Managed a bit of testing of the sneak ability last night with the kind assist of CLAUIDUS and BrightMorning and a small selection of NPC's at Industry square.

 

Against NPC's sadly it remains very very ineffective, in ten approches only 2 did I get within attack range before my 'Sneak' broke. In fact it is very clear the NPC's knew of my approach in most cases as easily as if I had just walked toward them (indeed they would be shooting me even though the sneak 'held'). Once spotted by an NPC you need to retreat to a significant distance to remove their uncanny ability to see you and even predict where you are going to emerge. Even weaving between level 41 NPC's regularly caused my sneak to break, I'm afraid real tests on the spy tree against npc's will not be possible till this is sorted.

 

Against players things seem very different and a more encouraging, on most occasions I was able to get into an attack position with the player unaware, sadly the success rate of landing assassin attacks isn't high (but maybe that is down to my stats and clothes), worse for a failed strike the punishment was harsh with between a third and half my HP had gone and no evident damage to my foe as I manically do a sideways rollout. The biggest issue is re-cloaking for a follow up attack, the players awareness coupled with the presence of npc's (only level 1) meant finding a spot to drop back into sneak was very challenging, a smart ma would be on you or would leap away to really impact on any chance of a kill and in a group of players I would imagine (as I can't test it) one shot will be all that is possible. Perhaps after a sucessful strike a stealthing bonus could facilitate an eaier route to engage sneak or disguise etc.

 

My initial build was MA/assasin subjectively that seemed poor despite the solider tree housing both neither branch seems to complement the other and both feel ineffective therefore - Moving to assasin+Mkt was much more sucessful....this is a disturbing potential consequence of CR2 that hybrid builds have far less flexibilty given that abilities have been replaced by buffs and those buffs dont stack. Basically you decide to use either ma OR assassin and practically speaking until you are able to step away from the battle changing seems unwise. Perfect for duels less so for the manic wars usually experienced on Vector.

 

I finished the seesion with a very tidy assassination combining knives and assassin strikes which left me encouraged that the main issues could be solved through balancing.

 

Hopefully will be able to experiment a little further tonight but with disguise and 'disable evasion' were not available to test, after sneak I suspect these will be the next critical abilities to make or break the tree.