Guild Wars 2

There’s a kind of thief I’ve run into frequently in WvW that goes like this:
1. Stealth slightly outside my range
2. Hits me and doesn’t break stealth
3. Goto 2

I play a mesmer, and this is still counterable*, but I’d thought this wasn’t possible. My assumption is that there’s a build that recovers initiative fast enough to just hit cloak and dagger right as it would leave stealth over and over. Is that actually possible? My impression is that this build is mostly used to farm Dolyaks (who don’t even react when attacked like this).

*To counter as a mesmer:
1. Take max illusions trait to count self in shatters.
2. Time when they’ll hit you
3. Dodge, hit f4, then f3, then moa morph.
4. Mirror images, Clone, F2, then fight and watch them kill themselves with 10 stacks of confusion.

Sounds like a bug, as if you hit anyone while stealthed it should give you the 3 second debuff (Revealed) he could also be using black powder and heartseeker
(Smoke field +leap= stealth) and if the heartseeker hits he will still remain stealthed. As for spamming cloak and dagger would not work as he still would receive Revealed.

I should explain that I do see the “poof” that normally accompanies a thief entering stealth when I get hit. I’ve been assuming this is a matter of hitting the skill the moment stealth ends so there’s never a rendered frame where he’s visible, but it’s still technically “after” stealth has ended. I gather that’s not doable?

There’s an entire guild (MMAC) that seems to run nothing but whatever this build is.

He can hit you with heartseeker at best(that’s 9 initiative gone) but keeping it would be hard and he would have to hit black powder once his stealth ended which is most likely the “Poof” you hear, thieves do have some traits in the shadow arts branch that could facilitate this, (1 more second of stealth, regen initiative faster during stealth ) and he has to let his stealth run out before he can hit another black powder (this would be used to bypass the revealed effect so as opposed to waiting 3s to restealth he only waits 0.5)

For those trying to count the initiative wasted, remember there’s a trait that gives you 2 initiative whenever you enter stealth. This means C&D only costs 3 (if it costs 5, can’t remember).
But I’ve never heard of what you’re talking about. Exiting stealth with an attack makes you unable to stealth again for a few seconds. The only perma-stealth I know of is stacking lots of stealth abilities to get around 25s of stealth in one go.

Its hard to do timing wise but it can be done up to 2minutes or more. The guys must have super quick fingers.