So, to start this one off again. I’m starting a new thread for 1.05 (there are some old ones hanging around). TLDR at the bottom.
Lets start off with what Infiltrate is currently supposed to do (according to the in-game description):
Kerillian becomes undetectable and can pass through enemies. Lasts for 10 seconds, or untill she attacks.
The rest of this post is going to be divided into two parts, the first focus on the differences between what it actually does and what it is supposed to do (see above), and the second part focus on what I think it should do.
What it does
According to my experience and testing Infiltrate currently does the following:
Kerillian cannot be targeted by new enemies and can pass through enemies. Last for 10 seconds, or untill taking or dealing damage.
Lets break down the differences:
“Kerillian becomes undetectable” vs “Kerillian cannot be targeted by new enemies”
Currently enemies attacking Kerillian continue if they are in their attack sequence, what actually happens is that no new enemies target Kerillian. Enemies clearly should not be able to track an “undetectable” Kerillian, regardless of wether they have already started their set of swings or not.
“or untill she attacks” vs “or untill taking or dealing damage”
Currently infiltrate seem to break even without attacking enemies. My guess is that DoTs caused by the player, such as dual daggers and incendiary bombs, break Infiltrate since the game engine counts that as dealing damage. In my world “or untill she attacks” should be interpreted as “starts a new attack which hits an enemy”. Also, some damage taken seems to break Infiltrate as well, I haven’t been alert enough in these occasions to figure out exactly what breakes it, but the original wording is quite clear that attacking and not taking damage should break Infiltrate.
What I think it should do
I think Infiltrate should do this:
Kerillian breaks from combat, becomes undetectable and can pass through enemies. Lasts for 10 seconds, or untill she strikes an enemy for Y times the damage.
Infiltrate should break combat. Period. Current attacks should be cancelled, both for Kerillian and those attacking Kerillian. This also would get rid of the crazy “activate Infiltrate during downswing of second glaive heavy hit” (If you haven’t tried this already, you can activate Infiltrate during an attack, and the attack will strike as if you “started” it from Infiltrate, which in conjunction with glaive give you one hell of an attack which in my world bypasses the purpose of Infiltrate, i.e. lining up a backstab).
Another problem is that the Infiltrate stab seems to affect the crit multiplier by multiplying it. Ergo weapons with a high crit multiplier benefits more from the scaling. Let me explain with dual daggers as an example.
| Legend | description |
|---|---|
| crit HS | critical hit head shot |
| inf | infiltrate hit |
| inf HS | infiltrate head shot hit |
| vs | the armor of what we are hitting |
Note, empirical values, from hitting the dummy, “1” represents the damage of hitting the dummy with a light attack.
| attack | vs | normal | crit | crit HS | inf | inf HS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DnD heavy | unarmored | 2 | 4 | 6 | 24 | 42 |
| DnD light | unarmored | 1 | 3.1 | 4 | 33.6 | 45.6 |
| DnD heavy | armored | 0.5 | 2 | 3 | 10 | 17 |
| DnD light | armored | 0 | 0.5 | 0.75 | 21 | 30 |
As you can see, the infiltrate hits from light attacks are bonkers, presumably due to the hight crit coefficient for light attack dual daggers (+2.1x (i.e. a factor of 3.1), compared to heavy +1x (i.e. factor of 2 or double damage)).
This has the ridiculous consequence that if you are backstabbing an armored target and you are sure to hit the head, go for a light attack instead of the heavy attack with dual daggers. I mean, this cannot be the intended use?
TLDR; I want Infiltrate to synergize with backstab and sneakyness, and I want it to work without the current bugs.