Don't quit playing just because of Phantom

[KattiValk]

Make the cloak just give a flat 50% damage reduction while active and increase the cooldown for the cloak to be 1.2x the time active. Bam, look who’s balanced.

[CDisNinjy]

@MissMurder said:
In case you haven’t heard us talk about this on the streams- Phantom will be undergoing changes and so will aimpunch. Very soon.

Have you thought about instead of giving his shield its own hp have it so he just takes reduced damage? That way he will still last longer but won’t stay fully healed if he only gets hit while shielded.

[watsyurdeal]

Make the cloak just give a flat 50% damage reduction while active and increase the cooldown for the cloak to be 1.2x the time active. Bam, look who’s balanced.

True that would solve that problem, but I feel like the visibility of cloak could use work.

Right now, you have two variants, standing still…and everything else.

Be nice if crouch walking, walking, etc, really changed how well you blend in. Just to make him more, you know, stealthy.

[eruditeDiamond]

-Remove shield entirely
-Increase cool down
-Rear strikes, while cloaked, should be fatal to any merc. Otherwise his katana should be nothing other than cosmetic.

This would force Phantom to be played something akin to what his flavor is: a stealth, assassin type character. If you spot him at mid range, and he’s right infront of you, you can empty a clip into his chest and he’ll still take you down. No one should be able to just run straight at another merc and off them unless that mercs aim is terrabad.

[jetJester]

So the whiners have been heard.
Curisous fact about phantom whine on steam is that all the whiners have 50 or less hours of game and most that say he’s ok have 100+, curious combination uh? Too bad you can’t check here, but i guess that adding a noob stomper merc so early in an fps lifetime wasn’t that good
oh well i’ll be happy as long he will remain a good merc overall

[turquoiseFisherman]

In case you haven’t heard us talk about this on the streams- Phantom will be undergoing changes and so will aimpunch. Very soon.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to make a thread for information like this and sticky/lock it so people can see it rather than directly replying in a sea of shitposts or relying on streams to get information out to people?

[Ghosthree3]

Implying people would read that thread.

[dubiousGoggles]

I can’t really find anything that needs to be changed about this merc at all. Yes, some could say that he’s overpowered, but it’s simply how you look at it. New players who play phantom will have a difficult time getting anywhere without being killed on site, more experienced players can be taken down in a group. If you’re under lvl 8 or so, most phantoms are easily taken down if you know what you’re doing. Run away, wait for him to uncloak, shoot a little then knife. It’s that simple. And as people level up, they learn to stick together and work as a team. He’s not overpowered, it’s just the people who fight against him need to figure out how to really take him down.

On another note, he’s probably the most iconic character in the whole of Dirty Bomb, nerf him badly and you’ve got little defining traits.

[Hellfig]

I don’t like pub any more when there are at least more as 3 Phantoms in opponent’s team.
To be honest I’m a camper when I play public. I usually end up having highest k/d-ratio, just by camping. Since recently, I can’t camp anymore. If I get a a nice spree, I usually end up with a katana in my back.
I’m quite amazed that on pub (min lvl 10 servers), not many people are trying/playing Vassili and therefore making Phantom quite useless. But no vassili = guarantee getting ‘raped’ by Phantom

Anyway, I’m one of the ragers claiming to quit the game because of this merc. I know that’s quite pathetic, I agree
It’s just me raging.

On the other hand Phantom is killing my fun when playing pub.
(Funny thing: On competitive gaming, I’ve never saw any usefull Phantom.)

I can’t wait when they will nerf his cloaking device. Make it 10% more visible, and I’m ok with it. Perhaps make his footstep louder?
Vassili has a perk for increased footstep sounds, use it on other loadouts(mercs) as well?
I know (and agree) that many would think this will be a useless perk, but it can be handy…

Or at least try out some servers with limit # of same mercs?
For example: Maximum 2 Phantoms on a pub server, Maximum 2 fraggers, etc…

A bit like cup rules, but make it compatible for Pub (on some servers).

[Azure_Emulation]

[quote=“Alphafox;48580”]
Don’t worry people will switch to ‘‘Oh RedEye spotting and smoke is OP!’’ I can see that coming miles away[/quote]

What’s he gonna do? Throw smoke grenades to cover flanks and intimidate people from passing through? Vassili is already doing something like this with his heartbeat sensor. Redeye will just be blinding his teammates with smoke while he’ll be the only one to take advantage of it. Enemies could just rush around the smoke and into another flank. Besides, from those looks of his current gameplay videos, the smoke grenades don’t have a radius large enough for anything other than choke point coverage.

The Phantom outcry is likely the largest we’ll ever see. Many feel cheated from getting killed by melee. That’s giganticly accentuated by Phantom being a blur in your peripheral vision, and his extra cloak HP.

[Sussepus]

usually people cry about mercs on free rotation. we all saw it with nader, rhino, vassili, buchwacker etc. and when they no longer were on free rotation(meaning stacked on teams) people stopped complaining.
this time people cry about a merc even before its on free rotation.
i cant wait until he is one free rotation. these forums will implode. hahaha

[OmaGretel]

In my opinion it would be enough if phantom was much more visible while he is running. That would make it so much easier to kill when he is charging towards you and would also make it easier to spot him when he is trying to sneak past the frontline and backstab you whole team. that would also force phantom players to play much more slowly and sneaky

[Fleshpound]

What to do with his shield is easy.

Not remove it and delete that delay when shield is down so you can actually give more sense

for fighting with him.

Katana should have only bugs fixed and little rebalance(like almost not visible on gameplay).

Invisibility should be more noisy or more visible while moving.

This can force him to be actually be thug life VIP destroyer merc

[Bu5hmast3r]

[quote=“bucktoothcatfish;48094”] I think Overwatch will be the one to play in regards to unique characters rather than the TF2 clone that this game seems to be so far.
[/quote]

Overwatch ? Really ?

[watsyurdeal]

I’m more surprised he calls this a TF2 clone, when there’s no rocket jumping, ubers, laughable sentries, this game is more like Enemy Territory than friggin TF2.

[PurpleNurple]

His nerf will come before his free rotation so not really. Has it even been said all mercs will be on free rotation? On their part it wouldn’t be smart to put a merc so many people are annoyed by on free rotation. I don’t even want those useless phantoms on my team. Then again there are plenty of games people could play during his free week so meh who cares.

[Anaconda1]

I like how people say Phantom is OP because he can one hit kill people with his Katana. That’s considered OP, but one hit killing with a sniper rifle or shotgun is okay? The truth is, Phantom is hated because he can sneak through to get the players who love to sit at a distance and camp, camp, camp.

[Eddie1]

[quote=“Ghosthree3;46954”]Because 70 health would die to a light breeze. Add to it you didn’t give him more speed and you want him to manually disable his cloak before he can attack and he’s screwed.

You also wanted him to take reduced damage with the shield instead of just shielding it. 70 health would disappear.[/quote]

This.

[Eddie1]

I like how people say Phantom is OP because he can one hit kill people with his Katana. That’s considered OP, but one hit killing with a sniper rifle or shotgun is okay? The truth is, Phantom is hated because he can sneak through to get the players who love to sit at a distance and camp, camp, camp.

He is considered OP because he can Cloak to be less visible, Even when you spot him his Cloak will shield damage (while he runs closer to you) he stabs you.

One hit killing with a Sniper rifle is quite tricky for most players, because the targets move so fast and sometimes unpredictable.

I do hate shotgun 1 hits but hey Good aim is rewarding.

Swinging a sword isn’t hard at all

And yes Phantom is kind of made to sneak behind enemy lines and kill people, But a cloak with Shielding + Fast recharge is just horrible

[watsyurdeal]

And even if he didn’t have the shield people would still complain because of how much he changes the meta. People can’t get away with being careless, sitting in a cluster together, or just having sub par awareness over all.

The reality is even if he is nerfed people are going to have to learn how to adapt to new circumstances, rather than screaming nerf and hoping he gets hit with it so hard they never have to deal with it again.