Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty new, played around with all the classes, so far ranger, warrior and elementalist are my favorites. Started the game up last week. So assume I don’t know anything, but I’m a long time gamer, so don’t be afraid to get to technical with me.

The only major hang up I have with my elementalist is that underwater combat is absolutely awful. Am I missing something or what? I feel like all my spells hit like a wet noodle and that’s like, the one thing Elementalists (As I have seen) have going for them. Pure firepower, and without it, they just fall over.

Nah they aren’t all firepower at least imo they aren’t. Underwater is not the best like others but only thing I would like is better uw mobility like make that water 5 skill not stop you at the end or make that bubble transfer air skill better.

ele’s have several stuns in underwater combat. Use them

I’m not sure it needs another buff, per se. Once I got the hang of it I don’t have any problems, but the learning curve was steeper than any land weapon set (probably in part due to the 3-D rather than 2-D nature of the environment combined with action-combat).

Every element has great skills and some that are kind of mediocre or situational at best.

Fire: Probably my least used underwater element. Has a good cripple and a burn and fire field. Can generate fire aura or area might with the finishers in water attunement.

Water: This is where the damage is, mostly. Best ranged single target attacks, #2 has a short cooldown and hits hard. Good short range CC, #3 is a gap-creator/blast-finisher/aoe-chill and hits hard, #4 is a short range aoe sink (disable) that gives regeneration as well (still bugged not to work with cleansing water trait unfortunately). Tidal Wave (#5) is perhaps the hardest hitting underwater skill in the game, IF you get the positioning just right, wedge your target into a corner against the terrain and profit.

Air: Best point blank dps auto-attack. Decent ranged aoe attack on #2. The air bubble #3 is tricky to use and very situational, but can be great in pvp to confuse opponents or set up a burst in water. The #4 and #5 are both great CC, #5 in particular as it is the only underwater lightning field.

Earth: Mostly melee range, although skills technically have longer ranges. At point blank, the auto-attack stacks 3 bleeds per hit, and the #2 hits hard and applies more bleeding. The only one you’ll really want to use at max range is the #4 to sink your opponent while you close the gap with #3 or just swim over. The smoke field generated by #5 will help keep you safe at close range (aoe blind) and can give stealth with blast or leap finishers (underwater stealth elementalist? oh yeah!).

The elite has great damage and decent CC, even after it’s damage was nerfed. It’s also a whirl finisher.

Comparing OP’s favorite 3 classes, elementalist will probably feel lacking , especially if thinking of water combat like land where fire is a prime dps element. Rangers are very powerful underwater due to their pets and some traits (in pvp, pet ai has no problem tracking opponents, where a player has to be spinning their camera like crazy to keep target sometimes). Warriors are point-and-click easymode underwater. Elementalists have to learn to maximize their combos and positioning underwater to be effective.

Give it more than a week. I have over a thousand hours on my elementalist since beta last year, and I don’t feel like I have mastered it yet (of course, that is in part due to my general badness at video games). I felt the same way as OP at first, took a long time to get my “sea legs”.

DPS under water needs a buff and some better traits. EA doesn’t even work there.

Thrashbarg.9820:

I’m not sure it needs another buff, per se. Once I got the hang of it I don’t have any problems, but the learning curve was steeper than any land weapon set (probably in part due to the 3-D rather than 2-D nature of the environment combined with action-combat).

Every element has great skills and some that are kind of mediocre or situational at best.

Fire: Probably my least used underwater element. Has a good cripple and a burn and fire field. Can generate fire aura or area might with the finishers in water attunement.

Water: This is where the damage is, mostly. Best ranged single target attacks, #2 has a short cooldown and hits hard. Good short range CC, #3 is a gap-creator/blast-finisher/aoe-chill and hits hard, #4 is a short range aoe sink (disable) that gives regeneration as well (still bugged not to work with cleansing water trait unfortunately). Tidal Wave (#5) is perhaps the hardest hitting underwater skill in the game, IF you get the positioning just right, wedge your target into a corner against the terrain and profit.

Air: Best point blank dps auto-attack. Decent ranged aoe attack on #2. The air bubble #3 is tricky to use and very situational, but can be great in pvp to confuse opponents or set up a burst in water. The #4 and #5 are both great CC, #5 in particular as it is the only underwater lightning field.

Earth: Mostly melee range, although skills technically have longer ranges. At point blank, the auto-attack stacks 3 bleeds per hit, and the #2 hits hard and applies more bleeding. The only one you’ll really want to use at max range is the #4 to sink your opponent while you close the gap with #3 or just swim over. The smoke field generated by #5 will help keep you safe at close range (aoe blind) and can give stealth with blast or leap finishers (underwater stealth elementalist? oh yeah!).

The elite has great damage and decent CC, even after it’s damage was nerfed. It’s also a whirl finisher.

Comparing OP’s favorite 3 classes, elementalist will probably feel lacking , especially if thinking of water combat like land where fire is a prime dps element. Rangers are very powerful underwater due to their pets and some traits (in pvp, pet ai has no problem tracking opponents, where a player has to be spinning their camera like crazy to keep target sometimes). Warriors are point-and-click easymode underwater. Elementalists have to learn to maximize their combos and positioning underwater to be effective.

Give it more than a week. I have over a thousand hours on my elementalist since beta last year, and I don’t feel like I have mastered it yet (of course, that is in part due to my general badness at video games). I felt the same way as OP at first, took a long time to get my “sea legs”.

Thank you for this post. I will keep at it. <3

Our underwater skillset is fine, just takes some practice to get used to.

However, we have a number or traits which simply don’t do anything/do less underwater that are core to many elementalist builds – Evasive Arcana does nothing, none of the underwater weapon skills are auras for Powerful Auras, weapon-specific traits like Blasting Staff have no equivalent.

On the other hand, there’s warriors, who get benefits from Greatsword traits when using Spears, benefits from Rifle traits when using Harpoon Guns, and don’t seem to have any frequently used traits that become worthless underwater. Fact is, many of the popular warrior builds work perfectly underwater, while popular Elementalist builds don’t. I’d kill for an option to have a separate trait set-up while underwater so I don’t end up switching traits every time I do underwater content and forgetting to switch back later.

Ele is by far my favorite underwater skill set in game (and my current main is ranger), it just takes a lot of getting used to.

One thing I’ve noticed is that Fire essentially becomes supporty skills and water essentially becomes damage skills which is weird seeing as how on land it’s the opposite. Air keeps its Damage + CC nature, and is essentially the raw damage melee ranged one, where earth is condi damage melee range, and man does Murky Water make you hard to take out!

Btw, does anyone know if it’s true that blasting staff buffs underwater skills? My friend swears it does but I haven’t noticed any difference and I’m a staff ele…