Came to me while trolling around the reddit:
So currently the issue with underwater combat in spvp (Raid on the Capricorn) is that classes are too unbalanced underwater.
I don’t think this is the case at the mechanical level of the individual skills, but the thin nature of underwater stuff does mean that build diversity takes a giant hit, which is what I think (other than general MMO loathing of underwater directed at me every time I mention it in games, forums etc) was the source of the reason Capricorn was retired.
How to fix this? IMO, until some better thing can be put in place, make all underwater combat stats 100% uniform, and then take all the existing skills and retool their effects around this. Every class will keep the skills they have now, your gear’s stats will not have the chance to be in conflict with the skills you are bound to (lack of weapon/utility diversity) because they will all be the same.
Entering the water trips a flag currently that causes your aqua breather to appear, and your weapons and skills to change to their underwater counterparts, so this would also then be applied to your stats. How to apply it to your armor stats? My idea is tie it to that breather, make it the underwater version of SPvP amulets… that 1 piece of gear will carry the full complement of stats while you are underwater, and your armor and the runes on your armor will be flagged inactive as your land weapons.
Why wouldn’t the full stat breather be enough? Frankly, no. It is my opinion that several classes underperform very badly underwater. So fixing it will require a homogenization of the stats, as well as retooling and balancing of the skills. Each class would keep the same skills they have now, and thus retain the uniqueness of each class, but hopefully the power issues would be addressable and simpler to fix.
I don’t see underwater combat being expanded in the near future, I honestly think we won’t ever see Steve Bubbles or it’s minions in an underwater setting because of how so many people feel about underwater combat. So I don’t expect a rewrite or large expansion of that kind of content. I am simply putting out an example of how to try to balance what is currently there without scrapping it totally. It may not be realistic, I don’t know how the systems are written, I can only guess at it and base my suggestions off what I see from the end user’s perspective playing the game.
But I do enjoy underwater fighting, PvE and PvP(WvW now only), I find the third movement dimension adds something to the play, and I enjoy the aspect that we are not the lords of that realm. That fact alone makes fighting underwater special to me, to enter a place that is unfamiliar and alien, explore it, love it, and kill all it’s inhabitants.