Guild Wars 2

I ask because I have seen at least one player almost live in stealth..

Stealths, makes stealth attack, does burst and immediately re-stealths and if they get them down, the thief has time to finish them and escape while in stealth. I watched this happen several times to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. Mu guess is the stealth is going on close to 10 seconds or so.

My thief is in the mid-levels currently and my experience so far is four seconds for max stealth.

Skill: Shadow Refuge

Shadow refuge grants a lot of stealth, and different sources of stealth do in fact stack up to a maximum duration of ten seconds. SR itself (if you don’t attack and remain in the AoE for the duration) can grant that alone, but other ways that are good to extend stealth are using cloak & dagger followed by one or two more cooldown stealths.

This will blow your cooldowns, but it will let you stack up a solid 10 seconds of stealth. Also keep in mind there’s a shadow mastry trait thieves can take that extends all stealth abilities by 1s.

In the case of WvW and sPvP there’s a rendering issue that makes characters sometimes take much longer to render than they should. This is most noticeable on stealthers, who leave view and then need to be rendered again, which can cause an effective increase in stealth, as they are technically unstealthed, but the victim’s client hasn’t unstealthed them yet.

This issue is also responsible for many WvW deaths by ‘phantom zerg’ which literally pops on top of you although it should have been visible from a mile away.

If you’re seeing a theif that remains mostly in stealth, chances are he has an offhand dagger, and has trated pretty heavily in the shadow line to extend his stealth times and gain 2 initiative for each stealth. If you use just cloak and dagger and your 1 skill, and never miss with cloak and dagger, you can keep this up almost indefinately, unstealthing for your steak attack, remaining out of stealth for around 5 seconds, and then using cloak and dagger to get back in stealth again.

I run a pistol/dagger build that does exactly this, and its very rare that I use my stealth cooldowns when I’m not already in stealth for this reason. Often I want the cooldown stealths ready for escapes, so covering the activation with a cloak & dagger stealth is the best way to retreat, as it uses my full stealth duration from cloak and whatever cooldown I’m using.

Shadow refuge is the longest stealth if they stand in it for the full duration. It’s probably bugged since it stacks in duration the longer you’re in the circle and can stealth you for something like 9-10 seconds. If you attack or leave the circle before the 4 second ability ends, then you are unstealthed and cannot stealth again for another 3 seconds.

Shadow refuge is very easy to spot. It’s a huge haunted house looking icon. Otherwise regular stealth is 3 seconds, and 4 seconds if they are specced into shadow arts (a non-dps line).

The only exception is if the thief is really good at timing cloak and dagger. If you precast cloak and dagger before the stealth expires, you can hit a target every 3-4 seconds and basically remain in stealth until your initiative runs out (maybe 5 hits, so 15-20 seconds). However, the damage is very low and if you hit too early you’re stuck out of stealth. It’s more for messing with people, not actually killing anyone.

Shadow Refuge is the longest stationary stealth. Shadow Trap is the longest stealth for any other purpose.

I should have been clear in my original post – it was not shadow refuge he was using which has a distinctive tell.

I evaluated the various builds with a friend who enjoys a more solo experience in WvWvW and seems to me the individual is very good at CnD and probably had good use of Haste as well. My thoughts now is it was someone who lives, breathes and eats PvP and knows how to use their skills in the most advantageous manner to maintain at least the appearance of long term stealth from my client’s point of view.