I prefer fully ranged weapon sets for dungeons lately.
Rampagers and carrion aren’t bad armor sets for P/D condition builds. It really depends on how well you’re surviving. If you can get away with it without getting downed/dead in one or two shots, rampagers puts out good damage and actually helps survivability a lot (lifesteal on crit food).
That said, I use P/P-SB as my weapon sets and every piece of gear I have is berserkers except 3 trinkets (karka, solar and lunar infused rings).
Since I’m fully ranged I take little damage. Since I’m semi glass cannon, I put out good DPS single or multi targets. With a good crit chance, my lifesteal with food is through the roof with these weapons.
It really depends on the build type you want. If you like P/D condition build, go with that armor type. If you plan to use that build in PVE and WVW, I’d say definately go carrion. If you stay away from wvw, rampager may be better for you.
If you do decide to go berserker (power/precision/crit dmg), consider losing P/D because P/D is much better suited to a condition build. You can try D/D but combined with berserker it’s risky for sure against many bosses.
I did D/D for a long time in berserker gear and I did “ok”. The problem is I kept losing sustained damage simply because I had to dodge more or cloak and dagger more to get out and heal up. The damage output of D/D doesn’t make up for the risk of getting downed or the loss of attacks.
I could do many dungeons fine. Once I got to fotm level 10 or so, I finally switched up to P/P for bosses. After that,I figured, boss or trash, P/P is a better option for me full time. I’m up to fotm 31 with no worries. The only time(s) I bother equipping daggers any more is against reflect mobs (jade maw fractal and the like).
Also if you go P/P, I suggest getting the trait that regains initiative when stealthed. It helps overall sustained DPS a lot. You can blow your load (so to speak) on unloads, heal/stealth to regain init, auto attack with pistol from stealth for a 5 shot burst – which by itself makes up for the lost attacks while stealthing yourself, hit another unload or two with some auto attacks between. Then shadow refuge and do it again.
Even at only 14k health, with the quickness I steal life on crit, it feels like I have 20k+
Just as an afterthought, something a lot of thieves don’t use is #5 pistol attack. It’s quite helpful in select situations. If you / your party have to stand still in one spot for a particular dungeon scenerio, it’s incredibly helpful (like the middle seal of cliffside fractal for example).
