Rampagegeddon - What hit them?

This guide details how to bring about the end of your enemy's days as Rampage. Please feel free to offer thoughts and suggestions below

My guide is a bit wordy, sorry about that!

A bit about Rampage...

Easily the most able Jungler in game, especially the early game. His King of the Jungle ability gives massive HP regen in the jungle, which enables you to stack pure damage and clear jungle minions at a faster pace than any other hero can sustain. His ability to Enrage (his ultimate) is useful for topping up your health during ganks or tower pushes in the mid-game, but at end-game it's basically 12 seconds of giant invincible Rampagegeddon who can solo an inhibitor or the Orb Prime buff with ease.

Also, describing Rampage as a tank is a matter of opinion... in my opinion. I've never played him tanky but since developing the playstyle I describe here I've rarely lost a game with him, so I like to think I'm doing something right. My recent 14 game winning streak as Rampage was brought to an end when, in the 15th game, my team voted 4-1 to forfeit despite a massive level and card power advantage, presumably because the enemy had more kills and more towers still standing. As if that matters when I'm about to hit 15 with a 4 level and 15 ish card point advantage, unleash Rampagegeddon and smash the enemy to pieces...... This is basically the aim of this playstyle! The early and mid game only exists for you to snowball to 15 faster than anyone else, at which point you just help yourself to towers, inhibitors, Orb Prime etc while batting the enemy aside like annoying flies or squishing them like ants.

Abilities Overview

King of the Jungle is what makes Rampage the best jungler early on. 1.4 health regen is pretty solid for the early stage but the 4.2 health regen bonus in the jungle means you can just stack pure damage and ignore your health completely, focusing entirely on killing minions as efficiently as possible. Any other hero needs to sacrifice damage for life regen or lifesteal, or use mana which will run out, to jungle anywhere near as efficiently as Rampage can.

Rock Throw is brilliant for ganking players and towards the end game starts to do pretty decent damage too. I've had many last hits by chucking it at a retreating player I couldn't otherwise reach. Handy if the enemy is hiding amongst mobs too as it does full damage in a small radius and at end game can one shot any mobs near the enemy you hit.

Pounce is also really handy, not only for catching up to a retreating player but also for getting back to one of your towers from the jungle, as you can leap up the ledge to your own side of your lane rather than running to the ramp halfway up the map and then all the way back to your tower. This is invaluable and gets me many more gank kills than I'd otherwise get. Leaping up this ledge and rock throwing an enemy and chasing them with basic attacks is often all it takes to secure a kill. Pounce also does fair damage late-game, so if its neck and neck down to the last 10% hp, pounce immediately followed by basic attack makes you land right on their head and gives a small damage spike which can secure your victory.

And the ultimate, Enrage! This is an awesome ability. At lower levels it should be used to top up your health during a gank or tower attack. If you get to know how quickly it restores HP at each level, you can gauge how much tower HP you can solo at what parts of the game. At later levels Enrage is basically 12 seconds of invincible giant Rampageddon. You can solo an inhibitor or a group of enemies if you feel like it. It also makes your rock throw instant (though aim lower or it'll fly over their heads!) and makes your pounce go much, much further.

As for the basic attack, nothing to say really! This is the ONLY ability you should be using while jungling; save all your mana for ganks and tower attacks.

Abilities upgrade priority

Triangle > O > Square > R1

Enrage > King of the Jungle > Rock Throw > Pounce

King of the Jungle at game start, always. Then take rock throw and pounce at levels 2 and 3; I tend to favour rock throw first to better help those early game ganks, but pounce opens up new ganks too as you can then leap up out of the jungle straight to your first tower. The 4.2 jungle bonus from King of the Jungle doesn't increase with King of the Jungle levels, so it's worth skipping one level to unlock both your other abilities.

Both rock throw and pounce don't do very much damage until the late game but at level 1 they already offer their full amount of utility, so ignore upgrading them until you can't upgrade Enrage or King of the Jungle any further.

Abilities Combos

Rampage doesn't really use combos for damage; just Rock Throw and Pounce situationally to enable more damage from your basic attacks. So these aren't really combos, more like suggested plays.

1. Early Game
   No combos really for the early game! A suggested play though - wait for an enemy to attack one of your first towers, then Pounce out of the jungle behind them, rock throw them and basic attack until dead.

2. Mid/End Game
   Enrage - Leap to send you flying about 1/5 of the way across the map. If you feel like trying to solo a tower or a group of enemies, keep this combo handy and you're never really in any danger.

3. End Game
   Wade into a fight, get a few basic attack hits, then Enrage and Rock Throw to guarantee the first kill. Count 9 seconds into your Enrage and then Pounce away from the fight if you're not sure you can win.

4. End Game
   Pounce immediately followed by basic attack - leap up slightly and slam down on their head! Gives a small damage spike compared to what sustained basic attacks can do.

Early Game

Head straight for the red buff, and head for it again every time it respawns. If a team mate goes too then let them have it as you don't really need it and lane carries put it to better use, but if nobody else goes then it helps you storm the early game even faster and snowball ahead of everyone else more quickly.

With King of the Jungle you can ignore your health and focus entirely on your damage, so try to attack the Jungle Mobs in sequence to get all 2 or 3 kills in one final swipe. This minimizes time taken for the entire kill, by maximizing usage of your cleave damage. Can make a difference if you keep this up across the entire early and mid game. If you happen to have Beast Master Key, take it with your starting 3 points for +15 damage to jungle minions and the early game just flashes past, and you're ahead of the game ready to hit level 15 before anyone even sees what hit them.

Even by level 2 you should be looking out for opportunities to get behind solo players and get a kill, using Pounce to surprise attack out of the jungle when they're not expecting it and rock throw either to initiate a fight on someone who can't escape, or to stop a fleeing player who can.

Also, get those 2 friendly-side harvesters down asap! Ideally you should aim to arrive at the first one as it spawns on the 3 minute mark. Sometimes it's a good idea to travel back while placing that first one, spend your first 3-6 card points, and place the other on your way back.

A perfect game start is - take red buff (ding level 2), take out both packs of white minions on red side (ding level 3), gank an enemy, head to the red side harvester and teleport back while placing that harvester, spend 3 card power on your first card (windcarver blade or flashfire piston and a minor upgrade if you have it), then head to blue side and start by placing blue harvester.

Mid Game

Mid game is where you should really start to pull ahead of the pack. Stacking damage and attack speed means you'll quickly be taking minions down in seconds. This includes red, blue and black buffs, so clear those whenever you can. EXCEPTION - if you have a caster who frequents the blue buff (many don't) then leave that for them and just take the other buffs and blue buff's white minions for yourself.

If you're on your way to try for a gank then it's usually worth taking out any white minions on your way. If going to defend a teammate or tower it's a judgement call - do you pick up the extra exp and card points on the way or do you get to the tower asap? It'll pay dividends later if you always pick up the extra exp, when you hit 15 when everyone else is still 11-12, but especially for the second layer of towers it's often worth prioritising your team's defence over your own progression.

Also, HARVESTERS!! Every time you return, go via one of your harvesters on the way back. Other players should be doing this too but you especially. And DON'T neglect the two side lane harvesters! If you're ganking or defending in a side lane, or covering for a friendly whose returned to base, then put that harvester down before heading back to the jungle. Your laner, who SHOULD have a ward rather than a key, can then farm that side harvester when possible and your entire team should snowball ahead of the enemy on card power, rather than just you. The Orb Prime harvester is also a good shout as many teams don't go anywhere near orb prime until the late game. If you manage to get all 5 harvesters down the enemy has no chance.

Late Game

'Late Game' often never arrives. I've had the enemy forfeit within 20-25 minutes many times, normally when I'm around double their level! Think my fastest win on agora.gg is 16 minutes. However, if the enemy has a thing for pain and death and hasn't forfeited by the time you hit 15, then although you should keep farming harvesters you should only head to the jungle to pick up a buff. Only stop farming harvesters when you're at 60 card power and all your team are on 50+, as they'll be well on their way to 60 from other sources and the time taken to detour to harvesters is often worth more than the card power they give at this point, especially if you're 15 while everyone else is still 11-12.

Mostly you should be helping keep all lanes pushed right up to the enemy tower, and if a lone puny enemy thinks he can defend a tower against you then just charge in and teach them a lesson with Enrage. Chase with Pounce to secure the kill if need be - remembering to press attack when you're above them to avoid soaring right into the enemy Core prematurely - and then double back to finish what's left of the tower. Heck, charge in if there are 2 enemies but be ready to Pounce to safety if they're not quite as puny as you imagined (there's always a slim chance). With Enrage ready and a teammate or two at your back you should charge in even if the whole enemy team is there! In which case your other teammates are surely about to take down an inhibitor anyway.

Speaking of inhibitors, if the enemy is absent from a lane and you have a chance, just pounce into the inhibitor and smash it to pieces. Don't activate Enrage immediately as it'll still gradually heal you up even against inhibitor damage, even if you have no defence. If timed right then you should be able to solo the inhibitor. If the enemy responds then its often worth sticking with it and sacrificing yourself for the sake of getting that inhibitor down. An inhibitor down is worth about as much as an extra player on your team in my experience, so let those super minions take over during your lengthy respawn and then go do the same again to the next inhibitor while the enemy is occupied with super minions.

If the enemy is completely occupied defending inhibitors or their core and STILL hasn't forfeited, then feel free to take a little leisure time to go solo the Orb Prime buff. If you're at or near 60 card points then all it takes is using your Enrage, regardless of whether you took any defence or not.

A few points on Cards

Without a few key cards this build loses a little flexibility, but it works just as well in most situations regardless of how many cards you've unlocked.

The two most important cards are Thorned Greenweave and Spiked Boneplate, which allow you to take resistances as required as per the enemy team composition, without losing out on more damage than you need to. I now have both these cards so build both as 12 cost, with 3 of each 3 cost defence upgrade balanced out with 4 loose Major Strike cards in my deck. When I only had Tempered Plate and Tuned Barrier, I often found myself taking ONLY the card matching the majority damage type on the enemy team, and taking an extra pure damage / attack speed card such as Windcarver Blade instead of the second defence card. After all, killing them faster means you don't need to defend against as much damage! There's a note near the end with advice on building these cards instead of Boneplate and Greenweave.

Personally I never use any of the recommended cards like Health Potion Mana Potion Harvester's Key. For this build just take a 3 cost key at the start. If you have Beastmaster's Key then always take that to begin with, no matter what, as it gives you a decent jungle farming speed boost in the early game. Failing that take Brawler's Key as the damage is still better than any potion would ever be. Brawler's is actually better for ganks too, but at the stage of the game where it makes a difference you should be focused on jungling.

Another card I always include in my build, but which is a matter of taste and is by no means necessary, is Incessant Onslaught . I take this as my fifth or final card usually. I'm not entirely certain how the passive works, but a forum I read in the early days when I acquired this card says it stacks up to four times but only applies to abilities used while it's already stacked. Since Rampagegeddon stacks as much attack speed as damage, your attacks toward the end game are extremely fast and it should be easy to reach four stacks before using any abilities. I can vouch for it definitely stacking to at least some extent though - I distinctly recall one fight where I was attacking a player in a lane and a sparrow attacked me from the jungle. I Enraged, threw a rock at the sparrow, finished killing the player I was already fighting, threw another rock at the sparrow as it had already cooled down, then leapt onto sparrows head and killed her too. Two rock throws within one Enrage wouldn't normally be possible. You could use cooldown reduction instead of this card and probably achieve a similar effect but you'd be sacrificing a lot of damage in order to do this.

Perhaps the only other card worth mentioning is Rust-Breaker. If the enemy has some actual intelligence and 3 or more of them are taking some physical armour to try (and fail) to protect against Rampagegeddon, then taking this with a balance of damage and penetration as necessary should help cancel that out. This is sometimes necessary if your teammates (or you!) have made bad picks and ended up with 4 or 5 physical damage types on the team, and the enemy is laughing while stacking physical resistances since they can stack more resistance than you can stack damage. You shouldn't ever pick Rampage in this scenario but if you picked first and your teammates aren't up to much and also all pick physical, then the enemy will likely stack physical resistance and physical penetration will be useful.

If the enemy has a tank whose actually playing tanky and has taken more physical resistance than you can compensate for, then don't worry as he's sacrificed damage in doing so, and has little chance of posing a threat to you anyway! DON'T take penetration for the sake of one tank character though, as pure damage will give you more damage overall against the entire team. If they have two tanks it may be worthwhile, but its when their damage dealers have taken physical resistance, often due to a poor friendly team composition, that this card is usually effective.

As for generic cards, note that Flashfire Piston is overpowered compared to Windcarver Blade. For 2 card power you get 3 lots of stats, compared to 3 card power for 4 lots of stats. Thus, Flashfire Piston gives you more bang for your card points. I would probably run with 3 pistons, Incessant Onslaught  and 2 armour cards but to this day I still only have ONE piston :( so I still take two Windcarvers instead. FYI, if you do a tiny bit of math you find that swapping 3 windcarvers for 3 pistons = 1 free extra card point's worth of stats :) I think, anyway...

As for upgrade cards, it's not really possible for me to list every possible compromise depending on which upgrade cards you have available. I certainly don't have all the strike and kinetic cards I need for a nice looking 2-2-2, 3-3-3 or 3-2-1 set in all cases, so just mix and match what you have to get as close as possible to the cards below. I tend to focus more on strike for better chances at last hitting in the earlier game, and more attack speed later on so my Incessant Onslaught stacks build up faster in the late game for better versatility in team fights. Worth mentioning too that building upgrade cards as 3-2-1 costs is better than 2-2-2, since you can always spend 3 points in one go if all your cards are 3-2-1 but you may occasionally need to leave 1 point unspent if they're all 2-2-2.

One last note - I've tried playing with a crit chance / crit damage oriented build, and its safe to say that it's very weak in comparison to a pure attack damage / attack speed build. Feel free to try it but don't expect to cause Rampagegeddon.

Card build and approximate order

Start - and don't ever upgrade:

Beastmaster's Key if you have it, Brawler's Key if not.

Then (6 cost card)

Flashfire Piston if you have it, with a 2-1-1 of Strike, Minor Strike, Minor Kinetic, otherwise  Windcarver Blade with three minor upgrades. Holding out till you reach 6 card points before your first return will net you your first card completion bonus for another early game boost if you complete as a 6 pointer.

Then (9 cost card)

Windcarver Blade with Strike, Strike, Kinetic

Now that you have card completion bonuses from two cards, your options open up more, so the next few are in any order you see fit. If the enemy has 4 or 5 of the same damage type and you have the relevant Spiked Boneplate or Thorned Greenweave then now would be a good time to take that, with 2 or 3 greater damage resists as you see fit. If you only have Tempered Plate and Tuned Barrier though, then it's probably best to take another windcarver first to ensure plentiful damage output before you take any defence. If you are taking plate and barrier then it might be worth building them as 9 cost cards so they don't cause you to sacrifice too much damage, and if using boneplate and greenweave then you'll want an Adamant Edge instead of an extra windcarver so you can still take a little extra health. Note from personal experience - even with some defence, the default 1.8k HP at level 15 as Rampage is NOT ENOUGH! I've died many stupid deaths by jumping into a situation I thought I could handle and then dying while casting Enrage!

So, cards 3, 4 and 5:

12 cost Spiked Boneplate  - balance damage and resist as you see fit. Take cards for a 12 cost in case you need max resists from this one

12 cost Thorned Greenweave  - balance damage and resist as you see fit. Take cards for a 12 cost in case you need max resists from this one

12 cost Adamant Edge - 1x major strike and 2x greater health

By this point you have a 6 point card, a 9 and three 12s for 51 total. If you haven't already sold your Beastmaster's Key then sell it now to free the full 9 card points up for your last card. I usually go with

Incessant Onslaught Kinetic Kinetic Kinetic, though another Windcarver or an Adamant Edge is also a solid option.

Finishing Hand

By end game I normally have something like this:

Flashfire Piston Strike Minor Strike Minor Kinetic

Windcarver Blade Major Strike Kinetic Minor Strike

Spiked Boneplate Greater Guard Greater Guard Major Strike

Thorned Greenweave Greater Barrier Greater Barrier Major Strike

Incessant Onslaught Kinetic Kinetic Kinetic

Adamant Edge Greater Health Greater Health Major Strike

If the game has gone well and I've snowballed to level 15 while the enemy are still 10-12 then I often take a 12 point Windcarver first instead of the adamant edge as the extra damage enables even more dominance at that part of the game. When (or if) the enemy catches up, swap to the adamant edge to ensure they can't nuke all of your hp while you're trying to cast Enrage.

Alternative

If you lack Spiked Boneplate and Thorned Greenweave. Note the extra Strike cards in the Windcarvers to balance out the three Major Kinetics in onslaught:

Flashfire Piston Strike Minor Strike Minor Kinetic

Windcarver Blade Major Strike Major Strike Major Kinetic

Tempered Plate Guard Guard Health

Tuned Barrier Barrier Barrier Health

Windcarver Blade Major Strike Major Strike Major Strike

Incessant Onslaught Major Kinetic Major Kinetic Major Kinetic

Another note - I tend to put three of each 3-cost defence upgrades onto each of my armours in the deck and then put 4 Major Strike upgrades into the deck's loose upgrade cards. That way I can max out whichever defence I need, if either, and use any leftover Major Strike cards in windcarvers or my adamant edge. I do this because I only have 6 Major Strikes so need to be frugal with their use! Also, the reason I build my armour cards as 12-costs is because I'm using Spiked Boneplate and Thorned Greenweave and can swap defence for damage if need be. If you're using Tempered Plate and Tuned Barrier then this build might work better if you build your armour cards as 9-costs, with 3 2-cost defence cards each and four 2-cost health cards loose in the deck, and take three 12-cost damage cards instead. It will give you a little less flexibility to stack defence against teams who've taken 4 or 5 of the same damage type, but it'll cost you less damage potential against normal teams where stacking extra damage will be more effective.

Conclusion

Apologies for the wordy and sometimes ranty nature of this guide! But, providing you play by approximately the style I've listed here then you should almost always be the highest level and most powerful player on your team and probably in the whole game. May take one or two runs to practice but you'll find you sometimes hit level 15 with some enemies not even level 10 yet. There's very little they can do to stop the Rampagegeddon when you're at end game 5 levels before them. Just bat them aside like flies and take as many inhibitors as you please until they forfeit