A lot of discussion has been lately around combat sneak.
I think that one solution will be to give combat sneaker some specific roles where it should perform good (counter specific target, kill enemies on certain conditions), but outside those roles there should be still able to offer support to the team (providing information and weakening enemies).
So the power (damage wise) should be low in most scenearios. But the problem of decreasing strength of combat sneaker is that you dont kill your enemy fast you are mostly dead (like when waki was nerfed and end becoming useless).
Sneak character are most of the time in a bad position because they tend to be near the enemy team, so if they expose to attack or get caught, most of the times is a certain dead, and have almost no chances to get revived or supported by the rest of the team. So only nerfing damage will make combat sneak unplayable.
Better escape mechanism
I think that attack power should be low damage wise but escape mechanism should be stronger. This way combat sneak could be effective to lure, disrupt, and finish weak targets and have increased chances to survive after each assault
Make bloodthirst more reliable
Bloodthirst: increase move speed by 20% after each hit you make, duration will depend on AP used to attack and additional hit will increase duration. During bloodthirst duration you will also have increased resistance to suppression.
So if you hit someone with an 40 AP attack, you will gain bonus speed for 4 secs, after a second, you hit your target again you will get 4 additional seconds, so 7 seconds of speed bonus
Killing a target will increase duration by 5 seconds, to keep its original purpose of escape after killing or try a kill spree.
With current bloodthirst, you are almost forced to kill your target to get the speed bonus to escape, so its all or nothing. With this approach you can stab enemies to lure/weak/debuff them and run to safe again.
Sprinter armor trait
Sprinter is good to hit and run but the problem is that it works better for low AP regeneration players. So rework it to be like the proposed bloodthirst can help solve this issue.
Pick the right target
Sneaks should be good against certain targets under certain scenarios.
Killing a full health target with one AP bar should not be happen unless certain conditions are meet.
So instead of capable to kill any player in 1vs1 confrontation you should pick a target that meet the right conditions to be successful
This can be achieved making weapons perks/traits that offer specific bonus, so sneak weapons can have its base damage reduced but still perform good on certain situations
Additional weapons perks
-Slayer: same mechanism as silent hill dead (damage increase up to 25% on low health targets) so weapons can be balanced to be good on wounded enemies but weak on high health targets
-Eviscerate: Deals bonus damage to bleeding targets and turns part of the bleeding in damage. Great to finish bleeding targets
Proposed effect: removes 30% of the bleeding of the target, that bleeding will turn into x1.5 damage instantly. (So a target with 100 bleed will end with 70 bleed and will receive additional 45 damage instantly)
-Silent death: bonus damage nerfed to 50%. Will help balancing weapons with this trait
New proposed character trait: Backstabber
Melee silent weapons do 50% more damage against deployed targets. Ranged silent weapond do 25% more damage to deployed targets . Deployed players will be marked with an indicator.
This will make sneakers (specially melee) a direct counter to deployed enemies without team support. Good to assault BG snipers, or an unsupported machine gun nest.
Silenced weapons and playstyles
Long range: play safe, not good damage but potential to debuff and weaken enemies and remain safe. high revelation time than most silent weapons
-Syringe rifle: poison, AP drain, better chance to cause winded. Very low damage.
-Silenced rifle: medium damage. high ap cost (much more than regular snipers) maybe need to be deployed. 1 slayer rank
Medium range: more risky than long range but better damage
-Needler: nerf AP ammo damage, should be good to reveal other sneakers and damage enemies while still stay safe, low revelation time.
-Silenced Smgs: good for hit and run tactics and finish low health targets, add some Slayer perks. Some one could have eviscerate to synergy well with bleeding weapons.
Close range: Lowest revelation time, highest damage (still lower than regular melee weapons)
-Waki: 2x silent death, better criticals, more criticals, Slayer. Good to finish weak enemies from behind, able to kill a full HP enemy if deployed (waki +backstab perk will deal x2.5 to deployed targets from behind).
-Combat knife (lil Jesus?): Eviscerate, silent death, hit the gaps, 2 x finisher. Some bleed power. Good to finish enemies with high cumulated bleed or knocked down/winded.
-Machete: high bleed power and AP drain. Good to damage enemies making cumulate high bleed. Stacking with poison will make even stronger. Probably high AP cost to make it good in combination with bloodthirst/Sprinter to hit and run.
-Garrote: Increased DR trait. 2x knockout strike, better knockout, 2x slayer. Good to disable opponents, very low damage. You should be able to knock out one or two enemies and run to safe. Low damage and 2 slayer ranks will make it only good to deal damage to a target with very low health.
Non combat sneak weapons
-Soflam: good scouting tool. Maybe reduce its weight
-Jammer gun(?): similar to soflam (range, 0 damage), hitted enemies will lost all leadership bonus, even squad vision (and teammates won't longer have vision of the affected player). Hitted sneaker will also lost sneak for the duration. Good to isolate and debuff small groups of enemies and counter enemy sneakers
Traps:
Will be good if sneakers will be able to carry some traps without having much sneak penalty.
Traps also need an overhaul, not only for sneakers…
Some trap/device that i think will be nice to have (not fully related to sneak though)
Detector trap: AoE Soflam effect with increased duration. in the past a trap that gives vision of an area was implemented but not added to the game for lag issues, maybe using the soflam effect can be an option now?
(New) Stealthboy Wartime
Enabling stealthboy wartimer will further decrease your sigth (-4) and your detection range (-3PE for purposes of sneak and traps detection). Also, you will lose squad vision, and squad lose vision of you (they wont see your RTS mode marks either). You still get leadership bonus.
Disabling wartime will reset sneak and will give 5 secs sneak penalty. So you will need to move to a safe position to back to normal sneak mode
This will make wartime a mechanism to engage enemy or to increase your escape chances if you find yourself in a bad spot. While doing it you will be mostly by your own, unable to tell your team your exact position (and been more susceptible to friendly fire) and see theirs.
This will be a direct nerf to scout sneaker (they will lose the wartimer sneak bonus) and combat sneakers (harsher penalties, isolation from squad, less chance to find enemy sneakers). And make wartime a strategic desition instead of a flat bonus. Making actual differences in sneak roles and gameplay (scout and long range sneakers will use wartime mostly on critical situations to scape. Close combat assasins will use it to engage and get close to the enemy team)
tl;dr;
Sneak should be good to detect and offer enemy information (position, movement, equipment) but also good to debuff/weak/lure enemies and capableof killing specific or wounded targets. Not to be a ninja assassin capable of killing even the tankiest character on full health
Edit: added wartime suggestion