Guild Wars 2

So while I am slowly building a viper set for my Necro, I was advised to make a Carrion set as a cheaper alternative and next best option until I can get my Viper set up to speed.

So my question is, wouldn’t Rampagers be a better alternative? Some guild members told me that conditions don’t actually crit so precision and ferocity are useless for condi builds.

So who is right? If you cannot afford viper or sinister, is carrion the best condi gear? Do conditions crit?

Conditions don’t crit. Ferocity and precision do almost nothing.

The exception being that, some traits and runes/sigils can apply conditions on a critical hit. However, the internal cooldowns and or infrequent application means that the contribution precision adds is nigh negligible.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Conditions don’t crit. Ferocity and precision do almost nothing.

The exception being that, some traits and runes/sigils can apply conditions on a critical hit. However, the internal cooldowns and or infrequent application means that the contribution precision adds is nigh negligible.

Surely they must do something though? Otherwise why would Rampagers gear even be available? You may as well get Carrion and have the extra hp?

I’m not sure. Precision affects it as you make more crits, so you can proc more bleed or poison with the right runes, but that’s it. Neither precision nor ferocity affect condition damage

As pointed out they increase the chance of applying conditions on Crit. A number of builds can take advantage of this. The trait barbed precision is a good example of this. Sigils like tormenting and blight also trigger on crit.

They also increase your raw power damage. Condition builds do not just tick conditions. They also do regular damage which when it crits is boosted by ferocity. Some builds try and take advantage of this by taking less raw power damage than a pure power build and less condition damage then a pure condition build. These can be effective giving you a bit of each but many feel they not optimal.

I always found Rampagers to be far superior and underestimated a lot.

Bare in mind things have changed a lot for me but i always preferred Rampagers on my mesmer over Zerker gear etc..

Mitch.4781:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Conditions don’t crit. Ferocity and precision do almost nothing.

The exception being that, some traits and runes/sigils can apply conditions on a critical hit. However, the internal cooldowns and or infrequent application means that the contribution precision adds is nigh negligible.

Surely they must do something though? Otherwise why would Rampagers gear even be available? You may as well get Carrion and have the extra hp?

Good question. Rampager gear is often lauded as one of the worse gear sets, precisely because it just doesn’t do what other sets do.

I suppose it is supposed to be “hybrid” gear, for builds that are meant to do both direct damage and conditions at the same time.

Assuming you’re talking about pve builds
Thing is that the vast majority of the skills do both raw damage and have a condition application, for instance on engi you spam grenades a lot and grenades have a decent power coefficient; furthermore you have at least a couple of traits that proc on crit so if you want overall max dps, rampager would be a lot better than carrion.
I think for engi it would be something like viper>sinister>rampager>rabid>>carrion>dire
That’s my personal experience anyways
Edit: sry i misread, thought you were talking about engi xd still for necro i think rabid is a better dps option than rampager and carrion(cause of trait “target the weak”)

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Good question. Rampager gear is often lauded as one of the worse gear sets, precisely because it just doesn’t do what other sets do.

I suppose it is supposed to be “hybrid” gear, for builds that are meant to do both direct damage and conditions at the same time.

I may be wrong but I think it’s the only “vanilla” stat array that has condition damage but no defensive stats, so it’s what people were supposed to use if they wanted to be pure glass power/condi. A little sad since now there’s viper/sinister to make it somewhat forgotten.