Guild Wars 2

So I play a variety of classes in PvP unranked and ranked mostly, and whenever I come up against a warrior who pops Rampage form, it honestly feels broken; the counterplay is greatly limited to very few classes with a select few builds, and everyone else is forced to turn tail and run.

I’m not crying OP, but I’m more wanting to hear what people have used to directly counter a rampaging warrior with success. In my experience, excluding instances where you’re ranging them (I’m talking about real PvP, fighting on or for objectives):

Rangers can’t overcome them, (unless LB and at a distance where pathing obstacles are exploited lol) but signet of stone can buy you a few seconds once your dodges run out, which still leaves you open afterwards if you aren’t miles away by then.
Guardians can outlast their rampage duration if they save their blinds and blocks and renewed focus.
Necromancers pretty much get eaten alive by rampagers, unless they carry plague form in which case you can perma-blind which is more like a stalemate than a counter.
Thieves can try to use blinding powder and hope the blinds pulse well enough against the rampager’s reduced condition duration (a couple hits from rampage and you die as a thief) or use Whirling Axe (stolen from the warrior) on top of the smoke, which is currently my go-to. Stealing the stability isn’t that great considering the stability reapplies soon after, so I find that once the powder/whirl ends, I gtfo and stealth, re-engaging later or elsewhere.
Warriors themselves can’t counter it well unless they use their own rampage, or kite/evade, but they do stand better chances since most currently are running cele amulets so they can face-tank a few solid hits from a rampager and still be standing. Still it’s often better to just run away and re-engage later.
Mesmers die horribly if they remain nearby unless running a boon-strip and daze/stun combo, or Moa, which is hilarious but forces Mesmers to take an elite just to counter another’s, which is kind of lame. I usually disengage and either dps from afar or stealth and re-engage elsewhere or after rampage ends.
Engineers can try to break through the stability with slick shoes, blind with bomb-kit smoke, block with tool-kit shield, or whatever other tricks to buy time but for the most part will go down quickly if they stay near the rampager and don’t play like tricky tricksters.
Elementalists have some things to buy time, can evade the remainder and wet themselves to mitigate the remaining damage with heals, but again it’s just a game of tanking until rampage ends.

TLDR: most classes are forced to disengage or buy time with blocks/invulnerabilities/evades/blinds until Rampage ends, with the only true counter being the Mesmer’s Moa form which means forcing a Mesmer to take that elite over others.

Has anyone else found any effective counters? Immob/cripple/chill and then ranging doesn’t work because of the reduced durations in rampage form, so what else is there?

I guess I’m thinking in line with Lich form, which can be countered and outplayed and is arguably much easier to face head-on anyway, as it has the slower attack-rate and enormous telegraphs from being the size of Godzilla, but glowing and without effective CC of its own. Also Liches can’t stomp. So yeah, Rampage, I would love for there to be more counters than “moa” or “drop all survival CDs” or “just run away.”

how come you didn’t mention immobilize for countering Rampage? on my bunker ranger, I stagger intimidating howl and entangle, evade 3-5 times and let the condis finish the job. like any other elite, if used at the right time, it can be devastating on point, and yes you may have to leave. but I generally don’t. depends on what im running.

rampage has -66% movement impairing condi duration so immob is not that much of a reliable counter. best way is to just disengage. if you waste all your cooldowns to stay alive then you won’t have anything left when the warrior comes out of rampage.

Yeah I mainly run ranged hybrid condi on my ranger, and immobilise can buy you a few seconds but if the warrior is taking Dogged March as well as Rampage, then the immobilise will barely last a moment before self-clearing, and their relentless melee attacks will clear Entangle’s roots quickly anyway. At the most it buys you a moment to disengage, and condition damage kind of gets shrugged off a rampaging warrior anyway with the warrior’s vitality being bumped up to around 1800+.

Moreover, a shoutbow warrior who isn’t awful won’t use rampage against a condi ranger anyway, knowing full well they cleanse extremely well with their shouts, horn, and cleansing ire.

My safety net is Toolkit Shield and Elixir S.
Block, Block, Block, Block, Shrink, Run around for a bit and then use my stealth to get away.

I just wish all transform elites would be as powerful as rampage and lich form…looking at you -Tornado-

You cant stop it. Anet kept buffing and buffing rampage and now it is totally broken with too short a cd. Soon it will become clear how OP it is.

when i play necro what i usually do is i troll them with plague, they can’t do anything anymore at all, it’s a pretty good counter but you kinda sacrifice and elite for an elite. also works against lich and tornado.

Supreme.3164:

I just wish all transform elites would be as powerful as rampage and lich form…looking at you -Tornado-

Agree, Tornado needs to get buffed / changed.

Having played against team risk in the ToL, they best players in the game easily counter rampage. I myself love the elite skill but i also easily beat it. With longbow i first hit him with the skill 5 to get some distance. They will try and close the range because its all melee attacks besides the rock throw which is very obvious. SO dodge the next 2 big attacks. Next you blind and every elite player in the game in 1 vs 1 situations can roll this out against a rampage.

I once faced a guardian who just spammed blind with his next 2 attacks and used his scepter block skill and kept his distance. Im sorry if you struggle with dealing range damage within the circle but the best players in the game can literally stay in the cirlce or right near it to prevent decapping or capping and make rampage a almost non usable skill in 1 vs 1 situations.

Lastly rampage is easily killed with lots of condi damage. So necros,mesmers and thieves have the ability to easily stack condtions on a rampage and these 3 classes shouldnt be standing in the circle to just stand there anyways.

You cant just stand in the circle, you have to be able to do everything well. Fight in the circle/ fight out of the circle/ give support in the right situations. Rampage itself is best used in team fights.

If i could share what happened in the fights, i fought a ele 1 vs 1 and when i went rampage he dodged twice and started running around keeping the distance and when i went back to cap the home node he attacked me and ported to a distance away from me. When i got out of rampage i had alot of condi on me and couldnt remove in time and that was it.

The engy i fought 1 vs 1 when he saw me go into rampage use his block skill with shield then went into mini form so i couldnt even hurt him for these 8-10 sec. He then dodged 2 attacks i was able to hit him to bring him to maybe 25% of his life but i had used my zerk stance and my elite skill to try and bring him down and i didnt. He then killed me quickly after.

If you dont see it as some unstoppable force you can see that you can do alot of little things to avoid taking hits from this melee form of dps.

The amount of warriors popping rampage in a 1v1 (I know I know, I should honestly disengage more and help elsewhere and just let them have a cap) and then coming out with the smack-talk is becoming more and more prevalent.

I’m not one to complain about something like rampage often because hey there are counters…I think..somewhere? But when you’re smacked with an 8k damage boulder you’ve got to wonder, where does the buck stop? :/
Come to think of it it’s not about how strong it is, it should be powerful, but the cooldown is far far too short. I could deal with it otherwise, for sure.

what people tend to forget is, popping rampage in a 1v1 can zone out many enemies and giving you a free decap or a full cap if you really need it. obviously it needs to be done against the right class at the right time and is a total waste otherwise. i am not a fan of transform elites as they are very situational, sometimes op or sometimes complete garbage, hello tornado.

Yeah, I think the nature of transforms is that they’re always going to be highly situational, which is probably what makes them interesting in the first place, like even though I tend to take Lich on my necro if running power these days, there’ll be matches where I don’t pop it at all, because I know the other team is too easily able to punish it, I know I won’t get the support from PUGs, or the team matchups are just not favourable for it.

On the other hand, Rampage to me seems strong enough that you don’t need be so careful as you do with Lich form, while the payoff seems just as good if not better. On top of that, a cele warrior can take Rampage and become a beast in every regard, while a necro basically MUST be a squishy glass cannon to make Lich formidable, so punishing the necro and forcing them out of Lich back to normal form usually ensures their death anyway (while many warriors will still be able to revert, disengage, and ultimately survive after the same treatment), ie it’s more reward with much much less risk.

And yeah, Tornado, lol. They tried to buff it with the whirling thing in that last feature patch, but it’s still disappointing.

Anyway so the general gist of what I’m hearing is that there is no real counter or weakness to Rampage apart from the fact that it’s melee (if you disregard its ranged ability, almost near-immunity to CC, gap closer, and then subsequent CC of its own), and the way to “beat” a rampaging warrior is to dodge, block and blind better; ie, burn all your survival if it wasn’t already on cooldown, and hope you survive the next 20sec. Though this only applies to professions that have those mechanics available to them.

I was hoping for more strategic discussion on how one should go about taking them down, but oh well.

knaive.9075:

Anyway so the general gist of what I’m hearing is that there is no real counter or weakness to Rampage apart from the fact that it’s melee (if you disregard its ranged ability, almost near-immunity to CC, gap closer, and then subsequent CC of its own), and the way to “beat” a rampaging warrior is to dodge, block and blind better; ie, burn all your survival if it wasn’t already on cooldown, and hope you survive the next 20sec. Though this only applies to professions that have those mechanics available to them.

I was hoping for more strategic discussion on how one should go about taking them down, but oh well.

Lol what are you looking for? If you use all your utility skills and he uses ramapage you got out played. Ive seen thieves and mesmers in the 1 vs 1 dueling arenas absolutely destroy rampage in 1 vs 1 situations.

Lastly, you say in this quote what you need to do to beat this. Ive literally taken no damage from a person in rampage by simply using longbow on my warrior. A few times i popped the invulnerability to ensure i didnt get hurt at all. Seriously ive ran into rangers who pop the take no dps and then range it so perfectly to the point they arent in any danger of losing the 1 vs 1.

Everyone here is talking about this vs lich form, lich from takes out many targets in a area because of its range. Rampage can only take out people 1 at a time. Im not really sure what to say because there are so many counters for every class and the fact that your builds cant do dps and condi dmg shows maybe the weakness in your builds especially for solo ques.

Supreme.3164:

I just wish all transform elites would be as powerful as rampage and lich form…looking at you -Tornado-

Agreed that tornado sucks but you should try using lich form vs any competent enemies.

It has no damage reduction
It has no condi reduction
The cast times are rather slow
All of its damage is ranged
It only has 1 stack of pulsing stability
It has no CC

Knowing these things its pretty easy to counter via blinds, blocks, immobilize (then go behind them) or via reflects.
Or if you have team mates nearby it can be rather easily stun locked depending on your set up.

I have also seen decent condi mesmers, condi engineers & condi thieves just load it up on conditions then stealth. The necro pretty much has no choice but to leave the transform to remove conditions thus wasting their long CD.

The issue is the whole concept of pulsing stability. It should be removed. It takes away counterplay from the game. Even If I clear their stability or use a CC to remove their stack, they just get it back in another couple of seconds.

Bad game design.

Jekkt.6045:

best way is to just disengage.

This.

Part of being a good pvp player is to know when you are in over your head.

Put a comfortable distance between you and the warrior, and patiently wait it out or chip away his hp from a distance.

There’s no point in diving onto a point and losing a fight if you can wait a few seconds and win.

Win the fight and win the cap… or lose the fight and lose the cap.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Jekkt.6045:

best way is to just disengage.

This.

Part of being a good pvp player is to know when you are in over your head.

Put a comfortable distance between you and the warrior, and patiently wait it out or chip away his hp from a distance.

There’s no point in diving onto a point and losing a fight if you can wait a few seconds and win.

Win the fight and win the cap… or lose the fight and lose the cap.

Huh? More likely, lose the cap and THEN you fight. That’s the problem.

style.6173:

The issue is the whole concept of pulsing stability. It should be removed. It takes away counterplay from the game. Even If I clear their stability or use a CC to remove their stack, they just get it back in another couple of seconds.

Bad game design.

You prefer people playing ping pong with you?

Tornado is OP. Only ability in the game where you can turn into a tornado, and since tornadoes in real life would one shot most players. Well you get the point… If you see a tornado, RUN!

Spread the word, we may get a nerf though. “Tornado no longer grants stability”. Asruantornadoball.

Loboling.5293:

Tornado is OP. Only ability in the game where you can turn into a tornado, and since tornadoes in real life would one shot most players. Well you get the point… If you see a tornado, RUN!

Spread the word, we may get a nerf though. “Tornado no longer grants stability”. Asruantornadoball.

Hahaha TRUTH. If anything, a nerf to Tornado should make the launch affect the player in Tornado form also. Perma self-launch, it’d be the only way to balance it IMO.

On a less serious note, disengaging from Rampage is a fair call but indicates an imbalance in the skill, considering there aren’t any skills that boast the same “solution.”

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Jekkt.6045:

best way is to just disengage.

This.

Part of being a good pvp player is to know when you are in over your head.

I agree that that is a huge aspect of being a good PvP player, especially in organised teams where rotations play such a large role. So that’s the general consensus, then? Disengage and hope for balance patches to buff Tornado? Hahaha xD

knaive.9075:

Loboling.5293:

Tornado is OP. Only ability in the game where you can turn into a tornado, and since tornadoes in real life would one shot most players. Well you get the point… If you see a tornado, RUN!

Spread the word, we may get a nerf though. “Tornado no longer grants stability”. Asruantornadoball.

Hahaha TRUTH. If anything, a nerf to Tornado should make the launch affect the player in Tornado form also. Perma self-launch, it’d be the only way to balance it IMO.

On a less serious note, disengaging from Rampage is a fair call but indicates an imbalance in the skill, considering there aren’t any skills that boast the same “solution.”

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Jekkt.6045:

best way is to just disengage.

This.

Part of being a good pvp player is to know when you are in over your head.

I agree that that is a huge aspect of being a good PvP player, especially in organised teams where rotations play such a large role. So that’s the general consensus, then? Disengage and hope for balance patches to buff Tornado? Hahaha xD

Definitely echoing this because of something Fay posted in the Mesmer forums, and it was profound, because knowing when to disengage is maybe the biggest hurdle for most players, I’m still learning this and I’ve been playing since release.

Right off the bat Necro, Thief, Engi should be removed off this list.

Necro: Lich vs Rampage is definitely largely in favor of Lich 1v1, in team fights Rampage’s CCs let them get tunneled pretty easily though. This isn’t a Rampage-specific issue, it’s a general Necro issue. Busted ez.

Thief can just perma stealth it, there’s no reason why this “Thief can’t counter it” garbage needs to depend on the Thief boxing it.

Engi can easily deal with it if you don’t get every single big ability popped right before. Rampage is the only thing that actually allows that Cele Warrior to actually kill an Engi. A Cele Warrior+Rampage beating an Engi, especially 1v1 is called ‘getting outplayed.’ There’s too many answers to even bother listing. You have to make some serious mistakes to consistently lose this fight so quickly.

If you’re having so many problems with everything vs it means 1 of 2 things:
1) You’re immediately on tilt when you see it and you throw like crazy.
2) L2P.

knaive.9075:

I guess I’m thinking in line with Lich form, which can be countered and outplayed and is arguably much easier to face head-on anyway, as it has the slower attack-rate and enormous telegraphs from being the size of Godzilla, but glowing and without effective CC of its own. Also Liches can’t stomp. So yeah, Rampage, I would love for there to be more counters than “moa” or “drop all survival CDs” or “just run away.”

I’ll take a fight against Rampage over Lich Form any day.

With Rampage, you can dodge the big attacks. When they autoattack, it’s only the 3rd attack that’s really a threat.

Sure, they can stomp when Lich can’t, but the DPS from Lich is so big, they really don’t need to stomp anyways. Also, the Lich will can continually spam their autoattack from range, whereas Rampage is mainly melee and easily dodged if at range.

Also, both Rampage and Lich are pretty easy to counter as thief since you can just black powder spam. Rampage may be easier since it doesn’t hit as hard and if you do get CCed, you can either steal to grab stability and stun or just use one of your other plentiful stun breakers. There’s no need to even stealth.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Supreme.3164:

I just wish all transform elites would be as powerful as rampage and lich form…looking at you -Tornado-

Agreed that tornado sucks but you should try using lich form vs any competent enemies.

It has no damage reduction
It has no condi reduction
The cast times are rather slow
All of its damage is ranged
It only has 1 stack of pulsing stability
It has no CC

Knowing these things its pretty easy to counter via blinds, blocks, immobilize (then go behind them) or via reflects.
Or if you have team mates nearby it can be rather easily stun locked depending on your set up.

I have also seen decent condi mesmers, condi engineers & condi thieves just load it up on conditions then stealth. The necro pretty much has no choice but to leave the transform to remove conditions thus wasting their long CD.

Oh, maybe use other skills than #1. I don’t know, but removal of 12 condis seems like a great thing to me. It also rips 9 boons! Also, having doubled base vitality kinda helps with conditions, too.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

It has no CC

Chilling Winds Lich form #3 is a frontal cone knockback.

Everything else you stated was pretty much spot on tho.

rampage is full melee, so in a teamfight you can just focus another player while kiting rampage. alternatively you can just target the rampage warrior and just down him, its gonna be more work than normal- but depending on your teams classes shouldn’t be too hard.

rampage is great, but its not ‘i just wiped your whole team with 6k ranged autos good’. you can kite it, and even though it gets a 25% damage reduction its still very killable.

Necros have to use plague/lich for countering rampage, its the only way to stay alive.

One big balancing factor behind Rampage is that you aren’t taking Battle Standard. I know that may sound silly but look at it this way, Rampage is largely a “selfish” elite that while potentially powerful doesn’t have the ability to revive a downed ally.

Many would say that it’s way more valuable to revive that ally quickly than to POTENTIALLY down 1 or 2 enemy players. I enjoy the fun factor of the skill but until the next update lands that makes Rampage a Physical skill I think the Banner is stronger.

While a rapid disengage will save you from rampage in most situations, that completely misses the point. If the only 2 true counters to rampage are “Moa or run away”….then it’s broken. A full disengage from rampage guarantees that you lose whatever point you’re fighting over, and now once rampage ends, you’ll have to debunk the warrior from it. It’s a lose-lose situation.

BurrTheKing.8571:

One big balancing factor behind Rampage is that you aren’t taking Battle Standard. I know that may sound silly but look at it this way, Rampage is largely a “selfish” elite that while potentially powerful doesn’t have the ability to revive a downed ally.

Many would say that it’s way more valuable to revive that ally quickly than to POTENTIALLY down 1 or 2 enemy players. I enjoy the fun factor of the skill but until the next update lands that makes Rampage a Physical skill I think the Banner is stronger.

Eh, idk, the knockbacks are pretty awesome to prevent stomps/rezzes. Even if they stability, you have so much CC, you can often still break through.

Fay.2357:

While a rapid disengage will save you from rampage in most situations, that completely misses the point. If the only 2 true counters to rampage are “Moa or run away”….then it’s broken. A full disengage from rampage guarantees that you lose whatever point you’re fighting over, and now once rampage ends, you’ll have to debunk the warrior from it. It’s a lose-lose situation.

Yeah that’s my general sentiment, especially during 1v1s and has been how I’ve been dealing with Rampage lately unless I’m running some kind of ranged DPS or have some combo up my sleeve to effectively counter them for a while (the thief blindpowder->steal->whirlingaxe is great on a capture point).

Dahkeus.8243:

BurrTheKing.8571:

One big balancing factor behind Rampage is that you aren’t taking Battle Standard. I know that may sound silly but look at it this way, Rampage is largely a “selfish” elite that while potentially powerful doesn’t have the ability to revive a downed ally.

Many would say that it’s way more valuable to revive that ally quickly than to POTENTIALLY down 1 or 2 enemy players. I enjoy the fun factor of the skill but until the next update lands that makes Rampage a Physical skill I think the Banner is stronger.

Eh, idk, the knockbacks are pretty awesome to prevent stomps/rezzes. Even if they stability, you have so much CC, you can often still break through.

I have a problem with banner and that is that my Australian latency usually forces my ping to around 300ms, and the skill delay on throwing a banner down that means sometimes my banner arrives that split-second too late behind the incoming stomp, and that sucks so hard with the cooldown.

So I take Rampage instead and in big team mid-fights, I generally find that securing stomps becomes so easy with Rampage, with the self-reapplying stability and the added resilience. It might be considered a more “selfish” skill than banner, but banner for me is so situational with my skill delay (anything ground targeted seems to suffer extra hard) and Rampage is a no-brainer as I’ve actually got much more to help my team with it than Battle Standard :| lol. Irony~

Get gud? (Love you.)

In my opinion, Rampage gets too much cc for the damage output, vitality increase, and condition reduction. A 2s knockdown, a 2s stun, a .5 sec daze on the third autoattack, and a 300 range knockback is a lot, and all of this with a 30s shorter cooldown than Fiery Greatsword (lol).

That being said, I think if you can dodge the major tells you can kite it out, or outlast it with blinds, blocks, and soft cc. Rampage lasts 20 seconds, so you only have to budget cooldowns to provide that much time.

A hammer medi Guard running the meta build, for example, can: chain immobs with hammer #3 and scepter #3; blind with focus #4 and Virtue of Justice; and block with focus #5, Virtue of Courage (which also provides stability and protection), and Shelter. That’s at least 10s-12s of the 20s duration, and Renewed Focus offers a 2s invuln and another Virtue of Justice/Virtue of Courage if necessary. You’d also get 4 dodges within those 20s (assuming I can math), not including the extra endurance from Vigorous Precision.

Rusc.4978:

Love you.

This, I will cling to forever~

…lol Fiery Greatsword < .<

I would say a medi guardian has a pretty good outlook when facing a Rampaging warrior compared to probably anyone else though, and a warrior would have to be bad or just panicking (aka bad) to use their Rampage while 1v1 against a guardian, knowing full well they can buy a lot of time with all the blocks and blinds (the immobs probably won’t do much against the Rampager, especially if they’re carrying Dogged March, yeeesh).

Most classes up close and personal going toe-to-toe with that warrior once he pops his elite, though, are going to have to gtfo pretty quickly if they don’t have something to stalemate/neuter the Rampage (moa, lich, plague, stealth, or a buttload of blinds).