Guild Wars 2

3 seconds only gives you the option to use a stealth attack. It’s not long enough to escape or get past some powerful monsters or anything like that. Pretty dumb if you ask me. So is there anyway to increase the duration or is that all you get?

I’m no thief pro but, you can combo skills like Black powder (pistol off-hand) and leap finishers (Heartseeker – dagger main hand) or Blackpowder/Smoke screen + Heartseeker/Cluster Bomb (short bow) in order to get into stealth. With the right traits (I think it’s Shadow Arts + Trickery), you can spam them and get up to around 8-10 second stealth I believe? I’m sure someone can correct me. Also, shadow refuge grants stealth for around 15 seconds.

Thieves have a trait: Meld with Shadows
(increases duration of Stealth effects – 3s becomes 4s)

Pro Tip: Read your traits and skills from time to time..

You have shadow refuge which stacks stealth up to 12-16 seconds… You have blind powder (group stealth) and hide in shadows which will stealth you (or increase your current stealth timer) for extra 3-4s, you have smoke screen (and Offhand pistol 5 – black powder) which is smoke field and once you use leap finishers (heartseeker for example) through smoke field you get 3 seconds of personal stealth that is stackable indefinately as long as you have enough initiative to leap and smoke fields on the ground. Same can be done with blast finishers (Cluster bomb or any other blast finisher) for group stealth effect that is also stackable.

Player was able to stay stealthed al the time with dager/pistol and trait line, but it was nerfed. Currently thief can stay permanently stealthed using utility skills.

Sometimes u can stay stealthed almost all the time if u time your “cloack and dagger” skill when u bacome visible. MIght be usefull in WvW.

Tribio.8531:

Thieves have a trait: Meld with Shadows
(increases duration of Stealth effects – 3s becomes 4s)

Pro Tip: Read your traits and skills from time to time..

My thief is currently only level 18 so no traits yet and limited skills. Excuse my noobiness. ;P

Leviathan.7459:

My thief is currently only level 18 so no traits yet and limited skills. Excuse my noobiness. ;P

Hehe, that’s ok.. But no matter what level, you should have seen that there is such a trait (although you can’t take it yet). ;-)

And also, the combo’s posted here by the other posters, they provide very easy access to stealth:
1. Smoke field + Leap (dagger #2) = Stealth
2. Smoke field + Blast (shortbow #2) = AoE stealth
3. ….

You have enough escape mechanisms. Keep a shortbow as your secondary weapon set and just use 5 twice to get away when necessary.

For getting past powerful monsters, you use shadow refuge. If you have a really long area you need to run through (like some high level dungeons), you can start off with smoke screen (another utility spell) and then blast it ~5 times with your shortbow’s 2 spell, which will give you around 9 seconds stealth. When that runs out, you can then pop on SR as well. Combo that with effective dodges, perhaps Shadowstep, and the 5 spell on your shortbow and you can basically run past anything.
And if all that is not enough, you can trait into Shadow Arts to increase those stealth times.

The 5 spell on d/d is really mainly just for activating stealth attack

Leviathan.7459:

My thief is currently only level 18 so no traits yet and limited skills. Excuse my noobiness. ;P

Leviathan, stealth duration stacks. So if you use cloak and dagger, then use hide in shadows, you will get a total of 6 seconds of stealth. If you trait 3 points into the shadow arts line, that 6 seconds turns to 8. The longest stack being from shadow refuge with (I think) 15 seconds. Regardless, it doesn’t matter.

What DOES matter is that you should be maximizing your mobility whenever you’re in stealth: this should be used aggressively and defensively. Thankfully thieves have access to many teleports. Using teleports while you are in stealth allows you to move across vast distances un-noticed; i.e. maximizing your mobility and distance traveled in the shortest amount of time possible.

Leviathan.7459:

3 seconds only gives you the option to use a stealth attack. It’s not long enough to escape or get past some powerful monsters or anything like that. Pretty dumb if you ask me. So is there anyway to increase the duration or is that all you get?

Your problem is not because stealth is too short, you’re just too slow to cover the distance of your escape.

Bring a shortbow and use Infiltrator’s Arrow to get out of danger while in stealth.

Problem solved.