Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

I have a level 80 guardian and a level 41 necromancer right now. My girlfriend also plays guardian, this is the first MMO she plays and she is nearing level 60 now.

We love the game. Despite many bugs (necromancer… Jagged horror anyone? One of the 40 bugs or so), we’re still having fun.

The one thing that makes me want to punch a hole in the wall and causes my gf to pull her hair out of her head, is underwater combat. Whenever I find a heart or event underwater and start doing it, I just feel like logging off.

First of, I dont understand the logic here. Mobs have the same hp as on land (maybe even higher?), but on my guardian I do maybe 1/3 or half the damage I do with my hammer. Ontop of that it seems that I often am dealing with 3 to 8 mobs at once, taking a god kitten eternity to kill these all and the first one already respawns by the time the last one is dead

Right now I would rather have it the way other MMO’s did. Just give us land skills underwater. Either that or revamp it all. The skills also are incredibly boring.

I have the feeling the november content , Sea of Sorrows, will mostly be underwater. If thats the case, its just another area in the game ill have to avoid…

TLDR; underwater combat is boring, slow and the skills are boring and suck. They should do more damage. Please fix this.

Yours,
A big fan of GW2

aevitas

As an Elementalist, I agree. The underwater areas are gorgeous and I want to explore them, but Ele underwater combat is just so tiresome.

It seems to be in part a profession balance issue. An Engineer with grenades, for example, is arguably more deadly underwater. Very strong, very easy.

While I agree, I would just like to mention that not all classes suck underwater. I have a ranger as my main (guardian right now – I agree it sucks), whom is devastating underwater. Feeding frenzy + jellyfish f2 skill + rampage as one can rip through groups of enemies like they were nothing.

I think they just need to fix some of the classes to make them deal more damage underwater. And let the camera zoom further underwater so you can see the enemies above/below/beside you.

Sometimes it feels like ANet intentionally slowed down underwater combat by nerfing damage. My guardian takes ages to kill a group of mobs, but incoming damage also seems way lower than on land.
I don’t mind a little more time to get my bearings and make sure I’m not above/below my target, but it does get tiresome and most weapon skills become pointless if they do like 0.1% of a mob’s HP in damage.

Hmm we’ve no experience with the classes above. Sounds like more fun than for us right now, hehe.

I indeed really hope they improve it. It looks awesome underwater but I just cant find the motivation to explore right now. :-(

Btw, between you and your girlfriend, you could have 6 spirit weapons out, drop in a racial elite summons and you let them do the fighting while you explore and take pictures ;-)

I’ll agree that underwater combat seems more clunky and not as powerful, however there are a couple of things to do to make sure you are getting the best out of your toons abilities.

Firstly, make sure your underwater weapons and aquabreather are inline with your level – as with armour and weapons above ground having ‘old’ gear can really impact your effectiveness.

Secondly, not all utilities can be used underwater but you can set different underwater utilities (slots 7-0) and they won’t swap back when you get out of water. I’ve found this particularly useful with my ele as the arcane utilities work well underwater and pack a nice punch of damage.

One word of caution, I’ve found it more effective to stick to single target damage options when fighting underwater. Anything that causes a wider damage range has a tendency to pull in annoying barracuda, thundershrimps and hermit crabs which would have otherwise left you alone.

I don’t like underwater combat. As thief, I can use a spear or a speargun. Speargun = spamming skills 1 and 2, sometimes 3. Spear = spamming 1 and 5, sometimes 2.

that’s it. No tactics. Not the movement-filled combat I have above ground. The only utility skills I can use are poisons.

I avoid water combat whenever I can.

The combat also just seems incredibly buggy to me.

For example I will be fighting a mob out in the open sea, and it will suddenly become invulnerable (like mobs do when they can’t reach you to attack you) and stand there until they regenerate health back to full.

I could understand this happening if I pulled it too far from it’s spawn, but they don’t even swim away or anything.

I also find it really difficult to gauge distance underwater. To me, mobs always look a lot further away/apart than they apparently are, so I always end up pulling 5 mobs when I hit one of them.
This might just be a personal problem though.

I find underwater combat to be extremely fun on the variety of character classes I have, including the Guardian. The only thing that annoys me down there is the invulnerability bug, which needs to be fixed. Mobs in the water also don’t have access to all the abilities they do on land (assuming they’re the type that can be in both locations), and can actually be easier to deal with in the water because of that. Kiting is ridiculously easy under water.

I have no problems with underwater combat as an Elementalist. The trick there is, you are in Water, Attune to Water = You are God. We do massive damage in Water attunement while underwater. We have an extra evasion skill (You can still dodge underwater btw) and our #5 ability shreads a line of enemies. Oh, and our Elite Whirlwind ability? It becomes Whirlpool, even after they nerfed it’s damage it is still able to take out large groups of mobs quickly just by moving near them.

Underwater combat as a mesmer seems perfectly fine for both weapon sets. In fact, I feel overpowered underwater, especially when it comes to underwater PvP during Raid on the Capricorn. My phantasms and clones surprisingly last a lot longer underwater because of their evasiveness and deal a lot of damage. This is also the only instance where I see myself actually using Mass Invisibility as Veil simply doesn’t work underwater and underwater stealth is amazing for navigation purposes.

That’s only 1 class out of 8 though. I can see that with the wrong skill layout or bugged skills, the combat may not be fun with other professions. I don’t have much experience playing on other professions underwater, so that will be something I have to look at when I do play.

Personally I think that this is intentional. You can’t move as fast underwater, you can’t DPS as fast under water as well. I guess this has basis in real life physics, like have you ever tried to fight someone underwater? Every move feels slow and takes so much energy – so I think the slowing was partly to kind of add that feel to underwater combat ingame – like the water is actually slowing you down like in real life.

Luckily underwater is more like a “side thing”. Because it is frustrating, especially in “Deep Water” – because there are always swarms of mobs near the bottom for some reason Q_Q.

I think it’s more of a balance issue than anything else.

My thief using spear is borderline broken underwater. Two different evasion skills and a counter that restores initiative if it goes off. By comparison harpoon gun is simply awful, dealing what may be the most atrocious damage in the game, with two difficult to utilize line shots. On top of that, almost every utility skill in the game is not usable underwater, making even the OP water fighting classes weaker underwater than above water.

Arenanet is doing a good job so far with underwater, but dealing with a 3d space on a 2d screen will always be difficult to handle, especially when the NPCs can move seemingly flawlessly through it. Other than balance, my main issue is the difficulty of spotting enemies. You have to be paying attention to not only in front of, to the sides, and behind you, but above and below you as well. Unless you are moving very slowly through the water, it is extremely easy to be caught off guard. Getting pulled into a group of 5 krait out of nowhere with a veteran in tow is par for the course underwater.

I like the concept of underwater combat, but agree that the execution could use some tweaking. As much as I love playing underwater, lakes and the like are often one big death trap.

As the poster above me so eloquently noted, dealing with positioning underwater is a lot harder than on land.

Aggro is another factor; it seems way too easy to wind up with a pack of mobs on you! For this reason, I find AOE abilities to be rather risky, yet on some classes you don’t have much of a choice.

And then there is the matter of class balance, of course. I personally like having different skills for underwater, but the fun level varies by class. In my experience:

Ranger – fun and generally awesome, I don’t feel weaker at all.
Necromancer – Mediocre, feels stronger on land. Why must I have so darn many AOE’s?
Elementalist – fragile and not particularly strong, but the abilities are fun and IMHO they are no worse than on land. Easily overwhelmed by multiple enemies though, with their need to kite combined with the underwater issues mentioned above.

Just my 2 copper!

So far I have 2 chars who have 100% world complete (meaning I have done a lot of underwater areas). They are Engineer and Ranger, I can say for these 2 classes that underwater fighting usually is fine. I say “usually” because of the dang invulnerable thing due to the monsters always trying to flee or pull you into other enemies only to give themselves invincibilty and myself frustration.

So to me this sounds like it is certain classes that may need skill updates. Apart from that I would also suggest trying all the weapons underwater that your class can use to see if there is not anything you are missing. In the case of my ranger I found that the spear weapon is MUCH better than the spear gun. It puts me in close proximity to my jellyfish when fighting so he heals us both and it does aoe damage to grouped up enemies while also giving me an evade attack every third attack I think. So with that and my jellyfish (he heals, blinds enemies) I am pretty much 100% hp and not in much danger even against groups/vets at most times. Didn’t even have many problems in Orr..

Good luck all getting your voices heard.

Yes, all underwater weapons need a buff, maybe make a separate trait for water weapons? I have a mesmer and a engineer 80 and the mesmer is sooo bad underwater, I kill probably 10x slower than on land. The engineer is actually pretty good underwater while using grenades, but the harpoon gun is kitten

Mob: I WILL EAT YOU!
Player: Go ahead and try.
Mob: You are hurting me! Time to use my ULTIMATE MOVE! Prepare to be annoyed!
Player: Don’t you do it. Don’t you DARE!
Mob: SUPER HAPPY FUN TIME INVULNERABLE MODE GO!
Player: Kitten….

Here is a list of legendarys and their looks

Kudzu (Longbow): http://i.imgur.com/GWz6A.jpg
The Dreamer (Shortbow): http://i.imgur.com/ZH9kf.jpg
Frostfang (Axe): http://i.imgur.com/1NI3O.jpg
Incinerator (Dagger): http://i.imgur.com/WqZsf.jpg
The Minstrel (Focus): http://i.imgur.com/jge0O.jpg
The Juggernaut (Hammer): http://i.imgur.com/wLuHp.jpg
Maw of the Deep (Spear): http://i.imgur.com/DCw4W.jpg
The Moot (Mace): http://i.imgur.com/DqBQu.jpg
Quip (Pistol): http://i.imgur.com/7Flj2.jpg
Predator (Rifle): http://i.imgur.com/Gmutu.jpg
Meteorlogicus (Scepter): http://i.imgur.com/WZYt8.jpg
The Flameseeker Prophecies (Shield): http://i.imgur.com/Y0Yhc.jpg
Frenzy (Harpoon Gun): http://i.imgur.com/qT3pK.jpg
The Bifrost (Staff): http://i.imgur.com/KjBYX.jpg
Bolt (Sword): http://i.imgur.com/RvT5H.jpg
Rodgorts (Torch): http://i.imgur.com/gFMyj.jpg
Kraitkin (Trident): http://i.imgur.com/1IA0R.jpg
Howler (Warhorn): http://i.imgur.com/U9swM.jpg
Sunrise (Greatsword): http://i.imgur.com/ueANM.jpg
Twilight (Greatsword): http://i.imgur.com/yC6K0.jpg
Eternity? (Greatsword): http://i.imgur.com/aevfX.jpg

The hammer, dagger and axe are still not in the game.
For those that want to see the stats, I’ve been updating the wiki with all this new data:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_weapon

I actually clicked the toon in the pics to try to rotate it to see them better. Force of habit :P

i would like to be able to apply bleeding on underwater foes, and watch as sharks come and chew them up, assisting in my kills.

also, i don’t see my elite (whirlpool) animation. my character simply disappears, and i cannot tell if i am doing damage (perception is a bit poor when i cannot see my character or the skill’s effects).

rgrwng.4072:

i would like to be able to apply bleeding on underwater foes, and watch as sharks come and chew them up, assisting in my kills.

Necro’s have a skill when drowned that has pirahnas attack which causes a blood cloud to appear. Would be excellent if this cloud caused nearby sharks to attack the bleeder.

rgrwng.4072:

i would like to be able to apply bleeding on underwater foes, and watch as sharks come and chew them up, assisting in my kills.

also, i don’t see my elite (whirlpool) animation. my character simply disappears, and i cannot tell if i am doing damage (perception is a bit poor when i cannot see my character or the skill’s effects).

I couldn’t see my ele’s whirlpool effect either, until yesterday. Don’t know why but suddenly it came back.

Danny.1594:

Here is a list of legendarys and their looks

Those preview windows really do not do legendary weapons justice, since a large component of them (the effects) are not displayed in that view.

Example with Bifrost:

http://i.imgur.com/KjBYX.jpg
..versus..
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/9596/gw064.jpg
..or..
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/a/a8/The_Bifrost.jpg