Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone! In the past I have generally played D/D backstab thief (2/6/6/0/0). However, due to the April 15th nerf, and also me just getting bored with that build, I decided to try something new. So, recently (as in the last couple of months) I’ve gotten into P/D condi thieves and found them to be extremely fun. With a lot of practice I’ve gotten good enough so that I can put up a decent fight against my opponents in both WvW and sPvP, and even win the fight the majority of the time.

Ordinarily, I would just be content with this build and continue to play it. However, something unexpected happened. I noticed that the better I get at condi thief, the more crap I recieve from other players. Both in sPvP and WvW (when they join my party) my enemy will begin calling my build cheese or just mocking me because I run it claiming things like, “You run the easiest build in the game,” or, “What a bunch of condi cheese.”

What surprises me most is that I used to play D/D and these same players, when I ask them what build would take actual skill, generally respond something like, “real thieves use D/D.” Now, having played both D/D, and P/D, myself, I’m not sure I understand this. In my experience the skill cap has been very similar, although P/D is a little more forgiving when making a mistake.

Anyways, I didn’t create this post just to rant, but rather to ask you guys for some honest, unbiased opinions. Is P/D condi theif really cheese? And if so, is it really more cheese than D/D, or the super duper dodge S/D?

Please be honest! I can take the truth. lol

In a word: Yes. P/D condi thief is cheese. Very cheese. Far more than D/D, or S/D. A lot of it also comes from the (often) used SA traits, it is not uncommon to use 6 pts in SA, when running condi P/D.
What differentiates P/D condi from D/D power, is that you are far more tanky, since thief condi builds dont use precision, allowing them to go Dire or Carrion. Furthermore, it is based around kiting, as opposed to the more “in-your-face” style of D/D. Thirdly, a big chunk of the dps of P/D condi comes from the stealth attack. Whereas D/D requires you to be in melee, and behind your target, P/D condi has neither of those requirements. While the fact that you rely (somewhat) on C&D and/or #3 to stealth/kite, it means you are somewhat weak against ranged (although you have Steal, and possibly signet of infiltration), you are hilariously strong against melee opponents.

In regards to spvp: P/D condi is a dueling build, and has no real place in coordinates high level tpvp. Hence it comes off as “I’m here to duel, not to win”-kind of build, which can make it seem like you want to stroke your own ego by beating others in 1v1 etc. To clarify, if you’re running condi, you’re running a spec somewhere in between a terrormancer and a trickery thief, while not being that great at either of the two roles they represent.

Then of course there is the whole discussion of how unfun it is to fight P/D, since the playstyle boils down to “tickle the enemy from mid-long range. When they come close, use C&D, rinse and repeat”. So yeah, in spvp, you’re running an attrition, stealthbased dueling build, which has no real place in conquest pvp. Thats why people mock you.

Most of the people who called it cheese are unexperienced players pannicking or just tired and don’t like those types of fights. I had close fights vs celestial war,4 4 0 0 0 mesmes,med guardian and even s/d thieves. You seem to have the negative population with you because I did get compliments for my play style even from other thieves

My toughts are play what you like if it’s for fun for you do not be pushed around into this zerker meta. Choose do not let anyone choose for you I like pvp and when someone ask me why I play p/d I said someone has to play condition thief, d/d is for pve and I’m having fun. Don’t feel pressured to play a harder build just to prove your self everyone has a build they prefer.

Everyone prefers fighting a simple power build look on how many in pvp or www don’t have cleansing, some hate on AI,tank,escapers and support it’s just funny being different than the average person. They rather have a glass canon thief 2-shot them then a thief lasting against them. They get tired and gets funny from me lol.

The choice is yours: Play or be played?

Honestly, a lot of heavy condition builds are considered cheese. But don’t take crap from other players, play what YOU want. Play what YOU think is fun, no matter what.

I generally avoid accusing people of running “cheesy” builds, but P/D thieves are probably the ones which grind my gears the most (or really the only build that does).

It’s not the conditions. I don’t pay any mind to people who run condition builds, I dont see the fuss people make over it, so it’s not that. The problem I have is I don’t understand what possible build counters P/D on either of my 2 main classes (ranger and mesmer). Stealth is such a strong mechanic that really only works at all because mesmers have surprising little access to it (~every 12s even with with both CD reduction traits + one time uses such as elite), and because most thieves, even if they stealth spam, are ultimately going to have to come to you to do damage. This knowledge that a Dagger or Sword thief will come to you eventually gives people a fair chance to predict and counter a thief even if they are stealth 90% of the fight. The problem with a P/D thief is there is no counter.. they could be anywhere in a 900 radius around you, you cant evade the sneak attack because if you do they arent revealed, there’s simply nothing you can do to prevent the sneak attack. It’s annoying.

For other classes the counter I am sure if to evade CnD, which limits the thief to having very few stealth options (especially if using vemons), but as I said, since I main ranger and mesmer a good thief will never even try CnD off me as soon as they see I can dodge it and they will go straight for the pet and clones, which I cant prevent.

So ultimately, regardless of my build, I am left in a situation where I cant stop them stealthing every 3-4s, I cant stop the sneak attack from loading me with 6-7 bleeds + potential venoms, and I cant predict where they will attack me from like a melee-thief meaning I cant effectively fight back before they CnD off my minions again. All thats really left is stacking insane levels of condition removal to prolong the fight, but thats not actually a counter measure, just a stall method.

I have a thief and play it a little, but I couldnt really say it P/D is really a super easy-mode build or not. I just think at the moment it has too few counters because the thief can spam stealth like any thief but attack from range like a mesmer. They have the strongest aspects of both stealth classes but none of the weaknesses, and it is a problem.

All that said though.. I dont blame you the player for using it. I blame ANet for poor balancing.. so don’t let other peoples opinion of your build choice get you down.

Is it more cheese than all the other cheesy things in this game? Nah not really, your opponents are just annoyed because your kills are drawn out, tactical, and clearly expose your opponents build flaws and the flaws in their playstyle more so than d/p, or even s/d for that matter.

Personally as a zerker guard, bunker guard and roaming d/p thief I would much prefer to fight you over the s/d builds that are extremely difficult to take down at the moment (these fights stalemate 90% of the time for me), and I would still prefer to fight any thief build over a well set up turret engi 1v1 on a point, or a PU mesmer or a Necro MM.

Cheese is relative in this game. I would say in terms of spvp the AI builds are a little too cheesy at the moment, but only minor changes are needed.

TrOtskY.5927:

Personally as a zerker guard, bunker guard and roaming d/p thief I would much prefer to fight you over the s/d builds that are extremely difficult to take down at the moment (these fights stalemate 90% of the time for me), and I would still prefer to fight any thief build over a well set up turret engi 1v1 on a point, or a PU mesmer or a Necro MM.

One of the most difficult 1v1’s for D/D and P/D thieves so I’m not wondering why.

However I find P/D as one of the easiest thief builds to learn, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a high skill ceiling though, it’s just easy to do relatively well with in fights, even when outnumbered, being really good at P/D makes you pretty much a god mode troll unless you fight outnumbered against hardcounters.

Only inexperienced or bad players will bother to invite you to a party just to call your build “cheese”. Every class/build has a counter, and some people don’t know how to deal with certain classes/builds or don’t realize that their current class/build simply cannot match up against yours. One time in WvW I was accused of “cheese” when I beat someone 1v1 with my staff ele by FGS rushing him to death (staff ele has to be one of the easiest classes to 1v1).

P/D thief is just one of those builds that is easy to pick up. Mastering any build is tricky, because mastery requires you to not only know how to play your class effectively, but to know how other classes work and can be used to counter you. P/D is no exception.

I absolutely hate fighting decent P/D thieves on my warrior because my condition cleansing relies on my ability to land Earthshaker successfully, which is hard to reliably do against someone who is constantly going into stealth and zigzagging around. Bad P/D thieves I can usually more reliably hit them in stealth because I can guess exactly where they are. Difference in ability, combined with a certain build, makes or breaks the fight. On my guardian, however, I know that the fight will always go one of two ways: 1) I will kill the P/D thief, because he is bad or got sloppy; 2) It will stalemate.

Regardless, inviting someone to your party just to call their build cheese is the surest sign of a bad player, IMHO.

RantOn

Define “Cheese”. I play d/d and beat lots of condi p/d thieves, its not impossible O.o

The problem with cheese is that it’s different to each player. d/p is cheese to one player, and not cheese to another. This leads to the conclusion that cheese is defined as whatever a player cannot beat.

When you lose, you have more or less 3 options to choose from:
1. Blame it on something (lag, my keyboard died, a wild racoon attacked me, etc)
2. Blame the other person’s build and call them cheese
3. Own up to it, admit that you made mistakes, learn from them, and improve

More players need to choose option 3 because most players choose option 1 or 2.

Final advice, play what you love most and have the most fun with, don’t care about what other players say about it. If I listened to every player that called d/d the weakest weapon set in the game, I’d probably be maining d/p. I guess the fun part is just proving em wrong (;

RantOff

Actually I hate to play with p/d because of one the heaviest weakness in www – you can’t chase people. We thieves , like no one else can understand how important to run from fights where you can’t win. Just run from that thief and problem solved. Others classes should feel for us too, when you can’t beat a guy just because he’s an engi. Get used to it, because that’s how we feel since release.

People call it cheese cause it wins, and if you beat them you must obviously be using a cheese build.

/sarcasm off. =p

There is nothing truly cheesy in the game (AoE-cap/downed-rezzing/other stuff aside, closest thing is probably Dire or Supply Crate, but those are just strong), it’s more just people not liking the odds being stacked against them. I also play D/D on my Thief and I have a harder time with good burst Meditation Guardians compared to anything else — these guys are a joke for condition classes and not very group friendly.

My point being with the above example, as others have said, is that what is difficult to fight for some is not a problem for others, but it is frustrating (for me sometimes too, I’ll admit) when you’re clearly losing because of a build being played by someone who is playing it sloppy — but you have to know that you probably could have done something differently too and taken advantage of them playing sloppy.

At the same time, you have to realize that every weapon set or build will have its counters of some sort and have to accept that you can’t be the best at everything all in one combination of weapon sets or build — if you don’t want to change either of these, then there’s only one option: get/play better.

Everything I said is from a 1v1 perspective but can also be translated to a group mentality.

What the Thorp said ^

In a multiplayer game, no one build can be the best against every other build. Each one has it’s own weakness.

so funny. when i post my p/d videos some of this community call it cheesy even when i put outnumbered situation…
they explain it cheesy because its the most easiest playstyle atm. so what about other class build …
conclusion every class has cheesy build

i play condi thief p/d long time and took it to extream with full venoms which made me more experience in cnd which is my only escape tool

now as i turn to p/d power and from 12 fights i had against p/d condi i won 10. why because i dodge thier sneak and unticipate when they gonna use venom so 80% i was right.
ppl dont dodge and w8 for you to attack them in the face so they can burst you easily
this is thier mistake
if i fight good guardian its gonna be long fight if he’s smart as his block prevent me to cnd, also mesmer if hiding behind his clons, and ranger on his pet. so many time my cnd got stuck in the ally and not the enemy.
yes p/d condi is hard to counter but doable. like pu mesmer, signet warrior, d/d ele, torret engi etc

pvp warrior go zerk and want you to stand for easy kill… dont

so play and kill and punish them

Thanks so much for all the input guys! I think I’m beginning to understand all of this a little bit better now. I believe I’m going to stick to P/D because I find it insanely fun, and because I’ve already spent loads of laurels on ascended gear. However, I think I may blow some WvW badges on an alternative D/D build just so I can reassure myself that I’m not some punk relying on cheese mechanics. Haha I appreciate the thoughts everyone! If anyone has more to add, please do!

It’s cheese and I love playing it now. It took me forever to figure out how to deal with P/D thieves with my mesmer, and it takes a PU build just to counter a thief and make him back off.

Now that I’m playing a thief I’m starting to wonder if I was just meeting some really bad thieves. I’m enjoying roaming again and I don’t have to run at the first sight of a hammer warrior.

Being unbiased, one can state the simple undeniable facts of strength versus condition builds:

- Condition builds rely on one stat to deal damage.
- Strength builds require the focus of three stats to deal damage.

From the two points above, one can see that conditions have more room to invest in survivability while retaining a large amount of damage, opposed to our strength based brethren. Differentiating the tactics that are used between both builds, p/d conditions retain high amounts of initiative while creating gaps between them and their enemy at will. Couple this with the high defenses that p/d conditions typically maintain, and you will have a very tough opponent. Other power builds typically invest in all damage, or damage and some defense. Their initiative pool is typically harder to maintain in most cases, and closing gaps between them and the enemy is crucial.

IMO if conditions where dependent on multiple stats just like power builds were, I feel that would be balanced and acceptable into our community. Until then, its undeniable that condition p/d is easier to play. There is much less risk involved if you’re always creating gaps that inflict damage, and have room in you’re build to maximize toughness and maintain high hp pools.

Condi builds still need a bit more survivability than power since condi is dot.

Someone posted a great idea in some other thread: remove +/- condi duration food or make the global condi duration food in line with single condi duration foods. That would be like +/- 10% . And add a new gear stat to the game with condi duration, which would essentially be power glass equivalent.

That would allow condi players build either safer or more dmg oriented builds.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Condi builds still need a bit more survivability than power since condi is dot.

Someone posted a great idea in some other thread: remove +/- condi duration food or make the global condi duration food in line with single condi duration foods. That would be like +/- 10% . And add a new gear stat to the game with condi duration, which would essentially be power glass equivalent.

That would allow condi players build either safer or more dmg oriented builds.

i think the time anet will do it the meta will move directly to power again
condition dmg to be effective need both dmg and duration. with the runes and food which decrease up to 60% the duration and also some powerful skills with add 33% like guardian have this is the reason you here groups dont look for condition dmg rather direct dmg as conditions get cleanse easily
in roaming and small group if enemy wont take 1 skill that remove conditions it his fualt.

so i might suggest dont touch condition rather buff the power again

The “meta” would change most definitely as everyone looking for ez mode would look elsewhere.

The change would reduce the -% condi duration people can currently stack as well. Right now condi build without +% food won’t scratch anyone who uses -%.

Condi dmg + condi duration + vitality or toughness is the gear stat suggested. It would allow condi players build for more condi duration than what power builds would be able to stack with 20% from runes/10% from adjusted food. In exchange for some survivability. That’s why most power players consider condi builds cheese, high survivability, high condi dmg.

If power gets buffed, people will be able to 1 shot squishies again.

the balance should be simple
risk versus reward

the more cirect dmg you get the less vitality and tougness you got
the more condition dmg the less vitality and tougness you should have
this is why condition duration trait goes with power as they want you to split your decision making between the two. but alas condition duration above 50% is not very demandable right now
if you have less condition duration rune the less vitality/toughness it should bring you

so if they delete the +duration food and switch the condition duration trait with condition dmg it will make sense to all classes

The main reason why P/D is cheese is its ability to apply multiple stacks and multiple kind of conditions in almost an instant.

Example:
Pre-cast CnD → Steal (poison) → CnD (vulnerability) → Sneak Attack (bleed) → Shadow Strike (toment)

Trait for Cloaked in Shadow to add blindness to CnD. Trait for Shadow’s Embrace and Rejuvenation to counter a fellow condition build. Trait for Bewildering Ambush to add Confusion to Steal. Then just auto-attack to maintain bleeding.

By that time, your target have multiple stacks and multiple kind of conditions in practically two skills.

i dont agree it is only two skill and if you use only 2 of them you will have 5 stack of bleeding (500 dps) 2 torment (200-400 dps) poison (150 dps) and 5 confusion (1000 dps)

so smart play will dodge and get maybe 1-2 bleed which make the dps probably 1500 if using skills so lets say its around 750 dps which is very low

i think pd is strong because with venom which put 3 more torment and also ppl cleanse too early but i agree that the longer the fight the advantage is for the condition base combine with good escape tool as stealth .

condi necro is much dangerous but have less escape tools

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The main reason why P/D is cheese is its ability to apply multiple stacks and multiple kind of conditions in almost an instant.

Example:
Pre-cast CnD -> Steal (poison) -> CnD (vulnerability) -> Sneak Attack (bleed) -> Shadow Strike (toment)

Trait for Cloaked in Shadow to add blindness to CnD. Trait for Shadow’s Embrace and Rejuvenation to counter a fellow condition build. Trait for Bewildering Ambush to add Confusion to Steal. Then just auto-attack to maintain bleeding.

By that time, your target have multiple stacks and multiple kind of conditions in practically two skills.

It sounds to me like you have a problem with condition builds in general, and not just P/D thief.

messiah.1908:

i dont agree it is only two skill and if you use only 2 of them you will have 5 stack of bleeding (500 dps) 2 torment (200-400 dps) poison (150 dps) and 5 confusion (1000 dps)

so smart play will dodge and get maybe 1-2 bleed which make the dps probably 1500 if using skills so lets say its around 750 dps which is very low

The issue is the Thief’s ability to apply those conditions in almost an instant and repeat again sooner than any condition removal skills.

The only profession that is literally immune to conditions is a DS Ele.

i think pd is strong because with venom which put 3 more torment and also ppl cleanse too early but i agree that the longer the fight the advantage is for the condition base combine with good escape tool as stealth .

Might stacks is worst than venom because it applies to all kind of conditions, not just one.

condi necro is much dangerous but have less escape tools

I agree, it’s as it should be. The only difference is, condi necro cannot apply conditions as fast as Thieves can.

MightyMicah.7451:

It sounds to me like you have a problem with condition builds in general, and not just P/D thief.

I have no problem with the condition builds in any shape or form since I know how to handle myself. I’m simply stating the fact about P/D Thieves since I’ve used it myself in the past. The near instant application of conditions is what causes discomfort to others.

Game is balances around sPvP so condi thiefs 1v1 people in WvW is not something arena net cares about. Those thiefs are really useless in coordinated sPvP and people dont like them because you could do so much more with a decent sPvP spec.

Cheese is such a stupid statement, every spec/class has his downside. Im running a fresh air ele in sPvP right now and can literaly 2/3 shot people with it from 900 range. Is it cheese? No because they usually die because they didnt even bother to look behind them and when im out of position I will die in 3 hits too. The only thing balance wise that kittenes me off right now are warriors in WvW :/ tankiness, damage and roaming. All in one spec.

long time condi thief here. i actually never get yelled at in game. i use 2/0/2/4/6 with withdraw, roll for init, bp, and shadow step, though. so i think people dont yell at me cus im a bit more in their face, and less in stealth. when i do stealth i do it simply to pop sneak attack.

I liked when people thought d/d was super easy and would join my stream to tell me. Such rookies, do what you want don’t let others limit you. Gw2 is so simple so easy.