I’m still a relative newbie to PvP in general (only just reached rank 13). I play only hotjoin SPvP, and so far the only class I’ve tried is Ele. I don’t want to play Staff because I don’t think I’m skilled enough to avoid getting slaughtered with it, and I don’t play S/x or x/F because I just don’t like the “feel” of those weapons. So D/D is my set of choice.
I love burst builds where I can rush in, offload a lot of damage at once, and rush out to heal. The high risk/high reward style is appealing to me, and it forces me to learn to pick my fights and watch for stuff that’ll screw up my burst. So far I’ve been winning more than I’ve been losing; this could be pure luck of course but I’d like to think I’m getting better
But one matchup I canNOT seem to ever prevail against is vs Spirit rangers. Rangers in general give me a hard time, especially if they catch me with my gap closers on CD. But I just cannot seem to be able to kill spirit rangers. I don’t mean to QQ about them; I want to learn what I can change with regard to my build/skills to help even the odds a bit.
Here’s the build I currently use. It’s something I came up with myself, so it’s not amazing, but I like it:
Just wait, knowing anet and their laughable skillz at balancing, they nerf spirit rangers to the point an afk bunker guardian will be able to kill them.
Fact: every Thief tells you to “l2p” when the subject is to nerf stealth.
Ok, based on my experience playing Bunker Eles over 300+games and 100+ games play as Dps Eles since fresh air trait coming out, you simply won’t beat Ranger with that build. You can not one shoot ranger with the burst Eles combo. Ranger’s Regen will out-heal your burst before you can set up another one. Your build also have low health,not enough healing power to cancel the Condi Dams,that will make you eventually go down as the fight dragging on and on… You will be defeated when go against any decent Spirit Ranger that know their stuff. While it may sounds harsh, but it is the truth. Again, maybe I am suck at the game, I don’t know.
Kaane Moka – Champion Magus. Loola Illuma – Champion Genius.
Proud player of : team [uA] – team [TGI]. Australia base, now recruiting.
A D/D ele has little chance vs spirti rangar and if your new to the mode you have less
anyway i would give you a few tips, D/D ele is fun but not effective you get to clouse and eles are verry fridgail
play with 0 30 0 10 30 build or 0 20 0 20 30
didge the eagal rune and get ogre/divinity/scolar
use S/D wepons and valcary amulet
this build is verry good tho with this condy meta is on the bench realy
D/D is trash now, especially with damage builds. If you enjoy the weaponset, all you can do is plod through it and wait for the devs to stop being lazy and get around to balancing the game. About the only bright side is if balance ever swings our way again, you’ll be a lot better after playing severely underpowered than all the fotm eles that reappear.
Open up the fight with aoes to take the spirits down since you’re lacking range skills. After that you have a chance, if you put more condition removal into your build – you haven’t really got enough atm to face up to a heavy condi-dealer. If ranger looks like it’s chancing a long cast to resummon a spirit then throw an interrupt.
The problem with that opener is you wasted all your AoE resources, just to take down the AI, leaves you very vulnerable to the Ranger himself. Plus, most of the encounter you face, the Ranger will always has their spirit up and if they are killed, he simply summon another since the CD start when they summon, not when die.
Kaane Moka – Champion Magus. Loola Illuma – Champion Genius.
Proud player of : team [uA] – team [TGI]. Australia base, now recruiting.
while this will not fix your problem with spiritrangers you should change one of the sigils. all sigils that have any kind of internal cd deactivate each other.
that means if you get the might stacks from battle both sigils wont proc for 9s and if fire procs both wont proc for 5s.
better use a passive one here (+power/prec per kill or force/accuracy).
Spirit rangers as well as necros are very strong in their current meta and I don’t think the D/D ele can defeat either one. They don’t have enough condition cleanses as they used to and therefore can’t compete. Along with the spirit ranger self rez and necro long lasting death shroud, combined with the low health pool of the ele, you are outclassed in damage, and in health.
Anet probably tested for these things when they buffed these classes and I don’t know why they decided to go through with it anyway even if they knew what the results were. D/D ele was a meta build, surely they must have. And if they didn’t, it shows they don’t care about these things as much as we want them to. Either way, it was incompetent and disappointing.
If you want to beat spirit ranger you need a class with strong sustained damage, such as the warrior or s/d thief or a necromancer.
Spirit rangers are not unique. Any class that can outheal ele burst, which is basically every bunker, can shut the ele down because the ele’s autoattacks, the main form of sustained pressure for all classes in the game, are incredibly weak.
Just compare a warrior’s autoattacks with the ele ones. The ele just cannot sustain damage. All he has is his burst.
If lightning hammer, the only sustained damage weapon eles have, were remotely viable in spvp, then the ele could overwhelm a spirit ranger.
Not much you can do about the matchup. Some classes are just much better against others right now (ex. warrior vs necro). As others have pointed out, the ele has problems keeping sustained damage. The problem isn’t actually sustained damage it’s how reliable is your damage. Since most D/D damage is easily telegraphed (attunements, burning speed, fire grab, etc.) it’s easy for rangers to use their numerous evades while doing decent damage with conditions.
You just have to hope you massively outplay the ranger otherwise you’ll lose. I believe with very specific conditions, you could possibly kill a ranger. The biggest factor would be if their Spirit of Nature Renewal is on CD and they’re really bad/laggy.
Even though I think an ele trying to fight a bunker 1v1 is a bad play in itself, here’s some advice that will help you kill some bad rangers:
- If they’re running shortbow, try to stay facing the ranger so crossfire bleeds don’t proc.
- Constantly run through their body to force them to constantly turn their camera. Some players are terrible at adapting to this.
- Dodge torch sklls, storm spirit activation, and wolf fear.
- Save RTL to leave whenever you want. Only use it when you are close to dying and NOT for getting in melee range or doing damage.
- Use Air Elemental for CC
- Wait for them to use Concussive Shot before you use Ether Renewal. With zerk amulet, you should be worried more about mitigating damage instead of healing yourself.
- Signet of Air is more for moving around the map and has very little combat use at least against rangers. I recommend replacing it with Lightning Flash or Mist Form.
- Don’t be afraid to reset fights. If he uses a lCD like Healing Spring, go ahead and walk off point to stand behind a pillar or something. You have another 30 seconds before he can heal himself again.
Honestly, I just rerolled instead of spending days theorycrafting a new build that will have even a slight chance against rangers. I’ll revisit the class after PAX.
