Guild Wars 2

Yes we all love cheese and love to it eat it.

However in WvW, may be not so much. I just would like to generate a conversation about it with a few questions.

1) How do you personally define "cheese" or what are the characteristics of a build that make it "cheese"?
2) How do you feel about people using these so called "cheese builds" while roaming?
3) How do you usually deal with encountering these "cheese builds"?
4) Which builds do you consider to be the most "cheese" in roaming/WvW/dueling?
5) Do you believe "cheese" is the product of game mechanics and/or class imbalances?
6) Any other comments, suggestions, changes you would make?

I will give my answer if this topic generates enough conversation.

I think a cheese build could be described as a build that allows you to beat someone with far superior skill with consistency.

Example: warrior cheese vs. a skilled D/D Ele. If the warrior is even barely competent it is usually a tough fight for the Ele. The Ele has to play a near perfect game in order to top the massive regen, armor, DPS, and mobility the warrior has.

Example: D/P thief. Not winning? Go perma stealth and regen ALL you health back or, just stand in your blind field and spam 1. D/P thieves can beat nearly anything in the game with barely any effort. Put that cheese in the hands of an above average player and it’s very difficuly to counter.

patricide.1062:

I think a cheese build could be described as a build that allows you to beat someone with far superior skill with consistency.

Example: warrior cheese vs. a skilled D/D Ele. If the warrior is even barely competent it is usually a tough fight for the Ele. The Ele has to play a near perfect game in order to top the massive regen, armor, DPS, and mobility the warrior has.

Example: P/D thief. Not winning? Go perma stealth and regen ALL you health back or, just stand in your blind field and spam 1. P/D thieves can beat nearly anything in the game with barely any effort. Put that cheese in the hands of an above average player and it’s very difficuly to counter.

please be more specific about what p/d build is cheese. i, use p/d, but for some reason i cant stand in a blind aoe field, am i missing the 6 dagger offhand skill?! i think you are confusin p/d with backstab d/p thieves… pretty much any thief you run into is going to regen a lot of health in stealth… you literally said nothing that pertains to p/d thief

ryan.6217:

patricide.1062:

I think a cheese build could be described as a build that allows you to beat someone with far superior skill with consistency.

Example: warrior cheese vs. a skilled D/D Ele. If the warrior is even barely competent it is usually a tough fight for the Ele. The Ele has to play a near perfect game in order to top the massive regen, armor, DPS, and mobility the warrior has.

Example: P/D thief. Not winning? Go perma stealth and regen ALL you health back or, just stand in your blind field and spam 1. P/D thieves can beat nearly anything in the game with barely any effort. Put that cheese in the hands of an above average player and it’s very difficuly to counter.

please be more specific about what p/d build is cheese. i, use p/d, but for some reason i cant stand in a blind aoe field, am i missing the 6 dagger offhand skill?! i think you are confusin p/d with backstab d/p thieves… pretty much any thief you run into is going to regen a lot of health in stealth… you literally said nothing that pertains to p/d thief

You’re right, I meant d/p. Fixed.

personally i think cheese is an issue with weapon skills. it’s not really fair to assume some one is using cheese tactics just because you noticed an active signet, or a specific weapon set.. we arent given much choice when it comes to weapons, and we are given 0 choice as to what skills come with the weapons. SO when a p/d perplexity thief hit you with a scorpion wire, then uses thieves guild, then hides in stealth and caltrops you, he might be a little cheesy, but if a thief is just utilizing fair weapon tactics and class abilities, he isnt cheese. ( not trying to rag on you, but p/d gets a lot of crap, its also my main, so i feel more comfortable supporting it, or calling it out).

tl;dr cheese is abuse of high value items that have yet to receive any form of true balancing, such as perplexity runes, and using said high valued items to the nth degree.

1) Hambow warrior/Condi warriors

2) Perplexity spamming engis.

3) PU mesmers.

4) P/d perplexity/condi spamming thieves.

5) D/P stealth spam thieves.

6) Conditions spammers in general.

That is what cheese is, players who don’t really want a challenge and specifically pick a build as they know they can be successful with minimal effort as the build favours victory due to game mechanics.

Worst of all, just how can it be fun, spamming the number 1 button most of the time.

ryan.6217:

personally i think cheese is an issue with weapon skills. it’s not really fair to assume some one is using cheese tactics just because you noticed an active signet, or a specific weapon set.. we arent given much choice when it comes to weapons, and we are given 0 choice as to what skills come with the weapons. SO mr. patricide when a p/d perplexity thief hit you with a scorpion wire, then uses thieves guild, then hides in stealth and caltrops you, he might be a little cheesy, but if a thief is just utilizing fair weapon tactics and class abilities, he isnt cheese. ( not trying to rag on you, but p/d gets a lot of crap, its also my main, so i feel more comfortable supporting it, or calling it out).

tl;dr cheese is abuse of high value items that have yet to receive any form of true balancing, such as perplexity runes, and using said high valued items to the nth degree.

You missed the part where I immediately corrected it.

to patricide, many sorries

yeah i was trying to get back to you and tell you that you’re fine! i often times come off as biased towards thieves, but in reality i just know more about them then the other professions, so i like exerting my opinion about them more. youre right though, d/p is rather cheesy. i just never like to call something cheesy based off the weps some one uses, more on how they use them

ryan.6217:

to patricide, many sorries

yeah i was trying to get back to you and tell you that you’re fine! i often times come off as biased towards thieves, but in reality i just know more about them then the other professions, so i like exerting my opinion about them more. youre right though, d/p is rather cheesy. i just never like to call something cheesy based off the weps some one uses, more on how they use them

No worries, and that’s a fair point. I often immediately think “CHEEEEESE!” when I encounter a P/S condi Engi without checking for perplexity yet. I just assume they are all cheese perplexity so I’m not taken off guard.

I all admit to having a noobplexity engi alt. When I get frustrated with all of the cheese running around I grab my own cheese. It’s fun, but I feel bad when I do it.

Also, sorry for the poor grammar. I’m on a snow holiday of sorts so I have a toddler fighting me on the keyboard.

patricide.1062:

ryan.6217:

to patricide, many sorries

yeah i was trying to get back to you and tell you that you’re fine! i often times come off as biased towards thieves, but in reality i just know more about them then the other professions, so i like exerting my opinion about them more. youre right though, d/p is rather cheesy. i just never like to call something cheesy based off the weps some one uses, more on how they use them

No worries, and that’s a fair point. I often immediately think “CHEEEEESE!” when I encounter a P/S condi Engi without checking for perplexity yet. I just assume they are all cheese perplexity so I’m not taken off guard.

I all admit to having a noobplexity engi alt. When I get frustrated with all of the cheese running around I grab my own cheese. It’s fun, but I feel bad when I do it.

That’s funny, because i almost never assume some one is using cheese. i almost feel like its not worth all the hate, so then i AM caught off guard when a fellow p/d thief hits me with perplexity! I try my best to use p/d without it being cheese. so i dont use HiS, or perplexity, or shadow refuge! Moderation is key, and to be honest, i feel like my build flows better having stripped such over used tactics from it!

killahmayne.9518:

1) How do you personally define “cheese” or what are the characteristics of a build that make it “cheese”?
2) How do you feel about people using these so called “cheese builds” while roaming?
3) How do you usually deal with encountering these “cheese builds”?
4) Which builds do you consider to be the most “cheese” in roaming/WvW/dueling?
5) Do you believe “cheese” is the product of game mechanics and/or class imbalances?
6) Any other comments, suggestions, changes you would make?

1) Cheese is as cheese does.
2) Trolls
3) By killing them. If not possible, to run away.
4) PU mesmer, P/D thieves.
5) Yes and yes.
6) Roaming is dead, I don’t even know why do I care.

patricide.1062:

I think a cheese build could be described as a build that allows you to beat someone with far superior skill with consistency.

Example: warrior cheese vs. a skilled D/D Ele. If the warrior is even barely competent it is usually a tough fight for the Ele. The Ele has to play a near perfect game in order to top the massive regen, armor, DPS, and mobility the warrior has.

Example: D/P thief. Not winning? Go perma stealth and regen ALL you health back or, just stand in your blind field and spam 1. D/P thieves can beat nearly anything in the game with barely any effort. Put that cheese in the hands of an above average player and it’s very difficuly to counter.

Lol at standing in a blind field.

Protip: No one with any skill just stands there melee attacking while a thief is in a blind field.

As for cheese builds, I think the max regen build in general are cheese. Warrior, ele, and engi all have builds that fall into that area.

Any condi build is pure cheese.

Why? Because of the speed at which conditions can be applied and re-applied, and the ineffective counters of them. Auto-attacks should not apply conditions. No more conditions that apply on X condition being met. Only weapon skills and utilities should apply condition. No more random 20% chance to cause confusion on hit, 66% or whatever to cause bleeding, etc. Remove the randomness and unpredictability from condition application and you fix one of the major problems.

Honeslty condi spamming is what keeps me out of WvW or PVP more so than anything. Hell, I get annoyed at Claw of Jormag for the 3-5 fears in a row.. It’s just so annoying I don’t even put myself in the position to get annoyed by it.

any builds that give low risk and high reward

MrFluffy.9307:

any builds that give low risk and high reward

This.

Basicaly anything with “unlimited” escapes.
PU mesmer, thief stealth regen, GS warior with stupidity signet. The stealth is a problem of gamemode, only reason pvp is considered balanced and fun is because capture points force poeple away from this in-out with regen-hp play.

Anything with perplexity runes.
Even without the brokenly OP runes, many condi builds are too strong 1v1 with their condition spam, while being tanky. They dont have escapes for 1v3+ like above builds, but they have such condiburst, that in 1v2 , they kill 1 person before they even got to 50% , heal, and its 1v1 with 70% hp. easy to win as a conditank.

The 1st is gamemode side-effect, the 2nd is overall class/item balance problem. Hope it cleared u up

Zerging some1 with your party, when hes having a fair fight with some1 is IMO also stupid. Same for help.
Like, who would watch uninteresting sports, where the outcome is obvious?
“Can you kill this person 1v5?” “Yes u can, as u are not a superbad player. Bravo, achievement unlocked.”

Flumek.9043:

Anything with perplexity runes.
Even without the brokenly OP runes, many condi builds are too strong 1v1 with their condition spam, while being tanky. They dont have escapes for 1v3+ like above builds, but they have such condiburst, that in 1v2 , they kill 1 person before they even got to 50% , heal, and its 1v1 with 70% hp. easy to win as a conditank.

I actually disagree with this. It isn’t the Rune set that is the problem, it is the insaly easy low cool down access some classes have to CC – Thief, Warrior and Engineer are top of that insanely broken access to CC that makes the rune set seem MUCH stronger than it is.

2 of these classes have great access to Confusion already, Warrior needs trait but its big stacks and without an ICD that procs a 4stack 8 second duration Confusion and Engineer with several ways to get easy application of Confusion on low cool downs.

If these were fixed, then the rune set would seem a lot more balanced. It is only really broken to certain classes – those that have WAY to much access to Confusion and/or spammable CC even with the 7second ICD all the above can easily trigger it every 7 seconds…

killahmayne.9518:

1) How do you personally define “cheese” or what are the characteristics of a build that make it “cheese”?
2) How do you feel about people using these so called “cheese builds” while roaming?
3) How do you usually deal with encountering these “cheese builds”?
4) Which builds do you consider to be the most “cheese” in roaming/WvW/dueling?
5) Do you believe “cheese” is the product of game mechanics and/or class imbalances?
6) Any other comments, suggestions, changes you would make?

I will give my answer if this topic generates enough conversation.

1. Cheese is something that is made from milk.
2. Well, it depends on the variety of cheese. I personally cannot stand the smell of blue cheese. But in general, I like cheese, it’s an essential ingredient in many food items, such as pizza or risotto. Therefore, I cannot say that I dislike people who like cheese. In fact, someone I know used to work closely with cheese at a supermarket. But liking cheese doesn’t really net any bonus points from me either.
3. Well, the most common way of cheese for me is with bread. What comes with it depends on the variety of cheese, the contents of my fridge and my most recent sandwiches. Sometimes I like to just shred a small amount of cheese into a bowl and eat that as a snack.
4. Well, blue cheese is the easiest to notice due to the smell. However, I think that mozzarella is definitely the… cheesiest cheese I have encountered.
5. I believe cheese is the product of someone discovering a delicious, alternative way of using milk.
6. Cheese ftw!

1) There is no cheese.

2) There are balance issues.

3) “Cheese” is the favored term in the GW2 community used by Scrubs.

4) “Scrubs” are those people who play games by their own made up set of rules, and who definitely are not playing to win.

What is cheese? "Cheese most often refers to an unexpected strategy that relies in large parts on lack of information and/or psychological impact on the opponent. Cheese build orders typically revolve around an early attack that, if undetected, is more difficult to defend than execute.

Examples of Cheese:

Cannon Rush (Protoss)
Proxy BBS
Proxy Gateway
Worker Rush – A worker rush is when you take all of your starting SCVs/Probes/Drones to the enemy base and attack everything there.
Aggressive Pool First
Proxy Hatchery"
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Cheese

Couldn’t help myself, but the definition still applies to GW2

Flumek.9043:

Zerging some1 with your party, when hes having a fair fight with some1 is IMO also stupid. Same for help.
Like, who would watch uninteresting sports, where the outcome is obvious?
“Can you kill this person 1v5?” “Yes u can, as u are not a superbad player. Bravo, achievement unlocked.”

Yes, this. I do not know how many times I have been run over in the middle of a fight by another random party of anywhere from 1 to 20 people. Or if you down someone and then out of nowhere someone happens to show up and start rezzing them. Legit in terms of game rules? Yes. Annoying? Yes.

I dunno, when I see a 1v1 going on or similar I just stay out of it. Only time I interfere or attack already downed players is if I am in a zerg assaulting something.

As far as cheese, that is hard to define. Technically a lot of core class mechanics are cheese—stealth, clones, mass conditions, mass CC, etc. I think this is mostly the fault of no real counterplay outside of a few specific meta builds, but maybe its just me.

Wonkadude.4207:

What is cheese? "Cheese most often refers to an unexpected strategy that relies in large parts on lack of information and/or psychological impact on the opponent. Cheese build orders typically revolve around an early attack that, if undetected, is more difficult to defend than execute.

Examples of Cheese:

Cannon Rush (Protoss)
Proxy BBS
Proxy Gateway
Worker Rush – A worker rush is when you take all of your starting SCVs/Probes/Drones to the enemy base and attack everything there.
Aggressive Pool First
Proxy Hatchery"
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Cheese

Couldn’t help myself, but the definition still applies to GW2

Remembering worker rushes just made my night.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Wonkadude.4207:

What is cheese? "Cheese most often refers to an unexpected strategy that relies in large parts on lack of information and/or psychological impact on the opponent. Cheese build orders typically revolve around an early attack that, if undetected, is more difficult to defend than execute.

Examples of Cheese:

Cannon Rush (Protoss)
Proxy BBS
Proxy Gateway
Worker Rush – A worker rush is when you take all of your starting SCVs/Probes/Drones to the enemy base and attack everything there.
Aggressive Pool First
Proxy Hatchery"
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Cheese

Couldn’t help myself, but the definition still applies to GW2

Remembering worker rushes just made my night.

Glad to oblige

Flumek.9043:

Anything with perplexity runes.

I use perplexity rune on my necro and for me there is nothing “cheese” in that.
(Spectral Grasp)

killahmayne.9518:

1) How do you personally define “cheese” or what are the characteristics of a build that make it “cheese”?

“Cheese” originates – as far as I can tell – from “cheater’s strategy”.
Going by that original definition, no setup in GW2’s WvW right now appears to be cheese to me.

Going by what is a nearly-cheating-efficient setup, there’s a few. AE stun Warriors for general-purpose, PU Mesmers and Permastealth Thieves to kill roamers, condition necros to siphon kill credit off zergs, Eles around towers.

Mind you, none of those bother me, really. They’re powerful, but that’s about it. They still die fast enough if faced with superior numbers, and numerical advantage at the right moment and the right spot is the cornerstone of WvW victory.

Cheese is the build that..
1) Requires your to activate, in general, no more than 3-4 skills to win
2) Makes you feel almost nonexistent pressure from fighting your enemies
3) Makes you feel that not many things could go wrong. For elaboration, if I run dps shatter mesmer and the shatter misses, there’s a 50/50 chance I would die cuz I miss my burst and my enemies are still running full hp. If a s/p thief miss its 3, they can spam it again, and again and again cuz even if they miss they’re evading other attacks.
4) Also usually doesn’t require any setup. You just press 1-2 skills and you reach your objective, coinciding with the first point.

I think cheese is the product of poor class design. In my opinion, a good build is a build that requires you to at least set up certain moves before delivering the final blow. It should have the opening/sustaining/finishing kind of mentality. This would make it challenging as it requires some extent of skill to make sure that things go as planned. Rushing to your enemy and press 234, win, is very dumb.

Some of your definition of cheese is verrrrrrrrrry different than most games. Typically, cheesy or gimmicky builds/tactics are something that leads to you either winning very easily or you lose horribly. Glass Cannon Ele would probably qualify, either you destroy your target very quickly or they just crush you into the dirt in 3 attacks. Hammer/Mace on Warrior could also possibly qualify because if your target has even moderately decent Stability up-time you’re probably not gonna win but some classes will melt. Some people seem to define using class mechanics like adrenaline as “cheese” which makes me scratch my head.

Other than that, I can’t name many builds that really qualify. There are plenty of “cheap” builds, which too me mostly involve Thieves and Mesmers that stack Stealth and either run or just heal up and reengage. Sure that’s a key part to their sustain and a class mechanic but being able to basically reset the entire engagement make things feel less about who’s better than who and more about whether or not your utilities will come off CD in time to counter their inevitable sneak attack. You can feel robbed because you had the win and they just decided to hide. I’ve had fights where I downed a Thief while they were stealthed, they rallied, then came back to kill me. I only knew because someone on their side told me after. Of course as a Warrior it is my right to look down upon those who lack the courage to face me out in the open like a true champion.

EDIT: I don’t understand the mentality of calling Hambow “Cheese.” Is is a good build, yes. However I have seen sooooooo many people lose to it due to nothing but their own mistakes. This includes using all your best condi attacks while Zerker Stance is up, using Stun Breakers on the Hammer skills that don’t hit as kittenly to eat a Backbreaker, standing in Combustive Shot you name it. This has gotten a lot better recently. I see Necros play defensively until Zerkers is down, only apply just enough condis to bait out a Combust Cleanse and then hitting with their big guns, using the Golem Charge to stop a Hammer combo (I’ve gotten good at knowing when it’s coming though). It’s actually crazy how close a fight can be considering just how much of the build is anti-condi. Hambow is good at squashing the ignorant but those that understand it seem to not complain about it. If someone makes the mistakes above you’ll often get “faceroll War,” “Lol u bad,” and the like but if you beat someone who doesn’t make those mistakes they generally say “gg” or “gf” in my experience. Now one person’s view is by no means proof but for me it’s been really consistent.

Outside of the Burst skills most of the Hammer attacks have a fairly long CD. If you want to hit a full combo you’ll be waiting around 25 seconds. It’ll be even harder once Pin Down gets a longer cast time because it’s always been a great setup. I’ve always found the build to be very reactive. I don’t always use the same Hammer rotation because chances are after you land the 1st Earthshaker you need to cancel out of Backbreaker because chances are they are gonna stun break. Your average War doesn’t have “sheathe weapon” bound and it’s a great way to fake people out. Hambow also really sucks in the mobility department and sometimes I actually prefer GS/LB even if it’s not as good generally.

Yeah but in the case of the stealth people, just run past them. They’re pure 1v1 builds, they rely on you wanting to fight them, they’re pretty bad at stopping anyone and they hardly contribute all that much.

But you’re right, Burr, definitions of Cheese vary a lot. That’s part of the problem I suppose, for many “Cheese” means “Killed me”.

Carighan.6758:

Yeah but in the case of the stealth people, just run past them. They’re pure 1v1 builds, they rely on you wanting to fight them, they’re pretty bad at stopping anyone and they hardly contribute all that much.

But you’re right, Burr, definitions of Cheese vary a lot. That’s part of the problem I suppose, for many “Cheese” means “Killed me”.

My personal problem is that I don’t like running away. Feels lame being forced into retreating because someone else is a pansy. It’s even worse when I go to duel servers to practice for TPvP and half the players do this.

From someone who hates stealth in its current form but doesn’t actively play any classes that depend on it – basically my view means squat – I think the current way stealth works is crap. You should either move slower while stealthed like you’re actually sneaking, or certain skills should be disabled while stealthed, or just make stealth something that you can’t have up for a long duration and have be purely for setting up an attack within the next few seconds and not something you use for escape. At least with Warriors you SEE them while they’re running away. Just knowing that "OK, that guy isn’t about to backstab me because he’s running " would make it feel less cheap. You just need those few seconds of “which way did he go” to get a good head start…if you like to run for 1v1s (run from 1v3+ all you want, there’s a difference between bravery and stupidity). It would also make fights more fast paced because fighting a foe who stealths all the time is boring as sin.

From my perspective, coming from games which had permanent stealth (EQ, DaoC, WoW), the GW2 implementation is the fix. It can be frequent, but it’s never quite permanent.

In DAoC the stealth made running solo in RvR entirely impossible. Stealth parties (worst were the Albion ones because their Bard-class could stealth…) would prey onto single targets at gates, while basically being impossible to route outside of another stealth party (who had skills to find them) hitting them.
This did however lead to an interesting Spy vs Spy metagame, and that is something GW2 might still need.

Not some generic anti-stealth mechanics, because the ephemeral nature of stealth in GW2 already kinda serves as that. Rather, a way for the stealth classes to be their own Achilles heel, so stealthers are always drawn to fight one another, and then ofc on even ground.

phaeris.7604:

1) Hambow warrior/Condi warriors

That is what cheese is, players who don’t really want a challenge and specifically pick a build as they know they can be successful with minimal effort as the build favours victory due to game mechanics.

Worst of all, just how can it be fun, spamming the number 1 button most of the time.

If you lose to hambow in WvW then the cheese is spoiled.

killahmayne.9518:

Yes we all love cheese and love to it eat it.

However in WvW, may be not so much. I just would like to generate a conversation about it with a few questions.

1) How do you personally define “cheese” or what are the characteristics of a build that make it “cheese”?
2) How do you feel about people using these so called “cheese builds” while roaming?
3) How do you usually deal with encountering these “cheese builds”?
4) Which builds do you consider to be the most “cheese” in roaming/WvW/dueling?
5) Do you believe “cheese” is the product of game mechanics and/or class imbalances?
6) Any other comments, suggestions, changes you would make?

I will give my answer if this topic generates enough conversation.

1) Builds that require very little skill to be SUPER EFFECTIVE, CRITICAL HIT.
2) I mostly pity them, and just /laugh.
3) Fight, avoid or team up.
4) P/D thief, Conditank warrior/engie, PU mesmer, basically anything that uses Dire?
5) I believe cheese is the consequence of both very defensive gear with high condition damage, and the overpowered condition damage in itself. It just offers too many advantages above direct damage.
6) Nerf condition damage. And fire the person who thought Dire was a good idea.

Interesting topic. I would like to add that I do main a warrior, the class considered the cheesiest of cheese. I agree warrior is easier to play, but lacks when you face highly skilled opponents. Glass all the way.

Cheese is a product of cry babies constantly dieing to certain class/build and refusing to learn of how it works and how to counter it and/or refusing to change their builds/playstyle to reach that goal. Cheese is a product of people who refuse to accept that every game, up to a point, has rock/paper/scissors system.

There is cheese and there is cheese that stinks.

Cheeese that stinks is AoE spammers (like D/D eles) complaining, Warriors complaining, Guardians complaining.

Mildly stinking cheese is people complaining about conditions.

Cheese is consumables, ascended gear and guard-stacks.

What to do about it? There is nothing you can do, move along.

killahmayne.9518:

Yes we all love cheese and love to it eat it.

However in WvW, may be not so much. I just would like to generate a conversation about it with a few questions.

1) How do you personally define “cheese” or what are the characteristics of a build that make it “cheese”?
2) How do you feel about people using these so called “cheese builds” while roaming?
3) How do you usually deal with encountering these “cheese builds”?
4) Which builds do you consider to be the most “cheese” in roaming/WvW/dueling?
5) Do you believe “cheese” is the product of game mechanics and/or class imbalances?
6) Any other comments, suggestions, changes you would make?

I will give my answer if this topic generates enough conversation.

1. A build that can be used with little to no skill involved and can near guarantee a win 80% of the time.
2. Annoying as hell, especially since these cheese builds are very hard to counter 1v1, and sometimes even 1v5.
3. If I see one, I usually just run, I won’t be winning the fight.
4. PU mesmers, D/P thieves
5. I feel it’s a gameplay mechanic problem. Stealth is a powerful skill that stops you from seeing the enemy or targeting them, and sadly has no real easy counter.
6. For PU mesmers, Deceptive Evasion just needs an ICD other than the dodge bar (15 seconds maybe). For Thieves, the Black Powder on offhand Pistol needs to either give a dark field to stop the stealth spam or the field needs to just be created on the target so they can’t stealth spam without being on top of the target (thus making the stealth spam easier to counter).

Cheese is exploiting a certain game-mechanic to gain a certain advantage in ways that were probably never intended.

Decap Engineers are the prime example. Being a Bunker is fine, spaming knockbacks too. But in a Conquest type game-mode this combination is game-breaking because it allows your team to gain a massive upper hand.

In any other game-mode or situation being a decap Engi wouldn’t be an issue. It’s a problem specific to Conquest and sPvP.

Hence it’s a cheese build.

Another way to look at cheese builds is when classes exploit a specific low-risk/high-reward move or synergy that, considering the effort, is very hard to counter.

PU Mesmers are a prime example for this.

To me, the cheese is whenever I see characters whose attack routines are basically a practiced series of dance steps that’s performed the same for every encounter such that I could exchange the skins of any two characters and be unable to tell them apart based on their game play. It means you could be replaced by a macro executing the attack in sequence and nobody would know the difference (and maybe that’s what some of these players are even doing).

killahmayne.9518:

Yes we all love cheese and love to it eat it.

However in WvW, may be not so much. I just would like to generate a conversation about it with a few questions.

1) How do you personally define “cheese” or what are the characteristics of a build that make it “cheese”?
2) How do you feel about people using these so called “cheese builds” while roaming?
3) How do you usually deal with encountering these “cheese builds”?
4) Which builds do you consider to be the most “cheese” in roaming/WvW/dueling?
5) Do you believe “cheese” is the product of game mechanics and/or class imbalances?
6) Any other comments, suggestions, changes you would make?

I will give my answer if this topic generates enough conversation.

1)In a WvW context, I think what is cheesy is a build or strategy that, in any other game mode, would fail completely. Stealth spam builds don’t work in PvE because the mobs can reset and require more damage, they don’t work in sPvP because the enemy can cap for points while the stealther sits and regens, but in WvW stealth spam can be the most powerful strategy. Stealth is a strong offensive weapon and a great defensive tool, but in WvW it is both at the same time. Stealth spam with maxed guard and bloodlust stacks? Gimme a break.

2) I can’t stop them, and I have been on the internet long enough to know it is going to keep on trucking. There is no honour in the virtual world.

3) It depends. I am ranting on about stealth here, but it is a good example so I will stick with it for the whole post. If I am on my necromancer, and I run into a heavy stealthing bloodlust+guard stack thief, I take my hands off the keyboard. I’m going down, I’m not getting to a gate or downing the thief. Cripple, bleed, crit, whatever the angle may be, I am kittened. The necromancer is not specced to 1v1, and especially not against something this strong. My guardian on the other hand will eat this thief for breakfast with retaliation. So usually the answer is ‘accept my fate or flee’, nothing is cheesy if I stand a chance. If I don’t stand a chance I’m getting out ASAP or dead already.

This goes back to my #1 point, the cheese is that if the thief finds my necro he gets a free bag, if he finds my guardian he falls on his face (or more likely, realizes he can’t instagib me and cloaks and runs).

4) ‘Most cheese’ is to me sorta moot, something is cheese or it isn’t. Confusion builds are a big one, the lesser moaned about is torment. I #$%^&* hate torment in WvW, the game mode is so built on moving that a few stacks of torment can decide the encounter (on a class without much cleansing power). Glass builds themselves are not true cheese (I had retaliation on, you killed yourself, ha!), but a glass build abusing stealth, confusion, and torment would pretty much be my worst nightmare. I don’t think such a thing exists though.

5)It is a product of class imbalance AND game mechanics, but not in the conventional sense. Going back to the example of my necromancer, he is a great help to my team in group fights, especially defending. He has skills and traits that help him do that, he is good at his job. If I want this necromancer to STOP dying to every moderately strong thief in the game, I have to choose to steer his build away from being the helpful supporter. In this sense it is a product of game mechanics: I want to play a support, but still will need to run for supplies every so often. When the necro gets picked off by a thief once again, the thief is doing his role too. He isn’t a supporter, he is a kitten-off-enemy-supply-runners.

6) This is how it is when trying to balance a game over 3 modes. It was a lofty ambition, and we are seeing it suck hard in reality. Would a party of 5 guardians be a threat in sPvP? No way, most of your team can ignore them and cap points. But a party of 5 guardians in WvW is suddenly a juggernaut of might, swiftness, and stability marauding the countryside, and though your team can work around them, it isn’t the same as sPvP where their antics will probably cost them the game. Those 5 guardians can camp the pants off of a camp or tower and be a real pain while the other 40+ members of their team do work elsewhere.

Simply put, I don’t think this game will ever be truly balanced across all 3 modes. sPvP is pretty good right now in my view, even if somebody is abusing a strong mechanic like confusion it doesn’t mean they will win the match. But in WvW, getting killed multiple times by a confusion abuser means a lengthy walk back to the action, no loot, and sometimes an armor repair bill. The cost, consequences, and objectives aren’t even close to equal across the 3 modes; how in the blue heck does anyone think the balance will be?

This is a Roaming issue what should first be identified is what build YOU are running. I bet it falls in the line of someone else will call it cheesy.

All the roamer builds are almost always the same. Every roamer of one type usually complains about another roamers build because sure they might be able to beat 1 roamer using a roamer build but 2 roamers using a roamer builds is alot harder to pull off.

How is it cheese is if everyone is running just about the same thing when they are roaming.

Condi engi, pu mesmer, s/d thief, s/p thief, p/d thief, d/p thief, any warrior build with mobility, terrormancer.

The only roamer build nobody really complains about is meditation guards because they can kill them easier using any of the above.

I have 7 classes at 80 roam on all of them ran all the popular roaming type of builds and the only 1 that I can say has the best chance against most roaming builds out there is P/D condi thief the funny thing is that a Meditation guard can easily beat at a P/D thief if played right.

killahmayne.9518:

Yes we all love cheese and love to it eat it.

However in WvW, may be not so much. I just would like to generate a conversation about it with a few questions.

1) How do you personally define “cheese” or what are the characteristics of a build that make it “cheese”?
2) How do you feel about people using these so called “cheese builds” while roaming?
3) How do you usually deal with encountering these “cheese builds”?
4) Which builds do you consider to be the most “cheese” in roaming/WvW/dueling?
5) Do you believe “cheese” is the product of game mechanics and/or class imbalances?
6) Any other comments, suggestions, changes you would make?

I will give my answer if this topic generates enough conversation.

1) Any build that is highly accommodating for mistakes and/or can be played on auto-pilot with tons of passives. Anything that requires almost no real effort.
2) I hold no ill will for someone using a max strength build to ensure success. Some people just want to win, so it’s sensible for them to play max cheese.
3) I either ignore them or just use Moa Morph.
4) God where to begin, err: PU Mesmer, D/P Thief, perplex full dire Engi, Dhuumfire condi Necro, hambow Warrior, S/S LB condi Warrior, P/D perplex Thief, phantasm Mesmer. There are other builds that are almost cheese, I call these milky builds.
5) For some cheese builds it’s usually just one or two skills or traits that put these builds into the ridiculous territory. With PU Mesmers it’s just the PU trait itself that elevates the build to craziness. However, some of the cheese just comes from the fundamental design of the class, i.e. phantasm Mesmer.
6) Roaming cheese is annoying, but nothing is as bad as the almighty cheese that is the Warrior/Guardian hammer train. I find that much more detrimental to the game mode than a PU Mesmer trolling other roamers.