Guild Wars 2

hey forumers!
seeing that the elementalist only has 1 weapon to use underwater, but 4 attunements, there is more diveristy then other professions. i am curious how you go along with this underwater. do you swap between attunements every now and then, or do you stick with one? is there a patern (combo) you follow or are it just randomly pressed buttons?

i myself have a hard time battling underwater, so i only keep it to water attunement for the big damige (skill 1, 2, 3 and 5).

I like to open with Water’s 5 and burn all burst damage CD’s in water. Then I switch attunements and use different skills like I would on land.

I’m partial to spamming all my skills in one attunement, then switching to the next to continue the cycle.

It really depends on the situation. Against players I’d generally keep rotating attunements for cc mostly. In pve…1 mob I’d stick to air…a bunch of easy mobs – fire…a bunch of holy puppy…earth5→water→whirlpool then keep rotating mostly 5-2 combinations till everything is dead. But generally, I put cc > dmg cause… kitten it I hate playing in 3d when the game is 2d….

I’m partial to staying on land.

I rotate through and spam the aoe skills (all 2, all 5) against groups, against single target I like to chain the ccs together. I also like to hide in the blinding could.

always swap often
abuse the the godlike water skills as much as possible
switch to earth only for the disables (4, 5) unless I’m at point blank range to use 2. the self pull (3) sucks because it’s a self stun. Amusingly it does nothing if you have armor of earth up. And skill 1 obviously sucks. Turn that auto attack off. If you’re in earth and not casting something else, you should be switching

Actually undewater, the water attunement gives the most damage. You have to time it though. Go in with skill five, cast skill three, let it explode wich does a lot of damage and gets you out. Skill two is great, but time the explosion.

IF they get close, earth five is a blind. Earth three is very good melee damage.

Fire has a couple of good AoE including a criple.

Air, i don’t use that much

I avoid getting my robe wet at all costs. I handle underwater combat by avoiding the ruins at al times on capricorn and swearing at my monitor when i need an underwater heart for map completion.

I detest the underwater game gimmick intently, even more so on ele.

open with air cage, then air 2, pop elite and circle strafe watch every thing die.
if elite isn’t up , start with air , close in arcane blast switch to water , water 3 to blast back then follow with water 5 . Switch to fire 1 to 5 then back to air . Just circle strafe the whole time. I rarely lose 1 v1 under water. I don’t gt why ppl say we have weak under water skills.

Start in air: 2 for dmg> use the floater ability (4)> Air cage to stun (5)> 3 to get close/confuse,
Switch to Earth: Sink ability while air cage is still up stunning them again> rock spray in the face> then root them with number 3> 5 for aoe blind
Switch to Water: number 3 and 3 again to blast them while sitting there> 2 then 2 when it reaches them > 4 for the regen (might need it by now)> 5 for the charge back in close and dmg,
Switch to Fire: Heat Wave 5 for the burning and vigor> Steam 3 for blind> Boil 2 for dmg> Lava chains 4 for cripple,

Then switch back to air and repeat with dodges thrown in willy nilly and cantrips for breaking control effects. I do all this, of course, AFTER i use Whirlpool boss mode. As you can tell, I don’t waste any abilities, every ability has a role and switching between attunements pushing only a couple of abilities per is wasting those other abilities (not to mention you get stuck by the attunement recharge rate doing that and end up auto attacking with crap abilities)

I rotate through the attunements, spamming DoTs and condition damage skills and floats/sinks/cripple. Tidal Wave is used as often as possible.

Underwater is just so weird for elementalists since positioning matters so little and there’s no combos. We have a lot of CC, though, and can stop our opponent from attacking us for a decent percentage of the time.

Whirlpool is awesome, of course. Very different from what Tornado is like.

Best way I’ve found is just to avoid fighting anything underwater (at least solo) unless your elite is off cooldown. Sorry, but that’s the best advice I can give…..

What? Elementalist has the best underwater set

If the enemy is near the bottom, earth’s anchor move, then water 5 at point blank.
Also getting good at sending my teleport one way then swimming the other and rocking up at the teleport (air 3) good to get away from sharks with.
Don’t really use fire, air for teleport stun and float, water for the big damage and earth for the anchor

Provided the projectiles don’t bug out and just sail over targets heads, earth#1 is actually pretty good if you have some +condition damage. It’s super fast cast time also means you can stack a metric kittens worth of bleeds on a target, then sink them or cover with a blind. Since you are already forced to be in melee range to get all 3 projectiles to actually hit your target, you can follow-up with the shotgun blast of earth#2.

Also, It’s a hard sell given GlyphoEH activation time underwater is super quick compared to on land, but running heal signet for underwater and spamming lightning/earth auto attack (which are very quick) can also heal you up a fair bit.

My preferred underwater style is to pretend that my enemies and I are both having a good time as I try and tickle them to death.