Stealth: Subterfuge vs Moon Magic

So, does anyone have a good working knowledge of both the subterfuge system and moon magic? Im wondering which is better for stealth, or is it good to have both. I liked Vanish / Shadow Form / Night Step from Moon Magic, but now I am leveling up both skill trees for stealth (I believe it is Camouflage in Subterfuge, I forget the rest of the tree).

I want to see which is "better" for playing thieves / highwaymen / assassin / "stealthy" roles. It would be great if mastering both Moon and Subterfuge added compounding effects on each others' skill trees.

Im going to spend r23-25 trying to level all these skills up, and ill see which fits more into my gameplay style, or if I would like a bit of both worlds.

 

I'd like to know as well.

 

Camouflage allows you to stealth but you have to remain still. Silent Movement allows you to stealth while moving.

Getting to Night Step seems to be one of the advantages of the Moon tree, plus it is meant for casters. Subterfuge stealth accommodates non-casters.

 

Good topic. I have lots of questions about this too:

1) What is the difference between 'stealth' and 'hidden?' Moon magic uses hidden. Subterfuge uses stealth.

2) Does Moon Magic's attunement improve 'hidden' skills?

3) Does Sun Magic attunement reduce the effectiveness of Moon Magic's 'hidden' skills?

4) Why does 'Shadow Form' require three reagents, but 'Silent Movement' requires none?

 

I'd like to know too. Leaned heavily on the Moon magic stealth spells in R22 but always wondered what the Light armor equivalents were like. Now that those are all in the subterfuge tree it's become a more difficult decision. where to put the skill points.

 

How do the subterfuge stealthing skills currently work?

I noticed last release that they changed you to look invisible similar to Vanish. I would hope, eventually, they'd rely heavily on cover or darkness, so would be less effective than Vanish, but also less costly to use.

 

I've levelled them both up to the point where I can stay invisible while moving indefinitely. Moon magic lasts a lot longer, but consumes reagents and has a high fizzle chance without them. So if I'm sneaking I'll keep Shadow Form up all the time, and use Silent Movement to cover the gap between the long 60sec cooldown (tooltip says 30, its wrong) and any fizzles I might have as I'm recasting Silent Movement.

 

Subterfuge skills will not fizzle, Moon Magic will.
Moon Magic lasts longer, but requires reagents to reduce high focus/fizzle cost.
Moon Magic can benefit from Moon Magic innates. This comes at a cost/benefit however as you need to train in Moon Attunement to get there. The higher your attunement the more susceptible you are to Sun Magic and the more powerful your moon magic will be.
Subterfuge skills lead to other thiefy type skills, so if you're min/maxing you may not need both Moon Magic and Subterfuge.

Everything royalsexy said is true, however I would point out that moving in full stealth indefinitely is a pain no matter what level you are. It's not like you're getting 10 minutes in shadow form per cast. It's been my experience that moving around in stealth at all is very demanding and doesn't give much back in return.

In addition, once you stealth and a mob sees you, you have to go outside of that mobs vision range to restealth. This is very annoying because if you're creating a stealthy character using Moon Magic or Subterfuge (or especially if you're trying to use both), your offensive ability is really tied to being stealthed, so you'd think there would be an easier way to restealth - not instant invisibility when people are right around you, but SOMETHING. Maybe this will happen once the cover system is implemented.

One more thing, Night Step is bugged and everytime you use it you're instantly unstealthed - making it currently impossible to use a backstab sneak attack while stealthed (that's pretty frustrating when you consider all the moves and skill points required for this move).

 

The light armor camouflage / silent movement skill won't work with the light spell - which makes sense. But you'll need night vision to see things properly at night.

They fixed night vision btw, it now lasts 60+ seconds and the duration increases as you skill up. Camouflage and silent movement also work well together since the cool downs are the same.

 

So far, my experience in the last release tells me that Subterfuge is a bit more useful and also easier. The night vision skill from Moon magic is priceless, but the vanish skill in Moon magic is not as good as Subterfuge's camouflage (camo having shorter cast time). The stealth skill in Subterfuge is easy to access and level up, while the equivalent spell in Moon magic requires reagents (so do all the subsequent "stealth" spells). Id probably have a mix of the two, but for now, I dont see a point in leveling up Vanish and Camouflage at the same time.

 

Darkstarr is already on record saying that stealth isn't going to rely on cover or darkness; the systems aren't designed to handle this scenario.

 

This is correct but cover currently does break line of sight which minimizes or prevents mob aggro. Wolves in particular tend to break my stealth if I'm too near and in their front view - but if my stealth breaks while I'm behind cover then nothing happens. This held true in R23.