Guild Wars 2

So I but together a build to maximize retaliation up time. However, as far as I can tell, retaliation on the necro doesn’t work (at least in PvP). I have tested this by using axe 3, then followed up by a heal (traited) to provide 8-ish seconds of retaliation. When tested against the training partners, it doesn’t work. The warriors direct damage hammer skills go right through the Ret, and do no reflective damage. Also in sPvP, I have been easily focused right through my Ret.

I understand that conditions ignore Ret, but direct damage should be reflected. Is this skill broken, or is there some nuance of Ret that I don’t understand?

Retaliation never reflected damage. You still take the damage, but the foe takes it as well.

The damage dealt isn’t tied to the damage received either. There is a formula based on base value and power. Look it up on GW2 wiki

Retaliation doesn’t reflect damage.

What it does is whenever someone hits you it deals (198.45 + (0.075 * Power)) to them.

The power it uses is that of the caster of the Retaliation (So if you cast it on yourself or allies then it’ll use your power)

It doesn’t reduce damage you take, just punishes people who do damage to you.

Ok. So it seems my confusion is associated with a poorly worded tool tip. “Reflect incoming damage back to its source” implies exactly that. It will “bounce” off me back to the attacker. “Reflect a portion of incoming damage…” would be a somewhat better description, but still not accurate. The formula ignores the specific damage of the skill, and reflects a fixed amount regardless of the damage taken. In fact, the skill doesn’t actually reflect anything (in my opinion “reflect” implies a damage reduction). It simply adds a passive attack.

kpu.7839:

Ok. So it seems my confusion is associated with a poorly worded tool tip. “Reflect incoming damage back to its source” implies exactly that. It will “bounce” off me back to the attacker. “Reflect a portion of incoming damage…” would be a somewhat better description, but still not accurate. The formula ignores the specific damage of the skill, and reflects a fixed amount regardless of the damage taken. In fact, the skill doesn’t actually reflect anything (in my opinion “reflect” implies a damage reduction). It simply adds a passive attack.

yeah the tooltip is poorly worded, did the warrior take any damage at all from attacking you?

a better description would be, enemies attacking you take damage.

Dredlord.8076:

kpu.7839:

Ok. So it seems my confusion is associated with a poorly worded tool tip. “Reflect incoming damage back to its source” implies exactly that. It will “bounce” off me back to the attacker. “Reflect a portion of incoming damage…” would be a somewhat better description, but still not accurate. The formula ignores the specific damage of the skill, and reflects a fixed amount regardless of the damage taken. In fact, the skill doesn’t actually reflect anything (in my opinion “reflect” implies a damage reduction). It simply adds a passive attack.

yeah the tooltip is poorly worded, did the warrior take any damage at all from attacking you?

In a second test, yes, the warrior did take a small amount of damage. In my initial test, I was expecting full reflection, so I was anticipating large movements in the health bar.

kpu.7839:

Dredlord.8076:

kpu.7839:

Ok. So it seems my confusion is associated with a poorly worded tool tip. “Reflect incoming damage back to its source” implies exactly that. It will “bounce” off me back to the attacker. “Reflect a portion of incoming damage…” would be a somewhat better description, but still not accurate. The formula ignores the specific damage of the skill, and reflects a fixed amount regardless of the damage taken. In fact, the skill doesn’t actually reflect anything (in my opinion “reflect” implies a damage reduction). It simply adds a passive attack.

yeah the tooltip is poorly worded, did the warrior take any damage at all from attacking you?

In a second test, yes, the warrior did take a small amount of damage. In my initial test, I was expecting full reflection, so I was anticipating large movements in the health bar.

It used to work closer to that method where it would scale based on damage originally, but it was so powerful, that there were some guardians builds that only focused on keeping up retaliation, and you would kill yourself on them.

If you think about it, what you were expecting would be crazy OP. Full invulnerability and full damage reflection at the same time (for 8 seconds no less!) would be the best boon in the game by far, far, far.

Where retaliation really shine is for skills that are like:
(8 x) 4000 damage

and the like. Since retaliation will usually hit for 300 or more (depending on your power) per hit, the person will deal say 4000 damage to you but receive 2400 in return. Pretty darn good!

Now imagine if the skill above is an AoE and hits 5 people at once, all with area retaliation boon….

Actually, necromancers can easily keep 100% ret up time, which in your example would indeed be ridiculous :P

Bhawb.7408:

Actually, necromancers can easily keep 100% ret up time, which in your example would indeed be ridiculous :P

easy in what way?

I don’t find it easy to give up better traits, gear and food to get it.

It takes 30 in SR + 10 in Spite, and using an axe. I consider that easy because it takes absolutely no skill to accomplish (press your profession mechanic button twice per 5 seconds, and axe 3 when its up), no gear, no food, and can also synergize with other DS related traits for either solid damage or solid support.

“Better” is your opinion.

You may be able to upkeep retaliation for a long time, but what good does it do you when you can’t actually survive that many hits? The boon itself is worthless unless you’re a guardian.

Bhawb.7408:

It takes 30 in SR + 10 in Spite, and using an axe. I consider that easy because it takes absolutely no skill to accomplish (press your profession mechanic button twice per 5 seconds, and axe 3 when its up), no gear, no food, and can also synergize with other DS related traits for either solid damage or solid support.

“Better” is your opinion.

Technically an untraited axe 3 can keep 100% Retaliation uptime.

15 second cooldown, provides 3 seconds per target hit, can hit up to 5 targets.

Traited axe (30/x/x/x/x) would only need to hit 4 targets to get 100% uptime (12 second cooldown)

So… Yeah, pretty easy to keep 100% retaliation on a Necro, no food/gear/runes needed.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

You may be able to upkeep retaliation for a long time, but what good does it do you when you can’t actually survive that many hits? The boon itself is worthless unless you’re a guardian.

It’s possible for a Necro who wanted to maximise Retaliation to be very tanky:

• Toughness and Vitality gear can provide 26k health and 2.6k armour before traits + food

• Regeneration from Staff #2 or Focus #4 can provide health

• Life Siphoning from Blood Magic trait line can provide decent healing (If going Minions you can get ~80 health per hit from each minion)

• Death Shroud, easily generatable second health bar

• Various ways to remove conditions

Even if you just took the Ret on DS that would mean 4 targets would give full uptime, so… 10 points into Spite is all it would take.

Nm.. I didn’t read the previous post.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

You may be able to upkeep retaliation for a long time, but what good does it do you when you can’t actually survive that many hits? The boon itself is worthless unless you’re a guardian.

It’s extra damage added to your already existing damage output, not your lone source of damage. It’s not like you stand there hoping for retaliation to do all your damage and win the dps race.

And it works quite well on my Mesmer also (who can also get 100% uptime) in a tank build, so it’s not just good for guardians. I think it is better for tankier builds for sure though.

Mesmer retaliation builds are really funny to watch against AoE builds, when they stack illusions with retaliation. The guardian in heart of the mists will kill himself with a single whirl attack if you do it right.

Bhawb.7408:

Mesmer retaliation builds are really funny to watch against AoE builds, when they stack illusions with retaliation. The guardian in heart of the mists will kill himself with a single whirl attack if you do it right.

Whirling wrath is actually a really unique attack that procs massive retaliation because the single use of that attack produces multiple separate attacks, each of which have a 5 target aoe limit. When myself and 3 phantasms all have retaliation, it ends up producing a return of a maximum of 7 hits of retaliation per single attack, and I often will take out a guardian instantly from 80% hp with a single whirling wrath.

are the retaliation hits considered hits to proc vampiric traits?

would be interesting if they did, might test it tomorrow if no one knows

Bhawb.7408:

Actually, necromancers can easily keep 100% ret up time, which in your example would indeed be ridiculous :P

Wow… this seems impressive on paper, did you tried it?

I bet if they had just called it ‘Thorns’ we would all have understood immediately…

Engels.8537:

Bhawb.7408:

Actually, necromancers can easily keep 100% ret up time, which in your example would indeed be ridiculous :P

Wow… this seems impressive on paper, did you tried it?

Yes, I currently use a DS build that gives me 100% ret uptime (along with some other things). With how high necromancer eHP is, you can really abuse the ret damage, even more so when you see that you can get high fury/weakness/condition removal along side it. The difficult part is using DS every 5 seconds to keep the buffs going, and also learning when to let the buffs fall off because you need to actually tank with DS.

joffmonk.1285:

are the retaliation hits considered hits to proc vampiric traits?

would be interesting if they did, might test it tomorrow if no one knows

It does not, sadly. It falls under the same category as conditions as far as vampiric is concerned

Bhawb.7408:

Engels.8537:

Bhawb.7408:

Actually, necromancers can easily keep 100% ret up time, which in your example would indeed be ridiculous :P

Wow… this seems impressive on paper, did you tried it?

Yes, I currently use a DS build that gives me 100% ret uptime (along with some other things). With how high necromancer eHP is, you can really abuse the ret damage, even more so when you see that you can get high fury/weakness/condition removal along side it. The difficult part is using DS every 5 seconds to keep the buffs going, and also learning when to let the buffs fall off because you need to actually tank with DS.

Yeah, I have near-100% ret uptime too.

30/15/25/0/0, axe/focus and dagger/warhorn. Given the 25% increase to boon duration, you can get:

6.25s from healing (trait)
3.75s from Unholy Feast on 15s CD – critters and pets count
3.75s from tapping DS

12.5s (from Lyssa runes some of the time)

I feel the SR traits don’t do enough to aid either survivability or damage, so I prefer to stick my points into DM/Curses.

I quite like SR traits, actually, it gives you a lot of potential LF gain, and assorted defense, and 5s CD DS can give some very beneficial effects (fury, condition removal, AoE weakness/bleeds). Its just a different build, I don’t focus only on ret, but on stacking a number of boons overall with the extra DS effects.