I’m seeing alot of people choosing either a condition damage build or critical damage build. Which one does more damage? Which build do you guys run?
Condition focused builds lend themselves to much higher innate survivability due to the way thief traits are arrayed, while crit builds are capable of better damage, but the survivability is not as good.
That’s not to say crit builds can’t survive, they can, but what they can’t do is “pick up tank” in an instance, or take quite as many hits and remain standing as your average condition build.
Basically, Crit is a much higher risk/reward setup with better damage but less overall party-based utility or combo synergy, while condition builds are much less “heroic” in terms of damage, but tend to fare better when things start to go south unexpectedly due to having better overall hard survival numbers, and ofter more traited bonuses to stealth and evasion.
Also note that condition builds for all classes are a bit hampered by the condition stacking rules, and although anet has stated they’re going to do something about condition stacking at some point, for the time being condition specs are usually hampered in the DPS department when similar builds run content together.
Groups tend to be ambivalent one way or another, as a well played thief of either persuasion tends to bring similar amounts of value to the table. Crits bring lots of pain while conditions tend to bring lots of cripples and blinds, and most PUGs appreciate a well played character of any class/flavor.
Guild Master – The Papacy [POPE] (Gate of Madness)/Road Scholar for the Durmand Priory
Writer/Director – Quaggan Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky2TGPmMPeQ 
) There are different kind of varieties that you can try out and from there, pick out the best one. Moreover, it depends on which dungeon are you playing. Certain dungeons you may want to use double pistol, some you may prefer sword+pistol. But I can tell you that condition build is great not only for dungeon/pve but it is beast for WvW and Spvp.