Hello everyone.
There's definitely a lot of agent ideas floating around, and I've noticed a pattern that they get run into the ground quickly by clueless agent haters. Clearly there is a missing piece of information between Agents and non-agents about how this class really performs.
A lot of the agent-rage comes from people who simply state agents are great when they are in sneak, or they really arent too bad when they can choose the terms of the engagement, while most agents scream about debuffs ruining whatever fun they can get from the game.
Both points are valid, and having played my agent recently I can attest to both sides of the story. From sneak, agents can do a lot, and really ruin peoples days by appearing at inoppourtune moments. For example, appearing right next to a trader the instant he tries to drain someone else, and has a few seconds of recharge, doesn't know you are there, etc.
Or popping out with a well timed CH to turn the tide of battle. Etc. Or both.
Very agenty. Fun, too.
However the major issue with this is concealment.
Concealment in BS is ****ing boring.
Noone does it. And to get the most "fun" out of your agent you are realistically forced to do this, which results in about 1 fight per BS where you can actually use this to your advantage.
So agents dont sneak. Thus, they run around unsneaked, which opens them up to a world of ass ****ingly huge debuffs that are launched with a single click from practically everyone on the BS.
The easy fix for this is to raise concealment speed, relative to the concealment skill of the user (this even helps shades!), and as a side effect of classes using their toolset properly, having PLAYER CONTROLLED TIMING (a skill) be part of a defence toolset of a class, it would also have another little side effect of being FUN.
Add that, a touch more AR (or a rework of bullseye making it a hostile perk you can use from sneak, which DOES NOT UNSNEAK YOU), and an ability to re-enter sneak when in combat (say, 1min cooldown.. people can easily kill an agent with a 1 minute window)
And suddenly Agents will stop whining, without making them a fantastic lovechild (you can still squish one when it pops, infact you'll have to) but a WHOLE lot less frustrating and annoying to play.
1000 conceal = 25% of RS
2000 conceal = 50% of RS
3000 conceal = 75% of RS
Consider it. It's simple. It's effective. It's logical, it fits in with stealth class toolsets, it makes Concealment a useful skill to max out, and it makes playing both classes a shedload more fun.