Hey guys. Long time vet here and recently installed again to feel out the 1.9 hype. I've been having quite a bit of fun playing again. Been seein some familiar faces here and there but man are there a lot of Hispanic corps/players nowadays.

Anyways, on to the point. I've been playing Scout since 1.8 (I know, I'm cancer, scum, etc.) because of how ludicrously overpowered EWAR and cloaks became and I just want to say that this cloak delay has done all but nothing to defer from Scout supremacy. All that's really been done is made the cloak feel incredibly clunky and simply feel less responsive. The change has hardly altered its effectiveness on the battlefield.

What it seems like to me is CCP trying to treat the symptoms of the problem and not the actual problem itself. I play my Scout like an Assault suit because it does everything that my Assault suit should do but better. The Scout has more stamina, speed, regen, extra equipment, better scan stats and most importantly jumps higher all traded for a marginal amount of EHP. I'm here to try to help CCP realize that fudging around with the Cloak isn't what's going to put Scouts back in line. I regularly have Skirmishi/Domination matches where I can rack up 20+ kills without dying because of one simple principle: first shot advantage.

In any FPS game and even in real life there comes a distinct and very powerful advantage to being the first one to shoot. It's fairly obvious that being able to pump someone full of lead before they've seen you is going to automatically put odds in your favor. Those miliseconds between getting shot and adequately responding decides the fate of any encounter, and the problem here is that as a Scout I almost ALWAYS have the first shot advantage. When you factor in that Scouts have no drawback to using high-alpha damage weapons like the Shotgun or Combat Rifle it's no stretch of the imagination to see everyone as either a Scout or Heavy. You either play to not be seen or play as a bullet sponge that has enough time to respond. That extra EHP as an Assault means jack all when you've been shot in the back and killed before you can turn to respond.

So how do they try to fix it? They add a negligible and clunky delay between when a Scout can come out of stealth and blast you in the back. The result? Take a minute to adjust to the delay and continue to dominate the battlefield.

I've created threads about this in the past, and at this point I don't really know how to adequately point out how silly it is in a first-person shooter to have a constant feed of exact enemy positions around you while simultaneously being invisible to everyone but other Scouts and the occasional Active Scanner. The unfortunate thing is that CCP has no plans to change the dynamics of EWAR which effectively means that we're stuck with this broken system.

Inadvertently people seek ways to balance around the scan mechanics but the problem of a Scout with a Shotgun seeing your exact position if you're anything but a Scout will remain unless something is done about the way passive scans work. They're simply TOO GOOD. There is almost no drawback to passive scans. They provide a constant tactical feed of who's around you not only on your radar but on your god damn SCREEN. Active scanners were the same way for the longest time until they suffered a huge nerf, and what happened? Passive scans all but took over. Who wouldn't want little red chevrons to appear over all your enemies heads the second they get in range regardless if they're behind a wall?

I don't really know how it can be fixed at this point besides completely removing the chevrons that appear on your screen with passive scans. The active scanner is fine the way it is because it has a long list of drawbacks. Passive scans have no cooldown, no duration, and work seamlessly.

Anyways, I have very little faith in this game anymore as it is but I just wanted to do my best to point out why things are the way they are.