Guild Wars 2

Is there any gameplay reason for aquabreathers besides being cosmetic?
Whats the reason for this ‘seventh’ armor slot we have to get another rune/kill tequatl for?

It only goes at most to rare, limited to certain stats (Magi/Rabid/Soldier) and I guess there isn’t enough underwater combat to warrant bringing this in line with the rest of armor.

If its not going anywhere can it just be dropped and let us use the armor stats and rune of our helm instead?

(Although I’m ashamed to say it, the reason I’m bringing this up is primarily my OCD at having full exotic gear and this one slot that is green…)

They are so when you go underwater you don’t drown. That said, I do wish they’d just convert them to a cosmetic thing that clips though existing helms rather than an entire inventory slot that overrides helms.

we KNOW there is an elder dragon in the water (referred to as the deep sea dragon or bubbles) and a mysterious race the largos whom we will definitely be learning more about at some point. i figure when we do move in that direction all things underwater related will be revamped but until anet are ready to put that much time and effort into it they shouldnt bother with small changes that don’t really do a lot

They seem to be abandoning underwater content. They recently removed the SPvP map that had underwater combat. It’s sad, because GW2 has some of the best underwater combat and exploration in the genre.

nexxe.7081:

They seem to be abandoning underwater content. They recently removed the SPvP map that had underwater combat. It’s sad, because GW2 has some of the best underwater combat and exploration in the genre.

well i dont think underwater combat is balanced very well for pvp, certain professions would currently have major advantages which would force pvpers to restrict themselves to those specific professions when the situation came up

I think there is a good chance underwater combat will be revamped eventually. Possibly adding more underwater weapons or adjusting the skills to do so. Looking back at before launch the underwater combat was one of its biggest features.

Underwater combat simply isnt good enough with only 2 weapons to choose from. Your skills are limited to the class you play and even then there is little to no variety in them. I think the guardian has the best balance in terms of skill variety but Thief’s 3 on spear is very satisfying to use.

I hope there will be some attention paid to that when we are finished with maguuma.

It would be nice to either
1.) use the normal helmet underwater (the stats, runes, etc.) and just have the breather skin enabled underwater (but please the fixed skins that don’t randomly change the texture of some of your armor set parts) or
2.) be able to craft higher tier breathers.

I know that’s a so called “first world problem”. But this rare breather among my ascended set bothers me, as well as the missing 6th rune bonus…

Also, I’m one of the strange people who enjoy the underwater environment even though the combat isn’t balanced (I totally agree with the changes they did to PvP and WvW). I think diving has its place in the game and there are definitely beautiful diving spots to explore.

Ohoni.6057:

They are so when you go underwater you don’t drown. That said, I do wish they’d just convert them to a cosmetic thing that clips though existing helms rather than an entire inventory slot that overrides helms.

Don’t think you actually drown even without it. I use to run without one for quite awhile there wasn’t any drowning. Though if it changed I wouldn’t know.

I think they’re retrenching on underwater. They realize it has issues, so they made it less important where they could, but don’t have time to improve it at the moment. I fully expect at some point though they’ll have a significant underwater patch, attempting to balance the power sets fully, while at the same time delivering a large amount of content that requires it. That isn’t likely to be this patch though.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

nexxe.7081:

They seem to be abandoning underwater content. They recently removed the SPvP map that had underwater combat. It’s sad, because GW2 has some of the best underwater combat and exploration in the genre.

well i dont think underwater combat is balanced very well for pvp, certain professions would currently have major advantages which would force pvpers to restrict themselves to those specific professions when the situation came up

Presently it’s not well-balanced, but it’s not too bad. All it needs is that you can set up different traits to apply when you’re underwater, so that people aren’t built for land combat with a build that probably isn’t suited to their UW skills. Then just balance as usual; wouldn’t be too hard.

There’s going to be a whole town and a starter map underwater when they decide to make quaggans a playable race. ;D
so Suck on that~! xD

What’s an aquabreather?

hannah mee.7925:

What’s an aquabreather?

Its that level 1 item you still use on your level 80 chars

Underwater combat is broken in any kind of player vs player content, engineers in particular have access to nearly all of the skills they have on land while most of the other classes have to make do with substandard skills on the spear and harpoon gun/trident.

They’re still fine-ish for pve content where profession balance isn’t nearly as major a consideration, but in general open world only have 8% of hearts underwater, and fractals can be entirely done without any underwater component as starting with Swamp automatically cancels Underwater fractal, while people simply have to avoid HoTWp2/3 to skip all underwater content for dungeons.

It’s kind of sad really.

I don’t dislike the current situation except there is no method to obtain better ones with some variation in stats. My main quesiton is this:

We have tons of Exotic / Ascended Backpieces that many allow for a CHOICE of stats (and the choice can be altered AGAIN when infused). Why do we need crafted backpieces when end game variety in Aqua-breathers are what we are sorely lacking?

I get that the cosmetic BLING in this game rules all, but it seems this feature pack is adding crafting items that are not needed while we still have no way to get an Exotic breather…..just saying.

Ohoni.6057:

I think they’re retrenching on underwater. They realize it has issues, so they made it less important where they could, but don’t have time to improve it at the moment. I fully expect at some point though they’ll have a significant underwater patch, attempting to balance the power sets fully, while at the same time delivering a large amount of content that requires it. That isn’t likely to be this patch though.

I second this opinion.

ArenaNet appears to have stopped adding new underwater content, and has actively removed underwater combat from PvP, but the PvE underwater content that is in the game will not be removed. (In fact, removing that would require more work than overhauling underwater combat.)