Guild Wars 2

im running a ret build and i find it funny that back in the past retaliation use to be so good but arena net thought that it needed to be nerfed , as for the reason why ? i have no clue , maybe they thought classes that pvp that are dumbed down needed to be auto pilot to get their wins , who knows . one thing is for sure . if retaliation were to come back and i mean back to where it use to be would you all consider running it ?

Problem is, too many multi hit skills/pulsing skills/etc, for short too much kitten that you cant control (unlike basic auto attacks against which retal was designed) in terms of hitting a enemy. It would get something like a internal cooldown if it got returned to old/bigger values.

Retaliation is a good example how things have been nerfed and buffed with little regard to how they affect on builds or gameplay.

Retaliation used to be one of viable ways to prevent being whacked up for necromancer but it is not very effective nowadays. Basically everything which allowed you to avoid or make opponents not hit you was nerfed into oblivion for necros. More or less by accident.

I do agree, however, that retaliation needed a little change. There just wasn’t anything to replace what you lost for those builds which used it.

Retaliation got nerfed because it was OP as hell. It used to be something that if you wanted to you could keep up 24/7, meaning it was a blanket boon that you didn’t need to use smartly, and would deal high damage back to the people hitting you. Bunkers could effectively just throw around retal themselves and paired with the high sustainability they had and the little extra damage, many people would kill themselves just attacking someone. If you want to see how strong retal still is, get a Mesmer friend to fight the Guardian, you can kill the guard without attacking him just through the use of a phantasm and retal.

It was ridiculous. Retal as it is now is in a decent spot. You can as a Necro still get very high (if not permanent) retal uptime, which does pretty decent damage back per hit, but you can’t just throw up retal and be a real damage threat without doing anything.

I agree with Bhawb, necro’s retal is pretty decent as-is. There’s still low investment required to pump out respectable numbers off of it and perma-retal is possible (situationally). The one big complaint i have is our death shroud effect, spiteful spirit. To me, it just seems that 3 seconds of retal does pretty much nothing. Yes if you blanket it on top of other retal you have going on it adds up, and assume some thief gets spam crazy on you. I get that. I still think it needs a longer duration though. The retal on heal (which I absolutely love, btw, especially with blood fiend) gets a 5 second duration and is far more effective and you can notice a difference in the damage returned when using it. Not even gonna cover axe 3 because you can just about perma-retal with it alone so that’s not even in question.