Concealment Pool suggestions

[Sunsette]

The following changes would hopefully make the concealment pool more interesting to take, including for characters that already get significant StealthRadius values from their primary/secondary powersets. 

 

Improve Stealth and Infiltration

These two powers are too close to each other in effect.

 

Infiltration offering comparable stealth to Super Speed and comparable movement to Athletic Run given the free distribution of Athletic Run and commonality of the +stealth proc120 IOs feels bad and makes it uncompelling. Give it 55 StealthRadius, as well as a travel tray pop-up power with a very wide-area (60 ft.) Mag 4 placate, fast animation (under 1 second) and a 120 second cooldown. For Stalkers only, this placate should also activate the Hide state. Use the Smoke Bomb animation for this (with alternates in the combat teleport animations). 

 

Being a very wide area placate would make it function like a vanish button in other MMOs and give a reason to run Infiltration in combat like the other travel powers (except for Super Jump, which has Combat Jumping) already do. At high magnitude, it can stack with existing placates for those characters which already use them against difficult individual characters. 

 

Stealth should probably offer a much higher StealthRadius value or an additional benefit to be worth its high endurance cost. It might be interesting to give it a minor amount of Defense Debuff Resistance. What makes the most sense to me, though, is for it to offer a minor degree of Energy and Negative Energy resistance -- fitting with its description of bending light around itself. This would obviously have an effect of directing some pressure off of characters going for the fighting pool purely to slot resistance unique IOs, though it might also be too powerful in that context -- allowing resistance sets here might not be wise. 

 

Enhance Misdirection into Distract

Distract would be a targeted AoE rather than a PBAoE and replaces the Mag 4 placate with a Mag 2 confusion without turning the enemies hostile to you. It also lowers their perception radius significantly, to cover enemies unaffected by the confusion.

 

This would make going deep into Concealment for a dedicated infiltration character provide a real benefit when dealing with enemy groups that have auto-sight enemies and be worth the long cooldown. At Mag 2, this would become a possibly interesting power pick for Dominators since Domination would double it, it would also stack with existing confuses for Controllers, and it would offer a potential stack for Rogue alignment characters, providing a variety of interesting synergies on more neglected elements.

 

Finally, at such a long cooldown, it should also activate the Hide state for stalkers if they are not already in that state.

Edited April 4 by Sunsette

[Uun]

Stealth was buffed in i27p2 and its stealth radius increased from 36 to 55 feet (the same as Invisibility used to provide). Other than foes that ignore stealth (Rikti drones, Rularuu eyeballs, snipers, etc.) you are completely undetectable (highest perception radius for standard foes is 54 feet). There is no benefit to further increasing its stealth radius. 

 

If you want to increase the stealth radius with Infiltration, slot a Celerity or Unbounded Leap +Stealth IO in it. It will increase the stealth radius from 36 to 66 feet. I'm against adding a pop-up placate to Infiltration, especially one with vastly superior stats to Misdirection. Misdirection requires 2 power picks, has a 240s cooldown and a 20 ft radius. You're asking for a power available at lvl 4 with no prerequisites to have a 120s cooldown and 60 ft radius.

 

Misdirection is fine as is. It's already a stronger placate than Smoke Flash that Ninjitsu stalkers and Ninja Training blasters get in their secondaries. 

[Jacke]

11 hours ago, Uun said:

Stealth was buffed in i27p2 and its stealth radius increased from 36 to 55 feet (the same as Invisibility used to provide). Other than foes that ignore stealth (Rikti drones, Rularuu eyeballs, snipers, etc.) you are completely undetectable (highest perception radius for standard foes is 54 feet). There is no benefit to further increasing its stealth radius. 

 

There are hostile mobs with greater Perception ranges.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Stealth_and_Perception

 

Also, what's also vital is all stealth powers, even the ones that are under 55ft, like the Base Buff "Grant Invisibility", also lower the threat of the Toon.  That's how with just Base Buff GI a Toon can run past mobs as long as there's not a lot of time within their Perception range.

 

EDIT:  Thanks, @Uun. for calling out my mistake here.  Only some of the stealth powers have -Threat.

 

Edited April 5 by Jacke

[Uun]

57 minutes ago, Jacke said:

Also, what's also vital is all stealth powers, even the ones that are under 55ft, like the Base Buff "Grant Invisibility", also lower the threat of the Toon.  That's how with just Base Buff GI a Toon can run past mobs as long as there's not a lot of time within their Perception range.

Not true. Most stealth powers don't have -threat. Base Empowerment/Grant Invisibility does not, nor do +stealth IOs. To my knowledge, Concealment/Stealth, Super Speed, Superior Invisibility and Group Invisibility are the only ones that do.

Edited April 5 by Uun

[Enamel_32]

I like the specific call-out for stalkers and the interaction between placate and hide, but feel maybe it should also apply to banes and widows that have taken their respective stealth powers too?

[Uun]

53 minutes ago, Enamel_32 said:

I like the specific call-out for stalkers and the interaction between placate and hide, but feel maybe it should also apply to banes and widows that have taken their respective stealth powers too?

Seems redundant for stalkers, banes and widows, all of which have access to auto-hit AoE Placate in their primary or secondary on a much shorter cooldown.

[Sunsette]

1 hour ago, Enamel_32 said:

I like the specific call-out for stalkers and the interaction between placate and hide, but feel maybe it should also apply to banes and widows that have taken their respective stealth powers too?

 

I don't know much about VEATs, but seems reasonable to me.

 

6 minutes ago, Uun said:

all of which have access to auto-hit AoE Placate in their primary or secondary on a much shorter cooldown.

 

Stacking scenarios, along with the fact that Stalker Placate is target-driven and primarily about an opportunity to deal more damage or reset against specific opponents, not a global 'reset combat' button.

 

5 hours ago, Uun said:

Misdirection is fine as is. It's already a stronger placate than Smoke Flash that Ninjitsu stalkers and Ninja Training blasters get in their secondaries. 

 

Placates are largely not seen as very useful (which is the same reason I give such a high mag/radius to these idea powers). Stalker placate powers became useful for reasons not terribly related to the actual status. 

 

Giving an ability that can interact with auto-sight enemies means you can conceivably place more of them in missions to make skipping a bit less trivial and require investment.

 

I like stealthing in other games, in this one it's very basic and kind of boring. I'd like to enhance the stealth minigame and counters to it.

Edited April 5 by Sunsette

[Uun]

12 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

Placates are largely not seen as very useful (which is the same reason I give such a high mag/radius to these idea powers). Stalker placate powers became useful for reasons not terribly related to the actual status. 

Stalker, Bane and Widow Placate powers were reworked in i27p3, changing them from ST to AoE, reducing their cast times and making them instant hit. They are quite useful now.

[Rudra]

I'm sorry, but I'm not following. Infiltration gives +764.5% jump height, +150.645% jump speed, +1000% movement control, +200% movement friction, +154% running speed, sets the user to hidden attack state, 36 ft. stealth radius, and +1.875% defense per City of Data.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=pool.invisibility.invisibility&at=scrapper

 

In Mids it gives 7.65% jump height and 2.13% defense with no mention of movement control or friction as the differences from City of Data.

 

In game, Infiltration says it gives +764.5% jump height, +150.65% jump speed, +154% run speed, +1.75% defense, and +3600% stealth radius.

 

In game data says Athletic Run gives +695% jump height, +139.95% jump speed, +140% running speed. Mids is the only place I can find non-formulaic data on the stealth IOs, and it says 30 ft stealth.

 

So Infiltration stomps Athletic Run + stealth IO. So my question is, what is the complaint about it?

 

Edit:

Also, what is wrong with a Mag 4 15 second 20 ft. radius placate? It stops everything from attacking you for 15 seconds, giving you ample time to pop some inspirations or run away or set up to resume combat if needed, and also debuffs the affected targets' resistances by 11.25% for 20 seconds. So you have an extra 5 seconds longer than the placate effect to make use of the lowered damage resistance.

 

(Edit again: And further in Misdirection's favor, Hide needs 8 seconds of no combat to trigger and your enemies are placated for 15 seconds. More than long enough for Hide to kick back in. And then when you AS out of it, you still have 12 seconds of reduced enemy damage resistance to murder them through.)

 

Edited April 5 by Rudra
And again to add "In game sata says" before "Athletic".

[Luminara]

On 4/4/2024 at 12:47 PM, Sunsette said:

Infiltration offering comparable stealth to Super Speed and comparable movement to Athletic Run given the free distribution of Athletic Run and commonality of the +stealth proc120 IOs feels bad and makes it uncompelling. Give it 55 StealthRadius

 

All of that was addressed when Infiltration was added.  It's faster than Athletic/Ninja/Beast run, in can be slotted to be even faster, and it was only intended to give enough stealth to help players get from point A to point B safely (the same reason the Defense cancels if the player attacks, is mezzed or interacts with an objective).

 

On 4/4/2024 at 12:47 PM, Sunsette said:

Stealth should probably offer a much higher StealthRadius value or an additional benefit to be worth its high endurance cost.

 

Stealth is fine.  It's not supposed to be comparable to Superior Invisibility.  It has a massive out-of-combat Defense buff, the endurance cost is only 0.325/s (same as Tough and Weave), the stealth radius is high enough to avoid aggro by anything other than snipers/Rikti drones/special foes, and it reduces Threat Level.

 

On 4/4/2024 at 12:47 PM, Sunsette said:

Distract would be a targeted AoE rather than a PBAoE and replaces the Mag 4 placate with a Mag 2 confusion without turning the enemies hostile to you. It also lowers their perception radius significantly, to cover enemies unaffected by the confusion.

 

So we'd lose the -Res and gain... a Confuse which only affects minions.

 

That's not an improvement, especially for a T4 power which currently affects bosses.

Edited April 5 by Luminara

[Sunsette]

6 minutes ago, Luminara said:

All of that was addressed when Infiltration was added.  It's faster than Athletic/Ninja/Beast run, in can be slotted to be even faster, and it was only intended to give enough stealth to help players get from point A to point B safely (the same reason the Defense cancels if the player attacks, is mezzed or interacts with an objective).

 

It is technically faster, yes. it is not meaningfully faster without heavy slotting, though there are a few builds which can benefit from use of the universal travel sets as sets rather than as partials.

 

6 minutes ago, Luminara said:

So we'd lose the -Res and gain... a Confuse which only affects minions.

 

Specifically did not say anything about losing the -Res. Infiltrate's tray pop-up would keep the Placate utility. There would be very flatly nothing lost.

 

  

7 minutes ago, Luminara said:

the endurance cost is only 0.325/s (same as Tough and Weave)

 

But it's not Tough or Weave. True, it's a Tier 1 pool power and those are Tier 2/3, but it's much more end expensive than Combat Jumping or Hover. I do not think it unreasonable for it to have an in-combat benefit besides minor defense at that cost.

Edited April 5 by Sunsette

[Rudra]

9 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

13 minutes ago, Luminara said:

the endurance cost is only 0.325/s (same as Tough and Weave)

 

But it's not Tough or Weave. True, it's a Tier 1 pool power and those are Tier 2/3, but it's much more end expensive than Combat Jumping or Hover. I do not think it unreasonable for it to have an in-combat benefit besides minor defense at that cost.

Stealth isn't supposed to be directly beneficial in combat. It's purpose is to avoid combat. That is why it reduces the range at which enemies can perceive you and reduces your threat to further hinder them from attacking you. And if they attack you, it still gives you improved defense so you can keep moving on, or reduced defense after that first attack if you stand and fight. It does a lot.

 

(Edit: And before anyone tries to "correct" me about Stealth's defense, please note I said "that first attack" and not "your first attack".)

Edited April 5 by Rudra

[Sunsette]

Right now, Stealth is a boring and overpowered condition that allows huge portions of content skips because it is effectively a binary state for the majority of content: you either get seen before you can run past the group and walloped, or you don't. It is a design headache for the devs because they have limited ability to craft maps which can deal with this.

If you give the stealth pool more depth, you can also create a more in-depth counterplay to stealth -- you can reliably bring in auto-sight enemies and enemies with higher detection ranges at points (not advocating using them in every single pull, by far) and expect people who want to engage in skipping to have heavy mechanical depth invested into it.

Right now, there is zero purpose to going deeper than one stealth power if that for the purposes of Stealth. Its most compelling uses are as a LotG mule and a long cooldown res ability.

Edited April 5 by Sunsette

[Rudra]

12 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

Right now, Stealth is a boring and overpowered condition that allows huge portions of content skips because it is effectively a binary state for the majority of content: you either get seen before you can run past the group and walloped, or you don't. It is a design headache for the devs because they have limited ability to craft maps which can deal with this.

If you give the stealth pool more depth, you can also create a more in-depth counterplay to stealth -- you can reliably bring in auto-sight enemies and enemies with higher detection ranges at points (not advocating using them in every single pull, by far) and expect people who want to engage in skipping to have heavy mechanical depth invested into it.

Right now, there is zero purpose to going deeper than one stealth power if that for the purposes of Stealth. Its most compelling uses are as a LotG mule and a long cooldown res ability.

Snipers already ignore stealth. And several high level factions have snipers. And I can't recount the number of times my stealthy characters had to fight through the entire map because seemingly 2/3s of the spawns on the map included a sniper. (Edit again: And enemies that grant each other +Perception also see through stealth. And you can find those as low as the RIP in Mercy Island. Though fortunately, the RIP typically only trigger it when they start combat.)

 

Stealthing a mission is a valid strategy. And players like me have characters that are built around stealth in all its various forms available to us in the game because we envisioned having sneaky characters like Batman, Gambit, Wolverine (when he has a mind to not eviscerate everything dumb enough to be in his path) and so many other heroes and villains in comics. This post reads to me like you want to take that away from us.

 

And you're right about there not being any purpose to going deeper than one stealth power. I used to have characters that used multiple stealth powers. Hells, I still have one character with multiple stealth powers because I could not bring myself to respec out of them when the devs decided to make most stealth powers no longer stack. I really like having a Stalker that ran Hide, Stealth, and a stealth proc. I really got a kick out of sitting in the hero base in Siren's Call back on Live as a rogue and watching the heroes run all over the place until someone finally made use of the +Perception the drones gave them to finally notice the Stalker standing in the corner. Bring back stealth as a stacking effect and you'll see players taking multiple stealth powers again.

 

Edited April 5 by Rudra
Edited to remove double negative "not". And again to add "back on Live".

[Sunsette]

22 minutes ago, Rudra said:

This post reads to me like you want to take that away from us.

 

Then read it again, please.

 

I *like* stealth. I want there to be more mechanical depth and reward to stealth. I want to feel a sharper difference between my characters which invest in stealth and those that do not, the way that I feel sharp differences between those that invest in the other travel pool powers. And I want the benefits for going deep into concealment to pertain primarily to acting in a concealed way. I want to be able to specialize beyond "Stalker has the Hide power."

 

City of Heroes is the only MMO in which one of my mains has never been a stealthy character (although I play and enjoy Stalker) because there's not much to the stealth component. If I'm determined, fast, and durable enough I can brute-force a skip on a non-stealthy character with just a single IO.

 

Have you ever experienced the joy of sneaking through a dungeon designed for 5 max level characters with a buddy and using everything in your arsenal to make it to all the treasure chests and a few key minibosses? Cuz that was *fun*. I don't think we can bring that into City, but I think we can borrow a few elements towards it.

Edited April 5 by Sunsette

[kelika2]

stealth has -1 threat level

means you are less likely to be attacked when standing next to someone with no mods

[Luminara]

9 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

It is technically faster, yes. it is not meaningfully faster without heavy slotting

 

It doesn't require "heavy slotting", one or two slots is enough if it's used in concert with Sprint.  And that it can be slotted is the reason the base speed is only 10% higher than the free travel powers.

 

12 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

though there are a few builds which can benefit from use of the universal travel sets as sets rather than as partials.

 

You mean you can only conceive of a few builds.  I have 40 characters, 32 of them use Infiltration, and almost half of those use two or three IOs from one of the Universal Travel sets.

 

16 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

Specifically did not say anything about losing the -Res. Infiltrate's tray pop-up would keep the Placate utility. There would be very flatly nothing lost.

 

There would be things lost.  They're not going to give a travel power -Res.  And changing Misdirection to a Confuse would also mean the ability to slot it with Threat Duration sets would be lost.

 

And you just complained about having to put one extra slot into Infiltration, but you're pushing for the Placate to be moved to Infiltration, which would force players to six-slot it if they wanted to use a set like Mocking Beratement, or let the Placate languish because they slotted the travel power for travel.  They're absolutely not going to buff the movement speed so you can cap just by toggling it on.  That horse was flogged until it was skeletal when the power was in beta.

 

37 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

it's much more end expensive than Combat Jumping or Hover.

 

Combat Jumping and Hover don't give you 4x the Defense out of combat, reduce Threat Level or make you invisible.  You draw equivalency because all three grant the same in-combat Defense buff, but it's false equivalency.  They're all different, with different effects and different endurance costs.

 

Out of combat, Stealth grants twice as much Defense as Weave.  By your vacuum-derived logic, that means Stealth's endurance cost should be doubled.  Still think it's a good idea to base suggestions on a single variable?

 

35 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

Right now, Stealth is a boring and overpowered condition that allows huge portions of content skips because it is effectively a binary state for the majority of content

 

Yeah, but that's not because there are problems with the Concealment pool, it's because missions are linear, spawns are static, critter design is simplistic, mission/arc/*F completion rewards encourage maximum speed and there's almost never a reason not to go straight to the end.  You want a less binary game?  Address the game, make missions less linear, spawns less static, completion rewards not revolve around time.  Put more interesting things in missions so players have a reason to do something other than go straight to the end.  Giving Stealth and Infiltration higher stealth radii, and nerfing Misdirection, isn't going to discourage ghosting, it's just going to push it even further into the players' minds as the expected play style.

[Sunsette]

 

Quote

There would be things lost.  They're not going to give a travel power -Res.  And changing Misdirection to a Confuse would also mean the ability to slot it with Threat Duration sets would be lost.

 

I did not say: give the travel power version -res. I am saying: give a travel power a placate similar to misdirection, with a lower cooldown as it cannot be enhanced, and turn misdirection from a placate to a targeted confuse, but with identical radius and cooldown currently. I did not even directly reference misdirection when discussing the travel power tray in the original suggestion for a reason, precisely because I am aware the -res component is the significant purpose of the misdirection power as it presently exists, outside of muling. Yes, placate sets in there would be lost and placate sets are pretty strong as mules, so that would get lost. Sure, I can concede that.

 

I'm also aware that my suggestion is on the strong side and likely needs whittling; the loss of being able to slot a full placate set isn't meaningfully going to amount to a net nerf, though it would certainly nerf some builds. Toss the confuse? Yeah, I can see that being reasonable, though I'd want more time to think through the ideas at the brainstorming stage.

 

Regardless of confuse staying or going, I'm not really interested in hashing out specific numbers in the course of this thread, which is why I was vague about whatever more would need to be given to Stealth within this context. 

 

(And doubling a minor level of defense when you're out of combat is not a meaningful amount of value. The very large AoE defense granted by Stalker Hide is considered a minor convenience.)

 

Added depth requires both player systems and level design, yes. This is not a point of disagreement. The devs are already frequently and actively engaging with player unintentional skips in the new content they've added and which I have given feedback on separately. There's a negotiation present in what's good emergent gameplay and what's not and it'll be a while before we see full development, but I have every confidence that if nothing else, they do look to see how players can use existing tools in more meaningful ways. 

Edited April 5 by Sunsette

[Rudra]

39 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

(And doubling a minor level of defense when you're out of combat is not a meaningful amount of value. The very large AoE defense granted by Stalker Hide is considered a minor convenience.)

39.38% AoE defense (in Mids and in game) or 39.375% AoE Defense (in City of Data) is considered a minor convenience?! To who?! (Edit: And that is straight level 1 Stalker Hide with nothing slotted anywhere.)

 

Edit again: Hide grants a base 1.88% defense out of the box. That gets modified by 3.75% for select defenses other than AoE which is +37.5%. So even Hide's base defense bonus is equal to Stealth's. (It just has additional defense buffs stacked on top of its base defense bonus.) (This data was pulled directly from the game. I made a brand new Stalker to check Hide's stats.)

 

Edit yet again: I also don't see the devs agreeing to put a placate effect in a travel power. All you would have to do is leave your travel power on and you would constantly be placating enemies during combat. Unless you made it a click, at which point it stops being a feasible travel power. Teleport works as a click because you have to place the marker for where you want to teleport to and each click sends you 350 feet away.

Edited April 5 by Rudra

[Sunsette]

16 minutes ago, Rudra said:

39.38% AoE defense (in Mids and in game) or 39.375% AoE Defense (in City of Data) is considered a minor convenience?! To who?! (Edit: And that is straight level 1 Stalker Hide with nothing slotted anywhere.)

 

Edit again: Hide grants a base 1.88% defense out of the box. That gets modified by 3.75% for select defenses other than AoE which is +37.5%. So even Hide's base defense bonus is equal to Stealth's. (It just has additional defense buffs stacked on top of its base defense bonus.) (This data was pulled directly from the game. I made a brand new Stalker to check Hide's stats.)

 

When that huge number is only active when you are not currently in combat... yes, it is only a minor convenience. 

 

I'm confused what you're objecting to here, honestly; within context, I wasn't saying "Hide is weak", I was pointing out that an out of combat defense buff is not much consideration in most purposes, especially as small of one as Stealth's or Infiltration's. Those extra values only matter for the very small scenario in which you are still in the hidden state but someone is attacking you, a situation which usually lasts a few seconds tops. It can be nice (but still quite risky and situational) on Stalkers for running through area damage on your way to something else. 

Edited April 5 by Sunsette

[Rudra]

3 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

 

When that huge number is only active when you are not currently in combat... yes, it is only a minor convenience. 

 

I'm confused what you're objecting to here, honestly; within context, I wasn't saying "Hide is weak", I was pointing out that an out of combat defense buff is not much consideration in most purposes. 

That non-combat only +37.5% AoE defense means you can slip by AoE effects that would render others visible, so you maintain Hide. It makes you a better sneak. That isn't minor.

 

Edited April 5 by Rudra
Edited to add missing "non-".

[Sunsette]

Let me ask you something, Rudra: How often do you, on your stalkers, encounter situations where there is AoE damage on your way to something you want to maintain the hidden state for and the only or best way for you to bypass it is to take a direct line through the AoE damage where you have, at minimum, a 5% chance of getting struck and losing that state.

 

Because I think that's happened to me maybe twice? I usually have a better option for it.

 

It's nice to have, but yes, it is minor. I get more (yet still not tons!) of value from the Hide state appearing mid-combat for whatever reason, like getting held or something and then porting back to catch up with the fight.

 

And yet (to return to topicality) it is still far more significant than a value a tenth of that.

Edited April 5 by Sunsette

[Rudra]

If all you do is look at how powers work in combat, then you completely ignore the other benefits and themes of lots of powers. Hide's non-combat defense bonuses, like Stealth's non-combat defense bonus, work to help you sneak around without losing your stealth to random mobs with AoE effects or map hazards. Too much emphasis is given to how powers work to make it harder for enemies to hit you in combat or how powers make it easier to defeat enemies in combat, and the non-combat elements of the game are getting dumped on because of it.

[Sunsette]

Well, it is a good thing then that I have made a topic in which I would like to explore how the concealment pool can be changed to increase the depth of non-combat stealth play! 🙂

 

Minor is not the same as non-existent, and Hide was used as a comparative that has a much better version of the stealth bonus.  And Stealth is the topic at hand. I am not here dumping on the Hide power as being weak.

 

What you have described is a minor benefit. One that I enjoy. And one that Stealth is not comparable with.

 

Last post on this from me.

Edited April 5 by Sunsette

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, Sunsette said:

Let me ask you something, Rudra: How often do you, on your stalkers, encounter situations where there is AoE damage on your way to something you want to maintain the hidden state for and the only or best way for you to bypass it is to take a direct line through the AoE damage where you have, at minimum, a 5% chance of getting struck and losing that state.

 

Because I think that's happened to me maybe twice? I usually have a better option for it.

 

It's nice to have, but yes, it is minor. And yet (to return to topicality) it is still far more significant than a value a tenth of that.

That depends completely on the faction populating the map and the map hazards. Like CoT maps with their plethora of pain crystals in the middle of hallways and intersections? I ahve to go through. Longbow Wardens with their non-toggle spine bursts populating maps? I have to slip by them in narrow halls on a regular basis. I get what you are saying, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Non-combat defense bonuses serve to help keep your stealthy character stealthed when you have to slip by something and you don't want to fight it.