Guild Wars 2

When 10 people are trying to defend a tower against 30 people, their main weapon is good AE. Let the arrow carts rain down. Let the meteors fall into the zerg. Make the zerg, at the very least, spread out a little bit and hopefully take longer to bash their way in, giving reinforcements time to arrive.

With retaliation, this badly needed mechanic is ruined.

Arrow carts die sometimes literally in 2 shots. I have dropped an arrow cart, fired it twice and had it die purely due to retaliation.

Attacking people on the door with your own abilities is tantamount to suicide because the amount of damage returned to you is way more than what you are doing to any individual.

The engineer mortar is rendered useless because, like the arrow cart, it will quickly explode due to retaliation.

In sPvP or PvE, retaliation is a fun little mechanic that adds a little damage to people hitting you. It’s nice to have but it’s not like “omg you don’t have retaliation/are you stupid”.

In WvW, it’s completely ruinous and does nothing but empower the zerg. There are a couple of ways to strip boons from groups (see Mesmer and Necro) but there aren’t enough ways, and things like guardian abilities that simply pulse 1 second of retaliation every second are effectively immune to these boon-removers anyway.

Arrow carts in beta were death to the zergs, forcing people to use more complex strategies. Retaliation is death to arrow carts so complex strategies are out the window and it’s nothing but “pile on the door and beat it with your fists” now. Throw in some light fields and explosions or else a few guardians and there’s nothing the enemy can do to stop you short of showing up with their own zerg.

At the very least, can we make siege engines immune to retaliation? Just give us a little something to fight the zerg with.

I totally agree, impossible de defend a tower because of this skill.

I even think its a bit overpower in spvp too lol but thats just ME, about WvWvW ya its not “What you think about that?” Its just a fact. lol

i honestly see it, very useful i mean is not like 1 min buff, you have to pop it in a good time

Siege Weapons shouldn’t be affected by retaliation. They are already immune to many effects, so it makes sence.

I think it’s fair against things like Meteor Shower, but arrow carts seem to have been implemented specifically to let a few well supplied defenders stand a chance against an attacking zerg. They could do with some anti-retaliation protection. Without decent AoE defenses, there’s no way for a numerically inferior defending force to hold out until reinforcements can arrive, meaning there’s no point in bothering to defend anything. WvW becomes reduced to a WvW zergfest where big groups rush between objectives and no one bothers to defend. You get something like the current state of Alterac Valley in WoW: two teams that mostly ignore each other and focus entirely on zerging NPC-guarded objectives faster than the other team.

I’m not saying it’s that bad currently, but when more people learn the potential of this mechanic, AoE siege equipment may well become completely useless.

JemL.3501:

i honestly see it, very useful i mean is not like 1 min buff, you have to pop it in a good time

Against an arrow cart, a good time is “immediately when it’s ready”. It doesn’t take any kind of skill.

Yeah, works too well in wvw – one of those things where arena net planed for SPVP and did not though on effects in mass battles.

Though had some fun in WvW with it: seen zerg of enemies attack the PvE boss in EB… so our people put reflect and retalation on the him: you can imagine how whole zerg of random people got wiped by their own damage numbers on the boss heh.

I completely agree, it’s really overpowered. Smaller numbers of defenders should absolutely be able to zerg-proof an objective with enough arrow carts. Taking a heavily fortified position should require siege or coordination to attack a backdoor, not guardians spamming retaliation skills while smacking the doors with 40 people.

Perhaps siege weapons should be affected by retaliation still, but be able to last for a lot longer. They shouldn’t take the kind of damage they are taking now.

I wish the response to arrow carts was “oh, they have a ton of arrow carts, we need to get back and set up catapaults instead.” Not “lets group at the door and have the guardians use retaliation while we intentionally eat this arrow damage”

Drop a well of something similar, retaliation is a condition.
It is only powerful when you aoe a lot of people with it up and it’s quite hard to make that mistake..

Abaregi.1659:

Drop a well of something similar, retaliation is a condition.
It is only powerful when you aoe a lot of people with it up and it’s quite hard to make that mistake..

You can keep it up pretty much permanently with a couple guardians.

Ceeps.3185:

I completely agree, it’s really overpowered. Smaller numbers of defenders should absolutely be able to zerg-proof an objective with enough arrow carts. Taking a heavily fortified position should require siege or coordination to attack a backdoor, not guardians spamming retaliation skills while smacking the doors with 40 people.

Perhaps siege weapons should be affected by retaliation still, but be able to last for a lot longer. They shouldn’t take the kind of damage they are taking now.

I wish the response to arrow carts was “oh, they have a ton of arrow carts, we need to get back and set up catapaults instead.” Not “lets group at the door and have the guardians use retaliation while we intentionally eat this arrow damage”

thats exactly what i do when we attack. its a valid strategy as of now, each tick does a maximum of 350 (up from 150 or so during beta, they increased it by 2.5x to make it more viable).

honestly. even though i love being a retal spec in WvW to get the job done when the enemy has 10 arrow carts on a single door which would normally take a longkitten time to mow through, throw on retaliation skills and tell everyone to beat on the door. pop them all, throw on the elite heals, keep everyone up while they soak up the aoe damage and destroy the arrow carts.

the arrow carts should still take SOME damage, but not as much as they are taking now… player AOE should definately take the damage they are taking, i swear i take 10x more damage from player aoe than i do from arrow carts. arrow carts should maybe take 1/5th of the damage they take right now from retaliation, otherwise having retaliation in WvW would be useless if siege took no damage from it. because when i can, i get a chance to make all of my people stand and take treb shots when they decide to do those impossible to kill trebs from stonemist.

stonemist trebs go down… tell a group of 10 or more to stand and take the damage from the treb shots, 2 guardians pop retaliations and after maybe 10 treb shots, the treb goes down… it seems like a fair trade to me for organized and smart people to take down something that organized and smart people put up in the first place.

Slamz.5376:

Arrow carts die sometimes literally in 2 shots. I have dropped an arrow cart, fired it twice and had it die purely due to retaliation.

The engineer mortar is rendered useless because, like the arrow cart, it will quickly explode due to retaliation.

The mechanic should at least be changed so that it doesn’t reflect onto the arrow cart/mortar, and instead is passed onto the operator with some sort of damaging reducing co-efficient to bring it in line with normal retaliation values.

It would also be really nice to see a few more of the good fields added.

Well I really hope they don’t fix it by making retalation useless, when I have used quite a bit of time to try and make my build based on it.

Retaliation shouldn’t damage siege weapons at all.

If one skill is so powerful in mass PVP that it totally invalidate entire siege mechanics, then its by definition overpowered.

The intention of WvW is for sieges to be required. Not really for fast karma and exp farming wich is now a possibility by zergs using retaliation ploughing through any defences.

As it is now its not a viable strategy in its current from. Because if you use the same definition as I did above, then you will find it next to “exploit” in a lexicon.

I definitely agree. They die before they even make a dent sometimes.

The solution that no one is going to like Is to set a maximum number of people retaliation buff can apply to. At the same time set a max number of people that an aoe can hit at one time.

I concur, Retaliation shouldnt affect siege weapons.
I do think arrow carts are too cheap and need to cost a little bit more supply.

Ushin.8406:

The solution that no one is going to like Is to set a maximum number of people retaliation buff can apply to. At the same time set a max number of people that an aoe can hit at one time.

There already is a 5-target limit on both.

I agree with this thread.

Retaliation need to not affect siege weapons. Arrow carts are currently useless in defending keeps against armies of 30 or greater.

It shouldn’t affect siege. There’s still reflection for that.

Here here, my good sir! We shall ask the powers that be that thy action “retaliation” be no longer useful against our might siege weapons!

I command ArenaNet to abide by our demands! rable rable rable

Would really like to see siege engines granted immunity to Retaliation.

Papa

+1 on this coming from a Guardian. However, it should probably not be nerfed straight to the ground. 1/6 damage of what it is now.

Then don’t randomly spam them then.

Agree, retaliation shouldn’t work on siege weapons. Not worth to put arrow carts when they destroyed in 2 sec from retaliation.

Bloodtau.4672:

Then don’t randomly spam them then.

“Oh, look, a Guardian; we’d better not shoot their zerg. At all. Ever.

…

Drop ’em and bend over, I guess?"

It’s not particularly effective to forgo the use of siege weapons and try to coordinate only single-target attacks with perfect strangers over keep walls.

The counter to Short range arrow carts should be Ballistas and Catapults, not mass zerging with a single buff…

WvWvW is about siege warfare, this is only encouraging massive zergs against gates knowing anyone who tries to AoE you down gets themselves or their Siege weapons killed.

Retaliation should still work but it’s effectiveness in WvWvW should be massively reduced.

Making siege and mortars immune to retaliation is a huge nerf to elementalists and rangers in WvW.

I thought Retaliation damage was fixed (not a % of the incoming damage). And I thought the fixed dmg was very low. Or are you saying that arrow carts are dieing because of the mere volume of arrows hitting like 50 people with retaliation?

Retaliation vs sieges is wrong. Not because we want to spam Arrow Carts at you. It’s that Arrow Cart is designed as ultimate anti-intantry weapon. How come that infantry itself destroy it with no effort at all? Where’s the logic in that? When you encounter a heavy machinegun you don’t run straight into it, you flank it, you send your sniper to get the job done or in extremaly tough situations you call for an air/artilery strike – there’s no magical shield that destroy weapon and leave enemy defenseless. This is why you have: balistas, catapults and trebuchets. Removing retaliation from siege weapons completely is not bad idea if the damage (but way lesser than the actual one which is almost 8×375 per shoot) would be transfered onto operator. It would prevent Arrow Cart spamming and also bring back sense of siege machines back again. At this point in time few guardians spamming retaliation skills completely break whole WvW concept down to mindless zerging. It’s not DAoC. Siege weapons were introduced with specific purpose to take braindead zerging away. This issue needs to be addressed and I believe it WILL be addressed.

TL;DR: Arrow Cart is an anti-infantry weapon. It cannot be taken down by infantry without proper equipment (your own Arrow Carts, Balistas, Catapults and Trebuchets) that easily without being in direct range of sword swing. But infantry should be able to kill the operator as it makes more sense. Therefore some tuned down dmg should be transfered onto operator.

edit:
Also retaliation effect should be indicated by particles/graphic indicator on characters themselves (for example let all affected by retaliation glow blue-ish), not only tiny icon on Boon/Condition Bar.

Also if you want your retaliation to destroy our sieges then we want to be able to put retaliation on the gate/wall as well. Because now there’s no option to defend against that.

Cimos.4923:

I thought Retaliation damage was fixed (not a % of the incoming damage). And I thought the fixed dmg was very low. Or are you saying that arrow carts are dieing because of the mere volume of arrows hitting like 50 people with retaliation?

That second one.

Retaliation damage that I’ve seen is somewhere in the 300s per target hit (that is, if you hit 5 people, you take over 1500 damage).

“Per hit” is the critical thing here. The engineer flamethrower hits 5 times per second so you will take a fair bit over 7500 damage per second (double that if you have quickness!) Elementalists doing a meteor shower will take 5 hits of retaliation for every meteor that lands. Arrow carts are probably the worst of all because they fire multiple rings of numerous low damage hits. You can usually look up and see the numbers flying off the top of the wall as the arrow cart takes damage.

So ballista CAN wrack up pretty good damage from retaliation. They will eventually die. Even trebuchets can eventually be killed purely through retaliation. But these weapons have a lot of hit points and they only hit each target once per trigger pull.

Arrow carts (and many of the AE player attacks in the game) hit multiple times per second into multiple people and retaliation effectively removes these attacks from the game as options, particularly for door defense, where retaliation is always stacked.

.

It’s important to note that Guardian retaliation, in particular, is applied 1 second at a time. They don’t stack it, they just constantly refresh it. So things like Null Field or Well of Corruption won’t really help with stopping retaliation.

When you see people using catapults as door defense, retaliation is why. I’ve even seen catapults knocked down to 50% health in pretty short order due to retaliation but at least they don’t die instantly.

Thanks for the info – I am a Guardian and now I can go be part of the problem….until they fix it.

Gilgamesh.2561:

Retaliation is a mindless mechanic and shouldn’t exist in a game about skill.

Confusion is how you properly do reflection damage. At least the player can dispel Confusion. With Retaliation you don’t know how many players have it, and it really deters AE. Remove Retaliation, and replace it with confusion for classes who lose retaliation. That or give every profession AE condition removal.

Why do we need two reflection sources? It’s silly how quickly a player can kill themselves with Confusion AND retaliation.

I think that’s a great way to look at it. Maybe all Retaliation should do is apply confusion to the target. So at least you get your 1 attack and if you see it results in 15 stacks of confusion, you can apply skill to look at that and say “whoa! Better not swing again just yet!”

Retaliation, as-is, cannot be effectively countered by anyone and most classes simply have no answer to it what-so-ever. As an engineer, there is nothing I can do when a mass of enemies has retaliation, other than “not hit them”.

Gilgamesh.2561:

Retaliation is a mindless mechanic and shouldn’t exist in a game about skill.

[…]

I second that. Really logic approach.

MikeFerguson.8921:

We intend to make it so retaliation does not effect siege weapons. No ETA, but we’re looking into it.

Well you should do this as soon as possible or your 24hrs WvW matching won’t be anyhow accurate because one people abuse this mechanics while others don’t or even don’t know that it could be used this way.

Although thank you for clarifying this situation. You should also look into catapults shooting at the gate from inside to prevent ram usage. Make it either AoE doesn’t work through gate (so defenders can actualy repair the gate) and/or make that you can dmg your own walls/gate with Catapult too. This would prevent massive abuse that’s going on out there right now.

MikeFerguson.8921:

We intend to make it so retaliation does not effect siege weapons. No ETA, but we’re looking into it.

was not even aware it did, I usualy sit on a arrow cart for ages and I’ve never noticed it being hit by retailiation…

Cameirus.8407:

was not even aware it did, I usualy sit on a arrow cart for ages and I’ve never noticed it being hit by retailiation…

I began aware of the issue when I’ve created an arrow cart, shoot exactly 3 times and it disappeared. I was like “WTF DID JUST HAPPEN?! O.O”

Marrond.1385:

You should also look into catapults shooting at the gate from inside to prevent ram usage.

I think you’ll find that this will go away by itself once arrow carts are no longer impacted by retaliation.

We use catapults as door defenses purely because they can survive the retaliation. Arrow carts are MUCH better for getting crowds of people away from doors but they were rendered useless once everyone started to understand how to stack up retaliation.

.

I agree with the guy who said sooner is better because this could impact world rankings. Large “zerg guilds” (that is, guilds that simply run up to doors as a giant clump and beat it to death with their fists) will have to radically change their approach and it will be interesting to see if this makes some of the smaller, less organized servers more effective (because it will be less about zerg vs zerg and more about good use of siege. A guild of 10 people will be a lot more effective when facing a guild of 50.)

Slamz.5376:

I think you’ll find that this will go away by itself once arrow carts are no longer impacted by retaliation.

There’s still AoE problem anyway. You don’t have to stand on walls and put yourself in danger in order to defend the gate. You just stand down there and spam your strongest AoE on it. It works in both sides (attackers prevent gate repair because whoever touch the gate is basicaly instagibed, defenders spaming skills lazy at the gate to kill of rams and melee attackers) but it shouldn’t take place anyway.

So if I use my arrow cart and see it taking something like ~336 damage secondly each time I fire it into the zerg, that means someone down there uses retaliation?

I was always wondering why the hell my arrow cart is going down without seeing that someone actually attacks it…

This definitely should get fixed/changed!

Retaliation is an tactical feature. So what ANet should bring is mechanic which will allow to counter retaliation, like, lets say, let arrow cart possibility to be affected by dark combo field field, which will allow to steal health, thus out-heal retaliation damage. But definitely not just nerf it. Like i said, one tactical feature should be countered by another one, but just removed initial tactical feature… lets be honest, that really lame, and more such nerfs will be applied to WvW, the less and less interesting it’ll be.

I died/downed countless times to retaliation alone. I dont know what the counter should be for it besides wait. But what happens to you while you wait? And what happens if you already launched your attack and the guardian clicks on signet of judgement?

Also I seen people trying to catch treb fire with retaliate. Go figure…

Retaliation is a dumb stat in general, just remove it please!

This exploit is ridiculous and needs to be fixed ASAP. One guy hiding in the zerg with retaliation or reflection on, takes out all your defences…

Replect.3407:

So if I use my arrow cart and see it taking something like ~336 damage secondly each time I fire it into the zerg, that means someone down there uses retaliation?

Yep. It’ll take out the arrow cart after 2-3 shots.

I just want to re-iterate that this is one of the most important and badly needed changes needed to help get WvW back in balance (displaying WvW zone populations is the other badly needed change).

Without this fix, zergs roam wild and free.

The first server to get even a mild population advantage will steamroll the others because without effective siege, there’s nothing to stop them.

.

WvW is broken because siege is broken.
Siege is broken because of retaliation damage.

I wouldnt say get rid of it totally but there certainly needs to be a range set on it. Ill give an example:

We had three trebs set up on the cliff on the garrison, firing at the fortified walls on the western keep. They were firing at MAX RANGE and barely hitting the walls, just to give you some idea of distance; the only way I knew I was hitting anything was because of damage numbers being emitted. Even with Draw Distance right up, I could only just make out the walls.

We hit the walls for over an hour to bring them down until a group of Jade Quarry (Yeh, ill name and shame what of it? :p) got together and spammed retaliation. The feedback damage to our trebs was rediculious, one fell completely, one was on a smidge of health and the other stopped firing. Essentially, the walls we were now hitting were not damaged. The only way to get into such a well fortified keep is by using siege but the retaliation buff makes that impossible.

Instead of having to take out the threat (IE assaulting Garrison and taking out the trebs doing the damage) JQ could merrily sit inside their highly, now, unattackable walls and sit pretty while spamming retaliation. This skill has totally broken sieges, It means they can sit and turtle inside their keep, doing nothing of any note and still destroy the attackers from a HUGE vast distance away. If I wanted broken, turtle keep sieges, I’d return to Warhammer Online!

I wouldnt say remove retaliation entirely but certainly have a range on it. It will mean placing arrow carts, cleverly, yes. But arrow carts are just OP’d anyway and need some thought before spam placing them however, that is an aside and NOT my main concern.

Being able to quell a siege from way beyond draw distance range with retaliation IS my concern and until this is fixed, fortified buildings become impossible to break, unless that is the intention?