Guild Wars 2

After my small guild of friends and I spent four grueling hours in AC on our level 30-40 characters, I concluded that I need to learn more about combo fields. Since I only play an engineer, ankittenhe theorycrafter for the group, I thought I’d ask about those skills since I am the most familiar with them. At the moment I’m just asking about PvE, may get to PvP some day.

1. Is there some way to use Smoke Bomb, a Combo Field Blind and Stealth, to more effectively single pull critters, say by shooting Projectile Finishers through it?

2. Smoke Bomb lasts about 5 seconds. Does the “makes the first attack miss” text mean that if a foe attacks twice in that time, the second one will hit as normal?

3. I’m not clear on what a blast finisher does in the field. If SB blinds and stealths for 5 seconds, how does doing a blast finisher change that? Does it add fresh duration or something?

4. How would SB stack with something like Grenades #3 (flash grenade), which is also an AoE blind lasting about 5 seconds but not a combo field? If I do a Grenade #3 and Smoke Bomb two seconds later, do I get 7 seconds total Blind (not stacking) or 8 seconds (duration stacks)? Is there a difference if I do them in the other order?

Blind stacks duration, but always drops after one attack. Smoke bomb continuously reapplies blind (once per second IIRC). It doesn’t stealth you on its own, just blind. Using a blast finisher on it will stealth anyone in the field.

You used to be able to use smoke bomb + mines to stealth everyone in the field for like 15+ seconds, which let you skip tons of content easily. Since the nerf it’s hard to pile on enough blast finishers to make the stealth last long enough to skip anything of note.

First of: this will help

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combos

I think, not sure, that you have a misconception on what smoke bomb does.
You keep mentioning it stealths, which it doesn’t. Not wihtout using the correct finisher in it.
By itself it only blinds, as explained in the post above.

I’ll try to go over your points one by one, correct me if i misunderstand you at any point.

1. Smoke bomb puts the condition ‘blind’ on anyone in the area. It re-applies it so it’s not consumed on the next attack like other blinds (for example the pistol or flamethrower blinds).

When you use a leap finisher (rifle #5) it will stealth you, not by itelf.
When you use a blast finisher (Big old Bomb for example) it will stealth you and all allies in the filed at that moment.

For your question about projectile finishers: as the table I linked shows, it would put a single charge of blindness on each target you hit.
If you hit the target again, the blindness duration will be increased, but will still be gone as soon as the target hits you and misses once.
Unlike the bomb itself it will not re-apply blindness but just lenghten the duration of the condition untill the first use.

2. this is answered in the post above, and in my explanation so far

3. Here the misunderstanding about smoke bomb pops up I think: SB does not give stealth, so the blast finisher does that and not increase duration like you suggest.

4. I’ll go over a possible scenario:
- SB will put a blindness up to start.
- grenades #3 will not add a second blind, since ‘blind’ as a condition stacks in duration. So it will increase the time the condition stays on the target.
- once the target hits, and misses obviously, the condition will be used and gone. Regardless of the time left at that point.
- at this point the grenades #3 will have no more effect
- if this all happened before Smoke Bomb duration is over, you will get another blind on the target simply because SB re-applies blind as was mentioned earlier

My conclusion: using greneades #3 at the start of SB is a waste, using it straight after will give you an extra blind.

I hope i didn’t understand your questions wrong.
And don’t take me for an expert, i might be wrong at some things, but if I am you can be sure other players will come here to correct me.

_if there is anything else, feel free to ask. No guarantee I know the answer, but I will try at least _

Thank you Yushikiro and Kimbald, yes I did have some misconceptions about how these things worked, even after reading the wiki, which is why I asked here.

The thread started a little after mine, “Can we stack stealth time with blast finishers”
discusses other ways to stack stealth from detonating various turrets in Smoke Bomb as well, so that is very timely. You can apparently still get over 10 seconds. If my reading of the wiki is correct, though, attacking in PvE will immediately break stealth, so its mainly useful to sneak past things, not as “in-fight” CC.

So it sounds like one might be able to protect one’s allies using the SB blind by shooting a foe through it, even if the foe is not in the field, so long as you keep applying the Blind faster then the foe shoots at whoever its current target is.

OK, next question, am I correct in interpreting the wiki that if I have a Water field up, for example from Healing Turret, and all my teammates fire off a Blast finisher, all the heals add up?

Also, if I understand it correctly, while Super Elixer S is a combo field, and heals, its combo field is Light so a blast finisher in it provides AoE condition removal, not an additional AoE heal, right?

Finally, do things like the Rifle Turret firing through a combo field inflict the effect, such as a Blind, just like if a player does?

Yeah all blast finisher heals add up from water fields. Although it’s hard to really stack a lot of them with the engi water field since the duration is so short. Elixer gun 5 removes conditions or creates retaliation depending on the type of finisher used.

I don’t know about rifle turret offhand. You have to look at the ability. Only abilities listed as “projectile finisher” will create a combo field effect based on firing through them. I don’t know offhand if rifle turret’s normal shots are projectile finishers, but I kind-of doubt it. Typically normal ranged auto attacks have a 20% chance of being a projectile finisher, so you have to get a lucky roll of the dice to keep up blind just based on firing through a blind field.

Check the sticky on ‘post your build’

Someone in there posted a very creative build to do exactly that: use combo fields to the fullest.
he describes ways to stack stealth duration and such, if you’re really quick.

A shame i can’t remember his name, and can’t go check while writing here.

It was a fun read on a build.

important note on blast finishers for healing in light fields:

the ammount of healing of the finisher is what determines the bonus to the healing, NOT the ammount of + healing of the one putting the field (which would be more logical to me).

I was referring to the build of Ganksinatra ‘stealth bomber engi’ on page 1 of the sticky (over halfway of the page)