Stealth Missions

If you've been reading this in order, you already know about my embarassing Noob moment when I thought I invented sneaking through missions. You have to understand, it's pretty exciting to learn that you can just run straight to the end and complete a mission in a few minutes and reap the bonus like that.

There are several reasons that you would want to do this which are as follows:

• Time

  If you're Squishy and can't or don't want to form a team, sneaking saves a lot of time. Trying to clear a mission without stealth powers can take hours or end up being impossible depending on your mission difficulty level.

  At best, if you pick the right path in a mission, you can skip some groups of enemies and still complete the mission, but using stealth, you can often fight only the end boss or no one at all if it's a Glowie mission.

• Time in task forces

  A long time ago, I recommended that a casual gamer skip Task Forces and Trials, but that was bad advice. Not only are TFs great experience, but they are a lot of fun. They do, however, take a lot of time.

  To make a TF more manageable, you can use your stealth techniques to cut down on the time it takes to complete some of the missions. This works even better if you have Recall Friend to teleport the whole team to the end for "Kill Leader" missions.

  

  I would never have been able to take this shot without stealth powers (and fly in this case)

  For some task forces, this can cut the time for the trial in half (or more).

• Mission and TF Screen captures

  Stealth will allow you to take awesome screenshots that you could never do otherwise. Many missions and most Task Forces have special zones or missions that you can only get while then. If you want to see them again, you have to redo the TF or in the case of missions, find someone else who has the mission so you can join them for the screenshots).

Stealth In Zones

Besides missions there are a few other reasons to take stealth powers.

• Safe Travel

  

  Oops. So much for being invisible...

  As you travel around, you may go through areas with much higher level enemies than you. While you can usually avoid them, sometimes they'll be standing right next to your contact or the door to your next mission.

  Each travel power (except fly) has the disadvantage of accidentally jumping, teleporting, or running into a group of enemies that you didn't see. Adding stealth to any of these will help.

  Don't forget to dismiss your pets when sneaking around or they'll draw Aggro to you.

• Outdoor Screen Captures

  As with missions, there are some shots that you can take with stealth powers that you wouldn't be able to otherwise. Stealth will let you get close to the enemies or sometimes stand in the middle of them to take screen captures. When combined with Emotes, this can be a lot of fun.

• Player vs Player

  Stealth is really useful in PvP not just for fighting other players, but for avoiding them. Again, screenshots or just missions. For example, if you want to get from one missions to another in a PvP zone or if your mission involves outdoor activities (like in Bloody Bay), stealth will be nearly essential (unless you want to log on only at the strangest hours that you hope will make you the only person in the whole zone).

Concealment Powers

Stealth Power Pool

Related topic(s):

Stealth Power Pool

VIDEO: Using Warshade stealth+SS to slap a void around (1.8Mb)

The stealth pool consists of Stealth, Grant Invisibility (nice, but only for teammates), Invisibility (you can only affect yourself = suck), and Phase Shift (a short term intangibility effect. You aren't invisible, just untouchable).

Powerset Stealth Powers

Some powersets have stealth powers as well (such as Shadow Fall from the Dark Maisma set for Defenders, Shadow Cloak for Warshades, and Cloaking Device from the Devices set for Blaster). They usually work the same way as Stealth and have the catch that they can't combine with other stealth powers.

In these cases, remember that SS does combine with stealth powers to create full or near-full invisibility.

Sneaking Techniques

Besides having full invisibility (either with the power or with a combination of powers, there are other ways to get to the end/target of a mission which are as follows:

• 

  VIDEO: Sneaking through a warehouse with stealth and fly (1.6Mb)

  Fly

  For open air missions such as train missions, you can simply fly to the end with no problems.

• Stealth + Fly

  By using any stealth power to lower the distance that enemies can see you, you can generally hug the top of warehouse or office missions without being seen. In some tight hallways, you might take a few hits or have to fight your way through, but it still gets the job done.

• Brute Force It

  Tanks or anyone with invincibility powers like Unstoppable, Phase Shift, or Light Form (Peacebringers) can just run to the end without worry. Even if you piss off every enemy on the map, because of adjustments made to the limit on Aggro (to prevent herding), at best only a few will follow you.