22 replies to this topic

[Green Eggs]

After playing WvW almost exclusively all three weekends I never bothered with fighting underwater until BWE3. And I loved it!
Perhaps it was just the uniqueness of it, or the fact that many people just swim along the surface allowing you to ambush them from below. Even intense battles underwater at the Bay keeps just seemed that much more fun just for the fact that I had not experienced anything like that before.

So now I ask, what class do you think would be best purely from an underwater combat stand point? Or at least which classes did you notice that had a wide range of their skills available to them underwater? Just for the sake of simplicity, lets ignore everything else such as viability on land and the actual point of basing a character around underwater.

I played a condition necro and found it held up pretty well. But I was curious as to how classes such as the ranger with it's aquatic pets, or elementalist with their attunements adding a little variety stack up.

Also does anyone know if the armor runes available for sPvP will also be available from else where for non sPvp armor? Just wondering because something like Superior Rune of the Krait (+100power under water) would seem useful in this case.

[MikeFish]

Avoid engineer underwater, they're the only profession that trully sucks when submerged.

For the record, above ground, I love engineer.

I had the most fun with mesmers and guardian (using the spear) underwater. Rangers are also a lot of fun due to the aquatic pets available. It's one of the main reasons I decided to use one of my five slots on ranger.

EDIT: To your last question: The runes in SPvP are not guaranteed to be in PvE but you can probably expect something similar if not identical.

Edited by MikeFish, 27 July 2012 - 06:57 PM.

[abr4]

Ele is gimped like hell underwater.

[Velron]

Ranger underwater weapon skills look pretty solid and I believe most of the utilities work underwater as well (obv not the traps but stuff like sharpening stone, all the signets, etc should work underwater no problem), plus you can have a damn shark pet underwater!

I'll prob still make a Ranger just to get a shark pet. lol

Edited by Velron, 28 July 2012 - 04:26 AM.

[Drekor]

Thief

Pull, block+huge damage and evasive attacks... it's very strong underwater.

[Cursor]

I'm extremely upset at underwater spear thieves, because they're so much more fun and powerful than dry land thieves.  Nine tailed Strike is extremely powerful and a great utility to boot, as it's either a spammable block/heavy nuke, or a constant source of initiative renewal.  Maybe my experience with it wasn't the same as everyone's, but from what I saw it was very powerful.

Their kit underwater is very cohesive and malleable.  Their 4 slot is a bit bad because it locks your abilities briefly, but other than that it provides strong damage with a surprising amount of defense and mobility.

[Sep]

I haven't actually tried any underwater pvp on my necro, probably won't until I get to do that spvp map with water in it.

[Tevesh]

Ranger. Gets to keep almost same dps output as above water and still has utility pets and such. Both of their weapons are viable and support condition builds too.
Underwater necro is also decent.

[Hanzo]

With thief you can pretty much win a fight underwater without taking a single hit while using the spear. The blocks and evades are excellent.

[Epic_Bear_Guy]

The ranger gets "Jaws" as an assist in underwater combat...enough said.

[Sebyos]

So far I only played Necro, Engineer, Mesmer and Thief underwater combat. Out of the 4 I found the Thief to be the best although not the most fun to play.

[Exeunt]

thief

[weizen]

i hate warrior underwater damage, you do so much less damage then on land, but the mobs are equally strong... in pvp your can't kill anyone solo because you don't do enough damage to counter the heals... and your best utilities are blocked.

mesmer is kinda fun, but still does very little damage.

underwater damage is to low for every class i played (engi, warri, mesmer)

and yeah engi sucks, you loose almost all of your utility spells... no turrets,half the kits don't work, and i think elixiers are mostly blocked too. at least in bwe1 that was the case.

So you sit there spamming your harpoon gun spells which suck.

i really don't like the under water combat right now.

[iLag]

Underwater warrior spear is amazing dunno what the guy above me is talking about. I loved it.

[bradadad]

iLag, on 29 July 2012 - 02:20 AM, said:

Underwater warrior spear is amazing dunno what the guy above me is talking about. I loved it.

Agree with that. The spear with Mariner's Frenzy was sick. Like a sewing machine on crack. The drawback is that you have to be up close. Not a problem if you use the Harpoon Pull. I didn't like the harpoon gun's damage though. I tested with a level 6 so who knows how this changes with leveling up.

[Nox_Aeterna]

MikeFish, on 27 July 2012 - 06:55 PM, said:

Avoid engineer underwater, they're the only profession that trully sucks when submerged.

For the record, above ground, I love engineer.

I had the most fun with mesmers and guardian (using the spear) underwater. Rangers are also a lot of fun due to the aquatic pets available. It's one of the main reasons I decided to use one of my five slots on ranger.

EDIT: To your last question: The runes in SPvP are not guaranteed to be in PvE but you can probably expect something similar if not identical.

That is not true, while engs cant, for now ,really use many skills under water , the turrets + other skills we get + weapon skills are enough.
Really i did a ton of underwater combat with the eng , it is true it lack options , but what it has is enough to kill stuff and control at least(based up to lvl 30).

[Alaroxr]

Underwater spear as a Guardian is simply amazing. I love it.

Then we have the Trident which is also quite useful, but not nearly as fun as the Spear.

It seems whoever designed the Spears' skills are geniuses since they seem to be very effective for all Professions and are generally very well liked.

Edited by Alaroxr, 29 July 2012 - 07:51 AM.

[Nox_Aeterna]

weizen, on 28 July 2012 - 11:29 PM, said:

i hate warrior underwater damage, you do so much less damage then on land, but the mobs are equally strong... in pvp your can't kill anyone solo because you don't do enough damage to counter the heals... and your best utilities are blocked.

mesmer is kinda fun, but still does very little damage.

underwater damage is to low for every class i played (engi, warri, mesmer)

and yeah engi sucks, you loose almost all of your utility spells... no turrets,half the kits don't work, and i think elixiers are mostly blocked too. at least in bwe1 that was the case.

So you sit there spamming your harpoon gun spells which suck.

i really don't like the under water combat right now.

Did anyone really lvled eng and went underwater at all?
We dont lose ALL turrets, some still remain.
And while the 1 skill really does not give a lot of dmg, the 2 one can work wonders if used right.

Im not saying eng is not gimped, but people here make it looks like a dead fish.

[WasiKaBooM]

Nox_Aeterna, on 29 July 2012 - 07:51 AM, said:

Did anyone really lvled eng and went underwater at all?
We dont lose ALL turrets, some still remain.
And while the 1 skill really does not give a lot of dmg, the 2 one can work wonders if used right.

Im not saying eng is not gimped, but people here make it looks like a dead fish.

Yeah i played a bit of underwater with engineer, and it wasn't very fun, and i am not talking about damage numbers here, these will change.
Homing Torpedo is allright and looks fun.
Scatter Mines are a bit of a bitch to land properly unless the target is in melee range, i think they scatter too much to be effective for (ranged) single target and too little to be effective as aoe.
Retreating Grapple is very weird and highly situational. Unless you want to pull a single enemy (that can be pulled) away from something this does nothing.I guess it can be used to get away from a group of enemies while pulling only one of them with you, but its still a pretty awkward spell and has no place on the limited weapon skill list. May work as an utility skill.
Timed charge and Net Wall are allright

I had more fun with Warrior, Guardian, Thief and Ranger (Feeding Frenzy may be my favorite spell in the game, its so fun) underwater combat. Again, not really talking about effectiveness here.

[MikeFish]

Nox_Aeterna, on 29 July 2012 - 07:51 AM, said:

Did anyone really lvled eng and went underwater at all?
We dont lose ALL turrets, some still remain.
And while the 1 skill really does not give a lot of dmg, the 2 one can work wonders if used right.

Im not saying eng is not gimped, but people here make it looks like a dead fish.

Maybe I was looking at it in a bubble (pardon the pun ) because I went underwater for a while at about level 17. So at that point I had one utitilty skill unlocked and I hadn't chosen any turrets.

As far as I could see, the throw elixir toolbelt skills simply didn't work and the weapon skills were all a bit crap. I never worked out that you could detonate all three mines early for a big blast though and that may have helped, but honestly (as people have kept saying), what if you're running a condition build? Or like me you avoid turrets? I found underwater actively fun on every other profession I played and I felt trully gimped as an engineer. I went out of my way to get a good speargun too, thinking it was perhaps my equipment. No change

[Cl1p]

MikeFish, on 29 July 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

Maybe I was looking at it in a bubble (pardon the pun ) because I went underwater for a while at about level 17. So at that point I had one utitilty skill unlocked and I hadn't chosen any turrets.

As far as I could see, the throw elixir toolbelt skills simply didn't work and the weapon skills were all a bit crap. I never worked out that you could detonate all three mines early for a big blast though and that may have helped, but honestly (as people have kept saying), what if you're running a condition build? Or like me you avoid turrets? I found underwater actively fun on every other profession I played and I felt trully gimped as an engineer. I went out of my way to get a good speargun too, thinking it was perhaps my equipment. No change

-throw elixirs work just fine, you have to explode them right after you throw them to get the effects on yourself
-weapon skills worked great for power engi's at melee range, just grapple an enemy to you and use the scatter mines, half of the hp of a creature of the same level is gone. Netshot & grapple shot work great for getting in melee range and the timed bomb adds some nice vulnarability
-I personally used slick shoes, rocket boots and the mine underwater (lvl 28). It worked great for me...

But yeah, condition builds are non-existent underwater.

[weizen]

Nox_Aeterna, on 29 July 2012 - 07:51 AM, said:

Did anyone really lvled eng and went underwater at all?
We dont lose ALL turrets, some still remain.
And while the 1 skill really does not give a lot of dmg, the 2 one can work wonders if used right.

Im not saying eng is not gimped, but people here make it looks like a dead fish.

like i wrote, only played engi in bwe1, and then you couldn't use turrets under water at least not the ones i used (rocket and net). i did not know they changed that.

the 2 skill can be good if you use it shotgun style. but with a conditition build it's useless.

and i don't like underwater combat overall, feels awkward. for three dimensional fights i'd choose aion everyday over gw2 underwater combat, and aion flying combat wasn't that fun.

[Tevesh]

I'd choose Planetside cavern pvp for three-dimensional pvp over any of the games you mention any day.
Because, really, the only game I've seen so far that actually has SOMETHING in that third dimension, not just some empty space for you to maneouver.