If people dont use stealth to the best of its potential then its hardly a design flaw or means stealth isnt useful its just laziness or a lack of understanding of the class as a whole.

As I said however I cant figure out what more you expect from stealth?

the utility is there to be used it is down to the player to get the best out of it.

oh wait, they took that out, zzzzzzz

> Our plan is to try and get the Heroic -> Blue Gear
> and Raid -> Purple Gear balance back.

There won’t be and CC in heroics because we’ll overgear them even faster.

This doesnt include the useage of stealth already ie disarming traps, vanish – aggro dump. Pick pocket. These things are all useful in their own way but if people dont utilise them then its not really a fault in the design its just human nature to be lazy.

If anything its peoples reluctance and lazyness to use stealth rather than it lacking any benefits.

Perhaps Im missing something but cant see what more utility it should bring?!

In WoW the only Rogue spec that doesnt use stealth so much is combat, but then they are more toe to toe orientated fighters where as assassination and subtlety rogues are more your attack from the shadows type.

I think I’ve used that stealth ability once or twice so far in my levelling career, and primarily it’s been to avoid fights that I’m really not in the mood for, for example when I’m needing to find a safe spot and log off quickly.

I think the Resolve All Problems Through Combat nature of MMOs definitely is one reason why stealth has been deprecated over the years.

I think the primary reason, however, is simply impatience on the part of the modern player. There are plenty of opportunities in DDO, for example, where a stealthed character could sneak ahead, scout the area, take out a few enemies and disarm any traps before returning to the group, but you’ll find that most groups outside of the role-playing crowd will just barrel through regardless and simply tank the traps and extra mobs and heal through it. Nobody wants to stop playing while one person carries on playing ‘solo in a group’.

It’ll be interesting to see how SW:TOR manages to deal with this, not just in combat, but also in the quest conversation system, because making players wait for other players has generally devolved into being a no-no among MMO developers.

Personally I think it’s a sad thing, because it’s another pillar of play that has been removed to streamline the experience, but at the expense of weakening the foundation of The Group as an entity in MMOs, reducing it yet further towards the rudimentary collection of players trying to get through unsoloable content as quickly as possible for the greater loot rewards.

Stealth no loner fits into MMOs because role-playing no longer fits in to MMOs; I think we’re also witnessing the gradual extinction of danger in MMOs, at which point there comes a time when you have to ask ‘what reason is there to hide from an enemy that I have no cause to fear?’