Guild Wars 2

I think one of the biggest potential combat systems in Guild Wars 2 is the underwater combat. To be honest, we have huge sections of the game underwater and few people touch it because it feels too difficult to enjoy, lackluster, or clunky. So lets help the devs out by offering up our thoughts on how to fix it!

Personally, combat underwater is so different feeling to being in the air or on land. There is no flat plane, and unlike aerial movement which has its own feel and is always relative to the ground, being in the water is more true free motion than any other kind of movement. I feel like we are failing to get that sense of ‘being in the water’ that we so want to have. Mobs are mainly stationary, as are players, and in a real underwater scene, movement is constant, not static. I think there are ways to create this; I think for instance we could have Asura technology create underwater propulsion systems to allow a strong sense of freedom of movement so we can really move around freely. Mobs should utilize skills that physically move them around as well as damage, to give that sense of constant motion that is part of being underwater.

Another thought is more underwater weapons, more underwater-only utility skills. Our skills change to the ‘underwater set’ already when we hit the water; lets make a set thats for the waves only that takes advantage of being in the water. I personally think ALL our skills should be underwater-specific so that entering the sea is a totally different type of gameplay with a completely different set of skills. I think our characters should be ‘loose’ as well; i.e. we sort of drift in the water instead of stopping when we aren’t moving.

For area of effect fields like necro wells, I think they should be fairly large so that their radius isn’t wasted. I think they should have a visible line indicating their range too, so players can tell how effective they are underwater.

What are your thoughts about underwater combat? I personally hope the next installment is the underwater dragon (Bubbles) so that we can get that overhaul of combat in the water we have all longed for and dreamed of. There is amazing underwater scenery out there, and even more amazing scenery awaiting us, and having the next installment be the Water Dragon would allow future expansions to make heavy use of the revamped water combat system, so I hope this is next for all our sakes!

It’s alright when you’re on a class that has decent underwater skills, some are just soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo bad.

Arenanet have kind of backtracked on underwater combat a bit. That’s why there aren’t underwater zones in HoT. They also removed the map in PvP that had underwater areas, and I think the new WvW maps also got rid of all the water.

So it seems like they’ve kind of abandoned underwater combat.

It’s a part of the game I hardly care about. I swimm to get from A to B, as fast as possible, not to combat. The only exceptions are mining spots surrounded by creatures. But they useually only slow me down, not even going into combat there lol! Sooo, I would say: underwater world has a nice look, but it’s a pretty useless feature…

Albadaran.1283:

It’s a part of the game I hardly care about. I swimm to get from A to B, as fast as possible, not to combat. The only exceptions are mining spots surrounded by creatures. But they useually only slow me down, not even going into combat there lol! Sooo, I would say: underwater world has a nice look, but it’s a pretty useless feature…

Your all kind of missing the point. The purpose of this article is not to harp on about how bad underwater combat is. Its purpose is to discuss what it needs to be the awesome system we all know it could and should be! Nothing constructive comes from saying, ‘Yeah, I just skip that part’. The point is to ask ourselves, what is at lacking that makes it annoying, and what do we each think could be done to make it enjoyable? Let’s focus on idea generation. I am for me, aware of where they took water out of pvp play in general but it wasn’t always that way, and fun underwater combat could draw even more players into the game. Maybe pvp would be a good discussion? What would you think the changes should be to underwater combat to make it worthy to have pvp and wvw maps that incorporate underwater combat?

Freedan.1769:

Albadaran.1283:

It’s a part of the game I hardly care about. I swimm to get from A to B, as fast as possible, not to combat. The only exceptions are mining spots surrounded by creatures. But they useually only slow me down, not even going into combat there lol! Sooo, I would say: underwater world has a nice look, but it’s a pretty useless feature…

Your all kind of missing the point. The purpose of this article is not to harp on about how bad underwater combat is. Its purpose is to discuss what it needs to be the awesome system we all know it could and should be! Nothing constructive comes from saying, ‘Yeah, I just skip that part’. The point is to ask ourselves, what is at lacking that makes it annoying, and what do we each think could be done to make it enjoyable? Let’s focus on idea generation. I am for me, aware of where they took water out of pvp play in general but it wasn’t always that way, and fun underwater combat could draw even more players into the game. Maybe pvp would be a good discussion? What would you think the changes should be to underwater combat to make it worthy to have pvp and wvw maps that incorporate underwater combat?

To me it’s the skills.

First you lose a lot of your signature moves and cooldowns. Then (not all classes) you get some really useless crap that doesn’t feel at all like your class and in some cases is down right terrible, slow, and clunky.

The irony is that there is no depth in the combat underwater (lel).

There are three ways I’d like to see it go.

1.) A complete overhaul. Like the action combat but in water. I’m not a designer so I couldn’t even begin to suggest how they should handle it. So much of the game is under water and the world they created under there is gorgeous.

2.) I don’t find the under water combat compelling for the most part. They could go with route #1 or they could get rid of underwater combat by getting rid of the creatures and events and make it all about exploration and puzzles and races and tons of other things. Add vehicles to drive around in. Everything from submarines to boats to propeller packs and just make all of it a playground.

3.) The one I’d like to see happen the most though is to have one of the dragons somehow magically get rid of the water and then they could add land events in place of what used to be underwater. It’s also the option I see as least likely to happen for obvious reasons.

Like I said, not a fan of under water combat so that would be my choice. I was against it when everyone on guild wars guru was all crazy about underwater combat. To me, it’s fun to explore, but after that the novelty wears off. It’s a side attraction that has a place, but combat is such a different beast underwater and it’s hard to get it right in any style of game much less an MMO.

Number 2 on my list seems the most reasonable. Swimming in LA is pretty awesome. Sometimes I just jump off the bridge and swim around old LA. Think about how cool it would be if we could rent boats or personal submarines and tool around Mount Maelstrom or LA or Gendarran Fields without anything attacking us. I think that would be pretty dope.

@Snarftastic: I agree, the skills in underwater combat often don’t work like your class really, and many dont work at all. For me, its about A completely different ‘underwater set’ of skills that lets you use a different set of skills entirely, no land skills involved at all. Keep it true to the class, and people should find speccing Underwater to be a new experience.

@Iason – Thank you for the detailed feedback! While I am not against removing creatures from underwater and making it about exploration, I would feel this messes with our understanding of the Lore and not just the gameplay. I like the drive around in vehicles idea. I have a question for you though: was the reason the novelty of underwater combat wore off because it wasn’t fun? That is how I felt. When I get in the water, the reason I get back out is because I find the combat unintuitive and clunky/boring. If it was as fun or funner than being on land, I could see myself under the sea all the time. And nothing wrong with that is there? For me, its about the immersion, pun intended.

The other thing to keep in mind is that ArenaNet is on record as saying they aren’t gonna do anything major to the base game anymore. With HoT not having any water or WvW either(Black Lion Ticket skins haven’t had any underwater skins added in ages)it’s fairly safe to say underwater combat is dead in the water :P

well they have an under water dragon to address eventually so surely they will have to look at the water combat at some point.

i think the first thing that needs to be done is letting us set our traits separately for underwater.
next thing would be to sort out ground targeted skills so that they can work underwater, my suggestion would be to change how they work, instead of you targeting them they either affect a sphere of distance around you or around your target.

My vision for underwater combat in GW2 is to remove it from the game. It’s annoying and I don’t like it.

Before Anet starts anything with Underwater Combat, they have to do first two things:

1) Add to Underwater Combat their complete own seperate Trait Lines, so that Underwater Combat becomes finally on par with Land Combat, because alot of things don’t work under water, therefore Underwater Combat needs to receive their complete own Traits.

2) A complete Skill/Mechanic Rebalancing. Underwater Skills have seen since Game Release no balancing at all. Theres so much utter garbage among them balance wise, it isnt’t funny anynmore.
—-
Once this has been done. Then I see as vision to improve Underwater Gameplay the Mastery System.

Diving Mastery

1) Deep Diving: Unlocks the Ability to dive deeper than normal to reach new places underwater you couldn#t reach before.

2) Diver Fins: Increases your Movement Speed while diving by 25% while outside of combat

3) Depth Gathering: Allows you to gather new unique Crafting Materials from Gather Nodes you find in the depths

4) Largos Language: Learn to communicate with the Largos in their traditional Language to gain access to their Vendors

5) Largos Trust: The Largos trust you now more, giving you access more to their lore, so that you can get perform at Largos Shrines “Hunting Rituals” to get Map Buffs while being under water

6) Largos Challenge: Have now so much acceptence amogn the Largos, that you can try to defeat daily their strongest Champions of the four Houses for unique reards.

7) Largos Superiority: Gain access to a Set of one time craftable unique Largos Legendary Weapons/Armors/Back Item

8.) Vortex Disruptor: You are now able to surpass vortexes underwater, which blocked off your ways.

9) Largos Hunt: Gain access to unique Largos Healing, Utility and Elite Skills while being under water and unlock for yourself a special Largos Finisher

10) Stream Diver: You are able to surpass now fast water streams to be able to swim against them and move forward instead of being pushed away so that you again can reach places, that weren’t possible to reach before.
—-

Add new Underwater Content in form of:

Underwater Dungeons: 3 Underwater Dungeosn should get added, one for Lvl 35, 1 for level 50 and one for Lvl 80 in a new map thats mastery relevant, while the othe two are in central tyria.

Largos Hometown “Atlantis” just to give it a catchy name with a trivial reference ^^

Underwater Raids What works on land, can work also under water…

Underwater Adventures See above

New World Boss: The Kraken
New World Boss: The Leviathan (Deep Sea Dragon’s Dragon Champion)
New World Boss: The Subject Omega
New World Boss: The Ursurper (Deep See Dragon’s Minion Champion)

Thats something that I would envision for this game content for the start to begin with and nothing less from this point on.

fellyn.5083:

My vision for underwater combat in GW2 is to remove it from the game. It’s annoying and I don’t like it.

This. Anet can’t even keep up with balancing PvP, patching HoT content, improving WvW, and so forth. The last thing I want is for them to devote resources to underwater combat. I go in water to harvest nodes and to get from A to B, that’s it and that’s all it ever will be.

I’m more concerned with improving the 98% of the content that happens on dry land.

fellyn.5083:

My vision for underwater combat in GW2 is to remove it from the game. It’s annoying and I don’t like it.

Were trying to find solutions on how to make it better and you come in with this redundant statement? Underwater is probably the most unique thing about GW2 I’d hate to see it go because of lazy devs and impatient players

I love underwater combat.

There -is- underwater combat in the expansion.

Why no more underwater legendaries? Because of all the unwarranted QQ over uverwater combat.

<3 6 DOF.

Maybe underwater combat will be revived when we face Susan?

I love the idea of Masteries for underwater combat! That would be a ton of fun, and I hope that could be implemented as a way to improve underwater as a whole. Lots of things that could be done through masteries to just make it fun. And two things:
1) I dont know what is meant by ‘nothing major’ to the base game. Nor does this have to mean underwater doesn’t get improved upon.
2) Until someone comes out and says ‘we are not going to do anything with underwater combat ever’ I refuse to accept that we can’t fix underwater combat! The potential is enormous, the possible gains thrilling. I also don’t get the water haters attitude at all; if the combat was revamped, why remove it? Because you don’t like it now? That’s the laziest thought process I can imagine; ArenaNet stepped outside the box with Guild Wars in general, and I believe innovation is the way to fix problems, not remove content.

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

This. Anet can’t even keep up with balancing PvP, patching HoT content, improving WvW, and so forth. The last thing I want is for them to devote resources to underwater combat. I go in water to harvest nodes and to get from A to B, that’s it and that’s all it ever will be.

I’m more concerned with improving the 98% of the content that happens on dry land.

And yet they added a Revenant, which means more content to balance on dry land. To me, just giving up on water content and never going back to it would show a severe lack of perseverance and would be quite disapointing. Besides balancing class skills better underwater, my suggestions are to make more skills available underwater. Fore example all AoE skills, like wells and what not need to form 3D bubbles rather than 2D circles on the floor. If any of you played the Legend of Zelda, I think it would also be cool if they added iron boots. By this I mean you can equip or upgrade your boots so that you can walk at the bottom of the lake or body of water. This way you still run into water monsters that swim. However, you can still use your normal land weapons under water. Likewise, they can add hover boots that allow you to walk on the surface of water. This game took what could have been a boring concept, like water combat, and made it very interesting with some mad creativity. I hope Anet does the same.

Some more ideas/many coming from zelda

underwater caves
Ships
Places where you can drain the water out/change water levels
underwater steam vents that make you invisible to foes for a short amount of time.
Being able to go inside the belly of a whale or kraken as a dungeon/raid
floating devices that burst you to the surface of the water quickly so you don’t have to swim slowly.
Speed boosters in the water, please
whirlpools
hurricanes.
surfing
small tropical islands
Deep ocean zones where everything goes dark except for a light source (use nature for inspiration for what type of creatures to put in).
parasailing/gliding from geysers that shoot you up into the air.
windsurfing
freezing oceans/water
Ever seen star wars episode 1? Cities inclosed in bubbles underwater. As soon as you swim though the bubble, gravity acts on you.
Cool dynamic events/boss battles. For example, it would be cool to battle a giant flying fish from the back of a giant kitten sea turtle’s back.
submarines
riverrafting
Tie the sea combat in with sky/flying combat
flying cities
being able to land on clouds with hover boots
Tengu that live on clouds anyone?
Diving puzzles (falling from clouds though a ring of obstacles with no glider/iron boots equiped)
Waterspouts
jetpacks
etc.

Kill.3458:

fellyn.5083:

My vision for underwater combat in GW2 is to remove it from the game. It’s annoying and I don’t like it.

Were trying to find solutions on how to make it better and you come in with this redundant statement? Underwater is probably the most unique thing about GW2 I’d hate to see it go because of lazy devs and impatient players

I offered the perfect solution to make it work. I’m (not) sorry that it doesn’t go along with what you have in mind for the thread.

As some else pointed out Anet considers it more or less dead too. The fact that gem store weapon skin sets haven’t come with under water weapons skins or that the revenant can only use one under water weapon where every other class can use two and more than half of the revenant skills don’t work under water gives weight to this theory.

It’s pointless to talk about how to making it better when Anet is abandoning it just like dungeons.

Xstein.2187:

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

This. Anet can’t even keep up with balancing PvP, patching HoT content, improving WvW, and so forth. The last thing I want is for them to devote resources to underwater combat. I go in water to harvest nodes and to get from A to B, that’s it and that’s all it ever will be.

I’m more concerned with improving the 98% of the content that happens on dry land.

And yet they added a Revenant,

Revenant can use 1 under water weapon (pretty sure every other class gets 2) and 3 out of 5 legendary heroes don’t work under water.

So yeah…

Just so we’re clear that means 3/5ths of revenant skills don’t work under water. For most other classes they usually only have 2 or 3 skills that don’t work under water, total.

Now this doesn’t specifically mean anet isn’t going to make any more under water content in the future but it certainly is a big hint.

fellyn.5083:

Kill.3458:

fellyn.5083:

My vision for underwater combat in GW2 is to remove it from the game. It’s annoying and I don’t like it.

Were trying to find solutions on how to make it better and you come in with this redundant statement? Underwater is probably the most unique thing about GW2 I’d hate to see it go because of lazy devs and impatient players

I offered the perfect solution to make it work. I’m (not) sorry that it doesn’t go along with what you have in mind for the thread.

As some else pointed out Anet considers it more or less dead too. The fact that gem store weapon skin sets haven’t come with under water weapons skins or that the revenant can only use one under water weapon where every other class can use two and more than half of the revenant skills don’t work under water gives weight to this theory.

It’s pointless to talk about how to making it better when Anet is abandoning it just like dungeons.

Dont lie on this thread. You have not offered any proof outside pure hype that UW combat is dead. A hiatus is not an official statement and until we get one there is plenty to discuss on the topic. Being fatalistic serves no purpose to anyone. If you wish to comment please keep it to the purpose of the thread about improvements and not griefing.

Edit: Lesson learned, never type a blog reply on an Android :P

fellyn.5083:

Xstein.2187:

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

This. Anet can’t even keep up with balancing PvP, patching HoT content, improving WvW, and so forth. The last thing I want is for them to devote resources to underwater combat. I go in water to harvest nodes and to get from A to B, that’s it and that’s all it ever will be.

I’m more concerned with improving the 98% of the content that happens on dry land.

And yet they added a Revenant,

Revenant can use 1 under water weapon (pretty sure every other class gets 2) and 3 out of 5 legendary heroes don’t work under water.

So yeah…

Just so we’re clear that means 3/5ths of revenant skills don’t work under water. For most other classes they usually only have 2 or 3 skills that don’t work under water, total.

Now this doesn’t specifically mean anet isn’t going to make any more under water content in the future but it certainly is a big hint.

Lets not draw conclusions on this just yet. I appreciate people’s perceptions, but I think it would be very damaging to the game to just rip underwater combat out entirely. Remember, we have a Deep Sea Elder Dragon sitting beneath the ocean, and honestly it would be outright silly to picture him climbing up on land for our benefit and amusement, wouldn’t you all say? Or his minions to only be found on land? Seriously, one expansion we can foresee being about underwater combat, that was the whole point, and assisting Anet by providing feedback on ways to make it better is the purpose of posting here.

That said, I agree with other posters that it needs more skills, personally I see each class having a full set of skills for just playing around underwater, with maybe some modified class mechanics to account for underwater differences and feedback from the community. Honestly, I thought the API’s were a cool collaborative method for Anet getting idea’s like the method they used to generate RAID’s and I am surprised there has not been one created for underwater combat idea’s by the dev team but perhaps that would be giving away too much? An answer of the sort, ‘Yes we are going to address the shortcomings of underwater play’ would go far to address player concerns at this point.

Lastly, I think we should just make ALL the current different underwater weapon types available to all classes so we actually have choice with our underwater set. Actually no, I changed my mind!! Instead, lets just have our standard weapon sets with an underwater set of skills! That way, we don’t have to worry about underwater specific weapons, instead just use variations on the existing weapons skillsets that are aquatic themed! Sure, its a lot of balancing work, but it would go an enormous distance to making underwater combat viable. I could see this happening for a Bubbles campaign; what say you?

Freedan.1769:

fellyn.5083:

Kill.3458:

fellyn.5083:

My vision for underwater combat in GW2 is to remove it from the game. It’s annoying and I don’t like it.

Were trying to find solutions on how to make it better and you come in with this redundant statement? Underwater is probably the most unique thing about GW2 I’d hate to see it go because of lazy devs and impatient players

I offered the perfect solution to make it work. I’m (not) sorry that it doesn’t go along with what you have in mind for the thread.

As some else pointed out Anet considers it more or less dead too. The fact that gem store weapon skin sets haven’t come with under water weapons skins or that the revenant can only use one under water weapon where every other class can use two and more than half of the revenant skills don’t work under water gives weight to this theory.

It’s pointless to talk about how to making it better when Anet is abandoning it just like dungeons.

Dont lie on this thread. You have not offered any proof outside pure hype that UW combat is dead. A hiatus is not an official statement and until we get one there is plenty to discuss on the topic. Being fatalistic serves no purpose to anyone. If you wish to comment please keep it to the purpose of the thread about improvements and not griefing.

Edit: Lesson learned, never type a blog reply on an Android :P

Lie? I haven’t lied about anything I’ve been perfectly honest in my post and my speculations.

In any case, I’ll post what I want as long it’s within the rules. Speaking of which there aren’t any that say I can only post in a thread if I agree with what’s being discussed.

If that bugs you then maybe forums aren’t for you.

Bring it back so Rangers can go back to being the Penguins of GW2!

Freedan.1769:

fellyn.5083:

Xstein.2187:

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

This. Anet can’t even keep up with balancing PvP, patching HoT content, improving WvW, and so forth. The last thing I want is for them to devote resources to underwater combat. I go in water to harvest nodes and to get from A to B, that’s it and that’s all it ever will be.

I’m more concerned with improving the 98% of the content that happens on dry land.

And yet they added a Revenant,

Revenant can use 1 under water weapon (pretty sure every other class gets 2) and 3 out of 5 legendary heroes don’t work under water.

So yeah…

Just so we’re clear that means 3/5ths of revenant skills don’t work under water. For most other classes they usually only have 2 or 3 skills that don’t work under water, total.

Now this doesn’t specifically mean anet isn’t going to make any more under water content in the future but it certainly is a big hint.

Lets not draw conclusions on this just yet. I appreciate people’s perceptions, but I think it would be very damaging to the game to just rip underwater combat out entirely. Remember, we have a Deep Sea Elder Dragon sitting beneath the ocean, and honestly it would be outright silly to picture him climbing up on land for our benefit and amusement, wouldn’t you all say? Or his minions to only be found on land? Seriously, one expansion we can foresee being about underwater combat, that was the whole point, and assisting Anet by providing feedback on ways to make it better is the purpose of posting here.

That said, I agree with other posters that it needs more skills, personally I see each class having a full set of skills for just playing around underwater, with maybe some modified class mechanics to account for underwater differences and feedback from the community. Honestly, I thought the API’s were a cool collaborative method for Anet getting idea’s like the method they used to generate RAID’s and I am surprised there has not been one created for underwater combat idea’s by the dev team but perhaps that would be giving away too much? An answer of the sort, ‘Yes we are going to address the shortcomings of underwater play’ would go far to address player concerns at this point.

Lastly, I think we should just make ALL the current different underwater weapon types available to all classes so we actually have choice with our underwater set. Actually no, I changed my mind!! Instead, lets just have our standard weapon sets with an underwater set of skills! That way, we don’t have to worry about underwater specific weapons, instead just use variations on the existing weapons skillsets that are aquatic themed! Sure, its a lot of balancing work, but it would go an enormous distance to making underwater combat viable. I could see this happening for a Bubbles campaign; what say you?

Did they ever really confirm that that creature was an under water elder dragon? Last talk I ever read on it was all speculation and no hard proof.

In any case, at the pace anet is going it’ll be 10-12 years or more before they ever have to worry about that what with all the other elder dragons and a 3 year gap between each one.

fellyn.5083:

Freedan.1769:

fellyn.5083:

Xstein.2187:

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

This. Anet can’t even keep up with balancing PvP, patching HoT content, improving WvW, and so forth. The last thing I want is for them to devote resources to underwater combat. I go in water to harvest nodes and to get from A to B, that’s it and that’s all it ever will be.

I’m more concerned with improving the 98% of the content that happens on dry land.

And yet they added a Revenant,

Revenant can use 1 under water weapon (pretty sure every other class gets 2) and 3 out of 5 legendary heroes don’t work under water.

So yeah…

Just so we’re clear that means 3/5ths of revenant skills don’t work under water. For most other classes they usually only have 2 or 3 skills that don’t work under water, total.

Now this doesn’t specifically mean anet isn’t going to make any more under water content in the future but it certainly is a big hint.

Lets not draw conclusions on this just yet. I appreciate people’s perceptions, but I think it would be very damaging to the game to just rip underwater combat out entirely. Remember, we have a Deep Sea Elder Dragon sitting beneath the ocean, and honestly it would be outright silly to picture him climbing up on land for our benefit and amusement, wouldn’t you all say? Or his minions to only be found on land? Seriously, one expansion we can foresee being about underwater combat, that was the whole point, and assisting Anet by providing feedback on ways to make it better is the purpose of posting here.

That said, I agree with other posters that it needs more skills, personally I see each class having a full set of skills for just playing around underwater, with maybe some modified class mechanics to account for underwater differences and feedback from the community. Honestly, I thought the API’s were a cool collaborative method for Anet getting idea’s like the method they used to generate RAID’s and I am surprised there has not been one created for underwater combat idea’s by the dev team but perhaps that would be giving away too much? An answer of the sort, ‘Yes we are going to address the shortcomings of underwater play’ would go far to address player concerns at this point.

Lastly, I think we should just make ALL the current different underwater weapon types available to all classes so we actually have choice with our underwater set. Actually no, I changed my mind!! Instead, lets just have our standard weapon sets with an underwater set of skills! That way, we don’t have to worry about underwater specific weapons, instead just use variations on the existing weapons skillsets that are aquatic themed! Sure, its a lot of balancing work, but it would go an enormous distance to making underwater combat viable. I could see this happening for a Bubbles campaign; what say you?

Did they ever really confirm that that creature was an under water elder dragon? Last talk I ever read on it was all speculation and no hard proof.

In any case, at the pace anet is going it’ll be 10-12 years or more before they ever have to worry about that what with all the other elder dragons and a 3 year gap between each one.

The Inquest confirmed that the 6th dragon was a water dragon because the dungeon has 6 zones, each based on the minions of an Elder Dragon. This zone is a water themed zone with a blue color; why would it be anything else? I believe there have been other official comments aluding to it, but the coil is all the proof most need to know its a water dragon. That is why its unofficial name across all players is Bubbles by the way. Read up about it, I think you will be convinced.

I wanted to keep the thread focused on improvements to underwater combat and ask others how they feel it can be improved. Anyone may of course comment; but I prefer troll comments be left out of a thread that is not hating on underwater combat as others have, but simply what we can do to improve it. Lets keep focused on positive suggestions; things that help a great game become greater. I for one look forward to seeing more amazing underwater scenes and moments!

Disagree = trolling.

I’m not trolling in the slightest. I feel that under water combat doesn’t add anything to the game.

Sure some of the environments look nice but that’s about it.

I like the underwater stuff.

I am bad on many of the classes though as I don’t use them often enough to be familiar with the attacks. However practicing does work and they improve- even the weird Mesmer stuff and the memories 16 more abilities elementalist trident. By the way… sharing the one underwater weap issue of the Rev. The only one I don’t “get” at all is the dang Engineer… Grenade kit works better… heck elixir gun works better then the harpoon gun…. Oh also limited to harpoon gun but kit’s nullify that. Oh my! It occurs I haven’t tried the new elite mortar underwater….

There are some places to “swim” in HoT but not much in the way of combat underwater. I did find some underground watery tunnels in HoT.

Yes indeed- with actual foes and a crazy piranha effect reminiscent of a certain fractal mechanic… It was in the Tangled Depths map. With that name- some underwater stuff would make sense…. I haven’t seen much of the map yet. Halloween stuff taking up time atm and our Guild went after the hall. Thankfully Ranger has good underwater capability and the fractal reminded me what they expected you to do with the exalted beacon/light things they leave at periodic spots where the Piranhas of death wait in the dark. I have no idea yet if there is anything important in the underwater cave as those beacons did not last long -forcing you to mad dash for the next. In all, there were the beacons and piranha mechanic effect -then later (3-4 beacons later) none of that remains. Safer swimming with just some basic easy kill regular and veteran skelks/jellyfish/gulper fish to deal with.. and the odd innocent neutral tuna.

I exited the cave into the exterior… I think. Maybe…. There were tree root’s there dunking into the water like overgrown mangroves and shallower water and that’s all I know. I promptly died to some unknown effect…

Yes unknown… Didn’t see an effect/debuff on me- Granted there wasn’t much time with the rapidly vanishing HP bar.

Perhaps there was another Exalted beacon nearby that I missed picking up and extra fast piranha? Anyway- couldn’t tell. The death… well- It was “that” fast. Maybe the area counted at Jungle bottom and Mordy got me? I could see a nearby poi but my toon didn’t “make it” to unlock it.

It was cool though to get a smidgen of underwater action in the expansion… just wish there had been something to do if import there. Maybe they meant to and didn’t finish? Maybe if I hadn’t died I’d have made it to that poi and unveiled a wp or something? IDK but I wont have that kind of exploration time again till next weekend. If anyone doe’s know what that final killing effect among the mangroves was- I’d love to know.

1.Balance the classes
2. All skills usable underwater
3. Aquabreather grants unique underwater buffs or cosmetic changes
4.Bring back the PvP map and area in PvP Lobby
5. Complete weapons sets by adding back the underwater weapons
6. Give classes access to all underwater weapons so they have some choice in the matter since we only have three and classes have two slots for two weapon slots and with the addition of the third weapon they have choice.
7. Flesh out the aquatic races Hylek, Quaggan, Largos, Krait, Karka
8. Speed up swim speed do a Zora scale deally for all I care to unlock
9. Leap out of water – like a Dolphin or something or ledge grap not all area are easy to exit the water. So a Leap will allow people to leap out of water in areas that are too steep to walk out off.
10. Underwater trait line or more traits with underwater secondaries.
11. undependant underwater trait line that takes into effect when your in the water.
12. More aquatic lore and Dragon minions I have a theory that the Chak are Dragon Minions but haven’t done all the quests in that area and a single Modrem Possesed Chak would shatter that theory. If not then they should be officially announced to build up hype. Only after allowing all skills to be used underwater, Balancing the skills, and opening up the third underwater weapon for use.

If underwater becomes an exploration deal then aquabreathers need to be removed
All in All usuable skills, balance, and Aquabreather stats are the compains I here the most*

I love the idea of having underwater cities showing off Largos especially! Possibly having a few friendly NPC Krait like they did with the Dredge would give insight into the society of these characters and add depth to the game, although I think karka is pointless since they seem more like semi-sentient creatures than fully sentient ones. Hylek and Quaggan we know a lot about it, although I have no aversion to them. My preference though is absolutely Largos. That could be very cool!

Underwater trait’s is a great idea, and I would love to spec underwater although I worry that gets a bit complex for the average Jane Doe? Just curious.

Both speeding swim speed and out of water jumping are nice QoL improvements.

Also, what about a mastery for underwater combat?? Where it essentially unlocks new underwater weapons, gives access to special traits and aquabreathers possibly, and offers those quality of life improvements you mentioned!? I could see the mastery system doing what we want to make it a cool system, plus it incentivizes buying the expansion.