No Cloak Challenge

Discussion in 'Infiltrator' started by giltwist, May 26, 2015.

  1. giltwist

    So, I just found myself in a brief in-game conversation with a low ranked infiltrator of an opposing faction. Long story short, "Sorry, kid, I found you because you were cycling your cloak and I could hear it." Just a few minutes later, I got myself into a hiding spot just to observe troop movements. I hadn't realized I was in Hunter rather than stalker mode, but the hiding place itself was good enough that a couple people walked right by me without noticing. I cloaked up and was almost immediately caught by a sunderer, of all things. This brought me back to the age old question of whether an infiltrator might not be just as well off without the cloak, given its current limitations. There's really only one way to prove it one way or another in my book, which brings us to the present thread.

    Can people produce videos of good infiltrator action (either sniping or CQC) while not using the cloak at all? In short, is it the cloak or the playstyle that succeeds?

    This challenge could prove that it's patience and positioning that makes a good infiltrator, not the cloak...which should be darn good justification that the cloak itself is underpowered.
  2. cobaltlightning

    I've gotten some angry tells from the people I found who kept cycling their Cloak. Even in the middle of a Fire Fight, Cloak is Loud and easy to pick up out of explosions and gun fire. Why, I could even hear one cloak from the top of one of those small tower thingies that tend to be scattered around bases sometimes with their AV and AA turrets on them.

    Anyway, I think it's moreso a mix of the cloak and the playstyle: If you're only found out because you turn your cloak ON, then you're doing your job of getting behind enemy lines correctly.
  3. giltwist

    At the risk of threadjacking my own thread, about a week ago, I heard a strange sound in a very small battle and couldn't figure out what it was until I saw the kill screen from a LA... I'm BR 66 and have been playing for ages...and only now have I been in a battle quiet enough to actually hear the jetpack.
  4. RedArmy

    get a better headset - turtle beach makes everything loud but doesnt pick or discern differences in levels of sound so its more blended. get a steelseries or krakken, less blending of sounds so u can hear different audio playing at the same time
  5. Sir Cypher

    In my opinion, knowing when to use and when not to use your cloak is one part of situational awareness. If you think you might compromise your location by cloaking or decloaking, better not do it, if you have any visual cover. Of course, this needs to be balanced in each case with the possible risk of being sighted if you don't cloak.

    I completely agree with this and I'd go even as far as to say it is ridiculously loud. And as a side note - it's amazing, considering how loud the cloak is and distinct for each faction, how many people totally ignore the sound. Yesterday I played a short session and tested it out. Walked up to point blank range to six snipers (invidually of course), uncloaked "right next to them", aimed carefully (=slowly, allowing time for reaction). Only one of the six reacted to the cloak sound. I tend to cloak and move/jump/crouch immediately when I hear enemy faction cloak noise close by.
  6. breeje

    if you want to play without cloak then a good camo will help allot
    i find the desert zebra on hossin overpowered in the same way giraffe was overpowered on indar before the vanu cover change
    half the players don't see me on hossin except when i play as NC
    no need to say i still cant walk right up to them
    and on esamir is indar dry bush overpowered if you stay on the rocks or in front off them

    [IMG]

    [IMG]
    indar ?
    test different camo's i will not tell you everything
  7. Voross

    I usually use cloaking only to remove the marking when I was spotted, or after I killled someone to throw off Q spammers and counter snipers. Cloaking when you've got a decent camo and/or a good hiding spot isn't really necessary.
  8. Quinnocent

    The cloak is not a crutch. Forget just the cloak noise. I spot plenty of infiltrators purely because of their minimap dot. Above a certain relatively low skill requirement, all players will be constantly watching their minimap. I keep it large and zoomed out or in to an appropriate level. In a contested base fight, I zoom in a lot, so I can pick up individuals skulking across a base. In the field, I keep it zoomed out quite a bit, so I can pick up on enemy macro movement, as well as snipers, engis on their turrets, or other long range attackers.

    So you pay for using a non-suppressed bolt action rifle. You pay for using a bright, cool-looking camo. You pay for walking directly in the line of sight of an enemy. You pay for constantly cycling the cloak. You pay for a lot of things. People who have the right amount of situational awareness and the right hardware (a quality surround sound system) will easily find you if you do the wrong things. I main VS. So when I play my NC infiltrator alt, I can sorta tell which rifle a VS inf is using by the sound alone, and I can tell where. You learn to spot the different voice packs too. Spotting is vital, but if you do it in the wrong place, it gets you killed. Stock voice packs (male and female) are very distinct. So even if you spot something faction neutral, "Spotted an enemy heavy," just the sound of your voice gives you away.

    But you're honestly given ample tools to rarely get noticed. Once you really have patience and understand stealth, primarily _where_ to hide, you can cross enemy terrain very easily to get behind the enemy, or you can even walk through enemy bases. I can sneak through enemy bases with only a moderate amount of people in them with only a very small chance of getting caught using the Hunter cloak.

    It mostly boils down to knowledge and awareness, not tools. Your cloak, on the best day, is active camouflage. Meaning, if you're sitting silhouetted with your cloak on, or you're sitting against a monochrome solid background in the open (the corner of a room in certain bases), it's not going to help. It shouldn't help in that situation. It _should_ be obvious when you're looking straight at it. Because when you're using it _right_, it's incredibly powerful, and it lets you get places you otherwise wouldn't be able to go.

    Honestly, please don't believe the wah-wah forum hype that cloak is worthless. That's the easiest way to put a hard cap on your effectiveness as an inf.
    • Up x 1
  9. MisterSlim

    Flashing the cloak does more than most people realize. When using the NC sniper rifles (my stats with the VS snipers are terribad, since I learned to play with that character, and since I mostly play overwatch for my outfit with it), I rarely ever use the cloak as a source of hiding. As a matter of fact, I'm one of the few snipers that uses the NAC for long-range sniping rather than up-close brawling. Flashing your cloak gives you time to cycle your bolt, erases your minimap blip, and gives you time to reposition and start lining up the next shot while their line-of-sight on you is broken. (NAC gives the added benefit of not glowing when hit by stray rounds, and being able to survive a T3 sniper round to the head).

    It's not about separating cloak from playstyle, it's about integrating your cloak into your playstyle. Cloak cycling is indeed loud, but if you know when and how to use it, the benefits far outweigh the noise. Don't look at the cloak and say "This is why I don't like it. This is how it should be." Look at it and say "This is how it works, and this is what it does. This is how I will use it to my advantage."

    -Stay Frosty
    • Up x 6
  10. Quinnocent

    Very good post. I tend to avoid extraneous cloaking on my VS, though, primarily because I use a suppressed rifle, and with that rifle, I tend to operate a lot closer. But you're using the Parsec primarily as VS, I'm guessing, so radar dot is a big issue for you.

    I've actually thought about switching to NAC precisely to avoid countersniping, but I don't get countersniped often, and I tend to do a lot of macro movement. I primarily snipe behind the enemy. Hunter cloak with its 12/8 duration/refresh is a great way to cross a long distance out in the open if your enemies have LoS but are far-enough away for cloak ripple LoD to kick in. I'm not sure how I'd deal with the 8/12 of NAC.
  11. DirArtillerySupport

    I have an old logitech z-680 with the two rears high on the back wall of the room. Moving the mouse from left to right it becomes very easy to track individuals on the map by their footsteps. Cloakers are super easy. It is like tracking someone with a cough.
  12. CuteBeaver

    After trying this a little bit today I have to say that cloaks power is mainly in providing anti spot utility. I equipped "counter intelligence" that tells you when you have been spotted. The eye icon will change to red when your spotted so you can medkit or take evasive action. Ideally this would be a time to clear the spot with cloak...

    In terms of SMG streaking without cloak was much more "responsive" but when it came to ridge line sniping the pressure was certainly much higher for target acquisition. The smg was interestingly positive since its mostly about flanking and cloak often gets in the way for response time and potentially gives away the ambush. While watching the implant change color, it became very clear the power of cloak came down to removing / preventing spots. Counter Intelligence made it painfully obvious that cloak is keeping us off the mini map especially in larger fights. I kind of really like counter intelligence as an implant after using it for a few hours. Would recommend for this challenge or for those curious to see how often we do get spotted.
    • Up x 2
  13. ALTRego

    I cant say that what we have now is actually a cloak but rather more of an environmental camouflage. To cloak or not to cloak, who knows. The other guy was right, boils down to situational awareness. Hunter cloaks and runs into a Stalker trap, busted. Stalker moves at wrong time, busted. Mobile gets sniped while in recharge, busted. In the end, were all vulnerable and cloaks are more vulnerable than any other class which makes for the ultimate challenge to play successfully. David(us) vs Goliath(any other class or vehicle). This is why we play it.
  14. giltwist

    First of all, thank you for actually trying what I suggested rather than just telling me that I don't know how to play Infiltrator. I also like your idea of using the counter-intelligence implant to quantify the difference.



    Since you mention SMG, I'm going to assume Hunter Cloak. So Hunter cloaking does serve a purpose for long-distance Infiltrators...but maybe it doesn't for CQC snipers, which does seem to be evidence in the direction of "cloak is underpowered" argument. I certainly wouldn't expect stalker infiltration to be possible without the stalker cloak. This may mean the real problem is that Nano-Armor Cloaking is really the underperformer, not Hunter. I don't think I've spent a cert on it, honestly. I wonder how hard it would be for Nano-armor to not work with sniper rifles, but would allow fire-from-cloak. That would keep it from being OP for sniping, but make it more in line with SMG use.

    Are mini-map pings really even an issue for an infiltrator in larger fights? I really only worry about pings if I'm somewhere where there aren't friendlies around to distract.
  15. CuteBeaver

    For the sniping I used a silenced ghost + NAC + counter intelligence. I had tried the V10 silenced but, I kept having issues with hitching. This frustrated me, and I switched to the ghost which didn't require the hold breath mechanic on top of hitching.

    I found when running counter intelligence implant it was much better to use the ghost which didn't have any sway to deal with either.. Especially since you cannot use hold breath implants + counter intelligence. I also had my favorite camo bladestar (indar tree camo) at night, hiding in one of my normal hide sniping locations and was able to stay undetected for roughly 10+ minutes wracking up a good little streak before eventually being spotted by a tank which probably was using thermals.

    In contrast ridge line sniping (hill bumping with other infils) was much harder, and required very quick target acquisitions to make kills without using any cloak. Maybe its because I don't often snipe but having cloak to line up shots in predictable locations would have been much more helpful at a distance. Thankfully medkits were a nice cushion for times when Id take fire.

    The SMG was actually very easy to use without cloak. Technically again i had NAC although i did not use it (Not even to clear spots) My goal was radar usage and pre-fire on doorways. Without cloak reacting to enemies was easier. Also the flanks were easier to make in some cases, you don't have cloak spoiling your ambushes, or alerting everyone to your presence. I honestly didn't expect the SMG to go so well, and I was using an MKV which isn't a gun id normally be running. This little "experiment" opened my eyes to just how detrimental cloak can be for SMG play. Subconsciously we flash it to feel safer. It really got me thinking of all the times I shouldn't be using cloak in a CQC setting. Ultimately I would run around with counter intelligence and NAC with an SMG again and really take a hard look at my CQC cloaking habits. We can probably learn a few ways to improve ourselves by doing so. The reason normally I run NAC rather then hunter is for lack of shimmer, and damage mitigation.
    • Up x 1
  16. Navron

    Sometimes, I intentionally spam my cloak just to draw a person or two towards me. Using it offensively works when you set yourself correctly.
    • Up x 2
  17. MisterSlim

    I actually use the NAC almost exclusively for longer ranged sniping. The only times I run with Hunter whilst sniping are when playing overwatch for the outfit (pretty much all I use my VS for currently), or for those rare situations on Esamir or Indar where there is very little cover, and the distance between it is more vast than normal.

    To me, the benefits of NAC far outweigh the few drawbacks. It allows you to avoid the shimmer of being hit by stray rounds ( I normally snipe at around 100ish meters, so this is hugely helpful), and allows you to survive headshots from countersnipers at a reasonable distance away (because everyone gets lucky from time to time). On my NC, I play much more aggressively and forward thinking, so my time-between-shots is fairly low, making my cloak cycles short and helping to mitigate the drawbacks of the shorter timer.

    -Stay Frosty
  18. Nurath

    You'd be surprised how many hill snipers cloak but stay in the same spot. I've gotten a fair share of counter-snipes that way.
  19. Jawarisin


    I disagree with patience. Unless you're a stalker cloak, patience is rubbish!
  20. Amouris

    Easy Betty kills :cool: