Guild Wars 2

Just a quick question.

What is the max stealth duration that can be achieved with a group of thieves blasting a smoke field? Is there a max cap on stealth duration?

A group? Endless if timed well enough. I think Stealth caps at 13 seconds (could be 14s don’t quite remember) So if thief #1 drops his smoke field and cluster bombs to the cap time, then are 2-3s left thief #2 repeats. Realistically you could stay stay this way with 2 thieves but adding in #3 and #4 thief would make this very easy.

A well organized 3 thief group could really never leave stealth. Though your speed while running around would be very limited as you have to stop and restack stealth every 10 or so second.

If I remember correctly the stealth hard cap on duration was around 25 seconds

That may be so, I haven’t tried this in a long! time. My post was what a thief friend and I used to do quite a few months back so I could have been changed. Unless less some one wants to give it a quick test, I’ll do it when I get home.

Dasorine.1964:

If I remember correctly the stealth hard cap on duration was around 25 seconds

Used to be, was reduced a while back to 14s (think it was 14). But it can be reapplied indefinitely. In other words you won’t just drop out of stealth after 14s if you keep reapplying.

Ahh fair enough outside of stacking 2 shadow refuges to skip twilight arbour last year I’ve never really bothered with a long duration stealth

nobody is dumb enough to go up to 20 seconds. there is no cap in my opinion bc of that fact. you can forever invis but u lose all your intiative doing so and have to spec for it. helpful but not really killer. workswell in d/p i guess but also having 14k hp sux in wvw. u die. dont care about yisish videos. they are almost 100% irrelevant. 2 v 1s and 3 v 1s have no bearing on wvw. no points. and doesnt help anyone by winning these. hence thief defense is almost non existent . sure they can survive zergs sometimes. but they also dont put a hurtin on them either. and surviving doesnt help anyone but yourself from walking back 25 secs or less :P

Dasorine.1964:

Ahh fair enough outside of stacking 2 shadow refuges to skip twilight arbour last year I’ve never really bothered with a long duration stealth

^^^^ See? ^^^^ exactly what he said.

There was in fact no cap at one point and you could stack duration indefinitely. Certain PvP teams would utilize a smoke field and blast finishers at the beginning of a match to get over 1 minute in duration for purposes of bypassing the enemy to get to a point.

Travlane, If your trying to do it by your self, yes you would have to spec for it I guess but in the OP he states a group. So if thats the case 3 thieves could use smoke screen and short bow and rotate. 2 thieves could do it if they trait Master of Deception.

Also I might be a bias because I’m a bit of a Yisish fan boy but his 1vgroups and zerg surfing does more then you think. Where its not game changing, if 1 thief is keeping 3+ people from doing anything useful for long amounts of time, hes helping his server. Being able to survive in a zerg is also helpful because your able to add confusion with in the zerg. If they are on the move you’ll easily stop 3-5 of them to try and kill you, thus stringing out the zerg a bit. Like I said its not game changing and won’t win the match for you, but its not for nothing.

You can get very close to permanent stealth on your own. Use Cluster Bomb together with Smoke Screen. Wait until the stealth has run out, then drop Shadow Refuge on yourself. After the stealth from Shadow Refuge has run out, your Smoke Screen should be ready to use again. If Smoke Screen and Shadow Refuge are both recharging, then use Cloak and Dagger, Hide in Shadows, and Shadow Trap, in between.

Needless to say, if you have two Thieves, you can easily get permanent stealth.

Yes, because nobody will be able to see the thieves many combo fields/cluster bombs/houses.

Might as well just say they arn’t stealthed…

Daecollo.9578:

Yes, because nobody will be able to see the thieves many combo fields/cluster bombs/houses.

Might as well just say they arn’t stealthed…

Why does it matter if anyone sees them? Shadow Refuge has a duration of 4 seconds, and Smoke Screen has a duration of 7 seconds. After that you get around 10 seconds of stealth, from each. You can run very far as a Thief in 10 seconds, with permanent swiftness and shadow stepping.

I assume by permanent swiftness you mean the fleet shadows buff?

Zikory.6871:

Travlane, If your trying to do it by your self, yes you would have to spec for it I guess but in the OP he states a group. So if thats the case 3 thieves could use smoke screen and short bow and rotate. 2 thieves could do it if they trait Master of Deception.

Also I might be a bias because I’m a bit of a Yisish fan boy but his 1vgroups and zerg surfing does more then you think. Where its not game changing, if 1 thief is keeping 3+ people from doing anything useful for long amounts of time, hes helping his server. Being able to survive in a zerg is also helpful because your able to add confusion with in the zerg. If they are on the move you’ll easily stop 3-5 of them to try and kill you, thus stringing out the zerg a bit. Like I said its not game changing and won’t win the match for you, but its not for nothing.

even if they can stay invis forever.. it takes every resource to do so. which isnt causing dmg and u cant cap while invis . also @ yisish videos….yishis is another good thief. really good. cant take that away from him. but the people he was playing were rather…ordinary/lack luster. if u are w good thief its the kind of people we prey on and quick. infact he runs 20 30 20 which is what i run on my s/d similarly.

Dasorine.1964:

I assume by permanent swiftness you mean the fleet shadows buff?

No. I put 15 points in Acrobatics and 15 points in Trickery, and then pick “V gain swiftness when you steal”. Then I use Signet of Agility and use “Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew” to gain more endurance. I can then gain 10 seconds of swiftness from steal, and then follow up with the swiftness from dodge rolling, by also activating Signet of Agility. Then repeat once steal has recharge. If I don’t get the timing right, there might be around 1 second where I don’t have any swiftness, but other then that it’s solid. Getting 20% more boon duration helps cut that small second out, though.