Guild Wars 2

I don’t get this. I use the Rabid amulet in PvP and I’m trying to now get Rabid gear outside of the mists and it’s rather concerning that I get zero results for it on the TP. I know OoW vendor has rare Rabid gear, I know I could buy the ridiculously expensive exotic rabid set off the TP, I know that there are allegedly vendors somewhere in Orr (I’ve yet to see any Karma vendors in Orr) that sell various pieces of Rabid, but why is there NO gear on the TP called Rabid? Did they decide to change the name of just that one type of gear outside of the Mists? Berserker, Rampager, Carrion etc is all the same stats as the Mists and I find tons of gear on the TP, nothing for Rabid (except a couple jewelry things). I was able to find “Rabid” gear stats in rare quality at one point but it was called something else for whatever reason. Any help?

You should visit Historian Vermoth, the karma vendor who is available whenever the Temple of Dwayna (in Malchor’s Leap) is uncontested. He sells Rabid accessories, rings, amulets and backpieces.
Some of the armor pieces he sells (but not all!) also have the Rabid stats.

Link to his vendor list:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Historian_Vermoth

(Note: You need to buy this with karma. The items are soulbound upon acquire.)

The reason to the lack of Rabid is that you cannot craft it. Meaning that the only way to get it as a tradeable piece is a random drop.

The best way to get Rabid Armor is by doing dungeons : CM, TA, HotW and Arah all give you token that you can exchange for Rabid Armor and Weapons.

Also what about runes? Say I run condition builds in both PvE and WvW that both use Rabid stats but different runes. I have to buy new Runes every time I want to switch builds? Or buy/farm two pieces of everything just for separate runes? Either seems absurd so I’m assuming there’s a better way.

I totally disagree with you. You didn’t look up how to even get any of your desired gear. I’m running pure rabid from head to toe and did not have any trouble getting them. I bought the armor from karma vendors from 3 different temple vendors and the rest from TP. If you want to run with two sets of armor, that’s up to you. There isn’t really much to use karma on right now that you can easily buy two of everything for different runes.

Yes, you’ll need to buy runes every time you change build. So what people normally do is to prepare at least 2 full sets of armors with the stat that you want for each build and then stick your runes in them. Every time you switch build, you switch armor set. There are no other method that allows you to quickly changing build with your armor.

Also all the ascended pieces have rabid versions too (but obviously not called rabid as those have unique names