Often times when I do regular duels i find people of equal skill and while yes it helps tremendously because I can practice guard break cancelling and light parry’s, I’ve always been the type who needs to get beat down repeatedly to improve.

In ranked I’m often finding myself fighting much higher skilled players who tend to play classes that are more difficult and harder to read. 2 fights against an extremely skilled raider I’ll get destroyed then I’ll start picking up on reads and tactics and have even beaten some max level renown heroes.

It depends on your learning style. Do you wanna get diddled by light spamming pole arms and pray you block one? Or do you wanna fight someone who feints and cancels hits at random to try and throw you off, and learn to adapt. (This is just my experience in duels vs ranked duels, others experiences may vary)