Guild Wars 2

Shall I choose Rampage or Hounds of Balthazar as my tier-2 Elite skill?

What is you guys’ experience?

Rampage — I have never really found any use for this other than some really wierd harrasing in WvW.

Hounds of Balthazar — Pretty good damage output if you can keep them alive.

I still prefer Warbanner or SoR over those two

Rampage is always useless. Might be fun in that new PvP map in the cannon booth, but otherwise it’s pretty much the worst skill in the game.

YuiRS.8129:

Rampage is always useless. Might be fun in that new PvP map in the cannon booth, but otherwise it’s pretty much the worst skill in the game.

Not always useless and definitely not the worst skill ingame. It is amazing to hold the circle and defend a tower or just to leeroy into a ton of people causing massive disruption. It has it uses, but very situational unfortunately.

Rampage is actually fairly decent now considering the recent CD and after cast reduction. If you use it with a Hammer or Mace/Shield you can unleash a constant stream of CC that can be pretty useful. The problem is most people can’t stand parting with SoR considering its effects.

I want Rampage skills to have a target limit of 10!
Then it would see use.

Would be fun

Rampage is a very strange skill. I would never select it on warrior, but I do often roll it through elixir X on my engineer and it does have its uses.

-Long stability, good for moving through massive amounts of CC, or to get out of dodge.
-4 interrupts, good for disrupting dps classes.
-Throw boulder can be thrown backwards if a target is selected, good for escape.
-Dash = easy escape on a short cooldown, 2 dashes per rampage.
-doubles your power, toughness, and current HP. This means if you have retaliation on, you will deal massive damage and be very tanky.
-If you lead in with stomp, you can do another one right before it ends.

I recommend Warbanner over it though if you play wvw, and signet of rage if you need it, but warbanner is much more useful. Small combat hounds of Balthazar can be good, unless someone knows to dodge their landing attack.

SoR/Warbanner

/15char

‘rampage’ seems to be a pretty good “oh kitten ” button.
Massive CC, more HP, Stability and a dash to run away. Furthermore, as already mentioned, ‘Throw boulder’ helps to keep following enemies away…

Whats your problem with the skill?

(from the OP) I’m not sure if you realize it but most of you guys just stated their opinion as a matter of fact (especially those regarding rampage as useless), and didn’t explain why. Plz think if your purpose is to help or to boast before posting

That being said, I still don’t know which skill to pick. How would Rampage be useless when it doubles toughness, triples Vit and gives some nice control effects? Or do Balthazar’s Hounds surpass it dmg-wise? Or is Spirit of Rage, which costs 5 times less, better in every situation (which does sound incomprehensible)? Or should I stop bothering as skills can be reset somewhere?

Any constructive advice is welcome.

Merryweather.2381:

Or should I stop bothering as skills can be reset somewhere?

Not a human so I haven’t used the hounds, and I haven’t tested any of the norn elites or rampage since the patch (before with a 4min cd, they kinda sucked compared to 50%+ uptime on SoR, more if you traited for cd). But I think I can answer the above.

I think you are talking about being level 80 and that you’re out of skill points (if you aren’t sorry, but that’s the impression I get about the above). Once you hit lvl 80 you continue to gain exp, and every 254,000 exp you gain an additional skill point, so you can get every skill. You don’t need to worry about resetting them (which you can’t do anyways). Other ways to get skill points (if you want to quickly get both to test them for yourself)

1 skill point from Dessa’s Experiment Journal (purchased for 35 Fractal Relics)
5 skill points are earned for: Using Sea of Sorrows gained from the History Buff achievement

Honestly I just wish there was more of a use right now for them, I have ~500 and other than the 100 I’ll eventually need for a legendary I don’t know what to spend them on. Hope that helps, and if you knew that already, sorry for my confusion.

Rampage is very “situational” in some cases. In WvW i use it when i am bored (when im solo roaming) it can be a nice little “wtf” moment for anyone you come across since you do not see alot of warriors running this elite. Tending for some to not realize what it can do, so you can capitalize on that fact.

Although, i tend to use it more when im trying to break a siege line (either solo cause others are worried about dying due to enemy blocking our spawn points) or with another couple warriors for lawls. Now this is where fun comes in, if you look into strength you will see you get a nice and little trait at 10 points called “Death from above” now when you take falling damage, you deal damage, push back, and take 50% less hp from fall. Now whats even more fun, is this has no cap, so if you get say two more warriors with this trait, you can cause serious confusion. Than tie in rampage that has a pushback as well, and you can break that line; giving your team either some breathing room, or time to rally and push. Than we either push deep into the enemy mob (suicidal, but that was point of your line breaking) or we just hammer on the siege until we either die, or decide to flee.

Hounds: Never liked it, has too high of a cooldown to be useful to me, i tend to just use warbanner instead of it. But it can give you a nice little spike on things if they can land (like an unsuspecting player, or siege weapons you find in a push that you wanna put a dent in).

Well that’s my two cents, hope that helped a little bit.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

I think you are talking about being level 80 and that you’re out of skill points (if you aren’t sorry, but that’s the impression I get about the above). Once you hit lvl 80 you continue to gain exp, and every 254,000 exp you gain an additional skill point, so you can get every skill. You don’t need to worry about resetting them (which you can’t do anyways)

No, I’m level 55. My concern is to avoid wasting the 30-odds skill points I have collected on the wrong skill. At least now I know that they cannot be reset but that we end up with plenty once lvl 80. Thx for the info.

Merryweather.2381:

Shall I choose Rampage or Hounds of Balthazar as my tier-2 Elite skill?

What is you guys’ experience?

Neither is still an option, and a good one at that….I like using avatar of melandru on my warrior, lol. It’s actually not so terrible, XD.

P.S. Rampage is really only good for dash and stomp, which aren’t exactly anything to mail home about :/.

Assassin.7890:

‘rampage’ seems to be a pretty good “oh kitten ” button.
Massive CC, more HP, Stability and a dash to run away. Furthermore, as already mentioned, ‘Throw boulder’ helps to keep following enemies away…

Whats your problem with the skill?

-very obvious incoming cc
-lose any method of condition cleansing
-boon steal/strip on ur stability
-incredibly weak attacks

If you are afraid of getting the wrong skill:
Rampage is a VERY situational skill with little use outside of WvW.
it is just devastating everything with loads of stun and damage but in PvE these stuns are not needed.
So the point, you might think about putting points into rampage is about the time when you are running around lev 80 with full exotics and start suiciding into enemy lines to break sieges in WvW.
Just get anything else and put points into Rampage when you need to kick kitten .

Hounds on the other hand is a hellish strong skill pretty much anywhere where they aren’t blanketed by heavy AoEspam.