Guild Wars 2

oZii.2864:

Einlanzer.1627:

snip

Aveneo.2068:

Hey Karl, thanks for your response. I appreciate it very much!

I do hope however that with ‘PvP’ you also mean to include WvW. Personally I feel that you guys have been constantly trying to balance this entire game around a minor aspect at the cost of everything else; and in doing so destroying the aspects that actually keep this game going.

So I would humbly suggest that you guys should stop focusing so much on an aspect as minor as sPvP/tPvP and focus on the actual core aspects which keep this game running.

Thank you

Einlanzer.1627:

This is a very common sentiment; I don’t get what the deal is with their almost myopic focus on PvP either.

Both of you don’t even know what is and isn’t split PvP/WvW/PvE. You want them to considier removing the internal cooldown on cleansing water in PvE/WvW when there isn’t one. That is basically what you 2 are discussing here. Nothing.

THERE IS NO ICD ON CLEANSING WATER IN WVW AND PVE!!! Never has been.
Cleansing water was never nerfed in WvW/PvE -Source is patch notes and testing

This is probably why they don’t want to split so many things balance wise because people like (see above) don’t know what is and isn’t split. Obviously people don’t go and test things either.

I was speaking in a general sense. Personally I don’t care about sPvP. What I do care about however are all the global nerfs PvE and WvW have suffered because of it. It is high time for the devs to stop treating sPvP/tPvP as if it was the entire game.

Now go outside and get some fresh air.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all!
Once again, thanks for the feedback!
We’ve been discussing elementalists quite a bit recently in PvP and one of the things that’s brought up constantly from feedback is the internal cooldown from Cleansing Water. This is something we feel is out-dated and we’ve been playing around with removing the ICD totally from PvP. We’ve got some concerns, but would love to hear some feedback on this.

In general, we’ve got quite a bit more stuff coming. As before, we can’t say what these things are just yet… But there’s a bit of stuff that will shake up the meta. We’re really looking forward to it!

-Karl

Hey Karl, thanks for your response. I appreciate it very much!

I do hope however that with ‘PvP’ you also mean to include WvW. Personally I feel that you guys have been constantly trying to balance this entire game around a minor aspect at the cost of everything else; and in doing so destroying the aspects that actually keep this game going.

So I would humbly suggest that you guys should stop focusing so much on an aspect as minor as sPvP/tPvP and focus on the actual core aspects which keep this game running.

Thank you

For me there is one issue with kits in general and one issue with FT in particular:

General issue: Kits have Power like a single ‘Rare’ weapon afaik. The damage output did not improve when Ascended weapons were made available so the gap only became bigger.

FT issue: Can be summed up in one word – Retaliation.

I have opened a veritable ton of these chests so far, but I can’t recall ever getting a completed key as a reward.

Dave Pare.2069:

Akisame.9508:

Anet already said they will not touch pets because it will break lord knows how many more things with NPC’s in game. That leaves two options, 1.) removal of the pet and the lost damage being returned to the ranger. 2.) rewriting the pet code which they said they do not have the resources to do right now. So the only option I see is option 1.) removal of the handicap!

I totally agree with you 100%. The fact is (unfortunately) Anet already made it clear that they’re not removing the pet from Ranger class nor will they rework the A.I.

The best thing I could think of was a solution in order to put this potentially 30% damage from pet to any use. The core issue with pets is that they die quickly and they do not hit a moving target, so buffing a 20-30% both attack speed and movement speed (with or without trait I don’t care at this point) will contain, at least, the problem of the pet never hitting!! (that would also be logical: a wolf or a bear or a jaguar runs definetly faster than a man)

This might be a wild idea here, but has anyone at ANet ever considered separating Ranger pets from their npc animal versions?

The way I see it, the ‘juvenile’ pets and their npc versions are all linked. So a change to the pet would currently also result to a change in their npc counterpart. However, if they would all be added to a new separate ‘juvenile’ sub-class, they could then be reworked separately. This would allow ANet to fix the unresponsive F2 as well as ability to reliably hit targets etc. etc.

I mean, it’s the same way that Nightmare Court and Toxic Alliance npc’s are each part of a separate subsection. And a change to one would not affect the other.

I mean, we have a select number of pets to choose from (all with the ‘Juvenile’ header) so why not create a new group for them and move them there. Much easier to fix issues from entities in a separate group without having to worry about causing global issues to the whole animal kingdom of Tyria.

(this is a post I made over a year ago)

While I fully agree that Ranger Traits are probably the worst random collection of crap, here is a small list for some of the other changes the Ranger needs in my humble opinion

• A Camouflage utility (be it as an opener or escape) – 3s Stealth + 10s Swiftness (similar to the Wintersday Scout ability). Could replace the active effect on Signet of the Hunt because currently that active effect is pretty pointless.
• Point Blank Shot: Change name to Sniper Shot and add a secondary effect. If you tap it once it will function as it currently does, but if you choose to press and hold the ability, it will channel and fire one shot dealing massive damage (as per the Wintersday Scout ability).
• Signets should apply their active component to Pet and Ranger by default without requiring you to use Signet of the Beastmaster.
• A utility or effect that allows Rangers to see stealthed targets. At present time stealth has no counter and is not fun to play against. The Ranger would be most befitting to provide that counter (being a tracker and having pets). See the video on Counterplay: http://youtu.be/BRBcjsOt0_g
• [i]for the above, if signets would apply their active effects to Pet+Ranger without the need for Signet of the Beastmaster, that Grandmaster trait could be changed to Sight of the Beastmaster, allowing stealth detection as a passive ability and make stealthed targets appear in a similar fashion as we now see stealthed allies (that Predator like camouflage) if players spend 30 points in Marksmanship and choose the trait[i]. In my humble opinion the Ranger should be the direct counter to a Thief.
• Some signet active effects need a rework because some of them are pointless (even dangerous) to use (try Signet of Renewal with Signet of the Beastmaster active).
• Some shouts need a rework as they mostly revolve around sacrificing your pet (~30% of your damage potential) at present time.
• A ‘fix’ for all the OBSTRUCTED messages when firing arrows when there’s absolutely no reason for them to become obstructed.
• More reliable AI and pathfinding for our pets and being able to hit moving targets (maybe increase their effective attack radius and cleave?).
• 75% reduction of AoE damage for our pets (with the option to trait it to 95%).
• F2 abilities that fire near-instantly. The pet just has to cancel any current action and immediately go through the F2 command.
• Some traits need to switch position as it makes no sense in having Trap traits in Skirmishing when they should be in Wilderness Survival. Same with traits like Martial Mastery which should have been in Skirmishing instead of Wilderness Survival. As stated above, trait lines are just one gigantic mess at the moment and make no sense nor offer any form of synergy.

Sakri.7234:

As a fan of the game, anet owes me quality service, and this is not it. Fortunately I don’t have to wait long for The Elder Scrolls Online now…

Being forced to pay full price for the box, $15 per month, a cash shop and paygates for an extra race and ‘free’ mount (Imperial edition)? Have fun with that.

Now if ESO would have launched as a B2P game like GW2, you could have had a point.

It was Queen Jennah all along!!

My god man, you’re right! Warriors need buffs as we can’t have a Guardian outhealing a Warrior!!

Elementalist (buff)
Ranger (massive buff)

Would have been better if they had added some gold color in the mix imo.

Search your feelings, you know it to be true!
- Darth Kasmeer

Deal with it. It is there to allow the transition between alive and downed. Otherwise people would be dead before the system even registers the initial health going to zero.

So you’ll just have to show some restraint and anticipate the transition instead of rolling your face on your keyboard or raging when your macro fails and wastes your precious initiative.

This game would have been better off if the Thief class had never existed. Stealth in and of itself is inherently broken in most MMOs and giving one class access to a dynamic initiative system while keeping all others on a static cooldown system was a recipe for disaster.

Thief has to rely so much on stealth to get anything done as an old man has to rely on his cane. And personally I find the Thief class very unfun both playing one as well as playing against one as there is little to no counterplay involved.

Mainhand pistol for Mesmer please

I’m not entirely sure, but I believe both you and the clone start out in stealth. However the clone immediately starts attacking the target which punts it out of stealth before you run out of yours. And this is possibly the flaw in the system because it is easy to identify the real Mesmer when the clone always shows up first because of it instantly attacking the opponent.

Now if there was a skill-delay on the clone so that it too would remain docile for another second or two before it starts to use its #1 the Deception might work out better.

However, didn’t the real Mesmer also have a giant arrow over their heads; indicating who is the real one? A little uncertain if this is still the case though.

Filosophi.7251:

You forgot the Time Warp nerf…

I knew there was at least one major nerf missing from my list and this was exactly it! Time Warp (or rather the effect it produced: Quickness) was yet another 50% nerf without any compensation. At the very least I would have expected a significant reduction on the cooldown to compensate for the reduced effectiveness.

Also, I just remembered that Portal was another big nerf for us Mesmers and not only got it’s cooldown increased (from 60s to 90s) but also its number of uses was reduced (from infinite to 20). Yet the cooldown remained the same.

aspirine.6852:

I fail to see how an elite skill of the engineer with a cooldown of 3 minutes needed a nerf and other( I wont call them out) stun professionskills can do this every few seconds?
Is this because of the well known engineer trains marching across EB and scaring every borderlands patrol?

The way ANet balances their game boggles the mind, does it not?. Especially as they continue to ignore the one class that are actually using continous stuns/cripples/immobilize.

Asura – Summon Power Suit Mark-2
Streamlined and much more durable than the prone-to-malfunction Power Suit Mark-1, this engineering marvel (supposedly engineered by Zojja and Taimi, but patent got lost) can be called in through the sheer genius of instant translocation. Certified Golem pilots only.

Cooldown: 240
Duration: Indefinitely (until dismissed or destroyed)

aspirine.6852:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Yet, Mesmers spamming invisibility while Phantasms blast away opponents isn’t being look at.

Backstab an issue? Try phantasms doing ~6-8k damage per attack while the Mesmer remains safely invisible.

Are you sure that 6-8k damage per attack was from the mesmer phantasm. Seems a bit high.

I’m also wondering about that because I can’t recall my phantasms reaching such numbers and they have a tendency to die when getting hit by a wet noodle. But maybe I was paying more attention to that invisible 16k CnD+Backstab macro that downs me in 0.5s

Not really abilities, but a worthless class mechanic: Ranger Pets.

Ranger Pet AI is worthless
Ranger Pet inability to hit moving targets is worthless
Ranger unresponsive/unreliable F2 is worthless

Also, here is an old post of mine regarding Retaliation; which is in dire need of a complete change in my opinion. And seeing that you guys are grasping at barren treelimbs because apparently all the ‘low hanging fruit’ is gone; it is time to use the ladder and reach for the higher fruit before the entire harvest is spoiled.

From my perspective Retaliation as listed is fine, but only if it actually worked as it is listed.

Reflect incoming damage back to its source; stacks duration.

At present time it does not reflect incoming damage at all. Instead it basically counterattacks with damage disproportionate to the damage that was being dealt:
198.45 + (0.075 * Power)

As such, I feel that this formula should be removed and Retaliation changed to something more akin to Retribution from the original Guild Wars.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Retribution

This would change Retaliation to simply deal a portion of the actual incoming damage back to its source.

EXAMPLE:
Retaliation – Reflect 25% of incoming damage back to its source; stacks duration

• 10 little hits of 200 damage each (2000 total) would deal 25% (10×50=500) damage back to its source.
• 1 big hit of 2000 damage would deal 25% (1×500=500) damage back to its source.

With such a change the effects of reflected damage are equal across the board and do not punish players that have attacks with multiple small hits compared to players that have attacks with single big hits.

Volrath.1473:

JS. “Allot of good things are coming for the Thief” on the last “ready up” stream.

… he didn’t say wen…

I recall JP stating that good things were coming for the Ranger too. That was 1.5 years ago and we’re still waiting…

• Confusion nerf
• Phantasm damage nerf
• Phantasm health nerf
• Phantasm LoS nerf
• Phantasm summon nerf
• Glamour nerf
• Might-on-shatter nerf
• iCelerity nerf
• Invulnerability nerf (Sword#2)

And the list goes on and on with this kind of whack-a-mole nerfing we have seen the past 1.5 years. And apparently ANet devs still wanted to continue nerfing (seemingly random) things that did not need to be nerfed at all (like Deceptive Evasion; of which they finally saw reason and listened to this community – for once).

So when will we see some viable build diversity as all I have seen so far is ANet nerfing the class and any build we might have had into the ground (because we’re ‘cheese’)?

Promoting build diversity by destroying build diversity seems to be a recurring theme nowadays, and they succeeded as we have almost no competitive builds left (and those we have left will most likely get nerfed soon).

So when will ANet revert the Mesmer back to becoming something more than Veil and Portal bots?

(And when am I going to get my Mainhand Pistol so I can finally wield both Lyss and Ilya at the same time?)

Talyn.3295:

Litany of Wrath: Reduced the cast time from 1 second to 3/4 second.

Won’t matter, still won’t use it, unless it becomes instant. It will just set on the shelf

Agreed, all Meditation skills are instant (which was the main idea behind them) yet this one is not.

Either change the cast time to instant or you will find out that people will still not bother with it as in its present state it is just not a viable alternative to Shelter.

Can it be true? For once they listened and reverted a proposed change based on user feedback?

Guess there may be hope for this balance team yet. But to me they are still too much “Buff Warrior, nerf everything else” in my opinion.

Where’s Thief? You missed that one. Unless you didn’t notice them because of their permastealth.

Seriously, these days/weeks, I’ve been seing warrior all the time in PvP, with a build only based on running, and controlling, and it really is the most annoying thing i’ve ever met, if he plays a little bit well you get controlled all the time, knockback, immobilized and every other thing that everyone likes.

It’s really just unsportsmanlike, it takes off all the fun of fighting, and it’s just so hard to kill due to all the healing, blocking, running, serioulsy this is the biggest trash in this game in PvP, and it makes me rage all the time. This is the only thing that makes me rage in PvP, because it’s just not fun to meet.

So, when is the nerf comming?

fixed

Thedenofsin.7340:

Josh Davis.6015:

Last Refuge is something we’ve been talking about quite a bit internally, and we certainly don’t like the way it can occasionally unintentionally punish players.

We’d like to keep the minor traits in Shadow Arts thematically the same (stealth based) rather than simply providing boons or something similar. Keep that in mind when you’re suggestions changes for Last Refuge.
RM
Thanks for the feedback!

And you are giving Desperate Decoy the same treatment, right?

Now that would be silly as ANet devs don’t play a Mesmer. All they do is call them names and swing the nerfbat.

(this was meant as sarcasm)

My character had 4435 or so health in Lornar’s Pass. When I was sitting in a Golem it had 1465 or so health. This was in Lane 5.

So it does indeed seem that the golems have a lot less health. Probably to make up for them hitting so hard with the missiles and flames.

Also, they behave slightly differently in terms of health. If you are at low health, exit the golem, heal yourself and get back in; the golem will also reflect this new health. So unlike WvW golems that have their own health which cannot be repaired, the golems during this event actually ‘can be healed’.

So that might be another reason for their lower health, so that more people could use it throughout the event instead of that mesmer in Lane 5 who is constantly hogging a golem (me)

I think Lord Faren became a vegetarian so he can imagine eating Scarlet instead of the other way around.

I’ve done the marionette event 12 times now I believe and despite my best efforts I still don’t have any of these platform avoidance achievements. Loading times is also very wierd. Sometimes I teleport instantly, and at other times I’m looking at a loading screen for 10 seconds.

Ah well, at least I got my useless sprocket node and can just use the events to farm keys now without having to bother with these iron-fist restrictions for the platform achievements.

CeruleanRevolver.6085:

A friend pointed out to me that Taimi’s golem isn’t hollow when you zoom in, there’s a chair and control panels and all…

Is this norm for all Asura summoned golem or is this another hidden gem to look at? I must say this is certainly a nice touch to it!

I’d definitely like to get me one of these golems as a new Asura elite skill or something and drive around in it (or on top) all day long!

Best thing we have atm is that Power Suit and that one only lasts 60s

Vince Ste Marie.2081:

If you watch carefully when she first begins fighting, you can actually see her drop into Scruffy like a battle suit.

Ride on top while not in combat and drop into the golem to enter combat mode? I’ll take one!!

Scruffy sure puts my Power Suit to shame, and that one only lasts 60 seconds before it malfunctions.

What I wouldn’t give for an Advanced Power Suit elite skill that can last indefinitely until destroyed and allow me to ride on top or inside it. Cruising Asura style

Excelsior!!

Can’t wait for when my Asura can ride around on top of a golem.

Make it so ANet!

Some people missed out on it as well after this random overflow server finally managed to bring it down; even after me telling everyone in /y to do a /cheer immediately once the fifth chain went down.

So it would have been nice if the window for the /cheer could have been longer as I had to skip the cutscene and as such missed out on the cinematics.

Kal Spiro.9745:

It’s a great concept, until you realize that it will effectively trivialize the whole thing. Lets say there is a non-ideal setup of 20 people in the lane. That should be five groups of 4, but because it seems to use some nonsensical measure it makes three groups of five, one group of four and a group of one. The guy in the one is screwed, obviously.

One of the groups is beast though, and they trash their warden easy. Now they pop into the other groups. It was one of the five groups, and now there are two groups of six, a group of five, and the loner is up to three, cause it worked out this time. The two groups of six finish their wardens soon after. Now we have a group of 9 and a group of 11, both for fights expecting about five. One of the groups happens to destroy their warden a little faster than the other and the last warden, the one that had been the loner is looking at twenty guys.

As each warden falls the following wardens become more and more trivial. The only way to make this a reasonable measure is to use ninja rules. As each warden falls the remaining wardens have to increase in difficulty, until the last warden can actually be a challenge for 20-30 people. Unfortunately this isn’t necessarily fun either, since we are still looking at a timer.

I tend to assume this is why they let it go the way they did. It happens every other hour on the hour so there are plenty of opportunities to finish. It’s going to fall short for some, but ultimately it probably works out.

Assumptions aside; they would still need to beat the time limit, so overall it’s probably the most reasonable and effective way to fix this.

In my opinion people helping other platforms in need after vanquishing their own adversary should have been done in the first place. Implementing a RandomFailGenerator is not how you should design a Living Story event that is supposed to function as an enjoyable experience for everyone.

Besides, it’s rather unfortunate that we have this great ‘Hold The Line’ community event which can then suddenly transform into a ‘Deal With It’ solo experience if your community gets rotten luck dealt to them by bad design with four platforms having 5-6 people and the last platform has only 1.

Just my personal opinion on the matter.

At present time there seems to be no real use, unless you want to enter the secret lair on more than one character (I believe the initial key to open the lair only applies to that character).

I’m just going to keep my extra tokens for now; just in case some obscure recipe pops up that just happens to need them or something (unlikely, but better safe than sorry)

ANet should make it so that once a group manages to clear their platform, they will be ported to another that still has a champion.

But the current RandomFailGenerator system is just pathetic.

Thanks as always for your awesome guides Dulfy! I really appreciate all the effort you put into making these guides. We would truly be lost without you!

+9001

Gambit.8425:

The events are badly planned is all when every boss fight has to have a zerg of loot-free mobs surrounding it. I remember all the epic boss fights in that other MMO that had zero adds.

Exactly this!

Time and time again I’m shocked to see the sheer amount of crap ANet is dumping in our face. Can’t make the fight interesting enough on its own? Dump a crap-ton of mobs in whose only purpose is to make your life even more miserable than it already was.

Just look at the ridiculous crap that gets thrown in our face during the Jungle Wurm event. Can’t even take 5 steps and some random mob does a launch/immobilize/push/knockdown (and more times than not dumps you straight into a poison field or into some other AoE).

We were promised some epic battle and I admit that the Marionette event seems to be a pretty decent concept (even though it has some serious design flaws with 5 individual platforms that allow no outside assistance; so if one platform fails due to a failure in design the entire stage fails).

But in my opinion you have no reason to be proud of the Jungle Wurm event; nor proclaim it to be an epic encounter because it is very poorly executed and is generally unfun.

I’ve done screenplay and sequencing for a multi-stage bossfight on another game in the past but I would never dare to pull a stunt like this by just using accumulating numbers of mobs with random cc’s during the entire fight. That’s not making the fight more interesting; it just makes the fight more annoying. The basic concept is good, but the numerous adds are simply there to hide the poor implementation on said concept.

So please take this into consideration and tone down on the misery-mobs because you guys clearly ran out of ideas.

It’s not even a real three-headed giant wurm but just 3 separate wurms like the one in Caledon Forest spread out across the zone. You guys had the chance to make a giant Hydra-like boss but instead chose to opt for the mundane approach.

Been playing exclusively with mortar these past few days in WvW and noticed something odd.

As stated I have stability when using the mortar. But can a mesmer pull me off with Temporal Curtain? It looked like the Mesmer could just ignore my stability, although maybe the boon was stolen (if that is possible) just prior to the Mesmer trying to pull me?

Trying to find out if this is a bug or coincidence or working as intended.

junho.7825:

Whenever you told that fact, ppl who are arguing nerf about warriors won’t listen you
They are just warrior haters

Easy there buddy and tone down the generalizations. If you check my sig you will see eight names there. That’s one name for every class in this game, all of them level 80 and each of them has seen extensive playtime in WvW.

I don’t hate Warriors, I ‘hate’ (strong word) particular members of this balance team for not doing their job properly and apparently playing favorites where one class has to have everything whilst all the other classes get nerfed constantly.

Just look at the signet response and what kind of a joke it is. 8% reduced HPS on passive and going to look for compensation to make the active more attractive?

Devs didn’t have a problem slamming down the hammer on all the other classes since launch with little to no compensation, but when the Warrior is concerned they seemingly feel they need to start using a scalpel under the false pretense of fixing the issue (or in this case of straight line mobility ignore it entirely).

So once again, I am no Warrior hater. I just dislike the way ANet has been performing in their game balance department.

Reduce Rush (GS#5) from 1200 range to 600 range.

Done

I’ll take my paycheck now ANet.

ThiBash.5634:

Why is it so bad to let Anet try balancing in smaller steps? They’re gonna apply a small nerf, see how that affects things and then see if it needs further changing. Why must it be a HUGE nerf all at once?

You’ve been heard, ArenaNet is acting upon it…wait with the complaints until the next patch is out, ok?

Never stopped ANet in the past from slamming down huge (up to 50% with little to no compensation) nerfs to every other class. So it makes you wonder why now they suddenly pull the minimalist card when it concerns Warrior.

Because you can be sure that in the end Healing Signet passive might only get reduced by 5%. And you can bet your trunk-monkey that the active will be ‘compensated’ by a 25% buff.

Holden.9273:

I really don’t get why they want to nerf celestial, it has nothing to do with max zerker/dps meta in dungeons, its mostly used on www to balance out vitality/toughness/critical damage in builds. Everyone who has celestial is basically nerfed twice, by critical damage nerf and celestial nerf – this is really not fair. Dear Arena.net why celestial after patch cant have: 147+ to all stats / + 285 ferocity so celestial owners will be nerf like all criticical damage users?

They don’t want to nerf celestial; it will just be a casualty of war as ANet rarely sees what their whack-a-mole style balance will inflict on the rest of the game.

Dev1 – “Oh, Zerker doing to much DPS. Zerker=CritDMG amirite? Nerf CritDMG!”
Dev2 – “Good job man, easy fix!”

Aberrant.6749:

Aveneo.2068:

Already phantasms were nerfed at least 3 times so they deal less damage, need LoS and can be prevented from spawning by dodge/block/invul. Vengeful Images was stealth-nerfed to lasting only 5s instead of indefinitely, Shattered Strength nerfed from 3 stacks to 1, 50% nerf to Time Warp, 50% reduction to Confusion, increased cooldown on Portal (from 60s to 90s) and later also reduced number of uses, Illusionists Celerity changed from Adept Minor to Grandmaster Minor (and later back to Master Minor), Glamour nerfs etc.

And this is just an off-the-top-of-my-head list of some of the big nerfs the class has had to endure.

You can’t prevent a phant from spawning from a dodge/block afaik… blind/invuln yes.

A single blind will stop a multi-hitting phant unlike other multi hit attacks and they also doesn’t cause any reveal… despite phants being considered attacks they don’t always act as if they are. IMO the rules for them should be brought more in line with other attacks and have their damage adjusted for the buffs/nerfs this causes. This is a bit off topic though :P

Just managed to find the original patchnotes regarding that nerf and you are correct. Serves me well for trying to recall the main nerfs from memory.

Still, I feel that since launch Mesmers received numerous giant nerfs and instead of using a scalpel when attempting to balance any class (that isn’t a Warrior), the ‘balance team’ seemed to prefer a sledgehammer.

I fully agree that Mesmers definitely needs to become more viable in large scale fights. Unfortunately it seems ANet has a hard time seeing anything beyond the sPvP aspect. Most likely because none of the ‘balance team’ apparently spends any time playing in WvW.

As such can just see the next patch notes:
* Veil – reduced number of uses to 5
* Portal – reduced number of uses to 5

Already phantasms were nerfed at least 3 times so they deal less damage, need LoS and can be prevented from spawning by dodge/block/invul. Vengeful Images was stealth-nerfed to lasting only 5s instead of indefinitely, Shattered Strength nerfed from 3 stacks to 1, 50% nerf to Time Warp, 50% reduction to Confusion, increased cooldown on Portal (from 60s to 90s) and later also reduced number of uses, Illusionists Celerity changed from Adept Minor to Grandmaster Minor (and later back to Master Minor), Glamour nerfs etc.

And this is just an off-the-top-of-my-head list of some of the big nerfs the class has had to endure.

From my perspective Retaliation as listed is fine, but only if it actually worked as it is listed.

Reflect incoming damage back to its source; stacks duration.

At present time it does not reflect incoming damage at all. Instead it basically counterattacks with damage disproportionate to the damage that was being dealt:
198.45 + (0.075 * Power)

As such, I feel that this formula should be removed and Retaliation changed to something more akin to Retribution from the original Guild Wars.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Retribution

This would change Retaliation to simply deal a portion of the actual incoming damage back to its source.

EXAMPLE:
Retaliation – Reflect 25% of incoming damage back to its source; stacks duration

• 10 little hits of 200 damage each (2000 total) would deal 25% (10×50=500) damage back to its source.
• 1 big hit of 2000 damage would deal 25% (1×500=500) damage back to its source.

With such a change the effects of reflected damage are equal across the board and do not punish players that have attacks with multiple small hits compared to players that have attacks with single big hits.

My Mesmer (full zerker gear) once landed an iZerker on a Warrior while he was just standing there and attacking a gate with his longbow in WvW. By the time the iZerker did another pass the Warrior’s signet had already healed him back up to full.

So he could simply ignore the iZerker because his passive signet+ passive regeneration (Dogged March) was enough to keep him at max health.