Guild Wars 2

HI i am new here and decided straight away to choose the thief because its the same type of class I’ve always played. I’ve only just started but i noticed one thing the stealth doesn’t work in the same way as other games have. The stealth seems to come off abilities which activate a short burst of stealth which in turn gives the thief chance to pull off some burst. (also certain ones removing debuffs). Something i am wondering is why is their no Activate stealth button out of combat and whats the longest possible chain to stay in stealth.

You can stealth out of combat with Hide in Shadows, Shadow Refuge, or Blinding Powder. You could also combo Black Powder and Heartseeker/Cluster Bomb. None of those require entering combat. You can chain stealth indefinitely provided you have the initiative.

You can maintain a lot of stealth with 3 points into shadow arts, having offhand pistol, shadow refuge, blinding powder, and either shortbow or dagger.

You can only have 5 stacks of stealth at once, there is no indicator for the number of currently active stealth stacks on you.

Shadow Refuge will give you the maximum stealth possible all at once.

Blackpowder from offhand pistol can be combined with Blast Finishers and Leap finishers to gain stealth. Skills with these combo finishers are:

• Blinding Powder – Utility
• Heartseeker – Dagger mainhand
• Cluster Bomb – Shortbow

Also Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge are Deceptions type utilities, so you can take the master of deception trait in shadow arts to reduce the recharge on those skills.

The Thief in Gw2 does not operate like the stealth classes in other games you are probably used to. That being said, the Thief’s stealth mechanics in Gw2 are amazing and provide for some great combos in PvP and PvE