How to balance Phantom (from a community perspective)

(Grave_Knight) #61

This is the part where you comment what you think should happen. [/quote]
They can reduce the visibility on his cloak and re-extend the damage window on melee weapons (not just for the katana).

(humaneCushion) #62

As far as I’m concerned, Phantom is an assault, not a recon.

To that end, his armor, should only act as armor when he’s not using it as a cloak.

Give him 100hp

When cloaked, he gets ‘release’ levels of transparency, and no damage absorption.
When visible, he gets ~30% damage absorbtion, deducted from his cloak energy.

If he uses his cloak, he gets no “bonus hp” but he is hard to track, if he dosen’t use it he is tankier than his speed would normally indicate, but not enough to outweigh the benefits of remaining undetected.

Additionally, at no point should Phantom be rewarded for remaining stationary.
There should be a constant minimum visibility and volume to his cloak that prevents him from simply sitting in one spot waiting for cheap kills.

(Sipiri) #63

I’m still trying to figure out the best way to play phantom, but maybe my insight will help.
Currently this merc is not a melee class in any sense. This merc just has a little health and is slow. Katana DPS is lower than knife DPS, and his lack of speed really hurts him. I’ve had more luck melee fighting with aura.

Nor is this merc a direct assault class- again, aura is better suited to direct fighting if only because she can regen her health. However, if you use the cloak as a damage buffer you have a LITTLE extra time to aim properly- but not much. Likewise, you can escape better than most classes because you can use the cloak to prevent a few bullets from hitting you.

This merc is not a support class, for obvious reasons.

The merc can be useful as an engineer, but even with stealth he’s pretty bad at it.

So the only thing this merc can be is an indirect assault class. Surprise attacks, basically. The problem is that the cloak isn’t that good. You can’t walk in front of someone with the cloak on because they’ll notice you. If you walk behind someone- well the cloak might as well be turned off, because it doesn’t matter. If you stand still people will notice you if they’re looking for you- but usually they won’t see you. If you move on people’s peripheral vision, you might not be noticed.

So basically, if someone knows you’re there- you’re slightly less useful than Aura. If they don’t see you; you’ve got a distinct advantage.

Right now, I think Phantom is one of the weakest mercs because his stealth is very limited and you just have to HOPE nobody is looking in your direction when you’re trying to get to a good ambush location. When you’re at your ambush location you either need to get really good at being a mentalist and turn on your cloak at the right time, or hope that whoever you’re hunting isn’t very observant. The katana is a fairly useful ambush weapon against everyone except Rhino, so phantoms are rewarded for getting close to people- but they’re not useless for ambushing at range.

Several ways Phantom could be made stronger (Any one of the following. A combination of any of these will probably be overpowered):

  1. Buff combat abilities
    a) Give phantom some combat secondary ability such as an air strike.
    b) Remove katana’s slow attack speed
    c) Buff Phantom’s run speed
    d) Increase Phantom’s health to 130
    e) Phantom’s primary weapon becomes sniper. This removes phantom’s almost mandatory up-close-and-personal playstyle, which makes the cloak deficiency better.

  2. Buff support abilities
    a) Higher engineering skill
    b) Ability to track enemies
    i) Tracking station that detects everyone in proximity
    ii) Tracking bug that stays detects an enemy to everyone for a minute
    iii) Personal radar
    c) Ability to spoof enemy combatants Eg. Fake noises, false radar blips, phantom images.

  3. Buff stealth
    a) remove stealth duration; remove stealth armor; stealth still cancels by combat; stealth still has a cooldown timer- possibly increased to 30 sec. This encourages an ambush style of play
    b) remove stealth movement penalty. This will make the phantom difficult to notice unless you’re actively watching for him. This MAY be overpowered in that you might be able to run up to fools and start whacking away- but it will greatly increase the ability to get behind enemy lines.
    c) Stealth grants complete invisibility; stealth cooldown increased; primary weapon removed; secondary weapon replaced with machine pistol; katana becomes secondary ability; katana shares cooldown with stealth; katana damage increased 2x when aimed at back. Probably an unlikely change, but this blatantly copies a character from another class based shooter.

(GRUARRR) #64

In my opinion the key could be between:

A ) Increase movement speed, attack speed, and cloak duration.
Remove armour aspect.

And:

B ) Add ability. Ability buffs attack strength temporarily. Cannot cloak under buff duration.

But in not sure about how to balance him or which option choose. I feel brainstorming and feedback is important. He has to be competent but he has to be balanced.

I also like the idea of the flicker, the ability to spot enemies (he is a recon, so, he should spot enemies as other recons) and I agree with what has been said about we dont want a guy that can stab a lot of people just alone. This could be the main issue with him.

I also like the idea of the semi pistol and the katana and not having smgs, but as I havent tried him on this way, Im not sure if it could be good or not. Closed beta players know better about this thing.

I like teamplay. And I think the best teamplay is the one in which each merc has his role, and well played, can be great.

I find atractive the idea of having one option or ability, call it whatever, just to kill someone. Just one. Only one, but fast and being accurate.

I mean, he is supposed to be an assasin. I think, it could be good, if he could have some type of ability to kill a vassili that is well positioned and is not allowing my team to move correctly, or a Proxy that is going to completely defuse the bomb or a well positioned turret.

You know, to get something/someone annoying out of the way.

Just one melee kill every certain time, but a kill that can change the game. Only one (uhm… well more or less), but well done.

Some shoots over here, some stealth over there in order to move or mislead the enemy, and a good stab on the “objective”.

This is my humble opinion.

Happy to see that a lot of people are trying to find a solution on this issue.

(Killerbee) #65

[quote=“humaneCushion;67762”]Additionally, at no point should Phantom be rewarded for remaining stationary.
There should be a constant minimum visibility and volume to his cloak that prevents him from simply sitting in one spot waiting for cheap kills.[/quote]

That’s like forcing vasili to constantly relocate after every shot. Ambushing is a core part of stealth classes, without the element of surprise he might as well not exist because at that point hes just a shitty version of fragger.

(Olipops) #66

Just buff him :smiley: