Never played retaliation builds, and in the light of the new top 21 thought that it might the time.
However one thing about them is hard to understand.
The idea of retaliation itself seem quite simple.
Enemies attack me, and in case of landing a hit they get “hit back” by my retaliation damage, which is a separate stat. I can find it on gear, on devotion points and on the skills.
The first two are easy to understand. Let’s say I get 100 flat retal damage on my equipment and another 100 from devotion points. That means that each time an enemy hits me they suffer 200 of this retal damage (minus their %resistance against the damage type, if for example all my retal damage is fire).
Now, what I don’t yet understand is “retaliation damage added to attack” for skills.
For example Shattering Blast node for Grenado, which softcapped has “40% retaliation damage added to the attack”. Do I get it right that it’s just another “bonus damage” applied directly to the skill? So, in the example above, results in additional 200 * 0.4 = 80 flat damage added to the skill?
If it works like this, than it seems like it’s is just another way of adding / scaling damage.
So rather than stacking flat damage on my gear I would instead stack retal damage, which is then added to my Grenado.
If it so, than how’s retal builds any different from any other builds?
After all, I’m still spamming the same skill.
Or is there something more going on which makes them kinda special / unique in this regard?
Another question while we’re here: why is low DA considered good for such build?
I get it that if we don’t get hit then enemies won’t suffer our retal damage directly. But we’re still adding that damage to the skill, so why bother?
I guess there must be something more going on here.
I’m so confused I don’t even know where to start.
Please share the wisdom on retal builds
Yes, but it scales with retal (fire) damage % not with the regular (fire) damage %.
Because it requires different items and devotion setup.
Because the lower your DA the more likely enemies are to hit you. Since you’ll have a lot of retal damage, they’ll die faster than if they miss their attacks and don’t take damage in return.
Because they get hit ‘twice’. Once by hitting you and once by the grenade.
Would you want to not use skills and just stand there? Because that’s the alternative The funny thing is that you’re usually 1-p the main node of the skill, sometimes even the whole skill line which is funny.
I just want to add that don’t do that if you’re just starting out with Retal. This is just advance min-maxing technique.
Also they have different strengths and weaknesses. I.e. they are weaker against ranged characters and mages - might have a very difficult job to kill Crate. It also influences your gameplay. Theorycrafting them is and feels different.
Btw you can also make a Hybrid Retal / non-retal builds. I like those in particular. Pure Retal builds feel soulless to me
Would you want to not use skills and just stand there?
That’s what I assumed retal builds would be. But then those mages and cronley gang guys would live forever.
No, I was rather surprised because mechanically (from the player input standpoint, not from game mechanics under the hood) it feels the same as just stacking direct attack stats.
After all, I’m standing there spamming the skill.
In this regard the difference between casters and AA builds seems to be greater than betwenn retal (with added damage) and AA.
Kiting casters I’d say? That’s kinda not good / normal for Retal. Because spamming/tanking casters can feel similar to AA builds regardless if retal or not.
This is technically also possible, but a little slow to play. There are some skills which trigger on you taking damage, such as counterstrike and vindictive flame. (Edit: Those can help with casters in addition to the normal retal damage.)
Yeah I meant the general “feel” of an “arechetype” if you will. So I compared a pair of regular (non-retal) casters and regular AA builds, which to me feel quite different, to the pair of non-retal AA and retal added to attack, which to me (on paper) sound quite similar.
often you’d find it hard to get high amounts of retal dmg while getting normal dmg, so you’re essentially favouring one
in the old days this was horrendous, and basically never worth because we didn’t have RATA, so killing non melees were so abysmal it more than outweighed the benefits of melees selfPesi’ing on you in the blink of an eye
These days because of rata you get a “double” dmg boost on melees, but still suffering a kill speed penalty of casters for the tradeoff, Rata now then just allows you to actually kill them without falling asleep/or with the right amounts be competitive with “normal” builds
(basically it’s thematic catering/people out there like the idea of thorns build, but they sucked so they got made useable)
The funny thing is that you’re usually 1-p the main node of the skill, sometimes even the whole skill line which is funny.