How do you feel about Covert Lethality?

[mrbeefy15]

I just ran Covert Lethality on a max range Excalibur with some nice results. I could stand my own but I think I fell short because of the environmental limit to radial blind and the delay between casts. Which makes perfect sense for balance purposes but I could still one shot ANYTHING. I really enjoyed playing around with it. I can see it not being very practical without some kind of survivability.

I think there are 3 frames that can easily make use of Covert Lethality the best. In no order: Inaros, Wukong, Ivara.

Inaros has a huge health pool, his 1 is a spammable blind and is passive life steal on finisher kills makes use of Covert Lethality.

Wukong has his defy and his 3 to lose agro/stun enemies.

Ivara has stealth and sleep arrows.

It's a weird mod and probably doesn't really belong in this game due to the fast paced nature but whatever. I'm having fun with it. Let me know your thoughts below. Cheers!

[taiiat]

Script Kills don't belong. ever.

[NightBlitz]

12 minutes ago, mrbeefy15 said:

It's a weird mod and probably doesn't really belong in this game due to the fast paced nature but whatever. I'm having fun with it.

well, the same could be said about stealth in general, if you really wanted to go there, as it tends to be a lot slower than the most commonly used method - AOE spamming the enemies to no end

[Beggining]

You forgot the lovely yet dangerous Equinox ;)

Edited August 31, 2016 by Beggining
'Danggerous' XD Should've said 'daggerous', huh?

[DiabolusUrsus]

Out of all the cheese in the game that needs to be gone after, Covert Lethality cheese is pretty low on my list... precisely because it doesn't fit with the most popular gameplay out there. It's very situational, and fairly uncommon to come across.

Need to be fixed? Sure. There are just tons of other things that also need fixing.

[Dreddeth]

Covert Lethality's finisher damage ability seems to me like it should just be a feature of daggers period, which otherwise have the lowest finisher multiplier of any melee weapon. Their other stats are frankly, meh at best, so Covert Lethality is pretty much the only reason to bring a dagger over any other melee weapon. Thus, it's basically a band-aid mod trying to fill in/overcompensate for a proper rules patch, similar to Body Count and Pressure Point, and it's honestly about as mandatory on a dagger as either of those is on any other melee weapon.

[Airwolfen]

Personally I love it and would NEVER run daggers if the mod did not exist.

[LunarEdge7]

I haven't done enough testing yet, but if this mod can finisher-kill enemies that're lvl 9999, that's.. imo, not balanced. I know, finisher kills are slow but they can be made to be swift and fast. And it's like if you need a sure-kill OHKO melee weapon, this is the go-to. Cuz' its finisher dmg just doesn't fall off.

But there are other things that need more balancing, as stated by another person here. Such as SS + Mirage.

[Kripion]

33 minutes ago, mrbeefy15 said:

I just ran Covert Lethality on a max range Excalibur with some nice results. I could stand my own but I think I fell short because of the environmental limit to radial blind and the delay between casts. Which makes perfect sense for balance purposes but I could still one shot ANYTHING. I really enjoyed playing around with it. I can see it not being very practical without some kind of survivability.

I think there are 3 frames that can easily make use of Covert Lethality the best. In no order: Inaros, Wukong, Ivara.

Inaros has a huge health pool, his 1 is a spammable blind and is passive life steal on finisher kills makes use of Covert Lethality.

Wukong has his defy and his 3 to lose agro/stun enemies.

Ivara has stealth and sleep arrows.

It's a weird mod and probably doesn't really belong in this game due to the fast paced nature but whatever. I'm having fun with it. Let me know your thoughts below. Cheers!

You forgot about ASH with teleport and auto-finsher mod:))

 

Anyway its one of the best mods diversity wise. I only wish it woul be equipable also on dual daggers....  I would use Fang Prime forever:)

Edited August 31, 2016 by Kripion

[LABAL]

I think it's a good break from fast-paced experience, greatly rewarding patience and cold calculation.
It has the capacity to instantly take down most enemies, but doesn't affect bosses and special units, so it's not game-breaking.
There are far more powerful weapons like Simulor and Tonkor, which could take out crowds instanty.
This is but a single-target, slow attack that is guaranteed to kill a single target.

Keep in mind that finishers on already alerted enemies don't trigger the instant kill. Only the 100% damage bonus, unexpected attack, armor ignore and regular finisher multiplier are taken into account, doubled as the dagger animation has two strikes. It's usually enough to kill most enemies on 1st or 2nd attack, maintaining the illusion that it always triggers an instant kill, which is not the case, really. It's just powerful.
Yes, that's a whole load of different mechanics stacked together. That's why I love it so much.
 

Edited August 31, 2016 by LABAL

[mrbeefy15]

I just tried a max range Equinox build and it's actually dumb. Spam sleep and just kill everything. It's so easy that's it's not fun for anyone on your team including you. Unless you're into that. There's a falling asleep during sex joke in there somewhere.

[Azrael]

23 minutes ago, LABAL said:

Keep in mind that finishers on already alerted enemies don't trigger the instant kill. Only the 100% damage bonus, unexpected attack, armor ignore and regular finisher multiplier are taken into account, doubled as the dagger animation has two strikes. It's usually enough to kill most enemies on 1st or 2nd attack, maintaining the illusion that it always triggers an instant kill, which is not the case, really. It's just powerful.

Uh... are you talking about finisher kills in general? Because this thread is about Covert Lethality, which is a guaranteed kill on any enemy that qualifies (meaning bosses don't). There's no "two attacks to kill." And any non-ground finisher triggers it, if you blind an enemy or otherwise open it to finishers (ash's teleport, for example) then you can trigger the guaranteed kill.

[p3z1]

Covert Lethality is a Bandaid mod that has no place in the game.

I mean look at the mod: +100 damage base and OHKO on finishers.

Daggers aren't supposed to be used in the open, they're supposed to be "kill quick and clean." (No, Assassin's Creed doesn't count).

FFS, just remove the mod and apply the OHKO finisher on all daggers, maybe dual daggers as well. The +100 base damage is to justify the mod's existence, and shouldn't really be a thing for daggers.

Edited August 31, 2016 by p3z1

[Azrael]

56 minutes ago, taiiat said:

Script Kills don't belong. ever.

This. CL isn't a big deal, because not many use it, but it is stupidly unbalanced and I hate it. It kinda takes away the cool feeling you get when you kill a really crazy high-level enemy when you realize that a dagger would have trivialized that kill...

[LunarEdge7]

Just now, p3z1 said:

Daggers aren't supposed to be used in the open, they're supposed to be "kill quick and clean." (No, Assassin's Creed doesn't count).

Well but the way some stun abilties work, they'll still be used in the open sadly..

[p3z1]

Just now, LunarEdge7 said:

Well but the way some stun abilties work, they'll still be used in the open sadly..

Maybe chuck in a code or few, enemies shouldn't be alerted (IIRC most stuns you mean don't change their alertness status, just blinded and open to finishers).

Yes, I've seen unalerted enemies kill stealth multipliers if not using a stealth finisher on them, so it is definitely possible.

[LunarEdge7]

Just now, p3z1 said:

Maybe chuck in a code or few, enemies shouldn't be alerted (IIRC most stuns you mean don't change their alertness status, just blinded and open to finishers).

Yes, I've seen unalerted enemies kill stealth multipliers if not using a stealth finisher on them, so it is definitely possible.

Agreed.

[Ceryk]

59 minutes ago, Dreddeth said:

Covert Lethality's finisher damage ability seems to me like it should just be a feature of daggers period, which otherwise have the lowest finisher multiplier of any melee weapon. Their other stats are frankly, meh at best, so Covert Lethality is pretty much the only reason to bring a dagger over any other melee weapon. Thus, it's basically a band-aid mod trying to fill in/overcompensate for a proper rules patch, similar to Body Count and Pressure Point, and it's honestly about as mandatory on a dagger as either of those is on any other melee weapon.

That's how I feel about it. I think the mod needs to be removed and daggers made faster and have innate finisher kills.

I really think melee weapons need to have specific functions and play styles instead of basically being the exact same weapon with a different animation, which is exactly what we have right now.

[LunarEdge7]

Just now, Ceryk said:

That's how I feel about it. I think the mod needs to be removed and daggers made faster and have innate finisher kills.

I really think melee weapons need to have specific functions and play styles instead of basically being the exact same weapon with a different animation, which is exactly what we have right now.

Don't forget attack speed, heavy weapons being generally slower etc.

Edited August 31, 2016 by LunarEdge7

[GinKenshin]

1 minute ago, LunarEdge7 said:

Don't forget attack speed, heavy weapons being generally slower etc.

Imo, heavy weapons are the fastest weapons in game. The lowest crit chance is like what? 20%? 

 

So much for 'heavy'.....

[Ghost_1302]

It should work on dual daggers.

[motorfirebox]

CL is frustrating to me because so few people realize that the +100 damage makes it the very first mod you should put on a dagger. Before Pressure Point, before even Primed Pressure Point, you should have CL.

The script kill is whatever. I like that it makes daggers viable for stealth, but I hate that it has to exist for daggers to be viable for stealth. The stealth kill damage multipliers on weapons are mind-blowingly, ridiculously, unfathomably dumb. A giant hammer should not have a higher stealth kill mutiplier than a weapon that was essentially designed for sneaky stabbing.

[cx-dave]

It should work on the Tonkor.

[Rioma]

I never used single daggers before covert lethality. Now I bring it sometimes with a select few frames. It is overpowered but the speed of the game is greatly reduced if you want to take advantage of it. So I don't really feel it needs to be nerfed. The second covert lethality is nerfed I simply wont use single daggers anymore.

[LABAL]

45 minutes ago, Lord_Azrael said:

Uh... are you talking about finisher kills in general? Because this thread is about Covert Lethality, which is a guaranteed kill on any enemy that qualifies (meaning bosses don't). There's no "two attacks to kill." And any non-ground finisher triggers it, if you blind an enemy or otherwise open it to finishers (ash's teleport, for example) then you can trigger the guaranteed kill.

See, that is the very example of that common misconception. It doesn't trigger an instant kill when the enemy was alerted before being opened to finisher. It still deals a huge amount of finisher damage, but some enemies could survive that.