Guild Wars 2

Hi,

As per topic title, I noticed that damage is really low underwater (comparing with land) with Harpoon Gun & Spear. I have the equipment of my level with Sijil and Rune too (condition damage).

Is there anyway to improve the damage? I’m not sure if I’m playing it correctly or just that it’s meant to be that way. Troubled and had hard time doing underwater event.

Nah, rangers are pathetic underwater damage. However, your damage is 10x better with harpoon, spear gun damage is pathetic, so stick to spear/harpoon when kiting isn’t necessary.

You should be swapping between them to use Pirahnas/SHARKTHING (forget its name) on cooldown.

I find my ranger does very well underwater.

Jellyfish pets are really strong, having good AE damage and a healing skill, and the spear has decent utility skills and does pretty good damage too if you use a power/precision build.

When diving into the water in WvW I feel quite confident that I’ll be able to either kill or escape from any reasonable number of enemy players and when swimming around Orr looking for orichalcum I don’t fear having 4 or 5 enemies attack me at once. I don’t know what more I could expect from my underwater abilities. I haven’t extensively played other classes much, but if any of them are much stronger than my ranger I’d be honestly kind of surprised. (I’ve never lost a 1v1 fight in the water in WvW, but most enemy players seem really reluctant to even try fighting underwater and just try to run away instead.)

The speargun is very underwhelming, though. The only things it really seems to be good for are fighting champion mobs that do ridiculous damage or poking at downed enemy players who keep bobbing to the surface. Give me my spear any other time.

The only difficulty I find I have underwater is measuring out the distance – especially if I’m using spear/harpoon. On land, things are limited to front/back or left/right – underwater, there’s up/down, left/right, front/back. It can get a bit disorienting after a while – especially since most underwater areas are filled with more things that want to kill you.

I thought the harpoon gun was great. To me close range combat in water is really awkward and I didn’t really like the skills with the spear. I’m not sure how much difference it makes to have condition damage or plain power set for your character, but I have very little condition damage and I was just fine with harpoon even though lot of it’s basic attack is condition damage.

I find it slightly harder to get a situational awareness read while underwater. That being said, the spear is my weapon of choice.

The best fix I’ve found though, is to go a pet based spec and I just do my thing while my pet rips apart all of the mobs. It works wonders.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, my Ranger does the most damage of any character I’ve played underwater, especially better than my Thief. The Speargun has terrific attacks to it.

My favourite part is shooting pirhanna’s at people on land. BEWARE THE LANDSHARKS!

I’m not sure what class you’ve been playing, but my Ranger does exceptionally well underwater compared to my other classes. The Harpoon Gun’s “Feeding Frenzy” is amazing for demolishing groups of enemies, and “Coral Shot” makes solo kite & killing Group Event mobs underwater a cinch.

My Warrior does way better damage on land then my Ranger, but once I hit the water, I’d take my Ranger over him any day.

Ranger has high underwater damage compared to other classes

I run a condition damage build and the ranger is great underwater and then some.

Maybe you just need more practice.

My thief sucks in comparison underwater so maybe I need more practice.

Ranger with blue jellyfish is very strong during underwater combat, as Stice mentioned. I have a 74 mesmer, 74 warrior, and 80 ranger and the ranger feels like godmode in the water. I always use the harpoon gun due to it giving my pet fury for a few seconds (during which time I use it’s f2 skill for 4-6k of AoE damage per target). Pair this with the trolls healing skill, jellyfish AoE regeneration, healing signet, and 4+ seconds of protection for my pet each time I dodge, I find soloing champions underwater or packs of 5-6 mobs that would easily kill my other characters a joke with my ranger. I find the other pets terrible in comparison to the blue jellyfish, and only rarely swap to the red jelly if my blue gets dangerously low (barely ever). The 5k AoE damage and sustainability is unbeatable from my experience.

I actually really like my speargun, but I have substantial condition damage, so the bleeds from skills 1&2 pay off. Underwater I use the sharpening stone too, to get even more bleeds.. I use the blue jellyfish and the Armor fish, which is great for helping to tank. I freakin’ can’t get enough Feeding Frenzy, which is an AoE and just awesome in conjunction with sharpening stone. Mercy shot is a great finisher and Ink Blast helps put some space between you and your foe. I also use the trait skill quick zephyr often with my harpoon gun. The bottom line is harpoon gun is a great weapon (get one with condition damage! and power!), but you want to be supplementing it well.

I tend to only use the spear when I am stuck in close-range or waiting on harpoon gun cooldowns.

It just seems that ranger spear and harpoon gun really depend on good placement (distance), timing, and the right complimentary stats.

I am glad that someone else noticed this. My underwater DPS is kitten

Look, ranger’s speargun applies bleeding but almost don’t deal direct damage. If you trying to destroy any synthetic construsction, that obviously can’t bleed (like krait underwater cells or engineer’s turrets for example) with a speargun – it will be long and diffcult. If my guess is wrong and you have issues with attacking something alive with a spear – I really don’t know why.

I like the speargun and kite very well with it, utilizing sharpening stone and my pet to continually keep my enemies in the hurt. Problem is, when I encounter ranged foes that can simply return fire rather than lazily swimming after me, I find myself in a bit of a bind as I can’t deal enough direct damage to keep up(With my pet down, anyway). Needs more cowbell, but not on a ridiculous level.

When you encounter ranged underwater mobs and feel you’re not putting out enough damage with the Harpoon Gun (people keep calling it a Speargun and it’s called a Harpoon Gun in-game, just a slight thing bugging me), that’s when you swap to the Spear and get in their face to deal higher direct damage.

I use the Harpoon Gun primarily. I use #3 as my opener due to the long cast animation. I follow that with #2. Often those two alone will take a single PvE mob down to half health or less. Once that happens, I use #4 as a finisher and mop up with a few auto-#1 if that didn’t quite kill them.

For higher HP like champions or whatnot, I use the same sequence multiple times. Only I won’t wait between #3 then #2 then #4, with auto-attack #1 while waiting for cool downs.

Usually I use the armor fish pet. I’d say that 80% of the time or more, I get very little aggro and take very little damage since the armor fish is tanking. It even does a great job tanking champion bosses in DEs. It rarely dies and lets me do my thing with the Harpoon Gun.

I have a power precision build and I’d echo that underwater some how my survivability is huge as well, so it’s not too bad ^^ I go with the spear as well, but switch in between if necessary. The spear has the shark thing xD which gap closes and then throw spear thing which when the target escapes or moves u can do that, and alternate back to shark thing to close distance, which is quite useful and all. some aoe damage as well and aoe pets, so it’s quite nice fighting underwater. It’s just annoying distance judging and controlling