Potential methods to use cloak use:

1:Sneak around the battlefield.
2:Decloak behind and away from the enemy.
3: Scan
4: Hit them in the rear.
5:Profit

One Precision Enhancer on an MN/CA/GA Scout will pick up single damp'd Assaults (30dB) on mid-range scans. You'll otherwise miss 'em. I run one often.

I do not disagree with you that cloak needs work. I'd personally like to see shimmer refined. It'd also be great if the decloak delay trigger were fixed.

Eyes are OP. You should use them.

I do not agree with buffing the cloak.

I think it is just fine and scouts have been put in place as 'scouts'.

There was once a time that the consensus was that it wasn't that cloak scouts had range on scans while cloaked, but that scouts could over take the role of an assault because of their ability to brick tank. Passive scanning, like hp tanking is currently, was supposed to be something you benefit from if you dedicate your suit to it.

Passive scanning is a joke because the active scanner did not get nerfed accordingly. Because apparently giving up an equipment slot is much more taxing to a suit than sacrificing all HP capabilities to avoid detection, or see the some of enemy team.

I'm disgusted that even though the dev post did in fact say that all scans would lose directional, but they didn't. Active scanners are 100x better than passives at this point, they don't worry about the circle of e-war, they have a fixed, long range, they even show you exactly how the enemy is oriented. People may argue "but you can get under an active scanner in a scout," well it's not like any E-war scout is gonna scan them.

Beyond all that the scout's main equipment, the cloak, actually penalizes them further for something they dedicated their suit to. Yes the thing that's supposed to help the suit shine, actually hinders the scout from avoiding detection. Vision alone is obviously not enough considering all the weapons in game have a minimum of 30m, to entertain that thought is asinine especially with the amount of hp that people who actually dedicate suits to E-war get.

Anyway, I'm so very glad that it was the FOTM chasing "scouts" that decided that the only way to fix scouts was to buff assaults, and nerf e-war to the point of irrelevance. I mean it's not like E-war was the role of scout suits or anything right? It's not like there was a bigger issue that was completely ignored because another suit became viable, right?

Do not touch the cloak. No Buff needed Leave ASS Is.

Standard issue Eyeballs and a friendly active scan.

Why is that sad? They're scouts. Why shouldn't they use the tools available to them to improve their ability to scout?

lol says the one who is grasping at straws so much he feels the need to ad hom....

Scouts are intended to wait for it........

Scout the enemy.

So it stands to reason that if there are tools available that improve their ability to scout, they should use them.

Sorry that you got so caught up in "WAAHAHAHHHAHHH I can't do what I thought I could do with a suit so I'll cry to mama CCP to change the game to suit me even though there are respecs available on the market" that you couldn't actually listen to reason while over there stroking your ego thinking you actually had a legitimate argument.

Have fun crying in your thread tool, I see now what this thread is and I am not going to waste anymore time on it.

Again, this is the same argument that was used against non-cloak users to defend themselves from sneak attack. It was just phrased differently:

• "Always check your surroundings..."
• "Never assume you are alone or safe..."
• etc.

I'm not sure if you were part of the group of scouts who made that argument. However, 'you' (in an abstract sense of the word) can't have your cake and eat it too. The situation you're describing sounds like the situation that non-cloak users are in when they fight cloak users. So, you should be able to use the same advice that was given before.

Let me extend my heartfelt, deeply sincere sympathies to you, as you complain about not knowing where the enemy is in a thread dedicated to buffing cloaks...

Seriously, I still get killed by de-cloaking shotgun scouts more than often enough to opine that cloaks don't need a buff. The suggestion that they are underpowered, should be ridiculed. On those rare occasions when I do spot a cloaked scout (as opposed to simply being assassinated by one, having had no idea he was present until I was down) they still manage to get away pretty frequently because of their speed.

How about scouts gain the Gal logi scan bonus, and lose the cloak bonus and second equipment slot? Then you'd be scouts instead of ninjas.

Because other people cannot see you. That's the point. The cloak isn't supposed to allow you to run around willy-nilly and shotgun people from out of nowhere. That's why it's been so OP. Plus it's not like it occludes your screen in any way (although that is an interesting idea) so you can still find people just fine. You just don't have your tacnet anymore.

You are correct. It is a scout. And it can scout out different positions with its high speed, as well. Being a scout isn't defined by "How strong is my radar", because if it was, then anyone with enough EWAR modules would be a "scout". Being a scout includes higher mobility, lower profile, etc.

To answer your question again, more succinctly, you can scout without being wholly dependent on your mini-map. You can also use your suit inherent speed and stamina bonuses to visually confirm enemies, and then escape without detection via your inherently reduced profile.

TL:DR - There is more than one way to be a scout

If the basis of the argument for restore the radar range of scouts while in the cloak is "The current system does not allow me to be a scout", then a faulty line of reasoning is what I have against the cloaking range nerf removed. As I mentioned earlier, the inherent bonuses that the scout suit receives allows you to scout in different ways.

To address your comment about the Minmatar Assault, it is rather cherry picked. Yes, you have shown that you can put two Complex Kincats and two Complex profile dampeners on an Minmatar assault to try and copy the bonuses of a scout suit. This is a product of the fitting system in Dust. However, that proto Min Ass would still be out preformed by a scout with the same modules.

You can brick tank a scout suit to emulate an assault suit. It will function like an assault suit (Or even better, in the case of some scouts). But that is a straw man argument. We're not debating the ability for other suits to copy the functions of a role different from their own. We're debating how damaging the cloak - as it stands - is to the ability of a scout to preform its duties. And my position of "Not very damaging, all things considered" still stands

The issues with the cloak as it stands it that it prevents the scout suit from avoiding detection by removing 85% it's scan range, if a scout can't detect enemies, it cannot effectively avoid enemies. If a scout has dedicated x amount of slots to scanning (which would be ludicrous in the current state of passive scanning but that's beside the point) it is a beyond ridiculous penalty considering how much has been put into one's passive scanning.

Example: Assaults get a 25% reduction to weapons and grenades cpu/pg, well what if every weapon that was equipped on an assault, and fired would make the assault suit lose 85% of hp tank. I mean assaults are supposed to be good at killing right? It doesn't say that assaults need to be good at surviving.

That's the current state of the cloak and the scout. It would be fine if scouts didn't get a bonus to the cloak,or if it was completely removed, because then it wouldn't be a balancing issue in terms of role bonuses, but it is.

To address the disparity between the scout and assault. No, in no case of pure fitting capabilities, combat capabilities, and versatility, the assault will always win. The scout's ability to use passive scanning is also inferior to active scanners, so literally everyone is fine that the scout's role has been completely aborted in place of penalizing the real cause of disparity in the scout ranks, that being scouts benefiting from E-war even though said suit is mainly hp tanking.

It's not an issue to the community anymore because the assault has been buffed enough so that hp tanking a scout is "inferior" to an assault suit's hp tank.

All in all it doesn't really matter anymore, what's done is done, and there is very little chance that this will be revisited anytime soon so...

Between:

1. "Scouts [should be] hard to detect, except they know where everything is..." (Bold)
2. "...In the scout suit's circumstance - its role is solely based on the fact that is has a strong radar..." (Bold)
3. "Your so called 'Eyes are OP' shouldn't really apply to scouts..." (Bold)

I can see that game balance is not what you are looking for. No suit can have the "Boss mode" Ewar that a scout can have unless it is gimped. You cannot compare a competitive scout fitting to a gimped assault fitting and call them equal. Gal Logis using an active scanner is also an active module of sorts, with its own draw backs. Finally, yes! You can use any suit to fill any role you want. Welcome to Dust514. However, some suits fulfill these roles better than others. There is no way to use a heavy suit as an effective scout. There are ways to build a Min Assault into a modest scout. That is one of the design goals of the fitting system - options and choice.

An Assault with EWAR is not gimped. Nowhere in my post did I say that. I claimed that an Assault that tried to match the abilities of a scout would need to gimp its suit to do so. Case and Point: I run a Complex dampener on all of my suits, granting me some measure of scan protection. This puts my Scan Profile at 35, I believe (Though this is off of the top of my head). However, if I tried to get down to 25 dB and 10.40m/s, I would need to get a proto Min Assault and fill all of my low slots with Kincat and Damps to achieve something that scouts can do with far less module cost. I was arguing that there are far more competitive Min Assault builds than that, and that the aforementioned fitting was "gimped" by comparison.

Secondly, on PC, there is also a scout that runs all EWAR modules to give passive scans to their team, if I recall correctly. In this case, compared to the Gal Logi, the Cal Scout will be able to see all of the suits in a 80m+ area all of the time, while the Gal logi can only see all of the suits in a 90 degree arc some of the time.

As for my motives, I don't have any. I just disagree with your faulty argument for removing the nerf, is all. I'm fine with fixing the numbers, or the mechanics of engaging and disengaging the cloak, but the spirit of the nerf is fine to me.

Finally, you sacrifice your scan range optionally to be both visually and electronically harder to detect. This is inline with dampening being more rewarding than scanning, by and large. This bonus is just not free of cost.

My argument is not any more opinion based than anything else said in this article. The debate is:

• "Is the range nerf applied to scouts appropriate?"

Your answer to that question is: "No, it is not appropriate. Scouts lose their ability to scout with this nerf."
My answer to that question is: "Yes, it is appropriate. Scouts are not defined by their radar strength."

Your supporting evidence is that scouts should be able to cloak and have radar superiority, and that scouts should not have to rely on visual situational awareness as much as other suits.

My supporting evidence is that scouts have other bonuses that allow them to scout in other ways - visually, for example - which are unaffected by the range nerf. Furthermore, scouts should take their own advice, and no suit should have the ability to "rely less on visual situational awareness" based on their class.

This is entirely an opinion based discussion. I just think your argument is flawed, and your supporting points are not in the name of balance. And, to bring things full circle: Since your argument is also completely opinion based, there is no real good reason to change the way things are.

Maybe when things like sprinting, firing, jumping, etc actually have an affect on profile... Otherwise, this is sort of over-powering...

What drawbacks would there be to using a cloak, exactly? The shimmer effect doesn't need to be touched because of the toupee fallacy when it comes to all the times it's been said that "it's too easy to see cloaked scouts".

A slight reduction in the drawbacks to scan range isn't unreasonable but if a Scout is already getting the best of both worlds (profile -and- precision) then why should he have the range as well..? Because he doesn't have the same EHP as my Assault? One could argue that because my Assault doesn't have the same EWAR abilities that it should get a sizable EHP and DPS buff to compensate; it's the same shoe on a different foot.

Your only goal is get behind and close enough for an insta-gib. My goal is being able to find you and keep target long enough to kill you while being completely visible to everything else on your team. I don't think it's unreasonable that you should have to use your eyes to survey an area instead of relying entirely on your scanners when I have to do the same thing...

The cloaking device in and of itself is primarily a Scout tool and thereby the problems associated with it are limited to Scouts. It is nigh impossible to fit a cloaking device with any degree of ease on anything else, even at the standard level, due to high resource costs. Take pride in the fact that this function and it's drawbacks are unique to your specialization.

EDIT: Also, as I was told when I went into the Barbershop to politely discuss things... How's about you guys go back to the Barbershop or whatever skype channel you crawled out of?

You mean like movement speed reductions on armor plates and increased depleted delay/reduced shield capacity on shield modules..?

Tell me, what does our role bonus encourage, exactly..? Reduced fitting costs on weaponry? Dispersion reductions? Reload speed increases? Don't make me laugh dude, at least Scouts have a legitimate and verifiable role in this game. Assaults and Commandos are so mixed and meshed together no-one even know what they're supposed to do besides be cannon fodder for Scouts and Heavies.



So I suppose that is you giving permission for Assault suits to have a longer short-range scan..? You act like having a small scan radius is somehow unique to Cloaky Scouts or something. #DealWithIt

Smashed it mate.

People who play a class almost exclusively are not a valid point of reference for balance ever, even if it is proto. There are those of us who have everything at proto across chars and play it all, we know what actual balance is.

I've not played for about 5 months now though so i can't really comment on anything but i'm getting back on dust next month. I have heard that it is very balanced at the mo.