Retaliation and Light field ? Opinions ? Ideas?

What are your opinions on these two ? Retaliation: On the one hand Retaliation is used as a counter but honestly it's overall effectiveness is rather limited when you consider it's scaling of 0.075 (PvE) and 0.05(PvP) and it goes completely counter to their new practice of limiting the passive affects etc as shown just on the recent balance pass with reduction of 50 points from all of the Traits that gave the Stat bonuses (Strength in Numbers as an example) , how about having it stack for intensity instead of duration granted this would obviously have a limit on how many stacks it could have but it would lend it self to a more active play and counter play instead of a trigger it and just keep up and forget about it. Then we come to the Light Field the field that Guadians put down with every Symbol we make and one of the reasons people were really annoyed with Guardians in the past when our Light field would mess up another players water or fire field at least now its a little more useful stressing the word "Little" . Ok it gives us a Light Aura if we get a Leap finisher , AOE Condition Cleanse for a Blast, Cleansing Bolts for a Whirl, and a Single Condition Cleanse for a Projectile now while these aren't terrible the Light Aura kind of stands out in that as one of the only Auras that can stack in duration but it gives one second of Retaliation (which I brought up options earlier) and one second of Condition damage reduction of 10% this is where I have ask really how useful is that by comparison to let's say some of the other boons, honestly the cleanses are more helpful. Now if you gave this something like a 2 or 3 seconds of Retaliation and Condition Damage Reduction (possibly with the ability to stack intensity although this could be over powering). Any comments, suggestions etc this just an observation on my part.

Don't know if it's just me, but comboing light field and whirl doesn't cleanse any personal conditions. I've tried it multiple times with greatsword, but I never seem to cleanse conditions this way. Maybe it's a bug, or it is a feature, but it never seems to work for me.

Greatsword 4 already gives retaliation. Sword 2 symbol gives area blind. These symbols are strong when used correctly offensively, but are practically useless for me defensively since it doesn't cleanse conditions.

Making reta stack in intensity would require just the next big rework of the radiance trait line. The likelihood of that happening is much smaller than the probability of totally screwing up DH, so it's a bad idea. With regard to light fields, remember the time when they granted reta on certain finishers? It's quite an irony that now we have a reason to want the reta back, but I don't see that happening. I'd prefer the devs to focus on the bigger problems of the class - given their typical speed of balancing, it would decades anyway to fix those.

@nativity.3057 said:Don't know if it's just me, but comboing light field and whirl doesn't cleanse any personal conditions. I've tried it multiple times with greatsword, but I never seem to cleanse conditions this way. Maybe it's a bug, or it is a feature, but it never seems to work for me.

Greatsword 4 already gives retaliation. Sword 2 symbol gives area blind. These symbols are strong when used correctly offensively, but are practically useless for me defensively since it doesn't cleanse conditions.

Projectile and whirl finishers are extremely inconsistent in light fields. I've often times stood in my symbol of energy, then successfully landed a trueshot, only to look up at my condi bar and realize that nothing had changed since before I even fired. Same goes for GS2, although that will generally cleanse 1 condition if I land the majority of the attack.

Not sure why these are so inconsistent but as far as balance goes, these should never count as another condi clear that guardian has because of how unreliable they are.

@"RUNICBLACK.7630" said:What are your opinions on these two ? Retaliation: On the one hand Retaliation is used as a counter but honestly it's overall effectiveness is rather limited when you consider it's scaling of 0.075 (PvE) and 0.05(PvP) and it goes completely counter to their new practice of limiting the passive affects etc as shown just on the recent balance pass with reduction of 50 points from all of the Traits that gave the Stat bonuses (Strength in Numbers as an example) , how about having it stack for intensity instead of duration granted this would obviously have a limit on how many stacks it could have but it would lend it self to a more active play and counter play instead of a trigger it and just keep up and forget about it. Then we come to the Light Field the field that Guadians put down with every Symbol we make and one of the reasons people were really annoyed with Guardians in the past when our Light field would mess up another players water or fire field at least now its a little more useful stressing the word "Little" . Ok it gives us a Light Aura if we get a Leap finisher , AOE Condition Cleanse for a Blast, Cleansing Bolts for a Whirl, and a Single Condition Cleanse for a Projectile now while these aren't terrible the Light Aura kind of stands out in that as one of the only Auras that can stack in duration but it gives one second of Retaliation (which I brought up options earlier) and one second of Condition damage reduction of 10% this is where I have ask really how useful is that by comparison to let's say some of the other boons, honestly the cleanses are more helpful. Now if you gave this something like a 2 or 3 seconds of Retaliation and Condition Damage Reduction (possibly with the ability to stack intensity although this could be over powering). Any comments, suggestions etc this just an observation on my part.

Its only confusing, because you're misinterpreting what Retaliation is a counter to. Retal is the compliment to Aegis, where Retal punishes rapid strikes that Aegis is weak against. Aegis is strong against large hits, with Blind serving a similar purpose. Its not really meant to be an offensive damage source, but designed to force skirmishing classes to disengage so they don't kill themselves. If you look at the core classes and earlier skill balance, the most dangerous builds were ones that favored overwhelming strike volumes.... Rangers, Dagger Eles, Sw/GS Guardians, Mesmer, and especially Thief. The fast attack combos apply massive amounts of pressure over a short period, with the only real counter being avoidance.

Retal still does what its supposed to, but its lost its threat level because most classes are now capable of healing through small damage. But intensity stacks aren't the solution..... because thats what they did with burning to make it more useful on offense, and now Burning dominates the condi meta by a wide margin. Retal would have to be a lot weaker, and nearly all skills apply multiple stacks...... but this creates a huge problem in WvW, where everything can be stacked in large volumes. Where a single stack is reasonably capable of being controlled, with an intensity stack, the difference between 5 and 25 is a huge problem for getting balance to work. How do you linearly scale the power of individual stacks so an individual can source enough to matter, but max stacks aren't completely overwhelming? If you look at bleeds and torment, because of their prevalence, their damage is borderline inconsequential to avoid a 25 stack completely overwhelming the target. Burning was supposed to compliment bleed's weak damage, but ease of application, with stronger pressure over time. But that didn't work, because of the number of condi cleanses outpaced Condi damage's ability ramp up. Hence they made burning intensity stacked to give condi more burst potential, but players realized the damage potential, and just focused on stacking as much burning as skills would allow.

When you realize Retaliation and Burning both suffer from the same type of scaling issue, you start to understand how quickly this can get out of control. But when you start taking into account Retal also scaling on number of hits, you have triple whammy problem of trying to control its effective damage range. Since it compounds exponentially when stacked and on strike, in order to cap the upper limit of how much damage it can produce, you either have to scale its per stack damage to abysmal levels, or do ICDs on retal damage, which brings a whole different set of scaling problems with it.

@Arcaedus.7290 said:

@nativity.3057 said:Don't know if it's just me, but comboing light field and whirl doesn't cleanse any personal conditions. I've tried it multiple times with greatsword, but I never seem to cleanse conditions this way. Maybe it's a bug, or it is a feature, but it never seems to work for me.

Greatsword 4 already gives retaliation. Sword 2 symbol gives area blind. These symbols are strong when used correctly offensively, but are practically useless for me defensively since it doesn't cleanse conditions.

Does GS5 work? It's a whirl finisher but seems to have the same problem as GS2 for me. And the fact that it's on a 25 sec CD while being the only semi-reliable CC guards have, it's a waste to try to use it as a condi clear.

@nativity.3057 said:Don't know if it's just me, but comboing light field and whirl doesn't cleanse any personal conditions. I've tried it multiple times with greatsword, but I never seem to cleanse conditions this way. Maybe it's a bug, or it is a feature, but it never seems to work for me.

Greatsword 4 already gives retaliation. Sword 2 symbol gives area blind. These symbols are strong when used correctly offensively, but are practically useless for me defensively since it doesn't cleanse conditions.

Projectiles and whirls cleanse conditions on allies they hit not on self. Same with regen.

@InsaneQR.7412 said:

@nativity.3057 said:Don't know if it's just me, but comboing light field and whirl doesn't cleanse any personal conditions. I've tried it multiple times with greatsword, but I never seem to cleanse conditions this way. Maybe it's a bug, or it is a feature, but it never seems to work for me.

Greatsword 4 already gives retaliation. Sword 2 symbol gives area blind. These symbols are strong when used correctly offensively, but are practically useless for me defensively since it doesn't cleanse conditions.

From memory, they can cleanse self-conditions but it's extremely unreliable. Perhap cleansing conditions on allies was actually the primary function? In that case, this makes whirl/projectiles in light field the most useless combo field-finisher combo in the game and it should really be reworked.

Edit: I'll have to test this more later but it just occurred to me that what both you and I said could be true. I think what happens when you cleanse with whirling wrath + symbol on guardian is that if you move slightly, your movement preceeds the actual projectile from the greatsword. That projectile launches in the direction you're moving, then gains light field finisher status, and passes through you, cleansing a condition. Since you only have 7 projectiles with WW, and they fire in random directions, it's entirely possible that one would never hit you during all of WW if you're moving around.

@Arcaedus.7290 said:

@InsaneQR.7412 said:

@nativity.3057 said:Don't know if it's just me, but comboing light field and whirl doesn't cleanse any personal conditions. I've tried it multiple times with greatsword, but I never seem to cleanse conditions this way. Maybe it's a bug, or it is a feature, but it never seems to work for me.

Greatsword 4 already gives retaliation. Sword 2 symbol gives area blind. These symbols are strong when used correctly offensively, but are practically useless for me defensively since it doesn't cleanse conditions.

Healing bolts work the same way. Its kinda dumb thats true. Cleansing and heal on self would be better.

@InsaneQR.7412 said:

@Arcaedus.7290 said:

@InsaneQR.7412 said:

@nativity.3057 said:Don't know if it's just me, but comboing light field and whirl doesn't cleanse any personal conditions. I've tried it multiple times with greatsword, but I never seem to cleanse conditions this way. Maybe it's a bug, or it is a feature, but it never seems to work for me.

Greatsword 4 already gives retaliation. Sword 2 symbol gives area blind. These symbols are strong when used correctly offensively, but are practically useless for me defensively since it doesn't cleanse conditions.

Yeah, I really don't see why not. Guardian is really the only class that would have self-combo potential here and it wouldn't be OP since you'd actually have to land the finisher to get the projectile cleared.

You gotta be in melee range of your target that gets hit to get a condition cleansed on projectile and whirl and it only removes max one condition from you. Also the light aura only provides 1 second of retaliation and damage reduction on hit but it is for every hit in that 4 seconds the aura is up.

Retaliation is balanced as is. It's not super op nor is it nothing. Torment and confusion have this same issue. Meant as a sort of "I gotta think before I do this thing" condition or buff in retaliation's case, but not instant down 1 shot you if you ignore it.

All 3 of those are much more pronounced in pvp than in pve. In wvw for example if you land a multi hit aoe attack on a group that has retaliation you WILL 1 shot yourself if you have a squishy build.

@"Snowjob.7245" said:You gotta be in melee range of your target that gets hit to get a condition cleansed on projectile and whirl and it only removes max one condition from you. Also the light aura only provides 1 second of retaliation and damage reduction on hit but it is for every hit in that 4 seconds the aura is up.

Retaliation is balanced as is. It's not super op nor is it nothing. Torment and confusion have this same issue. Meant as a sort of "I gotta think before I do this thing" condition or buff in retaliation's case, but not instant down 1 shot you if you ignore it.

All 3 of those are much more pronounced in pvp than in pve. In wvw for example if you land a multi hit aoe attack on a group that has retaliation you WILL 1 shot yourself if you have a squishy build.

Did some further testing and you're right. Also, the wiki states this, so bad on me for not doing some reading. This is however not terribly intuitive and honestly makes projectile finishers in light fields very underpowered as well as completely at odds with the nature of a projectile in the first place.

IMO it should be changed to clear a condi from the caster if the projectile lands, regardless of distance between caster and target.