Huh huh.
You can quote Ling Qi being ineffective at combat stealth and say "See! she tried as oppening moves/sparring!" but it doesn't change the fact that we
can't use stealth in combat, and that stealth needs heavy investment to be usable. 'Training stealth' being that investment would be like saying that 'Training Speech' this turn means we are planning to make Speech a major part of our build any time soon (hint: we aren't).
While the argument of "We need better art/it's one AP" is part of the reason why we won't ever get stealth working: Stealth is a heavy investment, and people aren't even willing to sacrifice
anything for beginning the investment unless something incredibly strong fall in our lap. However, the biggest reason is that it's now
too late. The train has passed unless we are hoping to get multiple rare stealth arts fall in our laps that will excite us that aren't archive, and we can't
count on those.... and it would mean not getting something else.
Shinies reign supreme, and complaining that it's unfair to blame "One AP of Shiny" is willingly lying to ourself about the cost of said shiny. One AP of shiny can sometimes mean something can't be gotten reasonable (barring lucky finds) for half a year, and by that time it's far too late to even try it.
Also,
@Thor Twin... our stealth isn't specialised.
You offer no support for your allegation that Ling Qi was ineffective at combat stealth. You just proclaim it as if it was fact. At that point in time we were green 1/ Bronze 1 and we got the drop on a Green 2 / Bronze 2 and it takes half the time of the spar for a Green 2 / Bronze 2 opponent to find her and fight her. Which means that stealth at that time, was effective both offensively and defensively. Against an opponent a stage higher than us.
No matter how much you cry, no matter how much you wail, no matter how much you try to convince yourself, succeeding at both things that stealth helps us with (offensive and defense) is the opposite of "ineffective."
And sure, I'll agree that training a skill doesn't mean that we are planning on having it as a major part of our build, but when we have a pattern of training a skill to it's maximum (such as stealth) that's pretty indicative that we have plans for it. Additionally, the reason why we went with training speech is because it is likely that if we go with the more diplomatic route we'll need to have some good speech. And so, since it's part of the precieved job in the future we are investing in it now. Well, guess what? We have a job currently that uses stealth (hint: it's the scout brigade).
Also, it's not too late to start investing in stealth. I know that people in the Math-Cabal like to try and plan things ad infinitum and think that they have a lock on what we will be doing, but that's not true. That's actually hubris. While I'm sure that there is already a plan for next turn (month 5) that doesn't mean that the plan will win or the plan won't change based on different circumstances (like, I don't know, pills and sites that we acquire or find).
Next, you claim that we can't rely on finding a good stealth art from the Cai archives or finding it elsewhere. Sure, we can't rely on that, but I've already made the prediction that we will get a stealth art from the Cai archives and that was one of the reasons that I didn't vote for the last stealth plan because I don't particularly like ENM for stealth and I think we will be able to do better. The reason I'm making that prediction is that when Cai sent her request to the Head Librarian her plan was to have us as more of a spy not as a diplomat. So I find it reasonable to think that the Cai arts heading our way will have a stealth art in them. We can have a disagreement about that, but there are limited other options for what the Head Librarian could be sending us.
As such, I believe your claim that it is too late for stealth to be highly premature, that we have established a pattern of investing in stealth to the degree needed to trigger our specialization in it, that your claim that stealth is ineffective in the examples I quoted to be completely inaccurate.
I think that the phrasing of "dropping stealth" is fundamentally backwards. We have one stealth art - Sable Crescent Step - and it is not an art we are planning to drop anytime soon. No, what is happening isn't us dropping stealth; it is failing to invest in stealth.
I admit that the difference is largely a matter of semantics - but this more accurate way of representing the world should paint a much clearer picture of what is going on and what needs to be done about it. Nothing stops us from investing in stealth at any time, but not all investments are good investments. It is up to us to decide what stealth arts if any provide enough of an advantage to warrant the time and effort required to acquire and master those arts.
If we think that we need to be able to pillage people's storage rings or sneak into their hidden bases, then we can grab a utility stealth art or at least keep an eye out for such. If we think that such a thing would just be a distraction from our goals for the next year-and-a-half, we should. If we think hiding provides a greater defensive boost than investing more in dodge-arts or other defenses, we should invest in combat stealth. If not, we should stick to training in conventional defenses. Etc.
What we SHOULDN'T do is go out and grab the first low level stealth art we see, just because we have a vague feeling of not wanting to "drop" stealth.
I agree, the distinction created here is completely semantic, and is, largely, unhelpful to the debate. Because if we don't invest in stealth we are, in essence, dropping it.
There are only two options currently, we invest in stealth or we don't invest in stealth.
I have seen exactly two arguments against investing in stealth. The first is that it is ineffective. The second is that it is too late to invest. The second is based pretty much entirely on the first argument because the argument is that "since the investment needed to bring stealth up to effective levels is so high, it is now too late to properly invest in stealth." This argument fails, therefore, if we can demonstrate that stealth is effective.
We've had, to my recollection, exactly three combat situations in this quest. The first was the King of the Forest arc with the Weilu Prince. The second was with Li Suyin in the Corrupted Caverns. The third was with our combat challenge. I've shown that we've used stealth effectively, in combat, during the King of the Forest arc. Which means that we've used stealth effectively for 1/3 of our combat. We didn't use stealth in the Corrupted Caverns because we were escorting Li Suyin and we didn't use stealth in the combat challenge because we choose to go for a more aggressive strategy.
We have seen stealth be effective against nominal peers and it won't take much investment to allow stealth to keep being effective against nominal peers. In that vein, it won't take that much time to keep our stealth at the level that it is effective against nominal peers. Which means that it is not "too late" to invest in stealth.
We have synergy with stealth for our combat and outside of combat. We have people in the voter base who want to see stealth continue to be developed and have expressed disappointment that it has not. As such, there are plenty of reasons to invest in stealth.
The last argument against investing in stealth is that we have other things to do. Which is correct, we do have other things to do. But having other things to do doesn't diminish the value of stealth especially when we have seen stealth arts do multiple things at once, some of those things are the "other things we have to do."
