Guild Wars 2

Spitjaw.2987:

Also,while i agree retal,clones,whatever are not best designed,thieves should literally not complain about almost…anything…whole class is badly designed with worst stealth design ever seen in any MMO so far.

Yeah, thieves shouldn’t complain that their non stealth included weapon sets (S/P and P/P) get destroyed by Retaliation! It’s almost as if exploiting that “broken” stealth was the only way to go.

Spitjaw.2987:

Aberant,retal can be kept up around 100% of time ONLY if you heavily spec for it….and go for boon duration rune combo.
Just to make that straight.

Not true… I do it on my guard without boon duration runes. +25% retal duration, retal on virtue, hammer chain + mighty blow + shouts (without aria)… is over 100% uptime (I had 20s + left over). Also gave me 100% prot. 20 in virtues is great for the aoe stability on courage btw (I highly recommend it). So… unless you consider putting 15 into a tree and bringing save yourselves and stand your ground (two of the best utilities) heavily specced…

An individual with retal is just unbalanced… it’s what aoe/large group retal does that’s OP IMO.

This topic is about two thieves playing a specific build who can’t kill a guardian playing another specific build.

maladikt.2180:

This topic is about two thieves playing a specific build who can’t kill a guardian playing another specific build.

If you read only the OP, and none of the rest of the thread, maybe.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Giving retaliation an inner cooldown defeats the purpose of retaliation: a means to discourage multi hitting attacks.

Source? Because that explanation is terrible. Why would a mechanic like that be a good idea?

Rottaran Owain.6789:

maladikt.2180:

This topic is about two thieves playing a specific build who can’t kill a guardian playing another specific build.

If you read only the OP, and none of the rest of the thread, maybe.

Your name is familiar. Did you post on the TF2 forums?

Archon.6481:

Your name is familiar. Did you post on the TF2 forums?

Eeeyup.

Nerf Pyros! Nom Nom Nom….

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Vengeful Virtues doesn’t give retaliation in an AoE. Blast finishers in a light field only gives 3 seconds of AoE retaliation.

5 each if you have up boon %

no matter how you look at it.

i dont think there is anything wrong with doing a % per hit for retaliation. and then cap it at like 250 damage per hit. that way those multi hit builds can still be viable and not instant death or hard countered. there is nothing wrong with this idea. the only ones who wont like it are the ones who want high dmg for doing nothing…just standing there

So what I am getting from the responses here is… no no no Retaliation works perfectly and umm if you nerf it you destroy the class somehow… funny, those same people are the ones who QQ’d and got these nerfs for thief:
1) Mug is too OP… result: Mug is changed into a low tier attack and heal, loses its ability to critical… what was once an opener and gap closer is no longer
2) Stealth OMG its too powerful, a thief is invulnerable… Result: Stealth gains a 4 second cool down, damage on stealth attacks are reduced dramatically, stealth no longer gets rid of agro from NPC’s which of course makes the down state of a thief virtually useless… yes Anet reverted the 4 second cool down thingy
3) Swiftness is sooo OP… result: Swiftness across the board loses 50% of its effectiveness.
4) Cluster Bomb does too much damage…result: Cluster Bomb’s range is decreased making the thief the only class without a 1200 range weapon set thus making it vulnerable to long range attacks from every other class as the thief attempts to close in.
5) Back Stab can insta kill my warrior or (insert class here)… Result: Back Stab damage is decreased along with damage from cloak and dagger and other stealth based attacks..
6) Not fair,,, Bask venom makes me use 2 utilities to get rid of the stun/immobile condition.. Result: One of the thief elite skills is reduced to a normal tier skill.
7) Dancing Dagger is OP… Result: Damage is nerfed downward

These are just a few samples of the nerfs done to thieves in the name of criers and whiners. Now, a thief makes a valid argument against an ability that has proven to be a deathnell to the thief because of the very nature of a thief’s attacks (rapid and repeated attacks) and what do people do… they start attacking the thief and say well just learn to play. Of course one of em admits to a 90% win ratio when using retaliation in PvP and WvW…. go figure.

^not true – I’m generally anti-qq and anti-nerf. Like I said before, I play thief and mesmer (and yes there are a few mesmer builds that use retal – but I don’t run them). I’ve seen plenty of nerfs, and I really don’t have issues with guardians…

So I see the people crying for nerfs to retaliation here as being very similar to those people you mention – rather than learn to deal with the class, and abilities out there, they complain.

Archon.6481:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Giving retaliation an inner cooldown defeats the purpose of retaliation: a means to discourage multi hitting attacks.

Source? Because that explanation is terrible. Why would a mechanic like that be a good idea?

Do you really need a citation for that? I believe it’s quite evident. Fixed damage responses which don’t depend at all on the attacker’s damage.
It is CLEARLY designed as a counter to multiple small attacks. And why is this mechanic a good idea? Because clerics, which you can note to often have low health and high healing capabilities with toughness and protection are supposed to survive getting cornered and sniped 1v1 but die to nukes and conditions (hence the low health and high toughness + healing with average-low condition removal).

See what thieves and rangers have in common? High attack rate. A necromancer has an ENORMOUS health pool so they can survive getting focused down in team fights (and a lot of offensive AoE) but it’s generally weak 1v1 when isolated against a thief/ranger. Note their little access to moves with protection, retaliation and confusion. Ironically, the necromancer is the true opposite of a cleric.

So a ranger or a thief should focus on hitting robes and specific players which wander off. But not a healing machine with retaliation and protection. These are NOT your targets and you shouldn’t be successful at taking them down. Leave those to players which have heavy attacks or can bypass these boons and toughness with conditions.

This is also why you shouldn’t make retaliation a percentage of the incoming attack nor make it trigger on conditions, since big attacks and conditions are there to deal with retaliation based people with low health and high toughness. Also, the percentaged retaliation is also a bad suggestion because then retaliation would make absolutely no sense in the game balance. What would be its use?

EDIT: I can’t believe I had to clarify something like that.
Do you guys need me to explain now when to get toughness and when vitality or the implications of going for more power, condi damage, condi duration or crit?

Pleurodesed.7625:

I can’t believe I had to clarify something like that.

citation? Kidding – guys, we are all just spouting opinions based on publicly available rules…no need to get all technical.

Yes he made an assumption as to the intent of the devs, and we all know that the devs are inscrutable and all-knowing. But c’mon, it was a reasonable assumption, and more importantly, he described the role that retal actually plays in the game, in terms of creating balance.

retaltiation works great on big hit builds. but it doesnt scale down for small hit builds. there in lies a problem. its 5x more effective against multi hit builds. so if u dont run zerk its going to ruinj your day incredibly….. it just has to affect multi hit builds diff. not trying to diminish it…just make it on par with what big hit builds have to handle

They’ve put an ICD on auras and chaos armor… and ele’s/mesmers still use them effectively (the other things in the game that trigger when hit). Chaos armor is stronger now that they put the ICD on it because of the protection change. I don’t see why putting a ICD to help balance out retaliation would destroy my guardian (or any other class that can produce high retal).

Travlane.5948:

retaltiation works great on big hit builds. but it doesnt scale down for small hit builds. there in lies a problem. its 5x more effective against multi hit builds. so if u dont run zerk its going to ruinj your day incredibly….. it just has to affect multi hit builds diff. not trying to diminish it…just make it on par with what big hit builds have to handle

Did you read my last post?
Low health high toughness + healing + boons. Vulnerable to conditions and spikes but resillent to constant raw damage, especially 1v1. Retaliation helps achieve this.
Making retaliation work based on a percentage of the incoming attack simply makes the skill imbalanced and its purpose completely disappears.

Other games like starcraft 2 achieve this effect by giving the unit armor which nullifies a static amount of damage. So when hit with a single strong attack of 1200, 2 armor will make it 1198 by cutting a total of 2. But when hit with 400 attacks of 3 each, the final damage will be 400 instead of 1200 saving 800 damage.

Since you guys hate so much dying to retaliation, allow me to propose a change.
Retaliation is removed and to replace its role in balance comes this new boon called “Iron will” or whatever.
It works just like starcraft. So based on power, instead of slapping back 200 damage per attack like now, it absorbs 200 damage per attack.

So the fools who spam burst on clerics don’t die anymore and thus the game will be more noob friendly, skilled players who know WHEN to attack retaliation will have that possibility removed and the overall mechanics will stay the same.
I believe that’s a considerable buff but that’s what it looks like you’d be happier with.

Pleurodesed.7625:

Did you read my last post?
Low health high toughness + healing + boons. Vulnerable to conditions and spikes

Yes, we all know how well conditions do Vs. Guardians…

Pleurodesed.7625:

Travlane.5948:

retaltiation works great on big hit builds. but it doesnt scale down for small hit builds. there in lies a problem. its 5x more effective against multi hit builds. so if u dont run zerk its going to ruinj your day incredibly….. it just has to affect multi hit builds diff. not trying to diminish it…just make it on par with what big hit builds have to handle

Did you read my last post?
Low health high toughness + healing + boons. Vulnerable to conditions and spikes but resillent to constant raw damage, especially 1v1. Retaliation helps achieve this.
Making retaliation work based on a percentage of the incoming attack simply makes the skill imbalanced and its purpose completely disappears.

Other games like starcraft 2 achieve this effect by giving the unit armor which nullifies a static amount of damage. So when hit with a single strong attack of 1200, 2 armor will make it 1198 by cutting a total of 2. But when hit with 400 attacks of 3 each, the final damage will be 400 instead of 1200 saving 800 damage.

Since you guys hate so much dying to retaliation, allow me to propose a change.
Retaliation is removed and to replace its role in balance comes this new boon called “Iron will” or whatever.
It works just like starcraft. So based on power, instead of slapping back 200 damage per attack like now, it absorbs 200 damage per attack.

So the fools who spam burst on clerics don’t die anymore and thus the game will be more noob friendly, skilled players who know WHEN to attack retaliation will have that possibility removed and the overall mechanics will stay the same.
I believe that’s a considerable buff but that’s what it looks like you’d be happier with.

well not all multi hit builds run high condi dmg. the point is the Retal needs a tiny fix. just so the dmg matchs on high hit and low hit. not 10x more on low hit.

skill A(10 hits) : 4000 damage and receives 3500 back from retaliation
skill B(1 hit): 4000 damage and receives 350 back from retaliation

tell me how this is makes sense. tell me why a warrior who does whirl has to take 3500 damage when a thief backstabs for the same amount and only takes 350 damage. mm? if u think this is fair then u are a bad….lazy…..“want something for nothing” kind of player. :P

what im getting from guild players testing it now is thakittens actually 33% less dmg than this forumla 198.45 + (0.075 * Power) which is on gw2wiki. did they lower the total dmg by 33%?

Travlane.5948:

what im getting from guild players testing it now is thakittens actually 33% less dmg than this forumla 198.45 + (0.075 * Power) which is on gw2wiki. did they lower the total dmg by 33%?

In PvP, areas, yes.

Still doesn’t fix the real problem with it though.

dueled 3 guardians in wvw today with my P/D thief. I think I took some retal damage, but it wasn’t really an issue – they all spent most of the fight running. Really not seeing why a nerf is necessary.

bobross.5034:

dueled 3 guardians in wvw today with my P/D thief. I think I took some retal damage, but it wasn’t really an issue – they all spent most of the fight running. Really not seeing why a nerf is necessary.

I tell you why, cause travln cant do as good as you against guards, so he cry for nerf. Thats all.

DrYamak.9364:

bobross.5034:

dueled 3 guardians in wvw today with my P/D thief. I think I took some retal damage, but it wasn’t really an issue – they all spent most of the fight running. Really not seeing why a nerf is necessary.

I tell you why, cause travln cant do as good as you against guards, so he cry for nerf. Thats all.

actually my builds destroy them and i win about 4/5 times with 90% hp or more. dink. lol.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Travlane.5948:

what im getting from guild players testing it now is thakittens actually 33% less dmg than this forumla 198.45 + (0.075 * Power) which is on gw2wiki. did they lower the total dmg by 33%?

In PvP, areas, yes.

Still doesn’t fix the real problem with it though.

true but its a lil better…multi hit buidls still get beat up a lil too muc tho. i think they did a lazy mans fix

Aberrant.6749:

IMO this doesn’t have to deal with being able to beat everything. A thief won’t win vs. several other classes already for other reasons anyways.

The real question is… should 1 boon which can be easily kept up 100% of the time be able to passively shut down multiple builds/classes just because they involve multi-hitting attacks? I say no.

Most of what I was going to say has already been said so I’ll keep short. Doesn’t seem to be easily kept up unless built for it, meaning they sacrifice a lot, so in that respect it’s ok I guess.

Also if I’m reading right, it’s not the single target retaliation but the multi target retalition which is a bigger problem. Honestly, nerfing retalition aimed at reducing effectiveness of AOE aspect would make the single aspect kinda pointless. Still think the best thing in World would be to just not use these attacks and try remove the boons. Not that many rapid fire attacks so needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Not a L2P thing at all, just gotta not rapid attack or boon steal somehow either yourself or somebody else.

I’d probably run though and take out rage on some skelk or drake. Can’t take retaliation damage if I’m running away Muahahahahahahahaha!

^ The aoe retal isn’t an issue either. The zerg makes sacrifices to pull it off. They need light fields + blast finishers to get very short duration aoe retal. So the group has to stack, and they have to spam blast finishers on themselves as opposed to opponents (wasting offensive strength, while making themselves sitting ducks). They also are giving themselves retal with those blast finishers as opposed to something more useful, like might. So the aoe retal strategy requires the zerg to coordinate, make themselves vulnerable, and kitten their offense, all in order to gamble that the opponent will mindlessly smash into them. If that’s what happens, then great. If the opponent is coordinated, then the gamble doesn’t pay off and gets the zerg killed. People running with mediocre commanders, or as parts of loosely formed zergs may find this tactic unbeatable, but coordinated or well led groups do not have an issue with it. So the retal serves as a form of counterplay to one strategy (or lack thereof), it costs something and there is effective counterplay to deal with it.

Again, this is a tactic that makes the game more interesting, and rewards things like skilled play over mindless numbers. There really is no good reason to further nerf retaliation either in 1v1 situations, or zerg v zerg. It also happens to be a tactic that benefits from having thieves in a zerg – as they can spam blast finishers…

Also – why is this thread in the thief forums – it seems like you came here, thinking you’d be preaching to the choir. It really belongs somewhere else – maybe guardian forums, maybe suggestions…not sure, but thief forums seems like the wrong place.

Travlane.5948:

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

Unload seems like the only skill there that should be difficult for you when facing someone with a lot of retaliation, or maybe the traited sneak attack. I mean, you’re listing caltrops as a problem? Aren’t these used for condition builds where you’re usually hitting once then playing defensive? And death blossom? I’ve never seen anyone use death blossom against another player but I assume if they were they’d also be running a condition build that in no way requires spamming multiple hit abilities.

Really, just pay attention. Most thief builds seem to rely on burst attacks that swing very few times for upwards of 15k damage. Retaliation is not gonna do 15k damage back at you in 2-4 attacks. It seems like what you’re really saying is your build that relies on unload has a strong counter and you don’t like it.

Travlane.5948:

DrYamak.9364:

bobross.5034:

dueled 3 guardians in wvw today with my P/D thief. I think I took some retal damage, but it wasn’t really an issue – they all spent most of the fight running. Really not seeing why a nerf is necessary.

I tell you why, cause travln cant do as good as you against guards, so he cry for nerf. Thats all.

actually my builds destroy them and i win about 4/5 times with 90% hp or more. dink. lol.

…. Then what the hell are you kittening about?

nglcpyro.4906:

snip

Go roll a guard and see how hard it is to keep retal up. It’s not much of a sacrifice.

They both need adjustment. Unbalanced = needs tweaking, OP = dear holy god I just got downed by shooting 2 piercing shots or one aoe into a group 20s after they were blasting.

bobross.5034:

snip

Yes yes asking people to blast in a light field takes SO much coordination. Last time I was in a group that did it I had 30s+ of retal after. Not so short. We did it while taking a tower since we were being attacked by players after destroying their siege. The two players that I could see were and ele and a ranger. Ele went down instantly as did the ranger (I saw more damage numbers throughout the tower but didn’t see who else went down because of it). We didn’t have to pull them off or fire a shot at them. They couldn’t attack us with much of anything meaningful for 30s+ That totally took more tactics and made the game more interesting vs. having to deal with those players. Totally.

Why is a retal thread in the thief forums? Because it kittens PP thief. Then the discussion moved to being about retal in general. Hope that helps you follow along better

IDC who agrees with me or not, but I enjoy a discussion. It’s getting a bit dull and going in circles now though. I’ll check back in later to see if anything new/interesting gets posted, but otherwise it’s been said.

Aberrant.6749:

It’s getting a bit dull and going in circles now though.

Agreed…if only somebody would admit to being totally wrong. :p

Travlane.5948:

actually my builds destroy them and i win about 4/5 times with 90% hp or more. dink. lol.

Then maybe they should nerf your builds. Poor retal guardians.

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.

^^

Travlane.5948:

Pleurodesed.7625:

Wall of text

well not all multi hit builds run high condi dmg. the point is the Retal needs a tiny fix. just so the dmg matchs on high hit and low hit. not 10x more on low hit.

skill A(10 hits) : 4000 damage and receives 3500 back from retaliation
skill B(1 hit): 4000 damage and receives 350 back from retaliation

tell me how this is makes sense. tell me why a warrior who does whirl has to take 3500 damage when a thief backstabs for the same amount and only takes 350 damage. mm? if u think this is fair then u are a bad….lazy…..“want something for nothing” kind of player. :P

I explained quite detailed why it makes sense in that wall of text.
You can’t ask to nerf something just because it’s better at doing what it’s supposed to do that at it’s not supposed to do, even when apparently it doesn’t particularly excel at it (you mentioned how you still defeat retaliatory guardians with burst with ease; it should probably get buffed so you can’t do it anymore since THAT’S what’s imbalanced).

Trabvln have big problems with logic, thats why in every single thread he get totally owned by himself. So i make conclusion-travln female or kid, or female kid.

joshisanonymous.5270:

Travlane.5948:

DrYamak.9364:

bobross.5034:

dueled 3 guardians in wvw today with my P/D thief. I think I took some retal damage, but it wasn’t really an issue – they all spent most of the fight running. Really not seeing why a nerf is necessary.

I tell you why, cause travln cant do as good as you against guards, so he cry for nerf. Thats all.

actually my builds destroy them and i win about 4/5 times with 90% hp or more. dink. lol.

…. Then what the hell are you kittening about?

well i would love to play my engineer or p/p thief. if thats ok w/ you…without having to get destroyed like thiat in wvw

Pleurodesed.7625:

Travlane.5948:

Pleurodesed.7625:

Wall of text

well not all multi hit builds run high condi dmg. the point is the Retal needs a tiny fix. just so the dmg matchs on high hit and low hit. not 10x more on low hit.

skill A(10 hits) : 4000 damage and receives 3500 back from retaliation
skill B(1 hit): 4000 damage and receives 350 back from retaliation

tell me how this is makes sense. tell me why a warrior who does whirl has to take 3500 damage when a thief backstabs for the same amount and only takes 350 damage. mm? if u think this is fair then u are a bad….lazy…..“want something for nothing” kind of player. :P

I explained quite detailed why it makes sense in that wall of text.
You can’t ask to nerf something just because it’s better at doing what it’s supposed to do that at it’s not supposed to do, even when apparently it doesn’t particularly excel at it (you mentioned how you still defeat retaliatory guardians with burst with ease; it should probably get buffed so you can’t do it anymore since THAT’S what’s imbalanced).

actually thats not what i said. i said MY build destroys them. but thats bc its a super high heal build with high condition removal and armor ignoring dmg. THATS why my build beats it. its not mainstream and it also isnt burst at all.

ok so explain to me the purpose of retaliation? its to punish weaker….multi hit builds? and reward high dmg single hit builds?

sorry that just doesnt make sense to me.

Travlane.5948:

Pleurodesed.7625:

Travlane.5948:

Pleurodesed.7625:

Wall of text

well not all multi hit builds run high condi dmg. the point is the Retal needs a tiny fix. just so the dmg matchs on high hit and low hit. not 10x more on low hit.

skill A(10 hits) : 4000 damage and receives 3500 back from retaliation
skill B(1 hit): 4000 damage and receives 350 back from retaliation

tell me how this is makes sense. tell me why a warrior who does whirl has to take 3500 damage when a thief backstabs for the same amount and only takes 350 damage. mm? if u think this is fair then u are a bad….lazy…..“want something for nothing” kind of player. :P

I explained quite detailed why it makes sense in that wall of text.
You can’t ask to nerf something just because it’s better at doing what it’s supposed to do that at it’s not supposed to do, even when apparently it doesn’t particularly excel at it (you mentioned how you still defeat retaliatory guardians with burst with ease; it should probably get buffed so you can’t do it anymore since THAT’S what’s imbalanced).

actually thats not what i said. i said MY build destroys them. but thats bc its a super high heal build with high condition removal and armor ignoring dmg. THATS why my build beats it. its not mainstream and it also isnt burst at all.

ok so explain to me the purpose of retaliation? its to punish weaker….multi hit builds? and reward high dmg single hit builds?

sorry that just doesnt make sense to me.

Thats the key of all talking that spread by Travln – ok so explain to me the purpose of retaliation? its to punish weaker….multi hit builds? and reward high dmg single hit builds?

I explain it to you, Travln. You are bed thief using poor bad build cause you cant play normal and control normal builds such as d/d d/p s/d and so on. You realize that you are inferior to normal thieves players, and crying here for a nerfs, to campensate your terribad skills. And you never ever can kill a good full buncker guardian (you lie again, saying that you destroy them) cause full bunker guard out-heal your pathetic damage easily, and probably you kill yourself off retaliation. Thats the point of your tears. This is all about L2p, travln.

Alright, then I like how you designed your build which makes a thief which can circumvent mine. I’d love to face you to see whakittens weakness is.

And yes, as you have said retaliation is intended to punish (stronger) multi hit builds without affecting high damage single hit builds.

This is because normally, highest damage is made in terms of raw damage. Right now, to my mind come stuff like daggers, guardian with blades and torch (compared to blunt weapons), pistols (hello mesmer)or axes (warrior, necro?). All these builds have in common having a constant high attack rate and being the best option for taking out vitality builds, being the prime example of it a necromancer.

Vitality builds, on the other hand, are there to endure conditions and spikes, relying on blind / aegis / dodge to resist this. They are better over cleric s when you’re there to survive a short fight. That is jump in, deal your own big attack and flee with big cooldowns.
And then a ranger / thief kills you if you don’t escape correctly. See the balance here?

If you nerf retaliation or change it to scale with incoming damage, you’re basically making vitality builds better and toughness-healing builds worse.
In conclusion, the proper build to go would be high vitality burst; making conditions and clerics obsolete.

In this thread, bad thieves cry to nerf a counter because they dont like being countered.

Retaliation is designed to counter aoe and fast attacks. AoE in particular is highly OP in spvp/wvw and really needs this counter.

Considering retal hits for 250-285, backstab hits for 6-9k and CnD hits for 3-5k, mainhand dagger thieves should have no problem taking down retal targets unless they go full kitten (never go full kitten) and try to auto attack a target down. They are taking ~500 damage for every 10-15k they put out. Problem? No.

Sword thieves do about 6-10k with 1 cycle of auto attack (taking 750 retal damage per target), or 6-9k with a pistol whip (taking 2250 retal per target). Problem? Only if you are trying to pistol whip multiple people. Auto attack does fine. Dont forget LS to steal the retal is an option if you run dagger.

P/P is basically kittened, but no one runs this. P/D is in a hard spot, doing 5 strikes on sneak attack will suffer 1250 retal, and deliver 4900 (1k direct, rest bleed at 130 a tic with +50% bleed duration). Thats tough, but considering this is widely considered our most OP spec, retal being good against it is a good thing. Problem? Probably Not.

stof.9341:

Yeah, thieves shouldn’t complain that their non stealth included weapon sets (S/P and P/P) get destroyed by Retaliation! It’s almost as if exploiting that “broken” stealth was the only way to go.

This is really the only good point anyone has made in the thread. Despite the OP’s rediculous claims to the contrary, Dagger builds are the least punished by retal as long as they stick to sneak attacks (which they do). This has the effect of encouraging more people to play backstab builds, which has a net negative impact on the entire GW2 community because of the way Anet implemented unlimited in-combat stealth.

Raven.9603:

This is really the only good point anyone has made in the thread. Despite the OP’s rediculous claims to the contrary, Dagger builds are the least punished by retal as long as they stick to sneak attacks (which they do). This has the effect of encouraging more people to play backstab builds, which has a net negative impact on the entire GW2 community because of the way Anet implemented unlimited in-combat stealth.

You see, my point has another implication which is why I think Retaliation in it’s current form is broken. People say it’s meant to counter strong multihit attacks. Sure, it does work well for that.

But let’s be honest here, Unload deserves such a harsh counter? Pistol Whip? There is a big problem here with Retaliation as a counter for those attacks. The problem is that those attacks are all rather weak in the first place!

stof.9341:

But let’s be honest here, Unload deserves such a harsh counter? Pistol Whip? There is a big problem here with Retaliation as a counter for those attacks. The problem is that those attacks are all rather weak in the first place!

Unload is great, and plenty strong in the right situations, as are the other rapid attacks…pistol whip is kind of weird…maybe if it didn’t root you, it would be great. The only issue with unload is that the rest of the P/P set is fairly weak.

So again, if the issue with retaliation is that it makes P/P thieves which are already kind of weak, a bit weaker – and few others have any issue with it…why are you arguing to nerf retaliation, rather than buff P/P thieves? Nerfing retaliation changes a bunch of balance that is already in play…it nerfs guardians and mesmers, and I’m sure a handful of other professions and builds. It also destroys the balance that already exists between those professions and others.

People don’t avoid playing P/P because of retaliation – although that may be annoying. People avoid it because it has one form of defense – blinds. It offers no mobility, and very limited access to stealth (with weapon swaps). On a thief – that is just asking to die. On top of that, gameplay with P/P is fairly boring (spam unload, or maybe black powder/headshot on occasion). That’s why people don’t run P/P. nerfing retaliation wouldn’t change that at all. So this proposed change messes up the whole game balance between other classes, and doesn’t even fix what it’s intended to fix.

What about Flamethrower autoattack? Grenade kit into a zerg? Ranger Barrage into a zerg?

There’s very few instances where Retaliation feels like it worked correctly and many instances where it feels like it’s wrong having to do that much effect.

but the issue with aoe and zergs isn’t that retal is overpowered – it’s that the aoe is overpowered – ANet has acknowledged problems with balancing aoe on numerous occasions…having one soft counter to aoe is not breaking this game.

But it only counters a couple AoE skills and hardly the most important like, say, Necro staff. Ranger Barrage for example is hardly worthy of the “OP” tag at all yet it’s hurt VERY hard by Retal.

Edit: kitten kitten kitten filter :o

^Yup, I agree…buff retaliation!

just read the first page so maybe someone already said it, but ima throwing in my 2 cents:

how about letting retal deal something like 20%~5%(maybe up to 10%) dmg depending on the hit you get.
like i hit someone with 200dmg and get 40 dmg back, but when i hit him with 5k i get 250-500 dmg back.

Would somewhat solve the problems with Skills like Unload or the rangers arrow hail, but it also keeps its use against slow/hard hitters.

Retal doesn’t kill you, you kill yourself on retal.

1v1 fight? Don’t fight perma retal.

Group/zerg fights? Do what every other class does, stop attacking and regen some health.

Adapt or die. Not cry and Nerf.

Omnitek.3876:

Group/zerg fights? Do what every other class does, stop attacking and regen some health

Actually, they find the nearest arrow cart and use it since it’s immune to retal :p