Just another Cloak thread

divnyi

Let's try to discuss what changes should happen to the cloak to make it less annoying to both users and opponents.

1. Remove "dodge" of projectiles that go into cloak. Make the damage go through without breaking cloak.
-- this mechanic is annoying to play against, there is no reason why your damage shouldn't go through if you already put an aim and shoot. Invisibility doesn't move the caster, so no reason for him to "dodge".

2. Break cloak only on one of 3 conditions:
1) incoming direct AoE damage
-- make sure all AoE dots are dots. Looking at you, sorc hurricane.
2) outgoing direct damage
-- no outgoing dot ticks should break the cloak. No, making ticks each 2s doesn't help, because you don't know when it ticked previously and can cloak just to be immediately uncloaked. Worst thing is burning status also does this, which severely limits "safe" skills.
3) use of certain skills.
-- heals should uncloak, attack skills should uncloak, buffs shouldn't uncloak. I'd even say snipe should uncloak on shot, not on arrival, as you can hear the bow, even if I abuse it a lot.

3. Incoming dots, both AoE and direct, should do full damage to cloaked NB without uncloaking.

Thoughts?

Sergykid

well you are not invisible just visibly, you coat yourself with shadows, that's why the incoming projectiles miss

also cloak is too strong, it just needs to be used properly. It's easy to break by people that know how to aoe immediately but it's also easy to keep it for people that know how to use it.

and i think their attention should go to sorc streak which is busted. Has too many effects in a single spell, not any other spell does this. This is a nerf sorc thread now.

divnyi

Sergykid wrote: »

This is a nerf sorc thread now.

No, it's not. This is the one.

[snip]

[Edited to remove Rude Comments]

divnyi

Sergykid wrote: »

well you are not invisible just visibly, you coat yourself with shadows, that's why the incoming projectiles miss

You coat yourself with shadows, that's why you get major resolve. Where's the "miss" part coming from?

Rahar

Should dodge-canceling cloak remove it? Because the obvious answer to retain the brief invuln on the spell would be to just dodge just as you cast it, which would be effectively the same. That -- the removal of the dodge when cloaking -- would be my only point of contention. Everything else is stuff I've wanted to see for a while, honestly.

divnyi

Rahar wrote: »

Should dodge-canceling cloak remove it? Because the obvious answer to retain the brief invuln on the spell would be to just dodge just as you cast it, which would be effectively the same. That -- the removal of the dodge when cloaking -- would be my only point of contention. Everything else is stuff I've wanted to see for a while, honestly.

Didn't mention interaction with dodge, because currently dodge and sprint break cloak, so I just forgot that's a thing.

But yeah, they should continue breaking cloak.

dodge->cloak ✓
cloak->dodge ✘

Faded

Your proposed changes are all logical and reasonable, this is the problem: historically, whenever they change cloak they break it completely for a minimum of three months, sometimes much longer.

If they never touch it again, nightblade might get to keep the ability to cast invisibility at all.

divnyi

Other thing that nobody ever mentions, but:

Place "cannot gain stealth" debuff on everyone, not only on players in stealth. I used Radiant Magelight a lot, players cloaked just in front of me and were able to run in cloak for quite some time before were uncloaked. I guess it doesn't tick very often.

divnyi

Faded wrote: »

Your proposed changes are all logical and reasonable, this is the problem: historically, whenever they change cloak they break it completely for a minimum of three months, sometimes much longer.

If they never touch it again, nightblade might get to keep the ability to cast invisibility at all.

They should do this when they roll next long PTS.

fbours

Good suggestions. I would add/change:

1. Not breaking clock when dodging/running
2. Provide 15%-30% speed while on cloak
3. Reduce duration to 2 secs
4. Add 33% cost if casted again in 4 secs to remove it as spammable

I feel this will provide a more fluid/natural high risk/reward playstyle while removing blades spamming cloak. Took me a while to learn not to dodge/run after cloaking. My 2 cents.

divnyi

fbours wrote: »

1. Not breaking clock when dodging/running
2. Provide 15%-30% speed while on cloak

This two changes mean NBs would be able to go 155% movement speed with sprint. It is insane amount of speed, as for cloaked state. No AoEs will ever catch this.

fbours wrote: »

3. Reduce duration to 2 secs
4. Add 33% cost if casted again in 4 secs to remove it as spammable

Favours stamblades, as they cloak rarely and can use sneak state effectively, unlike magblades that go high on magica recovery to be able to cloak more.

ThePedge

They shouldn't make any changes until they fix the number of issues which render the skill almost useless.

divnyi

@ThePedge The "number of issues which render the skill almost useless" are covered by the changes. Outgoing dots breaking cloak, some incomming dots breaking cloak, incoming damage somehow going through and breaking cloak. This will not happen if damage would not be dodged, but only AoE direct damage gets you out of the cloak.

Fawn4287

Nerf stamblade directly, magblade is hot garbage and not getting any better.

divnyi

Fawn4287 wrote: »

Nerf stamblade directly, magblade is hot garbage and not getting any better.

This in not a nerf thread.

rbfrgsp

Cloak should be changed by making the invisibility work 100% of the time. While cloaked you should get 100% damage mitigation and CC immunity from all sources. Cloaking should return magicka the whole time you are cloaked and other players who look at me while I am invisible should be stunned.

Tommy_The_Gun

divnyi wrote: »

Thoughts?

Just fix the bugs and de-syncs. Nothing more is needed really...

Because currently cloak is nothing more than a "stealth radius buff". Detection bonuses, (such as Wood Elf) can actually break cloak, which should not be possible as stealth =/= invisibility. It is a different mechanics...

The only things that are were supposed to breaking cloak / invisibility are:
- AOEs
- Detection potions
- Detection skills

But it seems that pretty much everything does. LA, HA, Dots... even enemy NPCs that are "thinking of attacking you" while you are invisible do break it. It is a mess....

I am gonna be honest. I don't know how to say it, but with current status of cloak / invisibility, if you fight a NB and you let him/her cloak... then you are doing something wrong. In the past you needed to slot at least AOE skill in order to counter entire class defence... Nowadays, you can just pew-pew bow / staff at that NB and he/she gonna get de-cloaked imminently.

spotzhopz

As a nb main, i dont want them changing anything until they fix the bugs with it. I get pulled out of cloak by absolutely nothing. I can be cloaked in ic and be far enough away from a flag that the guards arent even visible and an enemy player will run right to where i am and attack sometimes(in no cp so i know none of the stealth detection cp are effecting me). Idk why people complain about cloak so much, like maybe its because i get how the skill works because ive been kicked out of stealth so much so ive learbed how to do it to other people, but i usually dont have any issues with killing cloak spammers unless they one shot me.

divnyi

spotzhopz wrote: »

As a nb main, i dont want them changing anything until they fix the bugs with it.

They literally have to change something to fix bugs tho

ExistingRug61

Interesting suggestions. I'm not quite sure if I totally agree with the suggestions, but I do like the idea of trying to make a clear cut set of rules about what does and doesn't break cloak.

The current methodology of "all damage breaks cloak" combined with a bunch of band aids that then control which damage can actually occur to a cloaked target (ie: suppression of dots, the projectile dodge etc) to try to make it semi reliable is always going to be inconsistent and lead to the problematic function we have right now, which only gets worse with poor lag or ping. It also leads to horribly inconsistent experience depending on what sort of build your opponent has, for both the nightblade and the opponent.

A consistent approach, like suggested, would be better, but exactly what that approach would be is a whole new balancing problem.

There are a couple of things in the OP that I wouldn't be quite on board with though. The proposal seems to make cloak into more of a reliable invisibility/escape tool and remove some of its other defensive benefits. While I conceptually get this, I think this could be quite detrimental to cloaking magblade's already poor survivability, which to a degree can be reliant on these defensive functions. For instance, its not really an issue for a stamblade to roll dodge->cloak to evade single target and projectiles and get into cloak. On a magblade though with more limited stamina sustain, that roll dodge may not be an option and instead they rely on having the projectile dodge from cloak itself to avoid the damage just to survive. Suppression of dots is also quite important to magblade as there basically isn't any heal a magblade can use that doesn't break cloak (unlike stamblade with rally) and doesn't have a proper burst heal or in class purge so using cloak to survive dots is all its got.

I mean, stamblade with the other tools it has access too could likely still survive just fine with the loss of these defensive functions on cloak. But cloaking magblade doesn't really have a lot of other defensive options to recover. Sure, you might more reliably get into invisibility, but then you would just die anyway without really having anything else you could do.

On the counter side, making ground and player based dots not break cloak would be...interesting. This would make cloak way more reliable as an invisibility tool, but I think there would be a lot more frustrated players complaining about how hard it is to break cloak and how it requires too-specific counters (direct AoEs only - these aren't actually that common), and they would probably be justified in doing so.

Unfortunately, I don't have the imagination to offer up any other beneficial ideas here myself, kudos to OP for doing that to begin with.