Guild Wars 2

So a trend has been slowly creeping up on GW2 over the last year. I’m not talking about the ascended creep but the slowly phasing out of underwater combat. It’s most obvious when you see that Raid on the Capricorn was removed from both the team and solo queue rotations. In recent news, the big revamp to the WvW borderlands map is going to remove the vast majority of the underwater content in WvW (details: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Bloodlust-in-the-Borderlands-Details/first) and despite the opportunity to make one of the five capture points an underwater one for variety, they chose to make them all land combat. In another thread on the sPvP subforum a dev commented that the underwater combat is being removed from the Temple of the Silent Storm.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

We have a lot on our plate but what you can expect to see soon is:

• Temple of the Silent Storm map layout re-work (took out the water)

You could also argue that underwater combat gets very little attention when it comes to skill balance (and build variety). Ranger spirits die when moving from land to water, trap builds are completely kitten in the water, downed rangers are outright broken and most classes have very limited build variety and skill choices when going into the water. At launch it was clearly incomplete (elementalists didn’t even have an underwater elite) and one year later it’s far behind other aspects of the game (and it certainly isn’t balanced). Jon Sharp mentioned that class balance becomes much more difficult when you change skills between formats, underwater combat certainly adds to that work load.

Aside from an appearance in the daily rotation (aquatic kills) underwater content has been completely absent from the Living Story over the last year. Even Southsun Cove, the perfect opportunity to have a large underwater component, was almost barren of underwater content (most of it is just empty space with nothing to do there).

So now we have:

• The underwater map removed from the sPvP tournament rotations.
• An underwater component of another map is going to be removed.
• The majority of the underwater areas of WvW are being replaced.
• Almost no support or content for underwater combat in the Living Story.
• Over a year since launch and the best water breather is a green with fixed stats and ascended armour on the horizon.

Does ArenaNet not believe in underwater combat any more? Do we care?

Personally i dislike the underwater combat because;

1) Heavily Unbalanced
2) Z axis
3) No, seriously, heavily unbalanced, it has been 1 year since release and the game is in a really bad balancing state, and now you want to make it worse by adding more stuff to take into consideration?!
4) Cant seem to be able to get my point across clearly so I will say it again; game is really unbalanced, underwater is even worse.
5) Cant finish off players there, rangers are impossible to kill, mesmers can put and keep up 25 stacks of bleed in less than 2 seconds, you cant hit thieves, eles get rolled, guardians are so meh….etc etc etc

It would have been sweet if they made an important underwater spot to fight over in WvW, that would have added an interesting dynamic to the game, but you are totally right they seem to be removing a lot of it. Probably because the underwater content is unpopular, but that has to do with things like poor camera, poor skill balance for underwater, etc.

They don’t seem to care about anything which doesn’t fit their misguided e-sport agenda. PvE balance has been in a miserable state since launch and yet just about every single balance change has been driven by SPvP issues and when it comes to that underwater combat is just about irrelevant.

So yes, they certainly seem to have abandoned it for now. Maybe things will improve once the e-sport obsession dies down a little.

Fortus.6175:

Personally i dislike the underwater combat because;

1) Heavily Unbalanced
2) Z axis
3) No, seriously, heavily unbalanced, it has been 1 year since release and the game is in a really bad balancing state, and now you want to make it worse by adding more stuff to take into consideration?!
4) Cant seem to be able to get my point across clearly so I will say it again; game is really unbalanced, underwater is even worse.
5) Cant finish off players there, rangers are impossible to kill, mesmers can put and keep up 25 stacks of bleed in less than 2 seconds, you cant hit thieves, eles get rolled, guardians are so meh….etc etc etc

Yup. Pretty much this. I have never played an mmorpg in my life that was so unbalanced. This coming from a thief. People literally cannot hit me when I go underwater at all. Why? I tap one skill which costs 3 initiative, (barely anything), and they can’t hit me for 5 seconds while I can still attack them. And I can SPAM that skill over and over.

Yet I get on my Elementalist and get stunned, punched in the gut repeatedly, and killed in like 3 seconds. I might as well just spontaneously combust automatically when I enter water. In fact, I would probably prefer that because it would spare me from humiliation.

I would let Anet do a complete maintenance of the game where they took it offline for a month to do the maintenance, just so they could analyze the classes and determine a good balancing point, because it’s been an entire year, and the classes are still crap.

You could argue that poor support for a format can lead to its unpopularity with players. If the only problem with underwater combat is its balance, one would assume it would be balanced better.

I think the dramatic imbalance in underwater combat has led to a very hostile reception from the PvP crowd (although imbalance shouldn’t annoy WvW people too much, food buffs, numbers etc are all bigger concerns than any imbalances in underwater combat). Instead of balancing underwater combat (it’s insane that rangers are still so powerful in downed state in the water) the sPvP team (who seem to hold the reigns when it comes to class balance for all formats) are outright removing it.

nuuuuuuu why remove the water from temple of the silent storm?

Do not fret, in the next release we will be sent underwater for 5s after getting hit by one of Tequila’s attacks.

The problem I have with underwater combat in PvE standpoint is that I have to buy gear for it, which is just another added expense and another worry. Water combat is simplified version of land combat do to the fact that half the utilities cannot be used and you are limited to about 1-2 weapons. There is almost nothing unique about fighting in underwater than fighting on land. (Only thing really unique are different ranger pets and enemies, which are just generic fish/shark/jellyfish mostly.)

Water combat has a lot of potential, but it does fall flat on its face and that most people do not want to learn how to fight there.

However, I do not think Arenanet can abandon it or at the very least remove it entirely at least in PvE.
1)Underwater legendaries exist, my friend has one, it would be really unfair to those people.
2)Some of the maps are half underwater (i.e. Bloodtide Coast, Sparkfly Fen, and parts of Orr)
3)We have an underwater Elder dragon to deal with. There could be a lot of potential there to make underwater combat engaging. However, since Arenanet does not care anymore about Elder Dragons and instead focuses on just creating other storylines that have NOTHING to do with the main story of the game, I doubt this will ever happen in GW2 lifespan.

Also, they have added 1 thing to underwater content. Underwater fractal. Other than that though, you are right.

I agree, underwater combat needs a massive rework.

Diviner.7405:

Underwater legendaries exist, my friend has one, it would be really unfair to those people.

Well, technically, any of GW2’s aquatic weapons could be used out of the water.

Recently I had the single most, unforgettably enjoyable 2 v 1 battle, that lasted for at least 6 minutes, over land and sea;

It began with 2 against me on the shores. I retreated into the water knowing I would likely have an advantage with my powerful aquatic pets and exotic aquatic weapons—most don’t carry them.

I soon downed one of the two enemies, but the remaining warrior proved tougher. After minutes exchanging blows under water, we came up onto the Krait island, but I had no intention of fighting amidst an army of Krait where my Ranger armour would not hold up as long as my enemy’s warrior armour. So I fired my knockback arrow sending the warrior back into a group of Krait before I dove once again into lake and headed for dry land on the mainland.

My heart was filled with joy and battlesong, as I turned to see the warrior pursuing me to the mainland. I stood, bow drawn awaiting his arrival on the far shore. He swam up onto the shore his great sword swinging, I dodged, firing my arrows and a battle ensued for a minute longer before… a lone friendly commander jogged past and finished him off as I stood disappointed… feeling as though I had somehow betrayed my enemy. The commander ran off, without a word, without a pause.

I knelt at my enemy’s body by the shore in silent respect. It was an honour.
May we meet in battle again someday.

I really hope so. The water combat in this game is quite annoying.

Fernling.1729:

I really hope so. The water combat in this game is quite annoying.

2nd.

Just take it out, and give us Spears for land-based weapons. Tridents as well I suppose. No Spearguns needed.

They have also forgotten that water breathers existed.

The saddest part about underwater combat, is that my ranger fights better underwater than on land.

• Fights better underwater. Check.
• Talks to fish. Check.

My ranger is Aquaman.

They really need to get ALL SKILLS (or a variant) WORKING UNDERWATER.

If I have to change my build every time I go into the sea, something is horribly wrong.

Kinda sucks because people were excited about underwater combat and I was impressed when I first saw it too. Now… well… /shrug

The difficult with water combat is the additional dimension for movement. We lack the controls for it, and therefore feel clumsy and awkward, instead of free. My recommendation would be to add movement/attack skills that directly propel the player vertically.

I like underwater, NO jumping puzzles

My Necro, however, gets really peeved at the only minion with flippers cannot swim!!

@requiem, ‘key binding’ helps.

Underwater combat was actually abandoned by Anet before release, hence the fact it is unfinished broken and unbalanced.

Fortus.6175:

Personally i dislike the underwater combat because;

1) Heavily Unbalanced
2) Z axis
3) No, seriously, heavily unbalanced, it has been 1 year since release and the game is in a really bad balancing state, and now you want to make it worse by adding more stuff to take into consideration?!
4) Cant seem to be able to get my point across clearly so I will say it again; game is really unbalanced, underwater is even worse.
5) Cant finish off players there, rangers are impossible to kill, mesmers can put and keep up 25 stacks of bleed in less than 2 seconds, you cant hit thieves, eles get rolled, guardians are so meh….etc etc etc

Never mind buggy leashing. Oh, and necromancers turn into GS warriors…

I think they just need more time to work out all the kinks, and water combat has a lot of … (hate this filter) kinks. However, they simply can’t do everything at once. Not enough man power (no matter what job you’re in, this is always an issue it seems), not enough hours in the day.

Fortus.6175:

Personally i dislike the underwater combat because;

1) Heavily Unbalanced
2) Z axis
3) No, seriously, heavily unbalanced, it has been 1 year since release and the game is in a really bad balancing state, and now you want to make it worse by adding more stuff to take into consideration?!
4) Cant seem to be able to get my point across clearly so I will say it again; game is really unbalanced, underwater is even worse.
5) Cant finish off players there, rangers are impossible to kill, mesmers can put and keep up 25 stacks of bleed in less than 2 seconds, you cant hit thieves, eles get rolled, guardians are so meh….etc etc etc

It’s Heavily Unbalanced because they haven’t touched it to balance it. -.- They took the time out to nerf Thief into the ground (underwater ground?) though so feel free to hit them. Thief spear sucks hard and so does water combat as Thief now by having that on top of having 0 utility and 0 elite skills in water for 95% of builds.

Underwater combat is not in a suitable state for any major content. The weapon skills are broken in a variety of ways. Some classes have their utilities gutted out. Trait lines crash out with the utilities. There’s little balance in PvP or PvE. Rebreathers could be made purely cosmetic. And so on.

The major underwater fights in fractals and HoTW are not good and and not popular. Even well designed underwater bosses they are likely to fail again without a total revamp to water combat. They are right not to add any more right now.

(This is even without considering the long term underwater 3d problems that will persist after any skills revamp).

Underwater combat is not as broken as many would lead you to believe. They have just not invested the time or resources into becoming a better fighter under the water.

L2P

What I like about underwater combat in GW 2 that differs from other MMOs is that control was designed well, it didn’t feel like a encumbrance to enter the water, and that you had unique skills to play with underwater. I think it would be tragic for them to abandon it instead of work on the problems, which I see as:

- Enemies can be tightly packed together in some zones, making for frustrating combat experiences that rely on motion.
- Not all professions are created equal. Some are enjoyable underwater, some are acceptable, and some are just terrible. Builds can influence what you find enjoyable. For example, I like a condition damage mesmer underwater, but would probably find a berzerker mesmer boring
- There are not enough interesting utilities for underwater play. Some professions get neat variations to their utilities underwater, some do not. Some lose too many utility choices when entering the water.
- Aqua breathers are a fairly useless invention that just add more gear to acquire. Aqua breather shouldn’t be a slot, just a cosmetic item based on your helmet. You get you helmet’s stats/runes underwater

Underwater combat is fun, but since most players don’t like it, it will likely go away. I wish they’d balance it, improve it, and add more of it.

Requiem.8769:

The difficult with water combat is the additional dimension for movement. We lack the controls for it, and therefore feel clumsy and awkward, instead of free. My recommendation would be to add movement/attack skills that directly propel the player vertically.

You can easily set a key to move you down under water. I set mine to “C” so that C goes down, spacebar goes up. Water combat much easier.

It’s an aspect of the game I wish they would have given more attention to. Most maps don’t necessitate underwater combat and so players aren’t forced to learn how it works. Combine that with either utterly dull or imbalanced weapons and you have our current problem with aquatic combat. It’s just another gimmick that they can’t seem to get working so they’ll shove it under the rug for now.

Edit: I wanted to add that this is a lost opportunity here. What few underwater areas we have are absolutely gorgeous and give the player a sense of discovery and exploration that the land just can’t measure up to imo.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Underwater combat is not as broken as many would lead you to believe. They have just not invested the time or resources into becoming a better fighter under the water.

L2P

Are you going to say that same thing to a ranger running a trap build (all their armour, food buffs if PvE, and trait choices are tailored towards traps) only to find that their build flat out doesn’t exist once they hit water?

What is a trap ranger supposed to do when Raid on the Capricorn rolls around? Avoid water completely? What about a spirit ranger. Spirit can exist on both land and water but they can’t transition between the two. Often it feels like you can’t enter the water any time shortly after you summon your spirits because they will all die as soon as they enter it. There is definitely a balance/design issue with underwater combat. It’s not simply a case of L2P.

I have a feeling they’re pushing back water combat revamping until we start heading towards the water dragon. By that time, I sincerely hope that all abilities can work underwater, and they make it so we can use more weapons (like daggers) underwater.

Copestetic.5174:

Fernling.1729:

I really hope so. The water combat in this game is quite annoying.

2nd.

Just take it out, and give us Spears for land-based weapons. Tridents as well I suppose. No Spearguns needed.

Speargun legendaries can always be reworked into Rifles

I avoid underwater at all costs. It’s clunky and annoying. With my luck the next Living Story achievements will be some underwater version of SAB that also includes doing 300 45 minute underwater invasions.

Puru.4217:

Do not fret, in the next release we will be sent underwater for 5s after getting hit by one of Tequila’s attacks.

The problem I’ve seen with that one is that it treats the water much like other games do: You stay under too long and you drown (well, it’s supposedly poisoned water by TeQuatl himself, but still…).

What I was really hoping for was a push towards more underwater areas, possible zones, and creatures. Looking at Southsun Shores as on exampled area, there’s very little ‘water’ interaction with players on this secluded island resort* (*note: it’s not a resort and the locals will kill you).

Bubbles is an inevitability with this game. When it’s introduced, I’m really hoping that it’s done through the care of being a gigantic water area instead of a measly washed ashore dragon.

P.S. I recall a screenshot of a zone area that looked like an underwater Atlantis early on during the game’s development cycle. This was showing players outside this bubbled dome mini-town/hub with sea creatures all about and coral surrounding the area. Quite beautiful, like most underwater areas in this game, whatever happened to it?

Underwater combat simply CAN’T be balanced properly with only one or two weapons per profession. They would have to add whole new weapons just to attempt to balance it, because current weapons are usually only good in one build (eg elementalist is only good underwater with power build… and even then are far outclassed by mes and engineer). It should remain a pure pve feature, and looks like Anet is finally realizing it.

We are over a year into the game and no second dragon on the horizon. By my count we have Primordius, Kralkatorrik, Mordemoth, Jormag and the deep sea dragon. We have no idea when the next dragon conflict will be revisited by the Living Story (from what we’ve been told, we have to wade through more Scarlet filler first). Given the priority of underwater combat in development so far and the fact that he doesn’t even have a name yet, it’s not unreasonable to think it could be over a decade before the story ever gets onto him (assuming they keep up development for that long).

As far as it being a PvE only feature… it’s barely that with the direction the game has gone post launch.

If they haven’t they should. Most people only participate in water combat when forced.

I think after the first few months, the balance devs sat down and discussed whether or not to continue balancing underwater combat. Obviously, the answer became no (unless something is game breaking). Why? Well, I’ll paraphrase something one of the devs said a bit ago about splitting skills. If we split the skills in the respective areas of the game, resource wise, it will be the same as keeping up with three separate games.

Now, how does this relate to underwater combat and why we don’t see any balance there now? I believe there are two main reasons. First, the game is currently fairly poorly balanced on land and the vast majority of the player base cares considerably more about land combat versus water combat. Second, as related to my paraphrase above, creating a balanced underwater combat scene would be like creating a new game’s worth of balanced skills. This then doubles/triples if skills need to be split (see where I’m going with this?). In other words, it requires the same workload, yet is much less appreciated by the player base. Have you ever heard anyone say they quit GW2 because the underwater combat sucked? I haven’t. However, I have heard more people than I can recall tell me that they quit or took a break from GW2 due to the land combat being imbalanced or distasteful (fairly common now as many people don’t like the condi spam meta).

Siphaed.9235:

Puru.4217:

Do not fret, in the next release we will be sent underwater for 5s after getting hit by one of Tequila’s attacks.

The problem I’ve seen with that one is that it treats the water much like other games do: You stay under too long and you drown (well, it’s supposedly poisoned water by TeQuatl himself, but still…).

If that’s the case, I have absolutely no trouble believing that it’ll be a “do once to honestly say you’ve experienced it, then NEVER AGAIN” event for most people.

It is pretty obvious that underwater is not a priority atm (good sign of it : we’re stuck with a non-max green breather since launch, even though exotic breathers exist in PvP). Since Karka and Fractals (who were obviously in dev before launch), I can’t think of a single update that did anything underwater.

I think that while I appreciate going underwater as it is an interesting feature, many people like me have the feeling that it is completely separated from the rest of the game. If I take my Mesmer for example : I use a berserker/fantasm build with appropriate runes and sigils, but underwater this does not work very well, so my character sux. Do I want to change my build because of this ? Certainly not. And I can’t use my legendary underwater …

I think the devs realized that underwater needs more than just a skill balance to be fully enjoyable and as it’s not a priority, they maybe leave it for a future major release.

Fungalfoot.7213:

They don’t seem to care about anything which doesn’t fit their misguided e-sport agenda. PvE balance has been in a miserable state since launch and yet just about every single balance change has been driven by SPvP issues and when it comes to that underwater combat is just about irrelevant.

So yes, they certainly seem to have abandoned it for now. Maybe things will improve once the e-sport obsession dies down a little.

Chiming in to agree here.