Guild Wars 2

I’m an ele player myself, not D/D though, and I literally don’t understand how to counterplay D/D with any class except by being better at being DD than they are, which is nearly impossible. The burst and condi of them is still insane, and the survivability while in water is still extremely high, and they have good sources of stability (earth armour and auto earth armour) so CC isn’t even an option. How the hell do you beat this build?

When they are in fire attunement, prepare to dodge the incoming fire 3 and fire 4. Keep moving around and they won’t be able to land fire 5. Their main source of burst is basically fire 3 and fire 4, followed by fire 5.

If a ele blinks in with fire 4, chances are he’s gonna pop earth 4 to get might from blast finisher.

When he goes into water attunement, he’s gonna dodge roll and cast water 5, followed by water 2 most probably. He’s healing then ends there, from that point on start to burst him down if you haven’t use your burst.

Signet necro counters D/D too. Turn their boons into conditions.

If you are a Mesmer, moa them and win.

Thanks for the non-specific advice! What about air opening D/D?

Hard cc plus strong coordinated burst is the best way to take it down. It still only has 17k hp (same as a maurader thief) so if you can burst hard it dies very quickly. Against low damage it will survive forever though.

CC is very much a good counter since armor of the earth is on such a high cooldown and is the build’s only stunbreak. This actually gives it the fewest stunbreaks per minute of any build that is at least somewhat viable.

The other thing to consider is that smaller scale skirmishes (1v1 and 2v2) are the situations where the build shines, so attempting to force it into larger scale fights with proper rotations will limit its effectiveness substantially. Kind of like how do you duel a condi mesmer? You don’t, you just take advantage of its bad team fighting ability. DD ele is better than condi mesmer in team fights but the principle still applies.

As for fighting the ele it self. The key is to save your defenses for the fire rotation avoid drakes breath, burning speed, and fire grab. And save your condi cleanses for any burning you take. Alternately you can pressure them hard during their fire rotation since this is when they are most vulnerable defensively. They will no longer have protection from earth attunement, and water will also likely be on cooldown. If you can land a hard cc chain and some burst, you can force them, to rotate to earth prematurely to get protection, so you won’t even need to worry about the fire burst.

While this won’t help you if you need to hold the point, kiting is very effective against dd ele in a 1v1 since their fire field stays stationary. If you keep away from it they are forced to either chase so they can do some damage, or they can blast their fire field for might stacks but then they do absolutely no damage. Regardless of their choice, their damage will be heavily neutered since the build is dependent on might stacks.

Hope this helps.

SolarDragon.7063:

Thanks for the non-specific advice! What about air opening D/D?

When he cast Updraft and it hits, he’s most likely going to swap to fire and cast fire 3. That hurts a lot.

There are 2 hard counters to D/D Ele I think, one is Signet Necro, it will win the war of attrition the other burst shatter mesmer if it can land it burst.

For Ex, when I play my Warrior (without Rampage cheeese) I have bare to none chance to burn down D/Ds sustain.

While its hard to kill the ele, kiting works. As already said dodge or immidiatly cleanse the fire burns. One of my favs is to hit my cleansing flame at the moment ring followed by breath, so he burns. Then i stay at range circling him, being ready for his jump. I play S/F ele and have obsidian flesh, magnetic wave blinds and the air knockdown for his attacks. Timed this leads to a bad ele die and a good is like a stalemate because he can disengage and heal. Somtimes i get them with FSG. This fights are usually quite long and the winner is who brings his friend first.

Another random bit of non-class specific advice – poison and chills work pretty well versus DD ele, especially when coupled with some sort of soft/hard CC.

The chills slow down their attunement switches, which if you time it right can really hurt their sustain via slower water rotations. Poison works well if you have multiple sources of it as it can impact some of their off-water healing (regen, signet).

I personally have found engi and necro can match pretty well since they have easy access to chill/poison/cc, but I imagine there are other good options : ranger & thief already have good poison, and you can add in doom/hydromancy sigils to any build.

SolarDragon.7063:

I’m an ele player myself, not D/D though, and I literally don’t understand how to counterplay D/D with any class except by being better at being DD than they are, which is nearly impossible. The burst and condi of them is still insane, and the survivability while in water is still extremely high, and they have good sources of stability (earth armour and auto earth armour) so CC isn’t even an option. How the hell do you beat this build?

Timed burst can spell the end of a fire ele where the earth ele( by you described given the double earth armor) would possibly survive but he won’t deal nearly as much damage.

Ex : A power ranger dodging your burning speed, notes that you lack stab, will hit you with daze-maul-raven/taunt and you’ll be down by 80% HP, then ranger swap to LB- knockback-rapid fire -GG ( see @phantaram lose to @bear this past ESL)

-Burning speed is extremely easy to dodge even if they uses blink as the ele will start burning speed animation before using blink, for the rest you must learn to predict their actions from their attunement swap, keeping tab of their CD

-Necro can lay down wells making hard/impossible to approach, bait your dodges -DS-path of corruption -well bomb or signet play -corrupts your stab and fear chain you

-Mesmer uses staff, chaos field followed by double shatter

-GS/Axe war bait your dodge, shield stun and eviscerate, if you move, GS -arcing slice ( see @Phantaram lose to @tarcis this past ESL)

At equal skill level a d/d ele can be countered by pretty much any class, a fire d/d ele is extremely vulnerable to timed burst ( see @Phantaram and @Zoose going down in 3s during team fights this last ESL)

Are it´s hands on fire?
-if yes, prepare to dodge, obvious tells and big damage coming.

Did it just splash water around?
-if yes, good, heals are all gone, burst it´s sorry kitten down.

Did it survive?
-if yes, rince and repeat, it´s cantrips are running out sooner or later.

U can beat an ele if you l2p!

A DD ele dies when a DD ele wants to die. Even if you are winning the duel, he can always disengage and reset. Try not to 1v1 them until the expansion.

Cele nec being a counter is a huge huge misconception – yes it has better chances than other specs, but the RoF “nerf” made it harder for them to fight back and they obviously can’t chase down an ele who can just reset the fight anytime. If the ele plays it safe, he won’t die to necs.

Your best bet is applying chills when he leaves water.

posthumecaver.6473:

There are 2 hard counters to D/D Ele I think, one is Signet Necro, it will win the war of attrition the other burst shatter mesmer if it can land it burst.

For Ex, when I play my Warrior (without Rampage cheeese) I have bare to none chance to burn down D/Ds sustain.

Neither of these are. I have been playing a lot of DD ele for the past couple of months.
Unless you are facing some necro or mesmer that are much better than you mechanically, there is little chance they can win the 1v1. It is really barely a counter, let alone hard counter.

But after the burn/might got tuned down a bit, it does take more skill/effort for a dd ele to neutralize a point against some marauder class.

witcher.3197:

A DD ele dies when a DD ele wants to die. Even if you are winning the duel, he can always disengage and reset. Try not to 1v1 them until the expansion.

“maaan, thieves can disengage and reset the fight at will” —> “pvp is not about kills, if you forced him to disengage, you’ve won the fight. everything is fine, l2p”

“maan, eles can disengage and reset the fight at will” —> “ele is uncounterable, better nerf ele”

pmnt.4067:

witcher.3197:

A DD ele dies when a DD ele wants to die. Even if you are winning the duel, he can always disengage and reset. Try not to 1v1 them until the expansion.

“maaan, thieves can disengage and reset the fight at will” —> “pvp is not about kills, if you forced him to disengage, you’ve won the fight. everything is fine, l2p”

“maan, eles can disengage and reset the fight at will” —> “ele is uncounterable, better nerf ele”

Kill is actually a very important part of PvP. Saying pvp is not about kills is just plain false. Many people overlooked it and tunnel vision on that small capture circle.

If you get a chance to kill a dd ele, you really should go for the kill rather than trying to capture a point.

Also something like thief disengaging is much more than the lines ‘you won the fight’. The way thief mechanics works, they can easily reset in 10 seconds in stealth and come right back at you. Or they can use their superior mobility to create outnumbering at other points. You simply don’t win if you don’t follow up correctly.

Play a heavy condition build. Problem solved. Condition necro, thief, engi and mesmer are all counters to d/d ele. Even d/f condition ele with perplexity runes eats a d/d celestial ele (tested myself).

Play a berserker warrior, whittle down the ele’s hp. When you’re at 40% hp, pop rampage and roll your face on the keyboard. Do not hit the escape button though since it will de-target the ele.

Play berserker engi. Drink Elixir X. If you get rampage, see warrior.

Play dagger mainhand berserker thief, wait for the elementalist to be engaged in combat and when he is at 50% hp (equal to about 8,5k hp), burst him down using two buttons (steal -> backstab, about 10k dmg with steal damage, sigil of air and sigil of fire).

See above, replace thief with mesmer (about 12k burst damage). Only for experienced players since more buttons have to be hit correctly.

It’s not hard, I don’t know why people think it is … Soon as they go fire you dodge left or right to avoid the obvious burning speed.

Don’t stop moving to the side because it always goes to ring of fire which is worthless if you don’t stand in it or cross it. They make go flame breath and if you have an interrupt this would be a good time for it. Else keep range and moving around them in a circle so server latency will keep every tick from landing.

Next the obvious swap to earth and earthquake/ring of earth.

Then Water … and here comes the counter play. Let them do whatever , it isn’t important. You havn’t taken any serious damage if you evaded the burning speed/ring of fire.

Soon as they leave water you freaking NAIL them. Convert boons, apply condition, burst, whatever. You have 9 seconds to do whatever you want to them. If you force them to use their heal you win. If you don’t let them make it back to water in the rotation, you win.

They usually leave water for air which means they could updraft you if they didn’t open with that, so if you have a stability you may want to use it just in case.

Cele signet nerco use to hard counter d/d ele. But its no longer the case after the rof nerf. The nerf to rof In directly make them uncounterable. They are currently the king of 1v1 no class can win a average d/d ele. The real counter is to aviod 1v1 and 2v1 them

Huge condi build works well against D/D

Just force him to “waste” water and keep ur condi burst for that moment … (I won a 1v1 as P/P engi vs 1 D/D) that wasn’t even a long fight.

Aww… insta 5k burn. Cleanse immidiate or die. For me such condi burst is way to much it should build up slower. Condis are not burst XD.
but yes it works …

Power Revenants. D/D cele eles were incapable of outsustaining the sheer pressure of their damage in betas. You’ll find that out in two days anyways.