Guild Wars 2

We are moving towards retaliation being more of a counter to taking many hits rather than a general boon to keep up all the time.

What type of counter are they talking about? If they are wanting to change this to a reactive ability is it going to negate or reduce damage from multi-hit attacks? Multi-hit attacks seem to be very strong and currently don’t have much of a counter. Sure you can roll from melee, but ranged multi hits still track you after your roll.

I would find it interesting if they are going to make a large change in an attempt to create a direct counter for multi-hit attacks. That type of change would make pulling out your big multi-hit attack a little more strategic. Especially if the counter is an symbol that affects allies in the area.

The whole % damage back never felt very guardian like to me for some reason.

The only issue I see with tying Symbols to this sort of tactic is that a lot of Guardian traits and skills are balanced around Symbols being up fairly consistently. We’re seeing that Symbol of Wrath being on a substantially longer cooldown breaks synergies with traits for symbols.

Hammer has a very frequent combo with its Symbol on its auto-attack chain and #3 granting frequent AoE retaliation – will this, too, be nerfed in coming weeks? Will Guardians get anything in return to bridge the gap in effectiveness that would create?

Reimagining a mechanic is fine, but there’s a lot of pitfalls to navigate if that’s going to happen without breaking the effectiveness or flavor of the profession in the process.

Yeah, there are a number of issues with how they have setup traits and using a symbol in only one situation. Some of these problems may be offset by having more than one effect on the symbol or a sequence move on the symbol. The traits… well that is a bit more work.

Anyhow, their wording is curious, it would be nice if they would say more.

I’m hoping for something like an absorb and fire back type of mechanic… I’m thinking like Yoda does vs Palpatine. If it hhappens I’ll need to roll an third guardian as an asura so I can pretend to be yoda.

They probably only want us to use it as a counter to Pistol Whip, LDB, 100b etc. (short-time high-frequency hits) in PvP. Still, downgrading this in PvE made the boon even more useless there than it already was.

I’m fine with nerfing retaliation if they deem it too strong. They just need to differenciate between retalation by itself, which can still be obtainable easily, and the greatsword symbol, as part of many builds centered around symbol damage and buffs.
I like greatsword, but it is not going anywhere if we have to spam autoattack waiting for cds.

I find weapon swapping during combat pretty useful. It helps to fill the gaps waiting for CDs.

I still have no clue how exactly it changed with the patch. Everything seemed the same last night when I was on my guardian. It would be nice if they were more specific.

The problem with using active Retaliation to counter multi-hit attacks is twofold.

One, currently a lot of the sources of Retaliation are incidental or reactive. Outside Symbol of Wrath, “Save Yourselves” and “Stand Your Ground” it’s all side effects. And even on those three skills it may be a side effect. I personally use “Stand Your Ground” more to give my party Stability than anything else for example.

Two, when I hear multi-hit attack, I think of Lt. Kholer from AC. Standing in his whirl with current Retaliation will kill you. While this is an extreme example, there are several such enemies in dungeons. In fact, it seems like a lot of heavy hitting attacks are set up as multi-hit specifically to counter Aegis and other forms of Block with a counter (everything but Shelter). Without Retaliation having a component that reduces incoming damage, this is an utterly silly statement for the Devs to make.

I get the feeling they’re either going to make Retaliation into a true damage reflection, or increase it’s scaling.

The issue is going to be with tuning it, and it if becomes true damage reflection then Guardian survivability goes nuts with Aegis, Retaliation, Protection, and several Blinds (not useful on bosses mind you, but on every other fight in the game)

If they increase it’s scaling they need to make sure that they make it worth using, but at the same time make sure that anyone (Guardians aren’t the only ones with Retaliation, we were just the most abusive of it) using it doesn’t flat kill someone. I know we all hate 100B 5 Sig warriors, but buffing Retaliation to the point where any Guardian with Signet of Judgement auto wins vs them is something Anet will want to avoid. Even on our end, could you imagine a high scaling Retaliation on Mesmer clones? If we Whirling Wrath into 3 of them, we would get destroyed if the scaling was off.

I guess the point is, I feel like they changed the abilities involving Retaliation first, and have plans to update the effect later.

That is what I’m leaning toward Kami. It does seem odd to make a sort of half skill change which it seems they did. Was the current retaliation allowing some crazy exploits or completely destroying others in pvp?

irongamer.6014:

That is what I’m leaning toward Kami. It does seem odd to make a sort of half skill change which it seems they did. Was the current retaliation allowing some crazy exploits or completely destroying others in pvp?

Probably more simply they had these changes ready to push through and didn’t think it would affect Guardians badly enough to hold them off while the other stuff is completed.