but now that he is useless every other game one team is stuck at their spawn unable to get past the automated turrets, camping corners, frags, stickies, and mines.
Phantoms were great for going past weaker defenses and clearing out campers and destroying turrets.
Phantom players never prevented spawncamping, and Fragger is much more suited to clear whole teams camping in a single point.
Everytime I see a phantom murder half my team I think of these threads 
He is by no means “useless”. As has been said a number of times you need to change how you use him but it’s still possible to be very effective.
[quote=“Badger_Commander;54974”]Everytime I see a phantom murder half my team I think of these threads
He is by no means “useless”. As has been said a number of times you need to change how you use him but it’s still possible to be very effective.[/quote]
In those cases your team is beyond shit. There is no excuse for that, even an aimbotter can struggle to pull that off.
[quote=“Badger_Commander;54974”]Everytime I see a phantom murder half my team I think of these threads
He is by no means “useless”. As has been said a number of times you need to change how you use him but it’s still possible to be very effective.[/quote]
I disagree. It is not possible to be effective with him for 2 reasons(unless the other team is complete shit):
*Slow Melee turn - This weakened Phantom so much. Since most targets require 2 shots or even 3 shots to kill, not having the ability to quickly turn towards them and stab them again really gets you killed most of the time instead.
*Slow cloak cooldown - Phantom’s ability to quickly kill and then stealth back was one of the best reasons why I loved it. Now that they increased this the cooldown time, it is even harder to kill a person and then escape safely because the cloak time is too long.
I agree with the fact that he was a little bit too powerful at first but too many changes hurt.
Phantom is the worst merc now. His only role before was killing, but now every other merc can kill faster or just as fast. I can’t remember a time I’ve died to Phantom since the update.
At least you can’t deny the fact that voices lowered since the last patch. I prefer the community to remain rather calm than completely toxic about work in progress stuff (especially about freshly released mercs with little testing background like Phantom had). SD stat tracking system never failed on detecting mercs with lack of humpfff in the past so there’s no worry about Phantom getting buffed one day if he needs it.
Next free rotation should allow anyone to give him a try. This is going to be interesting.
Regardless of whether the team was bad or not if you can get a kill with Phantom then he’s not useless. If you insist on polarising complex things into extremes then lets go with a positive instead eh? how about instead of “that team must be bad” rather than “that person was really good”.
I played him a lot this weekend and he’s definitely not even remotely close to weak or useless. He can still do everything he could. He can’t just do it as reliably with a katana…but who needs one of those when you can laser people down with a kek10?
If you were trying to play Phantom like he was the spy from TF2 in the first place you weren’t using him to his full potential. He’s still pretty good. You just won’t be getting too many melee kills without you dying pretty easily directly afterward.
i played him yesterday for awhile. im fine with everything about him but the cloak visibility and timer. put that back to where it was and hes still just as good. now instead of stabbing them in the back you just shoot them in the back. his cloak visibility kinda sucks right now though. Especially in higher ranked games. still fun to play though.
Phantom can’t kill faster/easier than any other merc, can’t damage the EV, can’t revive quickly, can’t do objectives quickly, can’t give out ammo and can’t deny areas. If he can’t do any of those, he’s useless.
Before the patch, we got a lot of people telling others they just needed to “learn how to counter Phantom” instead of pointing out the numerous problems with the merc.
I’m sure not all those people are now complaining that he’s useless and the worst merc in the game - but I like to imagine they are. To which I’d like to respond with: Maybe you should try to figure out how to play him properly, instead of demanding the changes be reverted.
With that out of the way, it’s obvious Phantom will get a second look, and probably quite soon. Nader got the exact same treatment: First she was a bit too powerful ( and her martyrdom bugged as hell ), then she got nerfed pretty hard. Then those changes were softened up somehow, and she now sits in a good place.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for a complete rework, but I can easily imagine the general melee changes being either reverted, or changed quite considerably. I’m guessing stealth will get less visible, too, though I don’t know. All that remains then is for Phantom players to realize they’re not supposed to be doing suicide attacks with a sword out, but rather use their stealth and shield to get into a superior position, and attack at range. You know what kind of damage Phantom could do to someone hiding behind the EV, or to snipers, or things like that?
I would disagree with you on quite a few of those points. He wasn’t doing ANY of that as melee only for certain before the last patch.
Being able to more easily flank, especially without taking damage and sometimes not even being seen and shoot people in the back constantly is amazing. Seriously, go actually USE HIS GUN instead of trying to melee and you’ll figure out quite quickly how powerful he is in his current form.
I don’t care about the nerfs to his melee. I still think he’s so much worse at his job now that cloak has been gutted and his main weapons nerfed a bit that he’s just not worth using over anyone else.
there is never just one point from the spawn.[/quote]
False obviously u never played competitive on underground. Attackers constantly get spawn camped by the defenders setting up base on top of the escalator at the start of map and picking people apart as they spawn. Doesn’t matter how many “paths” there are (there’s only one, down the escalator) if you spawn in the line of fire.
I would disagree with you on quite a few of those points. He wasn’t doing ANY of that as melee only for certain before the last patch.
Being able to more easily flank, especially without taking damage and sometimes not even being seen and shoot people in the back constantly is amazing. Seriously, go actually USE HIS GUN instead of trying to melee and you’ll figure out quite quickly how powerful he is in his current form.[/quote]
I really didn’t want him at first, but I think I might just buy him now - and do exactly that. Just to hammer the point home, I’m going to try my hardest to get a loadout that doesn’t even have the katana. Just because.
I would disagree with you on quite a few of those points. He wasn’t doing ANY of that as melee only for certain before the last patch.
Being able to more easily flank, especially without taking damage and sometimes not even being seen and shoot people in the back constantly is amazing. Seriously, go actually USE HIS GUN instead of trying to melee and you’ll figure out quite quickly how powerful he is in his current form.[/quote]
This.
Proper flanking is an art in this game. Many players are trying, a few are chosen :D…
From what I saw, good after patch Phantom are the one who are creative in his use, not the one who are just using a “I disappear” button and then run in front of the enemies. In my mind, it’s impossible to select him and expect an “average” gameplay.
Use long side routes where you can end in the back of the enemies, do proper baits, create mess to allow your friends to wipe the enemies while they are chasing you, that’s probably where he excels at. That’s already an efficient strategy with light mercs, especially with proxy. Too many players shoot as soon as they have sight on something in this game, that’s often a mistake.
And for the holy kek-10, do use your main gun from afar in angles which are totally awkward for the enemy.
The problem is that every other class is just as good as flanking as Phantom now. Some actually more so since their speed allows them to make quick trips through what would be LoS in 1 second.
Sure they are.[quote=“Ghosthree3;55082”]The problem is that every other class is just as good as flanking as Phantom now.[/quote]
No doubt every other class has a regenerating secondary health bar for this reason.