Am I the only one that thinks Invisibility is pretty useless?

The fireballs of imps and cacodemons and so forth are pretty predictable, thus you can evade them very well. Once you pick up Invisibility, however, the monsters randomly miss you.
So I cannot predict the direction of the fireballs anymore, and as a result of this, I got more hurt than without it. So it´s a pretty useless item, IMO. id learned from this -> ring of shadows in Quake makes you completely invisible to monsters unless you attack them. Pretty useful this time.

It helps against hitscan enemies. And I suppose it can give you an advantage in a dark DM map.

Right occasion: map20 of Plutonia, you encounter one in a trap room containing a large number of zombies, including commandos.

Wrong occasion: map07 of doom2... those spheres are like curses.

EDIT: Deliberate hell: scythe map27 forces you to teleport on top of one before you fight three cyberdemons at once. :)

Only with the Mancubus. The Arachnotrons are a bit easier to deal with when invisible, since a lot of those shots hit the wall and you're already keeping your distance anyway. Heretic has something similar, but some attacks will pass right through you, so it's a bit more useful.

As stated above, it's useful against hitscan enemies. It makes it harder to fight anything else though, since you have to wait for the projectile to leave the enemy before dodging, since you can no longer predict the shots when the enemy aims.

Yeah, I sometimes steer clear away from those spheres. Because I'm so attuned to dodging everything I see flying at me, I'll inadvertently strafe right into them.

If you use ZDoom though, the enemies won't see you until you fire at them. (notarget mode)

Aside from that, it's just hitscan enemies and spiders. (dunno about railguns, anyone?)

Sometimes they don't wake up in ZDoom, but it seems to me that if you're running, they can still be alerted, even if you don't fire.

ZDoom will only let monsters trigger if you're too close.

Yes, invisibility spheres are kinda useless to me. I'm so prone to strafing out of the way of fireballs when they come at me. With invisibilty spheres, sometimes the monsters tend to shoot in the direction you strafe, and since I'm prone to strafe out of the way before they shoot it, it get hit.

I also think the invisibility are useless. It makes me mad especially when imps/barons/whatever look like they're going to shoot one way then they shoot the other way directly at me. And sometimes I just accidentally strafe directly into their shots. Strafing is much more efficient against those sorts of demons.

it's useful against hitscan enemies but useless against projectile-flinging enemies

I think it's quite interesting to have a power-up that is useful in some situations and a curse in others. It forces you to think about when and whether to pick it up.

As people have said, its main use is when you have to encounter hitscan enemies, but there are also some specific situations where it helps against projectile enemies too - for instance, if you don't have room to manoeuvre, and they're going to be firing at you no matter what.

Its only interest is to get 100 % items.
When I catch it I get hurt by the cacos' fireballs while trying to dodge them. Damn, do cacos aim better when I am invisible?

EDIT:I catch them only when I'm sure that I killed every monster in the room.

Vile said:

Deliberate hell: scythe map27 forces you to teleport on top of one before you fight three cyberdemons at once. :)

That's an interesting thing I'd never thought of doing. (Steals)

Okay, so I don't play many WADs -- I prefer to create them ;)

Deathmatcher said:

id learned from this -> ring of shadows in Quake makes you completely invisible to monsters unless you attack them. Pretty useful this time.

No, you're not fully invisible, if not you would be blind. That's why the HUD shows only the marine's eyes (funny).

Hm, that reminds me, i must remember to ask the EDGE team for a "Total invisibility sphere", as well as something to make you run further and something to make you jump higher

Another example of where it hurts more than helps is one level of Doom Rampage, where there is some plasma cannon that shoots a constant stream of plasma at you, you need to run right to one side of the 'arena' then jump over the plasma and run the other way, but with partial invisibility it flings plasma absolutley everywhere and you cant escape

Rumours has it that in Doom64: Outcast there will be a total invisible sphere. I believe one could be easily done in Zdoom. When You pickup a custom Decorate sphere pickup a script is launched giving him the notarget property.

Yeah invisiblity is not very helpful once you become very good at dodging enemy projectiles, since it can actually get you damaged since enemies fire all over the place, usually where you will be dodging too.

However, it can sometimes be usefull to get it if you dont want to be dodging so much.

But just like ducon said, your probly just going to get it for the 100% items.