Is Stealth Melee Focus Farming a thing of the past?

[ArbitUHM]

I've come back after a few months break and I seem to have recalled that getting a 5x affinity multiplier from stealth kills was a good way to farm focus. However, it seems like the stealth system has been made a lot more finicky or I just suck really bad because I can't maintain a 5x multiplier for any length of time using Loki and a Primed Reach Secura Lecta. I'm picking missions that allow me to one-shot everything but still no dice. Annoyingly, it seems like any time there is a tightly packed group of enemies I lose the modifier, because even if I kill them all in a single swing it seems that they get alerted by the sound of the first one dying, even though they all die in like a tenth of a second.

[FLSH_BNG]

Stealth is a bit more difficult now because the AI now notices dead bodies and death screams/squelches within a certain proximity.

You can really only kill isolated targets or sleeping ones if you want to maintain any stealth combos.

Ash's Blade Storm changes are really helpful in this now because they disintegrate targets when killed leaving no identifiable body behind... actually the only real reason I went back to playing with him at all.

[Raven_Makoto]

Bring Equinox to the mission, send everyone to sleep in her Night form, and melee away.

Or bring Ivara and shoot a ton of Sleep arrows at them.

Edited December 13, 2016 by Raven_Makoto

[ArbitUHM]

 

56 minutes ago, Raven_Makoto said:

Bring Equinox to the mission, send everyone to sleep in her Night form, and melee away.

Or bring Ivara and shoot a ton of Sleep arrows at them.

I'm farming up the nitain to build Ivara now, so that's good.

Are there any other powers that reduce enemy awareness like Equinox and Ivara's sleep abilities? 

34 minutes ago, FLSH_BNG said:

Stealth is a bit more difficult now because the AI now notices dead bodies and death screams/squelches within a certain proximity.

You can really only kill isolated targets or sleeping ones if you want to maintain any stealth combos.

Ash's Blade Storm changes are really helpful in this now because they disintegrate targets when killed leaving no identifiable body behind... actually the only real reason I went back to playing with him at all.

Will Blade Storm kills still cause death screams and break stealth combos though?

Also I feel that "stealth is a bit more difficult" is a bit of an understatement ;)

Edited December 13, 2016 by ArbitUHM

[(XBOX)Oussii]

2 hours ago, ArbitUHM said:

I've come back after a few months break and I seem to have recalled that getting a 5x affinity multiplier from stealth kills was a good way to farm focus. However, it seems like the stealth system has been made a lot more finicky or I just suck really bad because I can't maintain a 5x multiplier for any length of time using Loki and a Primed Reach Secura Lecta. I'm picking missions that allow me to one-shot everything but still no dice. Annoyingly, it seems like any time there is a tightly packed group of enemies I lose the modifier, because even if I kill them all in a single swing it seems that they get alerted by the sound of the first one dying, even though they all die in like a tenth of a second.

Yes it is (at least for me)

This is what i do to get my 100K daily

I go a hydron (Eris) defense mission of 20 wave (full squad), you will have not less than 40 to 50k

If the sortie has a defense or survival, i finish the cap there, or else, i repeat hydron

Be sure to pick up the marker at the beginning of the wave and not in the middle or towards the end of a wave so you can benefit from the full time.

[Cortanis]

4 hours ago, ArbitUHM said:

Also I feel that "stealth is a bit more difficult" is a bit of an understatement ;)

Very. This was basically done because DE got butthurt once again about people power leveling things in no time flat. Well... that's not quite accurate. That is one part of it and the fact that the enemy ai has been rather... impossibly dumb... for some time now. They finally decided to actually do something about it though. Here's the thing though. I still use stealth to level things and it's not all together impossible or anything to maintain that 5x multiplier. Yes, Ivara makes this easy. However, it's more of an issue of strategy more so than anything in this. You need to actually look at the pathings and possible sightings to know where to kill things and when. You'll also need to learn to leave alerted targets alone until they drop off again and go back to being dumb. Try also bringing a super high status melee to the mission and equip a status that will get rid of the body.

[Zendadaist]

Yeah the Stealth changes have hurt melee stealth affinity farming pretty badly. I used to roll Loki and stealth my way through an exterm or two scanning for simaris daily cap and then executing with melee for affinity or focus. Corrosive procs dissolving the body are purely a visual effect, other mobs will still 'see' it until the regular corpse despawn timer. Good luck predicting the mob pathing when they randomly stop and spin round in circles. Now I get better stealth multiplier kills out of a silenced Tonkor/Zarr etc. It's completely stupid. Ivara sleep arrow master race I guess.

[ArbitUHM]

11 hours ago, Cortanis said:

Very. This was basically done because DE got butthurt once again about people power leveling things in no time flat. Well... that's not quite accurate. That is one part of it and the fact that the enemy ai has been rather... impossibly dumb... for some time now. They finally decided to actually do something about it though. Here's the thing though. I still use stealth to level things and it's not all together impossible or anything to maintain that 5x multiplier. Yes, Ivara makes this easy. However, it's more of an issue of strategy more so than anything in this. You need to actually look at the pathings and possible sightings to know where to kill things and when. You'll also need to learn to leave alerted targets alone until they drop off again and go back to being dumb. Try also bringing a super high status melee to the mission and equip a status that will get rid of the body.

I've tried playing tactically and it's not really working. If there are a handful of enemies in a room I can make it happen with some planning and time. If there is a cluster of five or more enemies, or drahk master with a whole bunch of puppies, etc. then I pretty much throw up my hands and just rebuild my modifier after killing them.

I understand that enemies used to be ludicrously stupid (like they wouldn't notice the bodies of their comrades sailing right past their faces) but now they need to take a look at some stuff and push it back towards ease of use for the player. Like for instance, adding some sort of short countdown timer before they get alerted. It's pretty dumb that I can fire a burst from my Tiberon and because the first bullet doesn't kill the target, he is alerted for like the two milliseconds it takes for the second bullet to hit and kill him and I lose my stealth modifier.

[ashrah]

u can with ivara but u must setup u use sound arrow to first group enemies then sleep them and kill

[Callback]

7 hours ago, Zendadaist said:

Yeah the Stealth changes have hurt melee stealth affinity farming pretty badly. I used to roll Loki and stealth my way through an exterm or two scanning for simaris daily cap and then executing with melee for affinity or focus. Corrosive procs dissolving the body are purely a visual effect, other mobs will still 'see' it until the regular corpse despawn timer. Good luck predicting the mob pathing when they randomly stop and spin round in circles. Now I get better stealth multiplier kills out of a silenced Tonkor/Zarr etc. It's completely stupid. Ivara sleep arrow master race I guess.

Sleeping allies still "see" the dead bodies of their allies.  Your combo dies no matter what you do.

 

DE just wants us all to hop into Berehynia and spam 1 on a Saryn all day.