When 10 people are trying to defend a tower against 30 people, their main weapon is good AE. Let the arrow carts rain down. Let the meteors fall into the zerg. Make the zerg, at the very least, spread out a little bit and hopefully take longer to bash their way in, giving reinforcements time to arrive.
With retaliation, this badly needed mechanic is ruined.
Arrow carts die sometimes literally in 2 shots. I have dropped an arrow cart, fired it twice and had it die purely due to retaliation.
Attacking people on the door with your own abilities is tantamount to suicide because the amount of damage returned to you is way more than what you are doing to any individual.
The engineer mortar is rendered useless because, like the arrow cart, it will quickly explode due to retaliation.
In sPvP or PvE, retaliation is a fun little mechanic that adds a little damage to people hitting you. It’s nice to have but it’s not like “omg you don’t have retaliation/are you stupid”.
In WvW, it’s completely ruinous and does nothing but empower the zerg. There are a couple of ways to strip boons from groups (see Mesmer and Necro) but there aren’t enough ways, and things like guardian abilities that simply pulse 1 second of retaliation every second are effectively immune to these boon-removers anyway.
Arrow carts in beta were death to the zergs, forcing people to use more complex strategies. Retaliation is death to arrow carts so complex strategies are out the window and it’s nothing but “pile on the door and beat it with your fists” now. Throw in some light fields and explosions or else a few guardians and there’s nothing the enemy can do to stop you short of showing up with their own zerg.
