Guild Wars 2

I’ve been running HotW paths 2 and 3 recently, which has gotten me thinking:

Which profession is the best for underwater content? I’m asking mostly for PvE, but it’d be nice to know for PvP as well, too.

I suspect it’s either ele or engi due to versatility, but I’d be surprised if the same amount of work went into underwater balance as land combat balance.

Engis are great with grenade kit underwater. Guardian and Mesmer are fantastic with tridents. Necro’s Deathshroud is also fantastic underwater as each blast transfers a condition, and they get a few survivability skills on their weapons. In wvw rangers do well because once they get into down state you can’t really stop their pet from rezing them, so it might take a few people to outdamage it.

I’d prolly say they go in order like that.

For underwater strength, I would say the following:

1. Necromancer
2. Ranger
3. Mesmer
4. Engineer
5. Guardian
6. Warrior
7. Thief
9. Elementalist

In that order. Warrior and Thief may get swapped around, and Engineer/Guardian may also get swapped.

Of note, Ranger ranks so highly primarily because you just can’t kill them. They still have a decent set of underwater skills, but the lack of stomping makes them close to invincible.

yup pretty much . . .

also as a note . . . thieves are the worst, if you feel that u can not win a thief go to the water, i thing there is not a single profession that thieves can kill underwater (with a decent player).

Or probably i’m just bad underwater xD

I think to fix underwater combat, one basic thing needs to happen:
You cannot heal normally underwater.

By that I mean:

• Other players cannot get you up from drowning state.
• The fourth skill makes you swim upwards at 200% speed, it doesn’t heal you.
• Only being at the surface heals, at a rate ~75% faster than the current one.
• Rallying is possible (but I’d change rally a bit in general, but that’s OT for this).

The low overall damage, the focus on CC in the 2 and 3 skills, it all makes sense if you consider that once upon a time, it wasn’t intended that underwater combat can be healed/helped. And honestly, just patch it for 6 months and see how it works.

It’d be interesting. the lower you go, the greater the risk, but also the greater the reward, because if you can trap an enemy that deep in the ocean there’s no chance they’ll escape once drowning.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Engis are great with grenade kit underwater.

No they are not.

Grenades are horrible underwater. They were good at one time because of a bug that often caused double explosions. They have a extreme spread to them As of now they are very poor under water. The only weapon choice they have is the Harpoon gun and the AA for example has an extremely slow movement rate. The regular swimming pace of a target is literally enough to move out of Homing torpedo (the auto attack) causing to to miss unless the target is at a stand still.

Ele underwater really isn’t that bad. Try running through your foe with Tidal wave (Water 5). You can take half or more of your foe’s health in the blink of an eye (Like fgs fiery rush on steroids, but all of the dmg is done immediately). The cooldown is kind of long, but it’s shorter than any of ele’s land burst that does similar damage. Ele also has multiple CC’s and a decent condi auto and power auto. The disadvantage is that evasive arcana and ether renewal don’t work underwater, so you have no condi removal without a utility like Cleansing Fire.

I for one like underwater battle.
But I play Necromancer, check the list above

I’d also say Necromancer and Ele are pretty good underwater. Necromancer even OP weapon wise, but the shortage on usable utilities makes up for that :/