Cloak toggle change is perfect

Prionyx

That's actualy one of the best things you could possibly do. One of the cloak's main issues was it's undeservedly high cost. You couldn't really use it as a proper def skill because it doesn't do much when you're just next to the enemy because it would drain your magicka very quickly for such a mediocare effect and it wouldn't make sence to cast it over a burst heal, but compared to live cloak new one is like 2.5 times cheaper. With this change NBs can use cloak way more often but at the same time you can't use it to just be permacloaked and run away since it's twice as expensive if you decide to use it this way and also disables your mag recovery. That's literally perfect, this change engourages to use cloak in a healty way(to avoid damage for a few seconds, to sustain via siphoning attacks+heavy attack, to proc concealed and vampire passive etc) and punishes those who use it in unhealthy way(to run away all the time and stay permacloaked)

Firstmep

My impression is that this makes it worse for melee nb, but much easier for ranged.

A a sniper could fire his shot and be back in cloak and stay still from the comfort of 40+ yards range while a melee nb has to keep moving to avoid detection and aoe.

In general I am not fan of anything that makes ranged ganking easier.

bladenick

Firstmep wrote: »

My impression is that this makes it worse for melee nb, but much easier for ranged.

A a sniper could fire his shot and be back in cloak and stay still from the comfort of 40+ yards range while a melee nb has to keep moving to avoid detection and aoe.

In general I am not fan of anything that makes ranged ganking easier.

PVP Melee dps NB dead, I see no way to land clumsy incap strike without using cloak to do positioning, it side effect of nerf as Ranger proc Ganker NB is too OP , it fairly nerf for ranger proc Ganker , but melee NB get totally destroyed,

Want melee? Try tanker build or any other playstyle. Not relied on cloak to survive

Prionyx

Firstmep wrote: »

My impression is that this makes it worse for melee nb, but much easier for ranged.

A a sniper could fire his shot and be back in cloak and stay still from the comfort of 40+ yards range while a melee nb has to keep moving to avoid detection and aoe.

In general I am not fan of anything that makes ranged ganking easier.

If for some reason you decide to play ranged NB this doesn't change anything at all for your build, but NB is heavily tied to melee and is absolutely unplayable with ranged builds. The only way to play ranged NB is to run Heresya's asy destro build and you need at least 2 or 3 such NBs in order to kill someone that is not a PvE'er without a proper defense

Tommy_The_Gun

From my experience on PTS, cloak converted to toggle is extremely unreliable vs live server.

Also, In any realistic scenario, it is harder & more convoluted to use & sustain (duration is much shorter to the point where you need to slot & cast equilibrium or siphoning).

On top of that it is very unreliable. It will be basically 50/50 % chance if it works or not. This will be especially true in IC or Cyro, regardless if it will be used offensively or defensively or used entirely to avoid PvP & PvE stuff. That is why most PvP NBs will most likely switch to ranged or bombing. Cuz melee will be too risky as cloak will be far too unreliable for this type of builds.

And, no, PTS cloak is actually way more expensive to use since it shutdown your mag recovery, so even with more cost on live, for as long as you have even basic 500 mag recovery that "tics" in the background it actually makes cloak duration usable. But on PTS, in order to use for any duration that would allow to do anything relevant you need to either have extremely large magicka pool or use siphoning / equilibrium.

OP, if you don't believe me, then do a simple experiment. Login to live server & start running while casting cloak every 2.9 - 3 seconds to keep cloak up. Then count how long you can stay invisible.

Then repeat that on PTS on same character or character with same build. I can 100% guarantee to you that PTS duration will be 40 - 60% shorter. In my case it is 18 - 20 seconds on live vs 10 - 11 seconds on PTS.

bladenick

It looks Nb need third bar only consumed by cloak, follow this concept , implement some mechanics make max cloak time no more than 1x sec and this bar with fix cooldown to guarantee any kind of build could only access cloak in 1x sec for max, and need waiting 2x sec for this bar recovery to max level

with the huge mag cost of cloak, it will ruin all mag skill, as NB need preserve mag for burst healing and cloak, since no other survival tool. So there no room for mag skill like conceal weapon, maybe only slot it for 15% speed

Thumbless_Bot

Prionyx wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

My impression is that this makes it worse for melee nb, but much easier for ranged.

A a sniper could fire his shot and be back in cloak and stay still from the comfort of 40+ yards range while a melee nb has to keep moving to avoid detection and aoe.

In general I am not fan of anything that makes ranged ganking easier.

If for some reason you decide to play ranged NB this doesn't change anything at all for your build, but NB is heavily tied to melee and is absolutely unplayable with ranged builds. The only way to play ranged NB is to run Heresya's asy destro build and you need at least 2 or 3 such NBs in order to kill someone that is not a PvE'er without a proper defense

Hopefully they'll fix the range piece soon.

ajkb78

The problem with the new cloak, which remains even after the change, is that the ability to sustain it is entirely dependent on your current magicka pool. With the live cloak, you could cast it and get a few seconds of invisibility even if you only just had enough magicka to cast it. With current PTS, if you have that little magicka you can't really use it at all.

The change could work, but at the moment it's still too much nerf and not enough to compensate.

What would help, and provide fair balance, is if toggling cloak on also overrode active detect potions / detection spells. With everyone carrying detection pots any form of NB play that relied on cloak was already becoming untenable before this change, because a detect pot gives an enormous range advantage over cloak and there is no counterplay. So, fine, detection pot overrides cloak, but allow cloak to re-override a detection pot. Even if it carries a small additional cost it would provide more opportunities for stealth counterplay both ways.

It would also help if there was a visual indicator (above the player sprite, not hidden in the status bar) that you are detected (i.e. within range of a pot / spell).

Prionyx

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

From my experience on PTS, cloak converted to toggle is extremely unreliable vs live server.

Also, In any realistic scenario, it is harder & more convoluted to use & sustain (duration is much shorter to the point where you need to slot & cast equilibrium or siphoning).

On top of that it is very unreliable. It will be basically 50/50 % chance if it works or not. This will be especially true in IC or Cyro, regardless if it will be used offensively or defensively or used entirely to avoid PvP & PvE stuff. That is why most PvP NBs will most likely switch to ranged or bombing. Cuz melee will be too risky as cloak will be far too unreliable for this type of builds.

And, no, PTS cloak is actually way more expensive to use since it shutdown your mag recovery, so even with more cost on live, for as long as you have even basic 500 mag recovery that "tics" in the background it actually makes cloak duration usable. But on PTS, in order to use for any duration that would allow to do anything relevant you need to either have extremely large magicka pool or use siphoning / equilibrium.

OP, if you don't believe me, then do a simple experiment. Login to live server & start running while casting cloak every 2.9 - 3 seconds to keep cloak up. Then count how long you can stay invisible.

Then repeat that on PTS on same character or character with same build. I can 100% guarantee to you that PTS duration will be 40 - 60% shorter. In my case it is 18 - 20 seconds on live vs 10 - 11 seconds on PTS.

It's just as unreliable as it is on live, it's unreliable for the past few years

It's way more cheap compared to live because you don't need to spamm it and never had to, just press once or twice at max on live, if you have to spamm cloak you are using it wrong and not in a efficent way, with this change it's like 1.5k mag per cast(2 seconds) instead of almost 4k per 3 seconds on live, but you mostly need it just for 1 second to proc spammable and vamp passive

Just_Attivi

I think this is closer to where the skill should be in a balance sense (though I can argue against it for numerous reasons, predominantly how unreliable cloaks are without being a toggle)

My main issue is:
1- TOGGLE skills in laggy and poor performing areas (currently most of the game). How often do you hit a skill and it doesnt seem to go off? so you hit it again. with a normal skill: worst case you just cast it twice. With a toggle: you wasted resources and undid your invis. "But how often will you lag like that in this perfect game?" : literally every day for the last 5 months. Or maybe you panic in a clutch moment, tap a skill twice, toggle turns on and off. This renders the skill pretty much useless in what would be its intended use case until performance is fixed on LIVE servers.

a bonus issue, which is just annoying from a bar space standpoint:
2- Casting Shadow Skills for buffs. Previously we had Veiled strike in the shadow tree, so we had a spammable to keep our relatively short armor buff up(unless youre in like 5 heavy). That skill has moved to assassination. While the other skills in the Shadow tree are all great in their own ways, they all often fail to make it on my bars for one reason or another, except cloak, because of the crit passive. Okay, so we hit cloak every 6 seconds, manage both our armor buff and vampire bonus damage as needed. we can still do that with cloak toggle, as it pulls you out of stealth like attacks and such previously would. but now, we have a new issue: resource recovery. Resources recover once every 2 seconds, and so if you happen to use your GCD on this cloak toggle and it coincides with your recovery tick, you dont get any magicka back. even on a brawler which is the NB type that is generally not complained about for 'perma stealthing' they are getting a somewhat painful nerf with this.

Yes, there are ways around point number 2. yes maybe we just dont get our vamp passive so often (most of my toons are mortal now anyway) and need to be sure we have another shadow skill slotted. I just want to bring attention to how this does impact more than just the 'perma stealthers' often complained about.

Prionyx

Just_Attivi wrote: »

I think this is closer to where the skill should be in a balance sense (though I can argue against it for numerous reasons, predominantly how unreliable cloaks are without being a toggle)

My main issue is:
1- TOGGLE skills in laggy and poor performing areas (currently most of the game). How often do you hit a skill and it doesnt seem to go off? so you hit it again. with a normal skill: worst case you just cast it twice. With a toggle: you wasted resources and undid your invis. "But how often will you lag like that in this perfect game?" : literally every day for the last 5 months. Or maybe you panic in a clutch moment, tap a skill twice, toggle turns on and off. This renders the skill pretty much useless in what would be its intended use case until performance is fixed on LIVE servers.

a bonus issue, which is just annoying from a bar space standpoint:
2- Casting Shadow Skills for buffs. Previously we had Veiled strike in the shadow tree, so we had a spammable to keep our relatively short armor buff up(unless youre in like 5 heavy). That skill has moved to assassination. While the other skills in the Shadow tree are all great in their own ways, they all often fail to make it on my bars for one reason or another, except cloak, because of the crit passive. Okay, so we hit cloak every 6 seconds, manage both our armor buff and vampire bonus damage as needed. we can still do that with cloak toggle, as it pulls you out of stealth like attacks and such previously would. but now, we have a new issue: resource recovery. Resources recover once every 2 seconds, and so if you happen to use your GCD on this cloak toggle and it coincides with your recovery tick, you dont get any magicka back. even on a brawler which is the NB type that is generally not complained about for 'perma stealthing' they are getting a somewhat painful nerf with this.

Yes, there are ways around point number 2. yes maybe we just dont get our vamp passive so often (most of my toons are mortal now anyway) and need to be sure we have another shadow skill slotted. I just want to bring attention to how this does impact more than just the 'perma stealthers' often complained about.

Shadow barrier now lasts 12 seconds instead of 6. 14+ tbh since you need to run 1 heavy armor piece and some people prefer 2 or 3 pieces

Toggle is much better in laggy situations, I have no idea how someone can keep pressing a skill for an entire second while gcd lasts. Cloak breaks all the time because of unknown reasons, it can often break because of NPCs while you don't even have any debuffs or dots on you and NPCs are really far away, you have to cast cloak each seconds in this situations and since it's cheaper per cast it's a buff

When you use cloak to proc buffs you can just stop moving for like 0.2-0.3 seconds and that's fine most of the times