Guild Wars 2

I think there isn’t any definite idea on what is ‘best’ and what is ‘cheesy’.

Often we see a guy winning and we say he is strong and skilled, good, great, best.
Then another guy comes along and say no he is not, he is just using a cheesy build.

And then we see another guy and say this guy is using a cheesy build and thus he wins most of the fights.
Then another guy comes along and say no he is not, he is really good, and has skills, great, best.

so…which is which? when is a guy ‘best’ and when is he ‘cheesy’?
what defines cheese? what defines skill? could he be using a cheesy build and yet uses it with skill?
Can cheese and skill co-exist? Are these people then considered the best?

Does it matter?

Cheese and Salty are two words that come easy to the mouths of noobs.
Those words also making me hungry.

According to the whispers I get, cheesy seems to be whatever build I’m running when I win the fight.

There is no connection between those two things. “Cheesy” usually refers to the build, “good” or “skilled” refers to the player’s ability. So of course good players can play “cheesy” builds.

Oxford or Urban?

Sometimes it do. Sometimes it dont.

A cheesy build is more often than not the best build, because its built for a specific cheesy purpose.

If I where to blurt out things like say… ghost thief… perplexity mesmer… glass guard… would you instantly think “oh yeah thats totally the best to frontline an SM assault with!!!”. No. Not unless you are insane.

It depends on the honesty of the players.

Honest players are able to admit when they lose to a more skilled opponent and rarely make excuses. When they win fights they’re willing to admit the times they won because they were carried by their build.

Dishonest players usually make excuses when they lose, including claiming their opponent used a “cheese” build. When they win fights that don’t acknowledge any advantage their own build gives them.

If I stick you with 12k to 13k of burn on a single auto attack…I’m sorry. Just testing. Cheesy as hell.

“Eye of the Beholder” Basically, perspective.

People are going to use which word they want depending on a bunch of things including their personality, mood, how hard they where beaten, how much they got hard coutners or outplayed etc. saying “good/skilled” is the respectful variant, where “cheese” is the disrespectful version trying to downplay the achievement of the opponent by claiming he wasn’t the one solely responsible for the win.

It’s humans.

Nobody will call you cheese if you run Necro, so good might actually = cheesy

Cecilia.5179:

Nobody will call you cheese if you run Necro, so good might actually = cheesy

Condi necros are known as cheesy. Principally chill spam ones.

Jeknar.6184:

Cecilia.5179:

Nobody will call you cheese if you run Necro, so good might actually = cheesy

Condi necros are known as cheesy. Principally chill spam ones.

That pertains more to condi than necro. Condi necro is still one of the least cheesy condi classes that doesn’t suck. Our chill uptime and damage were both cut in half, and perplexity was nerfed, so we can’t even exploit that.

Of all of the accusations of “cheese” I’ve seen here, the ones I’m least inclined to discredit are those about builds with lots of passive procs which make a big difference in a fight.

Cecilia.5179:

That pertains more to condi than necro. Condi necro is still one of the least cheesy condi classes that doesn’t suck. Our chill uptime and damage were both cut in half, and perplexity was nerfed, so we can’t even exploit that.

Oh, by no means I actually think Necro is cheesy… Honestly I already stopped used this term. I was just giving a exemple of what people may consider cheesy and under what lame excuse when it’s not even one of the top builds out there.
The mere presence of condis already trigger the “cheese” call for many people.

Builds that require minimum invest to show maximum outcome are cheese.

Maybe the players running these builds are actually good, but they can’t prove it with such builds.

I roam with Power Reaper for a reason. Every fight is a challenge. I often meet players who simply spam skills. Good example in WvW: GS/Axe-Shield Warriors: They just eat everything you throw at them for about 20 seconds with their Endure Pain procs and HP regeneration. After these 20 seconds they can decide to run away or be a freekill.

The cheese: Surviving the first 20 seconds is ultrahard and requires some serious skill and even then the build has the capability to simply outrun everything but thieves (where there would be no need to run since it can oneshot them).

Newsflash – It is a low skilled cheesy game fullstop, and roaming in WvW which is basically ignored when it comes to balance or design, where you have runes, stats, etc deemed so broken in PvP they got removed, is cheesier still.

If you want to know what is cheesiest just look around at what the scrub playerbase is playing most (currently thief, ranger, mesmer & warrior) there you have the biggest cheese.

A definition of cheese I saw once that I like is something that you have to go out of your way to counter with an optional condition being that the counter is essentially only useful for dealing with the cheese.

Given how monobuild everything is in GW2 that makes nearly everything good automatically cheesy.

While it just got nerfed pretty hard power rev was a good starting example. With tanky stats even in marauder, tons of negation, stability and the safest gimmick heals in the game it was pretty good at smashing most other power builds. But with terrible condi clear if you put it up against a condi build it would pretty much have to run or die. When dots have you on the clock and debuffs are making you as threatening as a punching bag there’s not much you can really do without effective condi clear. But then condi builds can also be counterbuilt; ele in particular can get so much condi clear that even pitting it against multiple condi builds at the same time would still be hugely unfair in its favour.

Good players need not win every encounter but makes and execute good decision. Playing well on suboptimal build.

Cheesy players are winning most encounters by making full use of what the game design has to offer, running the most effective build for the sake of winning. Cheesy players are the best players in a way, they have to forego every little bit of dignity they have to run such builds.

Those that complain about Cheese all the time remind me of this scene.

IMO cheese builds are those builds that have a lot of passives or dish out a substantial amount of non-targeted damage from relative safety. Builds that basically carry a player to a large extent with a shallow learning curve yet effective results.

For example, a par player in a Tempest meta build will get destroyed by a solid player. That same build in skilled hands becomes near unkillable in an even match. On the other hand a meta DH build is outright dangerous in the hands of a par player; particularly in an outnumbered situation where the DH isn’t heavily focused.

Theirs no such thing as a cheese build only builds.Their are thousands of combinations a person can use when building a character. Usually what gets called out as a cheese build are nonmeta or builds that are what I like to call “niche builds” .Some people don’t like that because it exploits the weaknesses of theirs. Their is not one single build that will be invincible against all others . So build the way you want and play the way you want . good luck and have fun.

Personally I define “cheese” as something that is minimal effort but not necessarily the most effective. Ghost Thief being a good example. It’s easy to fight if you know how to do it but it kills people with little – no effort for those who don’t know how to fight it. Or another example being trapper Guard. Easy to fight if you know how, destroys people who don’t. I consider that “cheese” because it’s not OP it just exploits the people who don’t understand how to fight it.

Rank, title or build do not determine skill. You can’t judge how good someone is going to be until you fight them. “Always assume your opponent is a genius until proven an idiot.”

I don’t know how to describe someone who’s good. All I know is that it doesn’t matter if they’re using a cheesy/OP/meta build or not. I can tell the difference between player skill and build carry. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

As someone said earlier, cheese often refers to the build and skill refers to the player behind it.

In my opinion cheese builds are ones that either do one thing that is stupidly strong and then go to safe places after getting a kill with that stupid strong move or are over the top strong especially when fighting classes/builds that are already weak against the class.

So an example would be that lovely incendiary ammo P/S scrapper with double elixir S, stealth gyro, gear shield and normal shield who hangs around a tower and doesn’t venture out further than his elixir S procs will get him back in. Loads up a target with burns and 4-5 other conditions and melts them before running away, waits on cool downs and does again, that is cheese.

A good example of skill is hard to come by as there aren’t exactly that many even match ups but can almost certainly be shown when beating an opponant on a class that soft or hard counters you/your build

Cheese is usually definded as abusing the holes in your opponents defence. And recking them with a gimmick that prepared players can very much deal with.

Good examples are yolo signet warriors, P/P thieves, condi burst into moa engis,

If you know whats comming you put up a defensive cooldown and proceed to wreck their butts. If you get suprised or flustered you are pretty much dead.

joneirikb.7506:

“Eye of the Beholder” Basically, perspective.

People are going to use which word they want depending on a bunch of things including their personality, mood, how hard they where beaten, how much they got hard coutners or outplayed etc. saying “good/skilled” is the respectful variant, where “cheese” is the disrespectful version trying to downplay the achievement of the opponent by claiming he wasn’t the one solely responsible for the win.

It’s humans.

reading through the replies, I think I agree most with this post and other posts that conveyed similarly meaning.

also this post:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

snip

I don’t know how to describe someone who’s good. All I know is that it doesn’t matter if they’re using a cheesy/OP/meta build or not. I can tell the difference between player skill and build carry. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

and this post:

apharma.3741:

As someone said earlier, cheese often refers to the build and skill refers to the player behind it.

snip

A good example of skill is hard to come by as there aren’t exactly that many even match ups but can almost certainly be shown when beating an opponant on a class that soft or hard counters you/your build

apharma.3741:

.
So an example would be that lovely incendiary ammo P/S scrapper with double elixir S, stealth gyro, gear shield and normal shield who hangs around a tower and doesn’t venture out further than his elixir S procs will get him back in. Loads up a target with burns and 4-5 other conditions and melts them before running away, waits on cool downs and does again, that is cheese.

P/s?

Hahahaha you have no idea what you are even talking about. No one in their right mind use the shield nowadays. A p/s engie is in now way capable of “melting” anyone, just going p/s instead of p/p is a 50%+ drop in potential condi dps.

At best using toolkit then confusions can do some damage, but its still nothing compared to what a perplexity mesmer can do.

Most go tanky hammer today as even marauder can achieve tons of sustain with tons of damage on a scrapper.

Dawdler.8521:

apharma.3741:

.
So an example would be that lovely incendiary ammo P/S scrapper with double elixir S, stealth gyro, gear shield and normal shield who hangs around a tower and doesn’t venture out further than his elixir S procs will get him back in. Loads up a target with burns and 4-5 other conditions and melts them before running away, waits on cool downs and does again, that is cheese.

P/s?

Hahahaha you have no idea what you are even talking about. No one in their right mind use the shield nowadays. A p/s engie is in now way capable of “melting” anyone, just going p/s instead of p/p is a 50%+ drop in potential condi dps.

At best using toolkit then confusions can do some damage, but its still nothing compared to what a perplexity mesmer can do.

Most go tanky hammer today as even marauder can achieve tons of sustain with tons of damage on a scrapper.

The point is valid regardless. Which is that an intelligent player could easily defeat the Engi but most will feed the troll, playing on the Engi’s terms instead of their own.

This obviously doesn’t strictly apply to Engi as it could be any profession or build doing it. What I mean is that it’s still cheese because it’s not skill, it’s just abusing the stupidity of your opponent. And the person doing the cheesing doesn’t even have to realize that.

Engi shield is crap, though.

Dawdler.8521:

apharma.3741:

.
So an example would be that lovely incendiary ammo P/S scrapper with double elixir S, stealth gyro, gear shield and normal shield who hangs around a tower and doesn’t venture out further than his elixir S procs will get him back in. Loads up a target with burns and 4-5 other conditions and melts them before running away, waits on cool downs and does again, that is cheese.

P/s?

Hahahaha you have no idea what you are even talking about. No one in their right mind use the shield nowadays. A p/s engie is in now way capable of “melting” anyone, just going p/s instead of p/p is a 50%+ drop in potential condi dps.

At best using toolkit then confusions can do some damage, but its still nothing compared to what a perplexity mesmer can do.

Most go tanky hammer today as even marauder can achieve tons of sustain with tons of damage on a scrapper.

I occasionally still use p/s. In a lot of situations it ends up being better than p/p. Having an extra few burn stack doesn’t make a huge difference if the player you are fighting has a good amount of cleanse. P/S isn’t only defensive, it helps you chain cc a person after you load them up with condi’s.

Yeah Dawdler, you really should think a bit more especially given the context. It’s a cheesy build because of the way you go about it. Jump on a person loading up with conditions and running away if they can cleanse it when you CC them.

Though I do think pistol offhand would be a nice option too for blowtorch for extra burn especially with double elixir S and stealth. I used pistol shield as an example as I ran into a guy using this the other day pretty much only going after thieves as everyone else had too much condi clear.

apharma.3741:

Yeah Dawdler, you really should think a bit more especially given the context. It’s a cheesy build because of the way you go about it. Jump on a person loading up with conditions and running away if they can cleanse it when you CC them.

Though I do think pistol offhand would be a nice option too for blowtorch for extra burn especially with double elixir S and stealth. I used pistol shield as an example as I ran into a guy using this the other day pretty much only going after thieves as everyone else had too much condi clear.

For thief I would definitely run offhand pistol. Most are either relying on escapist absolution or shadow’s embrace for their cleanse, in either case you are best off overloading them with condi’s. If they are jumping around like a monkey you just stop attacking and let them burn, if they throw down a refuge either knock them out of it or keep aoe on the area to try and keep the cover conditions on.

I like the shield for builds with good sustain but not a lot of stability. Things like PU mesmers or druids. The shield reflect comes in pretty handy in both of those situations as well.

apharma.3741:

Yeah Dawdler, you really should think a bit more especially given the context. It’s a cheesy build because of the way you go about it. Jump on a person loading up with conditions and running away if they can cleanse it when you CC them.

Then every condi build is a cheesy build because every condi player can do that.

Also every power build is a cheesy build because every power build can do that too (except with direct damage).

There is a difference between cheesy tactics and cheesy builds.

Dawdler.8521:

apharma.3741:

Yeah Dawdler, you really should think a bit more especially given the context. It’s a cheesy build because of the way you go about it. Jump on a person loading up with conditions and running away if they can cleanse it when you CC them.

Then every condi build is a cheesy build because every condi player can do that.

Also every power build is a cheesy build because every power build can do that too (except with direct damage).

There is a difference between cheesy tactics and cheesy builds.

Of course, it is cheesy as a tactic and as a build. The thing that separates this imo from other condi builds is the way burning hits hard and fast meaning you have to cleanse quick or die. Some burn guards can do this also with the right on swap/critical apply condition sigils to cover their burn. They’re just cheesy one shot builds offering nothing engaging for either player.

Same is true of high stealth instagib builds, mesmers especially can hit you for 20k in total under the right conditions though are impotent after for a while.

apharma.3741:

The thing that separates this imo from other condi builds is the way burning hits hard and fast meaning you have to cleanse quick or die

Yet you chose p/s to pick on – a set that cripples the burn capability of the engie.

To me thats about as logical as claiming nomad guardian with mace/shield is a cheese build.

I did notice you mentioned it was designed to go after thieves, lol… yeah sure maybe a really defensive build help against if it still got enough condi damage. I still find it rather amusing that you call out a build on cheese thats designed to kill an entire class that thrive on cheese and exactly the kind of tactic you attribute your p/s cheese engie… except in the middle of open fields and theres 1000x more of them.

I think it’s pretty simple to define cheese: either the build has very few playstyle counters available to it while countering most other builds on the build-level;
or,
the amount of skill required to play a given build with reasonable success is much lower than other builds, often through mechanics which have little interaction with the opponent.

Cheese and skill are not mutually exclusive. That said, there’s often few ways to distinguish a good player on a cheesy build from a not-as-skilled one.

In many respects, cheesy builds are often optimal as in the hands of good players there’s little or nothing you can do about them; they offer few or no playstyle counters as the cheesy builds are broken on their build level, and for the most part when against the few that do exist, they’ll be able to out-play their opponents because they have less to focus on except for what their enemy is doing (or conversely only need to focus on themselves) and care not for what the enemy is doing).

You can tell a skilled player from an unskilled one dependent on how strong the build they’re using is for the most part, and whether or not they’re making plays that make sense to the situation rather than their specific rotation to score a win. Seeing power necro beat condi mesmer/thief, D/D power thief beat a berserker or DH, and ele beat a druid are examples where there’s simply no arguing that the latter players all got massively out-played despite having huge innate advantages. Assuming they’re average players, this indicates that the former ones are strictly skilled.

DeceiverX.8361:

Seeing power necro beat condi mesmer/thief, D/D power thief beat a berserker or DH, and ele beat a druid are examples where there’s simply no arguing that the latter players all got massively out-played despite having huge innate advantages. Assuming they’re average players, this indicates that the former ones are strictly skilled.

I’ve actually found whenever I’ve won or just barely lost a fight despite a massive build disadvantage that it really had nothing to do with my skill, but that the other guy was playing strictly incorrectly. Even if there was some kind of skill involved on my part I only had the opportunity because the enemy just used the wrong move.

A classic example: dodging thief steals. There was once a thief that I encountered 3 different times in a session and all 3 times he tried to steal to me with basilisk venom on only to get dodged. Steal is instant, so I had to read his intentions to be able to narrow down when he would do it to a 0.75 second window, but at the end of the day opening with a basi’d steal is just playing the game wrong. He should’ve waited for a chance to interrupt my heal instead since there’s no way that could’ve gone badly for him.

kingcragus.6810:

Does it matter?

The mechanicsl No.

The fact that others will wrongly call another “cheesy” because they can beat them by any mechanics they haven’t thought of or can’t use well? Yes.

Coldtart.4785:

DeceiverX.8361:

Seeing power necro beat condi mesmer/thief, D/D power thief beat a berserker or DH, and ele beat a druid are examples where there’s simply no arguing that the latter players all got massively out-played despite having huge innate advantages. Assuming they’re average players, this indicates that the former ones are strictly skilled.

I’ve actually found whenever I’ve won or just barely lost a fight despite a massive build disadvantage that it really had nothing to do with my skill, but that the other guy was playing strictly incorrectly. Even if there was some kind of skill involved on my part I only had the opportunity because the enemy just used the wrong move.

A classic example: dodging thief steals. There was once a thief that I encountered 3 different times in a session and all 3 times he tried to steal to me with basilisk venom on only to get dodged. Steal is instant, so I had to read his intentions to be able to narrow down when he would do it to a 0.75 second window, but at the end of the day opening with a basi’d steal is just playing the game wrong. He should’ve waited for a chance to interrupt my heal instead since there’s no way that could’ve gone badly for him.

Wat.

First, that has absolutely nothing to do with builds. If you dodge a BV’d steal, great for you; every profession and every build can do it. You’re literally arguing right now that you dodged a mesmer’s Mantra of Pain and therefore they misplayed their build. That makes absolutely no sense at all.

Second, opening with BV on steal or on a teleport is widely considered to be one of the best possible ways to engage on thief, especially when not on D/P where you rarely have the capacity to safely cast it once engaged without resetting hard (and if you plan to, pre-cast OOC wait on the timer/cooldown and do it halfway through the fight at ~20s like normal people).

I have absolutely no idea how this indicates any amount of misplay on your opponent’s behalf when you even stated early on that you dodged by playing well enough to avoid being hit by an instantaneous no-cast stun.

Unless you started the dodge and then he stole after seeing you dodge (I.E. he was just plain bad), there’s really no way to call anyone out for that.