Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

how do I play a spirit ranger correctly in sPvP?

1. When do I (re-)cast my spirits?
2. When do I use their ability?
3. Where should I position myself?
4. Should I focus on team fights?
5. What are the solo fight capabilities of the spirit ranger?
6. What other tips can you give me regarding spirit ranger/general sPvP? (I sometimes play solo arena and sometimes team arena with 2 friends)

Your help is very appreciated.

carrion spirit ranger
with shortbow and sword/dagger:

• 1.) always if they die and you are in a fight, just recast them,
  but be sure you are not focused hard, because they have a long cast time.
  you can use wolf fear or spider immobilize to get time to cast them safe.

• 2.) sun spirit: if you want stomp a enemy player use it to blind.
  and if you practice a bit you can it also time to blind some important enemy attacks like warrior hammer stuns
  stone spirit: use it always to immobilize enemys in a fight,
  a good combo is to start with spider immobilize + f2 spider immobilze and then use the stone spirit aswell for a long immobilize.
  rez spirit: if you or your team mates go low you should summon it, but after that ranger lovely patch this spirit dies really fast, so be careful and dont summon it to early…
  the healing range is anyways really low, your team mates have to stay nearly into the spirit to get heal.

• 3.) as a carrion spirit ranger you are not supposed to hold a point, so you fight around the point and only go on point if the bunkers need some one fast there because they go low.

• 4.) yes

• 5.) you die to nearly everything in 1vs1 on point if the enemy player is on the same level as you, because you need room to kite.
  ele, warrior, s/p thief will always win just because burning field and they dont take damage from you…
  s/d thief, necro, mesmer, off guard and another ranger is ~50/50
  but ofc not easy on point as spirit ranger, the moment you have to recast spirits is the most dangerous moment deciding you lose or win.
  but as spirit ranger, there is not much reason to take a 1vs1 because you need really long to kill someone and for close holder we have atm much better professions and builds in the game then a ranger.

• 6.) dont run spirit ranger and create a staff or dd elementalist.
  or just start to run a faceroll op warrior, they are still broken as hell and work 2x better then the old bm ranger, thats a nice feeling of dominate everything in easy mode.

at least in my mind spirit ranger is not worth to run in a team any more.
thief/mesmer combo is a pain, 1vs1 vs warriors and eles on point are impossible to win,
you deal just like zero dmg on them and in the same time you have to dodge and kite for your live if you face them.

in the teamfight you have still the nice protection and burning buffs of your spirit for your team mates, but it feels not worth any more to run a spirit ranger in teamfights.
there is so much better options after this patch then a single target low damage spirit ranger…

How to play a spirit ranger ? Are you serious? Its like asking how to play MM necro and hambow warrior.

@Oidmetala: Thank you for your opinion. I guess I will stay with condition ranger then or I will try out warrior.

@a t s e: Not very helpful, go somewhere else if you don’t have anything useful to say.

1. You want your spirits up as much as possible.

2. You cast your spirits to either damage the enemy, cover condis, or to blind something you don’t want to get hit by.

3. You should almost always be slightly off the node (only on node when you have to be) until you want to damage with your spirits, if you dodge through something and activate your spirits they will generally activate somewhere in the middle of where your dodge roll was (even though they were way behind you before they will run up super fast then activate). This allows you to dodge through the node dropping out the spirit actives on everyone while still maintaining your positioning slightly off the node.

4. Team fights are generally where the spirit ranger should be just for the impact of the elite spirit alone.

5. In my opinion, spirit ranger has the potential to beat everything 1 v 1 (you just have to dodge well). The nerf to automated response allows for the ranger to be able to 1 v 1 engis again, and the only other thing that can handle a spirit ranger is a warrior. But you have 2 things to dodge, hammer stuns or eviscerates. So unless they are playing asura, you have a pretty solid change of seeing the animations and dodging when you need to. The issue is it is easier to hit something than it is to dodge something. If you don’t dodge what you need to, you will lose to the warrior.

6. Most spirit rangers don’t take 3 spirits anymore (sun, storm, stone) but instead opt for 2 spirits (sun and x). This allows for them to take SoR or LR depending on the enemy comp. Personally, I think spirit rangers should take only sun spirit and the elite spirit, and then take LR and SoR because they are both very versatile utilities that help a lot more than storm or stone. The reason for not taking storm is because if you take LR you should live longer than you would without it and dish out the same-ish amount of more dps as the storm spirit active does, plus it gives you added mobility when needed. The reason for not taking stone is because you only get the protection procs by hitting your enemy. Most of the time you need protection is when you are getting focused and most of the time when you are getting focused you are getting chain cc’d. Odds are you won’t be getting off any protection procs and should just opt for other utilities. The reason you take sun over the others is because you can’t dodge burning procs but you can dodge torch. Therefore, you always have some burning on your target and the extra survivability on dagger + dagger 5 (which does solid damage) is just way nicer than using a torch.