BUFF PHANTOM

[SonataDusk]

There will be no reductio ad absurdium in this dojo!

[Amerika]

@SonataDusk The Katana is just a melee weapon. Just like Redeye has the Kukri. They are both going to be given to other mercs in the future. The Katana is not unique or special to Phantom. It’s just a new melee weapon that replaces the cricket bat on three of his nine loadouts.

I am not overlooking a “fact” that using a gun with Phantom is boring (that’s your opinion). I consider walking up to somebody and hitting a mouse button with a melee hit you barely have to aim to be the absolute most boring and lowest skill thing you can possibly do in Dirty Bomb. There is nothing special about it at all. There isn’t a nice melee system in DB. It’s just a left click or a right click.

One of Phantom’s original designs had him being a melee character with a charge ability and he only had a pistol. But SD found out that this didn’t work very well due to him either being way underpowered or way overpowered and it upset people either way due to the nature of stealth classes and changed him to just a normal SMG recon merc with some stealth and some armor. Then they released Phantom and he was way too powerful in the melee/stealth area which caused a huge uproar because stealth characters + low skill ceiling melee = pissed off player base. The forums and reviews from back then were insane.

SD has went on record multiple times saying that their biggest regret was releasing Phantom in that state. They clearly do not want him to be a melee only/focused character both in what they have told us directly and through the nerfs to multiple areas that allowed melee to be as successful as it was while keeping nerfs to gunplay at a minimum.

You don’t get to dismiss classes not being relevant simply because you want to compare Phantom to Fragger. It doesn’t work that way.

[Black2]

[quote=“Amerika;131453”][quote=“SonataDusk;127706”]These are two games, out of how many you’ve played with him I don’t know.
I’ve played phantom for over 100 hours, 12k+ kills, 8k+ of which were Katana kills. I do well with him, doing everything you say above. Figuring those tactics out isn’t rocket surgery. After some number crunching I average about a 2.6 KD with him. For a dedicated slayer merc, not bad.
The problem is that doing so is so exceedingly frustrating. In order to really rack up kills in the same way you can with Fragger or Nader, the enemy team has to not know phantom’s counters, and not know how to detect him. when he is detected, all they have to do is backpedal and shoot. You can try to long jump at them, but the Katana’s attacks are so finicky now it’s an extreme risk tactic, and doesn’t work if more than one enemy is present. You can shoot them, but then we run into the same problem. They can detect you, and moe likely than not their gun kills faster than your SMG, assuming they’re aim is just as good as yours. In addition to this, you’ll be no where near an ammo source, so assuming you survive beyond two or three gun kills you will be out of bullets to kill with, and you need the Katana, which puts us back to the first scenario.
The only way phantom is effective or game changing to the same degree as other slayers is if his melee is effective. As it stands now, melee is clunky and awkward, making Phantom as a whole clunky and awkward.[/quote]

You are treating Phantom as assault. He’s not assault, he’s recon. He just doesn’t have a spotter ability but is instead supposed to be a loaner with his cloak.

My stats are much better than yours and I rarely use the Katana. The reason why my stats are better than yours? I don’t try to play a gun class character as a melee only character. And your argument that a Kek10 or a Crotzni can’t compete with pretty much any gun in the game at ranges where you’d engage with Phantom discredits your opinion rather significantly.

He has a Katana instead of a cricket bat. It barely functions differently. It’s not his special ability. If you used his strengths properly and intelligently he’s quite good in pub situations. We’ve all discussed his weaknesses in legit competitive play. Smaller 5v5 servers with less chaos + people who know how to react to a Phantom without panic or being engaged by a ton of other people makes him weak for the team. That’s why many agree that he also needs a secondary ability and a few other minor tweaks up to possibly removing his ability to attack immediately out of stealth so he can be given better stealth. Hopefully SD does that.

SD doesn’t want a melee stealth merc. Why? Because it feels cheap both as the player of Phantom and the person on the receiving end. This is a common sentiment in almost every single game that has a stealth 1-shot style “rogue” class. It’s extremely divisive and even harder to balance. That’s why there have been quite a few changes to decrease the amount of success a Phantom player can have at melee but most of which has not hurt his gunplay too much. Stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and you’ll find him to be way less frustrating and even fun.

And before you question me too much, all of my stats are publicly viewable and have been posted on this forum along with a ton of Phantom videos (including many on min10 servers). Some people think I hate Phantom since I tend to post negative opinions about “melee only” play styles. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I love playing him and his style and I don’t want him further dumbed down so a bad player can feel powerful by walking up to anybody they want and instantly killing them with a right click as if it’s a hard thing to do.[/quote]

I disagree, I believe Phantom is an assault merc.
Even in his role call his health, speed, and combat are the highest.
Also in his role call they describe tactics that are geared towards combat and nothing to do with recon.

So it appears that SD intended for him to be combat based hence assault, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be used for recon, just means he better at assault.

Want more proof?
Look at his augments in his cards all of them support and amplify combat ability such as springy, untrackable, and chopper.

No way SD is going to give Phantom a whole lot of tools geared towards combat and call him a recon because he can technically give the enemy positions away while cloaked.

Although i agree with your claim that the “on hit stealth merc” is a pretty generic and hard thing to balance and keep both sides happy about the outcome I believe this comes back to the melee problem in Dirty Bomb.
Why the hell aren’t backstabs a one hit down?

[Dieu-Sama]

To make him a less generic merc (He’s just a peudo recon/assault with a vague cloack/armor and a remodeled cricket bat), I think SD should tweak him to make a TF2-spy lookalike, gameplay wise

Full noiseless invisibility and armor while cloaked

BUT

Totally unable to attack while cloaked. Make decloak slighty audible by everyone and give him a secondary, passive ability which give him double melee damage if hit the back. Et voilà !

[triteCherry]

[quote=“Dieu-Sama;132061”]

Full noiseless invisibility and armor while cloaked

BUT

Totally unable to attack while cloaked. Make decloak slighty audible by everyone and give him a secondary, passive ability which give him double melee damage if hit the back. Et voilà ![/quote]

The more “invisible” Phantom gets, the less armor he should get as a result. If he can’t be seen or heard unless by a spotting ability I don’t see any reason he should get bonus health at all.

[Amerika]

[quote=“BlackFro;132042”][quote=“Amerika;131453”][quote=“SonataDusk;127706”]These are two games, out of how many you’ve played with him I don’t know.
I’ve played phantom for over 100 hours, 12k+ kills, 8k+ of which were Katana kills. I do well with him, doing everything you say above. Figuring those tactics out isn’t rocket surgery. After some number crunching I average about a 2.6 KD with him. For a dedicated slayer merc, not bad.
The problem is that doing so is so exceedingly frustrating. In order to really rack up kills in the same way you can with Fragger or Nader, the enemy team has to not know phantom’s counters, and not know how to detect him. when he is detected, all they have to do is backpedal and shoot. You can try to long jump at them, but the Katana’s attacks are so finicky now it’s an extreme risk tactic, and doesn’t work if more than one enemy is present. You can shoot them, but then we run into the same problem. They can detect you, and moe likely than not their gun kills faster than your SMG, assuming they’re aim is just as good as yours. In addition to this, you’ll be no where near an ammo source, so assuming you survive beyond two or three gun kills you will be out of bullets to kill with, and you need the Katana, which puts us back to the first scenario.
The only way phantom is effective or game changing to the same degree as other slayers is if his melee is effective. As it stands now, melee is clunky and awkward, making Phantom as a whole clunky and awkward.[/quote]

You are treating Phantom as assault. He’s not assault, he’s recon. He just doesn’t have a spotter ability but is instead supposed to be a loaner with his cloak.

My stats are much better than yours and I rarely use the Katana. The reason why my stats are better than yours? I don’t try to play a gun class character as a melee only character. And your argument that a Kek10 or a Crotzni can’t compete with pretty much any gun in the game at ranges where you’d engage with Phantom discredits your opinion rather significantly.

He has a Katana instead of a cricket bat. It barely functions differently. It’s not his special ability. If you used his strengths properly and intelligently he’s quite good in pub situations. We’ve all discussed his weaknesses in legit competitive play. Smaller 5v5 servers with less chaos + people who know how to react to a Phantom without panic or being engaged by a ton of other people makes him weak for the team. That’s why many agree that he also needs a secondary ability and a few other minor tweaks up to possibly removing his ability to attack immediately out of stealth so he can be given better stealth. Hopefully SD does that.

SD doesn’t want a melee stealth merc. Why? Because it feels cheap both as the player of Phantom and the person on the receiving end. This is a common sentiment in almost every single game that has a stealth 1-shot style “rogue” class. It’s extremely divisive and even harder to balance. That’s why there have been quite a few changes to decrease the amount of success a Phantom player can have at melee but most of which has not hurt his gunplay too much. Stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and you’ll find him to be way less frustrating and even fun.

And before you question me too much, all of my stats are publicly viewable and have been posted on this forum along with a ton of Phantom videos (including many on min10 servers). Some people think I hate Phantom since I tend to post negative opinions about “melee only” play styles. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I love playing him and his style and I don’t want him further dumbed down so a bad player can feel powerful by walking up to anybody they want and instantly killing them with a right click as if it’s a hard thing to do.[/quote]

I disagree, I believe Phantom is an assault merc.
Even in his role call his health, speed, and combat are the highest.
Also in his role call they describe tactics that are geared towards combat and nothing to do with recon.

So it appears that SD intended for him to be combat based hence assault, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be used for recon, just means he better at assault.

Want more proof?
Look at his augments in his cards all of them support and amplify combat ability such as springy, untrackable, and chopper.

No way SD is going to give Phantom a whole lot of tools geared towards combat and call him a recon because he can technically give the enemy positions away while cloaked.

Although i agree with your claim that the “on hit stealth merc” is a pretty generic and hard thing to balance and keep both sides happy about the outcome I believe this comes back to the melee problem in Dirty Bomb.
Why the hell aren’t backstabs a one hit down?[/quote]

He’s a lone wolf merc which is a defining trait of recons in pretty much every game. And in many games you can play the more up close recon or a sniper version of it. He doesn’t need a sniper ability to be a recon. Also, there are four mercs of each class. Phantom fits into the recon class as the fourth merc. He doesn’t have a devastating weapon like Assaults. He has his refractive armor

I get what you’re trying to say but he’s just not an assault class, does not have assault abilities or HP, he fits into the recon definition and he’s the 4th character in the recon class for Dirty Bomb.

Basically, I don’t think people should be using the argument, “Phantom isn’t as good as Fragger so he should be buffed” when Phantom and Fragger aren’t even in the same class and you could say just about any character isn’t as good as Fragger when it comes to straight slaying (even though I’d argue Stoker is almost on par). I get that there isn’t much you can compare Phantom to other than he’s Bushwhacker but with armor/stealth and no turret and no disarming capability. But that at least makes sense. Move him into being an engineer or at least let him plant/disarm while stealthed to give him that niche if nothing else. Or just be lazy and give him the spotting ability he should have. Hell, it could work like Redeye’s where it only works when cloaked. Or let him throw a shuriken at a wall and have it work like the HBS or actually hit somebody with it and then they are a walking HBS for 30 seconds or they die.

Pretty much anything like that fixes him without drastically changing his gameplay or making him cheap.

[Naonna]

I had a somewhat uncertain idea for phantom: that rather than emitting sound, it should emit a spotter-like effect. Being spotted could be a good way to find him. Rather than normal spotting from red-eye or vass though, have it be ONLY while in radius of his cloak while invis: after a small amount of time, one could learn to triangulate his location within seconds if too close, but also allow phantom to be stealthy.

The main issues I have outside of lack-of-team-support for phantom are his speed and invisibility while moving. While I understand the need for him to be slightly visible, it makes it a bit difficult for the argument of ‘he should flank people’. If he can be seen while running, the only other option is crouch-walking and hoping no one notices: hardly reliable. His problematic attack-out-of invisibility is mitigated with this method. I just wish there were a better way of doing it so that phantom could actually be mobile without being a visible blurry smudge when not walking.

Considering the other recons can 1shot classes at range with no penalty as long as their aim is good, why penalize phantom for doing the same thing with the difference of having to be closer rather than further away?

The issue of some wanting phantom to be fast-but-stealthy and others wanting him to be buff-and-damaging like a fragging class is another divide I’ve noticed. The stealthy party wants him to become more mobile and squishy (myself included) and others want him to have higher and more consistent killing potential.

I almost feel as though there should be 2 mercs with different abilities: the stealthy version with reduced gun damage and better melee damage and speed and the attack-based one gaining an overshield-like effect: giving him temporary HP for firefights.

List criticisms below: I await your hate mail.

[Litego]

Only read OP, but I’m just gonna throw this one out there… You’re allowed to use your guns too. Having the element of surprise and getting the first shot from a flank is a strong ability, don’t have to fuck it up by trying to melee people in the face. And if you always need to melee, do it in the back.

[Naonna]

Melee’s basically useless: phantom DOES get the kek-10, which is nice. First shot doesn’t always mean much against more than 1 person at a time, however.

[Litego]

Melee’s basically useless: phantom DOES get the kek-10, which is nice. First shot doesn’t always mean much against more than 1 person at a time, however.

On a good flank? Yes, it does. If you engage while they are fighting people in front of them, you can clean up all of them, assuming decent accuracy with mostly headshots. A string of only HS from the KEK-10 will kill the first enemy before he even reacts unless he is a heavy.