Confused about the 20 crystal power. I can deep cover as someone but can't wear a mask of them? Is this supposed to work with the rainbow face somehow?
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Meh, I'm very unhappy about giving away deepcover to everyone. I was okay with giving away veil, but deepcover was one of the things I wanted to make sure was only ever available in stealth. What's worse, the veil one is a super limited artifact that you have very little chances of getting now that the promotion period is over, but wonder items will never go out of circulation. And what's even worse, this version of deepcover is actually better than the stealth version, which requires power AND a mask of the person you want to mask as, which makes it more restricted than this wonderitem.
So it's like, a powered up version of deepcover is given to anyone who has the money to spend for it, while actual stealth users with the original ability are using the gimped version.
And to top it all off, besides the above concerns of unfairness to the original stealth skillset holders, this artifact simply flat out ignores the fact that stealth deepcover has such limitations for very valid balance concerns. Basically, anyone with level20 wondermask is immune to ALL guardstacks, ANY guardstacks, at ANYTIME they want. Stealth users had to have a prepped item that will only ever work depending on whether they can get access to an enemy mask that doesn't have a status to the org they are trying to get past, whereas a wondermask user can pick any random fresh newbie name and immediately become immune to every single guardstack in the game because newbies aren't enemied to any org.
@Estarra You know, it would really have been nice to be asked about giving away a trans skill the way feedback was gathered for the solstice coal items. This is just lame as fuck.
Edit: Okay, so deepcover is not the trans skill. The just-before-trans skill, then.
I also have serious misgivings about the ego-reduction debate abilities, as well as the balance/equilibrium debuff-limit abilities the wondermask. What's the point of going through the upheaval of the overhaul if we're just going to keep adding exceptions to the tiered system? We might as well have kept the bloody DMP system and continued to add mechanics that create outliers, because this is exactly what this is.
What's that you say? It's a tiny, perhaps even negligible effect? Yeah, sure, I'll give you that. At the moment, there's little to no eq/bal debuff in the game, anyway, so it's fine to "limit" debuffs, right? No big deal right? Who cares if we're cutting off a possible mechanic we might want to develop into a class in the future, right? Who thinks about long term possibilities, right? Who wants to listen to this entire thread and the requests for movement utility abilities, right? Just come up with more ways to break or render useless the entire concept behind the overhaul! What can go wrong, right?
I mean, I'm under no illusion my ranting will get anything changed, but well, at least it's off my chest.
Just one small thing, though. I suggest you make it clear that the ego-reduction for debate powers aren't going to be allowed in ascension Justice trial. That's probably not going to be very fair.
Or not. You could let it be allowed. Who cares anymore.
But I am having fun roaming around Ethereal Serenwilde without any of the Ladies attacking me.
Edit: Lerad, as a note, it is weaker than Stealth Deepcover in this respect: Player skills still work on me. They had an ancestral watch spirit up in Ethereal Serenwilde and it triggered on me when I was "deepcovered" (my understanding is that that doesn't happen with Stealth's skill). I suspect the same would occur with pits, etc.
Actually, no. Deepcover has always only been org-enemy lists:
STEALTH - DEEPCOVER
Syntax: STEALTH DEEPCOVER
Power: 10 (any)
While under a masquerade, you will be able to briefly assume that identity to such
an extent that you will fool organizations. While under deep cover, organizations
will truly think you are indeed that person when checking their enemy lists.
However, this does NOT fool individuals who have you on their personal enemy list.
This is very taxing and you will not be able to maintain deepcover for long so use
that time wisely.
The "difference" in the announce post is basically that you don't appear on quicklook or in the room as the person you're deepcovered as, whereas a stealth user will be.
While I completely understand the frustration at one of your near-trans skills becoming an artifact power, to be honest I think many of Stealth's skills are way too powerful in certain scenarios, no matter how limited in availability or usability. Veil shouldn't even be allowed in world events like many of the Ascension challenges. The fact that they are becoming more available will expose these issues more.
Actually, no. Deepcover has always only been org-enemy lists:
STEALTH - DEEPCOVER
Syntax: STEALTH DEEPCOVER
Power: 10 (any)
While under a masquerade, you will be able to briefly assume that identity to such
an extent that you will fool organizations. While under deep cover, organizations
will truly think you are indeed that person when checking their enemy lists.
However, this does NOT fool individuals who have you on their personal enemy list.
This is very taxing and you will not be able to maintain deepcover for long so use
that time wisely.
The "difference" in the announce post is basically that you don't appear on quicklook or in the room as the person you're deepcovered as, whereas a stealth user will be.
While I completely understand the frustration at one of your near-trans skills becoming an artifact power, to be honest I think many of Stealth's skills are way too powerful in certain scenarios, no matter how limited in availability or usability. Veil shouldn't even be allowed in world events like many of the Ascension challenges. The fact that they are becoming more available will expose these issues more.
I've addressed concerns about Stealth abilities multiple times, over multiple posts in the forums, whenever they've been raised as an issue. I've not seen an argument that has convinced me otherwise yet. I mean, we can rehash them together now if you want:
Besides Veil and Deepcover, what are the other "many of Stealth's skills" are you talking about that are "way too powerful in certain scenarios"? Answer is none of the abilities in Stealth are really that strong. Most of them have, for the majority of their existence, been mediocre at best, unusable in combat and otherwise at other times. A number of them remain useless, period. Some of them have been made a little more useful nowadays.
Veil has an actual counter that pierces it while it is active. And it's use in-combat is questionable at best. It shines the most in scouting/pre-combat scenarios, in quests, and as you say, in certain world-events. That's great, but it also has a hefty, and unavoidable cooldown. Hard-coded cooldown. You literally can't use it during this cooldown. So even despite the fact that people can still scry veiled users during Chaos events (and any other event) using the counter, they now can only keep veil up for 5 minutes at a time before being unable to be used for the next 2 minutes. A cooldown that is 40% of its duration. Veil has been opened up to everyone for the last 9 months now. I've not heard a squeak of protest about how it is overpowered during this time. Hey, you said it yourself, right? "The fact that they are becoming more available will expose these issues more." I'm ready to hear the ground breaking expose.
Stealth deepcover is right not not just being turned into an artifact power. It's being upgraded while in its artifact power form. Deepcover (and masquerade) has always been limited by the number of times you can wear the mask, which is, 25 times before it decays. This 25 times is derived from the fact that stealth masks have a 25 lusternian month decay time when created, and it drops by 1 everytime the mask is worn. Which is to say, if you spend a handful of days not wearing it, the amount of times you can wear it decreases by that much as well. Stealth masks also drop on any aggressive action, meaning the number of uses you have drops everytime you do something aggressive while wearing it. Deepcover drops as well when you use an action.
The wonder mask is NOT limited in this way. You can deepcover as many times as you like. 100 times in a day? No problem, as long as you have the power. You also can choose anyone to mask as, not just someone's corpse you had access to sometime in the past 25 days. Anyone at all. When a stealth user gets his hand on a corpse of a player that has no enemy statuses to his target org, he can shout and celebrate and whoopadeepdoop - but he basically has to hoard that mask and its use over the next 25 days carefully. Misuse will only lessen his chances of capitalizing on it. And should that person get enemied for some reason, the value of that mask drops. Wondermask? Nope, no worries. Just pick another random newbie that is on no enemy list. Who cares if they haven't logged on in the past year?
Stealth deepcover provides access to areas that no one else in their orgs can access - and this is severely limited by the above paragraph I just described. Getting your hands on a mask is by no means a walk in the park. A well-prepared stealth user can go places that orgs without access to stealth can never do equivalent of - even if they were just as prepared as the stealth user. But inequality does not mean imbalance or unfairness. The restrictions in place are certainly nothing to scoff at.
Here, that's a brief summary of some of the most common misconceptions about the "overpoweredness" of stealth.
I'm a bit bummed by the debate boost. The last revolt was so exciting because it felt like I could really participate and help, despite being sub-par in combat and low on artis.
Admittedly I was referring mostly to veil and to a lesser extent deepcover.
Veil is by far the strongest skill you can take into many of the ascension challenges, including death and life. I have heard of people using veil extensively during ascension challenges but I haven't experienced it myself so I won't speak extensively about them. Instead, I'll use myself as an example. Had I been able to veil myself for five of every seven minutes, I would have almost certainly been able to secure fifth place, if not higher in Harmony despite Xenthos and Shuyin's best attempts at stopping me from getting a placing. I have no problem with veil as an ability 99.9% of the time, but the fact is that it is very, very powerful in what can be argued to be the most important situations of the year.
As for deepcover, thankfully in my time nobody has used it to cause too much grief to organisations yet, but with it being available to everyone now I think it's only a matter of time before we see someone abusing it.
Pretty sure that Seek pierces Veil. Can just station someone in Havens to Seek and send room names via tell/clan.
Heck, I have the Ascendant ability that allows me to Seek from anywhere (not just Havens) in Ephemeral right now. Wouldn't have been hard to flip that to supernumerary for a bit (I don't particularly need Quietmind during a challenge that I'm not even allowed to participate in).
If I was regularly facing Veil instead of a one-use-during-Wildnodes-and-done, I'd probably have that active permanently.
Having one person standing in havens telling everyone where the person they're trying to harass is, only to have that information become invalid as little as a second later, is one less person actively hindering, provided anyone can get to the veiled person between the locating call and the veiled person moving.
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
Having one person standing in havens telling everyone where the person they're trying to harass is, only to have that information become invalid as little as a second later, is one less person actively hindering, provided anyone can get to the veiled person between the locating call and the veiled person moving.
The person I was replying to actually is an Ascendant, though!
The "person moves after scrying" is the same whether you personally scried them or someone else did. In fact, if someone else is scrying for you (and does it on demand) you can actually get there 4s earlier because you don't have to wait for EQ to come back. Sure, it's a tactical trade, but during Harmony we had the numbers and the room for that kind of tactical maneuvering if we needed it. You always have to determine your tactics based on what tools you have available to you (including counters to what your opponents have).
Nobody has used deepcover to "cause too much grief" to organisations because they've been pretty limited in how much they can do so. The kind of grief that can be done in deepcover is already limited, and won't change much. You can't run around attacking people in their orgs without getting guards on you because deepcover drops on aggressive actions. That's not going to change. And you don't see stealth users infiltrating your org every single day because there's a cost to doing so - the limited amount of uses for each mask that a stealth user has. Using it frivolously doesn't make sense, lest the mask is not there when you actually need it.
The use of deepcover is not in enemy org territory - there's little to gain there. The use of deepcover is in quests - allowing stealth users to do certain quests in peace, or get access to certain quests without hefty parley fines or difficult amnesty attempts. Or, of course, to mess up conflict quests for enemies. And as I've also argued in a past thread about this - usage of deepcover for quests is absolutely counterable if you're prepared. As long as you're not caught with your pants down, you don't even need a team to protect, say, the dwarven monarch from assassination. Indoor rooms, guards and a pit is all you need. Similar examples can be made for other conflict quests. Deepcover certainly does afford an advantage, but one that is very tempered with its costs and restrictions. And I think it's fair to let the stealth skillset get to feel special and unique in its access to a powerful but niche ability with proper costs and restrictions.
Costs and restrictions that the wondermask doesn't have.
In a game where combat is impacted heavily by numbers, having one person stand in the havens and spam seek is a pretty big ask, especially if there is already a discrepancy in the distribution of players during an event. If Veil is so easy to counter, why is it used and upkept during these events?
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
And yes, regarding veil during chaos. I'm sorry, but Xenthos is right about scrying and chasing. If you're scrying, even if you can do so outside of the havens, you're not going to be chasing. Period. Chasing someone is a matter of either balance-less scries (like scent, which can be countered by anyone in world events by staying in areas like the inner sea) or a matter of telling your team where the person's position is constantly, and having them scour the area to box them in and web them on sight.
If you're scrying, then moving, then scrying, then moving - I won't need veil to keep out of your reach.
In a game where combat is impacted heavily by numbers, having one person stand in the havens and spam seek is a pretty big ask, especially if there is already a discrepancy in the distribution of players during an event. If Veil is so easy to counter, why is it used and upkept during these events?
I can only assume it's because some people like sitting there waiting for EQ to come back from Mindfield before they start chasing, instead of letting someone else take the hit for them.
Slightly more serious: We've actually had events where Celest posted someone (Azula maybe? I don't remember the exact name) in Havens with Seek specifically for this reason. It's been a while. We don't bother with Seek since we can have our scry-locators stand anywhere, but it doesn't actually matter where they are. Also, it helps to plan this ahead of time; trying to get someone to switch to scry-mode mid-event is doomed to failure in my experience, you end up sitting around waiting for them to get around to scrying because they would rather keep doing what they were doing in the first place.
You have to be in the same area as someone to scent them anyways, don't you? During these events, people change areas constantly. If there's opposition, at least. Changing areas is the only real way to limit harassment (admittedly, Veil will do a good job at that if you don't have anyone working to counter it, but the best way to use veil is still to area hop to make it harder to find you... at which point, the scent thing is out the window anyways).
It does block scent, but scent is countered by hamster holders hiding in areas like the inner sea as well. In chaos, you're forced to move areas often, because the sheer number of enemies that pile into the area moving around and spamming TOUCH WEB LERAD is what'll catch you eventually. This is true whether you're veiled or not - once a certain number of enemies are in the area, it becomes too dangerous to stay in, since getting in range of any enemy is the risk of getting the hamster thrown out of your hands.
When veil had no cooldown, every area was essentially the inner sea when you're chasing a stealth user during Chaos. But with the cooldown, there's now an actual window to catch the stealth user. It's a window that is shorter than non stealth users, who would be chased out of inner sea-type areas more often, and therefore have more windows where they have to move faster than scent-chasers or risk being caught. But it's no longer a blanket immunity to scent-chasers for the entire duration. Blocking scries for tracking where the hamster holder has run isn't the advantage that veil gives.
As an additional note, only the last ascension had a real run-around Chaos. The two or three previous ascensions for Chaos had been lock-down chaos events - fortresses instead of chaotic hunts. Veil played little part in those. And lo-and-behold, while veil provides an advantage in the more chaotic versions that we can expect from now on, it's not a free win by any means. Stealth users get veil, but other classes get other advantages as well - like foresight letting them ignore a web even if they mess up once. I'm not convinced that veil is some kind of game breaker in such events, especially when it has a clear window of cooldown now.
Late Edit: actually, now that I think back, the last ascension (Ixion's chaos win) was a lock-down chaos event anyway, it was the previous one where there was chaotic running around. Yeah, veil isn't really as big a factor in world events as it's made out to be. More news at 11. -shrugcity-
I believe what Lerad is trying to say is implement the following changes to Skull Mask Deepcover: 1) 10p cost. 2) Drops on attack. 3) Limited to once per month.
These make sure it isn't massively abused and gives it a real cost. It doesn't need a mask,but it has a limiter instead. It also has the assurance it can't be used to raid or such, though I am not sure it falls on at tack right now. Each restriction serves a specific point, which seems rather.
It already has a 10p cost and drops when you perform any aggressive action (not just an attack, anything at all). 1/month is pretty darn limited for how long it lasts & what it does, as well-- if it allowed escaping Distort still, I can see the argument, but that's gone now.
Edit: What Lerad is saying is not that it's overpowered as a skill, but that it is less restricted than the last unique thing that was truly of use in Stealth (now that Veil is already an artifact). That's a fair argument and discussion to be had, but limiting it to 1/month is more than a bit of an overreaction.
Edit 2: Most of these artifacts come with a "buff" if you already have the base ability; what's the benefit to a Monk if they have Deepcover and this artifact? That could also be something worth looking into; Monks can use this for the regular use, and then use the mask for an "above and beyond". I agree that it doesn't actually seem fair to the Monk, based on Lerad's comments thus far. What would a good buff be? Being treated as the person being deepcovered as by ally lists would seem to be a pretty strong buff for the skill (but it is a 2,000 credit artifact effect). Any other ideas?
Yeah, finally found someone with one to give feedback (leaving old post alone).
Right now the timer is good, but it is already superior to normal deepcover, so I would like to cripple it. Veil on coal is once a month, and being able to get past defenses at will (note this should work on things like ripple/flux) is still silly powerful. We need to cap off its use. If someone can make a pressing argument for once a day, sure. If not, once a month is what I expect out of any 10p feat from a skill. Note that the top 2 skills from stealth are now available as artys, but the skillset as a whole is still terrible (stay tuned).
I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for severe limits on near trans skills. Trueheal is super limited and only works on others, this is available for 1 more crystal over the effect before it. Yes it is pricy, but it isn't like it is 1600 credits for a single skill!
Yes, that's one reason why I would have appreciated having a feedback session before this was put in: my concern would be that deepcover as it is in Stealth is already at a finely balanced state, where it doesn't make sense to increase any of the restrictions it currently already has - because it's so finely balanced, and where the current costs/restrictions are also actually required, and also should not be lifted because they're there for a very good reason.
It's not really an ability that needs, or should have any changes in terms of its benefit-to-cost/restriction ratio. The strict limits on its number of uses (25) is hefty, but not too hefty, and at the same time, we really, really should not be making it any easier, or harder, to deepcover.
And of course, above all that, I have also the sentiment that this is an ability that should stay unique to Stealth users.
Yeah, finally found someone with one to give feedback (leaving old post alone).
Right now the timer is good, but it is already superior to normal deepcover, so I would like to cripple it. Veil on coal is once a month, and being able to get past defenses at will (note this should work on things like ripple/flux) is still silly powerful. We need to cap off its use. If someone can make a pressing argument for once a day, sure. If not, once a month is what I expect out of any 10p feat from a skill. Note that the top 2 skills from stealth are now available as artys, but the skillset as a whole is still terrible (stay tuned).
I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for severe limits on near trans skills. Trueheal is super limited and only works on others, this is available for 1 more crystal over the effect before it. Yes it is pricy, but it isn't like it is 1600 credits for a single skill!
See my edit 2 above. I'd prefer to see a buff to Monks with Deepcover using their mask than a nerf to the artifact itself. Do you have any ideas? I'm really not seeing it being that strong given that it falls the moment you do anything aggressive at all. The only thing I've ever seen you guys doing with it is bypassing guards & distort, but (as I've said) distort is now gone, so...
And it's not like there aren't plenty of other ways to bypass guards.
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Tonight amidst the mountaintops
And endless starless night
Singing how the wind was lost
Before an earthly flight
HELP WONDERMASK doesn't work though (but HELP 7.22.7 does).
Edit: And now HELP WONDERMASK works.
So it's like, a powered up version of deepcover is given to anyone who has the money to spend for it, while actual stealth users with the original ability are using the gimped version.
And to top it all off, besides the above concerns of unfairness to the original stealth skillset holders, this artifact simply flat out ignores the fact that stealth deepcover has such limitations for very valid balance concerns. Basically, anyone with level20 wondermask is immune to ALL guardstacks, ANY guardstacks, at ANYTIME they want. Stealth users had to have a prepped item that will only ever work depending on whether they can get access to an enemy mask that doesn't have a status to the org they are trying to get past, whereas a wondermask user can pick any random fresh newbie name and immediately become immune to every single guardstack in the game because newbies aren't enemied to any org.
@Estarra You know, it would really have been nice to be asked about giving away a trans skill the way feedback was gathered for the solstice coal items. This is just lame as fuck.
Edit: Okay, so deepcover is not the trans skill. The just-before-trans skill, then.
What's that you say? It's a tiny, perhaps even negligible effect? Yeah, sure, I'll give you that. At the moment, there's little to no eq/bal debuff in the game, anyway, so it's fine to "limit" debuffs, right? No big deal right? Who cares if we're cutting off a possible mechanic we might want to develop into a class in the future, right? Who thinks about long term possibilities, right? Who wants to listen to this entire thread and the requests for movement utility abilities, right? Just come up with more ways to break or render useless the entire concept behind the overhaul! What can go wrong, right?
I mean, I'm under no illusion my ranting will get anything changed, but well, at least it's off my chest.
Just one small thing, though. I suggest you make it clear that the ego-reduction for debate powers aren't going to be allowed in ascension Justice trial. That's probably not going to be very fair.
Or not. You could let it be allowed. Who cares anymore.
Edit: Lerad, as a note, it is weaker than Stealth Deepcover in this respect: Player skills still work on me. They had an ancestral watch spirit up in Ethereal Serenwilde and it triggered on me when I was "deepcovered" (my understanding is that that doesn't happen with Stealth's skill). I suspect the same would occur with pits, etc.
The "difference" in the announce post is basically that you don't appear on quicklook or in the room as the person you're deepcovered as, whereas a stealth user will be.
Besides Veil and Deepcover, what are the other "many of Stealth's skills" are you talking about that are "way too powerful in certain scenarios"? Answer is none of the abilities in Stealth are really that strong. Most of them have, for the majority of their existence, been mediocre at best, unusable in combat and otherwise at other times. A number of them remain useless, period. Some of them have been made a little more useful nowadays.
Veil has an actual counter that pierces it while it is active. And it's use in-combat is questionable at best. It shines the most in scouting/pre-combat scenarios, in quests, and as you say, in certain world-events. That's great, but it also has a hefty, and unavoidable cooldown. Hard-coded cooldown. You literally can't use it during this cooldown. So even despite the fact that people can still scry veiled users during Chaos events (and any other event) using the counter, they now can only keep veil up for 5 minutes at a time before being unable to be used for the next 2 minutes. A cooldown that is 40% of its duration. Veil has been opened up to everyone for the last 9 months now. I've not heard a squeak of protest about how it is overpowered during this time. Hey, you said it yourself, right? "The fact that they are becoming more available will expose these issues more." I'm ready to hear the ground breaking expose.
Stealth deepcover is right not not just being turned into an artifact power. It's being upgraded while in its artifact power form. Deepcover (and masquerade) has always been limited by the number of times you can wear the mask, which is, 25 times before it decays. This 25 times is derived from the fact that stealth masks have a 25 lusternian month decay time when created, and it drops by 1 everytime the mask is worn. Which is to say, if you spend a handful of days not wearing it, the amount of times you can wear it decreases by that much as well. Stealth masks also drop on any aggressive action, meaning the number of uses you have drops everytime you do something aggressive while wearing it. Deepcover drops as well when you use an action.
The wonder mask is NOT limited in this way. You can deepcover as many times as you like. 100 times in a day? No problem, as long as you have the power. You also can choose anyone to mask as, not just someone's corpse you had access to sometime in the past 25 days. Anyone at all. When a stealth user gets his hand on a corpse of a player that has no enemy statuses to his target org, he can shout and celebrate and whoopadeepdoop - but he basically has to hoard that mask and its use over the next 25 days carefully. Misuse will only lessen his chances of capitalizing on it. And should that person get enemied for some reason, the value of that mask drops. Wondermask? Nope, no worries. Just pick another random newbie that is on no enemy list. Who cares if they haven't logged on in the past year?
Stealth deepcover provides access to areas that no one else in their orgs can access - and this is severely limited by the above paragraph I just described. Getting your hands on a mask is by no means a walk in the park. A well-prepared stealth user can go places that orgs without access to stealth can never do equivalent of - even if they were just as prepared as the stealth user. But inequality does not mean imbalance or unfairness. The restrictions in place are certainly nothing to scoff at.
Here, that's a brief summary of some of the most common misconceptions about the "overpoweredness" of stealth.
Veil is by far the strongest skill you can take into many of the ascension challenges, including death and life. I have heard of people using veil extensively during ascension challenges but I haven't experienced it myself so I won't speak extensively about them. Instead, I'll use myself as an example. Had I been able to veil myself for five of every seven minutes, I would have almost certainly been able to secure fifth place, if not higher in Harmony despite Xenthos and Shuyin's best attempts at stopping me from getting a placing. I have no problem with veil as an ability 99.9% of the time, but the fact is that it is very, very powerful in what can be argued to be the most important situations of the year.
As for deepcover, thankfully in my time nobody has used it to cause too much grief to organisations yet, but with it being available to everyone now I think it's only a matter of time before we see someone abusing it.
Heck, I have the Ascendant ability that allows me to Seek from anywhere (not just Havens) in Ephemeral right now. Wouldn't have been hard to flip that to supernumerary for a bit (I don't particularly need Quietmind during a challenge that I'm not even allowed to participate in).
If I was regularly facing Veil instead of a one-use-during-Wildnodes-and-done, I'd probably have that active permanently.
Now that Distort has changed, that's no longer as much of an issue.
Having one person standing in havens telling everyone where the person they're trying to harass is, only to have that information become invalid as little as a second later, is one less person actively hindering, provided anyone can get to the veiled person between the locating call and the veiled person moving.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
The "person moves after scrying" is the same whether you personally scried them or someone else did. In fact, if someone else is scrying for you (and does it on demand) you can actually get there 4s earlier because you don't have to wait for EQ to come back. Sure, it's a tactical trade, but during Harmony we had the numbers and the room for that kind of tactical maneuvering if we needed it. You always have to determine your tactics based on what tools you have available to you (including counters to what your opponents have).
The use of deepcover is not in enemy org territory - there's little to gain there. The use of deepcover is in quests - allowing stealth users to do certain quests in peace, or get access to certain quests without hefty parley fines or difficult amnesty attempts. Or, of course, to mess up conflict quests for enemies. And as I've also argued in a past thread about this - usage of deepcover for quests is absolutely counterable if you're prepared. As long as you're not caught with your pants down, you don't even need a team to protect, say, the dwarven monarch from assassination. Indoor rooms, guards and a pit is all you need. Similar examples can be made for other conflict quests. Deepcover certainly does afford an advantage, but one that is very tempered with its costs and restrictions. And I think it's fair to let the stealth skillset get to feel special and unique in its access to a powerful but niche ability with proper costs and restrictions.
Costs and restrictions that the wondermask doesn't have.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
If you're scrying, then moving, then scrying, then moving - I won't need veil to keep out of your reach.
Slightly more serious: We've actually had events where Celest posted someone (Azula maybe? I don't remember the exact name) in Havens with Seek specifically for this reason. It's been a while. We don't bother with Seek since we can have our scry-locators stand anywhere, but it doesn't actually matter where they are. Also, it helps to plan this ahead of time; trying to get someone to switch to scry-mode mid-event is doomed to failure in my experience, you end up sitting around waiting for them to get around to scrying because they would rather keep doing what they were doing in the first place.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
When veil had no cooldown, every area was essentially the inner sea when you're chasing a stealth user during Chaos. But with the cooldown, there's now an actual window to catch the stealth user. It's a window that is shorter than non stealth users, who would be chased out of inner sea-type areas more often, and therefore have more windows where they have to move faster than scent-chasers or risk being caught. But it's no longer a blanket immunity to scent-chasers for the entire duration. Blocking scries for tracking where the hamster holder has run isn't the advantage that veil gives.
As an additional note, only the last ascension had a real run-around Chaos. The two or three previous ascensions for Chaos had been lock-down chaos events - fortresses instead of chaotic hunts. Veil played little part in those. And lo-and-behold, while veil provides an advantage in the more chaotic versions that we can expect from now on, it's not a free win by any means. Stealth users get veil, but other classes get other advantages as well - like foresight letting them ignore a web even if they mess up once. I'm not convinced that veil is some kind of game breaker in such events, especially when it has a clear window of cooldown now.
Late Edit: actually, now that I think back, the last ascension (Ixion's chaos win) was a lock-down chaos event anyway, it was the previous one where there was chaotic running around. Yeah, veil isn't really as big a factor in world events as it's made out to be. More news at 11. -shrugcity-
1) 10p cost.
2) Drops on attack.
3) Limited to once per month.
These make sure it isn't massively abused and gives it a real cost. It doesn't need a mask,but it has a limiter instead. It also has the assurance it can't be used to raid or such, though I am not sure it falls on at tack right now. Each restriction serves a specific point, which seems rather.
Edit: What Lerad is saying is not that it's overpowered as a skill, but that it is less restricted than the last unique thing that was truly of use in Stealth (now that Veil is already an artifact). That's a fair argument and discussion to be had, but limiting it to 1/month is more than a bit of an overreaction.
Edit 2: Most of these artifacts come with a "buff" if you already have the base ability; what's the benefit to a Monk if they have Deepcover and this artifact? That could also be something worth looking into; Monks can use this for the regular use, and then use the mask for an "above and beyond". I agree that it doesn't actually seem fair to the Monk, based on Lerad's comments thus far. What would a good buff be? Being treated as the person being deepcovered as by ally lists would seem to be a pretty strong buff for the skill (but it is a 2,000 credit artifact effect). Any other ideas?
Right now the timer is good, but it is already superior to normal deepcover, so I would like to cripple it. Veil on coal is once a month, and being able to get past defenses at will (note this should work on things like ripple/flux) is still silly powerful. We need to cap off its use. If someone can make a pressing argument for once a day, sure. If not, once a month is what I expect out of any 10p feat from a skill. Note that the top 2 skills from stealth are now available as artys, but the skillset as a whole is still terrible (stay tuned).
I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for severe limits on near trans skills. Trueheal is super limited and only works on others, this is available for 1 more crystal over the effect before it. Yes it is pricy, but it isn't like it is 1600 credits for a single skill!
It's not really an ability that needs, or should have any changes in terms of its benefit-to-cost/restriction ratio. The strict limits on its number of uses (25) is hefty, but not too hefty, and at the same time, we really, really should not be making it any easier, or harder, to deepcover.
And of course, above all that, I have also the sentiment that this is an ability that should stay unique to Stealth users.
And it's not like there aren't plenty of other ways to bypass guards.