Infiltrate now deploys a Smoke Grenade with a highlighted Radius; this helps your Teammates who remain within the Smoke Grenade’s Radius deal with any additional Aggro from Enemies.
The Veteran who uses Infiltrate will no longer break Stealth on Attacks/Kills made whilst standing still nor on Attacks/Kills made whilst within the Smoke Grenade’s Radius.
Edit: The Cooldown could be extended to 60s (without Overwatch), and the Cooldown would only begin once the Ability’s actually finished, as this prevents a lot of silly CDR-related issues.
I like the idea of dropping a smoke grenade when entering stealth, everything else is way too much. It would be just a kill farming simulator with a power sword.
I think the other areas beyond the Smokes would make the Ability genuinely interesting and meaningful.
The Ability itself is boring and sloppy and throwing a Smoke Grenade on top alone wouldn’t fix that. If I could actually test these things out, I’d know exactly what to configure here and there. I’d happily take a longer Cooldown, for example.
Even then, I’m not really seeing it being out of place. You’d have to stand in place for the entire duration of an Attack if you’re outside the Smoke Grenade’s Radius or be locked to one area in order to get the most use out of the Ability.
The issue I have with Infiltrate is that, outside of ONE (1) gun, there’s literally no advantage to sprinting to an off angle and firing from a flank. I feel like the fundamental play style is to disengage and reengage from funny angles and blow holes in the enemy.
Its actually way worse than that, becasue the ONE gun is still better off not doing that and just go for the head from the front despite the blessing.
Sure its possible to do both, hit the head from behind, but the targets of actuall value like Crushers/Bulwarks/Reapers are hunched and its actually difficult to do that!
Worse yet, even on targets where hitting head from behind is possible, the resulting difference is often literally 1 bullet and that is under lab conditions and single firing the weapon, in a real match with full auto its very easy to overcommit and that pretty much kills the already miniscule efficiency.
The Cooldown could be extended to 60s (without Overwatch), and the Cooldown would only begin once the Ability’s actually finished, as this prevents a lot of silly CDR-related issues.
This iteration of Infiltrate wouldn’t be very problematic if its Cooldown is hefty enough to actually be an appropriate limitation.
This iteration of Infiltrate feels mostly pretty good. I don’t take the threat or TDR nodes and only would ever consider the TDR node since I only use it in melee focused loadouts. It’s kind of boring, most of the time it’s press F for 8ish seconds of damage steroid. Just give it a full 10s of +30% damage so it aligns with the other ability modifiers + Close Quarters Killzone.
Shout is just always going to be the best ability unless FS really meaningfully changes it.
I think you are severely overestimating the entire thing,
the stealth lasts for 8 seconds
you have to be in the smoke for it to work
the meta is pretty aggro and fast, you might have hard time selling it to your team to just stand in the smoke with you, especially seeing how it mostly concerns melee enemies your team might whoop just fine without it like they already do
most of the bonuses you get are after the stealth wears off
there’s really only one melee weapon to make it problematic and the weapon by itself is a clumsy low mobility/high stamina sword that already affects how much you get from the +25% speed and is generally counter-intuitive towards the infiltrate
Just imagine you PUG with it and get a team with fast shout Vet and a Scum/Zealot, how is that gonna work? How you stop them from zipping right thru the smoke and just defeating the entire purpose of the thing?
You do the stealth, smoke drops and suddenly there’s a Krak sound and a volley from a bolter, with a blur(s) zipping past you For the Emperoring successfully onwards and beyond. What was achieved and why does the infiltrate needs to have a 60 secs CD to balance it out?
To put it simply, there’s only so much that can be achieved within the 8 seconds and your team is unlikely to just stand there and scratch their butts, right?
Furthermore the thread name is “Infiltrate buff idea” and you somehow talked yourself into nerfing the CD by extra 20 seconds like if its nothing to balance out that you get to swing a very specific weapon 6 times in peace againt enemies that needs to be inside a smoke radius…
I think this is just playing bardin too much and wishing it worked similarly, when that whole character was built and balanced around his career skill, and the veteran having those things would be too much.
You can already do stupid solo stuff and or kill farm with it, and you get two charges. It’s good enough as is, and adding two free really good defensive options would just make it OP imo.
If Infiltrate is meant to be the “disappear and reappear behind enemy lines” ability, I find four obstacles to achieving this:
You collide with enemies in chokes when stealthed, so you can’t get behind them.
You have no good way to get back to your team.
Weapons don’t really support the playstyle very well.
You may cross invisible boss triggers (Havoc-only) and spawn bosses on your team.
Infiltrate is lacking, but it also resides within the Commando branch which imo has systemic issues. Weapon Specialist almost only suits the Revolver, Onslaught doesn’t suit the Revolver, Reciprocity procs on dodging attacks, Infiltrate revolves around avoiding getting attacked, Close and Kill (aura) is barely beneficial to most builds, Weapon Specialist requires continuous ammo consumption yet Commando branch gains no ammo regen, and the Veteran’s unique Power Falchion weapon needs to be recharged every time you switch to the Revolver to hipfire-kill in order to proc Melee Specialist or throw a Smoke.
I also find that this branch is the most talent point starved due to the reliance on dipping into two other branches for Tactical Awareness and Precision Strikes+Fully Loaded.
Right now I think a solution to Infiltrate needs to adhere with a solution to this branch, which imo plays like a weak Zealot with Smokes.
Some of the more perplexing takes I’ve seen in a while. Weapon specialist is obviously useful on a number of weapons. The ranged crit bonus is very good for any high damage per shot weapon and can let you dump crit blessings on a number of guns for even more damage. The free reload talent is quite useful on any low magazine capacity gun (such as shotguns, bolt weapons, and yes, revolvers.) The melee attack speed is obviously good on any melee weapon. And, of course, the dodge bonuses are quite welcome on every bloody weapon in the game. The weaker parts of the keystone are largely confined to the other two modifiers that nobody ever uses. Both are nice in theory but more or less fall apart in the details. But weapon specialist is hardly the only keystone in that situation.
Onslaught is great on any volume of fire guns and fast melee weapons to boot. Reciprocity is still good even with stealth; it’s not like you can be invisible for the entire mission after all. Plus you have two other talent choices you can make to path through that area, so it’s not even a tax node. Precision strikes & fully loaded are in no way essential to every vet build. And it’s almost immaterial that the movement speed aura is subpar because Survivalist has been, and still is, the best aura in the game since launch. And these days it doesn’t even incur a build tax.
Yes, it is clear that Infiltrate is not that popular and for plenty of fair reasons. But being on the right ride of the vet tree is hardly one of them.
Must disagree here, Taxslaught is too pricey for certain builds
The clash of philosophies is interesting, because i for one think that Close and kill and Survivalist are on equal standing and the chief difference is the direction and purpose of the build
So basically you suggest changing the Infiltrate ability from Vermintide 2 Kruber Huntsman’s Invisibility to Bardin Ranger’s Smoke Bomb, which I’m all for since the smoke bomb was way better and helpful than Huntsman’s “See ya later bozos!” ability.
Agile engagement is inferior to Skirmisher and Exploit weakness combo for melee builds and toughness boost doesn’t need mentioning. Agile engagement is also questionable in ranged recon lasgun build, which is the one that benefits the most from Onslaught, just as toughness boost is.
Also mind you that Onslaught is kinda hard to fully utilize except for few very specific targets and few specific weapons, because most of the stuff gonna die before you really stack it!
You need to take two lesser talents to get a talent that makes almost no difference 90% of the time (and even that might be too generous). That’s why Taxslaught!
Take for example DBS/Always prepared build, where the Agile engagement actually makes sense, in what universe isn’t Onslaught a tax talent then?
No longer exist in the game, that’s a picture of old talent tree
But seriously, take the Onslaught recon lasgun build and take into account ideal circumstance where you get to shot your heart out in reasonable peace, what does the Agile engagement or the extra toughness do for you? Nothing!
