I5 Stealth Discussion
Look, it’s right in the description of the change:
Basic Stealth Powers (Pools, temp powers, and Powers not in a Defense set like Blaster Cloaking Device, Controller Illusion Invisibilities):
Toggles:
If you Attack, or are Hit – Critters see you. You loose half your defense buff (and your PvP stealth) for 10 seconds. Your translucency is reduced to indicate this change.
Clicks
If you Attack, or are Hit – All enemies will see you. You loose half your defense buff. Your translucency is reduced to indicate this change.
Primary Stealth Powers (Those in a defense set like Dark Armor/Cloak of Darkness, Dark Miasma/Shadow Fall, Storm Summoning/Steamy Mist, Warshade/Shadow Cloak)
Toggles:
If you Attack, or are Hit – Critters see you. (You loose your PvP stealth for 10 seconds). Your translucency is reduced to indicate this change. No Defense is Suppressed
Yeah, so… I wasn’t wrong.
Also, note that Group Invis from the Controller group (And bestow Invis from the Stealth group). ALSO drop all ‘aggro reduction’ ability as soon as you attack, AND the defense from the cuts by half.
Suck. Suck. Suck.
And hey… even with Invis… all you need is one guy with Perception — ONE GUY — to see you and hit you, and the Invis drops for EVERYONE in range.
Guess they don’t want anyone stealthing missions at all.
Stealthy heroes don’t fit the profile?
What crap. Crap put into play to control its use in PvP, which I don’t even do.
And…
What is the point of having defense from a power if that defense is going to only work when no one is firing at you? Or ceases to work the moment you are fired upon or attack?
Sorry, but that’s just stupid.
Hmmmm…ok.
Well, I’ll need to play around then and do a new respec version of Zazi and get rid of stealth.
I’ll have to look at if I want to take another secondary pool power, or concentrate on Katana/SR powers.
The whole point of the pool powers was to allow folks to customize their character to be different from other’s folks with their AT.
I love my fire tanker, but lord, there’s literally like… ONE way to build the damn thing to make them viable: you NEED Tough to hit the Smash/Lethal cap… and you NEED the jumping pool for Knockback resistance… and I don’t really have room in the design for any kind of ‘customizing’ pools beyond that.
Stealthy scrappers? Batman (whom Strat sometimes bears a more than passing resemblance to)?
Can’t do it.
Hmmm. And I was very much planning on Stealth for Fazenda. Fits the RP goal …
Again, this is a change that makes a certain amount of sense. If you attack someone — or even if someone spots you for an attack and shouts out to his friend (“The shadows! Look at the shadows!”), it would make sense that you’d lose *some* of the stealthiness and invisibility. And it does come back — after you’ve run away around the corner for ten long seconds.
It does only drop some of the Defense, and …
… um …
… so under what circumstances do you get *all* the Defense? When a sniper takes that one first shot at you? After that, you’re at half-defense.
Hmmm.
Add in that all the Defense buffs have already been reduced …
I’ve sometimes thought, on the other hand, that Group Invis was a steal. It has made duoing with Psi-clone something just short of a walk in the park, and has made stealthing missions almost trivial. Of course, I haven’t reached levels with too many guys with higher Perception yet, so that may be temporary. But I did feel like some sort of reduction might be in order.
This seems a scosh much, perhaps.
“During hat circumstances do you get *all* the Defense? When a sniper takes that one first shot at you? After that, you’re at half-defense.”
Nope.
As is discussed at LENGTH in the thread, the debuff to defense starts when the attacks are QUEUED, not EXECUTED.
Which means…
Ugh. I’m already sick of talking about it. Dammit. I’m trying to be positive about this, but I’d finally figured out the path to put Strat on (ninja stealth instead of leadership), and that’s all friggin’ useless.
And, upon consideration, not that much is changed *unless* you go against critters that can Peceive through the Stealth/Invis.
It still lets you stealth missions (as long as you don’t attack) (and why is it that toggling glowies doesn’t produce aggro?) (Ssshhhh!!!), and it still lets you *set up* an attack. It just means that, once the balloon goes up, you’re a lot more defenseless than you used to be. And that Deceiving a whole bunch of baddies before starting things off makes even more sense.
Except, as noted, villains get to insta-fire as the attack is queued, as you note, not when it goes off. Which *is* just plain goofy.
I know you’re not to this point in the game yet, but there’s almost no faction after level 35 that doesn’t have perception on SOME mob. ((Except Council — except if their ‘base is on alert’, they ALL get perception for free.)) And after level 40, that number drops to zero.
Also, it doesn’t let you set up an attack — the stealth drops as soon as you start the attack series.
Here’s a fun game:
You’re stealthed. You move in kinda close to the mobs — you toss the (NON AGGROING) stealth grenade — your stealth drops as you START THE TOSS, and you are shot by the ENTIRE GROUP while the grenade (Again, NON AGGROING ATTACK) is still in the air.
Grenade lands, doing NOTHING, because the group (and you) are already in combat.
And decieving is an attack, which also drops stealth.
And invis.
Is Deceive considered an attack in this case? Because Deceive has, classically, never drawn aggro.
Well, there’s a pool I’ll be respec’ing out of on… oh, half of my charas. *sigh*
Smoke Grenade doesn’t draw aggro either.
Oh, except it does now. Mid-toss, you get nuked.
Let me put that another way.
It’s not smoke grenade that draws aggro…
It’s STEALTH/INVIS DROPPING that draws aggro — it triggers EVERYONE IN RANGE to see you and DO something about it.
So, Smoke Grenade/Deceive… whatever… non-aggroing, anti-enemy action = dropped stealth/invis.
Dropping Stealth/Invis triggers everyone in range to see you and do something about it.
I would humbly suggest that you start the Test Server download when you have the chance. Easy as pie.
Goddammit. I have real, live, production gameplay I want to do. I really don’t want to have to do Test and burn my valuable playtime hours finding out how screwed I am. Plenty of time for that on Live.
Dammit. (Mutters, kicks something, wanders off.)
Well, by all means, wait, if it bothers you.
Here’s why *I* am doing some testing:
I’ve got free respecs on most of my characters from the one-year anniversary. You don’t get to carry those forward when you get ANOTHER free respec, and I cannot FATHOM that they won’t give one out with such sweeping changes going into place.
Therefore, since I have a ‘use it or lose it’ respec, in essence, I’m trying to do some research to make preliminary adjustments prior to i5, so I can (a) get used to the way things might change (b) have full access to all the respecs I’m due.
That’s me. I know there’s folks that don’t worry about it to that degree.
I know, I know. Something I really should do. And Margie would be more than happy to show me how. 🙂
FWIW, it *has* been announced that there will be a Free Respec with I5. And, yes, it would be a good idea to have the changes already figured out for when it goes Live.
Still … rrg.
So… ToDo list…
Respec my Ene/Ene blaster to drop all defense from Stealth…
Respec my AR/Dev blaster out of smoke grenades and cloaking device…
Be glad I already respec’d my scrapper into a warshade as sneaky-scrapper-fu sounds less do-able now…
Not sure if my Bot has stealth or leadership, guess it’ll be leadership…
Damn. Stealth nerf’ing is just suckage. I can understand not wanting people to rush / stealth missions ( except, that surprise 10 minute timed one now is going to be even more vicious… ) but nerfing the powers to be this useless… Very un-fun.
Update, from Test:
Deceive DOES drop Invis’s stealth component (tested with “Superior Invis” and “Deceive”.
This particular drop in Invis’ stealth did NOT aggro everyone in range.
Update, from Test. (Yeah, I went ahead and Did It.)
I used Deceive on several individuals in groups of mobs (several different mobs, from blue to purple). It did *not* draw aggro or the attention of anyone I was standing right in front of.
Blind did so … sometimes.
Spectral Wounds — oh, yeah, they saw me all right. (And my Flight was suppressed for a moment to boot.)
So … I dunno.
That was with Group Invis (the only one I have) on.
What sucks here for me is my brand-new stealthy alt. Kinda wrote her stealthy, so she’s stuck with the useless pool cuz I’m all rp-minded.
*pouts*
Question on the or are Hit part, does this include AoE’s hitting you that aren’t targetted at you?
If I am simply standing near someone who pulls aggro and I get caught on the fringe of an AoE attack upon them, does it still drop my stealth for their screwball behavior?
Dunno. Have to check.