Hello, You log in, pick out your favourite class, hit J, and instant action to the nearest fight. You kill someone, someone kills you, you're playing the game, you're having fun. You engage in fights, you win some, you lose some, but at the end of the day, you know you won because you had the better aim, or you lost because your aim wasn't good enough, or you ran in with your shields down, a myriad of reasons. The next story, you pick your favourite class, hit J, run into the fight, and die instantly. You try again, and die instantly. The same person is killing you before they've even uncloaked on your screen due to how the client handles hit detection. You have zero seconds of warning, you see them uncloak as you are already dead. The only thing that can save you is if they happen to miss. You have no power, you have no control, you could do nothing differently. This is the story of the bolt action cloaker. You will die and you cannot stop it. There is a reason this game has been plagued by infiltrator mains using sniper rifles for a long time: Snipers with the ability to cloak are simply overpowered. Even stalker cloaking is overtuned in the current game, allowing you to effectively camp by vehicle terminals - somewhat alleviated by the spawn from map option that was released a while back - but the fundamental problem remains: You will be killed and you will not have a way to fight back. They need only aim true. Before you tell me to simply play better, imagine the frustration this causes for newer players, who can do even less than you can about these sorts of cheese tactics. Now think, what is the lifeblood of this game, that keeps it going, that refreshes the ranks and keeps it from dying? It's new players. New players can enjoy a lot about this game, but the cheese tactics that the veterans abuse are simply the reason they don't keep playing. And so, with all that preamble out of the way - let's discuss one of the problems that I'd like to offer a solution to today: The Infiltrator. We've all played it, we've all felt that class has a certain power the other classes really don't, and that all stems from its unique abilities. A single infiltrator will turn the tide of battle with recon darts alone. Who hasn't tried it and seen it for themselves? Fire a recon dart and suddenly everyone on your team is clued in to the enemy's positions, suddenly everyone is firing in unison, suddenly squad cohesion can begin. Motion spotters offer the exact same utility - but maybe infiltrator needs a different tool slot that isn't simply motion detection, as recon darts are enough for such utility. I won't be suggesting possible new tools, but, chew on that idea. The main source of infiltrator's power, however, is its stealth suit. The cloaking ability is really the true source of all the problems this class causes. And so, I'd suggest a way of dialling back some of the power of the cloaking ability, that will solve every single problem with this class. Hunter and nano-armour cloaking are perfectly balanced with SMGs and sidearms and maybe even scout rifles, but with sniper rifles they are just not balanced. The stealth suit ought to disable the use of snipers outright. Completely. Clientside means instakill, clearly it's not balanced, it's never been balanced. There's a reason every fight features a small horde of KD padders running Tsar, Ghost, and SAS-R. These weapons are not balanced with a stealth suit. They would be fine if they could not be cloaked with. As a form of restitution for such a nerf, it may seem prudent to add a possible replacement to the stealth suit, a suit slot which would allow the use of snipers and serve some function of its own. Perhaps an "Adrenaline Injector" which doubles bolt pull speed if the previous shot was a headshot kill, or a "Recoil Dampener" which reduces the recoil angle and hip fire bloom of equipped weapons by 25%. These would of course aid in killing, remove the stealth suit from snipers, and fit the infiltrator's hunter-killer purpose perfectly, while not nerfing bolt action sniping into the floor, and instead giving it a new, more balanced purpose. Thank you.
Removing playstyles is rarely a good solution. There are better solutions, for example: increase the decloak time. We already have different times for some decloaks, making an infiltrator take longer to decloak would not be a hard thing to do. Example: 2 seconds of decloak+sound would make decloaking in-your-face harder and emphasise flanking attacks they were originally designed for anyway. 5 seconds decloak would make it nigh impossible to start combat from cloak, and force all infils to start combat visible. This would mean you could give all infils 1000 health again and also allow you to make cloaks last longer so infils can reach the spots they want before decloaking.
Unlike OP, you didn't specify who you want to increase decloak for? EVERY Infiltrator? or only Sniper Infiltrator? Because I completely disagree that Hunter SMG Infiltrator, or SOAS-20 Infiltrator requires a nerf.
Oh definitely all infiltrators, the skills to dominate as SMG infil is far easier to come by than to dominate with a bolt-action. I would not mind making the SMG versions 2 seconds while weapons not for direct combat would be 5 seconds. I auraxed the scout rifles extremely early in the game, did they ever receive a buff or are they still basically accurate auto-pistols? If they didn't get a buff they should get it regardless of the cloak being altered.
Honestly the infiltrator class just needs to be split into 2 different classes. One based off spotting, most likely toggle scope as an ability. Than have the current infil be based around stealthy sabotage, making it hard to hold a single spot and stop the run into a grind fest or place traps, since we lack proper ways to assault infantry only built bases. Right now Sniper role: They're impossible to find, sure bad ones will sit in one spot but it really feels the only class that can take out an infiltrator is another infil prob running stalker. Usually only ever dies to another infil at this point. Infiltrator role: Doesn't really do anything past hacking terminals or tossing a good grenade into a fight. They don't do much past that to sabotage.
Gimme HA's health pool of 1500+ hp and i will forgive you for taking out my stealth xDDD But that was a joke you know)) I think your solution is just: F reuse timer delay 2 seconds. Cause its obviously you suffer from stealth spam but not from stealth itself.
