Changes to Invisibility intended or not?

Mayrael · March 2021

Ok we need some clarification about this. Below I post test I've done on PTS regarding HA, invisibility and detection. It seems that ZOS ninja nerfed cloak and in general invisibility, you're no longer safe in cloak, like ever.

Tests done on PTS with cloak and vampire invisibility but we can asume it will work the same way with invisibility potions.

1. Medium armor doesn't cancel heavy armor penalty so equiping 1 pc medium armor gives nothing, even equiping 5 pc of medium armor didn't took any effect.
2. You can say each heavy armor equipped eqauls 0,5 m of real additional detecion but it's a simplification. With 7 pc of HA equipped and no bonuses into stealth you'll get detected from around 3,5m radius.

Test results:
No points in Out of sight. No Khajiit bonuses. No sets.

1 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
2 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility in one condition - you have to be in movement - you can be detected only when standing directly "on" enemy < 1m proximity, it is possible that you will be detected if lag occurs.
3 pc of HA or more - affecting cloak and vampire invisibility - when you run through your enemy you will be spotted, getting closer than 1m means you will get detected. The more pieces of HA you wear the bigger the range youll get detected.

30 points in Out of sight. No Khajiit racials. No sets. Basically it allows you to equip 3 more HA pieces. (Khajiit racials = Out of sight - both work the same way)
1 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
2 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
3 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
4 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
5 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility in one condition - you have to be in movement - you can be detected only when standing directly "on" enemy < 1m proximity, it is possible that you will be detected if lag occurs.
6 pc of HA or more - getting closer than 1m means you will get detected. The more pieces of HA you wear the bigger the range youll get detected.

30 points in Out of sight. Khajiit racials used. No sets.
1 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
2 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
3 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
4 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
5 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
6 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
7 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.

30 points in Out of sight. No Khajiit racials. Night Terror set (-2 m detection range with 3 pc eqipped).
1 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
2 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
3 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
4 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
5 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
6 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility.
7 pc of HA - not affecting cloak or vampire invisibility in one condition - you have to be in movement - you can be detected only when standing directly "on" enemy < 1m proximity, it is possible that you will be detected if lag occurs.

And then bosmer walks in, all in white
When facing bosmer with his 3m additional detection radius. Oh my oh my. When standing directly on your enemy you will be always visible no matter of number of HA you use (even with none of them on you).

Ok worst case scenario.
No points into Out of sight. No Khajiit racials. No sets
1 pc of HA - getting closer than 1m means you will get detected. The more pieces of HA you wear the bigger the range youll get detected each pc of HA increases this by a bit more than 1m detection radius.
7 pc of HA - youre being detected in around 9m radius (a bit more than drain power range which has 8m radius).

Ok this is where things are getting a bit weird.
It seems that Out of sight or Khajiit racials (both when used separately) against bosmer doesn't work or does barely visible difference. When combined those passive work pretty well allowing you to get around 1m to bosmer and not get detected (without any HA eqipped).

In general Bosmer is the new PvP anti NB race completly disabling cloak and ivisibility in certain circumstances making it totally hard countered.

@ZOS_GinaBruno is this intended change not mentioned in patch notes or it's just a bug?

Tommy_The_Gun · March 2021

So basically, it seems that it all boils down to invisibility not being a different effect / mechanics than crouch - stealth, despite the game saying so.

It is basically a temporary buff to stealth radius, that can be de-buffed. It is just poor / lazy coding.

Best way would be simply to overhaul invisibility and code it as a proper, different effect / mechanics.
^ As far as I can tell, it used to be like that in the past, as cloak / invisibility potions were more reliable & consistent.

If however (from a technical reason for example), it is impossible to roll-back invisibility code to how it worked before, the quick way to fix it would be maybe to tweak the values to something like +1000% stealth radius buff, so it would keep the illusion that normal means of detection radius are not affecting invisibility (as they should not, since stealth and invisibility are supposed to be different mechanics to begin with).

Mayrael · March 2021

@Tommy_The_Gun Yup your idea is great way to fix it, I'd go for numeric values like 100m or something like this as medium armor passives decreasing detection radius seem to not affect invisibility.

On top of Bosmer passives we have CP passive increasing detection radius allowing total disabling invisibility in huge radius (over 15 m of real in game radius) making any kind of invisibility totally useless. It is passive and doesn't require anything to counter stealth or invisibility.

This is huge @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_GinaBruno it totally kills NBs, it's worse than detection potions having no cool down. This also the reason why cloak and invisibility doesn't work in PvE as it used to. Mobs are able to detect us through invisibility and the main cause of it there is heavy armor.

Vermintide · March 2021

No proc sets? No stealth? Boy, all they need to do now is remove sorcs, and the game will be perfectly balanced.

nesakinter · March 2021

Honestly, I like this. This makes Bosmer detection racials actually useful against brawler heavy armor NBs that opt not to use Dark Cloak, while still allowing stealth optimized NBs to go full stealth. The Bosmer is not new though, even in older patches if a Bosmer was within 1-1.5m of you, it broke Cloak.

Noctus · March 2021

i definately gonna buy racial change tokens for this

SshadowSscale · March 2021

Welcome to another reason cloak is completely broken and unreliable you can add it to the list of having hard counters such as detect pots.... breaking randomly on light attacks, heavy attacks and even single target abilities sometimes(cloak should not be broken with single target attacks),aoes being a more soft counter, gap close spam prevents cloaking completely due to it breaking it every time..... dots used by the nightblade will break their cloak...... oh and on top of all of that..... it just refuses to work sometimes for no reason at all

Chilly-McFreeze · March 2021

SshadowSscale wrote: »

Welcome to another reason cloak is completely broken and unreliable you can add it to the list of having hard counters such as detect pots.... breaking randomly on light attacks, heavy attacks and even single target abilities sometimes(cloak should not be broken with single target attacks),aoes being a more soft counter, gap close spam prevents cloaking completely due to it breaking it every time..... dots used by the nightblade will break their cloak...... oh and on top of all of that..... it just refuses to work sometimes for no reason at all

It's a shame. 7 years into the game and they can't even get the class defining features to work correctly.
But look, that new Mount in the Crown Crates looks spectacular..

Anyway, thanks OP for your work.

Mayrael · March 2021

nesakinter wrote: »

Honestly, I like this. This makes Bosmer detection racials actually useful against brawler heavy armor NBs that opt not to use Dark Cloak, while still allowing stealth optimized NBs to go full stealth. The Bosmer is not new though, even in older patches if a Bosmer was within 1-1.5m of you, it broke Cloak.

Yeah all we need now are passives that disable healing around us, seems fun.

divnyi · March 2021

I had a bug in one BG where I were constantly in "detected" state after cloak for like 2 minutes. I'm sure nobody followed me or was near me, I followed through some dark corners of the map to make sure. And it seemed that opponents did see me from 20m+. Only occurred once, but invisibility is weird in this game.

I don't mind anti-invis tools btw. And I would even vote to make em less clunky. As of now, NBs can cloak in the mid of magelight and will be uncloaked only at some 1s tick or something. I'd say they should catch that status as soon as they cloak.

Sneakers · March 2021

Mayrael wrote: »

@Tommy_The_Gun Yup your idea is great way to fix it, I'd go for numeric values like 100m or something like this as medium armor passives decreasing detection radius seem to not affect invisibility.

On top of Bosmer passives we have CP passive increasing detection radius allowing total disabling invisibility in huge radius (over 15 m of real in game radius) making any kind of invisibility totally useless. It is passive and doesn't require anything to counter stealth or invisibility.

This is huge @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_GinaBruno it totally kills NBs, it's worse than detection potions having no cool down. This also the reason why cloak and invisibility doesn't work in PvE as it used to. Mobs are able to detect us through invisibility and the main cause of it there is heavy armor.

This cat is out of the bag on EU PC since several days already.

Several ppl running cp builds + a few pieces of HA that allows them to detect at game breaking distances.

Moved my nb gear to stamcro after 2nd death to these knuts. Won't get fixed fast thats for damn sure. Also as you say medium armor does nothing to reduce ur stealth bubble.

Kaysha · April 2021

Yes, really no point in playing NB right now. Main char shelved

DrSlaughtr · April 2021

I mean, it's not meant to allow you to just sit in the middle of enemies. And usually it's guards, not players, that break my stealth.

Faded · April 2021

Mayrael wrote: »

nesakinter wrote: »

Honestly, I like this. This makes Bosmer detection racials actually useful against brawler heavy armor NBs that opt not to use Dark Cloak, while still allowing stealth optimized NBs to go full stealth. The Bosmer is not new though, even in older patches if a Bosmer was within 1-1.5m of you, it broke Cloak.

Yeah all we need now are passives that disable healing around us, seems fun.

Why not? How about a passive that prevents opponents within N meters from being able to use wards (you can still cast it though and eat the magicka cost). That would be popular. They can add an opposing CP star somewhere you can use to counter it. #balanced

martinhpb16_ESO · April 2021

Vermintide wrote: »

No proc sets? No stealth? Boy, all they need to do now is remove sorcs, and the game will be perfectly balanced.

You mean everyone playing p2w Wardens and Necros?

martinhpb16_ESO · April 2021

They already stealth nerfed stun from crouch / cloak and now this as well

DrSlaughtr · April 2021

I love being cloaked on my screen with closed eye but my buddy on another alliance can see me plain as say from 20 meters out. Then someone else shoots me from a wall.