There has always been lots of 'em on Miller, but I guess you could say there may be a few more around than usual.
You still go through uncloaking animation before firing, so it's not really an advantage. You're locked while it's happening. I find the ability to use fire to come out of cloak more annoying than useful.
Advantage or not, that patch was when I saw a rise in snipers and the like. Could be confirmation bias, or a correlation. I think the latter. I was making a comment about infils to some of my buds on TS and one ID'd it as being the cloak change. I hadn't put two and two together by that point. But it made sense. We are talking about the PS2 playerbase, whether its useful or not means nothing, if they think it is, they'll flock to it.
If you are noticing them they are not doing their job properly.............. ofc, the cloak is a good way to avoid being spammed by grenades, tank cannon, harrassers etc. which seems to be much increased these days, as people don't tend to spam what they don't know is there. So maybe a few more people are resorting to stealth after all. I have just started playing stalker infil and I am amazed at how easily I can wander into the enemy's lines and stroll about.
Isn't it amazing? Just wait until the random folks start seeing you through deep cloak at +75m and claim ignorance
Well, the stealth changes and recent influx of new players are indeed good explanations for most of the recent increase in infiltrators.
Not more of them, they're just more noticeable at this time of year due to mating season. Soon, their reproductive needs fulfilled, the decorative plumage will fall off and the infiltrators will slowly die off to make room for a new generation in the spring, full of hope and completely lacking in radar certs.
Now you mention it, I have experienced a few "unexplained deaths". I've read posts about bugged cloaks so I've tended to put it down to that or to sheer bad luck, or some nooby error on my part. Once I got run over by a Flash while crouched and stationary in deep cloak.......I mean I was in a snow field about the size of Siberia, not a damned thing in sight then this little speck appeared on the horizon and came straight towards me and I thought nope, nope, he can't be............. aw f*ck! I also got shot once by a BR 100 from really long range with a GodSaw, which I thought was just a case of getting caught between him and his target. But most of the time I get away with being ridiculously close to unsuspecting enemies. One time a guy came and stood on me while I was hiding out in a room near a cap point, after he'd gone around and shot into all the corners. Knifed him of course, just couldn't help myself.
Stalker infiltrator is very fun until a point where most of your enemies happen to be BR 100s with proximity radar, darklights and aware heavy assaults etc. Your movement and aiming skills will have to be excellent in order to manage against top players with much more effective HP and firepower than you.
This is very true. Positioning is huge, and having a direct and fast LOS escape is also huge. If you're not headshotting every shot, you're dead, and sometimes you're still dead. Sensor shield makes as much sense to run as anything on a stalker, unless you feel EMP is worth it. All depends on what weapon you have and what kind of work you're doing. The best results I have found simply lay in being wherever they aren't thinking to look for you. See that nice looking hiding spot? Find somewhere else.