Guild Wars 2

Specifically against ranged mobs. I’m fine against them on land since I have cantrips, enough damage to take them down quickly, and interrupts (dual daggers), and I’m also fine with melee underwater mobs. However, against multiple ranged mobs, I’m usually killed very quickly.

I do use my dodges and change attunements often. Most of my control skills don’t seem to be much use against them, though- only 5 on wind, which has a long CD.

Are there any tips I’m missing?

I’m also having trouble figuring out how best to go about underwater combat. I have to be very careful not to aggro more than one mob at a time. But then, I haven’t been underwater since I discovered attunement dancing, so I might be able to figure out some more tricks later.

In other words, BUMP.

Water attunement is where your major source of damage lies. 2, 3 and 5 (is that tidal wave?) deal pretty heavy damage. Well 2 +3 upon detonation that deals the heavy damage, and 5 requires almost picture perfect positioning, but it slaughters.

Actually I think one of the eles weakenesses under water (not sure if other professions experience the same thing) is that many attacks just have extremely poor hit boxes, or maybe collision detection in general is just really poor. Earth I find notoriously bad. Spamming earth 1 and I’ll constantly see ‘miss or evade’. Sometimes I can literally be in the mob’s face and still miss, but otherwise it’s a nice bleed stack which you can throw in. With earth 2 I don’t think I’ve ever successfully hit with it! These projectiles just have a funny flight pattern. Not sure if anyone else notices this?

To deal with ranged mobs… I really don’t know. Both Fire and Earth have blinds, so try to use those. Ranged mobs in general give me the most trouble as an ele, on both land and in the water.

Above all else, remember that what we lack in physical toughness, we make up for in versatility, and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.

cough

On land, I handle ranged mobs pretty easily by closing and slaughtering… but that’s just because I’ve become most comfortable with d/d. Tried to do some staff play earlier today. Have yet to surmount the learning curve. That would be why water is difficult for me, because the trident plays very similar to the staff, which I find difficult to use to the same effect as the daggers. (I thought I was decent with it until I figured out how to make the daggers sing.)

My elementalist is like, 19, so you can take this or leave it if you like, but like Aiglos said, I find the most success with water, and I stay in it almost exclusively underwater. The 1 is mediocre, but the 2 is a huge burst of damage if you detonate it right. You have to launch it, and then rehit the key to make it explode. Otherwise it does mediocre damage as well. The 3 is really good if you can close the gap. Simply drop the wall, and then detonate it immediately the same way you do the 2. This one requires you to be close to them as the wall drops on you instead of shooting like a projectile, but it also does a large amount of damage. Water 4 gives you regen where you are sitting, and sinks any enemies in melee range. It is nice for some heal support, but not much else. Water 5 dashes forward (which you can use to close the gap if you like), and does damage and heals. It is extremely finnicky about positioning for the damage dealing aspect, but if you manage to get it right, it basically 1 shots any normal mobs.

I maxed out all the other elements, but rarely use them, so I cannot say how to use them effectively underwater. Whereas on land I am all about stance dancing, I stick to water while submerged.

AVHero explains it much better than I do. Good job

You won’t be the strongest underwater, but I think the combination of skills on the trident is actually quite nice. Fire seems to play more of a support/utility role, definitely make use of the cripple, blind and vigour here. I’d pretty much just unload your skills, unless you can get a mob bunched together, then try to go for positioning since fire has aoe. Just don’t stay in fire for the damage aspect! Use it to supplement your other attunements.

Air and earth have some nice control skills (flotation, immobilise and sinking) which can give you time to heal up or do damage. Air 1 itself can be quite nice if you’re up in the mob’s face and it is distracted. Otherwise, go to water for the damage and (regeneration perhaps)

While all the above is true (water attunement in particular), #1 tip is to avoid water. The primary reason being that water is buggy as hell. On a regular basis, I get mobs that leash and go immune while in melee range on top of their spawn point. A Grenth help you if you try to use any CC skills. It seems abotu 50/50 that sink or float will instead be “make mob invuln and heal to full after 5 secs”

These are not elementalist problems though, but water in general

Underwater combat is the same as land’s: you have to combo your spells.

No, i don’t mean fields and finishers, what i mean is that you have to use your cc to trap mobs inside your aoe skills: water wall is great because once deployed if you switch to fire and use n2 you have a mob stuck inside a heavy damage area while you’re safe. It’s just an example, it’s possible to further “exploit” wall by cycling trough elements and unloading all the damage skills at our disposal.

Kiting is very easy when you have float, sinks, multiple blinds, snares, stun, vigor to dodge more often and a teleport.
Use them! Standing still is as bad underwater as it is on land.

Ranged mobs suffer a lot from Earth Attunement 5th skill, it’s basically a 6 seconds long blind spam, add sinks and floating and it’s possible to chain cc a mob for about 10 seconds.

That’s it, use all your elements, just like you would do on land and you will be fine.