Stealth detection/prevention abilities: time to update them

HeroOfNone

Currently Expert Hunter, Mage's Light, Flare, anti-stealth poisons suck at detecting or preventing stealthing players. Even when first introduced they were used more by stealth players than the people trying to find them due to the extra damage, empower, and extra magicka. With the changes to reduce damage from stealth and empower only affecting light attacks though, the best reason to use them is the max magicka increase and the anti-stun from stealth effects. Flare is in the trash bin as it covers an area about as bit as caltrops with less damage and a slow cast time. It's time to improve these or replace them.

Note I did not put marked target or detection pots since they currently seem to work as intended, though the prospect of using a detection pot and losing my recovery item for 30 seconds is still kind of a harshort tradeoff to counter one ability.

First thought that comes to mind is just remove or nerf shadow cloak entirely. It's not a pleasant thought for nightblades I know, but when we have 6 ways to counter one ability, and 4 of them don't work as well as a slew of AOE abilities, I think we messed something up on how we're balancing things. I can go one and on with the points and counter points, but the point I keep coming back to is this: When you have an ability where a player takes almost total advatage of the fight to recover, there better be a hard counter that can be used despite latency, it better be something a player can not cast repeatedly, and/or its something available to multiple classes in various ways.

So, assuming we're not going to see a change to nightblades shadow cloak, the counters need improvements, cause they aren't doing the job. A few ways we can do this:
- Give a large area "ping" to find enemies: say every time you cast mages light/expert hunter it scans a 50m or 100m area a points out where all hidden enemies are. It wouldn't reveal them nor continue to track them, just give you their last location's direction so you can search. This would focus more on detection, rather than prevention.
- Increase the stealth suppression duration: the current 3 seconds is short and easily lost due to a variety of other variables. It should have a meaningful impact when you get hit with the poison magelight/expert hunter and try to go into stealth other than a few roll dodges then hitting shadow cloak again.
- Speed up the cast time & increase the damage on flare: Even with a buff to stealth suppression, flare needs a boost in several ways. Caltrops does its job and better in so man ways. Often you see flare coming players can move back, and fightng in it isnt a huge detriment. If it's damage were increased to be a bit more in line to be a magicka version of caltrops, or other effects like reducing critical damage were added, it could be a bigger boon to the PVP tool set.
- Give expert hunter a max stamina boost or stamina related improvements: just for parity with magelight's morph to increase max magicka, boosting stamina, stamina recovery, or maybe giving back more stamina on return when fighting daedra would help improve them
- Simply replace them: finally, rather than rework something that's always been broken, maybe just replace them and balancing cloak a little better. I'm sure there are other neat abilities that don't revolve around one ability.


That's my small rant on the current stealth detection abilities, feel free to put your own ideas up. Hopefully this doesn't become a nightblade debate, but let's face it, it's the forums and when ever we talk stealth abilities they are always the centerfolds.

Anyhow, thanks for reading.

Feanor

ZOS just added an indicator that shows that a player can see you although you are hidden. So do you think your suggestion is one that’s reasonably expected to be put into the game?

HeroOfNone

Feanor wrote: »

ZOS just added an indicator that shows that a player can see you although you are hidden. So do you think your suggestion is one that’s reasonably expected to be put into the game?

Certainly, detection pots were the bIg thing that needed an indicator since they gave no indication that your stealth was suppressed. Magelight though already gave a hood indicator and expert hunter rarely detected unless you were right atop of an enemy. Giving something like a "ping" ability with the new indicator will give the stealth use a warning that this person can find them, time to move.

Bergzorn

Let's also remove passiv stealth completely from PvP. This game has way to many sneaktards.

Gilvoth

horrible idea, i hope this never happens.

Waffennacht

I do like the idea of maybe increasing mage light/hunter etc's radius

As is, you're right, not worth using as a detect tool

Silver_Strider

Sure, NB can lose cloak entirely.
While we're at it, lets remove every skill that breaks cloak too.
Goodbye Curse, Hurricane, Streak, PotL, Jabs, Volatile, Inhale and all the previously mentioned methods in the OP.

You'll all be missed.

olsborg

Id love for magelight and specially expert hunter to have a wider area of reveal aswell as give more incentive to use besides the detect. Lets say a ganker attacks someone who has magelight active, the oponent then has no stealth available to then for XX seconds. There need to be more counter to cloak especially. Theres so many nbs who play nbs just because they can stay invisible and troll or just not need to fight after a battle has been initiated.

HeroOfNone

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Sure, NB can lose cloak entirely.
While we're at it, lets remove every skill that breaks cloak too.
Goodbye Curse, Hurricane, Streak, PotL, Jabs, Volatile, Inhale and all the previously mentioned methods in the OP.

You'll all be missed.

It would take a rebalance for sure and yes, we could stop designing skills to counter a single ability. I counter myself on this though that it's unlikely to happen soon more because ZOS would need to address the inadequacy of Nightblades in general when taking away the crutch that cloak gives.

So addressing the poor performing counters seemed more productive for now.

ak_pvp

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Sure, NB can lose cloak entirely.
While we're at it, lets remove every skill that breaks cloak too.
Goodbye Curse, Hurricane, Streak, PotL, Jabs, Volatile, Inhale and all the previously mentioned methods in the OP.

You'll all be missed.

Stop crying cloak is incredibly easy and incredibly strong with awful counters.

Use magelight/EH? Well done it either did nothing and cost you 4k mag, or revealed them for a staggering 3s and cost 4k mag. Flare is similar.
Use any AoE bar hurricane? Either you miss and cost yourself resources, or you hit and they recloak.
Use det pots? You have a target on your head saying "avoid me" and are out a potion effect, only 20m(?) and 15s, so nothing

Either way the counter user is at a loss... Unless its mark, an NB skill.

Now look at cloak:
Force misses
Full dot prevention
Untargetability
Full invisibility
No target limits like shimmer/wings

Great balance.

Dalsinthus

NBs would be complete trash in pvp without cloak. Doing away with it entirely would make them largely defenseless targets. I get that stealth is frustrating to fight against, but at times I feel the same against shield stacking, massive heals, permablock, etc.

Cloak is an easy skill to counter, perhaps the easiest of the major types of defense. The option to counter it with a potion allows you to slot it in and out as needed, which is exactly what I do. Any AoE skill also works well for NBs that are ganking in melee.

I do agree that mage light, expert/camo hunter, and flare are all pretty weak skills for detecting stealth targets. They could use some buffing or a total rework. I've never tried antistealth poisons but they also seem weak.

HeroOfNone

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

horrible idea, i hope this never happens.

Which part and why @dwemer_paleologist ? Are you invested into expert hunter/mages light to think they do a good job with stealth detection? if you don't think they are good were the potential buffs too much? How would make them more enticing to use as a counter? Or would you be opposed to replacing them entirely?

HeroOfNone

Dalsinthus wrote: »

NBs would be complete trash in pvp without cloak. Doing away with it entirely would make them largely defenseless targets. I get that stealth is frustrating to fight against, but at times I feel the same against shield stacking, massive heals, permablock, etc.

Cloak is an easy skill to counter, perhaps the easiest of the major types of defense. The option to counter it with a potion allows you to slot it in and out as needed, which is exactly what I do. Any AoE skill also works well for NBs that are ganking in melee.

I do agree that mage light, expert/camo hunter, and flare are all pretty weak skills for detecting stealth targets. They could use some buffing or a total rework. I've never tried antistealth poisons but they also seem weak.

I think some nightblades would still be strong without cloak, but cloak is a huge part of their toolkit and if removed they would require a total rebalance, which we've been dodging for a while. I still have to point out this elephant in the room though, we're balancing 6 or so abilities to counter 1, hence my reasoning behind the buffs. To expand their use and to make them more of a potential hard counter, if one or more suggestion here was taken.

Ragnaroek93

I'd much rather have just a blatant nerf to Cloak (50-100% costincrease or sth like that) than some kind of hard counters (just imagine you would have to slot a counter against every class lol).

Nbs did fine when Cloak didn't work well and often broke for no reason. The current state of Cloak is just ridiculous and fighting someone who Cloaks between every attack is no fun at all.

HeroOfNone

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

I'd much rather have just a blatant nerf to Cloak (50-100% costincrease or sth like that) than some kind of hard counters (just imagine you would have to slot a counter against every class lol).

Nbs did fine when Cloak didn't work well and often broke for no reason. The current state of Cloak is just ridiculous and fighting someone who Cloaks between every attack is no fun at all.

That's a fair opinion, but what would you do with the current counters? Recycle them into new abilities?

Dracan_Fontom

I won't deny that Mage Light, Evil Hunter, and Flare are not exactly the best at doing their intended purpose however I do think stealth pots are not horrible. Maybe they could benefit from an increased duration or range but other than that I think it's fine as is.

However, I disagree with removing cloak.

Sandman929

Maybe cloaking should apply Minor Cowardice for 4-6 seconds and getting revealed could apply the long awaited Major Cowardice (increase ulti cost by 100%).

I'm at least half-joking.

RedRook

RML's radius is kind of pathetic, I agree. Especially since the advent of swift jewelry, at best you're going to get a stealthing NB to back off you for a moment, not so much actually find him. It's not a fantastic use of bar space in PVP - although negating the stun from stealth for everybody in group isn't a bad secondary effect. Flare is for people who run in packs and can waste that spot just to troll NBs.

Which is why everybody is carrying detect pots, which are (still) hilariously overtuned and come in a variety of fun flavors. Mark is overperforming so badly I can't stand to use it. The PVP version and base skill need a shorter duration, it's silly as is now.

And then we come to the list of useful AOEs we're all running anyway that break cloak. It's a long list, and they're all still pulling NBs right out of invisibility. I can't believe people are still crying about cloak even existing and being a useful skill.

Ladislao

HeroOfNone wrote: »

Flare is in the trash bin as it covers an area about as bit as caltrops with less damage and a slow cast time. It's time to improve these or replace them.

I do not understand, are you talking about Scorching Flare? This is almost the strongest DoT in the game (except perhaps Soul Strike). And there is no cast time - just animation time. In fact, many people use it if there is an free slot and it's critically important to have detection.
Caltrops are used more often only because it has a greater range of uses. Not only for detection.

Xvorg

I think in this game cloak seems son good just because sneak is so bad. And considering the amount of (almost useless) original sets (Sentry, Stygian, Night Silence, Archer's Mind, Shadow Walker, Shadow Dancer, Darkstride, NME, Air, ) and skills that worked with sneak (NBs passives, Vamp Passives, Magelight), it seems that at some point ZoS wanted to make it relevant at least in PvP. Currently the only way to feel like a stealthy assasin is going NB and slotting cloak.

Priyasekarssk

HeroOfNone wrote: »

Currently Expert Hunter, Mage's Light, Flare, anti-stealth poisons suck at detecting or preventing stealthing players. Even when first introduced they were used more by stealth players than the people trying to find them due to the extra damage, empower, and extra magicka. With the changes to reduce damage from stealth and empower only affecting light attacks though, the best reason to use them is the max magicka increase and the anti-stun from stealth effects. Flare is in the trash bin as it covers an area about as bit as caltrops with less damage and a slow cast time. It's time to improve these or replace them.

Note I did not put marked target or detection pots since they currently seem to work as intended, though the prospect of using a detection pot and losing my recovery item for 30 seconds is still kind of a harshort tradeoff to counter one ability.

First thought that comes to mind is just remove or nerf shadow cloak entirely. It's not a pleasant thought for nightblades I know, but when we have 6 ways to counter one ability, and 4 of them don't work as well as a slew of AOE abilities, I think we messed something up on how we're balancing things. I can go one and on with the points and counter points, but the point I keep coming back to is this: When you have an ability where a player takes almost total advatage of the fight to recover, there better be a hard counter that can be used despite latency, it better be something a player can not cast repeatedly, and/or its something available to multiple classes in various ways.

So, assuming we're not going to see a change to nightblades shadow cloak, the counters need improvements, cause they aren't doing the job. A few ways we can do this:
- Give a large area "ping" to find enemies: say every time you cast mages light/expert hunter it scans a 50m or 100m area a points out where all hidden enemies are. It wouldn't reveal them nor continue to track them, just give you their last location's direction so you can search. This would focus more on detection, rather than prevention.
- Increase the stealth suppression duration: the current 3 seconds is short and easily lost due to a variety of other variables. It should have a meaningful impact when you get hit with the poison magelight/expert hunter and try to go into stealth other than a few roll dodges then hitting shadow cloak again.
- Speed up the cast time & increase the damage on flare: Even with a buff to stealth suppression, flare needs a boost in several ways. Caltrops does its job and better in so man ways. Often you see flare coming players can move back, and fightng in it isnt a huge detriment. If it's damage were increased to be a bit more in line to be a magicka version of caltrops, or other effects like reducing critical damage were added, it could be a bigger boon to the PVP tool set.
- Give expert hunter a max stamina boost or stamina related improvements: just for parity with magelight's morph to increase max magicka, boosting stamina, stamina recovery, or maybe giving back more stamina on return when fighting daedra would help improve them
- Simply replace them: finally, rather than rework something that's always been broken, maybe just replace them and balancing cloak a little better. I'm sure there are other neat abilities that don't revolve around one ability.


That's my small rant on the current stealth detection abilities, feel free to put your own ideas up. Hopefully this doesn't become a nightblade debate, but let's face it, it's the forums and when ever we talk stealth abilities they are always the centerfolds.

Anyhow, thanks for reading.

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

I'd much rather have just a blatant nerf to Cloak (50-100% costincrease or sth like that) than some kind of hard counters (just imagine you would have to slot a counter against every class lol).

Nbs did fine when Cloak didn't work well and often broke for no reason. The current state of Cloak is just ridiculous and fighting someone who Cloaks between every attack is no fun at all.

I dont think NB will be nerfed. Anything that counters NB will be nerfed to the ground. See that pathetic state of runcage. A skill with no debuff & no damage attached. Only CC. Even defensive rune nerfed exclusively for NBs. They made magic sorc downright to the useless state.

Now NBs can detect who are all using detection mechanisms. A game balance should not go this much for a class. Anyway I have stam NB. I dont bother once levelled as a main character.

Silver_Strider

ak_pvp wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Sure, NB can lose cloak entirely.
While we're at it, lets remove every skill that breaks cloak too.
Goodbye Curse, Hurricane, Streak, PotL, Jabs, Volatile, Inhale and all the previously mentioned methods in the OP.

You'll all be missed.

Stop crying cloak is incredibly easy and incredibly strong with awful counters.

Use magelight/EH? Well done it either did nothing and cost you 4k mag, or revealed them for a staggering 3s and cost 4k mag. Flare is similar.
Use any AoE bar hurricane? Either you miss and cost yourself resources, or you hit and they recloak.
Use det pots? You have a target on your head saying "avoid me" and are out a potion effect, only 20m(?) and 15s, so nothing

Either way the counter user is at a loss... Unless its mark, an NB skill.

Now look at cloak:
Force misses
Full dot prevention
Untargetability
Full invisibility
No target limits like shimmer/wings

Great balance.

Pot meet kettle.

Let's replace cloak with Permablock or Shield Stacking, things that also have poor counters. Of the 3, cloak is far and away the easiest to counter. There isn't a pot that breaks shields or blocking, there aren't abilities specifically designed to counter your defense completely (before we bring into the fact of unblockable CC there are all of 3 and each is class locked, unlike the plethora of Cloak counters, some of which are class locked, some are not), shields have no counterplay outside of 2 sets that people all call cheese (Shieldbreaker and Sloads) but heaven forbid it's Cloak that needs to be totally removed.

Ampnode

I don't think making abilities that completely prevent a defense should be made even stronger. There should be bias put aside to come up with a more proper way of balancing cloak. Imagine an ability that prevented casting shields, heals, using dodge roll, or holding block. NBs without cloak are like sorcs without shields/streak/dark exchange, templars without BoL/purge/their house, or DKs without major mending/battle roar; also, warden is the only class I haven't played so I can't comment on their defense(s). The point I'm getting at is you essentially want a class to rely on just vigor, rally, and roll dodging for their defense, which is over doing it.

One proper balance change I can come up with, which many others have as well, is to make it work like streak where consistent uses within 4 seconds increases the cost. This would prevent magicka NBs from perma-cloaking and would decrease the amount of cloaks a stamina NB can do by 1-2(depending how they build).

I'd like for NB in general to rely on a defense besides having to cloak and run away, but it's doubtful that ZOS will completely remove invisibility from Shadowy Disguise so all that's left to do to the ability itself is add the nerf mentioned above and/or rework Dark Cloak morph to where it's a more preferred choice for NBs who aren't gankers.

kadar

With the addition of the hard counter to cloak you failed to mention, AOE damage, I don't think it's reasonable to suggest more nerfs/removal. You don't have to sacrifice anything at all-- any PVP build on a should have at least 1 form of AOE built in. I don't think Det. Pots require you to sacrifice your regen, for sure not on Mag. You can make the Detect/Spellcrit/Mag or just the Detect/Stam (i think?) ones. There's even an immoveable/Det pot iirc.

I've been using a combo of Steel Tornado + Gap Close + Det Pot (only if necessary) to mow down fleeing NBs for ever. Even then just cause they are typically worth more AP that the average player

On topic though, agreed that flare is terribad. Maybe bad/new NBs will move predictably enough to get nailed? Expert Hunter does have parity w/ Radiant, it passively grants weapon damage as a fighter's guild ability. I'd like to see it's effects updated to be useful to for anythng besides ganking or dead slot fighter's build passive buff.

templesus

Just remove cloak from the game entirely. Nobody should be able to just disappear from a fight the way Nightblades do.

Guarantee the top 10% of PvPers (not Zerglings like you know who) across all platforms would agree.

kadar

templesus wrote: »

Just remove cloak from the game entirely. Nobody should be able to just disappear from a fight the way Nightblades do.

Guarantee the top 10% of PvPers (not Zerglings like you know who) across all platforms would agree.

Drdeath20

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

horrible idea, i hope this never happens.

Incorrect

Septimus_Magna

My problem with the stealth detect skills is that the NB can just Cloak again after being detected. People seem to forget stealth is avoiding/mitigating 100% dmg so its by far the effecient way to take less dmg.

If you shield/block/dodge/heal you still take dmg, can be CCed and you’re visible. Stealth is just a superior kind of dmg mitigation.

Even with Cloak breaking skills like Curse I find it hard to stop a NB who tries to escape. The reason why Streak was nerfed into the ground was because the devs felt sorcs could disengage at any moment. Well the exact same thing is happening for a while now with NBs, probably even more so because of the recent Shade buff.

The double standard should surprise me but it doesnt, NBs are ZOS’ favorite child and get all the nice toys.

I dont know what the best fix would be, maybe surpress stealth for 3 seconds after being revealed. Or increase the cost for spamming Cloak (like Streak) but increase the duration. Or maybe something entirely different.

Drdeath20

ak_pvp wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Sure, NB can lose cloak entirely.
While we're at it, lets remove every skill that breaks cloak too.
Goodbye Curse, Hurricane, Streak, PotL, Jabs, Volatile, Inhale and all the previously mentioned methods in the OP.

You'll all be missed.

Stop crying cloak is incredibly easy and incredibly strong with awful counters.

Use magelight/EH? Well done it either did nothing and cost you 4k mag, or revealed them for a staggering 3s and cost 4k mag. Flare is similar.
Use any AoE bar hurricane? Either you miss and cost yourself resources, or you hit and they recloak.
Use det pots? You have a target on your head saying "avoid me" and are out a potion effect, only 20m(?) and 15s, so nothing

Either way the counter user is at a loss... Unless its mark, an NB skill.

Now look at cloak:
Force misses
Full dot prevention
Untargetability
Full invisibility
No target limits like shimmer/wings

Great balance.

This! We all know it but EZ mode is hard to give up

The-Baconator

The biggest problem that I have with cloak is how it synergizes with what is already a rather busted stealth system in PvP. A lot of people that have never played a cockroach\gank build don't realize it but the biggest reason why they have problems with even pedestrian nbs getting out of fights rather easily is that you only have to use 2-3 cloaks before you can go right back to sitting in crouch stealth. As someone who played a gankblade heavily right before and immediately after the change that made getting out of combat easier I was astounded by how much easier escaping even competent players with radiant magelights\detect pots\flare spam was and that was with 7 divines, limited sustain and 18k hp.

Cloak by itself isn't an issue, the counters need some work as most are either useless (Camo hunter\AoE spam\etc) or ridiculously OP (mark). The main problems with stealth are you only need 2 maybe 3 cloaks to get out of combat to go back to crouch invisibility when fighting players and that anyone can simply bend their knees a bit and become completely invisible to anyone not walking over them literally anywhere on literally any class.

What ZOS really needs to do is just remove crouch stealth invisibility from PvP. Rework it so if you crouch and someone isn't within your normal detect range you show up as a black silhouette that lacks a faction identification marker, perhaps even being immune to single target damage, rather than being totally invisible. Nbs could still cloak to become invisible and other classes could still pop an invis pot if they want to try to get out of bad situation but they won't be able to sit completely invisible in the middle of an open field or effortlessly slip away from any fight, with no invis hard counter present, without a significant investment in doing so.

kadar

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

My problem with the stealth detect skills is that the NB can just Cloak again after being detected. People seem to forget stealth is avoiding/mitigating 100% dmg so its by far the effecient way to take less dmg.

If you shield/block/dodge/heal you still take dmg, can be CCed and you’re visible. Stealth is just a superior kind of dmg mitigation.

Even with Cloak breaking skills like Curse I find it hard to stop a NB who tries to escape. The reason why Streak was nerfed into the ground was because the devs felt sorcs could disengage at any moment. Well the exact same thing is happening for a while now with NBs, probably even more so because of the recent Shade buff.

The double standard should surprise me but it doesnt, NBs are ZOS’ favorite child and get all the nice toys.

I dont know what the best fix would be, maybe surpress stealth for 3 seconds after being revealed. Or increase the cost for spamming Cloak (like Streak) but increase the duration. Or maybe something entirely different.

• Some things I noted reading your comment: Cloak mitigates/avoids 100% dmg when successful. No other type of mit. can be outright prevented. Imagine anti block potion/poison: "prevents blocking for x seconds..." Effectiveness can be reduced, but you cannot prevent someone from healing or blocking or rolling (i don't bring up CC because you can CC a cloaked/cloaking target as well). Also, to cloak mid-fight is to relinquish pressure. Many times even if NB successfully goes invis, the target gets the free 2.9 seconds recover as well.
• ^Additionally, no damage, healing or other actions, barring a few exceptions can be performed without removing stealth. Any other type of mit is accomplished while retaining the ability to simultaneously do damage (block cast whip) or heal.
• I have difficulty relating with Cloak being difficult to counter. I just use Steel tornado, if they outrange it, gap close, if they are really slippery then I'll Det Pot. I don't alter my build or make any sacrifices whatsoever. Once in a blue moon a particularly skilled NB will pull a clever juke and get away.
• Streak is comparable to Shade for sure. Streak =/= Cloak. Streak is a re-positioning/mobility skill, where Cloak is for, like you said mitigation, and I'd add misdirection. A Sorc could (pre-nerf) continously deal damage, spam streak for superior positioning, spam heals/shields, streak more, more damage, more streak...basically ensuring perfect positioning and insane mobility for no cost/counter-play. Cloak is more comparable to hardened ward than streak IMO.