Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

I just leveled my mesmer to 80 and now want to buy some gear mainly for PvE and dungeons.
I read that many suggest using 100% Rampagers gear (power/precision/condition) with a GS/Staff (using staff only in longer fights) spec.
Now, I was at the exact same situation with my engineer, where most people recommended going rampagers gear with a pistol spec. I tried that with cheap green gear, and instantly noticed how much it sucks vs turrets, gates and other statics and especially under water, so I switched to rifle/berserkers and am MUCH more powerful, even in PvP.

Rampagers did a lot of damage, even when I wasnt able to directly attack, but overall, it was actually much harder to survive, because kills took much longer, and especially in Orr that meant more adds due to mobs that patrol or, since it took longer to kill, due to respawn.

Now I see the same problem with that with the mesmer. Even with right now only berserker gear (albeit 60ish), I have huge issues killing statics and under water its not the best either. It would suck even more if I would switch to condition.

So why is rampagers considered being so much better than berserkers? Overall I can only see disadvantages, at least in PvE, since most of my damage is due to mind wrack, mirror blade, mind stab and the berserker and warlock. I also dont really see the use of focusing on condition damage, because everything else than veterans, champions and dungeon bosses dies much too quickly. I actually sometimes have problems shattering my illusions quickly enough, before the mob dies. Especially with the addition of crit damage at later levels I noticed SO much more burst damage, that I dont want to miss it anymore.

The Mesmer class really comes together after you can get your traits and your build working for you.

Without traits, yes, condition damage is fairly lacklustre for us. But after you get illusions bleeding on crit, all shatters giving an extra stack of confusion, confusion lasting longer, etc, then condition damage actually becomes fairly viable… so much more than it ever seemed while leveling.

Personally, I use a mix of Rabid (perc/tough/con++) and Rampager gear, mostly just because I love the toughness stat on any class. When things have little health, then yes condition damage is worse than just using beserkers, as the conditions work better over a longer time. Against things with a lot of health, all those conditions add up and can do great damage… and benefit from all the good stuff condition damage brings anyways like ignoring toughness/armour, going through the Guild Claimer’s buff (in WvW). Also putting a bunch of stacks of confusion on an enemy at the right moment is great fun to watch (talking pvp here, confusion sucks in pve for the most part). But yeah, it sucks against static targets.

I have a Rampager set with me (because it was cheaper than Berserkers) and I don’t regret it. I use it as my damage set, but currently I’m building an extra set for toughness and vitality.

I use Rabid and Rampager right now, trying to get a full Rabid set though.
Most fights I do are against power builds, so toughness is more interesting to me.
But yeah, I find Condition Mesmers have some amazing End Fight Burst, after about 5-10 seconds of set up I melt the enemy.
Thats their window to take me down, and if they fail then they die.