemy uses a skill that hits you x10 times they take x10 retaliation strikes. So a theif that backstabs you hits one big time for a single only gets Retal once. But that same theif that uses Daggerstorm may take many hits.