How do sneak attacks work?

Saphayla

If I attack an enemy while stealthed, I will do much more damage than I would if I just walked up to them and attacked.

Once I attack an enemy with such a surprise attack, can I go back into stealth and attack again, to again get the damage bonus? Can I do it however many times I want on an individual enemy, or is there some cooldown?

Lynx7386

Technically yes. However, that's only going to work in pvp, and it wont because most players arent stupid enough to let you re-stealth and attack again (especially if they have detection potions or magelight available).

In PvE, if you try to re-stealth you'll reset aggro and cause the enemies to immediately go back to full health like combat never happened.

Saphayla

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Technically yes. However, that's only going to work in pvp, and it wont because most players arent stupid enough to let you re-stealth and attack again (especially if they have detection potions or magelight available).

In PvE, if you try to re-stealth you'll reset aggro and cause the enemies to immediately go back to full health like combat never happened.

That'd be the case if I was the only one fighting. I'm interested in dungeons and trials, so I want to know if it works there.
My race and class seem to encourage stealth and stealth attacks, so I'm wondering if it's viable for anything other than the first attack, and how it'd work in dungeons, considering the tank usually attacks first.

Ahzek

Sneak attacks require "true" stealth to work, meaning you need to sneak with the eye closed. Invisibility does not count for this, so it is pretty much impossible to get multiple sneak attacks off in a single PvE fight, since you can not sneak in combat.
The bonus effects from suprise attack/concealed weapon are different from this and also work with invisibility and thus can be used multiple times per combat. However for PvE this is largely irrelevant because cloak or invis pots are generally a DPS loss and most bosses can see through invisibility anyways.

Ahzek

Saphayla wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Technically yes. However, that's only going to work in pvp, and it wont because most players arent stupid enough to let you re-stealth and attack again (especially if they have detection potions or magelight available).

In PvE, if you try to re-stealth you'll reset aggro and cause the enemies to immediately go back to full health like combat never happened.

That'd be the case if I was the only one fighting. I'm interested in dungeons and trials, so I want to know if it works there.
My race and class seem to encourage stealth and stealth attacks, so I'm wondering if it's viable for anything other than the first attack, and how it'd work in dungeons, considering the tank usually attacks first.

Considering that, as you said, the tank usually attacks first and that most bosses have a decent stealth detection area around them, melee sneak attacks do not really have a place in PvE group content. The risk of a failed pull (and the long setup time to get there) are outweighing the minimal DPS gain considerably. After all what does that single 70k sneak attack contribute when the target has 100 times as much HP (for tough dungeon bosses) ...

Saphayla

Ahzek wrote: »

Considering that, as you said, the tank usually attacks first and that most bosses have a decent stealth detection area around them, melee sneak attacks do not really have a place in PvE group content. The risk of a failed pull (and the long setup time to get there) are outweighing the minimal DPS gain considerably. After all what does that single 70k sneak attack contribute when the target has 100 times as much HP (for tough dungeon bosses) ...

Well, I suppose I won't bother bringing stealth into my rotation, then.