Guild Wars 2

This may be controversial here but the following small post is my defense of the current way Retaliation can function.

Traits
30 Valor – Purity, Strength of the Fallen, Altruistic Healing
30 Honor – Writ of Exaltation, Writ of the Merciful, Superior Aria
10 Virtues – Vengeful

Gear – Full power/toughness/vitality. Weapons – Hammer/Greatsword
Utilities – Signet of Resolve, Stand your Ground, Hold the Line, Signet of Judgement.

So, heres how it goes.

Open with 3x Hammer swing basic attack for Protection symbol, use Hammer Mighty Blow for Retaliation, use Stand your ground for more retaliation, do 3x more Hammer swings for another Protection symbol, switch to Greatsword and use leap of faith through the combo field to gain more retaliation, use Symbol of wrath for more retaliation, use Blinding blade for the DoT then use Whirling Wrath. Swap back to Hammer and repeat the entire combo. You could even switch to Greatsword after the first 3x hammer swing/Mighty Blow, and leap seeing as though Retaliation stacks duration.

And thats how Guardian achieves the second highest PbAoE damage currently ingame, second currently only to warrior. Please note that this is intended for PvE.

Thats my small defense of the current way that Guardian can function in PvE with Retaliation up 100% of the time and Protection up about 70% of the time. Nerfing Retaliation would be a huge mistake and would basically destroy this Guardian build which is perhaps the most useful PvE build currently available for the class.

Note: For many situations in PvE you can swap out a utility of your choice for Wall of Reflection, which is an extremely powerful spell in many PvE situations

Now, thats all fine and dandy but you may now intervene and state that a major issue with Retaliation comes in when we talk about PvE/PvP balancing. Firstly, i think GW2 should separat PvE from PvP like they did in GW1, that way you can balance classes in PvP without damaging them in PvE or vice versa. In tournament PvP Guardian Bunker builds have been proving extremely powerful due to large amounts of retaliation + protection, however, i think this is only the case because optimal arena class + combinations have not yet manifested. There is no need to tamper with Retaliation and hurt PvE just because people have not figured out Tournament pvp tactics and what class build can be used to counterclass another. For example, if a 5 man Tournament team had a Thief built for boon removal and player harassment, it could be used to counter around 60% – 70% of the damage output of a bunker Retaliation Guardian by using Sword/Dagger and 20 Trickery (+ a Mesmer with Null Field ripping boons would be insane) while the other players in his team get to work on the other enemies. Simply put, destroying an amazing PvE build just because people in Tourneys cannot figure out tactics and counterclassing is not the way to go.

At this point you may be thinking what about WvW? Bunker Guardians are very powerful in WvW. My response would be again people should learn tactics and counterclasses, and here I would also add that WvW is inherently chaotic, unstructured and in many ways inherently unbalanced because people run around in different gear and enter at different levels with not all utilities unlocked, the server with the highest population almost always wins, people form huge zergs where class balancing has very little meaning whatsoever etc. WvW cannot be used in any way to try and figure out class balancing. As for Spvp, my same comments for Tourneys still stand.

If Retaliation still proves too much of an issue for you arenanet you should simply buff boon removal amongst some of the other classes. Guardian is one of the strongest, if not the strongest PvE dungeon class at the moment, you should not be looking to damage its most amazing PvE tank retaliation builds. You should be looking to add improvements to some of the other classes which need it.

Boon removal is a necromancer feature, and its ok with it…
But for example, if a wheel of you car is not at the optimal pressure, and you cannot drive well, WHY change all the engine! it dont make sense, simply pump that wheel! if the problem is retaliation, simply re address retaliation, and rebalance the guardians offensive skill to keep our overall damage. (you do the same damage but in a different way)

Retaliation is problematic, regardless of what you say.

• It should do damage equal to the damage received. This isn’t necessarily a buff or a nerf, but it would make much more sense and give enemies (in PvP) more responsibility in regards to the damage they receive from it.
• It should have a clear graphical manifestation. People should know when this boon is up.
• For a Bunker Guardian, using Retaliation is dumb. It doesn’t take special effort, so it’s low risk, high reward.
• As for PvE, I understand that keeping Retaliation up at all times takes some effort and is very effective. I just don’t think such a build should be extremely viable.
• Retaliation should be more reactionary instead of pro-active, like it is now. As it is now, you’re just keeping Retaliation up, because it does the same damage no matter how you use it. It should be something you (mostly) keep for big incoming hits, so you can punish enemies for those.

Aside from opinions about how things ought to work all three posts above me have their points and solid observations – however I think few things (some mentioned, one not):
1. Its not obvious enough that retaliation is active to an opposing player (or party members) – hate to say it but lets add some CULLENSTYLE.

2. A build which takes significant effort to play, and results in effective high metrics is not broken – it has clear counter-tactics and is very task specific, which generally means boring as hell to play in a short time (dropping one of the Rewards below).

3. MMORPGs have evolved from basic Risk-Reward cycles long ago – we are on a Risk-Time-Effort-Difficulty-Reward1-Reward2-Reward3-MoreThings matrix with multiple interactions between the elements all occurring at the same time. Just as balance is not the same as symmetry, and is measured many ways – but direct comparisons 1v1 is usually not one of the important ones.

@thisolderhead:
1. I agree. The responsibility for the Retaliation damage ultimately comes from the opponent, and they should be clearly informed about it.
2. If you’re talking about bunker-builds (I’m not sure), but with them Retaliation is mostly low-risk, high-reward. They don’t have to sacrifice anything for it.

@Ynna I can see where you are coming from, but as someone who used to play another game (or two) as their Bunker Build equiv. I have seen the light and now realise there is a bunch of game that goes on away from the capture points!

I spend years standing on flags thinking that my PvP contribution was calling out incoming zergs while standing basically still and not getting squished, I could never work out why “mobility rules PvP”, or why PvP in these games was meant to be fun.

THAT is the real sacrifice – have no fun and doing the same boring-as-Dunst thing for hours at a time so you can meet one VERY limited goal!

do i get a graphic when i have 17 stacks of thief bleeds that they can apply in 5 seconds?

how r u people still dying to retal?

I sacrifice a LOT for retaliation , it takes up a slot and has a cooldown.

how are you still dyign to retal?

if retal was doing 900 damage per hit i can see… but it hits for AT MOST 200 damage.
its a weak dot that you dont have to cast.. every single game has a thorns buff and in every single game the glass cannon stealthers complain about it and not being able to kill healers and tanks fast enough… so in thisgame the healer and the tank are the same class and they have thorns… guess what happened… again

As a guardian, I will build for retal until we get other viable options. /agree with guardian retal supporters.

I thought retaliation did have a visual effect, isnt it the glowing, bladed wing thingy that appears on your arm?

Retaliation atm is supplementary damage whenever is active. Its not game breaking ability per say and it ought to be buffed up a bit.

Mental note: WoW warrior retaliation→ fecking awesome?

thisolderhead.5127:

THAT is the real sacrifice – have no fun and doing the same boring-as-Dunst thing for hours at a time so you can meet one VERY limited goal!

I quite enjoy defending capture points, probably for the same reason as I like healing. I like helping out my team, but I don’t really like the actual fighting people. I also love it when I can knock back people for 2 minutes before they can actually stay on the point I’m defending. So, yeah, I like being a bunker, but for the good of the game, I’d argue that they’re too important right now. And you can’t just nerf the professions that play bunker-builds, because that wouldn’t solve the fundamental issue.

BishopX.6453:

Do I get a graphic when I have 17 stacks of Thief bleeds that they can apply in 5 seconds?

How are you people still dying to Retaliation?

I sacrifice a LOT for retaliation , it takes up a slot and has a cooldown.

How are you still dying to Retaliation?

I’ve argued (since beta) that buffs and boons are generally too hard to see (with some exceptions, like Poison or Aegis). But even so, Retaliation is different from Bleeding.
And it’s not so much that people are dying to Retaliation (the damage is indeed pretty low), but that defensive/bunker builds are able to have sustainable damage output because of it.
And I must say I don’t fully understand your post. First you are saying that Retaliation is very weak, and then you say you go out of your way to gear/build for it. Why would you do that if the boon was truly weak.

Ragnarok.6814:

As a Guardian, I will build for Retaliation until we get other viable options. /agree with Guardian Retaliation supporters.

As I said above, bunkers would be equally viable without Retaliation. And I don’t think Guardians shouldn’t have it, but I do think it shouldn’t be such a big part of the profession (and when we get less reliant on Retaliation, we should get other changes to compensate for that).