Stop nerfing Shadowscale

[stoic quail]

The title says it all

For 1.0.1, Shadowscale will be receiving a nerf to its cloaking ability that will once again make it weak in comparison to the other dragons. My suggestion is to completely leave Shadowscale alone in it’s current 1.0 state (cloaking NOT using stamina while moving and only using stamina when activated) and work on buffing the other dragons.

For example: The Flamestalker is getting a buff in its heat sense ability, which is a direct counter to Shadowscale’s cloaking. This leaves SS once again weak and with a very useless ability. Please ! Leave it alone ! It is great how it is !

The only change I feel like that could be made is to add footsteps to all moving dragons, that way you can hear when a shadowscale is sneaking up on you rather than continuously nerfing it into the ground for no reason. I’m almost certain that we don’t have footstep sounds right now, and if we do, they should 100% be louder so other people can hear you thumping around

Another thing I notice is that sounds seem to come from every direction, which desperately needs to be reworked. It would make hearing approaching dragons a lot easier

[mint lion]

granting practicaly permanent invisibility to a dragon or any creature or class in any multiplayer game is a horrible idea and never Will be balanced, no matter the counter measures. The FS is ONE dragon out of the roster what can counter the SS, all the others are sitting ducks for a cloaked shadowscale, so I don't think the cloak costing stamina is such a huge deal. I do agree tho that the dragons need balancing, but they need more abilities, not constantly messing about with the current ones, since compared to the Blitz any of the older dragons look weak simply because they can do only one thing while the Blitz can do many

[naive kraken]

Not only that, but with the patch, everyone had perma cloaked ss hovering over babies nonstop. They would go in, shoot, kill, fly off, and repeat.
Nothing could counter it. While it was great, it was broken.

[craggy sail]

I think its less so that it costs stamina by itself, its the fact that its actually worse now than it used to be before the perma-invis (i talked about it here https://discord.com/channels/576933363672285186/1259573746717691955 ) because you used to be able to regain stamina as long as you stayed still, at the risk of being found by a Stalker. Now not only do you use stamina while doing anything but crouching, but you also cant regain stamina, which is where my breaking point is in my opinion. You might as well just use a Ravager for flying ambushes because the Shadow is useless on the ground as well as in the air to hide now. Its no longer a well-equipped sniper, its a short-lived fighter jet.

[stoic quail]

Bio causes Shadowscale to decloak, this could also be applied to fire

I just think it’s ridiculous to link SS’s ability with its stamina, which is already an EXTREMELY limited resource

[ornate stone]

The main problem of pvp servers is the rat fights of dragons in invisibility. There's nothing you can do about it. In flight over the forest, you lose sight of it. At any moment, he can disappear and wait. I'm looking forward to when the invisibility cloak stops working. The Fire Hunter grows longer, so you can estimate the ratio of the number of SS men hiding behind the mouse and their fatal shot. The player is determined not even by the ability to fly and aim effectively, but by the ability to be a rat and wait.

[craggy sail]

'fatal' shot the shot doesnt even do half a flamestalker's health. The shadow is only really good at dogfighting, its not being a rat, it doesnt have much other choice because its so squishy. Unfortunately it is really good at ducking and hiding and can be frustrating to hunt down because even stalkers can't find it at the moment with its poor heat vision. I'd be fine if it drained stamina while using cloak but regain stamina normally while walking invisible, or being unable to regain stamina but stay cloaked until you run out, but not both negatives at once.

[stoic quail]

I agree with that, honestly, being unable to regain stamina rather than it being a constant drain would be a much better trade off

[torpid scroll]

Read the title in the picture for context 😂😭

As always, I'm willing to listen to criticism and adjust the suggestion if you have a good point

[hard zinc]

Footsteps would be very helpful and it makes sense since the dragons are literally modeled with ear holes.

[oblique remnant]

Are we forgetting that no matter how much you nerf something people will complain about something else becoming OP so leave ss alone just make FS heat sense be extremely far (FS with toggle not timer!!) with just SS now what would that look in the game? (Legacy gold glitch skin used as an example only SS will be seen this far out if they are cloaked flying with the perma invis)

This.. (Its within render range)
Only SS will be seen from this..

[hard zinc]

That's literally the definition of an ambush predator which is what the SS is supposed to be? people hiding and waiting for an attack is how the dragon is supposed to be played. Nerfing it's only survivability renders it useless and ruins what the dragon is.

[oblique remnant]

Indeed so use the other creature ment to hunt for it as its counterplay.

[split basalt]

I die to Shadow scales all the time as an fs

[craggy sail]

This might be actually be alright, although I dont particularly like the idea of abilities relying on stats to be any good. I think every 6 seconds is way too much if we go this route, I’d cap it at like every 2 seconds if its 1 percent each and make it consistent for any Shadow. Keeping trot available is a good bonus to allow for reasonable travel speeds along the ground, plus a slower stamina drain when flying, so long as it doesnt rip your stamina in two to activate it in the first place.

[split basalt]

I was killed by like 3 Shadow scales yesterday those things are deadly on PvP ~~ although I was also a juvi but still my fire did nothing ~~

[blissful glade]

It would be right if SS was an ambush predator but it isn't. An ambush predator shouldn't have this much mobility compared to other, even when it's ambush was finished it's not in a "weak/vulnerable" state

[final oasis]

I feel like they could fix it by just making it so ss can’t go fully invisible even crouched so they don’t have that extreme advantage over other dragons

[craggy sail]

While I dont disagree with this, the problem is that I find the movement of the invis texture very easy to see without foliage to hide it (and there is almost no foliage to hide it). If the texture didn’t move I would completely agree with you, but the shimmery thing makes it stand out to the point that I rarely have trouble tracking Shadows even through the skies until they fly through some other texture, usually tree branches, which has enough noise to disguise the shimmering.

[blissful glade]

To me there would be multiple way to balance the SS.

For example as you said what you said is an example but they will need to improve how it look when not fully invisible cause @craggy sailis right on this. and then it keep it's dogfight ability.

Another way is how devs did it making the fact to be invisible a risky bet that can pay but also have your head if it's not done carefully.

And finally how i would do it is making the SS a real ambush predator and keeping as it is in term of camo but decrease it aerial combat ability. This can be done by two way:

• making him less agile so it hard for him in aerial combat but i don't like this cause it doesnt fit the physical of the SS

-Make the SS a sprinter meaning it's fast and agile but greatly reduce it's stamina meaning if he starta figth with an ambush, it need to end the fight as soon as possible cause if the aerial fight last too long it's gonna run out of stamina

Of course it would need some adjustment for it's bile in these cases.

[hard zinc]

This entire thread is revolving around skill issues. The SS is fine. Its the Flame Stalker that needs tweaking. It's tanky, and slow and does a lot of dmg overtime if you know how to keep your reticle over your target. The real reason why people think the SS is overpowered is because, drumroll please, the Flame Stalker's heat vision sucks!

[stoic quail]

^^^^^
And it will be getting a huge buff in 1.0.1, so again, no reason to be nerfing SS when its counterparts are getting massive buffs that'll put it to shame

[oblique remnant]

What was leaked and seen from others.. The ability wont be fairly used often its still short worthless when flying and to hunt your prey item.. The stam drain is too much..

[stoic quail]

This is why I have been really pushing for abilities being separated from stamina, it doesn't make sense for them to be linked to the same bar in the first place. Adding an "ability bar" on top of the bile bar would make life so much better for these creatures and would make balancing a lot less frustrating for both devs and players

[zinc iron]

Can you nerf ss more, it has range it’s faster then other dragons and it can go invisible what doesn’t it have health? Why would you need that if you’re a sniper that can’t be seen. Switch fs fire with ss then doom fixed.

[umbral sage]

You would then have a strong tanky dragon that can overpower others both short and long range, it would be even more imbalanced that it is now. Just make the heat vision better and maybe do it so it can be used in flight? Not too sure about that tho.