Guild Wars 2

Currently I play a pistol thief, in all rampager armor. I’m just about ready to start crafting my ascended set, and I’ve thought about going rampager’s again(since I love the stats on it). My fear is that at some point, a condition build on thief will no longer be strong enough to warrant the armor set. So I’ve considered just making beserker, it’s pretty secure that direct damage will always do well. Any thoughts on this?

I think you should wait a bit as Anet said they were going to address the “dominance” of berserker equipment in PvE which could mean a big fat nerf (could be wrong though). How they address this so called “dominance” may have an effect on what armor you want, so it is best to wait a bit before finding that a patch screws it over.

What’s the point of Rampager’s in your build? Without crit damage, your critical hits don’t really hit all that hard. You’re probably better off either committing to direct damage (zerker’s) or condition damage (Carrion or Dire), since we don’t really have a lot of on-crit effects that are useful to condition builds.

rampagers is PVE only in my opinion. its not competitive enough for wvw/pvp so id go zerk first and get allt he best quality gear in that. good luck

At the very least, wait till Friday, because of this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Balance-Developer-Livestream-on-Friday-at-2pm-PST

Josh Davis.6015:

…
In this episode we’ll be talking about a few of the things the Skills and Balance team is working on for the next balance update, including:

• Runes and sigil rework
• Critical damage changes
  …

(Man the forums are slow today…)

Well, for thief conditions dire is much better. It gets your conditions up there and boosts your survivability drastically which thieves can always use. Condition thief is horrible in pvp, but it has its power in wvw when roaming if done right.

full zerker thief, in wvw and pve, is bad. You can’t afford a single mistake in a set like that. In spvp it at least gives you vitality but in pve you will be lunch meat to trash mobs. You have to find a balance with them, and also there really is no need to exceed 50% crit chance unless your trying to beat a friend to a dps contest. Better off putting in some cavaliar or valkrie, maintain the crit dmg but gain some defense. If you burst someone from stealth BS + Mug or Mug + CnD + BS and you don’t get them super low, they can turn around and monkey slap that sorry build of yours, you will die really quick. Ascended or not you will be playing in a eternal mine field where the wrong step and its over.

NinjaEd.3946:

in pve you will be lunch meat to trash mobs

like… soloing dungeons? or… sounds a bit exaggerated (depending on build/maneuvers).

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

NinjaEd.3946:

in pve you will be lunch meat to trash mobs

like… soloing dungeons? or… sounds a bit exaggerated (depending on build/maneuvers).

Dungeons yes, and maybe some living story instances like trying to solo the tower of nightmares (if you tried that on a thief).

Regular open pve kitten? You can do w/e you want. Bring 100 seed turrets from the vendor in Caldeon forest and kite the event, it hardly matters.

Travlane.5948:

rampagers is PVE only in my opinion. its not competitive enough for wvw/pvp so id go zerk first and get allt he best quality gear in that. good luck

Rampager is far from just solely pve. I’ve made it work for a succesful damage dealing hybrid capable build. (WvW)

This is what I’m running now, except my armor is exotic, but I could start going ascended. I usually do pretty well, especially if the fight lasts a little bit, and I can get my might stacks up.

http://tinyurl.com/mdz95re

Here it is with Zerker stats
http://tinyurl.com/kkj8osl

And now with a possible zerker nerf, I’m kind of leaning towards all celestial, which I run on my Mesmer and do fine with. Which would look like this.
http://tinyurl.com/mazpzxf

I know a lot of people will say “oh dual pistols is this” or “celestial sucks”. I still roam around and am able to kill people, not everyone, but enough that I still go out there every day :P

Such a weird build. You’d have more success if you committed to either direct damage or conditions, but as long as you’re having fun, YOLO.

Generally I don’t like Celestial on Thief, except for 2-3 pieces of Armor for crit damage advantages, because it’s hard to leverage all stats simultaneously. We are not Elementalists.

I’m sure it’s not the ultimate build or weapons, but It really suites me. I gain a lot of might very passively which buffs my direct and condition damage. Roaming about I very rarely find someone who is my exact equal match skill wise. I’m either a good bit better or a great deal worse then the people I meet up with.

As for Celestial, I want to be able to run with a zerg, and not become rally bait and hurt my team/server. But on the other hand I just can’t do pvt. I know there are great mix’s of beserker and soldiers. Or Dire. But I’m always afraid something is going to get nerfed somewhere. If I had gone full zerker, I would be sweating this announcement about crit damage, even tho no one has any idea what’s going to happen. With Rampagers or celestial I feel I can switch to condition if direct damage ever got screwed with, or vice versa. I won’t be min maxed, but like I was saying earlier, I think that really would matter in 1/10 fights.

As a rampager/celestial thief, you will never do as good as a berserker. Your damage output will be kitten because of initiative system. Sure, you can still outplay somebody, but you are holding back yourself; and you could do the same with any other class by rolling your face over keyboard.

But as written above, do what you enjoy.

K well now you can make a decision based on what they said about the crit damage nerf…

With the intended changes to Critical Damage, full celestial would have slightly more crit damage then trinkets + trinkets have now, exotic trinkets + weapons sum their minors on approx 470, full celestial gear at 436 per stat (including jewels).