Stealth feels so bad in this game

Hexs Fortune·Aug 22, 2017·65 votes·3,321 views

Twitch popping out of stealth and getting a free kill on you feels horrible and unfair on the receiving end.

Why support this playstyle?

79 Comments

PapaGreg21Aug 22, 201725 votes

When is stealth ever fair? Not being able to see somebody until they decide to show themselves and unload their combo on you before you realize what is happening isn't exactly a battle of skill.

Q RenAug 22, 20173 votes

Having a Janna that only has to point and click on you isn't exactly a battle of skill either now is it.

Though i agree that stealth on ranged champions is dumb, especially hypercarries.

HawckeyAug 22, 201714 votes

That's your fault for walking alone in obscure parts of the map. If Twitch or Eve or anything like that is MIA, you probably shouldn't be roaming around by yourself. Stop trying to dumb the game down

Chembaron YamadaAug 22, 201717 votes

[...] If ... Eve or anything like that is MIA, you probably shouldn't be roaming [...]

So 99% of the time you shouldn't be allowed to move out of lane if there is an Eve in the game? ^^

Jerry SeinfeIdAug 22, 20173 votes

if eve is strong, yes. You should be waiting until she pops up in a lane or near a pink or when she's revealed by vision plant.

Like honestly if lee is missing and you decide to roam mid and then die to lee sin who was getting scuttle in river, that's the same thing.

SqueyAug 22, 20175 votes

no because i can ward for lee, i can see lee as i approach him, and i can attack him first. Pink wards are fairly ineffective verse eve, and i cant see her till she is in range to combo me. A big part of the problem of stealth is that the champions who have it all happen to be assassins. They always hurt, there damage is in burst, and they scale off snowballing. These champs also always seem to have lower counterplay kits full of targeted abilities and low cd's

Jerry SeinfeIdAug 22, 20176 votes

Eve, twitch and Rengar are stealthed and revealed by Pink wards so they're just as effective against them as against lee.

I should have been more clear sorry, mb. i'll try to explain what i mean better.

If i decide to roam mid from bot, alone, and run into a lee sin who proceeds to kill me i most likely didn't know he was there and had no vision on him. & _ If i decide to roam mid from bot, alone, and run into Evelyn who proceeds to kill me i most likely didn't know she was there and had no vision on him._

Both situations unfold the same way and happened because i didn't know the enemy jungler was there.

_ If i decide to roam mid from bot, alone, and see lee Sin pop up in river near our pink ward i know i shouldn't._ & _ If i decide to roam mid from bot, alone, and see Evelyn pop up in river near our pink ward i know i shouldn't._

I had the necessary vision in river to know roaming mid was a bad idea. The difference is that Evelyn "forces" you to buy pink wards. This makes it easier for her to keep hiding because you're limited in vision tools, but that's the point of her passive.

If people can guess a lee/rek sai/graggy's position without ever seeing them, they can track evelyn too.

And that's just evelyn, shaco should never be invis in jungle when there's noone around neither should Rengar or twitch.

A big part of the problem of stealth is that the champions who have it all happen to be assassins. They always hurt, there damage is in burst, and they scale off snowballing. These champs also always seem to have lower counterplay kits full of targeted abilities and low cd's

Stealth naturally "attracts" assassins. Thematically it's an assassin/thief/scout/hunter type of ability.

Rengar is a hunter who strikes with precision (afaik) + being an AA range buff seems to me like a much easier way to keep it bug free/functional.

Twitch As an ADC/Assassin hybrid twitch is a bit special, his burst isn't as hard as something like syndra/lux but he has a small window where he's somewhere between DPS and Burst (you know the "Burst DPS" bs people are talking about) but unless he's Fed as Fuck and built like an assassin he's not gonna oneshot you. The only way i actually wipe people in about 1 sec is when i'm fed and built item 3147 item 3087 item 3094 but then i'm building assassin/single target and While my stealth is a reset escape it's not as good as classic assassins.

Evelynn i barely know her kit. but she's pretty much just the "infiltrator" archtype.

Talon only has 2 seconds and is the "assassin" archtype of this game.

Khazix Vayne have in combat invisibilty which imo is alot worse to deal with. As adc/AA based champs i'll often find myself clicking on them when they roll/stealth making me walk into them instead of AAing. other than that they can't leave a certain range before reappearing

Shaco Probably the best stealth in the game. It's got decent duration locked behind lvls, has a blink attached to it AND is actual invisibility. BUTIt's both his engage and escape tool, if you can't kill your target you'll most likely die.

Teemo The most balanced one i guess, it's incredibly strong but also incredibly gated. Honestly it functions just like twitch's. Personally i play APAS with runaans and thus have a reasonable burst with AA Q AA. Some people play him as an ap assassin and will oneshot you from stealth but lose alot of dps.

Imagine a tank appearing out of nowhere and then not doing any damage. What's the point? In general it's only usefull on dmg classes. Stealth being a surprise tool you need some form of enhanced dmg at reveal.

TLDR

It's a strong addition to your kit but it does have counterplay. Stealth favours Damage classes, especially mobile Burst classes. Thematically it's also better suited for these kind of characters.

SqueyAug 22, 20171 votes

thematically better and balance wise better are going to be different in a pvp game though. If a tank came out of stealth he would cc you and you would die to the 2v1. This doesnt seem any more healthy for the game then shaco appearing and you losing half your hp at the beginning of the 2v1. There is less cc follow up but even if you get away, the damage is done.

I cant say i agree with everything you said but alot of it is true. Some thing to note though is pink ward vision radius verse stealth units is (for whatever reason) smaller then its normal radius. So its only 70% ish as effective as you would think. Your also not gonna start the game off with a pink ward.

HawckeyAug 22, 20173 votes

She is so useless in team fights late game, she clearly has a big weakness

Meeks011Aug 22, 20171 votes

You ward her buffs and pay attention to where she ganks and what buffs she has so that you know which side of the map she is on.

99% of the time

Where'd you get that from? Nice strawman.

BoilTheOilAug 22, 20172 votes

pretty sure any champion can solo kill Evelynn shes useless as fuck

One Ashe OnAug 22, 201713 votes

I personally beleive you can't tune stealth in any way to be '' fair '' and beleive it is something that could be removed of the game completly.

TheHappyReaperzAug 22, 201710 votes

Yeah, makes sense. If you can't think of a way to balance it, fuck it, remove it entirely.

One Ashe OnAug 22, 201711 votes

{quoted}

Yeah, makes sense. If you can't think of a way to balance it, fuck it, remove it entirely.

I mean, unless you have idea to balance it, i doubt stealth will be any fair,in every game i played and there was stealth it was unfun and felt unfair to play against. It goes the same for LoL.

LankPantsAug 22, 20172 votes

Balance the forms of stealth that are more cancerous to play against firstly.

Vayne's stealth should be a camouflage with a small reveal range, considering how hard she already is to stick to someone who does so should be rewarded.

The reveal range on Twitches stealth should be increased to +50 units on his AA range so you see him before he attacks you. He shouldn't be able to R in E or E in R so he always obeys this rule at least for the first attack.

Kha'zix's stealth should end if he takes damage. It should be more about using the stealth to quickly juke in an unexpected direction, less about "I'm an assassin you can't AA for 1.5 seconds and who can end up anywhere at the end of that".

Other stealths I don't feel are that bad, they do what they're meant to. Akali's stealth lets her wait on CDs in a somewhat safe manner but leaves her vulnerable to AoEs. Shaco's stealth mainly just lets him juke and punishes you for not paying attention since you can see the smoke in FoW. Wukong's stealth lets him mindgame and is actually really well designed. Teemo's stealth is a joke anyway.

Meeks011Aug 22, 20173 votes

Read into how DotA's invisibility system works. As you can see from the wiki page, in DotA invisibility isn't a niche mechanic on only 10 champions (there are multiple items with abilities that can give invisibility, for instance), and there are a shitton of items, abilities, and even whole kits to counter it.

MohawkBirdAug 22, 20172 votes

[deleted]

LeetriAug 22, 20173 votes

It's pretty dumb not being able to do anything at all because your opponent brought a Pink Ward though. The issue with the old stealth was that if the enemy had a Pink Ward you couldn't do anything. They had to be balanced around the enemy buying a Pink Ward, so they were way stronger in lower ranks where no one buys wards. And come late game you don't have a spot for Pink Wards, so then the counterplay is gone. Technically, the new stealth system allows the champions to be balanced around having their stealth available. Whether or not they're actually balanced is a different question, but they should be easier to balance in theory because they're not rendered mostly useless by 100 gold.

Blackstone01Aug 22, 20174 votes

You can, but it takes a lot more work than just focusing those few champions. DotA is able to have several VERY long duration invisibilities without entirely breaking balance.

The DeckownerAug 22, 201712 votes

The foundamental idea of stealth is "you can't see me", which by itself is unfair to the receiving end. The worst part is that you not only can't see the target, you also don't know the target is there. Which is why short duration+telegraphed stealth(like talon R) is a lot more balanced than long duration+no counterplay stealth(like twitch Q)

zepdrixAug 22, 201711 votes

Stealth being used as an engage tool is totally broken in this game: Twitch, Rengar, Shaco and even Wukong and Kha'Zix to some degree.

Personally, I think they've done a good job with stealth on a few champions: Akali and Talon come to mind.

Their stealth abilities are telegraphed so there is at least some amount of counter-play.

But I agree, the "poof here I am, now you're dead" type of stealth is so frustrating.

An Undead bratAug 22, 20175 votes

Rengar's is now on the Talon and Akali side

martincastillo2Aug 22, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Stealth being used as an engage tool is totally broken in this game: Twitch, Rengar, Shaco and even Wukong and Kha'Zix to some degree.

Personally, I think they've done a good job with stealth on a few champions: Akali and Talon come to mind.

Their stealth abilities are telegraphed so there is at least some amount of counter-play.

But I agree, the "poof here I am, now you're dead" type of stealth is so frustrating.

rengar shouldnt count as stealh cause you can tell he is coming for god damn 4000 units away aka the entire river

zepdrixAug 23, 20171 votes

Oh true :) I haven't played Rengar in ages... forgot how that ability works.

Teridax68Aug 22, 20176 votes

I think the reason stealth feels so bad in League right now is because it's being consistently paired up with upfront burst. Evelynn can unload her entire RQE combo onto you within the first fraction of a second, which is why she's had her burst nerfed so much she plays like a fighter, Rengar can still one-shot players in spite of his rework, and Twitch can deal over a thousand damage within the first second of popping out of stealth. When these champions are fed, there's basically no point in time where their targets can be at all expected to react to them, so dying to them feels completely out of the player's control. In order for these champions to keep their stealth, they need to have their damage gated so hard that it's impossible for them to apply burst levels of damage for at least a second, if not more. Forcing these champions to give their target a chance to escape or fight back once they pop out of stealth would give them significantly more counterplay, and would make their stealth feel much more justified, imo.

MarshbouyAug 22, 20175 votes

Stealth is just a shitty concept in general in PVP video games. 95% of the time it's either too op or useless. You can pop in out of thin air and one shot someone, or you can't walk more than 5 ft without getting detected.

SdarsAug 22, 20174 votes

The only reason stealth feels so bad is that there's too much damage in the game. You're not supposed to take 80% or more of your hp before you even notice you're being attacked, but that's exactly what happens.

Many people ITT are saying stealth isn't fair, but I disagree. It's perfectly fair if done right. The problem isn't stealth, but the game state surrounding it.

If damage were lowered across the board, you'd let everyone have counterplay while still letting the people with hyper sharp reflexes have an edge.

BlåbæretAug 22, 20174 votes

Stealth will never be fair in any game. It's terrible design no matter how you look at it. Even if it's utter garbage it's still ridiculously unfair and frustrating to face.

GreatWhiteNorthAug 22, 20173 votes

Who is upvoting this? Basic map awareness people.

Downvoting.

Imperial JapanAug 22, 20171 votes

People don't like reality - complaining is a lot easier than just learning how to play

The Jackson FiveAug 22, 20174 votes

Those diamond and challenger players banning twitch every game should just learn to play and stop complaining!

Kappa

YfrappefortAug 22, 20173 votes

For me the only "healthy" stealth in this game is Teemo .

He can only use it for surprise attacks since he cannot move without breaking it outside of brush.

It rewards knowing the path of your enemies and patience but can also be punishing if you do it at the wrong moment/place.

Best use of stealth in this game imo.

Big LincolnAug 22, 20172 votes

riot makes it harder to detect stealthed champions

stealthed champions feel less fair to play against

surprise ??????????????

hhaavviikkAug 22, 20172 votes

giving twitch camouflage is pointless really considering his range, it's like making it so rengar his camouflage reveal range is the same as his melee range

WoonStruckAug 22, 20174 votes

Yeah, Twitch TOTALLY can't massively increase his AD, AS, and range all at the same time.

An Undead bratAug 22, 20173 votes

I believe his opinion is the same as yours...

PokladnicaZlaAug 22, 20172 votes

What if make stealth/camouflage a bit transparent/blurry? They can still catch you off-guard,but you can see them coming. This might result in the increase of stealth on some champions,but would overall feel more fair for the opposing party.

One of the major problems of stealth/camouflage is you either don't see them and they catch you off-guard or you see them and they have their ability nullified by an item.

An Undead bratAug 22, 20172 votes

I was thinking about stealth being like permanent Shiver mechanic, but I think it would seriously harm stealth abilities like Vayne's (no problem with me here, but we need to stay objective) and people would face it the same way as they face the current LeBlanc clone: "Did you really fall for that? Lol you must be stupid af"

LeetriAug 22, 20171 votes

They have that in HotS and the issue is that it's so bipolar. In lower ranks it's super OP because no one pays attention and in high ranks it's super useless because they get instantly spotted. It's also affected by hardware, so people playing on toaster mode could have an unfair (dis)advantage depending on if the lower quality makes it harder or easier to spot.

PokladnicaZlaAug 22, 20171 votes

Well,balancing strictly for lower ELO is never a good idea. What if the shimmer/blurr isn't constant,but appears every second second?

Do you have another solution? Stealth in it's curent form doesn't really feel fair,but I do like the concept behind it.

SkeltzAlukardAug 22, 20172 votes

Or when Vayne is 'outplaying' me without orbwalking, just presses r and autos me a few times. Then, when she feels like shes in danger just presses q , rolles away in hidden (idc its a good one) and spams mastery.delete stealth from the game pl0x riot

SleepcomaAug 22, 20172 votes

aoe burst from stealth and 850 range isnt fun to play against I agree

lolipopevelynnAug 22, 20172 votes

Its ironically funny. Out of all the stealth champs eve is probally the easiest to predict despite being perm stealth. The problem is people sre TOO LAZY to ward her camps and pink her gank routes. Then again that would require "teamwork" whatever that is

Votable JesterAug 22, 20172 votes

Even if you ward really well, she can just walk straight down your lane, and there's no way you have pinks surviving long there unless you're already dominating. Sure you can predict her to some extent, but Eve can also use predictions against you by breaking them. Instead of going for wolves, she decides to run down mid and wait a second for a trade to start.

Sire HippingtonAug 22, 20172 votes

The main issue isn't stealth, but giving it to a hgih ranged champ that does by far to much upfront damage. Camouflage theoretically has decent counterplay, it's just that the two main users can mpstly bypass that by haveing more engage range than detection range aswell as high upfront damage so you can't really react. If those champs would need to get into detection range befor attacking, and most of all if they would need some time to kill you after popping up so you do have time to react, then it wouldn't be an as big issue.

Flames99FuseAug 22, 20171 votes

Personally I haven't really had any major issues with stealth in league. Granted I play champs with easy escape/counter mechanics. (Quinn's W, Ashe's E, Bard's Q for example) But also in my opinion, Evelynn and Twitch (the two main stealths I see) are pretty underpowered in a fight and the stealth brings them equal. Rengar's invis hurts, and Teemo's can if you walk close. But there's also a reason why Stealth is detectable from a distance of about ranged AA distance. Not to mention, Control Ward and Red Trinket. If you REALLY want to talk about unfair stealth/invis mechanics in games, go try high level WoW PvP against a rogue. Detection range is just out of melee range and they can stun you for like 4 seconds when they pop.

KyunseiAug 23, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Hexs Fortune,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=5pIzV8jY,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-08-22T03:18:55.543+0000)

Twitch popping out of stealth and getting a free kill on you feels horrible and unfair on the receiving end.

Why support this playstyle?

Twitch stealth mechanic is unhealthy, not stealth in general.

sobi999Aug 23, 20171 votes

Late game twitch 1 AA'd me to death lel

naveenrenoldAug 23, 20171 votes

stealth doesnt feels unbalanced when u are the one playing the stealth champ Shaco .hehe stealth might not be fair but it is balanced by stealth champ having lower dmg or lower something in their kit compared to other champs.

DrugsForRobotsAug 24, 20171 votes

I see a lot of hate for stealth in these comments, and I think it demonstrates the confusion Riot has caused with the way they've talked about stealth since the games inception.

Stealth and invisibility aren't the same thing. Stealth is a mindset and form of gameplay, invisibility is the mechanic. Every champion can engage in stealth gameplay. This is what happens when J4 or Xin waits patiently just out of sight for you to over extend, before dashing out behind terrain. Hiding in a bush and waiting for a foe to facecheck is another example. They are not 'stealth champions' but they were using stealth in the true sense of the word. Most ganks and ambushes are examples of stealthily play, and this is what seperates pros from everyone else. They have the stealth mindset - they play League as tho it were a stealth game, very conscientious of what info they have and give away.

Akali can become invisible on demand, but that ability doesnt necessarily allow stealth gameplay. You know where she is. I could give dozens of examples like this.

I'm convinced that the problems surrounding stealth and invisibility are due to 1) Riot not recognizing and supporting actual stealth gameplay, and 2) Riot not making the rules and mechanics around visibility and invisibility clear.

I could write more on this, but that will come soon enough.