Stealth's Movement Penalty

KB IOs are 75 merits, a lot more attainable than the majority of the really good stuff

If even the most merit-retarded person in game (aka Myself) can get a a -KB IO using merits, so can anyone, frankly.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Don't forget MA tickets too. That's where I get mine.

If you're taking SJ as your travel power, then you probably have Combat Jumping. If you have Combat Jumping, you have a Defense power. If you have a Defense power, you can slot a -KB IO.

And if you are playing most types of squishy characters, Combat Jumping is pretty much mandatory, unless you like being immobilized in place throughout most of your career.

Minor nitpick:

You can't slot an IO of any kind until level 7. Not a big deal, but you can get Stealth 1 level sooner than you can slot a stealth IO.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Additional nitpick. Stealth IOs start at level 15.

That's entirely personal preference. The vast majority of my squishies do NOT have Combat Jumping.

Why are half of the pool powers virtually useless, while nearly every optimized build has Hasten and Stamina (or at least Health with IOs)?

Pool powers could do a lot for variety and balance in COH, but pool power choices are almost always very close to cookie cutter in optimized builds.

The whole concealment pool (which is better than the rest of this list)
The whole presence pool other than provoke for tankerminds
Team Teleport
Group Fly
Kick
Whirlwind
Jump Kick
Flurry in PVE

Each of those could use a buff to make them more than joke or RP powers.

My proposals:

Give players a passive +40% recharge and +20% recovery bonus.
Make Hasten 30% instead of 70%
Make Stamina 15% instead of 25% (30% instead of 50% enhanced)
Power creep shouldn't be too extreme, since this is essentially a buff to builds that are not currently optimized

Make the movement and combat penalties for Stealth/Invis less extreme

Increase the defense from Grant Invis very slightly

Convert Challenge, which has no use with Provoke available, into a placate

Buff the Presence mezzes, either slightly more duration or a small tohit debuff

Increase the chance of KD so Kick has a role distinct from Boxing

Add some sort of effect or buff to make Flurry and Jump Kick more interesting

Make Group Fly's buff a non-toggle effect. That is, the power is a toggle, but targets buffed receive the buff for a set duration without having to stay close constantly. Add option to ignore Group Fly requests.

No suggestions for Whirlwind and Team Teleport at this time. They're kind of hard to make viable.

I might contend that there's nothing /wrong/ with RP powers. No one is forced to take them. It would be nice in some cases to make them a bit more useful.

I think the main problem is that it would be a huge rebalancing effort - it would drastically alter a lot of builds and while I'm not necessarily against that in principle, it'd be a lot of work for not much improvement overall.

I use Challenge - not every character wants to tick off a whole group at once, especially in the lower levels.

I do agree the Presence pool could use some serious love. I took Challenge on my SS/Inv Brute because I wanted the terrorize powers for RP purposes and in the low levels I wasn't confident enough to want to Provoke groups. I haven't respec'd that character yet (he's at 33rd currently) and I'm finally planning a better build for him. Up until now I hadn't taken Taunt and now I imagine I will since it works considerably better than Provoke. What *I* would love is to be able to count Taunt or Confront as the first tier prereq for the Presence pool.

Whirlwind's really not that bad in some situations. You just need to be able to manage all that KB. Team TP strikes me as essential if you plan on using TP as a MM. But yeah, very situational.

Team Teleport would be simple to make viable. Simply increase the range so that it works as an ally gathering tool. It doesn't need to be zone-wide like the veteran power, but enough that you can use it when the team is split to regroup.

Stealth has had a movement penalty since day 1.

I think the essense of the original post is that you can stack superspeed with a stealth IO, then you don't even need a power pick and one of the 4 power pool picks. The movement penalty is actually not quite relevant if you are stealthing missions by stacking with superspeed. The movement penalty comes into play when you are not stealthing missions, for example avoiding aggro before a combat starts.

I guess MaestroMavius is probably being sarcastic here, instead of really asking if something is new here. The traditional wisdom to stealth a mission is to pick stealth and stack with superspeed. MaestroMavius wondered why the movement penalty is relevant for such usage.

I agree, and its that sentiment that led me to wonder about what is wrong with Stealth.

I believe Stealth's movement penalty should be removed, I would love to see the end cost dropped but I think that would be asking too much. Stealth having comparable stats to Combat Jumping would be amazing though.

I think part of me wants to ignore the differences between taking Stealth and dropping an IO into something (Sprint works too) because I don't want the Devs thinking too hard about what a sweet deal that is.