Guild Wars 2

Hi all, new to Elementalists and I was wondering if it was worth the time and money to get Rampager gear with the intent of focusing on burn/bleed for most of my damage. I plan on using S/D and stacking at least 9+ might solo.

Is this a good idea? Would Rabid be better for the incrased Cnd and toughness?

I use a lot of Rampager’s gear because it’s reasonably priced. And you can kit it out however you like with runes, crests, etc… So if you change your mind later you can alter your gear a bit, and change weapons sets, etc… In PvE it shouldn’t matter as much – but if you’re going to be playing with a large group or zerg a lot, remember there’s a cap on condition damage. So if you have a lot of people doing condition damage at the same time, it won’t be as effective.

If you have tried the build in pvp and are happy with it then go for it. But you will be very glassy, even with rabid and points in earth you will be 1-2 shotted by thieves making roaming not so fun, and in zerg fights your conditions that are weaker than other classes will be overwritten and less effective (like Elden wrote). Plus all the Warriors out there who can passively out regen your conditions. GG Anet.

I think any maximization of dps is your best choice. Truth be told I do not possess the skill (or cheats) to successfully pull off the current d/d build in the current meta. I was almost unstoppable back when full Berserker or full PTV was the rage (soon after release), and not just versus uplevels. My ability was directly tied to everything that got nerfed. Now, the most common activity for any Ele in WvW, who actually plays a long time on Ele, is to stay in fairly protected areas (with the zerg or defending). That means you should concentrate on what you can do in those situations – dps.

Rampager isn’t the best choice for a condition elementalist, might even be the “worst” in some ways.

There aren’t any built in “condition on crit” effects like there are with other classes. Our +condition damage line is the toughness line, not the precision line (like engineers, warriors, etc).

Our best condition dps builds focus on bleed duration and stacking with eruption or scepter auto. That locks us into earth for damage, making it hard to apply burning and impossible to heal or use much of our CC without basically stopping damage altogether for 10-15 seconds.

Condition damage is about outlasting your enemy. A condition set with no survival stats makes that very difficult. Waiting for backloaded damage to tick and trying to live with 11k HP and 2k armor sounds dangerous. If you can pull it off and it’s fun, go for it. I wouldn’t recommend it for WvW though.

Condition build in Ele doesn’t work well because we don’t have poison. (decrease healing)
Compare to ranger engi and necro they have poison and abilities to stack many conditions all the time.

Ele have to rotate attunements which means when you are in Air and Water you don’t have condition to pressure your enemy.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, Thrashbarg in particular.
I originally planned to play off Burning Precision and a Sigil of Doom. On further inspection, this doesn’t seem to be enough pressure.

If Rampager is not a good idea, what set would compliment a S/D dungeon build with a little roaming/zerging on the side?

Burning Precision: Burn (1sec) on crit (0icd)

It’s only really good for spreading burning (because it doesn’t stack in intensity. Say 2 attacks apply burning in 1sec. You still have to wait 1 sec for the 2nd burning application to do anything.

Stuff that can happen waiting for that 1 sec.
- target could already be dead on the 2nd hit (wasting the 2nd burn)
- you could be down/dead
- burn could be cleansed

For lack of a really good answer: celestial ~_~

Thrashbarg.9820,
I agree with you about Rampager being risky. Even though the ChillyChinaman.6057 liked your response, you did not give the whole story. Most of my success with d/d was due to Rabid gear. The problem with Rabid is that it did not put out the impressive single hit numbers. Rampager has less condition damage than Rabid. We both agree that condition damage is not the big thing for Ele. Rampager is like Assassin, too, but without the critical damage bonus. Depending on the traits bought, Rampager could be very good for decent crits and decent condition damage. Together the Rampager gear will make big trouble for the enemy. The question comes down to survivability. No matter how you look at it Ele is the lowest on the totem pole for that. He can pull off Rampager, and he will probably like it more when he figures out how to survive with it.