You arrive at an objective and there is a cloaked scout-shotty waiting in the corner. How do you propose to see him with your eyes?

Cloakheads aren't always running in front of you where you can see them shimmer. Most of the time, they are cloaked waiting or running up behind you. The only counter would be that EVERYWHERE you go, you must CAREFULLY survey the area for your crosshairs to turn red. Hopefully, your back doesn't turn from them or they don't just pop you with the shotgun before they decloak if you happen to walk right in front of them.

I understand cloaks are here to stay....but remove the dampening bonus, remove the decloaking animation when changing your weapon, and you should decloak or be at maximum shimmer when you take damage.

This week, I will make sure that I post some video and commentary of when cloak scouts are ridiculous.

I have only read the 1st post of this & a little after but here is my thoughts.

Recall the days you could scan everywhere? If you were a Scout, and you see "You have been scanned" was really annoying.

Remember Scouts being made of paper?

Recall if you were a Scout you were just as easily spotable as a Heavy?

Well now the scout is actually playable.

What people are really annoyed about is the cloak & shotgun, being a smart scout includes being a sort of Assassin on the battle-feild & using good tactics such as watching points, ninja hacking, or tracking a target to kill is fine & is grand tactics.

The problem is it's no longer Cloak & Dagger - It's Cloak & Shotgun. The majority (not ALL) of scouts currently are Scouts with NO originality - Scouts who are only Scouts for the shotgun purposes.

They pump into shotgun, probably proto, get a low level cloak & a decent suit, & the best modules possible.

They run around 1 shotting everyone with them having no chance to react. Proto Heavy's with complex sheilds & armor are took down in seconds to these shotguns. That shouldn't be happening & that's the REAL issue. The cloak complaints is because it's a CLOAK it just annoys people when they go invisible, running around killing people like it's nothing.

The only nerfs needed in my opinion are possibly Combat Rifle Range & shotgun DMG.

To CCP - Do not be afraid to stand by something that isn't broken like how the AR was originally, or how the scout suits are now. Only fix what needs fix & if it's not broke don't fix it. You have people like CPM's & CCP LogiBro - they'll tell you the facts they see on the feilds.

CCP forget them, why shouldn't the rest of us?

seriously just get rid of the cloak altogether, 1.7 was balanced dampener wise and scouts just needed a little push to achieve true parity

stop conceding that cloaks are 'here to stay'. they're ****** and kinda boring to use and if CCP didn't botch map design from square one there would be no niche for the cloak at all.

If you have to have it altogether than ditch the dampening bonus and give scouts a real skill rather than a CPU/PG reduction on cloaks and then we'll see a lot less slayer cloaks and a lot more stealth-oriented scouts.

Brick tanked cloak scrubs are the problem I believe so we need to keep in mind that proper scouts are not the problem. I believe simply setting the CPU and pg cost for cloaks higher would help. That way its either brick tanked scrub or hidden scrub but not both.

I have a scout alt with 17mil sp FYI, its amarr and I run either light assault or ninja fit depending on my squad composition. I have experimented and I can produce a fit that not only has better stats than an assault but it can also cloak. I know the amarr scout is supposed to be more assault oriented but seriously now lol. Its HP is slightly less but its quicker and can cloak with proto weapons. I do not use that fit though and deleted it after completing it, I cannot bring myself to run that easy mode bull sht and of course, it is proto amarr scout.

Cloak is easy mode.
I should be the proof of that. Before 1.8 i have played a scout for maybe 20 minutes. Now with cloaks in 1.8 i am a beast when i run my cheap BP dragonfly suit with only a shotgun and a cloak (not enough pg or cpu to fit anything else)
Running this ultra squishy dropsuit that has under 250 hps i typically go 20/2

So tell me again how such a combination is balanced?
I cant tell you how many times i have run right past enemy players and they do not notice me. The shimmer probably does not work properly otherwise i am sure they would have at least taken a second look. Remember people in a FPS lagg also plays a huge part of the game a shimmer effect might actually happen on a players screen far too late for them to actually ever see the shimmer.

Granted i like having this suite because the only things i pay for on it are the shotgun and cloak so its ultra cheap and i get pretty nice war points running it. However i think something should be done to make it more possible to counter a cloak. Situation awareness is not it.