How exactly does retalition work? (having problems with my current build)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Ok I am currently playing a strictly retaliation Tactician on hardcore. Don’t get me wrong I had great success with her in terms of sustainability, she’s extremely tanky. The problem is damage, especially against certain monster/hero types. I usually have the biggest problems with ranged heroes/bosses and casters. I can barely even kill Van Aldritch (the 3 guys) in Port Valbury. Like most bosses in the game they barely deal any damage with all my buffs on, but I can deal even less damage to them and on top of that they even heal in the meantime. I have similarily bad experience with a lot of stuff in the game, especially in AOM xpac. With all that taken into account you can probably imagine this character is not a great fun to play at all. I was used to playing great dmg dealers before and playing a game is just a pain in the butt now. A lot of stuff needing like 5 minutes to kill where I would just clear the entire screen in seconds before.

Why I even decided to build the retalition character then? Well I always thought it would be a fun idea having a character that doesn’t deal the most dmg herself (it’s a she this time), but the monsters just kill themselves on her. My second idea was, since I’ve already lost around 3 or 4 characters on HC (but I really love HC otherwise), that I want to build an ultimate tank who I wouldn’t have to worry so much playing with. She is also kind of a farming character that I really do not want to die, because I can then make a way with farming great stuff and putting it into the shared stash for my other (more fragile) characters on HC.

The main thing that I want to know here is if I’m missing some mechanics of retaliation? What I already know about retaliation:

  • It only works on melee enemies, for ranged you gotta get reflect
  • you gotta have as much flat retaliation for each dmg type as possible + the biggest modifier possible.

I am currently @ lvl 86, I am trying to get as much flat for each dmg type and I already have most of them covered with a couple exceptions. For example I haven’t been yet able to find anything that would give me chaos retalition, electrocute and a couple of other duration dmg types. My total retaliation modifier is currently somewhere around 700% (I want to get this to at least 1000% though for my endgame build).

I find reflect even more important and I try to grab absolutely everything with reflect stamped on it. But I still managed only to get around 180% reflect so far, sadly I gotta admit that this is still only barely visible when fighting ranged enemies. Do they have reflected dmg resistances or something?
Not to mention my reflect even gets way higher than that with some of my devotion procs (I think I mostly get it from targo’s hammer or something similar).

The third question that I really needs an answer for is how does the retaliation work in relation to shield block chance and shield dmg blocked? That is not clearly visible from any of the ingame stat descriptions. Is it perhaps only possible to retaliate as much dmg as you’re able to block it with your shield? I currently only have somewhere over 1000 shield damage blocked ammount, even tho I probably invested everything possible into this. I have shield training and overguard soft capped in soldier, I also have a shield maiden devotion etc.

If that would be the case, then why can a lot of mosters with a prefix “reflective” not even use shields and still retaliate a lot of dmg? Or are they only reflecting it? I’m pretty confused now. Also if the game only lets you retaliate/reflect if using the shield, that should definitely be clearly stated somewhere in the retaliation description/the game guide/whatever. I never came accross such information in the game itself.

  1. What is even the deal with the damage deflect? This is yet another type of retribution type stat in the game which adds even more confusion in my opinion. I currently have this on 0, it seems I have no stats/equipment/devotions to support this currently. What the hell would even be the difference between deflect and reflect? to me this pretty much sounds the same and should probably be the same in practice to avoid this unneccesary confusion.

  2. With most other builds the rule of thumb is to also get as most RR for the dmg types that you’ve specialized into. My guess is that a lot of bosses (especially on ultimate) would also have some kind of a retaliation/reflected dmg resistance/mitigation. Is there even a possibility to lower that mitigation somehow like with other resistance reduction mechanics? I’ve never seen any stats like this on anything, so I’m again very confused here.

So yeah that’s mostly it, perhaps there is some guide already regarding this, so in that case I would be grateful if anyone could just direct me to it. I really wanna make this character work (and even thought I cannot really say it’s not working at all since I’ve been able to clear veteran and elite without much problems in terms of sustainability), she still feels like she’s dealing 0 damage a lot of times and is an absolute pain to play with. Basically every time I play with her I wish I’d be playing another build and I think that tells a lot.

Thank you!

2

First off, retal builds is in kind of a bad shape right now, the upcoming expansion will supposedly fix this big time.

Second, right now you gotta go hybrid with retal to deal with ranged cuz reflect sux.
Monsters has much more health than the damage they deal (they have to, as player chars has 10-20k health and dealing hundreds of thousands of DPS on ult), so % reflect is kinda useless.

Shield blocking doesn’t interfere with retaliation at all, you deal the same retaliation damage regardless of you blocked or or not.

Edit:
You can download a mod that makes retaliation work on ranged enemies, but you probably have to start a new char for that cuz thats how mods work i think.

3

Deflect is not a retribution stat, it is a chance to avoid damage. Notice how it’s listed right under dodge chance? Dodge is a chance to avoid melee attacks, deflect is the same thing, but for ranged attacks.

4

FG will add new mechanics to retal that will aid it in dealing with it’s problems. Until then it’s kinda hard.

5

From experience with my good ol retaliation S&B warder, I can suggest getting an item with a “% chance when hit” skill like a lightning bolt or orb or somesuch, or a weapon like a dawnbreaker’s sledge that will cast the skill on autoattack and it sometimes will land on the ranged enemies. Stacking aoe shockwaves or novas when hit and trying to stand close to the rangers also works most of the time.

But if you’re up against a ranged or spellcaster boss, your best bet is pointing at them, weighting down your autoattack key and go make some coffee or something. Shit’s gonna take a while.

6

Thanks everybody! I actually managed to stack my reflect to around 220% right now (still sucks tho). But I hear ya opinions about also trying to stack some “% chance when hit” gear and various procs on weapons/armor/whatever. I’m still constantly switching up items as of now, but I’ll definitely try to build my endgame set around some of those items as I’ve already figured out myself - those items can indeed make a difference.

7

Most bosses are partially resistant to every damage type, so spreading out your damage types usually won’t help. You want as much flat retaliation as you can get and the biggest modifier possible, that’s true. But some gear gives bonuses to specific retaliation types, like pierce or lightning, so stacking the types for which you have the biggest modifier will result in more damage.

Another reason is resist reduction - if you’re stacking say lightning retaliation, you can also stack a whole bunch of lightning resistance reduction. It’s a lot easier to reduce one resistance type than it is to reduce all of them.

Basically, diversification usually hurts more than it helps. That’s a general rule for GD. It’s the least true for retaliation because retal has a ton of +x% to all retal, but it still holds true, especially when you get retaliation sets that give bonuses to specific retaliation types.

8

Reflect is a terrible way of increasing your damage output vs ranged enemies.

Themis and Dlesar pretty much summed up what you need to look for.
-aoe procs or attacks that trigger “when hit”
-healthy amount of resist reduction
-one main source of retaliation damage instead of multiple sources.

9

Crate is fixing retaliation damage in Forgotten Gods by allowing you to do a % of your total retaliation damage as melee (I think). I wonder how much the % will be since I remember one retaliaion build being able to do over 400K damage max.

10

If you look through GrimTools you’ll find there are only 2 real types of retaliation damage:Lightning and Piercing. Any other kind of retaliation damage provides only trivial amounts.

11

Fire/burn is okay and i have a feeling that acid is making a big comeback in FG :).

And retal damage types is kinda like pet ones, because of the prevailant all damage type % bonuses it’s okay to stack all damage types almost regardless of RR (Manticore is kinda mandatory though).

12

What Funky Gandalf said.

You’re probably overlooking the suffixes on greens when it comes to burn.

13

Well just read the descriptions under retaliation again and I think I understood certain things wrong from the beggining. I always thought that you only deal retaliation for the damage type that a certain enemy uses back to that enemy. So let’s say an enemy deals piercing meaning you could only retaliate piercing back to him.

But it seems I got it all wrong though, it seems that you always retaliate with whatever flat retaliation you have, regardless of the enemy type and the damage he’s predominantly dealing.

So in that case of course it’s again very logical to treat retaliator build similar to every other “classic” build meaning you should really only specialize in perhaps 2 dmg types, so you stack those as high as possible.

However even this logic has some flaws in my opinion and it’s already what some others have pointed out. As total retaliation % increase applies to all retaliation types (pet builds are a somehow close comparison here), perhaps it would be still better to spread the dmg types further than just around 2.

To be honest I don’t really know the monsters/specific bosses resists from the top of my head, but the mentality here is that most bosses shouldn’t have the same ammount of resistances to everything, I’m pretty sure if you spread out your retaliation on most dmg types possible yes you are sacrificing some big dmg on most mobs, but with that strategy you could possibly “catch certain bosses off guard”. I’m pretty certain some bosses don’t have like every resistance possible and some are lower than the others. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think even the nemesis bosses don’t have everything on 80%. On the other hand they usually have like one or two resists which are crazy overcapped. Let’s say you’ve specialized into dealing exactly the dmg type retaliation that is way overcapped on a certain boss. The only way of dealing with that problem would be some crazy RR, OR perhaps your other dmg types could come in handy here if you haven’t been able to invest into some crazy RR. We all know GD is a game of min-maxing and if, let’s say you went out of your way to get manticore/a certain piece of weapon with RR whatever, you could be very well missing out on hp/armor/better retaliation gear/whatever. So like everywhere, the hardest question is what works best?

I hope you understand my argument here. The “problem” with my build is that I haven’t chosen manticore in devotion meaning I currently don’t have almost any resistance reduction, I also don’t have any other ways of RR just yet (still the end of elite currently). On the other hand I’m pretty certain that I have a great devotion setup currently (in terms of points everything will get covered just perfectly as I want it). If I go out of my way and change to manticore I’ll be fucking everything up and you definitely know what I mean. Also manticore gives a shitton of useless poison and only the proc is useful for my build, is it really worth it to dump so much precious devotion points just for that proc, is it really that good? I don’t know perhaps, but I have a hard time believing that.

And while investing most into the single or few retaliation types with decent RR would probably work best, if you lack RR perhaps spreading your damage types would be a better min/max strategy to at least somewhat compensate for the lack of RR.

I’m only theorising here, let me know what your think about my thoughts. While playing yes certain enemy types definitely need very long to kill, but against others I’m doing surprisingly well right now, I gotta say dots are often pretty visible (as I have most retaliation types covered). I honestly don’t know if I’d be doing more damage with just approx. 2 dmg types stacked higher, honestly I’m not totally convinced I would.

Still haven’t reached ultimate yet, but let’s just take Grava’thul for example. I am able to kill him pretty quickly just with retaliation (my spread out type). So I don’t know what’s doing the most damage to him, but something is definitely hitting him pretty hard. I could kill him even faster if I haven’t had to watch for his debuff animation and be careful cause he still hits like a truck.

I also didn’t have some huge problems with chupacabra, again if you know what you’re looking for he won’t heal himself all the time and he gets retaliated pretty hard with my build on elite. Yes it still takes a long time, but that’s mostly because of his heals and general nature of the boss (like he splits 4 times or some shit…).

Again, yes certain bosses are a huge pain to kill, but those are mostly of the ranged variant. I’ve never had huge issues with my killspeed against regular melee bosses, so perhaps that’s the indicator that my plan is working in a way.

For conclusion, I haven’t really seen anyone play a different type of a retaliator (the more dmg type specialized one, so I can hardly talk about retaliator builds in general).

I started this thread because I was comparing my retaliator to other “classic” builds I’ve played and comparing her to some big dmg dealers she’s just an absolute horror to play. But this is my first retal build so like I said I cannot really judge in terms of retals in general and what other people are doing with them.

When this build will be nearing completion, I’ll probably post a video of some boss kills on ultimate and perhaps then you’ll be able to pass some judments and offer some improvements.

And oh yeah sorry for the wall of text guys, grim dawn can be a bit…complicated sometimes.

14

Basically what you did here was make a “mixup”. What you thought retaliation was, was in-fact “reflect”. What you just described here in these two beginning sentences of yours was in actuality… reflect.

Reflect = Enemy swings at you. The damage they deal “reflects” off you, back to them.

Retaliate = Enemy swings at you. Your retaliation sources “retaliate” from you to them in response to this action.

15

This what I could come up with retaliation. https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrvx05Z

16

Ok I think I now fully understand how retaliation works. Another question though, does anyone know if reducing enemy defensive ability actually helps with dealing more retal? From my logic it probably doesn’t, only RR to your retal dmg type does.

Am I correct on this one?

17

AFAIK retaliation always hits and never crits thus OA/DA relation doesn’t affect it.

You might not want to completely neglect your effective OA though as procs and such still needs to hit.

19

You have to be extremelly tanky to survive the buffs you’ll inflict into monsters to use that mechanic. If you have that kind of resiliance then sure, it will make enemies come at you much faster, and kill themselves even faster (as long as they are not ranged/casters).

But other mastery combinations can work. Pretty much any debuff you place on enemies will attract them to you, for a shaman you can spend a point into Devouring Swarm just to attract enemies to you, though I think War Cry already does a good job at that.

20

Most high end builds have over 100% resistance reduction for their specific damage type. Workable builds will have around at least 80% RR. So yes, you need some crazy RR if you specialize in one damage type. But it’s realistically achievable.

Manticore and Dying God are used all the time outside of builds with that damage type. The RR and the OA/Crit Damage/Total Speed, respectively, are just that valuable.
I understand why you would think so - it feels really frustrating to have a stat go to waste. But that’s just part of the game; for example, one of the best affixes is Thunderstruck, because it has amazing resistances (including stun res) and some OA. But hardly any build uses the lightning damage.

It turns out that some stats are so valuable that you have to invest some points into some useless baggage just to get to them.

21

I skipped most of what you said. Neither Grava or Kupa are bad match-ups for retaliators this is true. Try Alexander and tell me how easy you found it. It’s a good thing he’s not actually as strong as other Nemesis.

I think the toughest parts in the game on Ultimate are towards the end when taking on the Aetherial Vanguard. There’s a purple Fleshweaver in particular that can drop your character’s health bar pretty quickly regardless of how tanky you are and waiting for retaliation to kill him is a big NO, NO. There’s also the ascended Myrmidon’s late game that make life challenging/highly annoying as they will repeatedly heal everything else. Again waiting for retaliation to kill them is a big NO, NO.

My advice is to make sure you take some skills that can actually damage the enemy and not rely fully on retaliation specially considering you decided to go HC. I would hate to lose my character right at the end of the game. My burn/fire retaliator looks like this
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/vNQKXXpV