Guild Wars 2

so we all know that sneak attack and unload and all the lil hits like cluster bomb broken up…really can own some if not most thief builds. so how do we fix this so that thieves can play effectively in zerg and 1v1 without having a 100% hard counter? i have 2 proposed solutions and any respectable opinions are 100% welcome.

1) Make Retaliation have a 1 second cooldown per person whom hits the person buffed with. This i believe should have been in since day one. They could also rework the dmg on retal so it fits appropriately.

2)Grand Master Trait: Defiant Concentration (30 pts): While stealthed you cannot take any extraneous/collateral damage unless a skill was activated and targeting you before you went stealth. Melee strikes and Arrows/bullets can still damage you. just not AOE skills or ground targeting etc.

SIDE NOTE: what about a master/GM trait that says : all evades are +1/4 second long? i think that would help on the aftercast that leaves us very vulnerable in a fight/zerg etc.

retaliation doesn’t affect my build at all. but yes it’s frequently complained about.

depends what you run. but theres no reason for it to trigger 5x in 1 second. thats more dmg than ur prolly dealing with sneak attack if u use it

Or you could be aware of which classes frequently carry retaliation, know what to look for in terms of buffs on the bar & FX on the actual target and lay off the mad button mashing of multi-tick skills when you see any of those things.

You think we are having it bad? Ask grenade engineers and barrage hunters what happens when they meet retaliation.

Nike.2631:

Or you could be aware of which classes frequently carry retaliation, know what to look for in terms of buffs on the bar & FX on the actual target and lay off the mad button mashing of multi-tick skills when you see any of those things.

This doesn’t change that retaliation (and confusion) are badly designed and need to be reworked.

Nike.2631:

Or you could be aware of which classes frequently carry retaliation, know what to look for in terms of buffs on the bar & FX on the actual target and lay off the mad button mashing of multi-tick skills when you see any of those things.

so perma retal builds…what to do then? horrible suggestion by the way :P

apparently you’ve never ranger longbow’d 5 onto a group of 5 with 1 guardian shouting stand your ground in the middle of it and keeping everybody alive while you kill yourself off the retal of 5 people.

you wish thieves had it bad with retal.

Dagraan.2854:

apparently you’ve never ranger longbow’d 5 onto a group of 5 with 1 guardian shouting stand your ground in the middle of it and keeping everybody alive while you kill yourself off the retal of 5 people.

you wish thieves had it bad with retal.

cluster bomb…..ricochet….caltrops…..death blossom…..unload…sneak attack…trick shot

rangers do have 2 skills that hurt with retal….thieves …as you see above any of these skills just shouldnt be used.

Retaliation has already been nerfed. It is fine as-is.

style.6173:

Retaliation has already been nerfed. It is fine as-is.

so you would take sneak attack or unload and beat a guardian? ill challenge you to that lol. its a lil op when its up perma. if it was a lil harder to get…then i would agree.

Travlane.5948:

style.6173:

Retaliation has already been nerfed. It is fine as-is.

so you would take sneak attack or unload and beat a guardian? ill challenge you to that lol. its a lil op when its up perma. if it was a lil harder to get…then i would agree.

As a p/d thief I like to carry sword as a secondary weapon. It’s fairly useful in this kind of encounters. In zerg vs zerg there isn’t much you can do about it though.
Sorta weird that all auras and chaos armor have internal cool down but retalation does not.

i cant make sword work…its direct dmg only :/

Travlane.5948:

i cant make sword work…its direct dmg only :/

You just swap to it to steal the boons. Sure you lose some damage in the process, but it’s worth it if you steal a good bunch of boons. You can also pressure via caltrops spam while doing it.

Please consider you shouldn’t be killing every single build, otherwise you would be massively overpowered.

I’m a cleric whose only damage is retaliation. If you unload a lot of cuts on me, you die; and that’s how it should be.
That’s as if I complained about my damage being crap or asking for nerfs to conditions.

When I see a necromancer roaming around with a teammate, I think twice before jumping in.
When you see a soldier with retaliation, you should probably think twice before facerrolling your keyboard on him.

Pleurodesed.7625:

Please consider you shouldn’t be killing every single build, otherwise you would be massively overpowered.

I’m a cleric whose only damage is retaliation. If you unload a lot of cuts on me, you die; and that’s how it should be.
That’s as if I complained about my damage being crap or asking for nerfs to conditions.

When I see a necromancer roaming around with a teammate, I think twice before jumping in.
When you see a soldier with retaliation, you should probably think twice before facerrolling your keyboard on him.

i agree…..having almost 0 % chance tho is also something that shouldnt happen. you should never have to just either run away or stand there and die bc if u dont ur just wasting time/prolonging the inevitable.

Ignores condition damage, retaliation, and AoE damage while stealthed? Can you imagine the rage that would overtake the thief forum? No thanks. I don’t need that whole process again. I’d rather just learn to deal with it…like a good thief player.

At least your first suggestion doesn’t seem game breaking. Probably not the best idea regardless, but still better than the second.

no no no simplicity you misunderstood it…. only skills that linger on ground cant hit u. ranger AOE arrows can….bullets ricochet can….sword attacks. just not ground targeting stuff.

basicaly….

mesmer AOE stuns….
ele fire on ground…
freezes on ground…
caltrops on ground..
necro marks….

etc.

the thing is we get insta death when we get into a zerg fight….and when we are invis we are doing 0 for our zerg. we offer nothing. so going invis gives us a chance to atleast cut some dmg but not all. would be a great idea and atleast let thieves sometimes support the zerg.

I play a d/p thief as my main but I’ve played all the other major thief builds. Retal guards are annoying but not overpowered. I think retal is fine as-is… get better rather than trying to destroy other people’s builds… it’s bad for the community.

If it bother’s you so much use signet of malice… that’ll drop retal dmg by 50% or so.

Hype.8032:

I play a d/p thief as my main but I’ve played all the other major thief builds. Retal guards are annoying but not overpowered. I think retal is fine as-is… get better rather than trying to destroy other people’s builds… it’s bad for the community.

If it bother’s you so much use signet of malice… that’ll drop retal dmg by 50% or so.

not asking for a nerf that would bring it to the ground….. ok maybe u dont understand. there are some builds in this game that others just have an incredibly hard time beating. but that doesnt mean they cant. power based guardian vs any sort of pistol thief like p/p for example iwll just kitten him in seconds. wanna know why? well lemme break it down for ya

p/p thiefs are usually zerk or they wont have enough dmg to do anything.

unload = 8 shots. does 4-5k dmg with high crit chance. that 8 shots deals over 3k dmg back to the thief. ontop of that GS skill number 2 on the guardian followed from skill 3 ….. the thief is going to take another 6k dmg ontop of the 3k he was dealt from retal that is up the entire time.

without a critical hit…pistol attack does 350-450 dmg max ish. each hit does about 380 dmg back to the thief against retal on a power based guardian. …… so if the guardian has toughness that means hes taking about 275 -300 dmg per hit and doing 380 back each. so if he has more Hp AND more toughness its a quite impossible situation.

@hype…. btw you dont have to state u play d/p. i assume everyone is lol. kind of a given….90% chance anyway

But retaliation and rings of death are SUPPOSED to counter thieves. Think about the balance. This looks entirely like a “make my class OP” thread.

yes every class has hard counters. but shouldnt have instant win buttons.

thieves use to have that against other zerk builds. but we lost it on mug nerf.
there should be no instant win builds against given other builds.

in any experiment you need a control. in this a control is to see how much dmg you have to take against hitting another person with attacks and each only uses heal. this shows you how much dmg you dole out while recieving the same and see how mcuh total HP you have left vs theirs after all heals.

http://youtu.be/9i5ohK8KQ64

check it out. doesnt attack me once.

Signet of malice eats retaliation for breakfast.

i tried that in zerk p/p i hve some video. n ow i will say im not a master p/p player!
gimme 5 mins to upload it. again this is purely testing to see the implications of retaliation against multi hit tools.

I’m sorry I can’t watch that video. At this place I have an intermittent connection which is roughly 2kbps down and struggles to load these forums. It would take me two days to download the video.

I understand what you’re trying to say. I run a healing bunker with retaliation and 99% of my encounters end up in either win or draw.
People just can’t kill me; I heal too quick and there’s retaliation up.

But if you die to me, it’s solely your fault. My attacks deal no damage at all. I designed my character to be like this.

And you have trouble with retaliation? But of course! That’s how it’s supposed to be. All classes are meant to have a weakness.
This wouldn’t be happening if you did big long attacks with high critical rate. Think warrior with hammer or conditions.

http://youtu.be/kZy5SWNBdWg

:P

no problem check them both out later. u will see what i mean. its not that all builds are impossible to play against it just some.

I love running S/D against retal bunkers. They look so confused when their >1m of retaliation is gone.

people aren’t allowed to whine about retal until they’ve played nade engie

You can easily take 55 hits of retal in 1 second.

But do you agree with me then that all roles should have a weakness? That’s the whole purpose of balance in variety.

I assume you’re talking to me?

I don’t think retal needs a change, I just get annoyed when people who don’t know what true retal damage is whine about it.

After the one time I 2 shot myself with retal on my engie, I learned my lesson and started being more careful.

Pleurodesed.7625:

But do you agree with me then that all roles should have a weakness? That’s the whole purpose of balance in variety.

Caltrops, Caltrops and more Caltrops.

Not a fan of nerfing stuff that can be handled fine within game. Retal doesn’t do a lot of damage with any one hit, and it only hurts you when you mindlessly spam attacks at a single target. You can still do this as a thief if you use signet of malice. Thieves also have access to boon stripping, so vs a single target there are no issues.

Vs. multiple targets anyone can kill themselves on a zerg with retal. But this is a difficult coordinated tactic that takes a bit of skill to pull off well. On top of that, there is already group counterplay, like nullfield, wells, etc. that can counter this tactic very effectively.

Nerfing retaliation would just be taking the skilled and thoughtful gameplay that is already there around it and replacing it with mindless button mashing. I think the same can be said for confusion. Confusion should have been the bane of thieves, as it stands, you barely notice when you have it (unless you’re in PvE where it didn’t get nerfed).

Retaliation is supposed to be a counter to multi hitting attacks.

If you think you have problems, try running a grenadier engineer against retaliation.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Retaliation is supposed to be a counter to multi hitting attacks.

If you think you have problems, try running a grenadier engineer against retaliation.

i think retaliation is more of a help to non dmging builds. like guardians who are spec’d to be support and when they get targerted this kinda helps them stay on lvl. retaliation is not a class specific skill so its not really meant to be a hard counter anywhere.

yes yes yes we all know engineers have the same problem. but even in the grenade spec they have other skills to use. thieves dont. if u d like to point one out on p/p or p/d plz do show me.

On P/D, there’s always Shadow Strike. Also, weapon swap. You have the stealth to wait out retaliation, so use it.

Travlane.5948:

yes yes yes we all know engineers have the same problem. but even in the grenade spec they have other skills to use. thieves dont. if u d like to point one out on p/p or p/d plz do show me.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vital_Shot

^and weapon swap. In all the time I’ve played my Thief, not once has retaliation been an issue. I’d say it affects my Thief the least out of all 5 lv 80s.

The only problem I have with retal is how stupid strong it is on a full pvt guardian. The guardian is already crazy hard to kill but back when I would go 10-30-30 in wvw, each hit of retaliation would do more damage to me than my dagger auto attacks would do to the guardian (I was full zerker). Since the guardian had more total hp than me, a better healing skill, heavy armor, and perma retal up time, there was just no way for me to kill them. Now when I fight guards I only hit them with the big burst attacks and almost never use small hits. That’s the only way I can beat them without killing myself.

randomfightfan.4091:

The only problem I have with retal is how stupid strong it is on a full pvt guardian. The guardian is already crazy hard to kill but back when I would go 10-30-30 in wvw, each hit of retaliation would do more damage to me than my dagger auto attacks would do to the guardian (I was full zerker). Since the guardian had more total hp than me, a better healing skill, heavy armor, and perma retal up time, there was just no way for me to kill them. Now when I fight guards I only hit them with the big burst attacks and almost never use small hits. That’s the only way I can beat them without killing myself.

exactly. in the extreme cases where they go full zerk or full toughness/hp its silly hard to kill them…. id rather see their dmg boosted 10% and make retal reasonable.

Pleurodesed.7625:

I’m a cleric whose only damage is retaliation. If you unload a lot of cuts on me, you die; and that’s how it should be.

That’s terrible. Do you know how OP beastmaster ranger used to be? How he could spec full bunker and regeneration while his bird would still crit you for 7k? You should not be allowed to spec full bunker and still be able to kill people. Retaliation allows people who spec completely defensively to kill things when they obviously shouldn’t be able to.

You want to be able to do decent damage and kill things? Stop speccing full bunker and stop relying on obviously badly designed mechanics.

Heaven forbid a mechanic that forces us to adapt to the combat circumstances.
Retal is fine.

Jamais vu.5284:

Heaven forbid a mechanic that forces us to adapt to the combat circumstances.
Retal is fine.

you and pluero are silly :P ….u two prolly complain about thieves who go 2 2 2 2 right? lol…this is worse. a cleric should NOT be able to use retal to killsomebody. as you see in my video…a guardian with BERSERKER ARMOR took 99% of my hp without attacking. and all i did was unload on him. we both used heals but nothing else. so a no skill nub can beat the best p/p player just by clicking retal? cmon. get real. no talent. the buff is broken…only slightly but its a bad mechanic. it should do a % of incoming dmg or have a 1 sec cooldown on the retal.

Travlane.5948:

. it should do a % of incoming dmg

I would actually kind of agree to this, mostly because it would help fix Grenade Engis and LB Rangers.

Then sit back and watch as you complain that Backstab is useless because it damages yourself too much…

Sunflowers.1729:

Travlane.5948:

. it should do a % of incoming dmg

I would actually kind of agree to this, mostly because it would help fix Grenade Engis and LB Rangers.

Then sit back and watch as you complain that Backstab is useless because it damages yourself too much…

% with a cap of 400 dmg? that sound better? i mean theres always an answer

Travlane.5948:

Sunflowers.1729:

Travlane.5948:

. it should do a % of incoming dmg

I would actually kind of agree to this, mostly because it would help fix Grenade Engis and LB Rangers.

Then sit back and watch as you complain that Backstab is useless because it damages yourself too much…

% with a cap of 400 dmg? that sound better? i mean theres always an answer

Right now retaliation is used as a counter to multi-hit attacks. With a change to the mechanic, it would be a counter to all sorts of damage which (I think) is a stupid way to fix it.

At least now you can go “oh I will not use x and y attack”. With this change it would be “he’s going to damage me no matter what I do, and there is nothing I can do against it”.

Why are we complaining about a mechanic that’s easy to avoid and is completely bypassed by conditions?

Travlane.5948:

@hype…. btw you dont have to state u play d/p. i assume everyone is lol. kind of a given….90% chance anyway

The point was that dagger autoattack has numerous small damage swings, each receiving its own retal proc. The other obvious point was by using a melee set it requires being up close and personal to deal that damage.

So, by showing I play a weapon set that is fairly well countered by retal it gives more weight to my opinion that retal damage shouldn’t be nerfed. Make sense friend?

Viking Jorun.5413:

Why are we complaining about a mechanic that’s easy to avoid and is completely bypassed by conditions?

the only conditions that dont hurt much to apply have an incredibly long cooldown making them irrelevant to a “i can do you one better” kind of problem solver. so the conditions that really kill are the ones applied with weapons…they hit more often and apply more often and alos make you take more dmg “more often” :P

Hype.8032:

Travlane.5948:

@hype…. btw you dont have to state u play d/p. i assume everyone is lol. kind of a given….90% chance anyway

The point was that dagger autoattack has numerous small damage swings, each receiving its own retal proc. The other obvious point was by using a melee set it requires being up close and personal to deal that damage.

So, by showing I play a weapon set that is fairly well countered by retal it gives more weight to my opinion that retal damage shouldn’t be nerfed. Make sense friend?

i get you but i still dont agree. the main dmging skills to d/p and skill 3 and 1 (bs) and 2 (HS)……this accounts for 85-90% of d/p dmg! yes there are a few small hits here and there but those are from BPS and the 1 or 2 auto attacks between BPS HS HS HS BS rinse repeat combo. now imagine a p/d or p/p…..ranger or especially engineer……

no matter how you think about it you cant expect to say “I BELIEVE A FULL DEFENSE SPEC’D HEALING TOUGHNESS POWER GUARDIAN CAN TAKE OUT ANOTHER CLASS WITHOUT REALLY ATTACKING!”……. now i am going to imagine u wont say that? correct? i mean its like saying a full zerk thief can defend another class by just standing there. srry people shouldnt not be able to stand there like i did in my video and deplete 25k hp with retal alone. thats total BS and theres no way to argue that. there just isnt! its too strong.