Guild Wars 2

I enjoy the concept of underwater combat in gw2, and I think it is by far the best underwater combat I have ever seen. However it still falls short of being truly enjoyable and something to seek out in part to its disconnect to the rest of your build. You may spec a certain way but if you can’t use the skills that correspond to your build you are left with and underwhelming experience.

To this end I propose a future living story that introduces a new map that is 80% or more underwater, hopefully built with lots of vertically like the zephyr sanctum zone. Especially with a rumored deep sea dragon this seems a highly likely event. However it should coincide with a major rework of underwater combat.

To me the basics of underwater combat are fine, what is needed is the support stuctures to allow diverse builds. That means traits, utility skills, elite skills and potentially even healing skills. Possibly even a few more underwater weapons so everyone isn’t using the same ones.

The trait system should be split to an underwater and on land version. Each would have the 5 trait lines but each would be geared exclusively to terrestial or aquatic. Seeing as some skills overlap there could be some traits repeated in both. Seeing as trairs use a hexagon to denote how many points you have available to spend perhaps use a circle (bubble) to denote aquatic trait points. This would greatly help the feeling of losing our power when we enter the water.

Skills. We have skills that can not be used underwater. That’s all well and good but pleaseadd some aquatic sskills to increase our options underwater. Losing nearly half your potential skills underwater is disheartening. Losing the ones that make your build work even worse.

By adding a series of traitlines and skills exclusively for aquatic use would help flesh the system out and do exactly what the concept is now. To make it feel like a unique part of the game. It is hard when playing a class and have your traits actively work against you underwater. IE guardian concecrations and ground targeting. Instead let us spec for the uniqueness of the water. I may want to be a wellmancer on land and a conditionmancer underwater, and that should be a possibility that is as easy as diving under the waves.