Is Prisma Shade as broken as original Shade

[Hayrack]

Baro Ki'teer is offering Prisma Shade this weeked. I'm leveling an original one currently and boy it's cloak ability is useless... It appears like cloak is being applied at random, without following any consistent conditions. Should I waste 500 ducats and 2 companion inventory slots for it now, or should I waste them later?

[Nok-Rntha]

That's an intentional mechanic and has always been unreliable. Hence why no use uses any variant of Shade.

[Sevek7]

13 minutes ago, Hayrack said:

Baro Ki'teer is offering Prisma Shade this weeked. I'm leveling an original one currently and boy it's cloak ability is useless... It appears like cloak is being applied at random, without following any consistent conditions. Should I waste 500 ducats and 2 companion inventory slots for it now, or should I waste them later?

I'm not an expert on the shade sentinels, but I used them for a while so I can tell you how I understand them and how I feel they work best.

Firstly, the Prisma Shade works exactly the same way as the regular shade. The only difference is a slight change of base stats (armor, health, etc...). 

Here's the deal: Shade cloaks you, but only if you're not attacking enemies (and also only if enemies are nearby)! So if you're constantly fighting you will have no cloaking. This is of course pretty bad in the vast majority of the game since we're almost always fighting, but it does help for some things. For example, shade can help when hacking consoles or reviving other players, providing you cloaking while you do so [as long as enemies are nearby]. For this reason, Shade was pretty popular until they added operators, since operator can get free cloaking & invulnerability at the same time [operator is OP!].

So, as far as I can tell, the only reason to get Prisma Shade is for the mastery points. Keep in mind it also comes with a new sentinel weapon, the Prisma Burst Laser. Check out its stats and see if you like it, personally I'll stick with the Cryotra.

[McCIoud]

Level normal shade and it's weapon, scrap them, get Prisma shade and it's weapon, ez pz

[Dauggie]

you'll have to eventually get it for mastery. better to have it while you can than wait for it to show up on baro again which has no proper order

[RobWasHere]

Mastery, but Prisma Burst Laser is good till you get Cryotra or Helstrum.
Shade is so outdated, it was somewhat useful back in the past when we couldnt turn off alarms. Now only fuction it can do is to cloak you when hacking/reviving or that small damage buff with Simaris Ambush mod.

Cloak works based on enemy proximity and is dispelled on you attacking.

[Butterfly85]

Yeah, the cloak is wonky and situational anyway, and reliant on your sentinel actually using their precepts in priority order (from top left to bottom right of your mod slots).

[kyori]

If you care about the mastery points then get prisma version, else you can don't bother.

[baked]

as others ahve said this is "normal" behaviour for shade and happens regardless of model

and also as others have said, prisma burst laser is pretty nice for status procs on your sentinel until you can get better options from fortuna

[Khrel]

in short: to copy your title... yes its broken like the orignal shade... since its uses the same mod :)

[CephalonCarnage]

6 hours ago, Sevek7 said:

Shade cloaks you, but only if you're not attacking enemies

or running. It doesn't trigger fast enough (or they notice you coming) and by the time the invis kicks in, they're already shooting at you.

At least that's my experience. with the useless thing. My kubrow was better at the invisibility thing, though I often had to wait for it to stop licking itself to trigger the invisibility. I feel the problem is the range - you have to get within 10m or so of the enemy for it to trigger, and frankly, by the time you're that close, there's no longer any need for invisibility.