Stealth- The Phantom Menace

[Dr. Marker]

A situation I'm sure I'm not alone in facing, you're doing the Endless Harvest, things are going well when two horses appear as enemies and....they both go into stealth, leaving your party sat around for a whole turn twiddling their thumbs because you didn't think to bring one of the small handful of classes with a dedicated anti-stealth move.

Yeah, the TL;DR of this is that stealth in this game is not particularly well implimented, to borrow a point that very frequently gets brought up in balance discussions for Hearthstone, the main problem is that it's a mechanic that doesn't offer an awful lot of interactivity, you either have a move to bypass it or you don't.

The older system that used to be in play where multi-target moves could hit a stealthed enemy since they aren't 'directly' targeting it seemed fair enough to me, it didn't have the direct efficiency of just hitting the stealth enemy alone (and thus dealing full damage) and the damage penalty that most AoE attacks have made it a fair trade off in this situation (it's not the optimal solution but it IS a solution).

While certainly not a very common situation, it can also result in scenarios where a stealthed enemy is the last enemy alive in an encounter and can effectively wait out the clock for reinforcements to arrive (punishing the player for doing well in a fight with a penalty they often don't have the tools to avert).

As such, I would suggest the following changes for the stealth mechanic:

1- There must always be at least 1 enemy visable in a fight.

This one is fairly self-explanitory, it should not be possible for there to be situations like the one I described above where the entire encounter can be brought to a screeching halt because every enemy has disappeared behind a cloak of sudden invisability, I would suggest having a part of the game check when an enemy attempts to cloak if there are any other viable targets for the player, if not then the cloaking move fails (similar to when an enemy tries to guard a target affected by the CAN'T BE GUARDED debuff, they can still use the move and gain every other benefit of it, just not the stealth).

2- Being the last enemy alive immediately removes stealth.

Again, I'm aware that it isn't a particularly common scenario to eleminate every enemy in an encounter on the first turn except for one but I have had it happen a few times so I have to imagine I'm not alone in that regard, this is a case where the stealth mechanic clashes with the reinforcement mechanic. I would suggest that stealth either be removed upon being the last surviving enemy in an encounter or that the reinforcement timer not be triggered by enemies who are in stealth (similar to how having a lethal DoT also prevents it), even more so since the sole stelathed enemy can often leave you with no options during your turn except shuffling your party or doing what the game considers to be 'stalling moves'.

3- Provide more anti-stealth options.

As previously noted, a lot of the frustration here comes from the fact that unless you have one of a select few characters and movesets at your disposal (something that you can't always guarentee given the large variety of possible class combinations and moveset combinations across the game that you may want for different scenarios) then the surprisingly common stealth enemies just become an irritation, first I would say restore their vulnerability to AoE attacks (as previously mentioned, these attacks often already come with a drawback so it's not as if it isn't balanced) and additionally, provide more tools to the player for countering stealth, with all the moves the Vestal has themed around light, why doesn't she have an anti-stealth move? Given that marking abilities are meant to be about highlighting and spotting a target, why don't they have a built in anti-stealth capability?

I don't expect anyone to give this a read but these are just some suggestions, thank you for your time and I hope you have a nice day.

[Lujo]

The point of stealth is that it was way too easy to burst down key players on enemy teams before it was added. Or just stun them out of the fight. As a long time player I'm really glad about it being there because a lot of fights are finally "working" as the guy who's supposed to do important things in them doesn't get murdered immediately.

The horse is the only guy who can cause a "full enemy stealth" situation, and he's new, so it might be that there's something wrong with his spawn. They might want to make it so that two horses can't spawn together.

If you're looking for anti-stealth options there actually are quite a few. I've not had many problems with horses because you don't really need proper anti-stealth as you can hit them with AoE. You just have to manouvre them into the center positions and hit them with either front line AoE or back line AoE. I pay attention to this when I play Endless so it rarely happens that I have problems because I can't hit the horse, and even when it happens I have skills you can use in the downtime - buffs and heals. Occasionally one guy won't be able to do anything but then you just move him if you really don't want to take damage.

[RopeDrink]

Stealth is a great change. Calling it 'not well implemented' is strange given a hefty chunk of the roster have answers for it. If disease is a problem you take X or Y with cures. If health is a problem you take healers. If stress is a problem you take stress-relievers. If STEALTH is a problem you take anti-stealth etc.

Failing to see the problem here - you have anti-stealth QUIRKS now, and even an anti-stealth TRINKET that allows someone to utterly ignore the mechanic. Failing that there's numerous stealth-removing abilities.

As I'm fond of saying around here, you can't have your cake and eat it. The perfect group would be any composition that has access to everything and anything - but the game is designed for this to not be possible.

If you find yourself sitting on your hands because two horses were given time to stealth, blame yourself, not the game. With my most common setup I'd have either hit it with SB or HWM Tracking Shot and stunned the thing afterwards for fun so that it couldn't charge.

Expose, Tracking Shot, Illuminate, Flare, Skeet, Intimidate, Flashpowder... The list goes on.

[Doc]

Originally posted by Dr. Marker:

A situation I'm sure I'm not alone in facing, you're doing the Endless Harvest, things are going well when two horses appear as enemies and....they both go into stealth, leaving your party sat around for a whole turn twiddling their thumbs because you didn't think to bring one of the small handful of classes with a dedicated anti-stealth move.

Yeah, the TL;DR of this is that stealth in this game is not particularly well implimented, to borrow a point that very frequently gets brought up in balance discussions for Hearthstone, the main problem is that it's a mechanic that doesn't offer an awful lot of interactivity, you either have a move to bypass it or you don't.

The older system that used to be in play where multi-target moves could hit a stealthed enemy since they aren't 'directly' targeting it seemed fair enough to me, it didn't have the direct efficiency of just hitting the stealth enemy alone (and thus dealing full damage) and the damage penalty that most AoE attacks have made it a fair trade off in this situation (it's not the optimal solution but it IS a solution).

While certainly not a very common situation, it can also result in scenarios where a stealthed enemy is the last enemy alive in an encounter and can effectively wait out the clock for reinforcements to arrive (punishing the player for doing well in a fight with a penalty they often don't have the tools to avert).

the game is about making the "most" out of bad situations. Giving more Anti-stealth would take away from those situations.

AoE still works against stealthed enemies.

[LaserGuy]

If the party is surprised or ambushed at night, the game should randomly flag some of the enemy party with stealth, just to spice things up.

[RopeDrink]

Originally posted by Doc:

AoE still works against stealthed enemies.

The short and sweet of it is - if you are genuinely bugged by stealth, take an anti-stealth ability.

People need to remember that AoE ONLY works when that AoE falls in-line with a targettable enemy. Furthermore, hitting said stealthed unit won't reveal them, so while it is handy to harass (maybe even kill) a stealther without anti-stealth, having AoE is not the answer if you have TWO stealthed horses. You can't hit them unless a hero has a 'ignore stealth' quirk, the ignore-stealth trinket, or a de-stealth ability in such a case, so it doesn't answer OP's gripe.

AoE is still handy for harassing enemies that others can't target, maybe even killing them outright, but it is still worth considering a more stable option if you are genuinely annoyed by stealth.

My last comp had 2xAoE and one hero with a one-time-per-battle buff that also serves as anti-stealth. Fact is I'm not bothered by stealth that much, so if I buffed up already when one appears, oh well, I have AoE and Stuns to try and get them down -- but sometimes you have that option to buff up + de-stealth something right out of the gate, eg. Row 2 Scarecrows, or stealthers later during the run.


TLDR There's more than enough tools for the job. Take them if you want.

If the party is surprised or ambushed at night, the game should randomly flag some of the enemy party with stealth, just to spice things up.

They can by default anyway, it's just not forced. Been rudely awoken by plenty of stealthed sword-skellies while trying to get a sneaky non-protected camp-buff going. I doubt they'll try to script more specific encounters when ambushed when the same result is already possible via random chance.