Guild Wars 2

I like it well enough, but it could definitely use improvements. It’s much better than Champions Online, at least.

The main thing they need to do is make ALL Utilities, especially the Elites, work underwater, or at least provide a free alternative. I mean, if they can’t get, say, the Golem Suit Elite work underwater, they should at least make it so that you can slot the golem suit anyways, and if you click on it, something happens that is just as useful.

Also, the game needs to provide a better feedback mechanism for ranging underwater. Without proper landmarks it is much harder to gauge distance to target under water, and they need to figure out some better way of depicting this so that players have a better feel for what they can hit with their attacks, and which enemies can hit them.

And of course a balance pass is in order. Some characters I feel very confident underwater. Others I feel very wary. I don’t know that all weapon sets are properly fleshed out. I know that my Thief is reasonably competent in a fight, and practically indestructible if I choose to run instead.

My shark loves to cuddle me back to life!

But a lot of it is probably also a L2P issue. Not many people spend a lot of time underwater so they usually don’t have a clue what their abilities actually do so they’re just randomly mashing buttons. Next to that they’re usually swimming around with some level 20-50 junk weapon they never bothered to replace.

Yeah, this is a big part of it too. Depending on your starting zone, you might not encounter more than a minute or two of underwater combat until well into your 20s, and even by endgame you might spend less than 1% of your time wet. I upgrade aquatic weapons with the best substitute I pull as random drops, but it might be a while between pulling a specific drop, and I never bother to shop around for one. There’s also the face masks, which replace helmets when you go under, and I bet there are a lot of casual 80s that are running around with the starter version, missing out on a large chunk of armor and stats when underwater. Make sure to track down the rebreathers for your level at least at around 50 and 80.

It should get a bit of love after all the major things that WWW needs to be fixed are dealt with. I mean balancing. While ele has nice skills their damage lacks big time, same goes for several other classes. The idea about a map almost completely underwater is great.

A weekly swapping borderland maps (hell even eternal might!) with spawn on land and all the towers etc underwater could make quite nice and unique map. Of course you’d need some special underwater siege and solve many more problems. It could also be an extreme failure when done in hurry. Needs to be well thought and that requires time. So fix what needs to be fixed, then think of this in an expac.

Ohoni.6057:

Some characters I feel very confident underwater. Others I feel very wary. I don’t know that all weapon sets are properly fleshed out. I know that my Thief is reasonably competent in a fight, and practically indestructible if I choose to run instead.

Thief is a good example of a profession that has huge swings in effectiveness for underwater combat. On one side, there are a couple weapon skills that can be chained for incredible effect to the point that they’d probably be utterly broken … if every other skill wasn’t utter garbage. Utilities are even worse, completely removing stealth and evasion skills from the equation for a profession that relies on stealth and evasion for survivability. Better hope you’re not heavily invested in traited stealth, since the only way to get there underwater is to burn your heal.

Can thief be played effectively under water? Sort of, but not with any semblance of a “regular” trait setup for ground fighting, and what you get really shares nothing in common with on-ground thief play styles. It feels like an entirely different profession, and in the worst way.

It goes for other professions too. Most people I know dread the water fractal not because it is difficult (it is one of the easiest), but because water combat is just un-fun due to forcing you to play a profession/playstyle that is often completely different than the one you’ve specced for and enjoy. I’d liken it to the Orr temple fight where you’re changed into an animal.

I like it. I thought there would be more underwater content.

Thief is a good example of a profession that has huge swings in effectiveness for underwater combat. On one side, there are a couple weapon skills that can be chained for incredible effect to the point that they’d probably be utterly broken … if every other skill wasn’t utter garbage. Utilities are even worse, completely removing stealth and evasion skills from the equation for a profession that relies on stealth and evasion for survivability. Better hope you’re not heavily invested in traited stealth, since the only way to get there underwater is to burn your heal.

I had thought thieves were dead meat in water for a while, until people pointed out how useful the Spear 3 and 5 can be. Then I realized they are very OP in water against mobs, if you’re careful, at least. It’s trickier in PvP though, since enemies are less obliged to sit around in melee while you slaughter them, and Speargun is a bit blowful for offense.

But yeah, the main problem with underwater combat is that the underwater specs do a poor job of mirroring the land ones. The two big builds for Thieves are Stealth, or Condition. As you note, Stealth is a bust in water because almost nothing grants it, and Condition is poor too, because while some attacks apply conditions, they don’t do so nearly as effectively as land skills do, and the bread and butter attacks don’t do any.

It would improve water thieves considerably if the bleed on Harpoon1 was a bit longer, or sent double stacks, if Spear 3 did a single longer poison AoE rather than a trail that only applies 1s each tic, If either Spear 3 or 5 were to apply a bleed effect on each hit (making 5 like Death Blossom), and if Spear 4 were made to stealth on a successful hit.

Then just make it so that moves like Shadow Refuge, Smoke Screen, Blinding Powder, Thieves Guild, Needle Trap, Caltrops, and Dagger Storm all work underwater. I don’t see they they can’t, other classes have similar underwater effects. Part of it I think they probably will get to in a future balance pass.

Part of it though might be deliberate, the stealth part at least, since a Thief that is able to stealth as freely in water as on land would be much harder to track, since they can not only move left and right, but also up or down to throw the opponent’s eye. It’s kind of necessary that they allow for high-stealth underwater thieves though, just based on the builds. If they have a problem with that, then maybe they could make an alternate stealth effect when submerged, where instead of being completely invisible, you’d just have that “Predator” effect, but could still use all the special attack and traiting benefits of being in stealth, and maybe get a Protection buff or something instead to make up for still being visible.

Catisa.6507:

not in its current unbalanced state. however i wouldn’t mind a wvw map added that was 90% underwater including the fortifications. would certainly change the mechanics of wvw and perhaps force anet to give some real thought to balancing the classes underwater

Now a 5th Map for WvW which would be completely submerged might be amusing if Anet made it, balanced classes, and allowed new “under water” siege and the like.

Wouldn’t mind seeing Quaggans guarding the towers/keeps and such even. (It could be interesting if they ever did it.)

As for water combat, I like it, though classes do need to be more balanced for it to one another.

Ohoni.6057:

Also, the game needs to provide a better feedback mechanism for ranging underwater. Without proper landmarks it is much harder to gauge distance to target under water, and they need to figure out some better way of depicting this so that players have a better feel for what they can hit with their attacks, and which enemies can hit them.

I hope I am just pointing out the obvious here, but under each skill, there is either a red line visible, or it’s not. When it’s visible, you are out of range.

Now a 5th Map for WvW which would be completely submerged might be amusing if Anet made it, balanced classes, and allowed new “under water” siege and the like.

Wouldn’t mind seeing Quaggans guarding the towers/keeps and such even. (It could be interesting if they ever did it.)

That could be pretty fun. Have islands on the fringes, have underwater caverns where you pop out of the water and fight “on land” in the caverns over a central “keep” structure, adapt siege to work in the water, etc. It’d be a lot of work though, I would expect it if and when we get around to the Deep Sea Dragon and Largos storylines.

I hope I am just pointing out the obvious here, but under each skill, there is either a red line visible, or it’s not. When it’s visible, you are out of range.

Lol, sure, but that’s a very binary thing, if you’re out of range, you can’t tell whether you’re 5ft out of range or 15ft out of range, and staring at the toolbar all day is a boring way to fight. When on land, it’s easier to tell distance, since you can use the ground for reference, but in the water, how do you tell, on sight alone, whether that’s a maximum scaled Asura that’s 1200 range away, or a minimum scaled Asura that’s 900 range away?

There should be some better way within the active play field to tell, like maybe icons that pop above nearby character’s heads when they are 1200, 900, 600, or less distance from you, or like each time you hit an attack key while out of range of a target, it “pings” a little graphic flare at the attack’s maximum range so you can see where that would be (only you could see it).

I prefer playing my engineer underwater. Taking a quagan node is easy for an engineer. No hunting around for pearls – just spam some turrets in a Krait swim path and sit back and rest, just occasionally overpowering the turret..
For PvE and WvW I just tend to spam turrets and concentrate on evading attacks which seems to work well. In PvE I can solo champion underwater easier than I can with any other character I have, and in WvW I have won 1v1 fights underwater more than I have lost them which can’t be said for any of my other characters except perhaps my ranger.

Mumu.6203:

I kinda like underwater combat but I hate the “dead but still able to move” and the “no stomp” downed mode.

Basically my same issue with underwater combat.