Let me explain why I don't see any major issue with how the retaliation works.
Retaliation can be very powerful, it's especially useful against squeshy high dmg enemies.
Combined with LoneWolf I can see some of them even killing themself with 1hit.
On the flipside you have encounters where retaliations makes fights harder.
Like the one described earlier.
And now to the important point, I don't think that any fight will be unwinnable with a full retaliation build.
If that's not the case than I agree it needs to be changed.
However you might will be forced to use some spells/skills to deal dmg in certain situations.
Fights become extremely boring with high retribution. Most enemies who are squishy high damage dealers won't even try to hit you. I've been through several fights that most enemies just pass their turns. Maybe, not only the retribution itself has some intrinsic problems, but the AI is too binary when analyzing it. They'd rather pass their turn (or sometimes attack random civilians) than attacking a high retribution character. I've never been in a fight where an enemy one shot themselves, they are way too careful about this. The enemies just start casting all buff and defensive skills.
