Quick question about armored stealth. I have an ambushing ohe/shield rogue. Was planning on going for at least MBP and training armored stealth. Looking at the equation for the skill, it would provide zero benefit to stealth rolls if in AG5 (5-5=0!). Am I interpreting that correctly or is there still some benefit? Any other ambushers wear mbp or higher that can comment on the effectiveness of hiding in heavier armors (with or without armored stealth)? I'm just 2x in hiding so maybe need to bump that up a bit if necessary.

Thanks for the help.

While armor stealth does help you don't need it and you are reading that correctly, in MBP you'd see 0 benefit from it. 2x hiding is fine against most things but more is always better and somethings you just won't really be able to hide against. Using the hide verb there is no penalty for wearing heavy armor, however, if you plan to you vanish you are better off in lighter armor as there is a penalty associated with wearing more then robes.

Per the documentation:
Description: You immediately attempt to hide without roundtime (RT). This hasty attempt comes with a penalty to the hide check of 10*(3 - Ranks) + 15*(Armor Group - 1).

Thanks for the replies. Think I'll continue to train for full plate. Have dropped the stealth and will pick up evasion instead. Glad to know 2x hiding is sufficient for the heavy armors.

It wouldn't be a rogue armor thread if I didn't throw a little Devil's Advocacy into it.

2x hide and shadow mastery is fine for a lot of things. Even at cap. It is also lacking against certain other things. Sure you can hide from them 'most' of the time, but staying hidden and keeping from being searched out is a pipe dream at best. I won't say that OTF is slumming it at cap and under-hunting at best, but you know what level the stuff is there. Grimswarm guards, triton sentries, triton defenders, war griffins... pretty much everything in the Scatter... yadda yadda yadda?

3x hide with shadow mastery isn't even quite enough against some of those things. Might give a rogue reason to just give up on the whole stealth venture! CvA, am I right?

Throw on armored stealth and lighter armor, though, and now we're pushing things over the edge a bit and suddenly you're a ghost. Granted, and I get it, but yes... you need to keep on training in armor despite remaining in lighter armor to get them armor points to get more Armored Stealth. It seems counter productive, and I'm not going to get real deep into the entire heavy vs light armor debate.

Stealth is still the best defense. Being able to vanish in front of a Rift Crawler in the middle of a swarm, keep from being searched out no matter how long the RT is, and walk away is pretty hard to trump. Plate armor can keep its CvA.

Of course... if you get yourself stunned for long enough, you can make the argument that you just die faster and save yourself some time in ligher armor (I mean you'd die anyway, right? Stun move! STUN MOVE! Stun... stance?! STUN!... argh!!!).

Win win!

Heavy armor is perfectly viable, but so is lighter armor/stealth if you go about a few things differently... both routes have their beautiful perks.

.jaired
>BEAUTIFUL PERK
Please rephrase that command.