Thoughts on Stealth

[Dracos]

Stealth play is neat, and its fun to run around and kill things unseen. It certainly is a playable style and encourages a lure away, sneak around and kill one or two at a time setup. But it does have a lot of quirks and even after playing a fair bit both non-stealth and stealth characters, I find it a muddily communicated part of the game.

1)The game does not communicate well what Stealth versus See Stealth does. Unlike Power versus Saves which is nice and clear, it's really hard to look at an enemy and say 'can they see me'. Sure, if they have 150 see stealth they will, but if they have 35 see stealth versus 109 stealth, I can't assume I can travel up to them and kill them because odds are actually really good they will spot me and launch an attack on the way. While this isn't unfair (I mean I sneak around and murder hundreds), it also isn't predictable. I can't look at the numbers or talents and get a good feel on whether stealth will work, only when it certainly won't. Basically the value of 1 or 5 points of stealth or see stealth is very opaque.

2)Unseen Actions is strong when it works, but also fails at weird times. I've got to guess that it actually checks before the action is taken rather than after, which leads to the weirdness: 1 enemy by itself in a corridor, kill in one hit...and stealth is broken, despite nobody else being alive to see it. If it should be weaker, that's one thing, but it really should check afterwards because having stealth broken by a dead enemy is just weird.

3)Enemies often seem to know where you are even without any message that they caught sight of you, or possibly after catching sight of you once, they continue to know your location. I'd have ones that caught sight of me in a horde follow me for a dozen turns, through doors, into different rooms without ever catching sight of me again, basically acting as if they had perfect awareness of my position. I actually tested it explicitly in Vor Armory, letting an enemy catch sight of me once, then hightailing it at high speed (while still stealthed) all the way through its weave of rooms, getting more than 11 squares from the enemy with corners between us and multiple routes I could've taken... Enemy totally continued to follow, treating it as a known. Basically, the AI is not only getting to occassionally get a clear glimpse, and react to it, or guess at positions I could go, but seems to be getting a permanent 'I know where you are' once they've gotten a minimum spot through. Sure wish it worked that way for players!

4)Stealth as a system seems to depend a lot on a hidden stat of luck. I actually know I have pretty high luck since I'm playing a Faerie and they have a talent that shows it, but I think by having it be a meaningful calculator on talent, it seems about time for it to become at least a visible thing on the character sheet.

5)A side effect of stealth being hard to read is from the non-stealth side, it's hard to get a read on what is needed to protect against being stabbed by orc assassins. This makes it hard to quantify 'are these perception skills worthwhile/needed', 'is a cunning bonus to spot stealth enough', etc, and basically leaves Spotter skills an ambiguously weak part of a build. They may be important, they may not, but it's hard to get a read on just how much value they may or may not add. Having not looked at the source code, it makes even the passive abilities unclear.

6)The 'they're there/they're not' spotting setup on the same action is enormously confusing as a new player. Hardily encourage having: If my character sees them this turn, they're there. If it doesn't see them, they're not there, over "they are there for 5 seconds, and then vanish" or "They are not visible at all, but my character totally knows where they are and will autotarget them happily enough from 7 squares away". Basically, if the information is available to the character to make auto-target resolutions with, then it should be available to the player looking at the screen. It may be a bug, but it's hard to tell and definitely makes invisibility and stealth enemies very confusing.

Suggestions:
1)There's some formula, possibly involving distance or luck. Please put it in See Stealth and Stealth descriptions, so folks can get some intuition on whether or not stealth or perception will work and how added points on either add value. Right now it's always just 'high is good' rather than being able to say 'there's no functional difference for a 30 see stealth enemy between 51 and 100 steath' in the way we can easily do that with Power and Save.

2)Unseen actions should get checked last, rather than first. It may also relevantly deserve a nerf on its value there, but it shouldn't fail if at the end of a turn, nobody is alive to see you.

3)Don't change visibility within a turn boundary. For both a player and a character, an enemy should either be visible in a given square (Possibly with indicators they're stealthing or invisible) or not. If a player can't see the enemy, then the auto-targeting shouldn't either, and vice versa. Basically, Either we saw the enemy and they're in that space, or we didn't. If this is a bug and not by design, then it's one that just makes stealth/perception play that much more confusing in particular.

4)Add luck to the character sheet so its visible. There's certainly an enormous set of items that modify it positively and negatively and talents that rely on it being high, so it seems weird that it's not reported.

The Enemy AI always knowing where you are seems like a deeper issue that may have wider implications and so I don't have a clear suggestion for that other than the silly 'Don't give enemy super radar sense' which sometimes is totally necessary. Maybe just if they fail to see you the next round they don't update their tracking of where you are?

[Parcae2]

Another problem with stealth is that the ability to see through stealth varies with character level. This means stealth fails when you need it most, and is useless on higher difficulties.

Some off-the-cuff suggestions for an entirely new stealth tree:

1. Stealth. Always works, goes on cooldown when you perform any action other than movement, talent levels affect cooldown.
2. Lure enemies, causing them to go to a targeted location.
3. Reduce the distance from which enemies can see you.
4. Phase door to a nearby random location, and restealth yourself.

[Carvool]

Among the suggestions listed by Parcae2, I rather like the idea of causing enemies to go to a targeted location while unseen. I think it would be cool if we could adapt some tropes from actual stealth games into the rogue class and have the game play a little more like a proper stealth game. One of my favorite things about the Rogue class is that, especially in the early game (due to their reliance on traps), succeeding is a lot more about outsmarting your opponents rather than overpowering them.

For example, there could be a third level of detection rather than just seen or unseen: alerted. For example, if you snipe somebody from a distance while stealthed and they have some friends around, those friends might know which direction the shot came from, but it doesn't mean they've seen you already. They might start to head in your direction, but your stealth shouldn't be broken yet.

Perhaps there could also be a sizable stealth bonus when an undetected player is viewing an enemy from around a corner, with the implication that the PC is using the wall/tree/whatever as cover.

[HousePet]

Other than the few small attribute bonuses from Luck, it is only used protecting yourself from your own spell explosions, Unseen Actions and that Halfling talent.
Stealth does not use Luck.

It is a bit weird that stealth and invisibility are still using the old check hit formula, but the values are just stealth versus see stealth. Why not convert them to use diminishing returns and the simpler formula?

A small modification to the tooltip would also be useful: Display the creature's current stealth or invis value if they are using it.
If the player is using stealth or invis at the time, display the relevant see stat on the tooltip.

[Dracos]

ah, I read it was used for Unseen actions and passed that as used for stealth as a whole. Just an unfortunate side effect of it being opaque without examining the source code directly. I didn't know character levels mattered in the formula either.

[Marcus Aseth]

I totally agree with the 3rd point of the first post,my first gameplay was actually ruined by thar

I wanted to go Rogue (trapper),in my head the plan was to go unseen to study the "situation",then place some of my traps and then start the fight. The problem is that there is no "unseen" in this game because the enemy is always aware of your location,therefore I may as well play the rogue just ignoring all the stealth related skill,since don't affect the way I play my trapper...and this is a huge letdown for me :\
The only reasonable way to play the trapper as for now,I think it is with the skill that throw traps,making it looks more like granades than traps,wich is a cool feature but it ruins the idea of trapper I had in my mind so I can really enjoy playing that way,my suggestion would be:

1)Remove the "cheating awareness" of monster toward a stealthed rogue. If the player is stealthed,then visible monsters move to a random tile (with a chance of standing still instead of moving) instead of ALWAYS going straight toward him.

2)at high levels of Stealth,like skill level 4 or 5, should be possible to place traps without breaking Stealth,at least until the enemy don't catch sight of you for the first time,after that,beign it aware of the character,placing further traps in the monster field of vision will always brake stealth (this to prevent people "haking" difficult bosses by placing traps,make him walk on it,go invisible,repeat)

3)this is not really related to stealth,but would be awesome to have more traps! In my opinion the current one relegate the trapper to a "support" skill three,one cannot do a character based on traps with only that What about a trap that need to be placed in 2 different spots and electrocutes who passes in between? Or maybe a "portal trap" (again placed in 2 spots) wich relocate the enemy that steps on it into the other end of the trap? a "super push trap" ,that push who step on it in a particular direction,choosen by the player! So I could go invisible,place a Bear trap and a push trap ,then lure the monster toward the push trap and having him sent 6 tile away into the bear trap,keeping him running around the room while I do my stuff xD So many possibilities!

[cctobias]

I have played stealth a decent bit, even into Insane and I don't really have any suggestions here but I want to point out two things.


1) melee stealth vs. ranged stealth is HUGELY different. Ranged stealth way way safer for two reasons:
a) there is no second melee check there is only the unseen action check
b) there is ranged fall off on the creature detection rating.
This makes ranged stealth possible in Insane and NM without much investment when a melee guy with double the stealth rating is losing stealth somewhat regularly

2) The number of creatures in view is a VERY big modifier. The only times I was extremely certain i was going to lose stealth on my SB nightmare winner was when I initiated an action when say 16 things were all in LOS (ie. a vault) especially if they were over leveled.


If you stay ranged and don't allow to many things in your LOS you can stay in stealth almost forever on Nightmare with something in the neighborhood of a 70 stealth rating.

Compare that to the melee who shoot for over 100 and still lose stealth fairly often, yes they stay in stealth like 75% or maybe even 90%. But the ranged guy with 70 stays in stealth 99.9% of the time, and if they are very aware/smart maybe even 100%. You can never say that about the melee, that extra check means you are going to lose stealth.

Also stealth is not that amazing of a buff. Its nice and I like it, but in the end its just 100% crit rate and 85% crit mult. A marauder usually gets close to 100% crit and has 25% crit mult. So in the end Stealth at end game stealth is just an extra 60% crit mult enhancer.


Does melee really deserve to be as disadvantaged as ranged? When you consider how strong marauders are I am not sure that it does. They can do tons of damage and have unstoppable/stun immunity. Also consider that you start to see fall off in returns from crit mult; its just add to the mult and after a certain point its better to get +damage since its multiplied by the crit. Perhaps that melee check should be taken out?

Edit: actually I forgot about Lethality which is basically same crit mult as Thuggery, but either way the point stands that by end game the auto-crit portion of stealth is much less valuable than it initially appears.

[Zeyphor]

would stealth work if you were always at at least range 3 with elvl6 unseen actions and elvl6 stealth on nightmare/insane for the purpose of getting ranged shadowstrike crits on an adventurer?

[cctobias]

would stealth work if you were always at at least range 3 with elvl6 unseen actions and elvl6 stealth on nightmare/insane for the purpose of getting ranged shadowstrike crits on an adventurer?

On NM I am pretty sure that is fine. On Insane I think it will work, if you have a pretty good stealth rating.

The main thing is actually the melee specific check which I don't believe uses Unseen Actions. There is an Unseen Action check and there is the melee check. I think melee check is against base stealth rating (although I have not checked the code for confirmation), anything is uses the Unseen Action check.

Maxed Unseen actions almost double the base stealth rating and at 3 squares you reduce the monsters stealth detection by about 30%. So with, say, 80 stealth rating you are looking at Unseen Actions checks of the neighborhood of 150 and with the 30% reduction the mob needs something like 200 stealth detection to get close to it.

So as long as you are 1-on-1 or 2-on-1 you are generally fine at 3-4 out, even on Insane. But melee on Insane is basically gonna need a base stealth rating of 200 to match that 80.

Most likely you are still going to sometimes run into random rares/bosses that have like talent 10 piercing sight. Or even on nightmare some rare with Radiance. In which case you are just gonna have to deal with that and not rely on stealth.

In the end staying at truly long range (say 6+) is the safest route, but if you invest in cunning/stealth equipment I think range 3 is doable on Insane. Again as long as you make sure the number of guys in LOS is carefully managed and never much above 4-5 things (as a back of the napkin guess).

My experience with a staff/gravity adventurer with low investment in stealth rating is like 50/50 loss of stealth when things are really close; like 1-2 squares. With a better investment in stealth rating and a square or two more range(ie. 3-4 instead of 1-2) it seems doable. I don't think I would even bother doing stealth for melee on Insane.

In the end stealth for adventurers is pretty much fine, the biggest loss IMO is that the crit is worse. Increasing stealth rating from stats/equipment can quite easily make up for the lower mastery, but the difference in crit for Adventuer versus Rogue is like 20% for 1.0 vs 1.3. Maybe if you are going melee it might be something to think about, but even on normal melee has to pump rating with equipment because they are so dependent on the base rating. An OK belt will give you like +8 to rating, the difference in base rating with the same cunning between 1.0 and 1.3 is only a few point really maybe 5 points. When you consider the huge difference in "effective" rating of melee vs ranged in the example above you can see how being ranged is just much less fiddly in this regard.
The melee guys scrap for every mastery point and every bit of gear. But ranged get catapulted by double multipliers and doesn't need to scrimp at all.

So in general I would guess that range 3 mastery 1.0 on Insane is comparable to to melee with mastery 1.3 on Normal. Maybe a little less stringent.

[Zireael]

I like the alerted condition idea.

[Nagyhal]

Stealth really needs a rethink, so I'm going to bump bump bump this back to the top.

Also, I'm doing a guerrilla rework of Stealth for a Shadowblade variant I'm creating (solely because Shadowblades are my favourite class and I want Stealth to be a good choice for them ), and it's been quite educational. Let me explain my findings:

There's an incredible, yet little-known way to gain a deeper insight into the Stealth mechanics. If you go on dev mode, you get to see which squares enemies think you're on in the tooltip. Apparently, their estimate is based on where they last saw you, and how long it has been since they last saw you.

This is a vaguely nice idea, but needs to be thought through for it to actually work. For example, when you sneak up on an enemy in Stealth mode, even if you haven't been seen yet it tends to immediately suss out your current location and come straight for you, because of the tendency to progress from perfect knowledge of your location, rather than toward that.

Under this system, if you're hidden from your enemies and then teleport to the other side of them, that's when their guess will be at its most inaccurate. Great! Fun! Rogues and Shadowblades alike have a wealth of movement abilities and this would add interest to them. But not only is this mechanic rather well-hidden, all it takes is one good roll for foes to have a perfect tab on you again. I would change that.

The other thing that struck me is how the de-targeting supposedly in place within the Hide in Plain Sight code doesn't really work. Enemies within vision range of you are permanently targeting you, which results in the above behaviour - enemies targeting you will try to come toward you, which Hide in Plain Sight was supposed to stop happening, because their targeting is continually reset, to you. That needs to be fixed as well.

All this of course has been noted in the above thread, I just thought I might be able to shed some light on it!

[Doctornull]

People with insight into Stealth: has anyone tried the Anti-Perception talent on the Trickster class?

It doesn't do Shadowstrike auto-crit or anything, but it also doesn't go on cooldown when you become visible to an enemy.

It seemed like a much more user-friendly version of Stealth, but I don't know if it's balanced well, nor do I know if it could be balanced with the addition of staples like Shadowstrike.