Guild Wars 2

Considering the tease of Vampiric Aura, and how there’s a possibility that leaps and blasts through Dark Fields will provide it I’ve been thinking. Vampiric effects currently do a set amount of bonus damage+healing, then scale with Power and Healing Power affecting either side of the equation separately.

So, why not have Guardians continue their duality with Necromancers? Have Retaliation be reworked to block a certain amount of damage and then reflect that back onto your foe. The damage reflected can be amplified by power and the damage blocked can be increased by your Toughness.

This helps Guardians (a new mitigation skill that makes Retaliation more useful than an extra bit of damage if you fail to block an attack with your low base health pool), Warriors (Spiked Armor in the Toughness line would actually be something that ties really well with both the trait line and everything Warrior), and Necromancers (With the new Spite grandmaster trait and couple of other Retaliation modifiers, it would tie into that “hit me” style Necromancers have that doesn’t actually work right now).

Retaliation is a pretty lackluster boon right now, especially since it needed to be nerfed shortly after launch. This turns it into a new mitigation boon that makes sense for classes with low/no access to Protection, while tying strongly into Guardians, Light Fields, and Light Auras.

(We don’t have to increase Retaliation damage for this. Just keep it at the same it’s at right now, or possibly even lower it since it will be doing double duty).

I really feel like they should add some offensive scaling to defensive stats to break up the zerk meta. Let toughness, or vitality somehow improve stuns or CC. This could work really well with the new break bar system.

If toughness did more damage than zerker we’d have the toughness meta and everyone who complained about zerker would still complain. There will always be an ideal build and not running it will mean you don’t have the potential to complete content as quickly. Anything you want to run in this game can work, PvE can be completed naked with any build. The only way the current meta will end is if Anet decided active gameplay shouldn’t be rewarded and changes AI to punish players who can dodge and actively avoid damage. If that happens we can all switch to loading up on passive defense and facetanking damage as we faceroll to victory. I’ll take the “zerker meta” over passive and unskilled gameplay any day.