Retaliate skills; I'm just gonna say it

Nobody wants a skill they cant use. Everything in PoE has always been a problem to be solved. The skills you take, all serve a purpose, but can generally be broken down into 4 categories, your primary damaging ability, a ability that buffs your primary damaging ability, a defensive layer, or an ability that buffs your defensive layer. The only category retaliate falls into is damage. So they should be constantly usable, especially on the class that has room in its ascendancy for these skills specifically.

You cant solve retaliation. Randomly being gatekept from using this ability feels really bad. these skills are not in a place where they are busted OP, and being able to spam them is not problematic. Its strange that as a glad, where you get the node in your ascendancy tree, you cant get to 90 or 100% chance to not use the CD. there were better ways to solve this too, for example, blocking could has granted you an additional charge, or 2 additional ones, and the anoint could have granted you an additional charge, either way something creative to sustain the damaging train that is your primary ability. They dont provide a buff to fit into the primary ability buff, or defensive layer buff catagories.

My advice, since the league is still fresh, would be to increase the gladator node to 70% chance to not use the CD, leave the anoint, and give us glads who want to play these new retaliate skills 90%, and figure out a way to add a sustainable playstyle in 3.26, maybe with a unique to bridge the 30% gap, or bring it closer.

there are quite a few issues with them, in general i think it is worst part of this patch

1) you go all in or you dont go. unless you can make them ~permanently available the gameplay turns into FOMO + quick time event fest. you spend disproportionate time and energy keeping track of them.

2) attack time. SLOW attack time. they can do whatever damage but if the attack time is slow as molasses im not interested. on a two hander - it is suicide to use them. old Vengeance was tailor made precisely to help 2handers with a passive and hassle-free option. but thats is gone and we are left with something that 2handers cannot really use

3) the numbers.. arent that great. they for sure are nice but once you factor activation time, unreliability and the opportunity cost (not dealing damage with main skill) suddenly that 2000% damage or whatnot isnt groundbreaking. UNLESS you can make them perma-chainable

4) these skills costing mana was a low blow


i personally cannot see them in a non-Glad build with 80+ all block. just slapping them on a regular build doesnt make sense and the skills are very weapon-restricted. my 3.24 counterattack build used mace (as these skills preffered raw 'hit', disregarding attack speed).

oh and the passives are very bloated and spread all over the place when all that matters is Prepared Response + mastery, everything else is mostly useless fluff

Yeah its confusing what the intent is with all the negative drawbacks, and no real way to solve them. If you wanted a skill to not be spamable as a primary damaging ability, then where are the buffs it provides? Why does it cost mana? Why is it so slow?

I support