Guild Wars 2

Hello guys, im one of those ppl who are having a hard time deciding on his exotic armor, granted if i had enough gold i would happily bought both full rampager and full berserker but the sad truth is, i dont.

Ive been debating with myself for so much time what to choose, i currently have s/p & GS combo and in mists i semm to always win with berserker amulet rather than rampager amulet, im quicker to kill foes and im also quicker to kill chieftain, the figures are the following: 19 seconds to kill a group with full berserker, 22 seconds to kill the same group with full rampager, 22 seconds to kill chieftain with full berserker, 25 seconds to kill same boss with full rampager.

I believe in pve conditions deal twice as much damage, is that enough to justify for me going rampager instead of berserker?

Ive been wanting to make up my mind for ages but so far i couldnt…

What do you guys think?

Lots of views no replies, am i asking a stupid question? :P

Yes. Because we have no idea what your spec is.

But if you’re using a GS, you may not be doing many conditions so I’m not sure what the Rampager would even do for you.

I’ve done a lot of research on this and the best answer I can give you is “it depends”. Both are competitive options if you spec appropriately. Berserker set will give you more spike damage while the Rampager set gives you more sustained damage. Rampager performs better against heavy armor opponents, while Berserker performs better against targets with condition removal. The difference in DPS between the two isn’t large, it’s more a matter of what fits your play style better.

Completely depends on spec.

If you don’t understand that Anet made Gw2 so that you’re supposed to grind out several different set’s of gear for different specs then you don’t understand this game yet.

GW2 is LOL on crack. There is (on hit) Teemo, Ad teemo and AP teemo. If that makes sense to you then you now understand how to stat for GW2 depending on your spec and weapons.

If you’re using Sword/pistol with GS then power/crit gear is what you want. There is no reason to run any condition damage with GS. Pistol can be used as a bleed stacker if you run the Bleed on crit tactic.

SuburbanLion.8095:

I’ve done a lot of research on this and the best answer I can give you is “it depends”. Both are competitive options if you spec appropriately. Berserker set will give you more spike damage while the Rampager set gives you more sustained damage. Rampager performs better against heavy armor opponents, while Berserker performs better against targets with condition removal. The difference in DPS between the two isn’t large, it’s more a matter of what fits your play style better.

this guy speaks truth, but also it’s difficult to give you advice when your title says PvE but you mention a bunch of PvP damage metrics. Very different beasts. I’d say in general/ dungeon PvE rampagers is probs more useful (how many mobs remove cons? serious question not rhetorical lol i’m not really sure but haven’t seen any) just because i always prefer sustain to spike in a longer encounters. at least i’ve got an exotic rampagers amulet on my mesmer, so i can say i endorse to some degree.

Rampager is pretty overrated. It has moderately higher Sharper Images uptime at a cost of doing a kittenton less damage.

Edit: Would be curious for someone to go through the effort to model it. Should be fairly straightforward for the most part.

Pretty much only good when you are maximizing SI using a build that stacks Might consistently to make up for the low raw power/cdmg.

i have been using pvp “metrics” because its the only way to test both without actually buying them, if i had both in pve i would already reached my conclusion :P
Keep it comming guys, im rly interested in your opinion, so far i see that ppl are undecided between both, while easymodex says rampager is overrated.

@EasymodeX did u test it in pve or in pvp?

Full Knight armor
Full Valkyrie trinkets
Berserker weapons
6x Centaur runes

Now pay me 50g for my expert advice in becoming a god in WvW (and PvE)! :p

^_^

@EasymodeX did u test it in pve or in pvp?

No specific tests in either.

Few things you should be aware of though:

1. PvE and sPvP Berserker gear are very different. sPvP Zerk has +minor Vitality and something like 40% less crit damage.
2. Rampager gear gets a bump in condition damage on the PvE set (bump from low to medium allocation).

It’s been tested that in the direct damage formula, power is applied as a full standalone ratio. E.g. power x weapon damage x other stuff = damage. Double power = double damage.

Zerk has roughly 40% more power than Rampager. I assume this ratio stays the same between PvE and sPvP gear.

If you make a few assumptions it’s pretty easy to compare a large part of the model:

Zerk: 40% more power, 60% crit damage, 28% crit
Rampager: 40% crit

Pretend for a moment you have a moderate 20 Dom and 20 Dueling (200 power, 200 prec, 20% crit damage):

Zerk: 30% more power (both sets get +200 power, decaying the delta), 80% crit damage, 38% crit
Rampager: 50% crit, 20% crit damage

Expected direct damage:

Rampager: 1 * (1+.5*.7) = 1.35
Zerk: 1.3 * (1+.38*1.3) = 1.94 (sidenote: zerk crits do 75% more damage than rampager crits, which is a large reason why you see some disbelief by players who use Rampager gear when Zerk-gear-users cite their damage numebrs)

Zerk gear does 44% more direct DPS. If you add 250 power from 25 stacks of bloodlust, you’ll still land at >30% advantage for Zerk.

So the question is whether Rampager’s SI-love is really worth it.

SI on 2.5 GS clones (easy calculations, pretty high degree of synergy, doesn’t actually matter for relative comparisons):

Rampager: .5 * 2.5 * 5 * (55+(560/20)) = 519 per sec
Zerk: .38 * 2.5 * 5 (55) = 261 per sec

Rampager has about double the SI pew pew dps.

So the question is 44% more direct DPS for double SI pew pew. Direct DPS of course reduced by armor/tough, bleeds of course susceptible to condition removal with the additional tactical penalty of being “over time”.

You could say that Spatial Surge plows 4k crit damage using Zerk gear every second on a soft-ish target. That’s 2595 Zerk DPS and 1806 Rampager DPS.

Zerk total DPS in this situation is 2600 + 260 versus Rampager’s 1800 + 520, a clear win for Zerk by 23%. Of course, there are usually other attacks that do more direct DPS than autoattack … shrug. Higher armor will reduce the delta. Say you add Protection boon. The comparison is now 2k for Zerk vs. 1720 for Rampager. Throw in a moderate level of armor: 1480 Z vs. 1364 R.

So, Zerk is pretty much going to do more pew pew pew than Rampager, although it is close on armored + protection-booned targets. Also, if weapon damage is factored as base damage upon which power is added, the the whole comparison changes with some tilt towards Rampager, although it was tested to be independent.

GS here and I use same gear and same spec for PvE and PvP:

Power: 2,331 (Without Might stacks which I easily get)
Toughness: 916
Crit: 34%
Crit dmg: 76%
HP: 18,322

Berserker x6 /w Superior Rune of Strength x6
GS Berserker /w Superior Sigil of Strength
Accessories: Full Berserker

Thank you guys very much and especially EasymodeX for his very detailed reply, from what i can conclude is that berserker is the way to go for a gs build in almost all circumstances.
Thanks alot for all your help guys!

Berserker is the way to go for direct damage using a direct damage build.

There are other builds where you literally may not use a lot of direct damage capabilities where other things may be more relevant.

@EasymodeX: Very nice analysis. I’m curious, what if we were talking about a GS shatter build? Would you be willing to add the confusion damage into your existing model to see if Rampager starts to make more sense that way?

Ook.9321:

@EasymodeX: Very nice analysis. I’m curious, what if we were talking about a GS shatter build? Would you be willing to add the confusion damage into your existing model to see if Rampager starts to make more sense that way?

you cant accurately model confusion damage as it depends on how dumb the enemy is. plus the vast majority of damage from shatter builds is from mind wrack. i see 5k+ mind wrack hits all the time, and you wont get anywhere near that with the lack of crit damage on rampager.

@ EasymodeX maths:

There’s a fundamental mistake you made in your model as well as some misquoted set stats which skew your results considerably:

Fundamental mistake #1: You did not include base stats in your maths. Each character has 916 base power at 80. You may ask, why? aren’t we just comparing gear? Don’t base stats cancel each other out on both sides of the equation? NO it doesn’t.

This is because stats like crit rate have a much bigger impact when we are talking about a bigger base power pool, because it is multiplying a bigger number. Proofs by maths at end if you don’t believe me.

So with this in mind let’s revise your maths and also fix misquoted set stats while we are at it. Using PvE Zerk with the bigger crit kittenoo:

You misquoted the crit damage from Zerk as being 80% with just set and 20 in duelling – the set provides ~48% crit bonus + 20% from duelling so 68% bonus. If you want to include 12% from divinity runes you have to do the same for the Rampager side of the equation which you didn’t…

So in reality, full exo sets of each set with our sample build and Divinity runes provide the following power: (I used green backs as Rampager’s doesn’t have a Guild Backpack)
Rampager power: 916 base + 618 gear + 60 runes + 200 traits = 1794
Berserker power: 916 base + 876 gear + 60 runes + 200 traits = 2052
*note builds can have slightly more or less if you are using a different build than our sample

Hence a character using Zerk’s has 14% more power than a Ramp’s character… far cry from 40% isn’t it?

If you do the same for precision when you include runes and traits they increase equally – I again use PvE gear so we are talking 7% to both Ramp and Zerk.

Thus expected direct damage is:
Rampager: 1 * (1+.57*.82) = 1.47
Zerk: 1.14 * (1+.45*1.3) = 1.81

Zerker’s does 23% more direct damage – not 44%… yes those crits are bigger but also less frequent.

Now if you understand that Rampager’s takes better advantage of both condition damage and crit damage stats due to the increased crit rate – if you were to compare a max dueling, max illusions line (with 300 condition damage in addition to set) you would to see a build that slants even more away from Berserker’s favor…

A few more points that were neglected about Rampager’s:
- additional condition damage that is not from SI, namely buring and confusion
- increased weapon sigil procing rate due to crits
- Zerk damage dropping sharply during dodges, LOS, casting, fears/stuns/ccs due to more reliance on player direct damage

Anyway. You get the picture. It’s not as one sided as many would have you believe.

Math proofs of why base damage needs to be included, skip this if you are the TLDR type:

This is an exaggerated and simplified example to make a point, the ratios are not the same as Berserker and Rampager gear.

Let’s say red gear has 20 power and 50% crit
and green gear has 50 power and 10% crit
you get red gear expected damage = 20 * (1.5 + 0.5) = 40
green gear expected damage = 50 * (1.5 + 0.1) = 80
(yes you can divide 20 and 50 to get a % difference instead but the % margin of the result will be the same)
Holy crap! Green gear with more power does twice as much damage as red crit gear… right? No…

Now you say well, my character had 1000 base power at level 80 before the gear… then the damage is:
red gear damage = (1000 + 20) * (1.5 + 0.5) = 2040
green gear damage = (1000 +50) * (1.5 + 0.1) = 1680

Whoops, now red gear with increased crit is better. The stat weights have changed considerably… looks like base stats are important after all…

Better luck in summer school!

REgardless of anything else.. 22% is quite a large number regardless. And also vs objects, rampager’s falls off hard as conditions can’t be applied. This I think is the biggest downfall.

These Big Bang Theory formulas not only go right over my head, but they totally suck every drop of fun from a game for me.

If you are using Greatsword and Sword+Sword or Sword+Pistol, then you are going for direct burst damage and boosting Power and Precision through traits ( since those boost swordplay ) and might as well get some Crit Damage in there too since you’ll be criting like a beast. So that would be Beserker’s right?

Even with Sharper Images, with this playstyle you aren’t relying on bleeds to melt you target. You are taking them down fast, the bleeds just make it hopeless for them to heal.

With any other setup like Staff, Scepter and stuff, I’d focus on the Condition Damage more, and use the Power, Prec to supplement the lack of in traits you will need to boost Condition Damage ( excluding bleeds from sharper images). So that would be Ramager’s.

^Rampagers* …..Ramager’s lol

Great game, forum…..meh :/ <3

Actually, the Greatsword is a mixed direct damage and condition build weapon.
Simply due to the fact that with Sharper Images + GS clones hitting 3 times per attack cycle each means they have 3 times the chance of applying a bleed per attack cycle.

Mix that in with the ability to throw a Mirror Blade every 4.6secs and the extra bounce trait from Illusions you can maintain 9-12 stacks of might.

Couple this with the fact that the iBerserker hits multiple enemies multiple times and therefore increasing chances of crit allowing a GS user to aoe bleed (might not be high stacks)

I use rampagers gear to use a hybrid gs/staff build, which works very very well in PvE and works insanely well in WvW.
Shatters inflict confusion and direct dmg
Clones produce bleeds and burst dmg when i need from shatters.
GS crits are not the best but they are decent and whatever i miss out from zerker gear i make up for in condition dmg.

Even though I don’t currently use it, I like the Greatsword alot. However, I still believe it is strongest when used as a ranged weapon/closer.

The temptation is easy to see. I mean, you become a laser cannon. But to me, ppl that rely on it as such and too much are only cheating themselves. GS is best used to whittle down hp until you are in melee range, or to give you space with knockback if melee is currently exhausted, or you just need space to move, or you are playing intricate interupption games.

In general, I think GS is best used in a strong, up close melee build, as ranged weapon for evening the odds some before you get up into the fray. Just my opinion, and certainly not the only way it can be used.

I would not, however, at least in PvE, count on bleeds from GS from being my main damage output.

The persistence in hitting and hitting more often make them one of the best clones for bleeding. Staff clones are very good but their attack is not as persistent. But i swotch between GS and staff as it suits me as i can change my playstyle or method of attack during a fight. I also use the conditions from clones in pve as my filler dmg, just so im constantly doing damage and spike with the gs and shatters. 9% dmg with 3 clones up is a decent amount in a boss fight.

REgardless of anything else.. 22% is quite a large number regardless. And also vs objects, rampager’s falls off hard as conditions can’t be applied. This I think is the biggest downfall.

Ok, I’ll keep this mostly anecdotal as to not cause anymore maths-brain-tumors. I didn’t even touch condition math in the last post.

A good Rampager Mes will run at least 65% crit with max dueling (can get closer to 70% if not using any surv gear) UNBUFFED. Using Signet of Domination that increases the already high condition damage stat by 10% (there is no power damage signet equivalent for zerk) and increased might stacks from better sigil procing… now 100 damage per tick is the average for SI (very common – ask any cond mes)… that’s ~500 per stack of bleed. Now you have 3 clones out- very easy uptime with dodge on clone.

Now it’ starting to take shape… 2/3 average crits per GS volley = 1000 damage per clone per volley = 3000 extra damage (3 clones) for every volley.

So is that worth the extra ~22% direct damage? (of course we can’t use exact same numbers since we aren’t talking about the same build anymore) Many think so.

I’ll give you that Zerks is better for beating lifeless objects…

Thank you for your reply Marxo but you are also forgetting something, not only rampager looses in power but also critical damage, the extra critical % chance is not even close to make up for the loss on both power and critical damage so in the end its still going to suck vs foes, also since i have 50%ish crit chance, it is not too often that i miss a critical shot, i can easelly reach over 2k damage per auto attack with at level 80, the same cannot be said about rampager, rampager will however slowly stack more and more bleeding to the enemy which is good unless you use it on foes with low hp and you have alot of them mitigating aoe damage, as ive said before i did the same test with both rampager and berserker in mists vs golems and vs chieftain, in both situations berserker won by 10-15% beying faster to kill.

We could say that it would make alot of sense vs foes with even a bigger health, i would agree with you if those foes would not have a way to remove the conditions then yes, rampager in pve could possibly win i cant say for certain because i do not have both in pve.

EDIT: Marxo, you have 5% force sigil which increases dps by 5%, i know it doesnt sound that great, maybe i will replace it with a ruby orb.

All i can say here is what i have found lately.

I had (in the bank atm) full beserker exotics and beserker jewelry, i could cut through mobs like butter.
However, i recently read the mantra thread on these forums and since i had loads of tokens and cash i bout a mix of “whispering” with tokens and “cleric” with cash.
It absolutely owns. My spike damage has gone down, but my DPS hasn’t suffered too much. The survivability it offers though is unbelievable.

If i was starting from scratch again with limited resourses then i would say go for the cleric gear, its an awesome all round set.

@ArticRed im sick ofcleric gear, my guard has it, my engi has it, i want at least 1 class to not have it :P:P
Yes cleric gear is rly nice indeed

TheWarKeeper.5374:

Thank you for your reply Marxo but you are also forgetting something, not only rampager looses in power but also critical damage, the extra critical % chance is not even close to make up for the loss on both power and critical damage so in the end its still going to suck vs foes
…..
EDIT: Marxo, you have 5% force sigil which increases dps by 5%, i know it doesnt sound that great, maybe i will replace it with a ruby orb.

I certainly did include crit damage, power and crit rate in my Big Long Math Post™. That was the point actually. Also I use Sigil of Strength and take advantage of the increased proc rate with Ramp, not Sigil of Force

my 2 cents:

i haven’t actually done any serious testing with this, but i do really well in solo pve and dungeons.

my gear is neither berserker nor rampager, i use knight with the undead runes, this goes with a phantasm/bleed focused build using GS and sword/pistol, with this i usually can sustain 6 stacks of bleed which adds quite a bit of damage

Marxo.3829:

TheWarKeeper.5374:

Thank you for your reply Marxo but you are also forgetting something, not only rampager looses in power but also critical damage, the extra critical % chance is not even close to make up for the loss on both power and critical damage so in the end its still going to suck vs foes
…..
EDIT: Marxo, you have 5% force sigil which increases dps by 5%, i know it doesnt sound that great, maybe i will replace it with a ruby orb.

I certainly did include crit damage, power and crit rate in my Big Long Math Post™. That was the point actually. Also I use Sigil of Strength and take advantage of the increased proc rate with Ramp, not Sigil of Force

Youve said theres no increased dps sigil for berserker, i told u that the sigil of force it is just it lol

I see whats up, the biggest flaw is that you are comparing clones to clones in an obvious rampager oriented build, ofc rampager clones will deal more damage than berserker clones, however if we start talking about phantasms it becomes the opposite.

Ah. I meant Signet of Domination. There is no power boosting Signet. Sorry. (also there is no such thing as sigil of domination).

As for phantasms vs. phantasms – it’s in Ramp’s favour when we talk about fast hitting ones like Duelist and Warden (many more bleeds than GS clones), and it’s in Zerk’s favour when we talk about large single hit ones like Warlock and Swordsman.

Also I certainly did not use a build favourable to Ramp’s. I used the exact same 200 prec 200 pow build that the Zerk tester used. The Zerk tester also picked the GS clones as a damage measurement, not me. I did later show that there are more favourable builds to Ramps than 200 prec 200 pow.

Marxo.3829:

Fundamental mistake #1: You did not include base stats in your maths. Each character has 916 base power at 80. You may ask, why? aren’t we just comparing gear? Don’t base stats cancel each other out on both sides of the equation? NO it doesn’t.

Actually, with regards to power, it kinda does. Damage scales linearly with Power, so you get the same DPS increase per point of Power regardless of where you start. It’s not that they “cancel each other out on both sides of the equation”, but rather the starting value goes away when we take the first derivative of the damage function with respect to Power.

This is because stats like crit rate have a much bigger impact when we are talking about a bigger base power pool, because it is multiplying a bigger number. Proofs by maths at end if you don’t believe me.

Yes, crit rate does look better as your Power goes up. However, you would need to have about 4k Power before Precision starts to look competitive. This value goes down as your Critical Damage goes up, but at the values achievable in game Power is by far the best return on investment for direct damage.

Let’s say red gear has 20 power and 50% crit
and green gear has 50 power and 10% crit
you get red gear expected damage = 20 * (1.5 + 0.5) = 40
green gear expected damage = 50 * (1.5 + 0.1) = 80

Now you say well, my character had 1000 base power at level 80 before the gear… then the damage is:
red gear damage = (1000 + 20) * (1.5 + 0.5) = 2040
green gear damage = (1000 +50) * (1.5 + 0.1) = 1680

There’s two problems with your math. First, your damage formula is incorrect. The correct damage formula is damage = C*Power*(1+CritRate*(.5+CritDamage/100)), where C is a constant depending on the target’s armor, the skill you are using, and your weapon damage (if applicable). Second, you’ve ignored the fact that it takes 21 Precision to increase your critical rate by 1%. The difference of a 40% critical rate should be compared with 840 Power, not just 30. Allow me to fix that for you:
“red gear” damage = C(1000+20)(1+.5*.5) = 1275 C
“green gear” damage = C(1000+860)(1+.1*.5) = 1953 C

Yeah, I’ll take Power over Precision, thank you very much.

As I said earlier, there are situations where Rampager’s will beat out Berserker in terms of DPS, but this depends on your spec, choice of weapons, playstyle, and who you’re up against. However, that’s only when you take into account the increase in condition damage that Rampager’s offers. As EasymodeX said, if all you are looking at is direct damage then Berserker is the clear winner.

Better luck in summer school!

Come back after you’ve taken Calculus and I’d love to discuss it further!

Ty for ur post suburban also:

No need to indirectly attempt to insult anyone, this is just a debate, not of who graduates on what thread

I had no intention of insulting anyone. I just have this pet peeve about mathematical arguments based on flawed assumptions. Duty calls.

I really would like have a discussion about the cost-benefit calculus of Rampager vs Berserker gear. I’ve been modeling this problem in my off time, but got a little sidetracked. If there’s anyone here with a math/programming background that’s interested in collaborating, please send me a PM!

Actually, with regards to power, it kinda does. Damage scales linearly with Power, so you get the same DPS increase per point of Power regardless of where you start. It’s not that they “cancel each other out on both sides of the equation”, but rather the starting value goes away when we take the first derivative of the damage function with respect to Power.

Very simply: You are allowed to isolate the power on just sets and say Zerk’s has X% more power than Ramp’s (provided you get the set stats right at least).
You are not allowed to then include said X% into a damage calculation with an isolated crit rate which intrinsically requires character’s full stats to derive how much more direct damage a character does with a set. It’s a plain old boo boo and leads to erroneous results.

I don’t know how much more clearly it can be stated than that.

There’s two problems with your math. First, your damage formula is incorrect. The correct damage formula is damage = C*Power*(1+CritRate*(.5+CritDamage/100)), where C is a constant depending on the target’s armor, the skill you are using, and your weapon damage (if applicable). Second, you’ve ignored the fact that it takes 21 Precision to increase your critical rate by 1%. The difference of a 40% critical rate should be compared with 840 Power, not just 30. Allow me to fix that for you:
“red gear” damage = C(1000+20)(1+.5*.5) = 1275 C
“green gear” damage = C(1000+860)(1+.1*.5) = 1953 C

Whoosh. I said very clearly this particular example of hypothetical red gear versus green gear only has a basis in demonstrating a basic mathematical truth, and has no relation to the world of GW2’s 21 prec = 1% crit, and so on so forth. Perhaps had I made the same demonstration saying pile of apples versus pile of peaches it wouldn’t have thrown you off. Small tip: it had nothing to do with whether or not prec or pow is better.

Sorry you didn’t read it right but I certainly did explain that. For all the real gear set calculations I certainly did use the expected damage formula as listed by Anet on GW2W.

Also Warkeeper, I’m not offended but I do wish the reading comprehension here was a little higher. Ultimately it won’t be life-changing to take Rampager’s over Berserkers but people will have to man up to their errors and understand that Anet is not incompetent when it comes to stat weighting for dps sets – they are much closer in performance than some like to think.

Marxo.3829:

Very simply: You are allowed to isolate the power on just sets and say Zerk’s has X% more power than Ramp’s (provided you get the set stats right at least).
You are not allowed to then include said X% into a damage calculation with an isolated crit rate which intrinsically requires character’s full stats to derive how much more direct damage a character does with a set. It’s a plain old boo boo and leads to erroneous results.

All other stats being equal, if you increase your Power by X% then your direct damage will increase by X%. Obviously there are other stats on the gear to consider, but then you have to start looking at the spec as a whole. I mean, OP never even mentioned if he had Sharper Images…

Whoosh. I said very clearly this particular example of hypothetical red gear versus green gear only has a basis in demonstrating a basic mathematical truth, and has no relation to the world of GW2’s 21 prec = 1% crit, and so on so forth. Perhaps had I made the same demonstration saying pile of apples versus pile of peaches it wouldn’t have thrown you off.

Sorry you didn’t read it right but I certainly did explain that. For all the real gear set calculations I certainly did use the expected damage formula as listed by Anet on GW2W.

You can’t just pull a formula out of nowhere and call it a “mathematical truth”. It’s obvious that you made a mistake. Where you have (1.5+.5) as the crit multiplier it should really be (1+.5*.5) instead. It happens. Might as well just acknowledge it and move on.

Confusion deals twice as much dmg. Not conditions in general :P

This is a really interesting debate. I have a tough/prec/cond + coral jewels, and full berserker.

I have no maths, but from what I “feel” after much playing around, staff with extra bounce trait and power/prec/cond/critdmg seems to have the second hardest auto atk.

(i think that.. no maths again)Hardest auto atk will be 4 charged up mantras with full berserker. but i hate playing this build cause i <3 my other utils so much.

For tagging dynamic events in cs, I find that berserker works best as direct dmg is what you want when mobs die so fast.

Hybrid stats with staff is great for pve (dungeons) for me, because i don’t have to rely only on phantasm to due dmg, staff clones are painful with shaper images and high cond dmg. Destroying objects won’t be too slow, and cond dmg comes in useful on certain bosses with high toughness. Also I love how both my f1 and f2 shatters deal tons of dmg. When i used full cond/full direct dmg, i always felt lacking as only 1 of my shatters is dealing massive dmg.

Yes, I bolded “for me”. You should find what is best for you. Even if you min-max the maths for the best dps, whether or not you like that play-style/gameplay is a different thing all together. Just like how I felt mantra build dealt the most dps but I dislike playing with it.

I use Rampager with a Staff main and Scepter+Focus alt. I have most traits in Toughness and Condition Damage with almost none in Power and 0 in Prec. I kill mobs quickly, and for objects, I use iWarden and Lobs/Shatters from Scepter, works pretty good.

I just made my first set of Rampager’s gear. Everything has been fine until now. I’m only expecting things to be better.

I don’t know what this would look like in % and formulas, but take it as a “truth” and make it happen.

I always just consider the weapon you’re using. If it causes condition, build for condition damage. If it’s just white numbers, build for crit damage. Only two weapons that specifically apply a condition of some sort is the staff 1 and scepter 3.

You can’t just pull a formula out of nowhere and call it a “mathematical truth”.

If someone says:
(3 – 1 ) + 2 = 1 + 2

You can certainly say, but wait!
3 – 1 = 1 is wrong, it should be 3 – 1 = 2.

It doesn’t matter if the first equation is about damage equations, flying pigs or purple chipmunks. The second equation is about none of those things… it is only there to show how subtraction works. Get it?

What you just did was say I’m wrong in the correction because I left out the + 2 and it’s not about flying pigs anymore… hence: Whoosh!

Anyways we are side tracking – I’d love to hear more people’s experiences with either set.

Marxo.3829:

You can’t just pull a formula out of nowhere and call it a “mathematical truth”.

If someone says:
(3 – 1 ) + 2 = 1 + 2

You can certainly say, but wait!
3 – 1 = 1 is wrong, it should be 3 – 1 = 2.

It doesn’t matter if the first equation is about damage equations, flying pigs or purple chipmunks. The second equation is about none of those things… it is only there to show how subtraction works. Get it?

What you just did was say I’m wrong in equation 2 because it’s not about flying pigs anymore… hence: Whoosh!

you two are arguing about kitten kitten. what you just said makes absolutely no sense, but from your first wall of text, i know what you’re trying to prove.

yes if you include the base stats, the % difference in dps between berserk and rampagers will go down, this should be clear to everyone, as 50/100 is 50% but 50/1000 is 5%.

however the issue is despite the fact that the % difference goes down, the actual difference in dps remains the same. and depending on how many traits and other skills you factor into the equation, will boost condition dps numbers in favor for rampagers, including things like confusion which can’t be accurately modeled.

this brings me to an important point that many people asking for gearing advice don’t understand. the only way for anyone to definitively find out which armor set gives the most dps, you’d have to draw up a complete build, runes, weapon sets, traits, jewels, etc. theres no way you can come to a conclusions without knowing all the variables.

wads.5730:

this brings me to an important point that many people asking for gearing advice don’t understand. the only way for anyone to definitively find out which armor set gives the most dps, you’d have to draw up a complete build, runes, weapon sets, traits, jewels, etc. theres no way you can come to a conclusions without knowing all the variables.

This is -exactly- it. I also agree that this debate is starting to read like a book as well hence it’s hard to jump in. I didn’t start that trend though

TL;DR anyone?

I still can’t decide betwen rampager and carrion

Seems like Arenanet did a great job at balancing armor set, looking at this posts Even math wonders cannot decide.

Atm my damage is way to low on mesmer (blurred frenzy 1300), berserker phantasm 2500. I nowhere get near the 5k damage spikes often mentioned. Will fully berserker or knight bring me close to this?

the huge spikes come from crit damage. and skills that boost mindwrack damage.

Lol Domination’s first tier major trait that gives more Wrack damage, Berserker’s/Ruby to spike your crits and have huge power. For the biggest numbers, go WvW and hope you run into people that are scaled up to 80 without proper gear. Then you get numbers.

I run full zerker dps Mesmer, with s/s > GS setup, occasionally switching between focus and pistol to adapt to certain boss fights. This build of mine also has built-in mantras traits to yield me additional dps at a cost of survivability , though I rarely change now and then only for some stationary bosses like Mark X golem in CoE ; 30 domination 30 dueling 10 illusions, I play straight up offensive.

I also must concur that zerker perhaps way superior in terms of direct damage. Like Quex said, this numbers dramatically increases in WvW. I’m currently not fully on exotics ( lacking one piece ) , but my stats cap at around 3.45k power / 61% crit rate / 110% critical damage. That’s easily 3k~5k autos from GS autos on paper thin targets.

KuroKanden.1026:

I run full zerker dps Mesmer, with s/s > GS setup, occasionally switching between focus and pistol to adapt to certain boss fights. This build of mine also has built-in mantras traits to yield me additional dps at a cost of survivability , though I rarely change now and then only for some stationary bosses like Mark X golem in CoE ; 30 domination 30 dueling 10 illusions, I play straight up offensive.

I also must concur that zerker perhaps way superior in terms of direct damage. Like Quex said, this numbers dramatically increases in WvW. I’m currently not fully on exotics ( lacking one piece ) , but my stats cap at around 3.45k power / 61% crit rate / 110% critical damage. That’s easily 3k~5k autos from GS autos on paper thin targets.

@Kuro how do you have those stats such as 3.5k power/61% crit rate/110 crit dmg? I am full berserker weapon/armor/trinkets and superior runes of divinity doing a 20/20/0/0/30 build and have around 2.2k power/ 49% crit chance/93% crit dmg

I have 3 full sets of exotics. Tank set (power,tough, vit) Rampager set and Khilborn’s set

While direct damage is great and all, I’ve noticed most people seem to think condition damage is bad. That being said most people still think you only need one set of gear.

My new favorite set is the khilbron’s set though by far.

I’ve been running a confusion build in WVW and having a blast though it’s not the idea way to kill people. The enemy has to engage you, but if they do it’s a blast to see confusion hit for 1700.

I think rampager AND zerker are must have sets.

Ideally you should want, Rampager, Zerker, Tank set, Heal set, and Khilbron’s set. With those 5 sets you can spec any way you can imagine.

Full zerker with runes of scholar stacked is your highest DPS output with GS, and i would use scepter/pistol as my alternate for PVE which also benefits from full zerker/scholar runes