Definitely related to sprinting. Seems to occur at a greater magnitude if the cloak is activated while sprinting versus if you simply sprint while cloaked.
Dont be fooled by this ploy. After playing with Stalker Cloak in the VR room for a while, I came only to one conclusion: Its existance is only to make flak armor more useful. Hardly any players were using flak armor to reduce small arms damage due to small arms only being used when ammo is short and very close distance. The inability to use a primary weapon puts the stalker cloaker at the mercy of those who will invest in the flak armor, which would mean more shots needed to take a target down and more time spent outside of stalker cloaking. Even investing in nano armor cloaking will beat out a stalker cloaker any day. The only advantage the stalker cloaker has is that you can stealth for years without having to uncloak, and even then, the cloak is not perfect and you can still be spotted if people know what they are looking for. My opinion on the new cloak as of currently is that it is just something to make flak armor and nano armor cloaking a little more useful, thats all.
Surely you mean NanoWeave? And how does Stalker cloak affect the number of NanoWeave users, I don't understand
You Mean Nano Weave? Or do you mean the Anti-Explosive Flak-Armour? Because if you mean Nano weave then It doesn't really affect this cloak because it doesn't cover from head shots which stalker cloak is perfect for lining up.
Going with the assumption you meant nano weave. While it is true a pistol is effected more by nano weave due to magazine capacity the stalker cloak mechanic lets the user choose the conditions of the fight to a greater extent. This opens up the ability to take your time and line up your shots for that 2x head shot multiplier. It's a great advantage I don't think the CQC infiltrator community has taken advantage of as of yet with the stalker cloak. It's a different play style, slower and much more deliberate whereas hunter is faster pace and chaotic.
I'm not impressed with the new cloak. It cripples mobility too much, and you can't use your primary weapon. It's okay for camping, but not very good for crosssing enemy lines or battlefields. The day it got released I encountered 3 Vanu infiltrators with crossbows in 1 room. After we flipped the point, I stood on the roof of the building and went AFK for a couple of minutes. Then I came back and fired a dart, just in case. Immidiately, I saw enemies on my minimap. So I went down the ladder and saw one of the "stalkers". They were obviously setting up an ambush. I killed them all with a single SMG clip. They were just helpless with that cloak (visible even without a darklight) and their xbows. Very situational, useless for infiltrating. I was looking forward to get that cloak and had about 8000 certs saved. So far, I got myself just a crossbow. Explosive bolts for my Infiltrator and recon bolt for my HA and Engineer (I infiltrate enemy bases as HA or Engie too).
I had a brief go today post-patch, will try it some more later obviously but I had a few run-ins with stalkers and overall it doesn't seem too bad to deal with. It does require you to change gears a little bit in how observant you are in dealing with them. Now more than ever it's important to use your brain as well as your eyes and ears. Before, you could reliably count on cloakers being audible before you saw them because of their need to constantly cloak/decloak to regenerate energy. Now, you really need to be on the ball if you hear that cloaking sound (as they still have to decloak to attack someone, like one of your teammates) because you may not be able to 'home in' on their location using noise after that. You have to think like the cloaker. If you were the infiltrator, where would you scurry off to to hide after attacking someone? Get inside their head and sniff them out. Too many times have I seen people who 'tune out' the sound of enemy cloakers nearby, and that's where you see scenarios of infiltrators killing players one after another who are caught up in tunnel vision and sitting -right- next to each other, oblivious as they're getting picked off one by one. You hear that cloak noise? -React-, don't ignore it. Look around, and maybe pull out that sidearm with the darklight if you think a sweep is warranted. That's what it's there for afterall. Stalker can certainly be effective and definitely changes things up, but it's not like it can't be countered or prepared for. Be observant and not one of those mannequins you see getting picked off in the youtube videos.
At the moment it's quite OP when it's combined with the most powerful sidearms. It all depends on how long it will take before people start using Flashlights.
I was one of the people saying that stalker was gonna be bad. Boy was I wrong. It's awesome. I love it. You just need to be patient and together with the crossbow you can take out targets of opportunity. I just went on a mini streak behind the TR zerg killing engies repairing tanks and one on an AV turret. Then the server disconnected me.
Tomorrow I want to unlock the flashlight on my engineer Jaguar. I want to see how many Infiltrators I manage to kill. I think that's the best way to judge if the stalker is OP or not.
Meh... I'm undecided at this point. I've only got the first two tiers certified and the silenced Beamer, so perhaps the Crossbow and a fully maxed Stalker Cloaking device will change my mind. The constant need to stop and recharge leaves me feeling as though I'm dead in the water on mobility...which is what I expected and feared from Stalker. The cloaking effect itself still seems really situational, some people running right past me while others will simply pass by from a few meters, do a quick glance over, and hose me instantly even while I'm crouched. I'd love for someone to do a new video on the distortion effect between various stances, terrain, and graphic settings...we need something new to look at. I really can't form much of an opinion without seeing it on medium to ultra, which I can't do myself... I really wish it lasted longer though...
The cloak isn't as effective in its current state, even though most people would like to believe otherwise.
Thats where a lot of cloakers get the wrong idea. You don't cloak for the sake of cloaking, and you don't rely on it to hide you. One of the most significant epiphanies you have as an infiltrator, is realizing the moments when you don't want to be toggling cloak. Once you have that, the Hunter cloak suddenly becomes a lot more useful as you start figuring out how to make the most of your limited cloak time. Another powerful skill set is knowing what your surroundings look like. The most useful backdrops are the ones so bright, dark or complex, the distortions won't stand out. Bushes are also really good as the patterns mix you in perfectly. Just remember these words.... "Can't.... do.... plaid...."
I'd still up the movement time to 18-22 secs, lower the recharge time by 2 secs and fix the post sprint error. I like it though it's alot of fun but a very slow playstyle, mostly with all the massive WDS fights around. And yeah the VS need some pistol improvements lol. the Cerberus is okay but suppressed the velocity/damage effective range is really bad
There won't be any balancing due to the Ns pistols. Commi/umderb are great at brawling while the xbow awesome at medium range. I have both but prefer xbow. I have got kills up to 150m thus far but it demands headshots and unsuspecting targets. Managed to duel an la at 25m with it too, xbow is great as long as you are in control get jumped and you die. Atm i have 51% accuracy with it at 150 kills.
Got the Crossbow last night, got the stalker cloak today. I like it, it's like I'm an assassin. I may have to take back what I said about this patch not helping the infiltrator that much.
uggghhhgooooodamn.... the last thing I wanna do is play this right now. But given SOE's track record, if I don't, I'll miss out on like the only week or two when this class will ever be good, both for the first time ever, and pretty much ever again... ohhhh man, what a quandry
So I got this today to give it a spin tho I did use it in PTS. It is just absolutely crazy I had at least 5 TR looking for me even running through me and as they run away I would get a kill with the xbow. Now on to the xbow for the time I am just running a 6x on it as when you are firing mid range the mili dots give a huge advantage in medium range. I may get explosive bolts and blacklight. I will not get laser as the cross hairs are fine as it is. Really this weapon does not need anything more than a sight. The cons on the new cloak on xbow. Stalker with all cloaks have this bug where the perfect blending when you are still is really slowed. It can be fixed with a tap of the skill key but when you are running with stalker and see people coming at you you don't have that option of doing that and it will more than likely get you merked. The xbow and stalker could see some improvements without infringing to much on other options. The Stalker needs the cloak fix but all of them need it. Also the recharge time. When being used is fine no complaints but if you turn it off it should be a little faster I am not talking huge amounts but maybe 3-5 seconds. A faster re-chamber time to be even semi competitive in CQC. Maybe another round option called hunter bolts or barrel option like high tinsel string it does a OHK to the head at up to 30m. You do no't have to buff the damage at all just it's head shot multiplier. Some people will say but commish is a real gun and doesn't do that. Here is a bit of real info for ya a slingshot can be almost as good as a 44 magnum (within 30m) and the commish is based off that. Here is a video on it with real numbers. That said a headshot OHK vs a commissioner is that a commish has piercing power yes but a crossbow has about the same or more within about 30m but the bow has a different kind of projectile that is much larger. It still would not totally out preform it in CQC or fire rates and mag size.
