Guild Wars 2

I love my Thief, on land. In the water though, I really hate my Thief. It just doesn’t seem to work for me. I’m condition specced, and the only condition I can seem to drop is with the harpoon auto and the backpedal move. I don’t like to use Spear because melee seems especially squishy in the water and for a Con build most of the attacks do very little damage (except that one where you block, that does ok damage, but not as much as I take trying to use it). Keep in mind that I’m talking PvE only here, I’m not worried about an sPvP build or anything.

The Deluge attack does decent damage, but since I’m condition-based it doesn’t do a ton of it, Escape sometimes works, but often enough doesn’t deal any damage because it seems really finicky whether the poison actually gets applied. When I have a lot of room, I find it easy enough to use ink shot to infini-kite enemies, firing it, crippling them, and then auto-attacking a bit before teleporting way behind them, and then turning around and repeating, but this tactic is useless when in an enclosed area, or one with too many enemies around to be teleporting all over the place.

I’m also hugely disappointed in the available underwater Utility abilities. I can’t use Ambush, I can’t use Shadow Refuge, I can’t use Thieves Guild (why the kitten not?), and I’m certainly not picking up Basilisk just to have something to put there.

I just feel really weak when my Thief is wet. Here are a few ideas I had:

1. Change Escape from being a “drag line” AoE poison, to being a PBAoE poison. You dash backwards, but leave a spherical cloud where you activate it, about the size of a Shortbow poison field. Maybe less, so long as it hits anything that was close to you when you active it, that’s fine by me.

2. Make Disabling Shot like the Ranger SB Crippling Shot, only without the pet. Make it so that the direct damage is lower, but that it applies 2-3 stacks of bleeding.

3. Allow Thieves’ Guild to work underwater, and maybe some underwater version of Needle Trap, like how a lot of the Engineer’s moves are adapted into floating mines and stuff.

Those are my suggestions, please list any that you think would help, as well as offer any suggestions as to things I may totally be missing.

Agreed. My thief is a beast on land but feels completely rooted and worthless underwater. Literally the only skills I use are 3rd and 5th spear skills and the harpoon auto + skill 2. Those are the only ones that are even remotely useful in an underwater encounter.

Use a spear, spam 3 and 5. We are frankly incredibly OP in water, at least in pve.

Tremain.4623:

Use a spear, spam 3 and 5. We are frankly incredibly OP in water, at least in pve.

Right here.

This strategy really feels like endless block/endless evade and a ton of damage

Is it fun? Hell no. But it’s effective.

Use a spear, spam 3 and 5. We are frankly incredibly OP in water, at least in pve.

Is that effective against multiple opponents and in a non-Power build? When I’ve used these abilities in the past, I always took a lot more damage than using ranged attacks, and did very little damage in return.

Tremain.4623:

Use a spear, spam 3 and 5. We are frankly incredibly OP in water, at least in pve.

This.

In 1 vs 1 underwater, Thief is mostly invincible (only jellyfishes with the spin attack will damage you as you don’t block all the strikes, but you can always use 5 against them).

And you don’t need to bore yourselg always blocking, most underwater opponents throw attacks with a very obvious animation so you can keep using your attacks and then use 3 when the animation starts.

If there are too many of them (you can do well in a 1 vs 2 or even 3), you can always use the Speargun and swim in circles. Use some venoms if you want to add conditions to the mix (and I don’t get how the harpoon is low in conditions for the OP? It has bleeding, poison and cripple, terrestial sets doesn’t have more conditions than that).

If there are too many of them (you can do well in a 1 vs 2 or even 3), you can always use the Speargun and swim in circles. Use some venoms if you want to add conditions to the mix (and I don’t get how the harpoon is low in conditions for the OP? It has bleeding, poison and cripple, terrestial sets doesn’t have more conditions than that).

The problem is, the poison attack is hard to hit with, because they basically have to choose to swim straight along the line you leave (if they ever get poisoned at all then they may get poisoned for 1-2 seconds), and the auto-attack adds bleeds far too slowly. They tend to wear off before you get a significant number rolling. I can apply tons more poison and bleeds using dual daggers than I can using harpoon. Death Blossom adds three stacks of 10s bleed to multiple targets at once, Piercing Shot adds only one stack of 4s bleed to one target (more if you can get them in a straight line, but that’s much harder to manage).

I can drop about 12 bleeds on an enemy within the first few seconds of combat, while Evading, but in the water it takes twice as long to max out at around 6-8 stacks. You can also use Venoms with Death Blossom or Dancing Dagger to effect tons of enemies with poison, while Harpoon has no solid AoEs to hit multiple enemies with a single attack.

That’s why I would prefer they change the poison into a spherical AoE, and give an additional Bleed effect.

As for Spear, I’ll give it a second chance, but I just wasn’t as lucky with it, and I suspect it’s because of the lack of Power. If more of the attacks generated Bleed effects it might be more viable with my stats.

Depends on the foes, when melee, use 3 on the speargun when they get close and keep swimming in circles around them (swim sideways while targetting them) – that will kill them, eventually. If they have ranged attacks or stuns, don’t.

Spear is pretty good in close combat, and underwater is one place where you frequently have little room to maneuver because of the attention you might draw.

Ok, I definitely don’t like spear. If you’re only against one enemy, using 3 repeatedly works fine. Horribly dull, but fine. Against two enemies it’s worthless, because I block one and the other one hits me in the face, and by the time I get one of them down to 50% HP, I’m dead. 5 never works, it does so-so damage but leaves me completely vulnerable for several seconds. It claims to “evade” but it evades nothing.

Ohoni.6057:

Ok, I definitely don’t like spear. If you’re only against one enemy, using 3 repeatedly works fine. Horribly dull, but fine. Against two enemies it’s worthless, because I block one and the other one hits me in the face, and by the time I get one of them down to 50% HP, I’m dead. 5 never works, it does so-so damage but leaves me completely vulnerable for several seconds. It claims to “evade” but it evades nothing.

Are you using only 3? If you time your attacks correctly it’s very easy to predict the best moment to use 3, while doing damage with other attacks instead of always waiting. Also, you have to move a bit, when you’re on blocking stance you can still move which is important, and if you manage to put your opponents close to each other, the counter attack will destroy them.

And 5 works perfectly fine for me, I’ve defeated groups of 3 to 4 with it never receiving a hit. It evades everything while it’s up (that said, if you want to spam it, you must invest on initiative management, the good part of 3 over 5 is that you don’t need any ini. management).

I would even say that Thief is OP underwater (except for Utility skills limitations, and Elites, but they’re supposedly working on giving some skills underwater use), but I try not to say it much because we have been hit enough by the nerf-hammer and I want to keep my OPness underwater :P

Using spear 5 is godlike and with spear 3 it becomes even better. I am wondering whether spear 5 will get nerfed at some point. I’ve had whole groups of players around me getting extremely frustrated at not being able to make any impact on me between them.

Are you using only 3? If you time your attacks correctly it’s very easy to predict the best moment to use 3, while doing damage with other attacks instead of always waiting.

Like I said, against one enemy 3 works fine, it’s boring, but it works. I was able to fight a single Thrall, time my blocks to catch his attacks, and by the time my counterattack finished he was ready to take another swing and I was able to block that, repeat about five or six times and he was dead. Against two enemies the second one’s attack lands the exact second that the first one is blocked, there’s nothing to be done about that.

And 5 works perfectly fine for me, I’ve defeated groups of 3 to 4 with it never receiving a hit. It evades everything while it’s up (that said, if you want to spam it, you must invest on initiative management, the good part of 3 over 5 is that you don’t need any ini. management).

That is completely out of synch with my experience. It’s like we’re playing two completely different games. I swear to you that I have taken hits right in the middle of a “5” sequence, as if I were just standing still and waiting for them. I was fighting Orrians in Malachor’s Leap, mostly Krait and Thralls. They were totally 100% landing hits on my during the middle of the 5 animation.

I take hits with spear, but I run with Malice and Haste in the water. With careful 3 timing (it cleaves, doesn’t it?) I tear through mobs. Five is also useful since I can just spam it and even with no Initiative traits I’m topped up.

I have never been hit while using the evade, though.