Guild Wars 2

Greetings,

I’ve spent a significant amount of time researching and practicing my smoke + blast finisher combo rotation to get the longest amount of time out of area stealth effect. I’ve personally talked to/seen two other engis that were able to get 13s+ area stealth out of their rotation, and was so impressed I have been trying to reproduce it. I’ve combed the GW2 forums, GW Guru, etc, and googled the subject. I’ve found many general references but never any specific rotation details. I found a you tube video demonstrating the mega stealth technique but it didn’t detail the steps. I watched the video multiple times while pausing/rewinding to document the steps but I am still unable to reproduce. I can get about 8s of stealth currently, but from what I’ve read and seen I expect I should be able to get ~13-18s and I’m not even close.

Here’s what I’m doing currently:

Deploy Flame Turret
Equip Bomb Kit
Cast Big Ol Bomb
Cast Smoke Bomb (Smoke Combo Field)
Detonate Flame Turret (Blast Finisher)
(BOB detonates for Blast Finisher)
Cast Throw Mine
Detonate Mine (Blast Finisher)
Drop Supply Crate (Blast Finisher)
Unequip Bomb Kit
Cast Magnetic Shield
Cast Magnetic Inversion (Blast Finisher)

If I time it right, I can get all blast finishers to go off within the 4s time frame of smoke bomb combo field. Each finisher, from what I understand, should stack 3s of area stealth. 5 finishers = 15 seconds.. and lets say it takes the full 4s to get it all done.. that means when all is said and done I should have about 11s of area stealth to play with based on this rotation. But I’m only seeing 7s when I immediately hover over the stealth icon ( assuming it takes a sec for me to do the hovering, I am assuming I’m getting about 8-9s of stealth after the ~4s cast time) which means I’m not getting more than about 11s total out of my rotation.

Does anyone have any input on how I can improve on this? Am I going about it the wrong way? Are my expectations appropriate? Can anyone get 13-18s as of the last update? And if so, would you be so kind as to document current steps to reproduce?

Any help is greatly appreciated..

Cheers-
Doquiel

Maybe you can swap bomb kit for thumper turret and use flame turrets smoke field for the combo field, thumper turret should have a blast finisher on the utility skill before you drop it, one when you overcharge it and one when you explode it.

Keep it mind that this wont work if the flame turret isn’t near some enemies.

I’m pretty sure this all happened in previous patches, when the ‘throw mine’ toolbelt skill still used to create 6 blast finishers.

So I’m afraid it’s no longer possible to do this, but keep up the great work. More people should do theorycrafting like this.

Thanks for the input guys!

Can’t seem to use flame turret smoke field, it seems to work by pulsing? It doesn’t seem to have the same combo field functionality that Smoke Bomb does..

I Recieved some feedback (props to Burrage with CRFT and Are), swapped out flame turret for thumper turret in rotation to get a net of two more blast finishers. Here’s my current rotation in detail, including keystrokes:

OH: Shield

Skills:
(7) Thumper Turret
(8) Bomb Kit
(9) Throw Mine
(0) Supply Drop

Rotation:
(8) Equip Bomb Kit
(F3) Cast Big Ol Bomb
(4) Cast Smoke Bomb (4s combo field)
(F2) Shockwave (finisher) (.25s cast time)
(7) Cast Thumper Turret (.5s cast time)
(7) Cast Thump (finisher)
(F2) Detonate ThumperTurret (finisher)
(9) Throw Mine (.5s cast time)
(9) Detonate Mine (finisher)
(0) Supply Crate (finisher) (1s cast time)
(8) Unequip Bomb Kit
(4) Magnetic Shield
(4) Magnetic Inversion (finisher)

The only cast times that aren’t ‘instant’ total up to 2.25s. That leaves me approx 1.75s for 6 actions. Assuming it takes me .25s for each action, theoretically I can get through this rotation with approx .25s to spare (lol) and 6 finishers at 3s stealth stacking each =18s.. minus about 4s for total field time.. should give me about 14s to play with. That seems better than the ~8s I’m getting now. Still practicing it.. Still welcome any input.

P.S. Yeah I know this doesn’t give me much in the way of useable functionality, I’m just theory crafting at the moment. i would also like to be able to do this for certain specific situations where I just want to evade a large group of mobs and would re-skill once I got where I was going. Or similar situation.. So don’t be hatin’

I just remembered we have the stealth on immobilize as well (inventions traits) what if we could find an item that immobilizes us for a few seconds. Karma vendors usually sell those kinds of items.

Lay the Thumper Down and Mine down first then drop the fields on top of them so you don’t have to spend that extra time laying them down in the middle of rotation.

@Mints – that might work but just for the engi, and isn’t stealth it’s invisibility.. so it wouldn’t stack. looking for ways to stack area stealth to be able to stealth a group, say in a dungeon run to skip trash mobs or something like that.

@Mints – or maybe stealth a group in wvw for a portal bomb maneuver, etc..

@ cCriSPeH – If I lay down the the thumper i lose the shockwave finisher, same with throw mine

Well, one thing you can do is get a thief friend. (one that understands that you can do more than heartseeker) Get him to pick up a shortbow, as shortbow has a spammable blast finisher and let him cast it a few times in your smoke field. Yes, it isn’t as simple as your combo, as it requires two players, but it is very effective.

It’s true that thieves have shadow refuge, but that’s on a big cooldown and not every thief uses it, however a lot of thieves carry a shortbow with them.

It surprises me how often we take the very difficult approach to a problem, when the answer is right in front of us. Teamwork can get a lot of things done in guild wars. A class that many people consider bad (engineer) and a class that many players consider no-skill button mashing (thief), ignore these people btw, can still do tricks like this and I’m sure they can pull off way more impressive things if you take your time to think about it.

You can use the toolbelt immediately after detonating the turret. I like this idea, I wonder if a theif used refuge at the same time it would stack stealth, also getting everyone else to use blast finishers. Is there a max you can stack stealth? I could see skipping like 90% of the dredge fractal by being stealthed half the time

I don’t like the idea of using the elite for an extra Blast Finisher. Use Healing Turret instead. Lay it down first so its water field can come up and disappear.
Heal Turret, Thumper Turret, Mine, Big Ol Bomb(1), Overcharge Thumper(1), Smoke Bomb. Detonate your turrets and mine(3) and finish with thumper’s toolbelt Shockwave(1). If the field persists you can leap finisher with your Rifle(1).
That’s seven triggers.

I’ve done 18 seconds…once (3 turrets, BOB, Mag Inv, and supply crate). Most of the time I get 15. CrisPeH’s suggestion of putting detonate mine down before the bombs is right. The healing turret can also be detonated for a blast finisher can’t it? You can combo off the Flame Turret overcharge, but only in combat. The field doesn’t activate outside of combat.

Since the turrets can be detonated without delay, the problem you’re having is most likely the amount of time it takes to cast Supply Crate. You have to aim the ground-targetted AoE, wait for the cast bar, then wait for everything to drop out of the sky. That whole process seems to take around 2 seconds. At that point you still have the Magnetic Inversion to do.

Now that I think about it, that was when smoke bomb pulsed once a second for 3 seconds, instead of once every 2 seconds for 4 seconds. It might be easier now.

@ Mints – yes, I had considered the combinations of blast finishers that were available with other classes. My goal with this was to try to generate the longest amount of area stealth based solely on engineer abilities. So comboing with a thief is not the answer I was looking for. Interesting perspective tho.

@ Linc – Ill look into the toolbelt, not sure exactly what you’re referring to here. Yes I believe the thief’s Shadow Refuge area stealth would stack, to a point. Stealth stacking has a cap.

@ Nilix – healing turret no longer provides blast finisher, not sure when that changed. I tested it many times and it doesn’t work any more. I’ll check out your other rotation info tho, thank you.

@ Eviator – healing turret doesn’t work as blast finisher. Interesting info on the flame turret overcharge, but it is really useless for this application as I am looking to do this out of combat. As for the suggestion of putting detonate mine down before the smoke bomb, again that negates the blast finisher for deploying the mine, not sure what you mean by ‘suggestion … is right’, if you could elaborate that would be great. As for you having done 18s, that’s great news, unfortunately all you do is describe the blast finishers and not the rotation you used. I am aware of the blast finishers that are available, what I’m looking for is detailed rotation information for a rotation that works, and would proved the 18s you suggest you’re able to provide.

doquiel.5371:

@ Mints – yes, I had considered the combinations of blast finishers that were available with other classes. My goal with this was to try to generate the longest amount of area stealth based solely on engineer abilities. So comboing with a thief is not the answer I was looking for. Interesting perspective tho.

@ Linc – Ill look into the toolbelt, not sure exactly what you’re referring to here. Yes I believe the thief’s Shadow Refuge area stealth would stack, to a point. Stealth stacking has a cap.

@ Nilix – healing turret no longer provides blast finisher, not sure when that changed. I tested it many times and it doesn’t work any more. I’ll check out your other rotation info tho, thank you.

@ Eviator – healing turret doesn’t work as blast finisher. Interesting info on the flame turret overcharge, but it is really useless for this application as I am looking to do this out of combat. As for the suggestion of putting detonate mine down before the smoke bomb, again that negates the blast finisher for deploying the mine, not sure what you mean by ‘suggestion … is right’, if you could elaborate that would be great. As for you having done 18s, that’s great news, unfortunately all you do is describe the blast finishers and not the rotation you used. I am aware of the blast finishers that are available, what I’m looking for is detailed rotation information for a rotation that works, and would proved the 18s you suggest you’re able to provide.

I just tested the healing turret in game and it worked like it should… not sure what you are doing wrong. It gave me area stealth. I usually use it for the area heal.

The blast finisher from mine comes when you detonate it not when you throw it down.
Thumper Turrets blast finisher is from the overcharge attack.

You can lay down the thumper and mine in the same spot then put a field over the top of them and detonate for the finishers.
So you can have these laid down first so you dont have to cast them while the smoke bomb is up.
Also since the Thumper does not attack unless enemies are nearby the overcharge will be instant.

doquiel.5371:

@ Eviator – healing turret doesn’t work as blast finisher. Interesting info on the flame turret overcharge, but it is really useless for this application as I am looking to do this out of combat. As for the suggestion of putting detonate mine down before the smoke bomb, again that negates the blast finisher for deploying the mine, not sure what you mean by ‘suggestion … is right’, if you could elaborate that would be great. As for you having done 18s, that’s great news, unfortunately all you do is describe the blast finishers and not the rotation you used. I am aware of the blast finishers that are available, what I’m looking for is detailed rotation information for a rotation that works, and would proved the 18s you suggest you’re able to provide.

I also didn’t do too much with the flame turret after I figured this, because my tests were also out of combat. I actually never tried it with the mine, turrets always seemed faster to me because you could set it up beforehand. Throw mine is a blast finisher? Or just the Detonate mine?

Here was my rotation:

Setup:
6: Deploy healing turret
7: Deploy rifle turret
8: Deploy rocket turret
9: Switch to bomb kit

Timed preparation:
F4: Drop Big ’Ol Bomb
4: Drop Smoke Bomb
~: Switch to Pistol/Shield
0: Enable ground-targetted AoE for supply crate

After smoke bomb goes off:
Big ’Ol Bomb goes off (1 blast)
0: Drop supply crate (1 blast)
F1+F2+F3: Trigger turret detonations (3 blasts)
4+4: Magnetic inversion (1 blast)

6-7-8-9-F4-4-~-0-0-F1-F2-F3-4-4

I like how we have to dedicate our entire build and play Bach to achieve the same thing other class can do with an single non-traited ability.

Well, Stealth has a 14 seconds cap and seems to stack duration horribly. Thief’s SR for example, it pulses 5 times with 3s Stealth each. But nope, you only have 10s left by the time it ends.
So I guess you could deduct 1s from every stealth you stack to get a more accurate duration.

Did I mention that whenever I try to stack stealth as Engi I always hit INVISIBLE KITTENS and get put in combat+revealed?

so i guess i misunderstood the healing turret suggestion, detonate does work. duh. thank you all for you input this helps alot, I’m able to get up to about 14s now, with your suggestions, which is a big increase from 7-8s! cheers and thanks again!