Stealth feels useless.

TL;DR: At low skill levels Stealth literally never works.

I want to start this post by saying that I want stealth to be at least a little bit challenging. I don't think players should just be able to go invisible and walk around right next to things without getting caught. I think that you should have to use distraction and be aware of your surroundings if you're trying to sneak past creatures. It should be something that you have to do with caution.

That being said, Silent Movement is absolutely useless until you have significantly leveled it up, as well as leveled up Distract. Here's why.

At the moment, Silent Movement provides almost no actual stealth. Right now I have the thing leveled so it's providing 11.8% stealth for 32.5 seconds (level 35), and it never works. Creatures aggro from the same range in stealth or out of stealth. I have tested this on creatures of various level ranges and noticed no difference in aggro range - as soon as I get within aggro range of a creature it attacks whether I am stealthed or not. So it's possible that this is a bug.

I'm not 100% sure how stealth mechanics work - I am assuming that the percentage is either a percent chance for something to not notice me when I am in it's aggro range, or a percentage of aggro range reduction. If either one is the case, i have not been able to see it yet.

In addition, even though Camouflage says it provides 55% stealth, if I stealth with camo and a creature wanders within it's normal aggro range, it notices me every time.

On top of that, Distract. The starting range on Distract is so low that you will never be able to use the ability to distract something and sneak past it, because far before you get in range to use distract the creature has already seen you and broken your stealth. The range on distract scales as you level it, which is fine, except that it's starting range needs to be doubled to be useful at all. As it is now you can't use the skill what it is intended for.

 

Yeah who knows whats going on with Stealth. I didnt want to go grind so I was planning to do some stealth mining, but I got chopped down first mob I came across.

 

I haven't done a huge amount of testing with it, but Shadow Form felt kind of similarly useless. I thought it was great when I wasn't around any bad guys, but then when I tried to put my money to the test, the damn thing wore off way too quickly. I'm not sure if there's some mechanic there that I don't understand.

 

Been that way (broken) since it was first put in the game. It does absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell.

Not that I expect it ever will, the way things are going, but their apparent design goal is that it will be:
a) not usable in combat
b) inferior to invisibility/magic
c) not powerful, in general

So, ok, that's fine. I'll just kill everything. No problem.

I've seen some games do stealth well, and some games do things like stealth, silence, distract, mask (smell) and a bunch of other things.
But sadly, SotA isn't going to be the one game to draw them all together into something new and innovative. At the moment, Stealth is a sad pathetic joke.

 

perhaps hitting iron rocks with a pick axe is a bad way of being stealthy?
;-)

 

I thought "stealth mining" was done with a tiny plastic teaspoon.

Anyway, I am a big fan of stealth mechanics. I tend to avoid a fight whenever I can, or flee from one with clever tricks like "Look out! Behind you!".
And I like having alternatives in general.

Today it feels like everything is resolved with brute force. Gathering cotton? Kill the spiders first. Closed gate? Bash it down. Mail delivery? Fight your way through. Ugly wife? Chop her head off. Messy bedroom? Set it on fire.

 

Only way for stealth to be useful at low skills would be if sneaking past low level/intelligence? monsters was easier
Has noted that early stealth is useless for going past control points.

One guess i have about stealth is that 5% stealth maybe reduces agro range by 5%?

 

Chris, just so I understand a little better. It sounds like stealth training may only impact PVE and the chance a monster detects you. So if I have 20 Vanish and that gives me (making up the numbers here) an 11.3% chance to be undetected, I might have a 100 stealth and that might give me a 90% chance to be undetected by the same monster.

But for PVP, having a stealth of 1 is basically the same as having the stealth of 100, right? Because we're not talking about the level of transparency here are we? We're only talking about the chance that a monster (or skill like reveal hidden) can detect you.

Is this correct? If yes, is there anything else we could do to stealth so that training it up would be better in pvp? From a pvp standpoint, I feel like the stealth skills are not scaling very well to make me NEED to level them up past 10 so I can move on to the next skill. The increased duration is a good motivator, but unless I'm getting like 30 minutes of stealth at level 100 I can't see training up that high and feeling satisfied.

 

Last release a skill of 35 allowed for perma stealh with a couple seconds of overlap to account for cast time, and the uhoh I missed that timer factors.. for PVP that is all I needed, and for PVE I could run from one end to the other in Eastreach without being detected.. So it worked on both fronts with 35 skill.. im at 29 currently ill post feedback at 35 to let you know if it is the same.

 

If your opponent is affected by stun, confusion, root, etc should it increase the effectiveness of your stealth? Perhaps against rooted opponents you need to be behind them for increased stealth chance. These rules are more easily applied to humanoids.

Wolves and bears have a much keener sense of smell, so perhaps it's more difficult to stealth near these creatures? But...fun before realism I guess!

Also, when you think about it...what are the undead reacting to? Your life force or your physical movements? If it's your life force...it seems like you'd never be able to stealth against them. This would make undead considerably more difficult (for players that rely on stealth, anyway)...maybe something to consider for more powerful types of undead.

 

The numbers seemed alright in R25 (maybe R26's combat acceleration is affecting how often NPCs are spotting players?)... I just have to question why Silent Movement and Camouflage are two separate skills.

Considering you're constantly managing two cool-downs to remind your character that he/she should stay hidden; that's a lot of busywork. For optimal stealth usage, you currently need to sacrifice 2 slots on your combat bar as well as your non-combat bar.

To engane an opponent, you need:
- to be out of combat,
- activate Silent Movement,
- go in combat mode (it'll get awkward fast if you wait until you're behind before switching),
- move closer to your victim,
- cast Camouflage (because Silent Movement runs out),
- wait for Silent Movement's cool-down to end,
- cast Silent Movement again,
- move (yet again) closer to your victim,
- strike.
It isn't natural for stealth players especially when you also have to keep track of every NPC/player around you and their aggro range. It's even worse if you try to have them (the skills) shuffle randomly to avoid the cool-down.

 

In prior releases (R22? R24?) I thought stealth was awesome. At like level 15, it seemed like nothing could see me. I was dancing in front of bears.

With R26, stealth feels like it got nerfed. Everything sees me from very far away. I could have sworn it used to work a lot better...

 

I have been using stealth all morning, and can confirm it does work. More importantly, it works when used from behind your target. I even stealthed, swam through water, and stood immediately behind a Wizard this morning, then attacked once before he began to respond. I tried this again a few times, worked every time.

I only have skill level 14 in stealth right now.

Every single time I stealth in visible range of an opponent, or walk into their cone of vision, they see me. The distance seems shorter when its nighttime, but cant really tell. Basically anytime I sneak up from behind, they never see me.

 

You can do that out of stealth as well, don't get in their los.. Although I can confirm stealth worked better last release at low level. But as of this release you have to raise it higher for it to be more effective.. I'm at 31 now and can stealth closer in LOS then I could at 25. So it is working from what I can tell. You nest need a higher skill. If you notice now when you hover over the buff icon you now have a % stealth on there. Id wager that is how much shorter the mob's agro radius is now.. (Haven't tested to confirm last statement.)

 

Is two kinds of stealth subterfuge and moon magic

Stealth when standing still

• Camoflage 4 focus 15 cooldown 50.5%
• Vanish, 8 focus 15 cooldown and 8.5% stealth at skill level 17 lunar attument 7

To me it seems Camoflage is superiour

 

@stratigos I'm not using stealth this release so thanks for keeping me up-to-date.

Well it depends... Moon magic has the practical use to being effective in-combat, subterfuge skills do not. Also, what's the casting time on Vanish? For a stealth user, I'd say Camouflage and Silent Movement are both pretty slow spells to cast.

 

LOL ok, thats funny. I thought I was being this stealthy special forces commando, swimming through water and popping out with a stealth attack. It was just my imagination

 

Regarding Silent Movement: I made the same experience across all lvls of this skill. It appears, currently all stealth related attack skills seems to be useless. How to attack someone from behind or knock a mob down, if they are exposing me from the distance? @Devs, please overhaul stealth fighting.