Guild Wars 2

So currently we’re among the weakest classes to fight under water. The recent changes to withdraw, and roll for initiative has really hurt some of the Thief population. I for one don’t even really care about our 1-5 skills underwater, I did agree that there needed to be changes on the spear, but needing to have 7 initiative for a skill to defend ourselves without any real option to withdraw out if needed we were.. Well to be blunt about it. kittened underwater. Yes there is the 5 skill on harpoon gun which can be spammable. Now for a mesmer to be able to have access to I believe. 2 stealths, a wall that acts as a water jet boost to themselves, and portal skill ability. And we can’t have any of our smoke screen, shadowtrap, shadowstep, or any blinding powder, is pretty unfortunate for our class. Our utilities underwater are among the weakest. The nerf we got hit with just hit the nail on the head. because pre-nerf we were just pretty bad under water. Now the class under water is horrible. I just want shadowstep back under water that is all

Don’t bother going underwater as a thief now, if you do spam speargun 5 to escape.
That’s for pvp/wvw though, in pve it’s still kinda faceroll thanks to spear 3.

And yes, thieves underwater utility selection is pathetic.

Puru.4217:

Don’t bother going underwater as a thief now, if you do spam speargun 5 to escape.
That’s for pvp/wvw though, in pve it’s still kinda faceroll thanks to spear 3.

And yes, thieves underwater utility selection is pathetic.

This guy….spear 3? seriously? facepalm.

What are you level 10?

@OP

So currently we’re among the weakest classes to fight under water. The recent changes to withdraw, and roll for initiative has really hurt some of the Thief population. I for one don’t even really care about our 1-5 skills underwater, I did agree that there needed to be changes on the spear, but needing to have 7 initiative for a skill to defend ourselves without any real option to withdraw out if needed we were.. Well to be blunt about it. kittened underwater.

I have to disagree with you on this one since there is a way to withdraw if needed — harpoon #3.

As for spear #5, it always been a waste of initiative and even more so now. Flanking Strike IMO is way better choice.

Although, I do agree that the lack of stealth really cripples us underwater, but it’s not that bad in comparison to other classes. It’s Initiatives vs. Cooldowns and initiatives wins.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

As for spear #5, it always been a waste of initiative and even more so now. Flanking Strike IMO is way better choice.

Thief underwater was borderline broken before the nerf because of spear 5. You just evade forever with proper initiative and skill use.

The harpoon is not a bad weapon, if you ask me, and I find it more useful than some other profession weapons underwater. As to the spear, I agree it could use some attention. The reason skill 5’s cost was increased was probably because it made the thief virtually invincible for quite a while. However, I do not understand skill 4. It pulls you close to your target and effectively stuns you for a second, while your opponent is free to start attacking you straight away! So one of the squishiest professions has a skill that puts them in harms way and stops them from doing anything for a brief moment. Am I the only one that sees the problem with that plan?

Anyway, overall I think the thief is not all that bad underwater, I feel there are worse options for other professions, but it would be nice to see some improvements made.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Puru.4217:

Don’t bother going underwater as a thief now, if you do spam speargun 5 to escape.
That’s for pvp/wvw though, in pve it’s still kinda faceroll thanks to spear 3.

And yes, thieves underwater utility selection is pathetic.

This guy….spear 3? seriously? facepalm.

What are you level 10?

If you can’t solo the whole pve underwater content (there’s a few exceptions, didn’t tried that much since the ini increase though) with it you’re doing something wrong, just saying. In pvp flanking strike is indeed a better choice in general, it can also work in pve if you time the dodges but not as good when it comes to mass clearing, probably better against bosses now.

I’ve not really looked into it much before, as I don’t do a lot of underwater combat, and the build I use doesn’t change that much. But I was just looking on the wiki to see what our options are and it turns out that the thief has the lowest number of underwater utility skill options out of all the professions:

Thief – 13 utility skills (including 1 elite)
Necro & Ele – 14 utility skills (including 1 elite)
Ranger – 16 (2 elites)
Engi & Warrior – 18 (2 elites)
Guardian – 19 (1 elite)
Mesmer – a whopping 24 utility skills (and 3 of those are elites!)

So it seems in terms of underwater options, things are not too balanced and thieves have the worse of it.

The thing is, I don’t understand why some of our skills can’t be used underwater. For example, why can’t blinding powder become ink bomb or something? And the same for Smoke Screen. Dagger Storm is kind of understandable, but it’s not too hard to believe a skilled thief can throw daggers in all directions underwater, if we can spin round that fast on land I’m sure we could do the same underwater. And why can’t we use Thieves Guild? Am I the only thief in my guild with a breathing mask?

Now I have looked into it more I can see that the thief really is lacking in options. Like I say, it doesn’t effect me too much, but it is a problem and will no doubt effect others. I hope this gets looked at.

The recent nerf to thieves underwater abilities made them almost useless underwater in sPvP. In underwater combat, a downed ranger can survive most thieves by just using Lick Wounds and auto-attacking. That’s just wrong.

Spears lack range. Harpoon guns lack damage. Utility skills lack available variety. Elite skills really lack variety because we’re forced to use Basilisk Venom. Stealth, thieves signature tactic, is only available from one healing skill and one drowning skill.

Changes I’d like to see:

• Merge Combo Critical Chance into Combined Training
• Add a new Master tier Critical Strikes trait that increases sword and spear damage by 5%
• Allow players to move while channeling Shadow Assault
• Increase bleed duration from The Ripper to 10 seconds and increase base damage from 84 to 87 to match Piercing Shot.
• Allow Thieves Guild to be used underwater
• Allow Caltrops to be used underwater
• Allow Blinding Powder to be used underwater

These changes wouldn’t give thieves any powerful buffs, but would give them just enough options to be able to play their own play-style underwater, and deal enough damage/conditions to be able to compete with other classes underwater.

I cringe anytime I have to take my thief underwater. I lose my Caltrops, my Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, Ambush trap, half of my traits… Basically everything I use to not die repeatedly and painfully. I turn into a bar of untraited signets and venoms.

I assumed this was the burden everyone suffered underwater. Then I leveled an engineer and warrior. My god! The warrior just doesn’t die ever, but that’s par for leveling a warrior. The engineer… The engineer caught me completely by surprise! 1v1, even the Divines cannot save aquatic denizens from their explosive doom. But that’s just half the fun. Grenades! I pull krait in groups for giggles, then just roll my face over the grenade buttons until the bubbles clear and the giblets float away.

Meanwhile, my thief is developing aquaphobia. It’s just as well she die, though. A life without caltrops is no life worth living.

Honestly it does not make sense that spear #4 stuns the user for a half a second on activation. That skill makes me cringe everytime i use it. And why it can’t be like a scorpion wire, i will never know,but then you argue all that crowd control would be abit too much for a thief huh, and we’d be considered overpowered underwater. The skills that need to be applicable underwater atleast i see it as is, shadowstep(Water step), blinding powder (Ink), smoke screen(Ink screen).

AikijinX.6258:

Honestly it does not make sense that spear #4 stuns the user for a half a second on activation. That skill makes me cringe everytime i use it. And why it can’t be like a scorpion wire, i will never know,but then you argue all that crowd control would be abit too much for a thief huh, and we’d be considered overpowered underwater. The skills that need to be applicable underwater atleast i see it as is, shadowstep(Water step), blinding powder (Ink), smoke screen(Ink screen).

Spear #5 on necromancer has the same ‘self-stun on use’ trick, which is stupid and I hate it. >:c By comparison spear #4 on necromancer pulls everyone around you, and only ‘interrupts’ for the casting time, and is pretty kitten awesome really. I vote they change thief’s tow line to be a pull if it lets them remove the self-stun.

What bothers me most about underwater combat on a thief is how thoroughly screwed over condition specs are. There’s no equivalent to Death Blossom underwater (Suggestion: Shadow Assault should apply bleeding), you’ve lost caltrops, and the underwater version of sneak attack (The Ripper) is almost completely inaccessible.

All you have to work with is skill 1 on harpoon gun, the retreating poison skill, spider venom and the recently altered skale venom.

I think it’s rediculous that grenades and bombs can explode underwater (including a SMOKE BOMB might I add), but blinding powered can’t. That just makes no sense. Thieves have so little utility underwater. I realize the spear 5 with withdraw and roll for initiative allowed for perma-evade and probably needed a nerf, but now we have nothing underwater. The lack of utilities underwater, a ranged weaponset similar to pistol/pistol (same auto attack and unload and harpoon gun 2 or 3, can’t remember, are identical) which we all know the problems of (granted, harpoon gun at least has an escape with the blind on skill 5 (hmm, notice more similarities here?). Now spear gets nerfed, and other people here have described the problems with skill 4, and the other skills were nerfed too much to not buff the weapon somehow. We also have no stealths except for a heal (that should never be used for the stealth anyways). Underwater as a thief is just broken now.

I agree. I don’t enjoy underwater combat as a thief. I usually just use 1, and 3 with a spear, throwing up a steal on recharge. It’s very dry compared to ground combat