Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Detection Potions

For some bizarre reason (oversight ?), unlike with every other source of detection, you can still use them while still being in-stealth or invisible yourself & see others who are invisible, while the other players won't have even a tiny feedback that some one seen / detected them.

Hence why you can easily get an impression that you were a victim a bug - cuz it breaks the established rules regarding stealth/cloak/detection/what breaks invisibility.

You are in stealth and yet single target skill hits you out of nowhere. And worst part is that with detection potion, you have ZERO feedback that you have been detected.

It allows only the detection potion user to "see" invisible targets, but it kinda does not matter since players who are in stealth / invisible have no feedback or no way of knowing that they have been spotted.

Also @Silvains_Demon, I'm a long-standing magblade main and agree with the gist of what Tommy is saying, except I'm used to how it works and basically OK with being the "victim" of detection from time to time. I do not regard the differences between detection skills and potions as a bug. Yes, when you get detected it's a very hard counter to your invisibility, but then again invisibility is a very hard counter to other players.

In general, the actual detection skills have a short range and aren't terribly effective at detecting a nightblade you don't already know is very close. Potions, on the other hand, have a longer range and a cooldown. Because of the latter, It is generally a waste to use one, if you don't strongly suspect a nightblade is close. Having a potion off cooldown is more valuable. Of course that doesn't stop some people, especially perhaps on a town flag during an event. The OP may have been sitting too close. It was risky.

The other thing that immediately sprang to mind is, if this was a Crown Store tri-stat potion, that potion makes a noise. I don't know whether other players can hear that noise, but they could definitely hear your Siphoning Attacks, Rally, and Race Against Time, if they were close enough and you were using those. Hearing unaccounted for nightblade noises would immediately prompt me to use a detection potion myself.

In regard to how detection works and the feedback you get:

Detection skills, such as Magelight, Camou Hunter and Revealing Flare do not detect you so much as they force you out of cloak for a few seconds. You gain the blue orb above your head, everyone can see you, and you are prevented from recloaking.

While active, Magelight and Camou Hunter send out an invisible detection pulse every 1 second. When the nightblade gets hit by that pulse, and is cloaked, the above happens. It is forcefully uncloaked. From the other player's PoV, these skills are best used while you have a melee nightblade in your face, or while you are in hot pursuit and the nightblade is still visible. It gives you X seconds - the duration of the detection skill - where that skill will pulse and automatically knock the nightblade out of cloak, should it attempt to engage cloak. Sure, you can use those skills to deter nightblades, e.g. they will see the magelight and/or the detection eye above your head. However, the best offensive use is to prevent a melee nightblade you are visibly engaged with from cloaking away.

Detection potions, on the other hand, do not force nightblades out of cloak. Only the user of the detection potion can see you. This is why you do not get the blue orb above your head. That orb signifies you've been forced out of cloak and you cannot reenter it, until the orb is gone. This is not the case when someone uses a potion. That said, the end result may feel much the same. The person who detected you will shoot at you. That's the thing that will actually knock you out of cloak, for everyone to see. Technically you can recloak immedately, so that the zerg can't see you anymore, but realistically the zerg will jump you quicker than that and the guy with the potion will keep knocking you out with damage skills.

Finally there's the Sentry set. This is basically a detection potion on steroids. Potions have a range against invisibility. The patch notes, when this was last changed, were very obtuse, but I believe the potion range against an invisible target, e.g. cloaked and not merely crouched, is and has always been 28m. The Sentry set, on the other hand, has no range limit. The limit is the draw distance of the Sentry set user and may, therefore, depend only on their graphics settings. Also, while the set has a cooldown, it doesn't have the cost of a potion. Few people sacrifice a whole set to hunting nightblades, but it's worth remembering this set exists. It's unlimited range and zero cost makes it attractive to use speculatively, more so than a potion.

As regards to what you can do. If on PC, get Miat's PvP Alerts addon. If someone attacks you, you will hear a "ding" sound at the moment of their first attack. If someone detects you, I'm not sure it makes that sound immediately, but their first attack will for sure. If that's a light attack from behind that barely scratches you, which you might not otherwise notice, the addon will alert you.

If you are being attacked from the front, then you should see the detection eye above the player who is attacking you. That said, there is a bug I noticed in so far as what happens when I use a detection potion myself. If the potion is named "Essence of Detection", this will put the red detection eye above my own head. However you can make a potion that has immovability and detection components. This is called "Essence of Immovability". That potion does NOT cause an eye to show above my own head, when I use it. I presume this looks the same to other players. In other words, there are detection potions that show the detection eye above a player's head, and ones that do not. Nasty, eh? I also don't know about the Sentry set in this regard. It probably causes the eye to show, but I don't know.