I'm asking this question because I've never taken the perk "shadow warrior" and would like some info from people who have had experience with it.

The description says, "crouching stops combat for a moment and forces distant opponents to search for a target". If I take that literally, it is actually better than invisibility. In my experience, if I'm already spotted, casting invisibility will not effect the enemy's awareness of me. Basically they still know exactly where I am and can immediately find me. (I know I have to cast muffle and have quiet casting and am not interested in discussing that). Even with the combo of muffle, quiet casting and invisibility the enemy still knows where I am with no hesitation.

What I'm wondering is, does the sneak eye actually start to close when you use shadow warrior? Do enemies seem disoriented when you use it? If so, it is better than invisibility. Let me know what your experience with this perk is.

By the way, I already know about the sneak attacks that can happen from shadow warrior, so no need to go into that. What I'm wondering is if shadow warrior can be used as a way to get hidden again and go back into sneak mode. For example, activate shadow warrior, then hide behind a pillar- would enemies lose track of you?

Thanks for the replies.

I'd like to hear some experiences with this as well. However I don't think you have to activate a shadow warrior power, just crouch.

I don't find shadow warrior useful, but that may be reflective of my play style. My character is a fragile mystic archer with zero melee ability. That means she stays in stealth all the time when in or near combat. When detected, job one is to get hidden again and find a safe shooting position. She normally does that via illusion spells and or summoning distractions, then trying to gain distance and break line of sight while crouched. Shadow warrior requires you to crouch to activate it - that means you have to 'uncrouch' before you can do so. Uncrouching when trying to hide is just not something my character's going to do. During the times when it has been employed, I've not been particularly impressed by it. It certainly can't hold a candle to a calm or summon spell as far as trying to support getting hidden again. Your mileage may vary of course depending on your play style I guess.

I haven't used it much - haven't been terribly impressed.

I had a combat archer who was, I thought, going to use Shadow Warrior as a way to sort of mystically vanish in the middle of combat, roll a little away from the enemy, and then have time to draw and shoot, pulling off a sneak bow attack. It never worked, though; I'd crouch in combat and the enemy just wouldn't lose track of me.

Well that is disappointing.

This is pretty strange, on my stealth character, going into invisibility after being spotted guarantees that they can never ever find me no matter how many times they prance around their little dungeon. Invisibility + sneak is like the sickest combo ever.

Shadow warrior isn't exactly invisibility though, have you seen how it works? The description is correct to a point, but definitely not what you imagine it is (not what I expected either). It merely gives invisibility for a very brief period (a few seconds, maybe 2-3), and you're back to being visible (although in sneak). Unless you're already a sneak god at that point, I don't think shadow warrior would help much in escaping. I've never had much luck escaping with it anyway. The sneak eye doesn't really close much since the invisibility is so brief, the only use is the 'sneak for free backstab attacks' which you mentioned. I found it to be generally useless other than for the sneak attack. Its just cool because the 'invisibility' here has black smoke. Also I feel really OCD when I see my stealth tree incomplete, so I just add that.

Not sure how good it is at higher levels though, since I use invisibility all the time on my latest stealth character. I think they do get disoriented for a while, like 'Where are you?' but mostly the duration is too brief to scuttle somewhere else.

Ive been playing a thief since morrowind and my childhood days of playing dungeons and dragons and this shadow warrior...ive just never got it to work at all...ive watched videos on it...looked for mods that made it easier to use but never did find 1..so i basically save that perk point for something else.