Guild Wars 2

I’m having some issues with elementalist underwater combat, and I’m hoping anyone else can shed some light.

First, before anyone says anything about it, I know to dance attunements and circle strafe. I’ve got a post up about making full utilization of the staff with skills for combos to add more effect to all of your skills. I’m not a noob that just installed the game.

My problems boil down to this:

My underwater damage is pathetic. My staff and my trident are both level 53 rares (I’m 59). My air and earth auto-attacks above water hit for about 200 My fire auto-attack hits for about 300. My water auto-attack hits for about 125. Underwater, my fire auto-attack hits for about 150 all together, my water hits for about 100, my air hits for about 100, and my earth hits for about 20. My auto-attacks hit for about twice, if not more above water as they do underwater.

So, it takes forever to kill anything, even making use of slot skills.

So, with everything basically being AoE underwater unless you fight exclusively in earth, it’s difficult to not agro multiple mobs. Had I the same damage underwater as above, multiple mobs would be a walk in the park. The problem udnerwater is that since I do so little damage, it’s near impossible to actually kill them quick enough.

Whenever I start drowning, the real crapfest begins. At least I do enough damage above water that if I go down, I’ve probably got at least one mob sitting at around 5-10%. Underwater, I’m lucky to have that. Our drowning skills don’t do anything for us compared to our already subpar (compared to other classes) downed skills.

Whenever I get drowned, I have two options. I can fight which leads directly to death since the only skill that actually helps me avoid dying takes 10 seconds to come off recharge. Or, I can try to swim away and get to the surface. Since everything underwater tends to move faster than me while I’m drowning, they catch up to me. If I do make it to the surface, I’m stuck sitting there and can’t move while I try to recover. Then, they catch up to me at the surface and yank me back under to kill me.

Is this something just plain broken for us, or am I missing something incredibly obvious?

It’s not just you. Elementalist underwater combat feels terrible, like I’m 20 levels below the mobs or something. On some other classes (not all), underwater combat feels great. I enjoy it on my thief. On the elementalist though, I want to avoid it at all cost, and is I am forced to do it, I just want to get it over with ASAP.

Above water, I can kill mobs in under 10 seconds pretty easily. I can aoe groups of mobs pretty easily too. Under water, even a single mob feels like some sort of epic encounter that I can easily lose (a single friggin mob) and that drags on for entirely too long.

If they ever add major underwater content, I’m just plain skipping it in the current Ele state, it’s not enjoyable at all.

I agree … damage sucks for elementalist. to sum it all up i like to avoid water combat with my elementalist because its not FUN…I hate water combat atm havent tried other class yet but so far water combat is something i tried to avoid as much as possible.

maybe some skill tweak cause some skills like lightning i dont understand like the water pocket…magnetic current…why would i want to be closer to a monster that im circling around. I hardly use earth …i have a lot of +condition damage but still i would like the initial impact to do more damage. at lvl 78 it currently does 28 damage…seriously? we need a buff!

Underwater, water attunement is the only one that is worth akitten Just stay in it pretty much 100% of the time. Switching loses you dps because the other three are so bad.

You might not be making good enough use of your CC’s. We have a lot when in trident mode. There is an earth and water ability that makes them sink, the lightning one that makes them rise. The Lightning cage that stuns them. There is a water one that puts a shield between you and them, two cripples and two blinds as well, plus a teleport for keeping them farther away. Overall there is a lot of CC stuff, I’m probably missing some here too, but you should be trying to juggle the enemy as much as possible. Keeping them at bay.

In before Pinkerton comes in this thread and says underwater elementalist skills are completely fine, maybe a little OP even, you just need to learn to play better and change attunements, because some top skilled elementalists can solo 3 champion sharks, while selling items on the TP.

It’s great that we have so much CC when underwater, but it’s a painfully slow and long fight most of the time. Just wish it was a bit easier to actually KILL the things I’m fighting. I also tend to avoid underwater as much as possible these days. Sad, really, since there seems to be a lot down there for us to discover…

Water attunement is where it’s at – which is almost logical except for the fact that water is the ‘support’ attunement on ground…
-1 is blah like all other autoattacks (except maybe air at point-blank range)
-2 is very good if you have some range… explode it before it hits for more damage
-3 works both as a good aoe, a snare, and a distance maker. I almost always double-tap it so it explodes right away for a very nice chunk of damage
-4 is a good aoe cc (sinking = can’t cast anything) and some healing for DEs, but not really useful in a typical situation
-5 is where the magic happens. Target a mob standing behind the other ones and you’ll do crazy damage to the ones you run through, and then add in some more aoe damage when you hit the targeted mob. Only drawback is that it moves you a fixed distance, so it’s not as good in melee range (use 3 to remedy that)

Other than that, I use air 1-2-5 when fighting single enemies, fire 5 (I think?) to get vigor for more dodging, and earth 5 if there are mobs clustered around me for a long-ish duration aoe blind. Earth 2 isn’t that shabby with somce +condition damage, so I usually fire that off too before switching back to water.

Works pretty well, and makes veteran skill challenge mobs much easier as well.

Pull mobs to a croner and water 5.
Not feasible most of the time, i know, butkittenentertaining once you do it.

Underwater combat indeed is a bit lackluster (autoattacks especialy) compared to on land combat.
Though again i don´t think staying in the water alone is answer…it is effective but so is doing some attunement dancing, as every attunement has some nice skills.

For example, starting with fire 2 and 3, switching to air, 5 and 2, water 2 and 3 (maybe 4 and 5 too, if necessary)
, earth 5 and 2 if cloe enough, back to fire.
It´s still not nearly as much damage as i´d hope but it´s a lot more fun than just blasting away with water.

Oh, and currently ele with enough time can solo prettymuch any mob (as long as there´s not many of them) due to bug that earth autoattack can shoot at any direction, also directly behind….just swimming away in big circle and auto attacking, sinkin them once in a while, can take down a champion….if you´re patient….very very patient.
Multiple mobs and mobs that pull, stun etc are still impossible though.

Yes i have been using water attunement in underwater….but cooldown is killer…that earth attack sounds like an exploit…but good to know though…
what I have been personally doing is switching attunements a lot and basically using all my skills…switch use all skills…switch…use all skills…i dunno how you can just stick to water since cooldown is like 10+seconds
that has been working well but still water combat is a chore…im having way more fun on ground. staff or S/D is what i use…and loving it

Zaphir.7210:

-2 is very good if you have some range… explode it before it hits for more damage

This is wrong. You need to explode it just after it passes through the enemy so it does both the projectile and the explosion damage. Makes it much much more effective (takes as much as half HP off some enemies).

Sharpe.1485:

In before Pinkerton comes in this thread and says underwater elementalist skills are completely fine, maybe a little OP even, you just need to learn to play better and change attunements, because some top skilled elementalists can solo 3 champion sharks, while selling items on the TP.

Since he’s apparently sleeping, I’ll be the one to say it. Ele underwater is fine. It’s weak on the damage side, just as staff is weak on the damage side (unless you go fire only anyway), but it sports so much utility that you’ll be invaluable if you play with someone else. This isn’t a single player game after all.

Facetanking with Air #1 and a high crit works pretty well as it’s about a 1k/second autoattack, but you have to hit with all three prongs. I’ll usually cycle fire 2, water 2, lightning 2, 5, 1 and sit on 1 for a bit over and over.

Yes, I avoid water at all costs. Ele has a lot of control skills underwater, but overall it’s awkward compared to other classes that can just spam a long ranged autoattack and do more damage than an ele blowing CD’s underwater.

Maybe we need a second underwater weapon focused on damage, like spear.