I run CQC loadout, almost exclusively with nanoshield cloaking (fully certed). Although it takes a while to recharge and it only last about 13 seconds, it has saved me countless times with a sliver of hp remaining as I escape through doors and around corners. I never see any love for it here in the forum. Am I alone?
You're not alone, I use nano-armor cloaking fairly regularly. I even have a loadout built entirely around it. A lot of people tend to avoid it though because it's a departure from the infiltrator gameplay they're used to, giving up their reliable stealth mechanic for a defensive evasion tactic. A lot of folks can't reconcile the decision. Then there's also the cert progression where you don't really get to see what it can do until you've sunk the full 1000 certs into it, so there really no way for the average player to get a realistic impression on it at it's early ranks, so it would seem a lot of people who try it never buy more than rank 1 or 2. Actually getting into it takes something of a leap of faith and for most they can think of a few certs with promised effectiveness that they'd rather invest it.
Lol. No, to be fair to Plague Rat, at long-range sniping (although, who does this now anyway? it is all smg-range sniping now) when the cloak becomes invisible the chance of you being hit is very slim - so the uptime becomes the most important factor, which the Hunter cloak wins and is thus more "reliable". At closer ranges, however, people used to use the Hunter cloak to slip by people who didn't have time (or the inclination) to try and identify them as an enemy rather than a friendly - that has since been all but trashed by SOE's "quality-of-life" changes. Given the Hunter cloak is rubbish at helping with remaining undetected at close-range, and is now rubbish at misidentification, the only role it can play at close-range is duking shots - which the NA cloak does anyway as well as providing damage resistance, thus it wins. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of good infiltrators have switched to NA cloak when going close-range. While the NA cloak is better than the Hunter cloak at combat survival, it is still fairly poor in direct comparison to other classes' class ability. For example, the Nano-Armour cloak has a damage resistance of 25%, while the Heavy has a damage resistance of 45%. The Heavy is also tougher in general due to increased shields - as well as having better CQC weapons. It for reasons like that of the paragraph above that people ignore the NA cloak - if that is what infiltrators are having to rely on then something somewhere has gone wrong because we just aren't as good at it as other classes. Sadly, this has became the case. P.S. Biddion, the NA cloak lasts I think 8 seconds when fully certed, not 13. I may be wrong about the exact number, but I know it is not in the double-digits.
You took a phrase out of context to fixate on and expect lols. A real veteran of the chan's, this one. /specialolympicsgolfclap
Fair enough. No problem. But as for the actual stealth aspect, you can still be pretty stealthy with hunter. You just can't bank on the enemies confusion by sprinting around right in front of them, but that's the only trick it killed really. And I think WAY too many infiltrators banked on that one to the point they never learned how to actually be sneaky. And way too many continue to act with reckless abandon when it's active. As for NAC I sort of agree that when compared to other class abilities is doesn't look great, but when you compare it to the resist shield the heavy is also intended to beast it out in a firefight whereas the infiltrator is meant to get the hell out of dodge, move out of a disadvantaged encounter and possible re-engage on their terms. So there's no loss to movement speed you see in the resist shield, and we're still cloaked while it's active, and when maxed out it's 35% reduction, so we can soak a few rounds and be harder to target with normal sights and damn near impossible with the ever present IR/NV (which went from being infi detection easy mode to completely useless vs cloak) It does have it's perks compared to similar mechanics. But a bigger part of it is that they design things with intent of usage in mind, not necessarily equivalencies to other class mechanics that serve a similar but differently intended function. I think at one point the design of NAC was meant to allow firing while cloaked but I'm guessing that got nixed fairly quick.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh. Still, the whole concept of "Hunter Cloak doesn't do what it is supposed to very well" is precisely the reason I've given a lot of thought into picking the Nano Armor Cloaking up recently. I already rely on my Recon Darts & SMG far more than my Cloak when I play close quarters, playing to the Hunter's 'strength' at evasion and only really using it as an escape mechanism anyway. I've got the certs, but I really don't know if I want to drop them on an ability that may or may not be marginally more useful compared to what I have already.
