Talent was briefly in the Warrior class tree for Midnight. Super flavorful, superb design. A passive successor to Retaliation. Great for dps in solo content and not too powerful for tanks. I presume it didn’t proc if an attack were avoided or mitigated (block, parry, dodge). Like Unfair Advantage for Rogues, it likely just struck back with the main hand weapon. Fury Warrior’s lament.
I believe the ability is kept in check by the capabilities, roles, and scenarios of each Warrior specialization. In PvE, if a dps Warrior can survive where their tank went down, they ought to be able to multi-attack at the expense of being pummeled. It feels like such a quintessential Warrior passive.
The premise is still cool though. I would’ve liked to see them iterate on it at least a bit. Perhaps tune something else down so they can tune this up. I doubt there are many that’d say it isn’t a fitting idea for Warriors.
I think the only way something like that returns to be both a strong/unique mechanic would be something like the following being a physical version of Spell Reflect.
Retaliation 25s CD.
5s duration.
Ready yourself into a counter stance reducing physical damage by 10%, retaliating against the next melee ability dealing XXX% damage ignoring armour.
It would be ok if it was just a passive part of your basic class skillset, something you just learn normally, not wasting talents, so it can be weak and still have the flavour
The thought of making it baseline hadn’t crossed my mind. Even if it isn’t exceptional in terms of damage, you wouldn’t have to exchange a valuable talent point for it. That way they can freely tune the damage numbers and adjust how the proc behaves with far less pushback from the community. Regardless of how it’s initially implemented, I think a passive like this is a fundamental boon to the very concept of Warriors.
Perhaps the damage could ramp upon the Warrior receiving successive direct melee hits? The ramp could be represented by a stacking buff so players can track it. Put a cap on those stacks. Give it a 1 second internal CD like Unfair Advantage. Unlike UA, a downside baked into this passive is that you must take direct melee damage (at least my version). I believe the exchange of health should be considered when tuning such a passive.
I didn’t have access to test and just skimmed the notes. Drew some conclusions based on the name. I could personally validate a low proc chance, low damage, and narrowing the proc conditions. However, it not generating rage is pointless otherwise and not intuitive.
I understand keeping it in check for the sake of balance, but that’s so severely undertuned I’d suspect it was being deliberately sabotaged. I’m now advocating for making it baseline and evidently overhauling it to mostly how I inferred it should work. Perhaps a speculative talent to replace Resonant Voice with one that buffs this hypothetical Retaliate.
Warriors already gain rage on taking direct damage, so tying it to a counter-attack, while perhaps thematic, is kind of redundant and prone to failure.
I mean I don’t hate the idea, but it’s kinda of just background bloat - not really something you’ll ever notice or meaningfully interact with.
Gameplay wise, an active cooldown like the original Retaliation would give a more meaningful sense of engagement. At the very least, I could see it being a potential enhancement to Die by the Sword or something.