Ivara/warframe Stealth Tips

[(PSN)Alphonso-Alonso]

LONG post ahead.

So for the longest time I relied heavily on A Loki Invisibility Duration build to get me through spy missions when I absolutely had to do them. With the Second Dream and Sortie system implemented in U18 Spy missions were put into prominence more than ever. Now I feel it's come time to take them a little more seriously with a proper stealth frame. Seeing Ivara, I was immediately sold due to her number of utility abilities and overall Archer Motif she possesses. Indeed, I've had a lot of fun just running Ceres and T3 missions confusing enemies or manipulating them to lethal results. With Spy missions, however... That's another story...  

Lately I've been running into the same few problems with her and I wanted to ask you guys for tips or suggestions about what you do in these situations or if these situations can be mitigated at all. I am not saying she needs to be reworked or nerfs need to come into play, I'm completely accepting that this failing is my own, I just want some insight to know what it is I should be doing instead.

 

So, here are three common scenario I've been encountering.

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1) Her Utility Powers are invaluable- yet they are expensive when used together  in tandem (even with efficiency mods). So many tips I've seen feature how useful it is to employ her Navigator ability like a scouting drone to see into a room and map out your path. Another tip I've read is to use her prowl ability and then fire off a dashwire to scale diagonally to a perch since prowl doesn't allow you to bullet jump or slide. Another tip is to plant an explosive of some sort and then use a noise arrow to control the flow of enemy traffic to a centralized location and either blow them up or otherwise keep them occupied in one general area. These are all great ideas but my God are they expensive to an impractical level. How do you guys go about your approach when entering say a Spy Sortie?

 

It wouldn't be so bad if I knew for a fact what the layout of the map was or how far away I was in relation to the vault but there is so much second guessing as to whether I want to blow 50+ energy on controlling the enemies in this particular room or to risk it and run ahead blindly to the room THAT MIGHT count. Sure, I could do the Naviigator trick to survey the room ahead but that will easily blow through a good portion of my energy depending on how big the room is. The logical answer is to just hold off on powers until you get to the vault but there are layouts of the maps themselves where you are at a choke point and enemies just casually hang out near a door with their buddies chatting. At that point I have to use a noise arrow and draw them away OR use prowl. Which brings me to the next topic;

 

2) Prowl makes me feel so claustrophobic I would rather sneak without it. I can't bullet jump to a safe spot, I can't slide, my energy is ticking down even with as many efficiency mods as I can pack without hurting myself, it just feels impractical to ever rely on it. Even with Link-rolling it just feels like I have just enough time to get behind enemy lines and then poof into visibility just as a guy is turning a corner out of the klaxxon/security/puppy-puncher department of the ship. 

I get that prowl isn't meant to be a shroud of safe travel like Loki's invisibility is, but to pop a power just for a few window of snail-like concealed movement seems like a bad idea in a spy scenario surrounded by hostiles that are on a hair-trigger, especially when I still have 2 whole vaults ahead of me. This is definitely just me personally since I know it has farming capabilities and a headshot modifier but whenever I toggle prowl you might as well be playing the Sonic The Hedgehog "Drowning" theme. I get that tense o_o. 

3) Enemy AI is Legion. This is more of a common challenge in general rather than a gripe but even after dropping 2-3 power pads to max out 500+ energy, there's almost always a straggler (even with noise arrows) and while I can catch them on my radar sometimes, other times they are just  on the other side of a motion-sensing door that I must walk in front of in order to open. As soon as he sees me- EVERYONE SEES ME. 

 

This is a long-running facet of the game and I'm sure lore or thought-canon can explain it away, that isn't my concern, my concern is what are some contingencies here? A sleep arrow is fine for people in the immediate vicinity (14 meter radius for me) but then there are people in run in afterward. If I spam these arrows and my energy is gone, If I use prowl the energy starts trickling away while moving like a magnetized snail and I can't clear a possible line of sight with enemies long enough to find a safe place to let my energy rest. Of course Noise arrows aren't effective once they are alerted. There's Artemis Bow but at that point I'm no longer stealthing the mission I'm brute-forcing it with a magic bow. Are there really any escape tactics? Of course the logical answer is "don't get caught git gude" which is sound advice but leaves a little left to be desired.
 

Overall, I can get through spy missions with a success using her but I feel as though I'm failing upward and screwing up in places that shouldn't be that difficult for a Stealth frame to contend with. I've tried running without using her powers but after awhile it felt as though I could be using any frame for that type of gameplay so that's why I'm here now.

 

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Okay so that's me. I love Ivara and have found many uses for her as a supportive combatant but I just want to figure out how to use her as a stealth character. So often when I've tried to look up tips for playing her, the hardcore stealth Tenno give vaguely passive aggressive answers about personal intelligence but I'm just not getting it :\. If it really is that simple then what am I missing?

[Patemaani]

Before reading the post I'd have just say just learn the vaults and their hidden routes for fast data extracts since only vault alerts count for mission fail and there is alert panels at start of each vault to turn general alarm off.

 

General mission stealthing you'll want to take advantage of third person view, namely you can open the doors without being in line of vision and check in room before going in. The hive style AI is bothersome for most time and you'll need to be careful on your chosen route, usually more "hidden" routes being more adviseable.

 

 Ivara specific, remember that duration also affects energy drain of toggleable abilities namely Prowl and Navigator so you'll want balance of Duration and Efficiency for using those abilities often. You can use prowl to go through doors unnoticed most times and the Quivers Cloak bubble with balanced efficiency build can allow you to make bubbles for you to bullet jump to the more annoying to reach areas with invisibility. Also don't forget that you have access to Sleep arrows that you can use to neutralize the annoying packs at doors alternative to prowling.

 

Another option is to cycle your quiver arrows with Artemis Bow out using alt fire to shoot them out using cloak arrows to have small bubble of peace, Sleep arrow to neutralize pesky packs after directing them to tighter pack with Noise arrow and using Dashwires to go over the pits in prowl without bullet jumping if you want to.

 

Then Prowl movement options, Sprint, sliding and bullet jumping being out, you'll need to get creative if you want to stay in prowl and move fast, personal go to movement for prowl is double jump, glide roll or jump evade jump. you can use dashwire arrows on flat ground to hop on and off to gain some speed but it is more energy intensive.

 

 

My current no forma build in spoiler. Possibly swapping primed flow to something else since I already have 0.25 energy per second drain on prowl.

[Kalvorax]

well, in terms of energy you have to build for both Efficiency *initial cost* AND duration for toggled abilities. (not to mention all of Ivara's abilities but the bow and zipline are dependent on duration anyways).

 

It does take time getting used to Ivara, but once you do, she is great for a ton of things. Yes, she cant move like a speeding bullet while cloaked...but that isnt the point of her in the first place. Your meant to take your time with her and get to strategic locations without being seen.

 

Horde of enemies? build for range, efficiency and duration and use noise + sleep arrows. gets them clustered and then out of the way for quite a bit of time...especially when they dont know your even there. Yes, you wont be dealing much damage with artemis's bow, (iirc its also affected by primary weapon mods), but Ivara will shine in literally everything else.

 

Ivara also has the highest energy of a non-prime frame to date (a Base of 175). iirc with a primed flow at max its 723 (give or take a few) energy...and around 526 or so with a normal flow..which is a TON for for her. Add in energy siphon and Energy overload from the Zanurik focus tree and your good to go for along time, throw down a large and a medium energy pod at the start of the round and your good to go.

 

one thing about her prowl. Roll is your friend with Ivara, you can move really quickly once you get the hang of her movement.

Edited January 17, 2016 by xcynderx

[jonnin]

Its not really that complicated.  You are making it hard.   Lets ignore the fact that you trade speed for perma invis -- if that is getting you down, its the wrong frame.

 

1)  Not really.   You either have a utility build or you have a prowl build.  Prowl works best with duration/eff but does not need power str and range and so on.  So my prowl build has .25 power / sec cost and shes got master thief and such installed -- solo build.   If you want to use her #1 a lot, you can.  What you do is rank up zen school, and youll recover power faster than you can burn it even if you place nonstop invis-bubbles AND some sleeps AND some tripwires AND use #4 on top of it all.   But you can absolutely chain the invis bubbles and stay at max power if your duration is any good and you have at least 3 power/sec regen.  Go where you want to be, bubble, kill everything, move on. 

 

2) again, you accept this tradeoff, or you don't.   Rolling all the time gets old, for sure.   Invisibility chains as I said above can make up for it, but youll never prowl 100%  AND have speed too.

 

3) this just takes practice.   Shoot the guy that is in the back of the group, and the rest happily are not alerted.   Shoot them when they can't see each other,  no problem.   If they are next to each other, don't do a finisher move, do a broad swing that kills all 3.  If shooting, be more patient or swap to your .. gasp ... silent spreadfire bow #4.    The only issue I have with this one anymore is that no matter what you do, faction weapons' aoe bombs break your 500% affinity bonus.   This gets old when its every 3rd shot.   However the RV secondary restores power...  so there are times (mission start, for example) when you just give up your affinity/focus bonus to fill your power bar.  Then its happy hunting time.

 

What you are missing is perma stealth melee chopping -- you can wade thru high level enemy killing them by the scores with damage bonus / finishers on the high armor guys and being a blender on the rest.  You are missing double focus (melee and frame lens) with stealth kill bonuses.   You are missing the moving bubble approach if you want a utility build which again needs a power source but that is covered in any of many ways (trin, power pickups,  RV weapon,  power restores, digging dog, zen school , ...)

Edited January 17, 2016 by jonnin

[AnonymousArmadillo]

1. you don't have to engage the enemies in the level, except maybe those at the vault door and some in the vault. If you keep moving you can avoid most damage. Don't worry about the alarm while you're not in the vault. As soon as you've hacked the vault door any ongoing alarm will be turned off and the rest of the level will revert to an unalerted state. If you're unfamiliar with the spy vault layouts then I can only suggest looking around. Every vault has multiple ways to get to the console. Some paths have a lot of enemies, some paths have few.

 

2. Prowl took me a while to get used too (I love all the things that prowl hates) but it is worth it. If you can ensure that you're not under fire when going invisible you're fine. The drain (when not moving) is incredibly low. It's great for sneaking into a room and slowly observing things. If you need some speed for whatever reason then you can use a Dashwire arrow. You can sprint on them while prowling without it breaking.

 

3. Enemy AI is also stupid. the dashwire arrow allowes you to traverse tons of new paths that the AI won't notice (and even if they would notice you can just prowl sprint on it). The AI will often not look up so you can just hover above them and they won't notice.

[(PSN)Alphonso-Alonso]

Before reading the post I'd have just say just learn the vaults and their hidden routes for fast data extracts since only vault alerts count for mission fail and there is alert panels at start of each vault to turn general alarm off.

 

General mission stealthing you'll want to take advantage of third person view, namely you can open the doors without being in line of vision and check in room before going in. The hive style AI is bothersome for most time and you'll need to be careful on your chosen route, usually more "hidden" routes being more adviseable.

 

 Ivara specific, remember that duration also affects energy drain of toggleable abilities namely Prowl and Navigator so you'll want balance of Duration and Efficiency for using those abilities often. You can use prowl to go through doors unnoticed most times and the Quivers Cloak bubble with balanced efficiency build can allow you to make bubbles for you to bullet jump to the more annoying to reach areas with invisibility. Also don't forget that you have access to Sleep arrows that you can use to neutralize the annoying packs at doors alternative to prowling.

 

Another option is to cycle your quiver arrows with Artemis Bow out using alt fire to shoot them out using cloak arrows to have small bubble of peace, Sleep arrow to neutralize pesky packs after directing them to tighter pack with Noise arrow and using Dashwires to go over the pits in prowl without bullet jumping if you want to.

 

Then Prowl movement options, Sprint, sliding and bullet jumping being out, you'll need to get creative if you want to stay in prowl and move fast, personal go to movement for prowl is double jump, glide roll or jump evade jump. you can use dashwire arrows on flat ground to hop on and off to gain some speed but it is more energy intensive.

 

 

My current no forma build in spoiler. Possibly swapping primed flow to something else since I already have 0.25 energy per second drain on prowl.

 

Thanks, I wasn't aware of the Artemis bow trick or how the alert systems worked in Spy. Also, inventive idea with the cloaking arrow for loitering rather than popping prowl and watching energy slip away. This helped quite a bit, I appreciate the time and detail you took to respond :D.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

Feel free to mention any particular vault you have trouble with and I will try and help. Every single one has alternate routes that avoid most enemies. Since Spy seems to be tricky for you, I suggest practicing without a stealth frame until you can do them easily and then Ivara will make it an absolute cake walk using Sleep arrows in particular.

Edited January 18, 2016 by Zilchy