The -perception prevents them from noticing you by seeing you. It's mostly useful for areas with tightly packed groups of enemies--if two groups are side-by-side, you can Smoke one and pretty much kill the other with impunity. If you make any sort of attack roll versus a Smoked enemy, though, they will aggro on you like normal. Where it does help a little versus single groups is that if you Smoke the whole group and then attack a single enemy from range, the others will be less likely to notice and join in. An AoE like Flashfire, though, will make an attack roll versus all of them and aggro them all, whether or not it hits.
The Stealth analogy really does work. Most things that you can't get away with with Stealth up, you can't with Smoke either.
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
Yeah, all stealth and -perception give you is the initiative. You can set it up so you make the first attack. Once you have attacked, however, you will have aggro, and the foes will be able to "find" you no matter where you are. So the benefit of stealth effectively vanishes.
The good part is, if there are foes in the group that have not aggroed, and you can keep their allies from alerting them, they won't see the fight and won't join in. So Smoke is really useful for pulling. Hit the foe you want to come to you, and then run behind a corner or obstacle. The foe you hit will come after you, but his buddies won't, unless you did a lot of damage to him, or you hit like a Boss or Lt. And seeing an ally drop dead in their midst will aggro the whole group. 
Depending on your Secondary, you might want to pick a weak attack for pulling. A sniper shot, for instance, runs the risk of a one hit kill, which will aggro the whole group. The one thing you don't want to do is hold a foe, because he won't come to you and you'll have to kill him in place. Controllers sometimes have a good debuff for use as a pulling tool, like Siphon Power. (I almost responded with this, wasn't paying attention to which forum I was in) If nothing else, you can take the Blackwand, which not only pulls great, it debuffs accuracy. It also doesn't knockback like the Nemesis staff. (Which can sometimes cause unintentional aggro)
Thank you for the great response!
I had one follow-up question...
Say you have a group of three mobs standing VERY close together (like on a solo mission where minions will cluster together in spawns of three). If you smoke all three but do a light damage hit on one... will only that one aggro?
I can see how smoke will help pulling by preventing you from aggroing adjacent groups.
Thanks
[ QUOTE ]
Thank you for the great response!
I had one follow-up question...
Say you have a group of three mobs standing VERY close together (like on a solo mission where minions will cluster together in spawns of three). If you smoke all three but do a light damage hit on one... will only that one aggro?
[/ QUOTE ]
Very likely. It's not a 100% guarantee, but you're still far more likely to just get the one guy you attacked than you would be without Smoke.
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
QR
I use it several ways.
Reverse stealth - smoke everything and sneak past. It is very difficult to use this in buildings because blind spots are more common and sometimes you can't approach them without being seen prior to the Smoke. You also have to move along fairly quickly because Smoke doesn't have a huge duration. I'm pretty sure Smoke and Stealth stack since they operate in different ways (please someone correct me if I'm wrong). If that is true then the two combined should be a great combo for stealthing almost anything but then there are better ways to do that.
Two groups close together - smoke one and attack the other. If the group you want to attack is closer than the other then you may need to smoke both just so you can get range on the far group. Definitely *pull* the first group away because the smoke may run out before you defeat them. If you do manage to pull a few at a time refresh the smoke between fights.
Playing with my stalker friend - In that case I smoke every group because she says the high perception enemies are less likely to see her. I've never noticed that they ever see her to begin with but if she likes it I'm all for it.
It also provides a tiny to-hit or accuracy (I forget which) debuff so I frequently use it on everything just for that.
I've grown fond of the power. When I created a fire controller hero-side I skipped it and find I miss it.
I hear that when used with tp, it will practically never aggro others. (It was from a post by a nin/TA MM in the MM forums)
[ QUOTE ]
I hear that when used with tp, it will practically never aggro others. (It was from a post by a nin/TA MM in the MM forums)
[/ QUOTE ]
It does indeed work that way. As long as you don't TP LT's first. Grab them in order of rank from the bottom up.
Hi guys,
I find smoke a strange power. One of the guides rather interestingly described it as a reverse stealth skill.
My question is whether smoke offers you any protection from aggro from groups of mobs.
For instance, if I cast smoke on a group and then flashfire, are all of them going to make a bee-line straight for me after the stun wears off, or do some stay blinded and stationary from the smoke effect?
Does the stealth effect basically vansih after you hit them with a ranged attack?
Thanks