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Too much Perception in PvP?
mimey2
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Recently, been feeling like this is the case. Lots of Perception, very little Stealth. Do note that I will be focused on only perception vs stealth. I do know that there are many other counters of course outside of just that.
Not always necessarily a bad thing in either direction for perception or stealth, but now we are seeing much more of a pendulum swing.
We've seen what extreme levels of stealth can accomplish. Romulan BOFFs have been notorious for this twice. Once when the Embassy was put out, and once after LoR. On the other side though, also after LoR EPTA was broken and granting insane amounts of perception allowing any player to see any ship that was cloaked guaranteed.
One thing that really doesn't help is how terrible the amounts of stealth you can gain are in the first place. I can understand not wanting it to be easily gained either to the point that the pendulum swings that way. BUT, trying to spec into stealth outside of 'extremes' due to bugs or equipping a stealth boosting BOFF is pretty much pointless.
Perception though is easily gotten. Heck, get a Mk XII Jemmy Deflector and EPTA 3, and you are more or less golden for detecting most cloakers. Maybe toss in a Sensor Scan if a sci and/or a tier 3 Nebula console, and that should be good enough to see 99% of players. If you are on a science ship on top of that, you'll see em from even further out. EPTA can also be used for boosting stealth as well though, and not just because it pushes up Aux power.
It's also worth saying that you can stack perception, but not stealth. You can use perception boosting abilities as much as you wish. Either to cycle them and keep a more level of it going, or stack them all at once for a big boost. A cloaker on the other hand only has their single cloaking ability for it's stealth. On top of that, there are consoles and such that boost perception by quite a bit, but no consoles that give big boosts to stealth. (I don't mean consoles that 'cloak' you like Photonic Displacement)
On the ground, cloaking is mostly a tactical thing with the Operative kit. Many of the same things apply to that is they do to space. Lots of ways to gain detection (though not as many as space) and few ways to gain extra stealth. Tacs and scis have their own buffs and debuffs (Tricorder Scan, FOMM) that they can use to help detect cloakers. Anyone can use the Shattering Harmonics set for it's ability to detect pretty much any cloaking person, but it is balanced by the relatively poor stats of the armor. But there is also now the Hirogen armor with a similar ability that can detect any cloaker, and is an incredibly good armor to boot.
That's all I have for now. I'm not saying nerf this or buff that. This thread is more about how it feels like there is just so much perception gained vs the amount of stealth you can get. We've seen, mostly due to bugs the extremes that stealth can bring, but now the pendulum is the other way and we see how much perception can hurt wanting to cloak. Again, I know there are many other counters, both direct and indirect that you can use, this is still just a perception vs stealth thing though.
Not always necessarily a bad thing in either direction for perception or stealth, but now we are seeing much more of a pendulum swing.
We've seen what extreme levels of stealth can accomplish. Romulan BOFFs have been notorious for this twice. Once when the Embassy was put out, and once after LoR. On the other side though, also after LoR EPTA was broken and granting insane amounts of perception allowing any player to see any ship that was cloaked guaranteed.
One thing that really doesn't help is how terrible the amounts of stealth you can gain are in the first place. I can understand not wanting it to be easily gained either to the point that the pendulum swings that way. BUT, trying to spec into stealth outside of 'extremes' due to bugs or equipping a stealth boosting BOFF is pretty much pointless.
Perception though is easily gotten. Heck, get a Mk XII Jemmy Deflector and EPTA 3, and you are more or less golden for detecting most cloakers. Maybe toss in a Sensor Scan if a sci and/or a tier 3 Nebula console, and that should be good enough to see 99% of players. If you are on a science ship on top of that, you'll see em from even further out. EPTA can also be used for boosting stealth as well though, and not just because it pushes up Aux power.
It's also worth saying that you can stack perception, but not stealth. You can use perception boosting abilities as much as you wish. Either to cycle them and keep a more level of it going, or stack them all at once for a big boost. A cloaker on the other hand only has their single cloaking ability for it's stealth. On top of that, there are consoles and such that boost perception by quite a bit, but no consoles that give big boosts to stealth. (I don't mean consoles that 'cloak' you like Photonic Displacement)
On the ground, cloaking is mostly a tactical thing with the Operative kit. Many of the same things apply to that is they do to space. Lots of ways to gain detection (though not as many as space) and few ways to gain extra stealth. Tacs and scis have their own buffs and debuffs (Tricorder Scan, FOMM) that they can use to help detect cloakers. Anyone can use the Shattering Harmonics set for it's ability to detect pretty much any cloaking person, but it is balanced by the relatively poor stats of the armor. But there is also now the Hirogen armor with a similar ability that can detect any cloaker, and is an incredibly good armor to boot.
That's all I have for now. I'm not saying nerf this or buff that. This thread is more about how it feels like there is just so much perception gained vs the amount of stealth you can get. We've seen, mostly due to bugs the extremes that stealth can bring, but now the pendulum is the other way and we see how much perception can hurt wanting to cloak. Again, I know there are many other counters, both direct and indirect that you can use, this is still just a perception vs stealth thing though.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.pwlaughingtrendy wrote:I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
Post edited by mimey2 on
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I think thye had to do this with power creep and to address the whole stay cloaked during a match thing.
Sure, the one who got vaped probably wouldn't know how to counter stealth...but it's the principle of the thing,
Counter stealth is defensive, stealth is offensive. In the name of balance, defensive abilities that can not directly influence kills is never an issue.
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
The alternative is worse and we've been there with totally undetectable people. I think it's in the best position it's ever been in honestly.
Pretty much this.
You have to equip a proper deflector (200 Lobi Jem Hadar deflector, or a 750 rom mark 32000 dil deflector, run Sensor Scan, run a copy of EPTA, and the TDF to do some serious detection.
And absent those things, a guy with his cloak and a proper boff setup can still creep up to a guy not running those things.
And the smart players just wait out those bursts of extreme detection anyway.
And all the guy who can get up to 3.0km close to a guy without those aids has to do is slot some boffs and be cloaked.
Yeah, KDF need the TDF badly.
I doubt we'll get it though. It makes too much sense for Cryptic to make it happen.
Couple of nights ago I was in Ker'rat in a sci nebula I'm building. Its a sci ship so it has bonus detection, reasonably high sensor skill points (bonus), and the TDF console equipped (bonus). A scimitar flew right over me and I only saw a little glimmer from the passive detect. Sensor Scan revealed him, ofc, and he QQ'd mightily, but I would not have seen him if it werent for the fact he brushed against my ship. If I cruise around with EPtA3 and SS and the TDF running then I can see a ship about 15k out, but I only have about 30 seconds of that and a couple minutes of CD before I can do it again. Even if I see them I cant kill them because the ship has no firepower. More often than not I am pulling somebody out of cloak with a gravwell on their torp or something.
Meanwhile my klingons can sneak up on somebody and blow a torpedo down their waste pipe, np, as long as a sci ship isnt in the fed ball. I can spot them by their EPtA, I just stay away from those.
we saw what happened when stealth was broken and was stacking....
on the contrary....we need more stealth detection abilities
on ground you have for example the jem hadar armor now...or the nukara 3 piece set which is great....
another stealth detection item like another set with it wouldn't hurt
They need to remove the recharge time reduction for cloaks from the boffs and leave it on the Romulan Operative trait.
See heal and spike.
The Legacy of Romulus version of Emergency Power to Auxiliary had the same problem, it was an ability that made stealth effectively useless. Stealth should never be undetectable by abilities and stealth detection should never render stealth useless. Yes, it should be able to detect stealthed players, but it shouldn't be able to do so if the enemy is more than four times out of weapons range. There needs to be a semblance of balance and the Starship Stealth skill needs to have a worthwhile payout.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
QFT
Anyone who doesnt run one of the really tactically hamstrung sets like the jemhadar or nukara in order to see a certain member of the green faction won't. If you play smart as a Romulan vaper, with all the the stealth bonuses you get from doffs and batteries and whatnot not even epta can reveal your location.
Having to sacrifice almost your entire build to detect romulan stealth makes the game balanced in favor of the stealth.
I agree however that as soon as Klingons are the stealthers, then they lose to perception.
This is less of an overarching issue as it is a very simple one. Get rid of ridiculous stealth bonuses for Romulans, then everything will be fine. Being a snooper does have a high opportunity cost in the first place.
yeah, there's very little wiggle room for a lot of things in this game.
On one side, should someone under stealth be impossible to detect? But on the other, should stealth be essentially pointless if their opponent can easily and effortlessly gain tremendous amounts of perception to see them without much effort?
Or in simpler terms:
Stealth should not be a perfect sword.
Perception should not be a perfect shield.
- Nobody in their sound mind is going to waste a Lt. Commander slot on EPTA III, the cost is too high and the return, not enough to justify the investment
- Dedicated stealth hunter build sacrifices a great deal of firepower and/or survivability, therefore, these ships become unbalanced and unable to function well outside of a team
- Stealth detection is great against ships with battlecloaks, namely Romulan Warbirds and select Klingons, namely BoP. Ships with regular cloaks will automatically raise shields when under Red Alert, thereby reducing the effectiveness of snopping on them
The OP's contention is that there is too much perception/SDR. I think what he is saying is a problem on paper only and out of touch with reality. It is true you can potentially stack up a ton of perception, including items/powers normally not used by a snooper such as proc to increase perception on activation of Tactical Team,EPTA III, Emission-Seeking Torp console that comes with + Starship Sensors, lots of Starship Sensor Probes consoles from the Embassy and etc. Keep in mind, you have very limited active doff slots and up to 10 consoles slots. In all these, you need to manage your builds such that you can be effective once you actually detect a cloaked ship without having to rely on anyone to kill it for you. Sure, you can create a super good snooper but you'll become toast easily whenever you fire something, even torpedos or you carry so little punch that your targets will just ignore you.
So in reality, you can't have too much perception because it just wouldn't be a viable build. Now, I don't do premades. I suppose if you were a premade and you know your opposing team a lot of cloakers, you could in theory have someone act as the snooper for the team and reveal them for the teammates. Even then, there are counters to that. There are Klink premades in Kerrat, namely HOBO, Nerds of Prey, Isc. and etc. They have adapted to being snopped with a variety of tactics, without increasing their stealth. It really ain't so simple. I wish the OP had actually tested this himself before making generic statements that simply do not reflect the reality and the existing challenges at all. It's misleading to a lot of people here.
Oopsie! :eek: