Guild Wars 2

Guardian is flawed and puny underwater, while the rest classes got at least 4-5 dmg skills, we got only one – and mediocre one too.
With trident u can combo 2,3,5 skills which are nice and u can get almost half the damage as a single warrior skill underwater. And with spear which is the decent weapon of them two – u can get as much as half the dmg of ele, quarter the dmg of the thief and fifth the dmg of a war. And this is only if u shine with skill and gear.

We all know the programmers at arenanet made such a sloppy work with the underwater content, which is at best – boring, slow and buggy. However ur artists did great, and its a beautiful world down there.
So how about shaping up and fixing your mess, couse such a great artwork is utterly wasted by poorly execution.

Ive always hated it when people compare everything in form of damage.
While I dont agree that damage isnt the only way to do things, I do agree that guardian underwater is meh

If damage improvement isnt the option anet wants to take, then I for me better skills in general would suffice.
For example spear #4 granting immobilize, shorter cooldown on spear #3 since it blinds. etc etc

Trident dmg is super meh, but the spear makes quite good dmg but you have to be in melee range.

It seems like all classes have terrible underwater skills. If you get “half the damage as a single warrior skill” underwater then you must be doing negative damage, the numbers are pathetic compared to what a warrior does on land.

None of the classes underwater skills seem to compare to their terrestrial counterparts (with the sole exception of underwater grenades from Engineer).

I have found that the Trident provides amazing tankability under water. Combine with dodge, shelter, and it’s own attack skills, you can negate a lot of damage while dealing OK damage in return. I soloed a giant champion underwater wurm for a group dynamic event. While it took at least 15 minutes, I was able to negate most of it’s damage and cc’s by utilizing the Trident’s bubble, dodge, shelter, and a few of our class skills.

We don’t have super damage, but the things we can do, given time, are pretty awesome.

Spear works very well for me. Only skill 2 needs a longer range.
Damage input … in regular battles i barely get any damage and that’s without “tanky” gear or dodging …

Guardian I found myself actively avoiding the water while leveling, because I got punted around like a soon-to-be flat soccer ball.
Elementalist is actually fun underwater (you know you like making a lightning cage!), and Thief I’ve found myself having amphibious fights when near the water to take advantage of some of the underwater skills.
By comparison, Guardian’s lacking here.

Just wanted to add agreement that I find underwater as a guardian to be painful. Spear does decent damage but at the cost of survivability and while trident provides that…it pales on the damage.

tridents are really meh. I find that with spear i kill the enemies fast enough it would let me survive better than tridents ability to keep me alive

EDIT: The only time I use trident is sPvP at Raid the Capricorn. I use it for its #5 to sink targets for my army of sharks to feast on

Trident damage and targeting suck badly. spear damage is higher, but still low, and has useless skills.

I actually agree with this. As a guardian I find myself avoiding water as much as possible. I’m mostly build around tanking so it always takes me a bit longer to kill things even on land than it would for most other players. That being said, the trade off is that I rarely die and am able to take on 5+ creatures at a time. Underwater it takes me FOREVER to kill even weaker creatures and that’s using the spear. The only real problem I have with this is it takes a big chunk of the game that could be quite fun and turns it into drudgery.

Are you kidding me? Our underwater skills are the best skills we have on both fronts.

Area heals, vulnerability on hit, KD, aoes, bubble, pulls with fire.

Mougen.6702:

I actually agree with this. As a guardian I find myself avoiding water as much as possible. I’m mostly build around tanking so it always takes me a bit longer to kill things even on land than it would for most other players. That being said, the trade off is that I rarely die and am able to take on 5+ creatures at a time. Underwater it takes me FOREVER to kill even weaker creatures and that’s using the spear. The only real problem I have with this is it takes a big chunk of the game that could be quite fun and turns it into drudgery.

I’m in the same boat. I imagine if I were traited with stats towards raw damage I’d find it a better experience, but I’m not about to change my entire configuration for underwater only play.

I’m honestly not seeing it that badly. Yes, Thieves are more fun underwater, I’ll admit that. But I run a ‘balanced’ build with mediocre DPS and manage to kill weaker enemies under water in a few hits. Are you using your Slot Skills underwater? Are your aquatic weapons up to date? Am I just lucky? I don’t know.

MaxChaos.3825:

Guardian is flawed and puny underwater, while the rest classes got at least 4-5 dmg skills, we got only one – and mediocre one too.
With trident u can combo 2,3,5 skills which are nice and u can get almost half the damage as a single warrior skill underwater. And with spear which is the decent weapon of them two – u can get as much as half the dmg of ele, quarter the dmg of the thief and fifth the dmg of a war. And this is only if u shine with skill and gear.

We all know the programmers at arenanet made such a sloppy work with the underwater content, which is at best – boring, slow and buggy. However ur artists did great, and its a beautiful world down there.
So how about shaping up and fixing your mess, couse such a great artwork is utterly wasted by poorly execution.

I think you’re just doing it wrong. The spear skills are powerful and on short cooldowns, and the trident skills provide a good bit of control. Underwater doesn’t need boosting, I’d say you probably just need to skill up a bit and remember to use your utilities underwater as well.

I never had real problems fighting underwater. It did take some time to get used to. The Spear’s #2 skill does good damage, and the other skills are fine too. The Trident is a bit boring, but the #1 and #5 skills are very effective in what they have to do.

Make aoe the #2 of the spear and useful the #1 of the trident, and then we can talk about it.
aa (#1) of trident deals almost no damage and the heal is insufficient and impossible to control.

Nope, Im not doing it wrong. And Im excluding utility skills, because my point is weapon skills for guardian sucks. I am not having trouble killing a single or two mobs at the same time. I am having a trouble fighting a mob five times longer than any other profession. And that is just dull.
As I said – trident skills are nice – they heal, they sink, they burn – and u can combine 4 of them to get a really nice combo – which will do about half the damage of warriors single skill. Enough?
I actually played with all the professions – mainly in pvp, where I was able to test underwater skills at lvl 80 with all proffesions. Now.. I should remind that I have not built for underwater, I even do not take it in consideration when I make my builds. But no matter what profession u pick, even if u dont know the skills underwater – just random mashing of buttons can easily get you as high as twice the dps of a guardian.

I played an engineer through the betas, and now I main my Guardian. Engineer’s underwater skills are atrocious, and I love the guardians. Let me say this – I have yet to lose an underwater battle in sPvP. The guardian has a wonderful array of skills at their disposal underwater. And spear is nowhere near melee range, it’s 600. I think guardian underwater skillset is fine, you just need to learn how to properly use the tools available.

You haven’t tried grenades underwater, obviously.

Going to have to say that Guardian has the best underwater skills, both weapons are fantastic with their movepool (spear 2 is absolutely awesome). Only rivaled by the incredible grenade kit for Engies.

Wow, my underwater experience as a Guardian has only been surpassed by my underwater experience as a Ranger. I can battle a dozen mobs underwater and come out practically unscathed, and that’s at melee range for the 2 skill on the Spear.

Your mileage may vary, I guess.

I just wish our column of light acted as an underwater “symbol”.

It’s kind of sad that one of our class features (and all associated talents) doesn’t work in water.

Rely on your utilities… Spirit Weapons underwater are beastly. I know i super-owned a thief who chased me underwater, even without spirit weapons, because Trident gives me reflection bubble and im a condition build, so i can still burn people.

I haven’t tried other classes underwater, so perhaps you are right. However if guardian is so weak in underwater combat, then how is that I am completely invincible in Raid on the Capricorn, fight over the ruins? Sure when you bring overhelming numbers even guardian can die there, but so far in battles where both sides have similar numbers of players participating I always came out victorious… Spear melee dmg combined with radiance trait line and meditations for burning makes guardian a really strong underwater fighter. At least that’s my experience.

I also believe that excluding utility skills in your assesment of guardian underwater combat is very wrong. They are there for a reason – in almost no situation can your character shine with only his weapon skills.

I ran HoTW exploration mode a few times last night and was actually pretty happy with my Trident during the underwater areas/bosses (i play as support dps / heals in dungeons generally). I also love the spear for underwater fighting when I’m on my own – I generally throw spirit weapons and/or speed boosting skills in my utilities when I’m underwater to help me get from mob to mob faster without switching to trident too often.

Havent tried the spear yet. But with the trident the only issue i have with it is i have to be in melee range to actually do any damage. If in melee range its auto attack bounces back and forth between me and them up to like 4 or 5 times. On that last hit i noticed my trident does a total hit of all the damage it had done up to then. Although will say doing 25-50 damage a hit isent any thing great but that last hit normally goes anywhere from 100 to 200 damage. So on a single attack if in melee range my trident does 200 to 400 damage auto attacking. And it also heals which is a plus.

Just wanted to make sure everyone posting in this thread knows that Guardian can equip BOTH Spear and Trident and switch between them underwater.
You can set up a couple great skill combinations between them such as Spear5/Spear4/swap/Trident5 right as they get into the barb field.

Maybe it changes later on down the road (my guardian is in mid 40’s), but I was actively trying to find underwater areas because I kill faster with less chance of dying underwater than I do on land.

@Kidel the #2 spear skill IS aoe. It’s a frontal cone.

I feel that our underwater combat is very strong. We have a great selection of underwater utility skills. We have some neat abilities. We have underwater weapon swapping.

I’m not 80 yet, so I don’t know how it scales. However, in numerous underwater events, underwater hearts, and even underwater PVP, I feel like a juggernaut. I’m not very good at PVP, but if I find someone underwater I can stomp them very consistently. It’s nearly impossible for them to kill me. Above water, I’m a PVP-noob and I don’t tend to do well on 1v1.

In PVE, I can handle a fairly large pack of mobs underwater. In events, I do quite well and don’t get drowned as often as most other players around me. If I do get drowned, that amazing skill on the #2 button usually rallies me right away.

That harpoon ability that makes a column of light might as well not exist, though. I swear that thing causes more evade-glitching in NPCs than any other ability I’ve seen.

Sword Wall is useless. Maybe if I stayed within the wall it would work, but no, I place the wall and fall back 1 mile, moving the battle away from it.