Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Freeze Cooldowns when in Sneak/Invis

It makes the game too easy. Maybe this suggestion is a bit extreme. I'd like to hear what others have to think.

I was about to open my own topic regarding current stealth
(just finished the demo with a single lvl 5 toon exploiting stealth).

I think the problem is the poor AI towards sneaking/ invis.

AI obviously freezes upon being invisible. Only performing basic actions such as buff yourself, or move out of unfavourable ground.

I hope this is only an alpha bug D:

if the AI would simply turn towards your last seen position or attempt to chase then random search, things would be much, much harder already.

Contaminate etc are such great stealth counters - yet AI never uses it if you are hidden. This clearly needs change and I'm quite optimistic it will be adressed eventually.

additinally during party play - for the upcoming content I believe a "hunter Ai", that specifically tries to destealth, hunt and kill those who try to hide would be a reasonable addition to some enemies

Exactly. If the AI can "look" for you then the situation is different. My suggestion with the cooldowns is the least work of all for the devs, I think. Hopefully in they can just address this with an AI revamp. There's a relatively new thread regarding AI variance which you'll probably find interesting. Cheers.

I don't think this is necessary at all.

If the goal is to prevent people from sneak-attacking and then escaping, and returning, that could be solved by having health and armor of the enemies fully restored if all players have left combat. That's a much better fix.

I also don't really care much of other people ruin their own experience of the game by abusing sneak-escape to try to solo it. If they want to bore themselves out of their mind, it's not my problem.

This fix is so obvious, and irrelevant to sneak. It should have always been like that.



It's not about your subjective opinion of how people should and should play or enjoy themselves, it's an objective analysis of how to improve the game.

Your "fix" would also punish players who are not trying to exploit the game and are just playing normally. That is why I do not agree with it.

Your fix is better.

Normally you don't abuse sneakattack escape to damage but to kill. Armor will be automatically replenished anyway, not? But if you kill someone he will stay dead anyway.

Currently, if you manage to enter sneak during combat, armor is replenished only if the AI decides to cast a spell like Fortify. Armor will only regenerate upon leaving combat, but health will not.

I don't understand why the devs didn't make it so that health regenerates as well. Stabbey's fix is simple and obvious, but like you said: "If you kill someone they will stay dead".

I don't care if it's "boring" or "cheese". I should not be able to use sneak and marksman's fang (or another piercing attack) to deal free damage out of combat, and only enter combat for the final blow to earn the XP. This is a simple flaw that can be addressed with Stabbey's suggestion of regenerating health if the entire party is out of combat. It shouldn't be difficult to program, either.

It's true that freezing cooldowns while sneak/invis is punishing...but I wonder how punishing it is exactly, especially in a party of 4, where if you're playing a squishy melee you are constantly getting buffed and healed.
Also, I just realized, any kind of targetting should break invis. Maybe that is the real fix. It only makes sense that your position is revealed if you are targetted by a spell.

Something else I've been thinking is that maybe combat sneak should only be available to characters with points into Scoundrel. It might work like this:

if Current level + Scoundrel level >= Enemy level, then sneak is possible during combat.

We were talking about replenishing the armor if you leave the fight.

But I guess you could make, that the combat ends, if enemies don't see any possible target anymore.


At current any kind of skill used on you will break sneaking and even invis, even something like Encourage used in range. Only a few skills won't break invis.

TBH this "out of nothing" HP restoration is also off. But it should be possible for the AI to counter it, for example to use heal spells on allies in the meantime.
Also it otherwise creates an imbalance between damaging and killing. As dead npcs stay dead, as already said. Not to mention the consistency of it...
So instead of the ooc game function I'd make it an AI feature and design entities accordingly.

Also, imho, the flee mechanic should be removed entirely and instead maybe the auto combat exit distance somewhat reduced. So you would actually have to REALLY flee if you want to do so, not just smashing a button...
Add in a better search routine (or one at all) for enemies and sneaking/invis would be quite a bit less op.

Let's not make rogues more garbage again thanks

I don't feel like this problem is even rogue-specific. It's super cheese that any character who presses "C" behind an enemy can cause them all to sit still and pass their turn, and a minor 1-point investment in either Polymorph or Scoundrel allows anyone an invisibility skill.

I like the idea of enemies searching around for the stealthed person if no visible targets are available. This sounds like most of the fix right there. Although, I have seen enemies smart enough to grenade and Phoenix Dive stealthed and invisible units, but no attempts at moving towards the area otherwise.

For bonus points, I'd like AI to search for stealth/invisible targets even if other less-desirable targets are available. For example, If I've nearly killed a healer who suddenly disappears, and all I can see is the tank, I may just toss a grenade or search the last location of the near-dead healer before swapping.

Also, I'm pretty sure Armor and Magic Armor are already fully replenished on enemies after a few seconds out of combat.

As for the original suggestion of freezing cooldowns, that seems like it would infringe too much on legitimate stealth use. A more-targeted fix is necessary.

It feels good to know I'm not the only one who doesn't see this as a rogue-specific thing. Balancing rogues is a problem in its own right. The AI is just too poor in dealing with sneak. I made this thread about the cooldowns because I thought it would get attention and get people talking about this problem, but I think it would be MUCH less work for the devs to take my suggestion vs. revamping the AI, which I totally agree should be the main fix to this problem.

Still, I want some opinions about how much of a punishment freezing the cooldowns is REALLY. If you're playing Rogue doesn't most of your damage come from regular attacks anyway? The way I see invis, there is this HUGE advantage that no one seems to really value which is the ability to REPOSITION. This is a HUGE advantage in my opinion. Also, people would actually have to think about the best time to use invis in relation to their other cooldowns.

It punishes playing in a regular manner, not just so-called exploiting. That is all it takes to be a bad idea to implement.