Guild Wars 2

Than getting 2 shot by a NORMAL MOB underwater in Orr. I am a thief in full toughness/healing/precision gear, maybe I could use a little more vitality but I highly doubt even 10k more HP would help much, the spin attack those mobs do is pretty much instant, I never die to anything else but these mobs. I never enter water, as if WoW wasn’t any indication, underwater combat should never be done in an MMO. I actually hate underwater more in GW2. It’s just atrocious. Mobs fill every millimeter (in AND out of water)

This brings me to my next rant, GW1 had its fair share of frustration mechanics but nothing tops GW2. I have LOATHED 90% of my story because the AI is so terrible it’s a total joke and they die way too fast. I’m just one thief and basically I’m expected to do all the heavy lifting while dying in a few hits if I don’t play like some MLG pro. I just want to enjoy the game, let me play without testing my mental state 24/7. I just get way too frustrated all the time, if I wanted to play a diffcult game I’d go load up battletoads on my sega genesis. Condition stacking mobs are ridiculous, sometimes I get stun/confusion locked and I don’t have a trillion condition removals.

I understand difficulty is a large part of MMO’s, I was a semi-hardcore raider in WoW for 5+ years. Heroics are my bread and butter, but what I’m talking about is normal gameplay. Boss fights, dungeon mobs, those are what should be difficult. Not some rando commando.

Just let me enjoy something while I relax, kay ANet? Kay. Pretty sure I’ll never enter Orr again, it’s so annoying.

I’m sure this will fall on nothing but deaf ears and trolls, but meh, rant over anyway.
inb4 game is ez, dodge, etc.

Btw, loved the mad king fight.

I will admit that it does feel like going underwater is six times as dangerous as staying on land. For some reason, enemies seem to hit harder, move faster, and have more annoying control skills beneath the waves. Plus, is it just me, or are underwater skills substantially weaker than land skills?

Underwater is a dismal failure. I pretty much hate everything about it.

Yes, they do feel extremely weaker. And I run out of initiative five times faster as well, seeing as how I run a stealth build to make matters 10 times worse, I need to be able to control the fight fully to manage my resources but underwater it’s simply impossible unless I rolled a build specifically for maximum resource management to survive underwater (perma dodge 5 skill hurrdurr) I really don’t get why I have no stealth underwater except for my heal..

I hate the underwater enemies that seem to have a constant 75% chance to dodge you.

I have no idea if it’s something they do or if it’s related to the pathing/invuln thing but yeah.

Many monsters throughout the game are still “overtuned” as in they hit surprisingly hard compared to the average monster.

Consistently Dangerous:
Risen Sharks
Risen Hylek

It’s a problem but it may take quite a while for anet to fix these as they have a lot of other things to fix as well.

what are those brown vine tornado things? they hit you on land or in the water, don’t appear to come from any mobs and you can’t do anything about them. there’s that one skill point in malchor’s leap i just can’t get solo because of these things. they’re hitting me for about 1k and they strike every few seconds.

I know that for me my biggest issue with underwater combat is that I can’t use utility skills. I mean I could, if every time I was going to go into the water I paused to switch them up. But that’s too much effort, so I only ever use the same skills underwater, because even my elite is land only. If they just made every skill work underwater things would be great.

Is an underwater spike trap really that implausible? What about an entangling kelp elite?

Katie Feathermoore.5031:

I know that for me my biggest issue with underwater combat is that I can’t use utility skills.

If, while under water, you change yer utility skills on yer bar, they’ll auto change ta that settup each time ya go under water.

Underwater combat just got a lot better haha. Thanks Jack.

>>Katie said “Underwater combat just got a lot better haha. Thanks Jack.”<<

Ya think that’s a nice revelation, I only found out two weeks ago that ya could use skills under water! I’d been swimmin’ around with nothin’ but me weapon skills for a month an’ a half!

Hearing that some people still didn’t know you equipped underwater skills, underwater, it makes me wonder if people still didn’t realize their normal headgear is unequipped and replaced by the underwater one.

I know some players never bothered to upgrade their underwater helm (Karma merchants sell ’em), much less RUNE them with a 7th rune of the one they are using in their main armor. Thus not only are they down on the armor/stats, but also down on the 6th Superior Rune bonus of the set they use on land.

Underwater skills still needs more work (and MORE variety of them too, if not skills specifically for just underwater), though.

I don’t really have issues underwater on my Staff Ele. And Ele is possibly worse off underwater than most. We have only one weapon we can use underwater and it’s skillset is very similar to the Staff except it has no combo fields. We have only one Elite that works underwater and it’s very “meh”. Some of our best utility skills don’t work underwater. But overall it’s enough to do well IMO.

I don’t even think underwater combat feels all that different to be honest for an Ele. But maybe as an Ele I have a leg up since we have to learn to use all our skills and be versatile and quick from a low level even on land lol. Ele’s do more dying at low levels before we learn and it gets easier after that for us, so I suppose for other classes you’re all just learning the harder lessons now.

Underwater might take some adapting for some people but it’s not as bad as you all make it out to be. You’re not on land so don’t expect that the same tactics will work, try doing things a bit differently. For me we have bad damage underwater but a lot of ways to control the mob, so I keep rotating my blinds/CCs/etc. to keep the mob at bay while I take them down and my spec has a lot of condition cleansing already so that’s not an issue. Then I have a few utilities for stun breaks, invulnerability, and defense if I need them and one that produces crits on demand for a bit of extra damage underwater where I can get it. As a Staff Ele on land I rely on the ability to constantly use combos but I can’t do that underwater so I change things around to something that does work. An Ele specced for more damage than me might play differently than I do. But underwater works fine if you take the time to figure it out.

And the above poster has a good point – don’t forget to update that gear. You need to update your underwater headpiece as well as your underwater weapons.

You can use utility skills underwater?

………..

Would have been nice to have known that a couple of months ago.

Some of them yes, some no. There will be an icon on the skill letting you know if it’s usable underwater. But like another poster said, once you go underwater you can set the skills you want to use and it gets saved so every time you go underwater it automatically switches.

As a ranger with a shark, I actually fare better 1-on-1 with a mob under water than I do on land with a bow…

Throw multiples at me, though, and my face gets eaten. Axe/horn wins there (especially if there’s only 2 mobs)