right now there are no weaknesses to running a cloak

why defend crutch gameplay?

cloak needs to be ten seconds ON thirty seconds OFF
otherwise its just a crutch gameplay

not that it really matters once June/ July is here.

Couple dozen threads an hour is making it hard for me to keep up with so here's where I am garnering so far.

*Cloaks have glitches associated with them which leads to invisible weapon usage and vehicles

I will agree these need to be fixed.

*Cloaks are a bit hard to spot

*Decloak to weapon swap speed

Seems a bit fast for my own tastes but we don't need to bring this far too high it becomes a frustration and cumbersome and ruin the edge of a surprise attack. 2.5 sec max and lets try it 0.5 increments at a time

Its not crutch, it is a piece of equipment that CAN BE COUNTERED WITH EASE. Try a Thukker, not many scouts have enjoyed them tonight, try using your eyes... you mic, your squad...

Ten seconds is nothing, the duration isn't really the issue. Issue people are having is that they are being ran by full squads, who work together..thus making it seem so much worse. Another issue is the brick tankers...pain in the ass, the need to be busted early..not impossible. I do think brick tanking a scout should have more sever penalties to speed, shimmer visability of cloak and profile db penalties.

Fix the glitches. also, why should we go deaf when we have one on? I think it is a cute gimmick, but it's lame and disorienting to lose a sense of hearing. Why would that even happen? Also, the shimmer should be commensurate with your speed.

Once they are fixed, let's talk about changes.


First of all, you can not instantly shoot when you decloak. There is already about a second and a half delay when you switch to a weapon. The stamina like functionality is what makes it useful It is the perfect compromise to not being about to hold a weapon or equipment. This was a smart and elegant compromise, and it works. To have a cool down would mean you couldn't multi-task, and that would be annoying. Scouts are all about multi tasking.

Second, the timers are good. basic is 30s, ADV 60s, proto 80s. Not forever, and just enough to be tactically used. Basic cloak is garbage. Proto is too expensive to fit CPU/PG wise- but you can do it with some sacrifice.

Damage shouldn't screw with it at all. Presumably it is hardened underneath your shield and armor.

I could see a flux taking down a cloak outright based on tier- basic flux kills basic cloak, adv to adv, proto to proto. A basic flux shouldn't take out an ADV or proto cloak and so on.


Cloaks are not impossible to see or spot even at a long distance. Also, your reticle turns red as you sweep across an area. Once people figure this out, the QQ won't be as unfounded. Same goes for scrubs knifing and shooting and tossing REs while cloaked.

The fitting is good right now. Any more severe and it will be useless. As it is now, I can't speed tank and stealth tank my typical fit, It is one or the other.

A lot of this QQ is just for the QQ of it. Cotsy is particularly mock poutraging. Same for paradin(sp?). Both are the champions of nerfing it, yet it is woefully apparent their information is not based on personal usage, misunderstanding mechanics of it, and just missing the old glory days of the UP scout. Knifing, for example, outside of the glitch users, is much more difficult to pull off than shotgunning. I;d rather use knives, but they just aren't as viable.

It's a two fold comeuppance- first, we have competitive suits and EWAR- no one is used to it, and people's K/Ds are making them feel it. They need to adapt. The second part of that is scouts had to deal with UP suits for so long we are now like monsters with the new suits. or most. I am trying to **** around and try shotguns out again.. yikes! one good day and I was in la la land.. now the reality is setting in. so i'm not in beast mode yet, but i will be once I get my suits just right.

I've played cloakers in PS2, Killzone, Crysis, TF2, Halo, Guild Wars, WoW and a bunch of others. While Dust's implementation isn't perfect, it is mostly Ok. The durations are a bit long and the bugs need fixing.

The only serious problem they have is the time gap between due cloaking and firing. Latency is a fact of life in online games and you need to balance for it. Thieves had the same problem in GW2, invisibility didn't take into account latency delays resulting in near permanent invisibility and guaranteed alpha kills. Same with shotguns scouts here.

It doesn't need to be much,just 1 second between the decloak sound and firing is all the warning that is required. Then add 0.5s for latency.

I don't agree with damage dropping the cloak, this is too crippling (except maybe flux grenades).

It's already being said but for the sake of contributing to the voice:

Weapon swap in cloak
This is WAY too fast. I equipped cloaking with much anticipation to my Matari lilbro but even I felt uneasy with the speed at which I could switch to my CR and start unloading. It's too quick and needs to be reduced.

Taking damage in cloak
This needs to rapidly drain your cloak meter. Flux ought to almost fully remove it being an electrical damage weapon.

Hmm, those are my main two issues actually. The trade offs are fair, you shimmer and you're basically deaf but shooting is too easy.

The fastest suit in the game with the highest alpha weapon in the game shouldn't have 500+ HP and get to be invisible (or even nearly so).

I find your issue with brick tanking funny when you defend cloaking and say it isn't a crutch. The cloak cooldown needs major refinement. They should activate, deactivate, and cooldown like every other active module in the game.

PS2 will not affect dust

Not everything has to be the same... A charge shot from a scrambler rifle can be followed by a very fast semi auto onslaught, charge shot on the Ion pistol instantly over heats the weapon, Charge shot on the charge sniper, resets the charge to zero...
I also posted above that the deactivation should be slightly different. You Idea though is typical of the crutches of needing to always see your target, one of those who lost skill due to the map always being lit up for you.
As I said its not a crutch, its the new equipment learn to deal with it.

Luckily for you, between CPM and CCP they nerf the cloak into the ground.. so people with no game can continue to scrub it up.

They should fix those issues. However, in this thread, cloaks are up for discussion.

PS: CR got nerfed like all other rifles.

Not everything has to be the same... A charge shot from a scrambler rifle can be followed by a very fast semi auto onslaught, charge shot on the Ion pistol instantly over heats the weapon, Charge shot on the charge sniper, resets the charge to zero...
I also posted above that the deactivation should be slightly different. You Idea though is typical of the crutches of needing to always see your target, one of those who lost skill due to the map always being lit up for you.
As I said its not a crutch, its the new equipment learn to deal with it.

Luckily for you, between CPM and CCP they nerf the cloak into the ground.. so people with no game can continue to scrub it up.

Hold on :D so now it's a crutch to be able to see someone who's right in front of me to aim and fire? And it isn't a crutch to make yourself invisible so noone can see you?

I don't know what to say....

Yes, so why is the CPM finally paying attention to this, a minor imbalance at best, while leaving other far larger issues broken for so long? This is an issue for me.

FYI, CR was reduced with other weapons but it still needs fixing since it was the most OP of them all. The armour shield % are imbalanced relative to other weapons.

The Viziam scrambler rifle was the most OP of all the rifles

Seriously I don't get it. I have little problem seeing most cloaked scouts. Sure the odd one catches you with your pants down but usually you can pick them out.

I'm already having problems fitting the cloak.

*sigh* the joys of being minmatar.

Yes, so why is the CPM finally paying attention to this, a minor imbalance at best, while leaving other far larger issues broken for so long? This is an issue for me.

FYI, CR was reduced with other weapons but it still needs fixing since it was the most OP of them all. The armour shield % are imbalanced relative to other weapons.

I see 0, I repeat, ZERO, issues with the current cloaking mechanisms, outside of glitches that I am not aware of. I see people mentioning them, but don't know what they are. If it's a glitch, I'm all for fixing it.

That being said....

I cannot fathom the reasons people have issues with the cloak. Used intelligently, the basic, adv, and proto cloaks are devastating. Used poorly, you just sit there and laugh at the poor little cloaked scout as he goes splat. I may come off as being a bit rude here, but I'm under the impression that people are complaining because suddenly scouts aren't the easy kills they were before.

People have mentioned that they'd like flux grenades to disrupt cloaks, allrighty, I can see that, nor would I mind this.

But let's look at the rest of these "complaints"

#1) Decloaking to weapon ready/firing is too fast.

First off, to catch up to my target I have to sprint, which makes me very visible and uses up my cloak energy faster, if I drop below half energy, I have to wait to recloak. Secondly, when I decloak there is a rather loud noise that I've had no issues hearing when fighting other cloaking scouts, or running with team/squad mates. Next, you know why you hear me whisper in your ear, "What are we looking at?" before you get a head full of lead? It's because I've been running behind you, and you have never once bothered to do a quick 360 to see if anyone was sneaking up on you. If people had more situational awareness, or had another squad mate acting as rearguard, I'd have a MUCH harder time ambushing.

Furthermore, once you swap to your weapon you start to decloak and become even more visible. If the guy you are after isn't doing 360s, I'm just rather of the mindset that he was outsmarted and outplayed. Unless someone can tell me otherwise, I have a hard time feeling sympathetic.

Another way to put this is that I could easily kill you without a cloak in this scenario, which I have seen alot of lately. The cloak is to help hide from people further away, and if I see you start to turn, to stand still and crouch to hide.

#2) Damage to cloak.

I am neither for nor against this at this time. A moving cloaked scout is easy to see so I don't exactly see the need to deplete cloak faster or for more shimmer. Also, if you know they're hiding behind a pillar or something just chuck a grenade at 'em, that will kill them fast enough.

#3) Too "easy" to fit a cloak

I'm just going to sit here and say no. I have most of my core skills to lvl 5, and my chosen scouts suits to lvl 5 as well. I can fit mostly Adv tech on an Adv suit, maybe have a very select few proto modules (mostly complex precision modules) and Adv weapons. A player who does not have all lvl 5 core skills and suits, not to mention the skills to reduce CPU/PG of weapons, will not be able to fit a scout as well as I can. Frankly, I have proto skills, and I still have to choose between weapons/modules/other fittings if I want to run with an Adv cloak and have Adv gear, I can't have it all. If I want to stick a proto cloak on a Adv suit then I really have to pick and choose carefully, I have to give up something because those suckers are highly CPU/PG intensive. So I think this is working as intended. I don't mess with proto suits, so I can't really comment on those.

#4) Brick tanked scouts.

Brick tanked scouts were always a bit of an issue, I can see why people would complain about 'em with cloaks tossed on as well. I could see an argument being made that the penalties for armor plates affect suits lighter than say, maybe heavy suits, more. Further I'd say the lighter the suit, the more the penalty affects it.

#5) Cloaks last too long/recharge too fast.

Gonna disagree with this one. Smart usage lets me extend the life of my cloak much longer than I'm seeing other people get out of their cloaks. Hit cloak, dash across open ground, drop cloak for a few moments, then reactivate and continue. Frankly I pulse my cloak, unless I'm in an engagement. I see too many people just use up a entire cloak charge in one go which is downright foolish.


I find it amusing that people claim cloaks are "EZ mode". No, it's a thinking man's tool.

So to reiterate:

People need to up their situational awareness. Blindly rushing around the battlefield is the quickest way to die. Good teamwork is vital. And if you see me on the battlefield, get ready to be beaten to death with your own skull!!!

Final piece of advice. If you are in a group of 4, rushing an objective, and you see all those little blue dots following you start to disappear, and you hear the sounds of a shotgun, you might, just might, want to turn around before you are the last blue dot.

Glitches obviously need to be fixed, but glitches are glitches.

Moving while cloaked is easy to see.

Flux grenades should fully drain a cloaks recharge meter thing. I haven't used them personally, so I can't really comment on the rest. You shouldn't be decloaked from damage.

Brick tanking is a problem that CCP has been creating for a while, and they only further encouraged it with the 1.8 TTK changes.

Couple dozen threads an hour is making it hard for me to keep up with so here's where I am garnering so far.

*Cloaks have glitches associated with them which leads to invisible weapon usage and vehicles

I will agree these need to be fixed.

*Cloaks are a bit hard to spot

I am a slight disagreement with this, a moving scout can be spotted quite a bit far away (my longest spotting is about 90 meters out) it is just difficult for me on controller to put fire on them.

*Cloaks persist too well through damage or flux

I agree but a full disruption punishes pure blind luck of stray shots that can happen as well. I rather see a few tweaks instead such as cloak timer draining because of damage and longer lasting cloak scattering because of damage.

As for flux, I would like to see a massive chuck eaten out of the timer with it (scaled to the flux damage maybe?)

*Cloak Noise

Maybe for self sound its a bit too loud and out of balance but as a third person its balanced.

*Decloak to weapon swap speed

Seems a bit fast for my own tastes but we don't need to bring this far too high it becomes a frustration and cumbersome and ruin the edge of a surprise attack. 2.5 sec max and lets try it 0.5 increments at a time.

*Cloak timer at prototype

80 seconds is an eternity waiting for it to recharge. I think a second variant of cloaks is warranted, something with 30 second timer across all tiers and faster cooldown efficiency.

*Cloaked hacking

I see no problems currently with this.

*Brick Tanked Cloakers

There is a problem but not sure how best to deal with it outside of ramping up cloak fitting more which means either increasing the fit cost of the cloak or decreasing scout innate bonus. While we could go after the tanking modules themselves that's going to effect ALL classes and that would get more messy than needed.

=Anything else did I miss?=
Will update points and discussion if new things are brought to my attention. I know with the 1.8 patch then 1.8 hotfix this week and the follow up tonight and possibly more on the way lots of crap flying around and my time is split between paying attention to you guys and working with fanfest build. My opinion on cloaks right now is not hardline and easily subject to change which is why I am striking up this conversation.

OT posts will not be tolerated. I know vehicle rebalancing just hit but I feel that there hasn't been enough time to adapt around it yet to see if more follow ups are needed or if they went overboard.

As for Assaults there are discussions on how to buff them but the development team isn't ready to share them yet. Other balance issues are on the fire still but rather focus on this before we get too far away from 1.8 hotfix mood and far too deep into the next patch cycle.