[JALGator]

With a good stealth hack and commlink and good dice pools and AR initiative how much traditional decking tasks could a character do?

Certainly matrix searching, defense and spoof are all quite possible without a deck.

Obviouslty, cybercombat can't happen without an Attack attribute.

Without limits from 5e, the stealth hacking will be slower and less likely to get edge, but control device, editing programs, finding hidden data should all be possible.

Decker contributions during a run, opening locks, messing with enemy devices etc should be pretty possible.

What am I missing?

[FastJack]

Not really that much. Remember, the Commlink can only provide the Data Processing/Firewall, and maxes out at 3/1, so it's not that secure. You can go with Cyberhacks (H&S, p. 33), that go up to 3/6, but without a Cyberdeck, you won't have any Attack/Sleaze attributes, making you unable to defend yourself and easy to find. Your device also determines your Matrix Condition Monitor. You can also not use hot-sim VR without jacking in, so you lose that in initiative.

Basically, no cyberjack/cyberdeck/cyberhack means you can attempt the actions, but you're pretty defenseless if coming across other deckers or IC. Also, you do still need to invest in the Cracking and Electronics skills to do most of the Matrix actions.

But yeah, Matrix Searches, Jamming Signals, Controlling Devices, you can still do all that, just not as well as a decker.

[Banshee]

Without the Attack and Sleaze attributes you're limited to just Outsider actions for the most part, unless you figure out a way to get inside of a network.
You have Attack to use the Brute Force, Data Spike, and Tarpit actions and need Sleaze to use Probe and Backdoor Entry.

[JALGator]

I expect to have good (~14) dice pools in electronics/cracking and a Stealth Hack and secure hack attached to the commlink so will have 0326 ASDF I think, so should be able to use probe and backdoor entry.

The character will be pretty susceptible to tarpit, snoop and matrix perception.

Changing matrix perception to a minor is almost enough reason on its own to have a deck.

[MercilessMing]

You're talking about Stealthlink and Securelink upgrades for the commlink (page 44 of Hack and Slash).  Stealthlink provides a Sleaze Attribute, but is limited to Matrix Stealth only.  In other words, you can use it to hide, but you can't use it for Probe, Backdoor Entry, or anything else linked to the Sleaze attribute.

Note to whoever wrote this commlink gizmo: You wrote that the maximum rating for stealthlink is the commlink's Data Processing.  You could've avoided this reader's confusion by just saying Stealthlink lets the user substitute Data Processing for Sleaze when defending against Matrix Perception Tests.  Then you wouldn't have stepped into the hornet's nest of adding Sleaze to a commlink.

[JALGator]

Aack.  Thank you, Ming.  it helps to read the second sentence of the paragraph.

I was thinking of this like the Dongles in Datatrails (5e) when you could make a commlink function more like a deck.