Guild Wars 2

I’ve reached level 80 on my mesmer, and I’m trying to equip him. Right now I’m running 0/20/20/0/30 and I’m using sword/focusOrPistol and staff… I’m using the staff to kite/fight bosses and the other for shattering.
I was considering rampagers gear with a piece or two of knight’s (right now my two exotic armor pieces are knight’s chest and rampager’s legs)…
Guide’s like the Shattercat build suggest berserker’s with a piece of knights/valkyries… is rampagers a waste?
I plan to use it for both PvE/WvWvW
Thanks for any advice/criticism….

First I would suggest that you decide, if you want to play shatter or phantasm (I tried both and both are fun but still different).

I run a 10/15/0/25/20 phantasm build and I use a rampagers-set (at least the six slots for clothing) the trinkets are a mix of knights and berserker and the weapons are soldier (because I couldn’t yet be bothered to replace them with something else). Runes are undead.
This gives me decent power, precision, toughness, vitality and condidtion damage. And yes, I know that most people say phantasm should be played fully glass cannon (either full power,prec or full condition, prec) but I like it and I still think it is better to be alive and deal slightly less damage (and believe me this mix of direct and bleed damage DOES hurt) than to be dead and not deal high damage. Additionally this allows me to play pure trident in underwater battles because I absolutely can’t stand the spear.
I use this in both pve and wvw.
Weapons are sword/focus and scepter/pistol. Sometimes I swap sword/focus with greatsword (mostly for fractals with my guild because let’s face it: how often do you go melee in fractals?). In wvw I use the before mentioned weapon set but I use staff/gs if I run in a zerg.

Before this I ran a 20/20/0/0/30 shatter build with full berserker (at this time with rare equipement) with a few knight and valkyrie pieces (about 2000 armor and 16 – 17k health)

Thanks for the in depth answer!

I wasted a lot of gold gearing with Rampager’s with Sword/Focus & Staff. I wound up re-gearing with Berserker and I now feel 300% more effective in dungeons.

During some bosses you’ll have a whopping 2-3 bleeds up because your clones will keep getting killed and there won’t be anyone in melee range to bounce off of. Those same bosses will insta-gib your warden. In those situations, having a Warlock that crits for 8-10k from a safe distance is much more viable.

I also wound up stashing the staff outside of trickier bosses where Phase Retreat becomes invaluable (Subject Alpha, Lupicus). I’m now 25/30/10/0/5 Sword/Sword and Greatsword in Berserker/Ruby gear and will probably never turn back.

PVP is a different story, but even then I’d run Rabid over Rampager.

Well doubt he’s running phant if he is 0/20/20/0/30 unless he wants his phants to do crap all for damage (pretty sure you need 25 in inspiration and 10 into Dom for majority of the viable phant builds)

What he’s running is pretty close to the traits for condi mes and you can have power from rampages if you really want also would help your shatters. But personally I think you’d do better happier in rabid gear. You’ll end up really tanky with condi damage and a stack of bleed pretty much every hit your clone will make.

I don’t know how well such a build runs in WvW so I don’t have any input for that.
But you can get rabid stuff from karma venders so if your not hard pushing for a legendary your not wasting too much to try it, save you some gold while trying to get rampages.

But it’s up to you.

Also your clones toughness is dependant on your own so you’ll prob keep them alive and bleeding foes longer.

So if I’m running zerkers but don’t want to be insta-squishable do I still want the knight’s chest and then a valkyrie piece (as recommended in the shattercat build)?
I don’t want to run an actual condition build as I nearly have a lvl 66 conditionmancer (necro) already…
Your answers have been very useful

That would definitely help better in wvwvw than PVE, but the little extra D in PVE isn’t always wasted either. I’d do it over full zerkers, personally, but mostly because my reaction time isn’t that great.

If you are fast and good at using your active defenses, try full zerkers in PVE and switch to a few knights/valk pieces for wvwvw.

Awesome thanks, that means I’ve only wasted money on the one set of pants and a sword this is my first time gearing for exotics, so its kinda confusing tbh
Thanks everyone who replied: Gaiawolf, Daishi, kandolo and Wisler!