Guild Wars 2

It’s clear that a lot of work was spent on underwater environments and underwater combat. While the former is quite often amazing, the second unfortunatelly is very, very weak:

1) Mob density is too high underwater. Moving often leads to aggroing more enemies, and moving to kill those aggro even more, and so on.

2) Enemies bug often. On the surface, when an enemy is being attacked from a position it cannot attack (such as attacking melee enemies from high), or when an enemy is pulled to somewhere too far from its spawning point, said enemy becomes invulnerable and quickly regenerates health. Underwater, this happens all the time, even when the enemy is in front of a character. As a result, the smartest strategy is to move as little as possible, in order to not risk pulling the enemies too far from their starting point.

3) The game still cannot handle the Z axis well. Often attacks will miss an enemy that is is front of a character due to a slight different in height, even if said difference is still within weapon range.

Between those 3 points, the most effective way to fight underwater is to stay still and trade blows with an enemy. Moving is simply too risky – not only it risks aggroing more enemies, but also bugging those enemies so they become invulnerable, or moving them to a position in which all attacks miss due to a Z axis bug.

Therefore, while the surface combat is all about placement and movement and dodges… Underwater combat punishes all those thing.

Between this, how many underwater skills force movement (so they have to be ignored) and how many underwater enemies force movement (one of the most common krayt enemies has a pull, a common risen enemy has a sink), underwater combat is usually a frustrating experience alternating between trading static blows with enemies and having to deal with bugged, invulnerable enemies.

Underwater combat is understandably weak because all the races are not aquatic. Try leveling a ranger and use armored fish or shark in underwater combat. These aquatic pets thrive in their natural environment and they rocks.