Cloak
From TF2 Wiki
The Spy has the ability to Cloak for brief periods of time, allowing him to move unnoticed through enemy lines. When fully cloaked, he is totally invisible, although teammates will see a slight outline shimmer in the team's color. Bumping into enemy players or being damaged results in temporarily being more visible in the form of a semi-transparent silohuette filled in with your team's color.
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Using Cloak
The Cloak is activated by the Spy's alternate fire, independent of whatever weapon he may be holding. While cloaked or in the process of cloaking/decloaking, the Spy is unable to use any of his weapons or reload his Revolver. If a spy cloaks and then disguises, teammates will see disguise-smoke, but this visual effect does not apply to the other team: Disguising after cloaking is safe and imperceptible to enemies.
While cloaked, a Spy will see his own character model as translucent (as opposed to being tinted the team color). In addition to the indicator on the HUD, the Spy also holds his hand in front of him with his wristwatch exposed with an alternative indication of the cloaking time remaining.
It takes approximately one full second to cloak, and 1 second to decloak, and a fully charged cloak will last for 10 seconds, this means you are granted 8 seconds of invisibility unless you recharge your cloak with an ammo kit. Cloak automatically recharges when not in use, taking 30 seconds to completely recharge. As of the December 11, 2008 Patch, Resupply areas and ammo can also replenish your cloak meter. A full ammo box will fully recharge your cloak.
Seeing Cloaked Spies
If a cloaked spy takes damage from any source, he will be momentarily revealed as a team-tinted, translucent silhouette. This also occurs whenever he touches an enemy player, but not objects such as sentry guns or dispensers. However, enemy dispensers will heal the spy if he is disguised, this can give the spy away if he is still cloaked. This prevents Spies from simply cloaking and charging through an offensive front. Also, Spies that have caught fire (see Flamethrower) will be visible due to the fire effect, even though their model will still be invisible, they will also have an aura of their team's color around them. Cloaked Spies will also drip water droplets after emerging from a body of water, revealing their position for a short amount of time.
Cloak Strategies
A common strategy when using a Cloak is to combine its use with a disguise, as this gets rid of the time that is wasted when disguising once behind enemy lines. Be careful, if you disguise before cloaking, the cloak will not remove or lessen the "disguise smoke" effect.
Similarly, one must be careful not to be seen when decloaking, as the Spy flashes his real team color as he decloaks, regardless of disguise.
The Cloak is also commonly used to get past choke points or other places with lots of enemy presence. When crossing large open distances, it's generally preferable to stick with a disguise instead of wasting cloak time. In some cases it will make sense to disguise as a friendly class for travel, to prevent warning the other team that a spy is incoming.
In CTF games, a fully cloaked spy can run over the intel and pick it up without manually decloaking. The spy automatically decloaks once the intel is held. This can effectively move the enemy intel even when surrounded by enemies, or at least reset the timer on it so it doesn't return to the enemy base. If a spy manually drops the intel, they can recloak or disguise again.
Appearance to team
Note that for gameplay reasons, cloaked friendly spies are different from cloaked enemies.
A cloaked friendly spy has a small outline distortion to help you see them. By comparison, a cloaked enemy spy is generally completely invisible. Similarly, a friendly spy who changes their disguise while cloaked will appear to have "disguise smoke", while enemy spies may safely change their disguises while cloaked without any visual indication at all. This counterintuitive visual effect has misled many players to believe that they should not disguise while cloaked.
See Also
- Disguise kit - Another means of infiltration
- Spy strategy - In depth strategy for the Spy class (including how to use the Cloak effectively)
