Probably the least used Combat Ability on vet, and besides some very niche usecases, it’s mostly used for meme/fun builds. And at the same time it has FOUR subtalent nodes (more than any of the other two Abilities), that’s insane tax for such underperfoming skill.
How to make it more viable:
Surprise Attack sub-talent (+30% dmg for 5s when coming out of stealth) has to be the part of the main Ability
While in stealth state, it now also shows all directly visible Elites and Specialists highlighted, until you leave stealth (should help a bit with finding your way to the most juicy targets in the hoard to kill)
I do think the ability should change but i dont agree with ur changes as they are similar to zealot’s stealth ability, maybe a node that allows you to shoot a full magazine or 10% of ur ammo in stealth would be more unique and fun, i expect a vet skill tree rework eventually? ( emperor knows how long that will be…)
Honestly, that’s the fact that Zealot has stealth is the main problem here, not the vice versa. Clandestine operations has always been military’s thing, how comes some fanatic religious paramilitary dude is now considered “the main stealth guy” lol?
If they want to keep stealth on Zealot, then it has to be a worse version of what Veteran has then. So buffing it like that actually makes sense, though I don’t mind them to nerf Zealot’s stealth at the same time, it doesn’t make much sense in the first place.
To be fair vet and zealot would have access to the same equipment due to being under grendel and the vibe of being under the cloak of the emperor ig, not 100% on lore tho
Agreed on too many sub nodes. Personally Hunter’s Resolve is the one I’d make base but that’s gonna be pretty subjective.
Hard disagree on that, that’s definitely stepping too much on Exe Stance’s toes.
Main thing holding Infiltrate back is tree structure and that area of Vet tree having none of the usual “must have” Vet talents. And VoC + Duty and Honour being crazy OP obviously.
It would be better to get rid of Infiltrate altogether for this:
It doesn’t dump as much Specialist/Elite aggro on teammates, it allows Vet to live the “shooter fantasy” while providing a reasonable trade-off to doing so by making the Vet more vulnerable to ranged counterfire. Vet temporarily gets upgraded weapon, gets improved visibility over hordes, gets to ignore melee.
Maybe not likely, but a good suggestion nonetheless worth mentioning.
What if vet’s stealth mode would go more “supportish” direction, in contrary to zealot’s going into “killish” direction? Even if we add Surprise Attack to the Infiltrate, it’s still just +30% damage for 5s, while zealot has +100% backstab damage and other damage buffs, so stealth zealot will still hit harder. But we could make vet to assist disabled, downed and captured players at much higher speed when stealthed, for example. And what if also all grenades dropped in vet’s stealth mode would automatically be enhanced, hitting harder and applying more stagger, allowing him to disperse dense crowds that block his passage to downed teammate or objective? Smoke grenades dropped in stealth could become toxic to enemies and make them run out of the smoke cloud for a few seconds. That would send him along the path of special forces/saboteur, sort of.
It’s not - because you can’t attack them directly, benefiting from much better target identification. You also can prolong ES for way beyond its original timeframe, keep benefiting from that effect, which isn’t possible with Infiltrate, you lose the effect as soon as you drop stealth; you can only use it for navigation to your targets. Finally, notice the part about “directly visible” - unlike ES, what I suggested won’t highlight targets behind covers and walls for you. So it’s worse version of what you have in ES, by far.
Not to mention that even comparing to ES, Infiltrate is way less popular Ability, so even if enhanced like that, it won’t be a competition to it even remotely, they are very different and have different uses (well, Infiltrate have close to 0 real uses atm, except for rat builds for Havoc which are a very niche thing).
All I want is Low Profile to be removed (you already dumped aggro and suppressed enemies coming out of stealth, how do you even need this), and at least one of the other three talents to be base or the base talent needs some lingering effect to make it at all worth it.
I don’t really know, though. That side of the tree is just “something”. Doesn’t make me feel like a Catachan Jungle Fighter or scout, and none of the surrounding talents are juicy enough for me to give up talent points for a stealth melee build.
No idea why anything should be removed from already hugely underperforming Ability. Like, even if you do that other thing - making one of sub-talents part of the Ability itself - it STILL will be hugely underperforming skill compared to the shout, and less efficient even compared to ES - which is kinda meh on itself. Like, how Low Profile breaks anything at all? If that was true, we would see dozens of Infiltrate veterans running rampant in high havoc or Auric, but that’s not the case, you mostly see ogryns and arbites in top of the charts there, sometimes psyker, vet of any kind - much rarely, and certainly not an infiltrate vet, you’ll be lucky to meet one at all
It is a noob trap, it exists to steal a talent point away from an unsuspecting player who thinks they need this when it’s adding zero benefit to their build.
But it doesn’t “steal” it, have you tested it actually, with and without the talent? With it enabled, you can attack and kill stuff, and until they have other players in sight, they won’t attack you. It may be not as good and reliable as the other one, that gives you toughness dmg resist - but certainly not useless. If not for dire shortage of talent points you have with vet when trying to create a functional build beside meta, you could sink a point in there and your plays would become more solid, with both those sub-talents complementing each other (agro drop preventing mobs around you from attacking you while you kill them, and toughness resist protecting you from some others firing at you from a distance). But that’s another problem of vet being over-taxed, comparing to ogryn or arbiter for example.
Again, have you tested it? Because I tried both with and without, and they’ll shred you to pieces if you unstealth nearby and start attacking them, in a few seconds you’ll drag all agro on yourself. That doesn’t happen with Low Profile enabled, you only will be attacked by those who don’t have any other target in sight, so usually it’s shooters further away, or sometimes melee mobs who can’t see the rest of the squad (if you went too far ahead). In other words, it boosts your survivability a lot.
I haven’t personally used it, but I always assumed it was designed for doing more of a backline gun focused build. So you can stealth to reposition then have ten seconds of barely interrupted sniping. On paper it seems like it would have a place if heading over to right side didn’t already have an unreasonable opportunity cost. Probably not ever going to be a competitive playstyle for high havoc, but I don’t think everything has to be.
I want an infiltrate modifier which allows the ult to remain active for the duration of an objective / revive if you activate it before / during said action
That I think would be cool - neat utility function
Another modifier could be something like the next three attacks deal +100% dmg against monstrosity enemies
I mean if we temu cosplay huntsman kruber, why not doing it properly
