Guild Wars 2

Spear-gun needs to be heavily based around Direct Damage.
Harpoon needs to be heavily based around Bleeding/Poisoning.

Currently, Harpoons are more focused on applying poison and vulnerability, while Spear-gun is some direct damage and a tiny bit of bleeding, this needs fixed.

Add the bleeding portions from spear gun to harpoon and give vulnerability to spear-gun.

Before anything else, the weapon types are Spear and Harpoon gun. Not Harpoons and Spear-guns. So keep that in mind while reading my response.

I see no reason why the melee range Spear should be based around condition damage, rather than direct damage (such as the Vulnerability condition) since condition damage almost always takes more time to do its work by definition, compared to direct damage. Forcing the thief to hang around for a long time in melee range to kill anything forces them to be in the danger zone constantly.

Consequently, Harpoon guns are much safer due to their range, and their retreating skills of Evade and Ink Shot. Even they aren’t that bleed based: the auto attack bleeds, yes, but Deluge is a hard hitting direct damage skill. So the basic weapon strategy is to stack bleeds on your target(s) while you keep your distance with Escape and Ink Shot, waiting for the inevitable condition damage to wear your opponent down to the range that a Deluge or two can finish them off.

Basically I see no reason to make their purposes as suggested in the OP, since both weapons appear to have a purpose that matches their basic damage source.

Sorry I got that mixed up, I looked up the skills and the spear skills all say “harpoon”, currently my toon doesn’t use a underwater weapon at all.

And with suggestion above, I see no reason to use anything other then Spear Gun for running away as suggested and avoid water like the plague.

I’d really love for thief to have ranger’s underwater weapons.

Thief spear in particular just makes no sense, and with targeting a little messed up in the game its harder to use than it should be.

That said, I’d be fine with the current ranged weapon on thief if they’d just polish the melee.

They also took away too many thief abilities in 6-0 when underwater, IMHO.

No no no, don’t you go and take away my lovely spear! Only thing the spear lacks is an attack that stealths you.

What total Barrage said, in 1 v 1 pve underwater I can solo pretty much anything using the block and evade from the spear.

saying that I avoid underwater like the plague because it limits our skills so much, I mean none of the weapon skills stealth and all the utlities that stealth are disabled “WTF?!”

The harpoon gun is also just bad and boring much like duel pistols