Guild Wars 2

Wrathful spirit gave 10 seconds of retaliation when an aegis was removed, it got nerfed to 3 seconds. A lot of people think that guardians get 1 aegis and so going from 10 to 3 seconds was too much. I do agree that it should have been lowered to maybe 5 or something, but when ur in pvp, u get way too much retaliation from aegis removals.
Just for a random average build, ill try to explain how many aegis u would get in a fight (and keep in mind that retaliation is very powerful in pvp). U start the fight with an aegis activated and get hit. You’ll probably hit that 40 seconds timer once so u get a second aegis. U use ur Virtue of courage active and get a third aegis. U then reach half health and because of the 5 point trait in valor, u get another aegis (i dont know CD for this trait, but ill just assume u only get 1 aegis from this a fight). U then use renewed focus and it refreshes ur virtues giving u the passive aegis from it. Then u use the virtue again for the active virtue. This is 6 aegis’s in a fight that are getting removed, and that would give u 60 seconds of retaliation (which is a huge amount).
And i understand that with different builds, you could get more or less aegis depending, but i think 6 is a good amount for a decent length fight (and yes, renewed focus is actually good, especially in team fights where u have to tank and u get focused and stunned every time u try to use the other elites group heal). So now with the nerf, u go from 60 seconds to 18 seconds, which is a huge drop. And the point where this really fails is in short fights where maybe u get off 2 aegis’s for only 6 seconds of retaliation. So i understand that they needed to drop off how much retaliation u got in a long fight, but it also really hurt shorter fights

This is exactly what I’ve been thinking, i’m glad somebody posted it.

It’s far too obvious why it was brought in line – I could brainlessly keep close to 100% uptime with retaliation just using Aegis & Virtues – not even including weapon skills.

Now, I can still keep a fairly high %, but it’s not as easy to do.

The writing was on the wall and guardians could easily keep almost 100% uptime on retaliation with little to no effort. This change brings the trait inline with the others but shouldn’t change the way guardians are currently being played. So all is good as long as you don’t activate everything at once.

I never used Wrathful spirit, i went for Shouting Recharge rate instead.

I do use Vengeful in the Virtues tree however and i’ve never had any trouble keeping up Retaliation on me.

combining boon duration with symbols and shouts. You wont need to count on Wrathful spirit to maintain retaliation, just a good focus on dropping your symbols and dodging on to them.

Polle.6908:

The writing was on the wall and guardians could easily keep almost 100% uptime on retaliation with little to no effort. This change brings the trait inline with the others but shouldn’t change the way guardians are currently being played. So all is good as long as you don’t activate everything at once.

It did.

To quite a number of us theorycrafters.

Keeping it up 100% is in itself a bad investment now.

I would have stomached 5s, but 3 requires some venting.

I’ve already said most of the reasoning in a thread i started, but to give a snip:

The boon itself is worth so little (minimal damage, no reduction in received damage) and supporting it is so split between offense and defense which balances itself.

The only reason i accept as “reasonable” is the QQ that its a passive damage source which should not be a means of playing an action MMO.

Retaliation has constantly been on a fine line between useless and overpowered (this mostly applies to sPvP). If you build your character to stay alive as long as possible, Retaliation will end up dealing a lot of damage, giving you offense with little investment in actual offensive stats or abilities. That allows for a heavier focus than desired on defense. However, if you balance retaliation’s numbers for those builds, it feels like it has no impact whatsoever for characters that aren’t built to take a considerable amount of damage.

In the long-term, this boon may become more dependent on an offensive stat like power or condition damage than it already is (lower base, faster scaling). That way, it will be stronger for the squishier characters and weaker for the survival characters that tend to get it extended as a freebie for focusing on defense.

Exedore.6320:

Retaliation has constantly been on a fine line between useless and overpowered (this mostly applies to sPvP). If you build your character to stay alive as long as possible, Retaliation will end up dealing a lot of damage, giving you offense with little investment in actual offensive stats or abilities. That allows for a heavier focus than desired on defense. However, if you balance retaliation’s numbers for those builds, it feels like it has no impact whatsoever for characters that aren’t built to take a considerable amount of damage.

In the long-term, this boon may become more dependent on an offensive stat like power or condition damage than it already is (lower base, faster scaling). That way, it will be stronger for the squishier characters and weaker for the survival characters that tend to get it extended as a freebie for focusing on defense.

Not sure if you are guesstimating or just didn’t know how its calculated…

Damage returned is fixed per level and scales with power, increasing damage by 1 for every 13.4 power. At level 80, base damage is 267.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retaliation

Its damage scales with power… that is why i said it is a balanced skill, because you are literally teetering between offense and defense. it can’t be OP based on that fact (at its current scaling levels).

Still heavily inconvenienced by this “hey lets make something 70% weaker” nerf.

No, I was aware of the scaling. Just saying it may shift more in that direction (even less base damage, but more damage per power).

We all know why it was nerfed, becasue10 seconds was simply to long for it to last considering how often you could make it hapen (if specced for that i should add). However we all know why people are complaining about the nerf, because a 70% reduction was far to much.

I honestly don’t think there would have been that much moaning at a 50% reduction, but 70% was just way overbored and was going from 1 extreme (to long = OP) to the other (to short = UP).

I think they were gonna take it down to 5 seconds but since all other ret traits give you 3 someone on HQ had a massive case of ocd and said.. nah.. take it down to 3. and sketched up a quick theory craft on why it was ok and no one argued. I dont think even the players QQing thought WS would get that big of a nerf. they would have been ok with 7 secs and extremely happy with 5. 3secs is just dumb and we should at least hear their reasoning behind it.

How much damage is retaliation doing that giving the guardian it for 100% of the time in a game where ripping boons off enemies is extremely easy and commonplace is considered “unbalanced”?

players complained about Retal because they hit them self for almost 300 every time and thiefs and glads would kill them selfs and shocker didnt like it so they naturaly QQ’d. problem is Anet ate it up. IMO Retal NOW that has such a shorted duration should reflect 100%dmg. now will they listen to that? not a chance. if one class complains about their own class then its ok. if must other classes complain about your class then thats what they consider a problem.

look at warriors. they dont stop complaining about their classes but no other class complains about wars enough for the defs to worry so they have pretty much been ignored at every single patch.

@valdamus: Are you really suggesting Arenanet decides their balance changes based on forum complaints?

Ynna.8769:

@valdamus: Are you really suggesting Arenanet decides their balance changes based on forum complaints?

Yep. look at the facts. look at what they patch vs what ppl complain about. it is 10/10 always dead on with QQing. Thiefs spam 2? Nerfd. Mesmers clones?? nerfd. Guardians Retal?? nerfd. Guardian stability?? Nerfed. Elementalists massive condition stacking + unlimited aoe range?? Nerfed. Engineers massive cripple stacking?? Nerfed. and many others. I’ve played many other mmos where patchs as game and strategy changing as this take MONTHS to develop and another month to test. Anet releases this patches weekly w/o proper testing.

It took them 3 years of developing a class and change how skills work and then only a little less than 2 weeks to start changing skills left and right? That just sounds like they saying that they didnt know wtf they where doing whether true or not. They should ONLY fix skill bugs and game bugs and take their time with skill changing patches to 1 every 3~5 months like every other mmo. there is a reason for that.

valdamus.6289:

Yep. look at the facts. look at what they patch vs what ppl complain about. it is 10/10 always dead on with QQing. Thiefs spam 2? Nerfd. Mesmers clones?? nerfd. Guardians Retal?? nerfd. Guardian stability?? Nerfed. Elementalists massive condition stacking + unlimited aoe range?? Nerfed. Engineers massive cripple stacking?? Nerfed. and many others. I’ve played many other mmos where patchs as game and strategy changing as this take MONTHS to develop and another month to test. Anet releases this patches weekly w/o proper testing.

It took them 3 years of developing a class and change how skills work and then only a little less than 2 weeks to start changing skills left and right? That just sounds like they saying that they didnt know wtf they where doing whether true or not. They should ONLY fix skill bugs and game bugs and take their time with skill changing patches to 1 every 3~5 months like every other mmo. there is a reason for that.

qft.

The undeserved QQ about retaliation makes me sad.

But again, passive damage = no no in action MMO so a bit of a nerf was due. 70% is just insane, even for OCD.

Exedore.6320:

No, I was aware of the scaling. Just saying it may shift more in that direction (even less base damage, but more damage per power).

Good to know. Shifting more into that direction will make retaliation a viable build imo since you’ll be able to focus more on supporting it with power and be different breed of glass cannon.

Still hoping for return percentage of damage with +scaling to power.i feel that would be a reasonable change considering the tooltip.

Building for defense should see a big trade-off in a loss of damage.

With 100% Retaliation uptime that balance was skewed and significantly benefited the defensive player that could draw out a long fight.

Retaliation works well 1v1 but also provides damage against multiple opponents, which is why it’s on a finer line to balance.

Retaliation isnt something to rely on in a multi-person fight. To my experience, 2 or more people focusing fire on you do too much dmg for retaliation to be game-changing.

You’d be intentionally trying to dodge and avoid dmg in that scenario to keep yourself up to fight them. And every second your aren’t being attack with Retaliation up is just wasted Retaliation.

Retaliation is great in 1v1. Helpful in multiple enemy encounters but does nothing more then just some spare added dps. Your better off relying on your dodge skills, CC, and dmg in that scenario