Guild Wars 2

Now that the forums are up I figured I’d show you what I discovered with Shadow Refuge. The tooltip says the stealth lasts for 3 seconds but that is far from true. Also, the area that becomes the refuge stays in effect even when the ring is gone. To better explain this, I posted a video on youtube giving you 3 examples:

First Clip: Simply showing that the stealth area is still there when gone
Second Clip: Showing that you can restealth allowing you to get more than one sneak attack in even when the ring is gone.
Third Clip: Showing how long the stealth actually lasts.

I’m not sure if this is working as intended or not but I figured I’d post these here and let the devs decide.

Btw. Love GW2! Just please don’t cave in and make all the content super easy cause people complain on the forums :P

This is actually due to the description on shadow refuge not being clear.

Shadow refuge actually grants 3 seconds of stealth as soon as you enter it. The thing is it grants that 3 seconds continuously over its lifetime, to allow others to enter and get stealth, of if you’re super smart allowing you to use a smart few dodges to throw off opponents and if you’re quick re-stealth back in the refuge.

This means if you simply stand in it without doing anything to reveal yourself you’ll remain stealthed through the entire duration, as well as around 3 seconds after.

Similarly, if you get the timing right you can get 2 stealths out of the ability if you pop SR, immediately attack, then remain in the area until your stealth immunity wears off.

Basically, think of it like this:

Shadow refuge grants 3 seconds of stealth every 1/4 of a second as long as it’s on the ground. While stealth doesn’t stack, it can appear to stack if you’re stealthed and don’t take any aggressive actions to trigger your stealth immunity, because the duration is refreshed by the field constantly, leaving you with 3 seconds of stealth after leaving the field (or the field dissipating)

@PopeUrban

I understand the stacking. What about the field secretly still being there after it’s duration?

PopeUrban.2578:

While stealth doesn’t stack, it can appear to stack if you’re stealthed and don’t take any aggressive actions to trigger your stealth immunity, because the duration is refreshed by the field constantly, leaving you with 3 seconds of stealth after leaving the field (or the field dissipating)

That is incorrect. Your idea of Shadow Refuge is very different from what I’m noticing right now; perhaps it behaved that way in one of the previous Betas, but it isn’t like that at this moment. The stealth ‘pulse’ seems to occur at every second interval, one at the very beginning of the skill, for four pulses total. Problematically, these pulses stack in duration.

I can say for sure that it’s not merely a visual glitch, as I did use this fact to great effect in WvW by keeping an entire squad hidden in a middle of a huge enemy horde. You can also mine an entire Rich Mithril Ore out while being completely unseen by monsters, by throwing down Shadow Refuge on the ore.

You can break out of the stealth for Shadow Refuge prematurely by exiting the original area that the ability affects; if you wait about 10 seconds and escape where the ‘ring’ was, you will still break stealth even if you are stealthed for a longer duration by other means, and you will receive the debuff that prevents you from going stealth for 3 seconds.

As another bug, sometimes the debuff doesn’t occur, which means you can freely walk around any way you want, completely invisible to the enemy. I don’t have the full reproduction steps for this bug, however.

Why the breaking of stealth as soon as you leave the refuge does not get fixed? it is impossible to stealth someone as they run through it, like mesmers do with their “stealth wall”, because it breaks stealth as soon as you leave the area, so it is kinda pointless to even try. Any fix soon?
Come on people, bring some attention to this problem, or it will never get fixed.