Guild Wars 2

i had problems at the beginning with underwater combat but after a while it gets easier

underwater mobs mostly have less HP and you always have an underwater-weapon with a massiv AoE and most of them can’t follow you when fleeing on a beach/isle

but champions + underwater is just a frustrating combination - especially with a barracuda-zergfest around the champ

I will give them credit where it’s due by stating it’s the best system of underwater combat I’ve seen yet in a game like this. I dislike most underwater content but the environments are beautiful and the combat while isn’t quite there is a notch above most attempts. My first character was a Necromancer and I think they’re pretty good underwater, but there are still some issues that I think overlap with other professions.

My problems with it:
-Weapon choices feels limiting and does not always synergize well with builds we’ve set up.
-If your utilities happen to be unavailable underwater, then all your trait investment for these skills are also useless.
-It’s harder to make out distance and depth in water compared to land.

Idea: Now what I think would greatly improve underwater combat without having to create big changes is that give us the ability to have a trait build reserved JUST for underwater. That way it won’t feel like we have to sacrifice one end for another and feel like half a character underwater.

I agree with the OP on several points. First, the invulnerability issue needs to be fixed, and I’m sure it will be at some point. That said, I have found that my enjoyment of the underwater combat is slightly less due to the lack of choices we get for weapon skill sets/utility skills. I’m sure trade offs needed to be made here but I’m hoping they will be able to add in more weapon types and utility skills for this portion of the combat in the future, as I think it would help me enjoy it a great deal more.

Bytor.3826:

I cannot stand, I CANNOT STAND underwater combat in this game. Whenever I enter a zone with more than 20% water I cringe and get discouraged from playing. And unfortunately because of the story I unwittingly built I’m in a lot of water zones.

Not only is the combat clunky and boring, but there’s 3 game breaking issues with it.(Things I assume to be bugs.) I’m in the Straits of Devastation right now. And I can’t progress in the watery areas (i.e; 60% of the zone.) Can’t do it. I’ll tell you why I can’t do it. Because mobs respawn after 35 seconds. Because 70% of the time when I’m fighting a mob they bug out, reset, and turn around and finish me, because I’m weakened from the 3 minute scrap I just had with that veteran, and it isn’t. And because when they bug out for some awesome $%^&ing reason it pulls every other mob in a 100 yard radius, and I get obliterated.

For example, there an underwater skillpoint here (Out of probably 6 or something) that I cannot get. CAN’T DO IT. Why? Because there’s a veteran Risen guarding it with an insane amount of health, summons minions, deals a quarter of my health in damage to me every time it hits me (As a warrior, with 17k health, building toughness and vitality primarily), and bugs out and resets every time I get him to about 20%. Lets not forget the fact all the crap around him respawns every 30 seconds to a minute, AND THAT HE SUMMONS HIS OWN kitten MINIONS.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS? I realize the game is new, bugs are to be expected. But what I’m experiencing with the underwater combat right now is inexcusable. If the mobs were intended to respawn every 30 seconds, making it impossible to 1v1 a veteran and win, whatever. Thanks for the challenge. But these issues with the resetting and getting aggro on everything within a mile of you are things that should have been fixed well before the game went live.

how is it your warrior only having 17k health being lvl 70 or more? My lvl 60 warrior has 14.7k hp and around 1400 armor and she is dual weilding. Sounds like you need to upgrade your gear..Ive been doing that every 5 lvls or so ill get a couple new items and every 10 levels ill do an overhaul and replace all my gear and weapons if they are an upgrade. Also you should go back and reread the skill points you have. I had to do that at lvl 50 on my warrior..kept getting beatn up to easy until i took the time and read the skill points and redid my points and traits..now im a wrecking ball.

love underwater combat. it’s amazing.

I love underwater combat…. it’s my favorite part of the whole game. In fact, I specifically chose story paths that I knew would give me underwater combat. Of course, I am a ranger; so my armored fish is a big help.

It depends heavily on the class. Elementalist, for example, is absolutely atrocious underwater. If there’s hearts or DEs to do underwater, I’ll do whatever method doesn’t involve actual combat. The damage is just painfully pathetic. Then you jump on an engineer, use grenades underwater and literally auto-attack kill things in 1/4 the time it takes an ele.

So basically…I don’t find the gameplay bad. But they need to do some massive balancing.

Respawn rates are something that needs to be prolonged drastically under water, as well as on land.

I dont mind underwater combat, its far from perfect and as an elementalist i feel the dps is to low (great control skills, no dps). This can result into a long and boring kiting sessions.

It’s horrible on Elementist…The only element that ironically seems to do more damage UW is water/ice. It’s just so bad. That’s why I’m disappointed in UW combat, but the actual graphics are very nice.

apart from the invulnerability issue i think they did a good job. Yes, it is a lot harder, but that really seems to be one of the points when you enter the deep as a land creature (though it seems to harsh for some classes).

I like underwater more than normal combat.

Underwater combat is pretty “meh” for me. I am literally invincible on thief when I just spam shadow assault and on a crit build I never run out of initiative, even in pvp I am a god underwater. It’s boring, and the mob respawn rate and generally the ratio of enemies in any underwater area is far too high imo. It could be more interesting, but it’s no WoW water combat I’ll tell you that (absolutely hell)

ah the old re-appearing mob.. oh man this isnt just in water.. its everywhere…

I hate that when i try take on a few mobs and kill one—→ start on the next only to find the one i just killed respawned…i mean thats just cruel.. kinda means i have to run away or be stuck there fighting for ever..!!

I really like underwater combat, and the fact that it’s truly a 3D space (you can move above or below mobs and not aggro them, or attack from above or below).

Also, the underwater environments are stunningly beautiful.

I like the world underwater but really really HATE mobs turn to invulnerable without any reason !!!

As a Necro, my wells don’t work underwater, so with my build I lose a ton of effectiveness. I have to break out my minions which as everyone knows, do jack squat if they’re not traited. And they despawn if you pop out of the water, so you have to wait another 30sec to cast them again. REALLY ? The fact some classes have great underwater skills and other don’t is just another in a long list of “WTF Anet”?

So, lost effectiveness underwater+ invulnerability bug+crazy respawns=not a fun experience. It COULD be fun under there but its not. Prefer WOW where your character plays the same but you just have access to the Z access. Intuitive, effective, fun change of pace, but not an entirely new battle system.

Dusk jumps in every thread with a legitimate issue just to claim the game is fine and everyone is wrong. I’d claim he was paid off by arenanet but I doubt they’d hire someone so ignorant.

I’m not a fan of underwater combat either. Unless I’m using a grenade kit, it’s tedious as an engineer. The respawn rates are very annoying. In Orr, trying to complete underwater events is very difficult when attacking X pulls the aggro of four mobs and by the time they are dead, new mobs have spawned.

My biggest gripe is the “swim to the surface” mechanic. It seems pointless swimming to the surface just to be attacked and killed at the surface. It’s nice we get a shot, and I certainly shouldn’t get myself into a position where I get swarmed underwater, but it’s just implemented very well. Maybe if we had more powerful or useful abilities that we didn’t have to wait 5 seconds to be active, it would be better.

I love underwater combat, I’ve only run across the random invulnerability bug a couple of times, other than that it’s a blast.

I love swimming underwater as it’s beautiful and it adds another dimension to the game, but I loathe the combat.

This must really depend on your class. IMHO the engineer blows in underwater combat. (no pun intended) Underwater in closed quarters with the camera function being what it is, is an absolute joke to me. I get through it when I have to for the sake of achievements.

The underwater worlds themselves are great but I think the underwater gameplay needs alot of work and don’t find it the least bit enjoyable but hey, what do I know?

Another lover of underwater combat here.

Thread title should be: “underwater combat: do you want ME to hate it?”

I also like underwater combat.

Again, I’d be willing to bet the classes who “love underwater combat” are the classes who can generally tank most things underwater. The rest of us are loving our carpal tunnel syndrome from all the 5-15 minute slow motion strafing sessions.

I am a Thief and I wvwvw most of the time.

Raging Bull.5048:

Respawn rates are something that needs to be prolonged drastically under water, as well as on land.

I think players that have to farm crafting resources from underwater mobs would hate a change like this. I know I would have back when I needed tons of scales.

Fix other problems first. The invulnerability issue slows things down, which in turn can make the respawn rate an issue if you’re spending too much time on a single mob.

I have also seen many players blame the respawn rates incorrectly when fighting a mob that has the ability to summon other mobs. They kill (for example) a barracuda and immediately another one appears – they think they’re looking at a respawn when in reality the first barracuda simply summoned another one a moment before it died. This can happen repeatedly leaving the player to come to the incorrect conclusion that the barracuda has an instant respawn rate.

Ele / War here and I don’t like it, I just don’t.. Has nothing to do with how it works in game, I just don’t like it.. Same in WoW Cata, just plain hated the first levels in underwatercombat.. Same for air combat in other games, for that matter.. Not my kind of bag…

Vlaxitov.5693:

Again, I’d be willing to bet the classes who “love underwater combat” are the classes who can generally tank most things underwater. The rest of us are loving our carpal tunnel syndrome from all the 5-15 minute slow motion strafing sessions.

Think it might be a class issue, too. I’d like to hear from people who like the combat, what classes do you play? I’ve played everything but elementalist and engineer. Bugs aside, I’ve found it to range from ok, to pretty good – except on my necro.

On my necro, it’s terrible. Necros don’t get any ranged attacks on either weapon choice underwater. The whole class depends heavily on its utilities, but can be spec’d in ways that don’t work there, either.

Take a combat system that’s supposed to be dynamic and exciting. Put it underwater and it’s not anymore.

The system feels like it’s not done yet, not ready for release. A PvP thief has exactly one "choice’ for elite. Even floating in the middle of the water, mobs glitch out and go invulnerable.. My personal story segment yesterday the mentor npc and our target disappeared into the wall. I finished the fight beating on the mob that wouldn’t fight back…

It’s just clunky. I’m pretty sure if it actually worked well, I’d still not care for it. but at least it should work well.

Personally, I love underwater combat.

If I was a betting man I would bet the skillpoint the OP is talking about is the one under Castavall Waypoint in the Bloodtide Coast zone.

The integration of water combat into the game is nearly seamless. I love the implementation. Love it.

Underwater combat is a buggy joke.

The constant invulnerability issues make it a total waste of time.

Having a hard time judging distances underwater, very easy to aggro monsters you don’t want to aggro. It’s particularly easy to get overwhelmed by krait.

Craven.5468:

The integration of water combat into the game is nearly seamless. I love the implementation. Love it.

This is sarcastic, right?

I hate that half my skills are inexplicably unusable underwater… And that I go from having a modest choice of weapons to a total of TWO. (Neither of which, as a condinionmancer, are very good)

Some classes are awful in the water, some excel underwater.

My ranger and my engineer dont have any issues. You can pull like 4-5 mobs at a time and just nuke em.

Piranha gun is the best.

GranoblasticMan.2514:

Craven.5468:

The integration of water combat into the game is nearly seamless. I love the implementation. Love it.

This is sarcastic, right?

I hate that half my skills are inexplicably unusable underwater… And that I go from having a modest choice of weapons to a total of TWO. (Neither of which, as a condinionmancer, are very good)

I have enjoyed underwater combat on multiple classes thus far. I find it very fluid, and a very enjoyable experience. In time, I will have experienced them all.

I actually like that my weapons are different underwater.

The key to loving underwater combat is to roll an engineer. Everything will fold to your underwater grenades and bombs.

I think they’re the only class that might actually have a dps increase when fighting underwater.

Hi,

We lock this topic as the bug about the invulnerability of underwater mobs was already reported in this thread here.

Thanks for your contribution