Retaliation

[impp]

What does this spell work against best? Since barbs are doing such insane damage I'm thinking I need lvl5 to give them some of their own medicine.

Am I right in thinking it is useless against magic damage?

Although it is to be expected, from recent experience Soulkeeper just ploughs on straight through it.

[Arafails]

Any smart barb will hit you with a low damage spell, eg. kick, but sure whatever.

It deals a pretty fair chunk back to warlocks, I know that. Of course, 'locks mostly do physical damage anyway....

[El_Naso]

After using it for a month I found it to have way more cons than pros:

Cons
- It usually ends up returning some archer's arrow, a fireball, a terror, etc rather than a barbs 2k hit
- At war, a barb hits you more than once, and it's usually followed by several other barbs and warriors. Even if you succesfully return a 1.5k southcross, there's likely another one coming your way inmediatley after.
- It won't damage the target enough for it to matter, unless you happen to be hitting him. In the case of a barb, you don't want to do that unless you are really really far away from him. It will help you survive more often than it will help you kill anything.
- It doesen't help coordinating everyone's retaliation to counter barb areas. It would kill one at best, the rest will finish the job.

Pros
- Can save you from a two hit kill, making it a three hit kill; gives you time to run
- returns tick damage such as serpent bite, tear apart, summon lightning, etc. Works best aganist those imo.
- Works fantastic in pvp, where things are easier to control.

I just had a thought, if you cast summon lightning at two archers with retal, would it return the two damages from both archers or just one? O.o

[Immune]

Originally Posted by El_Naso

I just had a thought, if you cast summon lightning at two archers with retal, would it return the two damages from both archers or just one? O.o

Damage would be returned from both.

See this video where 6 people use retal against terror and summon lightning, shows how multiples of them will stack the returned damage. Skip to :20 to see terror, skip to :40 to see summon lightning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4Sr-OscscI

But obviously, that kind of thing never/seldom happens in real war.

Personally I don't use it anymore, the number of times it actually works well doesn't make up for how often it gets cancelled by non-damaging powers like feint/ambush/will domain and low normals. I think it might be more usable if it had a subtler animation, or no animation at all.

[doppelapfel]

Originally Posted by impp

What does this spell work against best?

Against very high hits so as you said barbarians. Or against dots, if you cast it after the dot has started it reflects the dmg each second until its broken by another hit. This works with many dots at the same time too.

Since barbs are doing such insane damage I'm thinking I need lvl5 to give them some of their own medicine.

4 is already 75% and really usefull but of course 5 is even better if you have the points for tricks 19.

Am I right in thinking it is useless against magic damage?

it reflects all kind of dmg you receive by the first attack after casting. If this attack is a cc like feint, a debuff like disable limb or any other spell doing no direct dmg like etheral arrow the spell turns off reflecting nothing.

Although it is to be expected, from recent experience Soulkeeper just ploughs on straight through it.

Soulkeeper takes away hp from you, thats not doing dmg. Same for vampirism and etheral arrow.

[impp]

Well does anyone have experience since the update, cause I just used it against a barb at lvl5 and it returned absolutely nothing?

My log says:
lvl5 retaliation
Normal hit 930
feint
Crit hit 1317
beast attack 1400

Can't get a screen shot cause it seems bugged, after playing a while it stops working.

Thanks for the replies by the way, it seems like quite a few spells a pvp spell in a rvr game. Not much use to a "support" class such as the hunter.

[Immune]

Originally Posted by impp

Well does anyone have experience since the update, cause I just used it against a barb at lvl5 and it returned absolutely nothing?

My log says:
lvl5 retaliation
Normal hit 930
feint
Crit hit 1317
beast attack 1400

Can't get a screen shot cause it seems bugged, after playing a while it stops working.

Lag or something else caused retal to miss the normal, so instead feint cancelled it, which does no damage. This happens to me a lot too, if the attack you want to return comes at the same time as you cast retal, it will probably ignore it and wait until the next attack you receive.

[El_Naso]

Agh! I've seen the video before but I completely missed the summon lightning part xP

Several archers alredy returned my serpent bite with retliation, I'm seeing it used a whole lot more than before so I'd expet area dot's to get returned more and more often now. Warlocks beware.

[impp]

Thanks, I'm finding there are lots of spells, particularly in the tricks discipline, that are so specific there are no chances to use them.

It can't be difficult to tweak retal to work on normals only but as you said it is only going to return useful damage against a barb and he is going to follow it up with another 1000 normal anyway.

Another spell I'll give up on again.

Sticky touch is the same, slowing a barb by 20% means it takes him 3 seconds longer to kill you. With such a reliance on spells in the game reducing attack speed is much less important than reducing cast speed. I was unanimously abused when I suggested changing the effect of sticky touch from reducing attack speed to cast speed.

Hunters just have no choice but to rely on ambush, confuse and distracting shot. Stunning fist is good but with a cast speed of 0.5sec you never get it off before kick or feint.

Back to Raeria to reskill ... again.

[blood-raven]

i'm going to rock this topic!

retal 5 rulez! in the heath of war barbs don't see who is buffed or not or when they are under dizzy and are stupid enough to charge anyway there dead, i can give you the list of how many sc i trown back at as many barbs, it's the reason why ppl say 'it sucks' that i use it, you have the complete advantage of surprise.

it rulez but as all spells needs timing