Why, like I said, fews days ago I didn't even know about a Stealth Module; but, way I see it, it's just the equivalent of a cloak. So, as long as this Stealth thingy is not a battle cloak sort of deal, yeah, then what's the big deal, really?! You can stay cloaked in your ship indefinitely too.
I persnally used the old stealth kit alot on my main. And it it did it work for how I used it. Sneak around, avoid guards, etc. Never used it for gaining more damage. Later on i got other kits and some modules could be used in stealth, so you could use dps skills. This was not my primairy goal, and if we got a new stealth kit back, just to cloack on ground (like the federation uses to spy on primal races (data in star trek insurection > and no possible way to use skills, then i could use the old strategy again.
The current module is very timed and based on generating more damage, i have enough or better modules as a tact for that, so i gained a new slot on tact. The difference on ambush makes it as a teamplayer more interesting anyway.
Did it ruin my tact build? No, Is the extra damage more fun? Not for me. There are now 4 temporary stealth skills, ambush kit, stealth kit, phasic shroud, and the the rep smoke skill. Of these the current stealth module is the least interesting now.
Probally some people can make a huge exploit flanker build with this module.
"Reports of our depression are vastly exaggerated." "Anyaway, we don't often see a sense of humor in Section 31."
Rofl, Tac underbalanced? What are you smoking? The only way Tac is underbalanced is if that means there is no balance at all as Tac is consistently pointed at as the most used class with the highest damage potential by a ways.
I have to agree there. LOL Tac has never been underbalanced it's always been very strong in the game even in PVE.
What gets me about OP's post is he doesn't seem to realize that yes you do actually have to put points in science skills in order for cloak to be effective even with the universal console.
Additionally you can get ships albeit in the store only that do have cloaking tech installed without a console.
My recommendation would be to get the intel escort ship, not only does it have cloak it also has the ability to cause enemies to miss at a certain distance so you could easily go all beams and wreak havoc on your enemies.
Rofl, Tac underbalanced? What are you smoking? The only way Tac is underbalanced is if that means there is no balance at all as Tac is consistently pointed at as the most used class with the highest damage potential by a ways.
I have to agree there. LOL Tac has never been underbalanced it's always been very strong in the game even in PVE.
What gets me about OP's post is he doesn't seem to realize that yes you do actually have to put points in science skills in order for cloak to be effective even with the universal console.
Additionally you can get ships albeit in the store only that do have cloaking tech installed without a console.
My recommendation would be to get the intel escort ship, not only does it have cloak it also has the ability to cause enemies to miss at a certain distance so you could easily go all beams and wreak havoc on your enemies.
When I first read the patch notes, I thought, well, they're going to be hearing from me about this!
But I should be fair and try it first, so I'm not just making pointless statements.
I was disappointed I immediately pulled the stealth module from all my Tacs' kitframes and replaced it with something else.
The one reason I used Stealth Module was because it was unlimited, both in PvE and social zones.
For PvE combat, I'd cloak, wait at a reasonable distance for the enemy party to pass by and then hit them from behind when they weren't expecting it.
All of this requires patience, planning and waiting for the moment to move.
None of which can be exercised if you are racing against a 15 second timer.
As for social zones, it was fun to run around almost invisible forever if I wanted to.
So in conclusion, all they've managed to do is to take the one module I found the most useful/entertaining and ruin it completely, to the point of making me never want to have it again!
And therefore, unless it goes back to the way it was with unlimited duration, I'm not interested in it anymore.
If I wanted a short duration cloak, I could just use Distortion Field instead as all my Tacs have this set bonus.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
In fact, even better: make it so shroud is FRAGILE such that it breaks and goes into cooldown if you take damage from ANY source for ANY reason, including going Jeronimo off of tall objects. That way you can't just plough through area effect toxic sludge or plasma grenades, you have to actually AVOID COMBAT while you're sneaking around. Get too close to that Tholian Lieutenant who got mad and started putting out thermionic radiation? Too bad, now he can see you! You have to actually SNEAK AROUND now, it's not just a panacea for every situation. And it greys out until your Red Alert goes away on top of that. In my opinion, that would make it a LOT more balanced and still make it fun. Because right now, it's just a wimpy version of Ambush Field. And guess what, it's another "always this, never that" situation now just in reverse of before. Why use stealth module at all now? Ambush field's damage bonus once it fades is HUGE!!!
Kind of off topic here, but related: the cloaking mechanic for KDF and Romulans in space is utterly broken, and the reason my Feds avoid space PVP like the plague. I don't care how buff your ship is, if it's an Annorax with full Chronometric Calculations and Krenim Timeline Manipulation and full Flagship technologies on top of that or whatever, against cloaked enemies in PVP you're nothing but PREY. Very annoying.
If I wanted a short duration cloak, I could just use Distortion Field instead as all my Tacs have this set bonus.
Very useful, but it also limits you to wearing two pieces of Task Force Omega armor at all times. Forget about that TimeCop build with Temporal Defense Initiative armor casting temporal distrotions everywhere. And forget about all the Marks you spent on special hostile environment gear for Nukara Prime and the few other environments that require it. The TFO armor, btw, I got for some of my BOFFs and they actually use the Distortion Field in relatively intelligent ways!
I'm officially lobbying for more hostile environments btw, all we really have where the space suits come into play are a few missions and of course Nukara Prime itself. My fave is to take my whole team down for the final New Romulus mission, Power Source, and I've got them tweaked with Winter Wonderland manuals so they're blasting the Tholians with cold as well!!! On Nukara Prime, the Winter Wonderland modules are EVIL against Tholians no matter what your specialization. My Tac is obviously throwing freeze grenades around and so forth, but one of the Engineering modules from Risa, Hurricane Turret, is a Cold attack as well!!! Tholians HATE IT. 3:)
In fact, even better: make it so shroud is FRAGILE such that it breaks and goes into cooldown if you take damage from ANY source for ANY reason, including going Jeronimo off of tall objects.
I would react with even more disapproval to that version.
In my first mmo, there was a device similar to a holoemitter, but had combat practically.
For 60 seconds (because it was timed), I could take on the appearance of an enemy soldier (in PvE) and pass through their ranks undetected as long as I didn't attack them while the disguise was active.
This gave me enough time to reach a safe area, deactivate the disguise, wait for cooldown to end and then start the next stage of my journey forward.
But then they decided to do what you suggested, using environmental damage as an aggro trigger while operating in this stealth mode.
Not a good idea where meteorites are falling from the sky every 10 seconds in groups of 5 that you can't see coming or avoid!
Which meant I had to immediately stop my forward progress, backup, reset the disguise and start again, hoping the next meteorite fall would miss my location and that it wouldn't hit me while I was near the enemy groups.
For the record, the most significant "balance changes" on this list were all done on my first mmo, because the players didn't like that someone else had cool powers and their class didn't.
So basically, Cryptic is just repeating mistakes that was made long ago by another company.
Very useful, but it also limits you to wearing two pieces of Task Force Omega ground gear (armor+shield) at all times.
Well, with my Tacs, that wasn't an issue, because they were already using it regardless.
The primary reason is I resented MACO set for drawing aggro due to the shield pulse effect, so opted for the Omega set instead.
Also because Omega is more geared to stealth and I value that above all else, it was a more rational choice.
I don't like the Omega set weapon though, so don't use it.
Fortunately being a TR-116 user, I don't need to remodulate when I shoot Borg.
Unfortunately, the MACO shield pulse is a teamwide buff, so I'm still affected with it if even one other member of the team brings it along.
Before they introduced the Honor Guard Variant that works like the MACO set, I was genuinely thrilled/ecstatically happy if I ended up on a team that was all KDF, because it meant nobody had the shield that was frustrating me!
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
And here's another, even better suggestion: in PVP, allow players to detect other players in shroud by hitting V to scan for anomalies. That usually points towards whatever marked object is closest, just make shrouded players another marked object. That will make the whole cat and mouse game versus shrouded players a LOT more exciting. The way it was before, there WAS NO cat and mouse game. You would basically wait until the guy decided to drop shroud and hit you, nothing more you could do. With this mod you can run him down, triangulating with multiple scans, if you think you're close drop some kind of area effect to force him out of shroud. #MakeStealthModuleGreatAgain lol
I never ever even used the Stealth Module in pve, except to test it a few times, and I never really saw a reason to use it further, so I don't understand what the fuss is all about.
The only time I used it for real was in recent PvP to profusely abuse the Kligat bug, and that's it.
In fact, even better: make it so shroud is FRAGILE such that it breaks and goes into cooldown if you take damage from ANY source for ANY reason, including going Jeronimo off of tall objects.
I would react with even more disapproval to that version.
In my first mmo, there was a device similar to a holoemitter, but had combat practically.
For 60 seconds (because it was timed), I could take on the appearance of an enemy soldier (in PvE) and pass through their ranks undetected as long as I didn't attack them while the disguise was active.
This gave me enough time to reach a safe area, deactivate the disguise, wait for cooldown to end and then start the next stage of my journey forward.
But then they decided to do what you suggested, using environmental damage as an aggro trigger while operating in this stealth mode.
Not a good idea where meteorites are falling from the sky every 10 seconds in groups of 5 that you can't see coming or avoid!
Which meant I had to immediately stop my forward progress, backup, reset the disguise and start again, hoping the next meteorite fall would miss my location and that it wouldn't hit me while I was near the enemy groups.
!
There's no place in this game where meteors are constantly falling on you. The devs do read this stuff, so we can either hurl abuse at them and get ignored or try to be constructive about this and throw out suggestions that might satisfy the PVP whiners. I'm taking option two there because it might acually yield results. To be blunt for a second, the devs have obviously gone World of Tanks on this issue and given in to the whiners whose main thing is PVP, because nobody cares what you do in missions/PVE because it's just you and whoever you team up with, if you team up with anyone that is, versus AI. They're not going to bring it back exactly the way it was, just like WoT never goes back on nerfing a cool tank because some players lack the strategy to defeat it. It is what it is. I can see where they're coming from anyway, being on the other end of the old Stealth Module in PVP was pretty annoying. This way its use is limited enough that the whiners will probably be satisfied, and even more fun if they implement my suggestion about having anomaly scan point you towards it along with area damage breaking it. Now you get a cool cat and mouse game where before you were just prey in that situation. #MakeStealthModuleGreatAgain
Kind of off topic here, but related: the cloaking mechanic for KDF and Romulans in space is utterly broken, and the reason my Feds avoid space PVP like the plague. I don't care how buff your ship is, if it's an Annorax with full Chronometric Calculations and Krenim Timeline Manipulation and full Flagship technologies on top of that or whatever, against cloaked enemies in PVP you're nothing but PREY. Very annoying.
You must mean "overpowered," not broken in the sense of it doesn't work as intended or is bugged.
First, PvP isn't an abandoned game mode in STO, and as far as I can tell has ceased to be one since delta rising. From what long-time members have said, when KDF was introduced, it was meant to be a PvP faction. Cloaks make sense, including enhanced battle cloaks which the B'Rel has. Romulans as a (half) faction were introduced some time after KDF, and they have their own boosts to cloak technology with improved turn rates, Remans, etc.
Second, it's canon. Even ground cloak is canon as I can think of one TNG episode where Romulans where sneaking around with some sort of personal phase cloak while Picard investigated his ship and a D'D stuck in a temporal anomaly. Both of space and ground cloak abilities on screen are used without limit. In STO, since it takes place in the future, ground players even have personal shields that regenerate and never fail, so there's clearly a long duration power source that can and should power personal cloak without time limitations.
Third, some Fed ships have had console basic cloak since a long time ago, like Defiant, Gal-X, Avenger. Defiant now can be upgraded to a battle cloak although I don't think it works anywhere as fast as real battle cloak and is costly in terms of console use. Some fed ships now have built-in standard cloak (scryer, eclipse, phantom), and even built-in battle cloak (Temporal Raider). Feds have had access to Sci ship (Palisade) cloak and battle cloak before the Defiant set, provided you had the other one or two Voth ships, one of which changed from being ultra rare to phoenix pack T5 prize recently. Feds had access to basic built-in cloak on the Tal Shiar T5 ships. Now, beyond C-Store, Feds have Na'kuhl Battle Cloaking ships (Raiders, Battlecruiser, Science), and probably more to come since the Na'kuhl opened the door to battle cloaks for everyone.
Fourth, Feds have had snooper builds which go around detecting cloaked ships. Science career has a space powers that help stealth detection. Subnuke might even prevent cloak after the ship is detected.
Fifth, stealth and stealth detection is built into the skill tree. It's a core game mechanic that NPCs use as well.
The reasons why Space cloaking needs to be this way are the same reasons Stealth Module nerf feels to me completely out of place in addition to the many reasons already posted here, not least of all from a purely role play perspective.
Devs: Provide the option to Turn OFF full screen flashes from enemy ship explosions
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I hope after this AoS event closes down Devs will re-instate pre stealth levels to what was last week. This is a disgraceful act of nerfing something to oblivion. What's next space cloak? I imagine they will do a similar event in space and if you cloak till your teammates do re-respawn it has the same principles as in ground. They need to stop this nonsense and really work harder to make it more fair to balance.
The rest of all the balance changes were good. Funny that this change is considered negative all of a sudden considering I regularly run ground elites, and NEVER see anyone using stealth module. And that's been so for years. Mostly because it isn't really needed. This weeping all of a sudden for a module that no one really used in the first place is hilarious, and I don't really care if they revert it back to what it was or not... but whatever.
I do see some phasic shroud users here and there though, and all veteren pvpers use it because of its low cd and ton of damage resist. It doesn't bother me like the kligat (which got rightfully nerfed for the broken piece of TRIBBLE that it was), but It's pretty cheesy because everyone is using it - mostly to avoid getting vaped by the b00l34n lolgun (in the hands of a lol tac of course).
wow, stealth useful in ground PVE? srsly? was more gimmicky than something actually useful compared with what you could put into that slot instead.
In the colony invasion PvE, going stealthy to rescue the ambassadors was actually a good strategy. Guess the only play possible now for the OP is the Omega 2 piece. Frankly, for something barely used, it doesn't really make sense that they made it even more garbage than it used to be.
I replied earlier, but my post got deleted when I tried to edit it. Back on topic. Personally, for me the stealth module is now pretty useless. I used it to sneak around in certain mission's and in pvp. The current incarnation makes it useless, at least to me. I don't really see the reason for the change as it wasn't really game breaking in its old form. It really feels like they nerfed it just for this new event. Which if they plan to keep it as an event added to the regular event rotation would need the stealth module nerfed. I can't see any other reason for the change.
There's no place in this game where meteors are constantly falling on you. To be blunt for a second, the devs have obviously gone World of Tanks on this issue and given in to the whiners whose main thing is PVP.
I was just choosing that as an example since it's what happened in my first mmo and I don't know what is considered "environmental damage" in STO.
Granted, walking through an acid pool or something like that I would accept, as it's (hypothethically) damaging your portable cloaking device.
But walking into a tree branch or dropping off a ledge, unless you were doing it at high speed or from impractically high levels, that should not happen.
Especially as we have shielding technology and (presumably) the cloak module is inside the shield!
But in the case I cited, there wasn't even any significant damage from the meteor hit, it was just an aggro trigger to trigger enemy alerts. And it wasn't always there, they added it late into the game. After a prior stealth nerf that was much much worse.
So you can see given my history of bad stealthbreaker "balances", I am not happy with it happening again in STO.
And since you brought it up, all the changes to that mmo were made to satisfy the PvP whiners, who (to be equally blunt), didn't give a gosh darn heck that they were messing up PvE in the progress, because they "never played PvE".
I think this phrase is particularly important for this situation:
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
And that's what I think is happening right now, Cryptic didn't learn the lesson of those who went before them and are repeating the mistakes they made.
I am also experiencing the edit comment bug.
I have had to repost this comment several times now, that's not good.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
There's no place in this game where meteors are constantly falling on you. To be blunt for a second, the devs have obviously gone World of Tanks on this issue and given in to the whiners whose main thing is PVP.
I was just choosing that as an example since it's what happened in my first mmo and I don't know what is considered "environmental damage" in STO.
Granted, walking through an acid pool or something like that I would accept, as it's (hypothethically) damaging your portable cloaking device.
But walking into a tree branch or dropping off a ledge, unless you were doing it at high speed or from impractically high levels, that should not happen.
Ever watch the Predator movies? there were dozens of things that could interrupt their cloaks. so yeah... it's like that.
PvE in STO is for the most part really dumb and easy (with the exception of HGE/AoTNE maybe), while pvp here requires a much higher level of grinding, min/maxing, planning, trial & error and skill. In most pve queues, you just pretty much run/fly to the enemy and shoot to win. The End.
With this (I admit rather silly) stealth module nerf, the game still hasn't changed one friggin bit really, because barely anyone uses it. But perhaps the devs have taken a look during my kligat exploits, how I stacked (hard to detect) stealth as cat (who gets even more stealth bonus) while 1-shotting other players with the kligat (that didn't break stealth then), and decided on "never again".
Rather what should be said is we need more missions or situations where stealth would be a nice optional necessity. Where this module would actually be worth a damn, nerfed or not.
The rest of all the balance changes were good. Funny that this change is considered negative all of a sudden considering I regularly run ground elites, and NEVER see anyone using stealth module. And that's been so for years. Mostly because it isn't really needed. This weeping all of a sudden for a module that no one really used in the first place is hilarious, and I don't really care if they revert it back to what it was or not... but whatever.
I do see some phasic shroud users here and there though, and all veteren pvpers use it because of its low cd and ton of damage resist. It doesn't bother me like the kligat (which got rightfully nerfed for the broken piece of **** that it was), but It's pretty cheesy because everyone is using it - mostly to avoid getting vaped by the b00l34n lolgun (in the hands of a lol tac of course).
If you dont use it probably because you are noob and don't know how to play with it. For over 6 years this was probably the best tool a Tact in ground could have. The TACT PvPer greatest tool in combat for the longest time and you really need to have a good "brain" to use it. Just because you don't do ground or dont use it does not mean it is "useless".
By the same token I could say ship "cloaking" is useless to me since I dont use it. However, would not belittle others due to my ignorance on the subject.
The rest of all the balance changes were good. Funny that this change is considered negative all of a sudden considering I regularly run ground elites, and NEVER see anyone using stealth module. And that's been so for years. Mostly because it isn't really needed. This weeping all of a sudden for a module that no one really used in the first place is hilarious, and I don't really care if they revert it back to what it was or not... but whatever.
I do see some phasic shroud users here and there though, and all veteren pvpers use it because of its low cd and ton of damage resist. It doesn't bother me like the kligat (which got rightfully nerfed for the broken piece of **** that it was), but It's pretty cheesy because everyone is using it - mostly to avoid getting vaped by the b00l34n lolgun (in the hands of a lol tac of course).
If you dont use it probably because you are noob and don't know how to play with it. For over 6 years this was probably the best tool a Tact in ground could have. The TACT PvPer greatest tool in combat for the longest time and you really need to have a good "brain" to use it. Just because you don't do ground or dont use it does not mean it is "useless".
By the same token I could say ship "cloaking" is useless to me since I dont use it. However, would not belittle others due to my ignorance on the subject.
Read my last post, noob.
I did REAL noob..and apparently with only 187 posts...for sure you were not around when this game launched and a big mouth or insults does not get you anywhere. Good luck with that attitude.
Stealth Module is useful the way it is now. Yes, it's clunky. No, I don't use it primarily for the damage buff. The durationless stealth toggle allows a player to interact with objectives and avoid aggression: a unique and situationally useful ability. Making the stealth duration finite would diminish the ability and actually work toward reducing options rather than increasing them. We already have plenty of "click for timed damage buff" abilities and Ambush already does the same with a much stronger spike.
That's what I wrote about this before the nerf went live. Having seen the newly "balanced" Stealth Module, my opinion has not changed. The new version is horrible and useless in practice. Maybe in some math void where numbers are pitted against numbers without concern for trivial matters such as actually playing STO this change makes sense, but... no.
- Damage buff is utterly useless after the first shot. Five seconds or fifteen, makes no difference how much time is left. Added positional requirement is another senseless hurdle that makes it extremely impractical.
- Six seconds downtime before being able to attack is worse than before. Waiting for the toggle to register took a little while, but this borders on masochism.
- Duration is nowhere near sufficient for the ability to serve its intended purpose. Or any purpose, really.
- Cooldown is excessive and hammers the final nail in Stealth Module's coffin.
The "i never saw any1 use it b4 who cares lol" posts only reinforce the complaint. Stealth Module was neither popular nor overpowered in any way. It was situationally useful, but it was useful. Now it isn't. If the problem was some unscrupulous individuals ganking with Kligat from stealth in PvP, the sane solution would have been making Kligat unusable from stealth, not nerfing both abilities into the ground.
I genuinely do not follow the logic behind these changes (Stealth and Kligat, and to lesser extent Tac Initiative). STO is mainly a solo/cooperative PvE game and trying to balance it for 1vs1 PvP through nerfing will not end well.
Needs to be re-balanced. This is an awful change and wish all the fools who are trying to derail this thread should stop. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but do so respectfully.
When it comes to it a NERF is a nerf no matter how you see it. In other MMOs DEVs have lost their jobs for doing lesser things.
Ground stealth was a great skill as it was prior to the last patch and just wait till they nerf space DPS to start caring about it.
It was generally agreed upon that the balance changes were nice change of pace. Nerfing the lol tac and making the sci's and engi's finally stand out more was a great move. Now the classes are almost equal, and that's good enough for me. (And before whining starts again, yes I play tacs too, I play every friggin class).
Regarding the stealth and kligat nerf, they went a little overboard there, as I agree that stealth should've stayed the same (useless or not). The kligat nerf makes sense in that its range and cd is reduced, but what I would've done is keep the "always crit" on it, and just only reduce the base damage.
Now tac initiative nerf was I think also pvp related, since I saw a group of tacs stacking "invincibility" buffs through coordinated group cooldowns and chroniton jolt. I was there in that match, and I saw the whole thing, and it was ridiculous. I won't name any names though... I've no further opinion on this nerf, I'm neutral.
It was generally agreed upon that the balance changes were nice change of pace. Nerfing the lol tac and making the sci's and engi's finally stand out more was a great move. Now the classes are almost equal, and that's good enough for me. (And before whining starts again, yes I play tacs too, I play every friggin class).
Regarding the stealth and kligat nerf, they went a little overboard there, as I agree that stealth should've stayed the same (useless or not). The kligat nerf makes sense in that its range and cd is reduced, but what I would've done is keep the "always crit" on it, and just only reduce the base damage.
Now tac initiative nerf was I think also pvp related, since I saw a group of tacs stacking "invincibility" buffs through coordinated group cooldowns and chroniton jolt. I was there in that match, and I saw the whole thing, and it was ridiculous. I won't name any names though... and I've no further opinion on it.
The classes are still no where near equal after these changes. I think the changes were more about making things more difficult for this event then a balance change for the actual game. Tactical initiative and stealth module unchanged would have made AoS easier, but the changes don't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Stealth nerf is kind of debatable, I personally think it was bad and can't really see it being useful at all anymore. Kligat I never used personally, but I heard it was pretty op since it had a guaranteed crit. Still, at the same time, most well build characters are pretty much guaranteed a crit anyway. Tac initiative while it does hurt tac characters a bit it hurts team play more since now it doesn't affect the team.
Comments
The current module is very timed and based on generating more damage, i have enough or better modules as a tact for that, so i gained a new slot on tact. The difference on ambush makes it as a teamplayer more interesting anyway.
Did it ruin my tact build? No, Is the extra damage more fun? Not for me. There are now 4 temporary stealth skills, ambush kit, stealth kit, phasic shroud, and the the rep smoke skill. Of these the current stealth module is the least interesting now.
Probally some people can make a huge exploit flanker build with this module.
"Anyaway, we don't often see a sense of humor in Section 31."
I have to agree there. LOL Tac has never been underbalanced it's always been very strong in the game even in PVE.
What gets me about OP's post is he doesn't seem to realize that yes you do actually have to put points in science skills in order for cloak to be effective even with the universal console.
Additionally you can get ships albeit in the store only that do have cloaking tech installed without a console.
My recommendation would be to get the intel escort ship, not only does it have cloak it also has the ability to cause enemies to miss at a certain distance so you could easily go all beams and wreak havoc on your enemies.
really talking about ground here actually
But I should be fair and try it first, so I'm not just making pointless statements.
I was disappointed I immediately pulled the stealth module from all my Tacs' kitframes and replaced it with something else.
The one reason I used Stealth Module was because it was unlimited, both in PvE and social zones.
For PvE combat, I'd cloak, wait at a reasonable distance for the enemy party to pass by and then hit them from behind when they weren't expecting it.
All of this requires patience, planning and waiting for the moment to move.
None of which can be exercised if you are racing against a 15 second timer.
As for social zones, it was fun to run around almost invisible forever if I wanted to.
So in conclusion, all they've managed to do is to take the one module I found the most useful/entertaining and ruin it completely, to the point of making me never want to have it again!
And therefore, unless it goes back to the way it was with unlimited duration, I'm not interested in it anymore.
If I wanted a short duration cloak, I could just use Distortion Field instead as all my Tacs have this set bonus.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Very useful, but it also limits you to wearing two pieces of Task Force Omega armor at all times. Forget about that TimeCop build with Temporal Defense Initiative armor casting temporal distrotions everywhere. And forget about all the Marks you spent on special hostile environment gear for Nukara Prime and the few other environments that require it. The TFO armor, btw, I got for some of my BOFFs and they actually use the Distortion Field in relatively intelligent ways!
I'm officially lobbying for more hostile environments btw, all we really have where the space suits come into play are a few missions and of course Nukara Prime itself. My fave is to take my whole team down for the final New Romulus mission, Power Source, and I've got them tweaked with Winter Wonderland manuals so they're blasting the Tholians with cold as well!!! On Nukara Prime, the Winter Wonderland modules are EVIL against Tholians no matter what your specialization. My Tac is obviously throwing freeze grenades around and so forth, but one of the Engineering modules from Risa, Hurricane Turret, is a Cold attack as well!!! Tholians HATE IT. 3:)
I would react with even more disapproval to that version.
In my first mmo, there was a device similar to a holoemitter, but had combat practically.
For 60 seconds (because it was timed), I could take on the appearance of an enemy soldier (in PvE) and pass through their ranks undetected as long as I didn't attack them while the disguise was active.
This gave me enough time to reach a safe area, deactivate the disguise, wait for cooldown to end and then start the next stage of my journey forward.
But then they decided to do what you suggested, using environmental damage as an aggro trigger while operating in this stealth mode.
Not a good idea where meteorites are falling from the sky every 10 seconds in groups of 5 that you can't see coming or avoid!
Which meant I had to immediately stop my forward progress, backup, reset the disguise and start again, hoping the next meteorite fall would miss my location and that it wouldn't hit me while I was near the enemy groups.
For the record, the most significant "balance changes" on this list were all done on my first mmo, because the players didn't like that someone else had cool powers and their class didn't.
So basically, Cryptic is just repeating mistakes that was made long ago by another company.
Well, with my Tacs, that wasn't an issue, because they were already using it regardless.
The primary reason is I resented MACO set for drawing aggro due to the shield pulse effect, so opted for the Omega set instead.
Also because Omega is more geared to stealth and I value that above all else, it was a more rational choice.
I don't like the Omega set weapon though, so don't use it.
Fortunately being a TR-116 user, I don't need to remodulate when I shoot Borg.
Unfortunately, the MACO shield pulse is a teamwide buff, so I'm still affected with it if even one other member of the team brings it along.
Before they introduced the Honor Guard Variant that works like the MACO set, I was genuinely thrilled/ecstatically happy if I ended up on a team that was all KDF, because it meant nobody had the shield that was frustrating me!
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Keeping up with the DPS gods was good while it lasted.
The only time I used it for real was in recent PvP to profusely abuse the Kligat bug, and that's it.
There's no place in this game where meteors are constantly falling on you. The devs do read this stuff, so we can either hurl abuse at them and get ignored or try to be constructive about this and throw out suggestions that might satisfy the PVP whiners. I'm taking option two there because it might acually yield results. To be blunt for a second, the devs have obviously gone World of Tanks on this issue and given in to the whiners whose main thing is PVP, because nobody cares what you do in missions/PVE because it's just you and whoever you team up with, if you team up with anyone that is, versus AI. They're not going to bring it back exactly the way it was, just like WoT never goes back on nerfing a cool tank because some players lack the strategy to defeat it. It is what it is. I can see where they're coming from anyway, being on the other end of the old Stealth Module in PVP was pretty annoying. This way its use is limited enough that the whiners will probably be satisfied, and even more fun if they implement my suggestion about having anomaly scan point you towards it along with area damage breaking it. Now you get a cool cat and mouse game where before you were just prey in that situation. #MakeStealthModuleGreatAgain
You must mean "overpowered," not broken in the sense of it doesn't work as intended or is bugged.
First, PvP isn't an abandoned game mode in STO, and as far as I can tell has ceased to be one since delta rising. From what long-time members have said, when KDF was introduced, it was meant to be a PvP faction. Cloaks make sense, including enhanced battle cloaks which the B'Rel has. Romulans as a (half) faction were introduced some time after KDF, and they have their own boosts to cloak technology with improved turn rates, Remans, etc.
Second, it's canon. Even ground cloak is canon as I can think of one TNG episode where Romulans where sneaking around with some sort of personal phase cloak while Picard investigated his ship and a D'D stuck in a temporal anomaly. Both of space and ground cloak abilities on screen are used without limit. In STO, since it takes place in the future, ground players even have personal shields that regenerate and never fail, so there's clearly a long duration power source that can and should power personal cloak without time limitations.
Third, some Fed ships have had console basic cloak since a long time ago, like Defiant, Gal-X, Avenger. Defiant now can be upgraded to a battle cloak although I don't think it works anywhere as fast as real battle cloak and is costly in terms of console use. Some fed ships now have built-in standard cloak (scryer, eclipse, phantom), and even built-in battle cloak (Temporal Raider). Feds have had access to Sci ship (Palisade) cloak and battle cloak before the Defiant set, provided you had the other one or two Voth ships, one of which changed from being ultra rare to phoenix pack T5 prize recently. Feds had access to basic built-in cloak on the Tal Shiar T5 ships. Now, beyond C-Store, Feds have Na'kuhl Battle Cloaking ships (Raiders, Battlecruiser, Science), and probably more to come since the Na'kuhl opened the door to battle cloaks for everyone.
Fourth, Feds have had snooper builds which go around detecting cloaked ships. Science career has a space powers that help stealth detection. Subnuke might even prevent cloak after the ship is detected.
Fifth, stealth and stealth detection is built into the skill tree. It's a core game mechanic that NPCs use as well.
The reasons why Space cloaking needs to be this way are the same reasons Stealth Module nerf feels to me completely out of place in addition to the many reasons already posted here, not least of all from a purely role play perspective.
This is a NERF and way imbalanced.
I do see some phasic shroud users here and there though, and all veteren pvpers use it because of its low cd and ton of damage resist. It doesn't bother me like the kligat (which got rightfully nerfed for the broken piece of TRIBBLE that it was), but It's pretty cheesy because everyone is using it - mostly to avoid getting vaped by the b00l34n lolgun (in the hands of a lol tac of course).
In the colony invasion PvE, going stealthy to rescue the ambassadors was actually a good strategy. Guess the only play possible now for the OP is the Omega 2 piece. Frankly, for something barely used, it doesn't really make sense that they made it even more garbage than it used to be.
I was just choosing that as an example since it's what happened in my first mmo and I don't know what is considered "environmental damage" in STO.
Granted, walking through an acid pool or something like that I would accept, as it's (hypothethically) damaging your portable cloaking device.
But walking into a tree branch or dropping off a ledge, unless you were doing it at high speed or from impractically high levels, that should not happen.
Especially as we have shielding technology and (presumably) the cloak module is inside the shield!
But in the case I cited, there wasn't even any significant damage from the meteor hit, it was just an aggro trigger to trigger enemy alerts. And it wasn't always there, they added it late into the game. After a prior stealth nerf that was much much worse.
So you can see given my history of bad stealthbreaker "balances", I am not happy with it happening again in STO.
And since you brought it up, all the changes to that mmo were made to satisfy the PvP whiners, who (to be equally blunt), didn't give a gosh darn heck that they were messing up PvE in the progress, because they "never played PvE".
I think this phrase is particularly important for this situation: And that's what I think is happening right now, Cryptic didn't learn the lesson of those who went before them and are repeating the mistakes they made.
I am also experiencing the edit comment bug.
I have had to repost this comment several times now, that's not good.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
My character Tsin'xing
With this (I admit rather silly) stealth module nerf, the game still hasn't changed one friggin bit really, because barely anyone uses it. But perhaps the devs have taken a look during my kligat exploits, how I stacked (hard to detect) stealth as cat (who gets even more stealth bonus) while 1-shotting other players with the kligat (that didn't break stealth then), and decided on "never again".
Rather what should be said is we need more missions or situations where stealth would be a nice optional necessity. Where this module would actually be worth a damn, nerfed or not.
If you dont use it probably because you are noob and don't know how to play with it. For over 6 years this was probably the best tool a Tact in ground could have. The TACT PvPer greatest tool in combat for the longest time and you really need to have a good "brain" to use it. Just because you don't do ground or dont use it does not mean it is "useless".
By the same token I could say ship "cloaking" is useless to me since I dont use it. However, would not belittle others due to my ignorance on the subject.
I did REAL noob..and apparently with only 187 posts...for sure you were not around when this game launched and a big mouth or insults does not get you anywhere. Good luck with that attitude.
That's what I wrote about this before the nerf went live. Having seen the newly "balanced" Stealth Module, my opinion has not changed. The new version is horrible and useless in practice. Maybe in some math void where numbers are pitted against numbers without concern for trivial matters such as actually playing STO this change makes sense, but... no.
- Damage buff is utterly useless after the first shot. Five seconds or fifteen, makes no difference how much time is left. Added positional requirement is another senseless hurdle that makes it extremely impractical.
- Six seconds downtime before being able to attack is worse than before. Waiting for the toggle to register took a little while, but this borders on masochism.
- Duration is nowhere near sufficient for the ability to serve its intended purpose. Or any purpose, really.
- Cooldown is excessive and hammers the final nail in Stealth Module's coffin.
The "i never saw any1 use it b4 who cares lol" posts only reinforce the complaint. Stealth Module was neither popular nor overpowered in any way. It was situationally useful, but it was useful. Now it isn't. If the problem was some unscrupulous individuals ganking with Kligat from stealth in PvP, the sane solution would have been making Kligat unusable from stealth, not nerfing both abilities into the ground.
I genuinely do not follow the logic behind these changes (Stealth and Kligat, and to lesser extent Tac Initiative). STO is mainly a solo/cooperative PvE game and trying to balance it for 1vs1 PvP through nerfing will not end well.
When it comes to it a NERF is a nerf no matter how you see it. In other MMOs DEVs have lost their jobs for doing lesser things.
Ground stealth was a great skill as it was prior to the last patch and just wait till they nerf space DPS to start caring about it.
Original STO beta tester.
Regarding the stealth and kligat nerf, they went a little overboard there, as I agree that stealth should've stayed the same (useless or not). The kligat nerf makes sense in that its range and cd is reduced, but what I would've done is keep the "always crit" on it, and just only reduce the base damage.
Now tac initiative nerf was I think also pvp related, since I saw a group of tacs stacking "invincibility" buffs through coordinated group cooldowns and chroniton jolt. I was there in that match, and I saw the whole thing, and it was ridiculous. I won't name any names though... I've no further opinion on this nerf, I'm neutral.
The classes are still no where near equal after these changes. I think the changes were more about making things more difficult for this event then a balance change for the actual game. Tactical initiative and stealth module unchanged would have made AoS easier, but the changes don't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Stealth nerf is kind of debatable, I personally think it was bad and can't really see it being useful at all anymore. Kligat I never used personally, but I heard it was pretty op since it had a guaranteed crit. Still, at the same time, most well build characters are pretty much guaranteed a crit anyway. Tac initiative while it does hurt tac characters a bit it hurts team play more since now it doesn't affect the team.