Currently on Nostalrius, being detected by an enemy NPC immediately breaks you out of Stealth. This is a bug. In original WoW, being detected did not have an effect on Stealth directly. Instead, it would cause the NPC to attack you and only this attack would be what broke you out of Stealth. Consequently, it was often possible to land a Cheap Shot on a target after being detected, but before the enemy could land its first attack on you.
So, this is a serious bug which basically negates one of the great advantages of Cheap Shot in solo PvE, i.e. the fact that it can be used while in front of the enemy.
While the current behavior is obviously incorrect and needs to fixed, I'm not sure about some of the details of the correct Stealth breaking behavior. I was hoping that some of you might have some recollection (or better: evidence) of how the original mechanics worked. That way, we could compile instructions on how the correct behavior needs to be implemented.
The points I'm not so sure about:
- Taking damage from attacks and spells certainly broke Stealth. But what about enemy attacks that missed you, or which you avoided by dodging / parrying? Would those keep you stealthed?
- What about fully resisting a spell?
- It seems like crowd control effects all broke Stealth. Were there any exceptions? How about resisted crowd control effects?
- Would you break out of Stealth as soon as an enemy NPC started casting a spell or only as soon as the spell hit?
The bug has been reported here in April 2015: Bug #441. Three months later, the bug was confirmed by a moderator. Since then, there have been no further updates.
