*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.

Actually it is quite easy to shoot cloaked mercs with sniper rifle. My personal best is 578m with Thale's in Bridge domination map.
I use cloak with ck.0 scout when using REmotes at objektive.
imo that cloak is balanced after those "cloaked knife kills" will be fixwd

*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.

I could work with these.

Why doesn't flux nades remove cloaking? Its electronic, it would make sense that it would remove cloaking and prevent re-cloaking until "x" amount of time.

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.

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.

Finally, fix it so that the Minmatar are the fast recovery race. We have the worst defenses of all the suits and need to be good at one thing. Just drop the shield recharge delays across all Minmatar suits to be faster than the Caladari.

A big part of the problem to me right now is the spam of the cloak. I have one point into cloaks and that's all I plan on putting into them. I currently run de cloak and kill, and then re cloak and repeat. There's really no necessity to go higher. Cloaking right now is labeled as a piece of equipment but isn't treated as such. It shouldn't get special treatment. Like other pieces of equipment give it a set number of uses before it disables completely. This would make investing in it worth while since higher tiers would get more uses along with duration, and kill them spam of it. As of this moment it's kinda of like having droplinks with infinite spawns or nanohives that never run out of ammo or reps. I also think if you mange to hit a scout with a flux grenade it should destroy his cloak just like any other piece of equipment.

Wasn't using a sniper though. 100 meters is pretty for no ads.

A big part of the problem to me right now is the spam of the cloak. I have one point into cloaks and that's all I plan on putting into them. I currently run de cloak and kill, and then re cloak and repeat. There's really no necessity to go higher. Cloaking right now is labeled as a piece of equipment but isn't treated as such. It shouldn't get special treatment. Like other pieces of equipment give it a set number of uses before it disables completely. This would make investing in it worth while since higher tiers would get more uses along with duration, and also kill them spam of it. Make scouts pick and choose when to cloak and be smart about the use of it. As of this moment it's kinda of like having droplinks with infinite spawns or nanohives that never run out of ammo or reps. I also think if you mange to hit a scout with a flux grenade it should destroy his cloak just like any other piece of equipment.

Just saw this thread so I will post what I put in another thread of my own here. To stop brick tanking the cloaking device when equipped should give a -25% to damage resistance, meaning people shooting at you are dealing 25% more damage. When the cloaking device is activated you get -50% damage resistance, meaning the person shooting at you gets 50% more damage.

This both prevents brick tanking clockers and give a reward to those who shoot is while cloaked.

*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.

Uh, what? If anything that would encourage more people to brick tank, since cloaking without doing so means you'd die at a sneeze. My E-WAR cloak fits typically have 300-400 EHP, so you're halving that to 150-200 EHP when I am cloaked? How does that make sense?

I think the only real change needed to the cloak is removing the ability to perform "decloak" actions other than pushing the FIRE button. So no more switching weapons then shooting, throwing grenades, or melee-ing to deactivate the cloak, allowing you to perform said actions while the cloak is still wearing off.

This means that if you decloak in front of someone with the intent of shooting him in the face, he will see you materialize before you get the shot off. You would need to manually decloak then use the quick-switch and fire. Therefore the only "surprise" attacks you could consistently win are those done from the back, which is how a scout should work.

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.

On that note. Is it possible to have a 'shortcut' activation like injectors? The problem I have in trying to use them defensively is that it's finicky to actually switch to (I'm sure logis are

I quite like the idea of flux grenade disabling cloaks. Can't imagine it having much real effect on the game but it's a nice idea and would be great if it appeases some of the QQ.

In general I think it's probably best to wait and see what changes will be made to assault suits and scanners (if any) before making changes to scouts/cloaks.