As everyone knows, I'm a firm believer - as someone who DOESN'T use the cloak myself - that the cloak is already fairly well-balanced.

I'm not sure how many have noticed, but IWS has posted in the CPM cloak discussion thread mentioning that CCP are considering a few elements to nerf. This thread is a call for CCP to not overdo it like they always do.

They're considering several angles, and a couple of the changes they're considering are quite significant nerfs to the cloak.

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That said, looking at things, I've noticed one of CCP's proposals was to remove the dampening bonus. If they make NO other changes, it's possible that this might be reasonable. But I'm worried at the same time, because it's possible that it may still be too large a nerf. And there are people calling for more than this - asking for the dampening bonus to be a penalty instead.

As such, I'd suggest that - for once - CCP should try UNDER-nerfing something in the first instance. NO changes to cloak EXCEPT to reduce the dampening bonus from 25% down to either 10 or 15%. It's small, but a small step then SEE WHAT HAPPENS is better than throwing the baby out with the bathwater like they have so many times before.

Shooting while cloaked is ONLY happening because of a glitch.

Glitches are not relevant to BALANCE, they are relevant to BUG FIXES.

And shooting while DECLOAKING is a perfectly reasonable result of the cloak's INTENDED mechanics, because for the most part, people aren't decloaking while in another player's line of sight anyway.

Your argument fails.

First of all, reducing the profile bonus (as I'm suggesting) will reduce the viability of relying on it like many players already do.

Secondly, THEY'RE ONLY HARD TO SEE WHEN YOU'RE NOT ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR THEM. That was my entire point in the first place. If you're not actively looking for cloakers, either you're doing it wrong, or you're busy fighting someone else.

I regularly kill cloaked players OUTSIDE of the Academy using a Starter Fit on my tank pilot alt while running a Starter Fit with no relevant infantry skills and a Militia AR. It's not about "they're noobs". It's about "they take risks and a smart player punishes them for it". Cloakers get away with a lot because A LOT OF PEOPLE AREN'T PAYING ATTENTION.

Bad players getting killed regularly by something doesn't make it OP. It makes them bad players.

Just.make it so scanning profile goes up while cloaked not down, and then add a sigificant, easy to hear buzz sound when any cloaker is around you(including your own/teammates so an enemy is sneakier if you're already hearing one). but the sound should not be direction based but rather just proximity based, direction based(hearing it in left or right speakers) would make killing cloaks way too easy.

You know there's already a sound that plays when decloaking, right?

You know that sound plays IMMEDIATELY when you switch from the cloak, right?

You know that means that even with lag, you hear the sound before the cloaker can shoot and while they're only partially cloaked and more visible, right?

I have previously said that sound needs to be given a higher priority because sometimes it gets covered by other sounds, and I've also mentioned my support for the volume of that sound to be increased. I'm still in favour of those changes, but I want to see CCP try UNDER-nerfing something in the first instance instead of over-nerfing so it becomes completely broken and useless.

TY, just remember discussions arm the CPM with arguments should and if ever CCP does feel like talking to the cpm about cloaks. So that if so say CCP came out with a off the wall nerf you guys would have provided more than enough firepower to divert such.

Anyways my proposal was to bring in a second variant of cloaks with dampening bonuses (that progressed through tiers and may have harder time fitting) but they gain no time bonus per tier. Then remove the damp bonus from the current cloaks.

As for the cloak animation deal I honestly think that is a low impact high effort ordeal. Low impact because its is not going to stop someone from decloaking behind you then shooting your ass off. Also any passive scan scout worth their salt already know when to decloak and when not to considering they can see through walls on their minimap.