What non-infiltrators would like to see infiltrators do for them?

Infiltrators are universaly hated (somehow). They are people that kill (sometimes) without their victims to be able to retaliate, and they don't contribute much to team efforts (some darts, that's all).

I feel however that many infiltrators would like to do less troll-killing and more team contribution, without however having proper tools to do so.

Recon:
Infiltrator's battle mechanics make it poorly suited to walk near other allies due to lost bullets, fire delay due to decloaking, need to wait to restore energy... however, on the other side, the three ways for an infiltrator to provide intel are hindered as soon it tries to assume this role from the outskirt of a fight:
- Darts: short-lived, and few ammo once far from the engineers
- Motion spotter: short-lived also, because destroyable and immediatly displayed on the radar, with no efficient way to protect it alone
- Manual spotting: the infiltrator shouts at each spot, often bringin him a swift death if he tries to provide intel this way to his allies

Hacking:
- hacking infantry terminal barely has an use: not only the opponent have safe terminals to their spawn point, but the utility provided by an hacked terminal is minimal
- hacking vehicle terminal: most terminal being near of the spawn points they are difficutly exploitable even if hacked. As a matter of interdiction, a blockade of tanks around the spawn point is just a hundred times more efficient.
- hacking turrets: most of them are destroyed even before you got a chance to use them, and most of bases also don't have any relevant turrets to hack... making this too situational


Infiltrators being regarded as an annoying class by most, it is however difficult to propose a buff for them without making all other players worried and over-cautious.

So my question is: What would you, other players, agree that an infiltrator should be able to do in terms of team utility? (considering both it as allies, and potential ennemies)

Some people on the infiltrators forum have already made a few suggestions:
- Silently spot people while cloaked (sentinel role)
- Have an auto-reload recon device (only one dart at a time, but no ammo limit)
- Hard-hacking of generators and SCU (takes longer to stabilize, unless another infiltrators is doing it)
- Capture point hacking (provide takeover speed bonus as long the infiltrator stay near)
- Be able to use ground support traps (mines not shown on the EOD HUD, using various non-lethal effects like EMP, concussion, flash...)

...however, other players could could have better idea or do not like those ideas, I would like to hear their opinions

Darts.

Darts are not a small deal, having a fight covered in friendly darts is huge.

Also, stop sniping 300 metres away from a fight, get your scout rifle and help hold that damn point.

Whatever other extra utility you can think of is still going to be trumped by these two very simple things.

I would like EMP nades to scramble vehicle HUDs.

snipers are useless and annoying, infiltrators not so much, they have a role.

We are aware of this.

The main problem most of us have with darts is that they are a 2000 cert spec that:
- either turn your gameplay into a spamming chore while standing still an ammo box (maxed darts wears of in 45s, and taking in account the speed of their reload, you need to almost never leave the ammo box to maintain the scan effect)
- either is rendered unuseful because somone is already doing it, and one is enough for the whole battlefield

Darts would be more frequent is they would work like the sad ammo boxes: no ammo, but you can only drop one or two at a time, making is a shared task among all infiltrators without making them rooted to engie's ammo boxes.

You know, snipers are a minority. They perhaps draw your attention, but most infiltrators are hunters or stalker: CQC fighters

The reason why you don't see them often holding a point with you is the mechanics of the class are poorly suited for room protection: SMG or scout rifle don't compare to AR and LMG for that task, cloak brings automaticaly a fire delay, and we have weaker shields

We can bring support, we just often feel like the class is not well thought for that.
For exemple, stalkers could try to help you by staying outside and spotting manualy everyone approaching the capture point... but it makes them shout out loud when doing and have them get killed quickly enough.

I want you to stop cheesing me with your skill rifle when i'm busy 1v3 ing

I'm a stalker. I have no rifle.

Well for infiltrators....keep in mind those darts or motion sensors met you a decent little bit of xp if you are good at placement and that recon has saved me many times in seeing enemies on my mini map that I would've otherwise not noticed.

Outfit ops nights we have done some good stuff hacking turrets and terminals in places to get sundies up behind enemy lines or to shell a tank line from their own base.

People don't appreciate good infiltrators enough, but good infiltrators are more a rarity, most just want to sit and snipe or are trying to play SMG Rambo.

On a serious note now, the crossbow is a nice thing if you want to spam darts

And EMP grenade is quite strong , especially coupled with standard grenades or before storming a room. Maybe SMG infil could spam them more.

More than that idk.

I know what I want female Vanu-Infiltrators do for me.

Do you follow them in the back while cloaked yourself? i do, before taking out my hard hitting stuff (NC faction trait don't be mad)

I'll consider that when I could be able to kill someone with my knife alone. For now, please let me bring a pistol

I run EMP with bandolier. However, EMP grenades are hard to place well (not bouncing is not always a good thing, because it means you have to try to have a line of sight on the enemy to throw them most of time) and people mostly don't know how to take opportunity of it.
Most of time, if you throw an EMP, no one will charge behind to shoot at the opponents.

This works well only with organized outfits with vocal, who are trained to synchronize their moves.

I feel like most of the time I catch a sniper bullet with my face I'm no further than 20 meters away from sunderer or spawn room where I just spawned. It truly is a very rare occasion when sniper gets someone that is doing anything particularly useful and even then they're usually not quick enough or don't have the angle to snipe the medic that rezes that person 5 seconds later, which makes me believe that sniping itself is overall useless.

But yeah, infils are for darts, and hacking turrets/terminals. Those are very useful things.

Had many times in my outfit we load up in a gal, go to assault enemy base, drop out and realize none of us are infiltrators to hack vehicle terminal and pull sundies... gal gets shot down and we only have 11 people on point with no close respawns. It's only a matter of time until we get overrun in those situations. Medics and beacons can only last so long. With infil hacking out a sundy we could get well entrenched and reinforcements would spawn in. It's a pretty big deal, not to mention darts to see which entrance enemies are coming from.

I often go infil with scout rifle for defending bases with light population. Darts make it easy to spot what direction enemies are coming from. Once I find their sundy I'll switch to heavy or engie to take it out.

Well shooting down AV mana turrets and putting some headshots on an AV / AA Max is quite usefull as well.
Maxes go down really fast from snipers headshots (i think it's around 6-8 shots), enough to force them to go back to cover.

there only 1 type of most annoying "snipers" who waiting for their victims at terminals.. all the rest is meh, cloak is visible, you cant snipe because enemy hitching like hell.
IMHO - there nothing to nerf or buff. Good infiltrators doing great job, using their tools, hacking terminals, unless some teammates reaching it first...

The issue with infiltrators as hackers and darts spammers is you just need 1 per squad while more is pretty redundant. Stalker Infiltrators have instead a big potential but 99,9% of squad leaders do not know how to use them. Stalkers must stay away from the team and arrive before the rest of the army. The team is going to cap NS Abandoned Office? Then the Stalkers must already be in Howling Checkpass.

True enough.
Assault have always things to kill, medics have always people to heal/rez, engineer have always someone needing ammo or repairs... but infiltrators just not have enough things to do outside of killing careless and isolated opponents, which is not that helpful.

Infiltrators are like in an employment crisis since the beginning: many wanting to help, but too few of them really needed.

I seriously think the class needs more things to do.

Throwing a lot more EMP grenades into enemy clusters. It makes an assault a lot easier to do than having to tank the shields first or swarm into an active mine field.

I would like to believe it is helpful. But actually out of the 100 last EMP grenade I thrown, I think I earned perhaps 10 emp kills assist, showing how few people actualy takes opportunity of them.

I'm more useful throwing them to clear tank mines on the road, or destroy perched beacons, IMHO.

As a stalker cloak it's really usefull for yourself first, as you throw it and then it's one Comi shot kill or one knife kill.
But i guess you know that already ^^

The problem I typically see is that no one knows you just EMP'd a bunch of dudes, unless they get hit themselves (in which case panic mode lol). When you're coordinating with a squad in TS/mumble/etc you can let them know you EMP'd, and then they can capitalize on it.

I'd like stalkers to mine/camp the nearest tank terminals. Also, pull stealth sundies at the next base and get the cap started right away when you're defending 3+ point bases.