Guild Wars 2

Underwater fighting is so underrated… I just don’t get why they’ve decided to make Underwater battling not that big roll in this game.
During the Beta Trailers everyone were like ‘’omgggg you can swim and fight underwater!11!!!!’’
Nowdays players are barely touching the water.
How is this possible?

Before I used to PvP and WvW alot. I was so sad that they actually removed one of the popular maps; Raid on the Capricorn.
A conquest map that had been in the game since launch, was removed as a consequence of the removal of underwater combat. I just don’t really get why this were a issue to players. I think it was awesome that you could choose between Land-fighting or Water-fighting.

And also the Underwater profession skills are just awesome. I wish I could use them in Land.

I’d love to see more future battles / stories in Living World where you are and have to fight underwater.
One of the Elder Dragons, called ‘’Deep Sea Dragon’’ will mostly be underwater.. Hopefully this would be a GREAT water battling!!

Let me know your thoughts.

Agreed. I love underwater exploration and combat too, but it seems it’s just not popular among many players for some reason. :/

The combat engine doesn’t work properly underwater. First of all there are the camera and depth perception problems for players. You could argue that players should get used to it but actually players just don’t like it. More importantly though the combat engine is designed for 2D land combat with fields/traps/aoe in two dimensions. Ground targeting is not applicable underwater. This means that the weapon sets are dull, hard to use, or almost broken. Utility lines are lost without ground targeting and so are the traits to support them. This leaves some classes unrecognizable from their land based versions. We haven’t even started talking about different builds for underwater, re-breathers, or the helpless surface state.

Underwater combat is alright for skirmishes for but not alright for any major content.

Underwater combat is definitely different from land combat. There’s a third dimension, for one thing. The downed state still allows you to be mobile. The weapon skills are totally different, and much more limited than land combat. Much of what Stooperdale said above applies, too. For a while, elementalists didn’t even have an underwater elite skill.

It’s definitely different, and an enjoyable twist to the old theme (with no breath meter!) but may not be perfected, necessarily. I do kind of wish there were more watery areas just to test out the underwater fighting stuff, but there’s also an extremely limited number of skills to use underwater, in both weapon choice (only 3 total, and at least one is locked to every class) and utility skills (so many no-water skills…).

Just add champ/world boss event, i.e Blood Witch of Kessex Hills

loneknight.8425:

Just add champ/world boss event, i.e Blood Witch of Kessex Hills

I’ve never seen people help to kill the Blood Witch. I don’t know if that’ll help enough.

@Stooper: You have a good point there about lack of skill diversity underwater. I know from personal experience that having Arcane Wave be ground targeted underwater also made it practically useless. (So glad they split the skills for above ground and underwater!)

As for having to adapt to enemies coming from along the Z-axis though, I think that’s part of the appeal of underwater fighting. You need to be extra aware of your surroundings and there’s more ways to get the drop on unsuspecting foes. The fact that Sink/Float skills also ignore Defiance means that CC plays a much more pivotal role in underwater battles, something which I think is sorely lacking above ground.

Rognik.2579:

loneknight.8425:

Just add champ/world boss event, i.e Blood Witch of Kessex Hills

I’ve never seen people help to kill the Blood Witch. I don’t know if that’ll help enough.

My apologies, I should hv used underwater fractal as example of engaging underwater combat experience :p

The main idea is to fashion underwater combats after popular space flight sims, such as X Wing vs Tie Fighter. You will always have to be on the move, and as we have 360 degree freedom to move around, the battle sequence should allow more than one approach to take it down.

Borrowing fr ‘Return of Jedi’, let’s say Inquest has a huge underwater assault base that is guarded by a force field generated from a remote generator. The main objective is to deliver a bomb which is strong enough to disable the base. You will need as least 2 groups – 1 group is to escort and protect the bomb while the second group goes about disabling the force field generator. The event will fail when the bomb go off prematurely when it makes contact with the force field, or it gets destroyed by inquest patrolling outside the base. It may sound simple, but bare in mind the inquest can attack the bomb from below, so it will require tactics such as kiting/baiting. For remote generator, you can take it down by direct fighting against the defense system, or you can sneak in through a trap-filled vent. To make it appealing for PvE folks, you can have achievement for each of the approach you take.

Heck, we can even have an extended version of dolphin path for new mini-game activity

However, I will like to suggest adding underwater only skills to current skill set, to make the underwater combat more interesting as compare to current fighting with ‘limited’ choice of skills

When I first started playing the game, I got the impression that fighting in 3d dimensions was just really disorienting, and that I needed time to get used to underwater fighting.

Nowadays though, I’d say that the underwater combat is simply messy, as is all of the combat in the game. There are very few underwater skills (and there aren’t many skills to begin with), and none of the targeted skills are allowed. And it’s basically just everyone spamming their skills at each other. There’s no strategic positioning what so ever. I get the impression that there simply wasn’t a coherent plan for how an underwater battle was supposed to go, apart from players and monsters spamming skills at will, till one of either dies.

Her Majesty is right, the top and foremost priority is to fix the underwater camera

Personally, I like the general idea. The 3D combat aspect complicates things, but that’s to be expected.

The problem is, of course, in the way various skills are implemented. Classes having key skills or even entire skill groups (and thus the traits associated with them) being shut down without anything to replace them really leaves it as an impoverished combat mode, particularly if your land build has traits that are useless underwater forcing you to switch traits every time you go underwater to avoid being handicapped.

What I think they need is to make sure that every utility skill and elite has an underwater counterpart. Where possible, make it something that’s pretty much the same. For instance, with the guardian: There are other wall skills that work underwater, so there’s no reason Wall of Reflection shouldn’t. Hallowed Ground could affect a cylinder rising up from the floor, or could be renamed Hallowed Water when underwater and affect an area around the guardian. Healing Breeze could be Healing Water, and the tomes really just need to have alternate targeting mechanisms for some of their skills to work.

Where such measures really don’t work… come up with something that does. For instance, the underwater flamethrower could be replaced by a lightning gun, sonic generator, or something like that which is affected by the same traits flamethrowers are, and is similar enough in behaviour that that makes sense.

Zaxares.5419:

Agreed. I love underwater exploration and combat too, but it seems it’s just not popular among many players for some reason. :/

I agree. I really enjoy everything about underwater areas of GW2; dynamic combat; mobility, environments, aquatic weapon designs, skill effects, …everything else. I honestly have not run into anything that I dislike about underwater areas and combat in underwater areas.

One complaint I do have about underwater combat is that many utility/elite skills do not function underwater despite nothing really preventing them from being able to. Draxynnic just explained quite well how, with a little effort on ANets part (my statement, not theirs), they could easily allow for there to be aquatic equivalents to skills that are currently land-locked.

I’d love entire underwater zones (with or without a surface), as well as an underwater city. Perhaps if/when Largos get introduced. :\
-sigh-
One can dream.

The different sets of weapons and skills really messes with people who trait for specific weapons and utilities. And there are some classes who’s underwater skills are a bit meh.

For a lot of players it’s also taking them outside their comfort zone.

Wanderer.3248:

For a lot of players it’s also taking them outside their comfort zone.

I thought that was part of the point of GW2. They changed the rules from what has become convention in MMOs and decided to make something different. If they aren’t comfortable fighting underwater, they need to actually try it more! The rest of the comments, though, I don’t really have a response to.

StinVec.3621:

I’d love entire underwater zones (with or without a surface), as well as an underwater city. Perhaps if/when Largos get introduced. :\
-sigh-
One can dream.

I’ll see your playable Largos and raise you playable Krait/Naga!

Because the most common underwater mobs are krait, and well, kitten krait.

Also there’s a myriad of issues involved with underwater combat. The most frustrating one I come across is being directly in front of a mob, spamming 1 like a guardian in a cursed shore event and for some vague arbitrary reason it doesn’t connect but the mob is free to wail on me.

That said underwater exploration is awesome and I love it, combat just mucks it up.

MatthewCam.4391:

Because the most common underwater mobs are krait, and well, kitten krait.

Or risen, or inquest. But yeah. I just love the underwater areas in Frostgorge Sound, though. Sooo deep, sooo beautiful.

I do find that my enjoyment of underwater combat depends heavily on the Profession. I love the Engineer bomb kit due to its high DPS because of shortened/faster animations, my Guardian feels painfully slow and clunky, though.

Its pretty much the issue that many things suffer through the entire game:
It wasnt polished and perfected properly before launch. Thus it remained buggy and/or inconvenient and/or a pain in the backside to go through. Thus it was unpopular and remained so. Since its unpopular, no need to make that much of an effort to get to polish and perfect it. Easier to sweap it under the rug and forget about its existence.

Stooperdale.3560:

The combat engine doesn’t work properly underwater. First of all there are the camera and depth perception problems for players. You could argue that players should get used to it but actually players just don’t like it. More importantly though the combat engine is designed for 2D land combat with fields/traps/aoe in two dimensions. Ground targeting is not applicable underwater. This means that the weapon sets are dull, hard to use, or almost broken. Utility lines are lost without ground targeting and so are the traits to support them. This leaves some classes unrecognizable from their land based versions. We haven’t even started talking about different builds for underwater, re-breathers, or the helpless surface state.

Underwater combat is alright for skirmishes for but not alright for any major content.

Not only are there a lot of traits useless underwater, but unlike skills they don’t switch out between underwater and land.

I think that a good deal of the issues around underwater combat would be solved if they introduced underwater-only skills and traits, and make traits function like skills in that they switch out when underwater. Also adding in craftable aquabreathers (up to Exotic at least but preferrably ascended) would be a benefit too. I’d say about a third of the issues would be solved then.

They need an underwater focused feature batch, imo, followed or accompanied with extended underwater content.

I love underwater combat in the game. It’s one of the most fluid, interesting types of combat the game offers, a very unique change from the traditional combat found in most MMORPGs. I don’t understand the points about depth perception, comfort zones, and the vertical axis, as I have never had problems with any of those.

As to some of the points about underwater combat needing improvements, sure, I can see it needs some improvements, but to label it as “bad” is doing an injustice towards it. Let’s be honest, most games have tried it, and they failed far worse than GW2 ever did with it. WoW’s Vashj’ir zone is a great example, where you’re able to shoot arrows underwater, and the excuse given for being able to breathe is a magic spell given by a shaman.

Oh, and you walk faster underwater than you do on land in that zone, which makes no sense.

One of my favorite zones is still Frostgorge Sound.

It was absolutely thrilling to explore the vast frigid underwater locations during world completion years ago, not to mention incredibly beautiful to swim amongst the ice floes.

Sadly, the only reason I visit the zone now is to do events that are no where near the water…

HotW is still my favorite dungeon as well. I’ve always loved running P2 and (to a lesser extent) P3.

Underwater combat is still undeniably a rather interesting part of this game, and doesn’t get nearly the amount of attention or focus it deserves. It’s a whole ‘nother ballgame, and it’s very much a part of the GW2 experience.

Sideways/vertical movement feeling sluggish still bugs me underwater… that and the camera lock thing (you can’t go past vertical). If it played more like Descent I would bother more often, but that might be dangerous territory

Sirius.4510:

Sideways/vertical movement feeling sluggish still bugs me underwater… that and the camera lock thing (you can’t go past vertical). If it played more like Descent I would bother more often, but that might be dangerous territory

I loved that game so much. They designed that so fiendishly perfect that I still use memories of my time playing it for reference when working with real and virtual world spatial orientation, structure and craft design, as well as in game world/map/level designing.

There’s two types of people, people who enjoy underwater combat and people who have leveled an elementalist through open-world content. :-)

I like the underwater parts of Tyria. Then again, I loved Vash’jyr enough to have it be IC canon that my shy stammering priest belf become self assured and free when down there … it was like flying. It’s even better in GW2 thanks to the no-breath-meter-anywhere. I’d say my only real complaint with the underwater stuff here came towards the beginning when underwater mobs had that annoying tendency to almost kill you, you’d almost kill them, then they’d go invulnerable, run off and heal, then come back to finish you off. Hax!

To a lesser extent it bothers me how uneven the professions are. Engineer feels sloppy, Necro has to melee even with a trident, but Mesmer, ah Mesmer! I actively sought out underwater dailies to do on Mesmer! Still, I think ANet’s done underwater more right than any other underwater I’ve tried, and I wish it weren’t getting so downplayed now.

wwwes.1398:

There’s two types of people, people who enjoy underwater combat and people who have leveled an elementalist through open-world content. :-)

I’m in both categories.

Admittedly, though, I don’t enjoy underwater combat AS an elementalist. The problem is that while most of the land weapon sets have at least one good ‘all round’ attunement that you can treat as your bread and butter dipping into the others when the situation calls for it, the trident, well, doesn’t. Fire behaves similarly to staff on land, but is even more reliant on the enemy not moving to deal damage. Water has water’s usual low damage potential. Air seems to offer potential with its three-shot power attack, but unless you’re firing into a crowd it’ll likely only be effective at point-blank range, and that damage still isn’t great, particularly since most of the rest of the air line seems to be built around avoiding letting the enemy get that close to begin with. Earth is probably the best, but it is a close-range condition line on the profession that least likes to be in melee.

Admittedly, the trident does have some awesome control and mobility options, so giving it too much DPS as well might be making it too powerful. The problem is that it’s the elementalist’s only option underwater. Now, if only there was some mechanic to let the elementalist use another weapon that allowed them to go into DPS mode when they just want to kill something, with some mechanic that made it inconvenient to simply swap it out to use control effects and then go right back into DPS mode? Perhaps they could have some skill that, I don’t know, conjures such a weapon for a limited period of time, on a cooldown, and if they swap out that weapon to go back to using trident it disappears and they have to wait for the skill that conjured it to finish recharging?

‘Course, there’s no precedent for such a skill type in-game already, so it’ll probably be a pain to implement, but we can dream, right? cough

Necromancer trident is also a bit weird, but I find necromancers still don’t have it quite so bad underwater – they’re more suited to close combat to begin with as a rule, and Crimson Tide while using Foul Current and Sinking Tomb to avoid contact still seems a viable strategy if you are in a situation where you want to kite. They’re also less likely to have their utilities shut down by going underwater unless they’re a wells build.

Hope we see more of underwater combat and exploration i like it a lot.

because its unbalanced and the skills in far too many cases don’t mesh with the trait setups for your land skills. it needs a major overhaul imo.

At a minimum we need the ability to have separate traits under water or alternatively more weapon options so we can have something that does go with our land traits. Optimally I think that we should also have some traits and utility skills specifically for under water use.