Guild Wars 2

Overall, underwater combat on the thief tends to severely disadvantage condition builds. In a power/crit setup you have a very interesting and useful spear bar with a nice set of tactical options and a highly damaging reactive attack that makes combat a really fun series of moment to moment decisions about where to spend initiative in terms of offense and defense, and gives your opponent a lot of potential counters you need to play around. With the speargun you’ve got a solid shadowstep, a nice spammable burst, servicable autoattack damage, and in general a lower damage but higher survival setup that can still dump inititavie for respectable damage.

The problem is that, when you’re a condition thief your only real option for decent damage is the speargun, and then, all of your damage comes from the single bleed stack on your autoattack, and a poison that only works if enemies move in to it. I find that even against relatively easy enemies in PvE there are simply no solid damage options for the condition thief. Underwater I spend most fights simply autoattacking until enemies get close, and then hitting 3. This keeps me alive, but it doesn’t leave any options for spending initiative on damage at the expense of survival. The result is a very long fight that I have no way to speed up, and I often find myself just trying to swap to spear and using the reactive because mobs are too dumb to counter it.

What’s problematic is that using a setup that should be suboptimal for my build (raw damage) actually offers better damage than any condition options I have available.

I suggest slightly lowering the raw damage on the speargun 2, and replacing that damage with a bleed. This wouldn’t disadvantage power/crit builds as they already have a perfect set of survival and utilities from spear, and can still use the speargun where its most useful for those builds: as a survival tool. This would however open up a solid bleed stacking option for condition thieves to spend initiative on and deal damage that’s much more in line with the damage numbers a condition build can dish out on land.

Your thoughts?

Honestly, I didn’t even have to do more than skim your post. You’re about condition damage, and there’s none for you underwater. It’s a valid concern.

That said, seriously, thief underwater combat as a whole is one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in a game. It is broken, period, so while your pursuit for condition damage should definitely be addressed, a lot of other things need to be addressed too.

In short, they built thieves around high mobility underwater, with lots of evasion. The problem is evasion never makes up for what actually happens underwater.

1) Single target damage is far too low. Things respawn before we can make any progress.
2) There’s virtually no aoe, and they’re both short range and too weak.
3) No serious option for condition damage. No aoe condition damage.
4) Even having evades built right in to half the skills isn’t enough to deal with many situations. Signet of Malice and spear is often required, because our damage is too low, enemy damage is too high, and enemy HP pools are too high. You have to block/heal tank many situations, or you’ll just get gunned down. Ever tried to fight ranged vs ranged underwater? No tools. Nothing.

Doing almost anything underwater around the east side of Orr is literally impossible. Not even joking, impossible. 5 or 6 enemies swarm, automatically, and there’s no way to survive it. You can’t evade every attack, and there’s no way we can absorb it, even with Signet of Malice. Then there’s that Sharktooth temple thing….

We need a lot of underwater redesign. They can start by not counting on built in evades to do 100% of the work. Need more options. I’m sure condition thieves feel the hurt far more than I do.

P.S.
I love underwater. It’s just that thieves don’t have the tools.

I can see your concern there. For sure, engaging ranged vs. ranged underwater with a thief is a really painful experience. Where’s my on demand blind? Where are my stealth options?

While the evasion works well, I do agree that its pretty much the only option in multitarget combat underwater, combined with copious amounts of max range abuse with speargun 3, which feels more like exploiting aggro range than it does like fighting. Its an option that doesn’t get you very far compared to the tools that other classes have.

Spear could honestly stand to just plain lose its gap closer I think, or append an aoe blind to it or something. Could also work an aoe blind or stealth of some sort in to speargun 4 or 5.

This would give us some more survival options underwater for sure.

Pope… dude, you are way too reasonable and rational to be playing in the forums. Well done! We need more of that.

And yeah, I think you see the situation pretty clearly all around.

Interested to see what other people think on the underwater situation/s.

Edit:
I think you’re exactly right about the speargun 2 having a bleed. It just makes sense.

Wha… Are you all serious? I’ve played underwater on nearly every class, and the Thief is definitely very high up there in regard to effectiveness. You have a couple useless or redundant abilities with each weapon, but the rest are insane and completely compensate; I’ve never had issues. Whether it’s condition damage, direct damage, ranged, melee, AoE. The spear even prevents you from ever dying with the defensive tools. Ever.
And considering also that you effectively have no elite and have to use almost nothing but signets in your utility slots, but I’ve still been able to perform so amazingly well at all times, under any circumstances, really says something.

On top of that, the useless/redundant skills thing is a problem with EVERY thief weapon right now, on land or water.

I actually do well under water, in a WvW scenario I often get guaranteed kills. In PvE…not so much. the mobs under water are super strong with effects like drowning.

What if Shadow Assault (Spear 5) had a slight AoE range around you (So if you get surrounded, you hit all close by mobs 3 times) and also stacked bleeds in that area? As a tradeoff, you no longer evade during the animation, but the skill duration is only about one second, instead of two and a half?

Personally I feel like the evasive nature of Flanking Strike and Block part of Nine Tailed Strike means we don’t /need/ another evade in Shadow Assault, since we can stall out a fight pretty effectively without it, and it would make Shadow Assault function a little bit like an underwater Death Blossom.

EDIT: I feel like I should clarify: I don’t think thief underwater combat is bad, or that thieves can’t be effective there. I just don’t think there’s a good condition damage build, which means that a thief that builds into condition damage for combat on dry land can’t continue that role if they’re suddenly forced underwater.

Personally, I dominate thief underwater combat. I excel in dungeons like HoTW where you fight the underwater bosses. Roll for initiative, basilik, venom sharing, the number 3 speargun skill and number 4 speargun skill are priceless.

Grimwolf, I’m glad you’ve had some success with the thief, but I’m a little suspicious of your comments. I’m also suspicious of where you’ve been and what you’ve done on your thief. There are lots of situations we simply can’t deal with, period. I’m not flaming you or anything, I’m just not buying it.

Like you, I’ve had some success underwater. That’s fine, but I don’t think that’s a call to say everything is ok. From what I’ve seen, there’s a whole lot that’s not ok, but it takes being in the right situations to see it.

For instance, it’s easy to think the spear skills can make us almost invincible, until something crushes you, spear and all. That’s when you realize that even your strongest abilities aren’t enough to get you through content that other professions have no problem with.

Just needs more work.

Softspoken, that sounds like an awesome idea. Honestly, it would probably even be fine to leave in the evade, but don’t let it last as long. The default length of the evade is way too much in pvp.

Death Blossom is a good comparison.

Underwater downed condition thief is beast. In hotw 2/3 you can just be permadowned underwater and pull insane dps on last boss.

I find the thief to be very effective underwater compared to other classes

I find underwater combat to be terribly designed and un-fun on all classes

Man what? I love thieves underwater. You’ve got great tanking ability, damage output, and some cool escape skills (though I’m a bit spoiled by shadowsteps on land). It’s trickier to facetank groups, because you have to learn to time 3 and 5 to avoid multiple attacks. But you can do it and the payoff is huge. Also don’t forget you can avoid a ton of damage just by moving around a bit.

The only thing I’ve had serious trouble with are Risen Megaladons, because for the life of me I can’t figure out how far away they are when I’m fighting them. They’re like a swimming optical illusion or something.

That and having Basilisk Venom as your only elite is kinda awful.

im a condition thief, and what i have found that works best for me is…..unbelieveably…use spear gun auto attack to keep up bleeds, let enemy hit me until im in my downed underwater state, then use my number 1 skill to further stack bleeds….i do more damage in my downed state than i do using my speargun….we seriously need reworked for our underwater combat…

I think what we’re finding out here is that people have not a lot of problem in spear with power/crit builds. Don’t get me wrong, the evade is very good, and spear really seems like its in a good place. However, I do agree with Wraithforge in that while those evade moves are AMAZING when they work, they’re also very redundant.

I don’t deny that other classes have underwater problems, or a whole host of other problems, however this is a thief thread, and personally my only other character with sufficient playtime is a level 14 engineer, so I am simply not well enough informed on these issues to comment. What I can see from observation and playing with guildmates is that other classes don’t appear to be quite so binary underwater. For thieves you’re either going to win an underwater fight extremely easily, or lose without much chance to do anything about it. This is true in both PvP and PvE and this is really a problem. Our underwater skills are simultaneously too good in some situations, and absolutely useless in others with no inbetween that actually feels like a fight.

I still feel like spear should get a small rework to be made the thief’s condition option underwater, but it says a lot that people are reccommending going in to a downed state on purpose in order to win a fight with a condition thief underwater. if that isn’t a sign that condition damage options underwater need work, and possibly underwater downed state needs adjustements, I don’t know what is.

So lets back off the speargun for a moment and just focus on the spear itself.

Basically, we could break down spear in to:

1 – After the multitarget buff to most classes spear abilities, this is a really solid auto. The auto-poison has good trait synergy and feels useful without being overpowered

2- The evade seems very redundant for what it accomplishes, the vuln, like body shot from pistol simply doesn’t contribute enough to a fight to make it worth the initiative cost in most engagements, even if used once as an opener. Could stand to lose the evade and buff the vuln to make this more usable, both as a personal tool and to add some team utility.

3 – The damage from the reactive block is stellar, and mechanically its a really fun skill to use. The game should have a lot more reactive/conditional skills like this one. There’s really nothing wrong with this skill. It’s powerful when used properly, and a laughable waste of initiative when used improperly.

4 – Basic gap closer for a melee weapon. In theory this is very useful. In practice its a skill that can often be completely forgotten. That said, I think its mechanically sound. Its a gap closer with a single target cripple, and it meshes well with the other spear skills for its purpose.

5 – The elephant in the room. Undeniably an amazing skill, but also too spammable and roots you in place. Its great for holding on to a tank, but its also extremely unsatisfying to use, and far too spammable for what it does. I’d be open to removing the root component to allow other options for its use, while increasing its initiative cost to make it less spammable, as a moving evade-ball of damage is something that’d be just plain broken and overpowered.

I don’t think Spear 5 is “the elephant in the room.” It’s fine for what it does, and spear does already have decent area-attack options. I don’t think it’s weak or redundant. I really don’t think thieves need a full area-effect attack underwater, you know?

Spear 4 is the skill that just doesn’t work. The way it’s implemented, it’s like Scorpion-Wiring yourself. It’s a really awkward self-stun at anything other than max range.

Moreover, Speargun 1 doesn’t work. The damage is pitiful, even with big bleed specs. I basically only use it to test range so that I don’t miss with Speargun 2.

ASP.8093:

I don’t think Spear 5 is “the elephant in the room.” It’s fine for what it does, and spear does already have decent area-attack options. I don’t think it’s weak or redundant. I really don’t think thieves need a full area-effect attack underwater, you know?

Spear 4 is the skill that just doesn’t work. The way it’s implemented, it’s like Scorpion-Wiring yourself. It’s a really awkward self-stun at anything other than max range.

Moreover, Speargun 1 doesn’t work. The damage is pitiful, even with big bleed specs. I basically only use it to test range so that I don’t miss with Speargun 2.

Interesting feedback. I admit that spear 4 would probably see a lot more play if it just plain worked like scorpion wire with a cripple. Spear 5 is the one that really has the problem of overshadowing the entire bar simply because its a spammable-to-infinity evade channel with very minor traiting needed to make that happen. Who cares if its damage is sub-par? My thinking with what I was talking about with 5 was to make it a little more useful as a tool by removing the self-root, while compensating for that utility by making it more situational, and thus less attractive to just endlessly spam.

Basically, any self-root feels very wrong to me on a thief bar, considering the entire class concept is about mobility or misdirection as a primary defense.

And yes, fully agree with speargun 1. The autoattack bleed is too short to be useful, and the sneak attack is pitiful considering the extremely limited opportunities to stealth underwater.

A few things that haven’t been mentioned:

Shadow assault has a weirdly long range, longer than the auto, but then it only hits one enemy at a time. It also does less damage than the auto so a lot of the time it’s quicker not to bother, unless you’re having a proper battle in which case go for it or spam ninetail.

The two from-stealth skills…. errr… Firstly, how do we even stealth underwater without blowing our heal or using traits? Secondly, what we get are “The Ripper” (First a slow shot that does some bleeds, woo) or “Deadly Strike”, which while giving a bizarrely long bleed, is actually inferior to the normal combo ender, particularly when you probably have the lotus poison trait. Can I at least get some cripple here?

Ah, now we’re getting some good feedback.

It’s true, being able to reliably stealth would be nice, and I would love to see our 5 skill changed in some meaningful way that makes it less spammy, as PopeUrban mentioned.

I do really enjoy the idea of an underwater Death Blossom.

For the sake of complete fairness, I’m going to go play more with 3 and 5 against groups, to further explore what ASP is talking about. I use them both all the time, but a little more practice and experimenting can’t hurt.

Among other things, spear 4 is absolutely horrific. While it is a long-range gapcloser with a cripple, it also disables you when you reach the target. I would never ever use it against anything that might hit me, because you are simply so unbelievably vulnerable after the pull. A move like that should be disabling them, not you.