Guild Wars 2

I’m finishing my set of Koda armor.

Superior Sanctuary Runes on Power Toughness Vitality gear from Honor of the Waves . I may skip out on the last piece(I have Grenth PowToughVit shoulders) because I’m not sure about the (6) 5s Stability at 20 percent health (cd 90s).

Traits: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlYgiC33xKEf4ES+hVq6R8wP3DODCMjA;TYAKxMiJEzKmTMpYA
Stats in picture.

I’d like your criticism please. Note that what I’m going for is high power, because retaliation is power based, and it goes well with PTV gear. The idea is to be doing significant damage without crits, and to be doing lots of collateral damage with retaliation. Worth it?

I find it impossible to do significant damage without having precision.. base damage
from skills is just really low.. even without having any critdamage, a critical hit will still
add +50% damage, which is quite significant. If you put 30 points in the valor trait line
you get 180% damage on crits, without having to sacrifice other stats.

I prefer getting 30 valor for the +30% critdamage, and then knight armor for the good
power + precision + toughness, which valor again increases with +300 toughness. That
way you have good enough survivability, as long as you pack some condition removal,
while still having significant damage output because of high precision and decent crit-
damage.

Especially in spvp this works nicely because armor there gives a lot less critdamage than
in wvw or pve, so you get a ton of critdamage from the valor trait line compared to the
total amount of critdamage you can get with spvp gear. Warriors for example to get
their +30% critdamage from trait points, need to invest in a trait line that is useless for
most of their builds (burst). Guardians get +300 toughness and +30% critdamage from
their by far most superior trait line (valor), whcih is simply awesome. Sadly though
that is the only thing that is good about guardian traits.

Having 5% to get 10 seconds of retaliation is highly random too though, you can’t rely
on that at all. Most fights you won’t get retaliation from that at all, and the few times
you do get it to fire, it will probably be too late to turn the fight. Retaliation is more a
kind of boon that you need to be able to control to be useful.

In short, no way to do significant damage without at least 40% critchance, and as a
guardian most preferably 30 points in valor for the free critdamage. That is why I use
sword and not greatsword/hammer, even though those weapons are superior in both
damage and utlity, as I can’t afford spending 20 points in honor to get -20% 2handed
recharge trait.

The 5 percent chance lasts for 10 seconds with a refresh of 30 seconds. That’s 1/3 of the time, and retaliation stacks duration. I get it from Great Sword as well as from Virtues. In other words it’s up all the time, I’ve tested it.

I’m not sure you read my post. This is a WvW build. Looking forward to WvW criticism.
P.S. Retaliation damage is based entirely on power.

It’s helpful to understand how this works I guess, if you’ve never seen it before.

Retaliation
- Stacks duration
- Ignores armor (crit based attacks take armor into account)
- Is calculated based on power 267 Damage + x/13.4 where x is your power

25% longer Retaliation duration, from trait
Retaliation from health dropping to 25 percent, from trait
Retaliation from Symbol of Wrath
Retaliation from leaping through light field
Retaliation from activating virtues.
Retaliation 33 percent of the time on average from armor.
Retaliation from Save Yourselves
Retaliation from Stand Your Ground

In short, retaliation never runs out and is doing damage to everyone who hits me with non-condition damage. This has proven effective for WvW, but I want to improve it. How can this build be improved?

hmm i think you are on a interesting path. But is the retal damage worthwhile since 600 power would add like 45 damage?

but first things first.

going for retaliation as a source of damage i would argue that you should be very beefy and hard to kill. the 30 points in zeal does not help you at all with that.

the traits you choose are also not that great imo. if you want to hold on to that point distribution i would suggest dropping GS Power for shattered aegis. fiery wrath is essentially better vs. singel targets since the burn does not last that long and to use it efectively you neet to pull VoJ. but with shattered aegis all your retal damage is increased by 10% too which is great when you have multiples hitting on you in melee. it might make sense to invest a little twords condition duration.

I find protectors impact very situational and since you do not really go for zeals (larger&longer)why not drop 10 points there as well as the protectors impact for the shattered aegis.

along the lines of this:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlYgiC33xKEf4ES+hVq6R8wP3DODCMjA;TYAKxMiJEzKmTMpYA

Thought behind it:
more aegis = more protection = more burn = more retal = more effective use of firey wrath

coming back to stacking power for more retaliation damage…

what your build tries to do is to do indirect damage. If they touch you they regret it. following this philosophy i find that tring to increas your burn damage might be an option to think about.

138 condition damage wil get you 10% on you burn damage which 33 damage and
138 power will give you 10 damage which is an effective 3% damage boost on a ALL Retal hits.

you have to note though that retal damage can occur multiple times and for a longer duration. so i think it could be good idea to find some sweetspot where you blance of power and condition damage…

IF you follow my idea on shattered aegis. (which you should test because this is all paper tatctics up until now)

if anything you should consider stacking toughness before power because a dead man does not retlaiate at all.

sorry for spelling but i am too lazy for that

Retaliation isn’t that great for dishing out damage if someone hits you for 3k crit in a single hit your not gonna reflect 3k back your going to reflect a multipler on their power usually around 400 dmg. I think you need a secondary source of dmg something like high crit

I don’t care about spelling, thanks for the critiques!

Asmodal,
I really appreciate the question whether it’s worth it or not. I could try to mix in crit, and go for passive burning, which would work well with the defensive nature of the build. I think I’ll work on that.

Nirvash,
I’ve never been hit for 3k in WvW. Who can do that to a guardian? I’m genuinely curious. I probably have about 50 hours of consistent WvW fighting and don’t get hit that hard. When people are bursting me I turn on invulnerability for 3 seconds, which I don’t prefer to do because it turns retaliation off, but it keeps me alive. It makes me wonder though what the average hit size is in GW2. Things like hundred blades and other channeled skills with multiple hits (the ones that list (x4) etc) often end up doing more damage to the attacker than to me.

Hehehe I’m only exaggerating on the 3k hit. Don’t take it to seriously, my point was that retaliation is purely based on power and not a great source of dmg. It is most effective against chain hit skills (eg. hundreds blade ).

Good thread, would appreciate an update on where you’re at today with your build.

retaliation can definitely be very strong and learning when to use it. i am still learning when to myself. if an opponent uses a single hit heavy hitter, for e.g. if you went against a high crit chance hammer Guard, your retal wouldn’t do you as much good vs multiplt hitting foes.

personal opinion, i wouldn’t build an entire spec around it, but i myself love incorporating retaliation into my builds. it’s a great passive effect and you can use it actively.. but i feel it’s just as if not more important to have a good build that can do without retal, and retal just further enhances it that much more.

if you worry about sacrificing too much power from the zeal line, you can always invest in a bloodlust item, get stacks and then switch to your regular weapon. as long as you can maintain not getting downed too often. which seems you’re able to do ; )) and thus you can build for more survivability. or hit harder. thus either way, dealing more dmg to your opponents.

I’d like to point a few things out, just as an aside, as people are often confused about retaliation.

- It does not reduce any damage.
- It does not reflect any damage, it inflicts a set amount.
- The damage inflicted is based on your power, not your foe’s power.