Some might argue “where is the action in pet builds?”
What action means is subjective. To me it means that is it not turned based but “real time” role playing game. RTRPG … let it sink in
There still can be found action in pet builds. If something attacks you, and you usually have trash resists, you have to be quite dynamic, which automatically enables “action”.
Same if your defenses and life regen suck when playing retal tank 
I think you are reading the word “action” too much like what Bruce Willis would do
I might be misreading but I think people are sorta missing the point I was trying to make. My goal wasn’t to make a retaliate build, it was to make a build that utilizes the new retaliation damage added mechanic. However it appears to me that the mechanic is fairly useless, since any build that utilizes it will in most cases get more damage from the base retaliate mechanic than the skill it’s trying to boost. Having the skill on top is nice, and might make the build more playable, but it seems very strange to me to have a build that spends a bunch of points into it’s main ability and builds a gear set to maximize it’s usefulness and then it’s basically just used as a support/utility skill.
I might’ve understood it wrong, but if you asked that if it’s good to use retal >> attack without retaliation damage, then no. Retaliation damage added to attack just takes the value of all of your retaliation values and adds a percentage of that to your skill. Basically, if you have 0 retaliation damage, 40% Retaliation >> attack will be 0, if you have 123841 retaliation damage, and 40% retal >> attack, you’ll deal 49536.4 additional damage with your next skill.
Again, I might’ve just misunderstand you.
I’m puzzled by the way it’s set up, with attack skills doing only a small portion of your retaliation damage. As I said in the first post, why isn’t it the other way around, with skills doing something like 400% retaliation damage added to attack, and then retaliation damage kept low enough to make that sensible. That way a build focused on this mechanic is actually incentivized to utilize and build around the skill.
I think the whole point of the mechanic is to make Retaliation builds more interesting to play by giving them an incentive to be active rather than just walk in the middle of a pack of monsters and then AFK while the mobs die hitting you as in some of the caricature posts i’ve read.
Could you use retaliation alone? Probably. Are you going to be as efficient? Probably not. Are you going to be safe that way? Probably not either. All around you’ll want to attack if you want to kill stuff reasonably fast (and not die from their attacks) and the new mechanic allows you to use a retaliation build with decent attacking power rather than having to choose either one or the other.
I’m currently levelling a Cold based Infiltrator (seemed like a valid choice for a beginner build). I’m now at the point where i can use it like an Auramancer. I don’t have great gear but you don’t really need great gear to kill stuff with Aura of Censure + Night’s Chill + Dual Chillstrife (i literally used the first 2 lvl84 chillstrife i found so they have bad affixes but they work). I tried to walk around while my Blade Spirits and Nemesis trigger Elemental Storm and Rumor and mobs die from my auras and it works. It works but it’s slow and while i’m slowly killing the enemies they are hitting me and slowly eating away my hit points (i can’t dodge every attack). Alternatively i can Shadow Strike in the middle of the pack, cast Ring of Frost to trigger Whirlpool and strike the biggest baddy with Beronath Fury while my Auras take care of the trash. It works much better this way, monsters die faster, hit me less and i heal myself with my ADCtH.
I’m not trying to brag about anything, it’s still a beginner build that won’t go anywhere near Mad Queen anytime soon but i expect Retaliation will be pretty similar, only worse because you can’t kite mobs if you want to retaliate. You can either play very passive and wait while monsters are dying around, hoping you don’t die first, or you can be pro-active, attack priority targets, heal with ADCtH and let your retaliation take care of trash. If i understand correctly (i didn’t have a chance to test it) the new mechanic was designed in that spirit : to help retaliation builds be more pro-active and thus both stronger and more interesting to play.
If it was the other way around direct retaliation would probably be negligible and that would defeat the purpose of the skill because there would be better ways to increase damage than rely on some useless retaliation that needs to be multiplied to become effective as an attack damage. Both direct retaliation and the damage added to attack need to do significant damage for such a build to be valid. Doesn’t mean the numbers are perfect, they will probably change in future patches but Crate and the play-testers have a much better idea than we of the current balance.
The way I see it this exists to make retaliation builds more viable since retaliation damage is completely useless against ranged/caster enemies and anything that exclusively uses ranged attacks and has a self heal is basically unkillable without this
Because at 400% a full on retaliation build would have like +1,000,000 damage added to the attack
You have to remember that flat retal sources are huge compared to regular flat damage sources. Some can go upwards in the thousands, which would make it ridiculously overpowered if you could push all of that through 100% retal to attack.
sorry if some people assume i hate retal builds. i just kinda frustrated that retal builds have little options when dealing with ranged mobs.
but i guess that’s the cons of retal builds. i’ll just have to accept that retal builds are meant to be hard counter to melee enemies and struggle when dealing with ranged crowds (in coop, this is non issue though). though eventually retals will defeat the rangers, just with much more time.
regarding pet builds and aura builds, their similarities with retals are their passive gameplays. although retals are the most passive… while pet requires more awareness and auras relies on autoattack/nuke skills too.
however, i’m pretty optimistic that oathkeeper can do retal builds in the best way, while doing respectable damage to rangers through this new retal numbers>attack damage mechanics. this new mastery will spur players into finding the best way to play retals. win-win for all.
me irl
edit for actual content: I actually enjoy playing afk builds because they’re different and it’s hilarious watching enemies fall over themselves in front of you. Not everyone has fun in the same ways.