Why did you decide or how did you come up with this utter garbage version for this implant? Leave the damn thing alone if you intend to make it significantly worse off.
Are you talking about landing a kill to get a deeper cloak? I seen mentions of it, and yes it is a dumb idea as it doesn't promote a "deep operative" but a run and gun style, but that is my opinion though.
In the latest version of PTS, it's changed into staying out of cloak + not taking damage will reduce 75% of visibility. The level 5 is 12 seconds. I think this change still makes it garbage. This can help you sneak and attack your first target, it will not help you hide and recover. Wait... maybe this can be useful for stalkers...
How often does an infilitrator get hit by a stray bullet meant for someone else which means this implant now has absolutely 0 benefit most of the time. Now combine this with being hit by darklight, cloak shimmer while running etc now puts this on par with minor cloak as being the most useless implant. Even if taking damage did not reset the benefit, having to wait 12 seconds outside of cloak before you get any benefit makes it utter crap, and killing someone (where you can't cloak afterwards) reduces the duration you have to wait by 3 seconds ? Seriously who the heck is in charge of coming up with these ideas? Seems like somebody who has never spent time playing infilitrator by the looks of it. And for a stalker it is even worse than hunter because you rely on getting close where you are often spotted and have to rely on recloaking after taking damage
It is silly that they force you to uncloak for so long in order to get it working, It should just be "after spending 12 seconds out of combat your cloak becomes 75% more effective." Perhaps the engine would require you to recloak and that is why they've done it this way. This new version is still miles better than the proposed version that required you to get 3 kills before it does anything. XD
And if you take any damage you have to go through it again ? Like I said, they should just leave the implant alone instead of making it useless. I run DO almost all the time, with this version I would never use it. What's the goal here to get stalkers down to spending so much time and having to be so cautious to get 1-2 kills the entire length of a fight? I think the thing that peeves me more than this horrible change is that it demonstrates yet once again that the designers behind this game now are putting little to no thought into these changes. I don't now what this stems from, lack of experience, lack of caring or something else ?
I don't get why taking damage resets the countdown. You'd think that if someone manages to spend 12 seconds outside of cloak WHILE taking damage from enemy sources would deserve it all the same, if not even more.
totally agreed that the current version is much better than the PTS version, i too run rank 5 deep operative all the time on my main, if i'm playing stalker it is always deep operative and catlike!
I think the idea is that you're being rewarded for being stealthy, not getting caught, stray bullets counting.
Why should that be rewarded and who wants infiltrators on their side who sneak around more than they fight? This implant is only going to encourage infiltrators to screw around instead of doing anything useful. Chances are that you'll just get caught trying to activate this nonsense or you'll have to distance yourself from the combat and waste time.
If you had read further than that, you would've noticed that it also mentions that taking damage will reset the countdown timer. It's possible to get kills without being damaged, but what's the point of an implant that makes you allergic to bullet fire. In reality, if you're going to get your hands dirty you are going to take damage there's no doubt about it.
The thing is, if you kill your enemy you usually stop taking damage, meaning that after a kill you only have to wait 3 seconds and you are good to go. Actually when I think about it, this implant gives you a bit of a choice: Be sneaky without using your cloaking device and you are rewarded (something I already do now anyways because cloaking makes noise and sitting out of sight behind a crate does not), and should you have been in combat you get 3 seconds before you can use a much more powerful cloak. This should be a Stalker's wet dream: Murder someone, by the time enemies can come to see what's happening you are already deep-cloaked with 75% less visibility and ready to strike. Even when crouch-walking (with catlike implant ofcourse) you'll be basically going deep-cloaked while moving. The fact that people go off their hinges about it while I can think of a Stalker's wet-dream in 2 minutes of reading these comments is what gets me. It's like the opposite of deep-cloak: Everyone went banana's screaming it would be OP with shotgun-MAX's and LA's decloaking everywhere for perpetual OHK's while barely anyone listened to the downsides that made it garbage to begin with. "We prevented something disastrous by moaning about it" my butt.
It doesn't reduce the cooldown TO 3 seconds, it reduces it BY 3 seconds. It'll still be 9 awkward seconds. I'm not saying that stalker infil will be left without interesting implants, but D.O as such will likely not be one.
Damn my mistake. So it's not a Stalker's wet dream. It's still good for regular stalking purposes though. Stay out of sight for as long as your shield needs to recharge to full (which is 12 seconds, 6 before activation and 6 for the recharge) and you are benefitting! As a non-stalker I'm already doing this and I'm effective with the tactic, and I'm assuming most players don't do multiple attacks in a row constantly and sit down for some shields every now and then and they would automatically benefit as well.
I'd just be content knowing that the benefit returns eventually. When you now take damage, this implant will abandon you in the direst hour of need. Typically when I'm out of shields myself, I will wait the shield re-activation time while cloaked and let it charge as much as it will when I ambush my next enemy. I probably take more risks than most stalkers with the mag-scatter, but that's what being a "deep operative" sounds like to me. So how would I improve the current iteration? I'd replace the tier 5 benefit by having kills grant the benefit immediately but only temporarily. This way you could prime the implant in a shelter but upkeep it by keeping a good pace on killing enemies until your business with them is concluded(for better or worse). Alternatively, just allow the user to suffer damage without resetting the timer and let the benefit accumulate eventually. If it's too crazy, the cooldown time could be longer or kills could take less off from the timer.
I know what you mean. I would think that damage should be less relevant to the cloak, or perhaps even do the opposite: if you cloak after damage is taken your cloak becomes deeper for a several seconds (6?). It doesnt work if you are already cloaked. This way it rewards using non-cloak stealth and if you are discovered and choose to escape with stealth rather than engage you can. As a deep operative I imagine a saboteur or sniper with a high-priority target. He's not engaging every Joe he meets as that's not his task. So he'll sneak passed lots of enemies using cloak when he needs to and trying to be silent and use cover when he can to avoid attention.
I main stalker infiltrator and this iteration of Deep Operative would be useless. I think they should go one of two ways with this implant. 1. Make it its own implant and retain the original implant. This would benefit non-stalker infiltrators as they are most likely to be the one actually fighting consistently. 2. Keep the passive 30% deeper cloak on top of this new mechanic. This makes it so stalkers still maintain their current, allegedly weak, implant while also promoting a more aggressive play style for stalkers.
