Guild Wars 2

Does Thief have a 10 point Elite skill that works underwater? If there are more than one, what would you recommend?

We only get Basalisk Venom.

It’s basilisk venom or nothing. Thief utility and elite skills are conspicuously absent underwater. Make your complaint at your local forum at the earliest opportunity.

Thank you! One of the classes only had a 30 point Elite for under water. I din’t want to make the mistake of opening the 10 pointers if they do no good.

doesn’t make sense at all that dagger storm doesn’t work underwater. It’s the one that would be the best pick by far. Same thing like smoke screen doesn’t even work but if you get the trait that drops a screen on downed, it drops as intended

Underwater combat is, in general, pretty unpolished for thieves. Available utility and elite skills are pretty lacking… And combat skills are pretty weak or even work against you… like for example, Tow Line… which essentially works as a reversed Scorpion Wire… including the part in that you are CCed and unable to move or use skills after being pulled to your opponent.

But since people can spam ‘Shadow assault’ and become an almost useless invulnerable immobile twirl of mediocre single-target damage, everything seems fine.

At least until someone with float/sink arrives, then, the party is over…

It is true that Basilisk Venom is our only underwater elite. With no burst to utilize with that move, it’s sadly weak underwater.

As for Thieves underwater, it depends… thieves have crappy HP, crappy toughness, and crappy DPS underwater. I’m full glass cannon and that’s still not enough to make up for the kitten ~100 damage skill bases. Thieves, however, do have one thing going for them underwater – they’re basically invulnerable. Despite hitting like a limp fish, 1v1 I own 99% of the time. Spear with 2 evades, one a long one (#2 and 5), a spammable block (#3) that you can use infinitely with even slight initiative gain attempts, and two gap closers (steal and spear #4), and I can slap anyone to death. In PvP it usually ends with them swimming for land – and well, pfft, half health against a glass cannon dagger theif? gg. Unfortunately you can’t afford to make yourself invulnerable for long against multiple targets (#2 and 3 is easy for another to just off hit, #5 far too expensive), so the second one more person joins (even if it’s a freaking pet), you’re screwed since once you lose that invulnerability, you’re back to low HP + low defense + low DPS fail. Sadly harpoon is just more wimpy DPS without the survival options and has stupidly costly moves (that still suck with DPS), so it’s a non-option.

Is half damage of other classes worth single-target invulnerability? Maybe if the game was 1v1 in PvP and that PvE was against single targets (which yay if you like taking 30 minutes to solo a Champion?)… But as it is not, pretty much any other class is better underwater.

Utilities and Elites are definitely lacking, but I disagree with weapon skills. I would say Thief is the best underwater fighter in the whole game. Spear #3 and #5 are absolutely ridiculous. Just using combinations of those 2 skills, I’ve been able to easily maintain the attention of the whole second pack in the underwater Fractal (the one with the Hypnoss mobs) at 40+ while dishing out nice #3 cleaves at opportune moments. Pack SoM, RFI, IS and something else, and you’re set for life with Spear. Hell, if I had skills like that on land, I’d use nothing else (and wouldn’t need anything else for that matter).

Auesis.7301:

… I would say Thief is the best underwater fighter in the whole game…

… I would say Thief is the best underwater TANK in the whole game…

A slight difference, but still a difference.

Interesting, I am not a fan of underwater combat and everytime Capricorn pops up I’m ughhh. Its just…slow..and not why I play a thief.

“I’ve been able to easily maintain the attention of the whole second pack in the underwater Fractal (the one with the Hypnoss mobs) at 40+ while dishing out nice #3 cleaves at opportune moments.”

That’s great. Can you give some tips? I often find myself sunk/netted/killed before I even start. I can single target with spear 5 for a bit while my team gets killed. I can block but nothing hits me. I can block and take enough damage during the block response to get myself killed anyway even with signet of malice. The krait often don’t swim into melee range for the block response and they always swim away from spear 2.

Really, it depends how good your initiative regain is – You can use #3 again even in the middle of the counter response to block and retrigger the counter. I always use Infi Signet under water to help boost the hungry initiative needs of this. The better your gain, the more targets or longer you can hold out doing your only real damage move while not taking damage. Stick on the ranged targets, and let the melee swim to you so #3 hits all of them. If you get more, spam #5 and dodges until your party gets the attention of a few.

For fractals I admit I play it a bit more pansy like – I let someone else initiate the fight, swing my spear until I have the attention of a mob or two, then commence #3 spam. :p

Conclusion – You’re fine in PvE (but you’re fine in PvE even if you played the whole game with nothing but auto attack and dodges on any class) as mobs are predictable and controllable. Unfortunately you can’t control people locations like you can mobs, and as they have heals and dodges, 2+ people are guaranteed to outlast your initiative unless they suck (I have had people fight me grouped up), or you built for super initiative gain (which usually means you sacrificed your already poor underwater DPS for it – so it just means it goes until you still run out or they give up).