How To Deafeat The Phantom - Tips

[MTLMortis]

Don’t forget to keep jumping, it’s hard for him to hit when your merc keeps jumping around while blasting shotgun pellets into his face.

yeah, 10X that. Jumping backwards keeps you out of katana range for the most part while shooting face.

[waste]

[quote=“MTLMortis;13765”]I just got done playing a few hours versus a lot of Phantoms. All this while playing Proxy, whom everyone keeps saying is the absolute worst Merc versus Phantom. My consensus thus far is that all the crying is much ado about nothing.

Here is the surefire method that I’ve used successfully over many hours of game play. Tried and tested versus up to level 20 Phantoms. Solo. Most of the encounters I had no teammates anywhere near me.

:: DEFEATING PHANTOM ::

1. LISTEN. The Phantom cloak makes a an extremely distinctive and very loud hum. There is no possible way to miss it. After a few encounters you will recognize it immediately.

2. WATCH FOR THE HAZE. The cloak isn’t completely invisibility. It is very noticeable while moving.

3. SHOOT THE HAZE. The enemy health indicator will light up and 1 more hit and he’s uncloaked.

4. KEEP MOVING. He is a melee specialist and will try and close the distance, keep backing up

5. SPREAD OUT. If you hear or see a Phantom then spread out, clumping up will only give him a multikill if he closes the distance. In Battlefield we call this combat spacing.

That’s it. That is the entirety of dealing with Phantom. Yes, he’ll get kills, but he brings nothing to the table in terms of objective completion. If people are aware of their surroundings, and you should be in any fps, then they’re not that big a deal.[/quote]

[quote=“MTLMortis;13765”]I just got done playing a few hours versus a lot of Phantoms. All this while playing Proxy, whom everyone keeps saying is the absolute worst Merc versus Phantom. My consensus thus far is that all the crying is much ado about nothing.

Here is the surefire method that I’ve used successfully over many hours of game play. Tried and tested versus up to level 20 Phantoms. Solo. Most of the encounters I had no teammates anywhere near me.

:: DEFEATING PHANTOM ::

1. LISTEN. The Phantom cloak makes a an extremely distinctive and very loud hum. There is no possible way to miss it. After a few encounters you will recognize it immediately.

2. WATCH FOR THE HAZE. The cloak isn’t completely invisibility. It is very noticeable while moving.

3. SHOOT THE HAZE. The enemy health indicator will light up and 1 more hit and he’s uncloaked.

4. KEEP MOVING. He is a melee specialist and will try and close the distance, keep backing up

5. SPREAD OUT. If you hear or see a Phantom then spread out, clumping up will only give him a multikill if he closes the distance. In Battlefield we call this combat spacing.

That’s it. That is the entirety of dealing with Phantom. Yes, he’ll get kills, but he brings nothing to the table in terms of objective completion. If people are aware of their surroundings, and you should be in any fps, then they’re not that big a deal.[/quote]

Thanks for the tips but, I thought the game would be focused on teams of players completing objectives, not defending yourself vs. one particular merc. Phantom just doesn’t fit well in the game. It’s just not fun when Phantoms are in the game and thats simply the best way I can put it.

[Suave]

Like most experienced players said, he’s good at pubstomping clueless people. There are more and more counters to him being discovered.

In competitive matches, just like spies in TF2, he’s barely used, also with voice you can warn people about him and everyone spreads out and looks. There are usually better merc picks who contribute more.

Melee hurts in general in this game, i melee’d loads of Phantoms trying to gib me.
I’m not saying i completely own enemy Phantoms but most of the time when a phantom’s doing great, he’d be great with other mercs too like Nader/Fragger/Rhino, which he should be compared to.

Shoot him when he rushes you and melee him when he’s close enough, most weapons are faster than the katana, plus they will use the rightclick stab, if they miss that u can get 2 melee hits in.

He’s not as fast as people say he is, so when he’s charging you to melee, you know he’ll come straight for you if you just back up, or he won’t make it on time, so it’s easy to back up and shoot his face

[EisenKreutzer]

90% of all the Phantom engagements I have seen end with Phantom getting one kill before dying horribly in a hail of gunfire. The few really competent players tend to rely more on flanking and the KEK rather than trying to melee, but even these players usually get only a couple of kills before they are swiftly dispatched.

In rare instances, I have seen Phantoms getting insane kill streaks. This is usually wither because the Phantom player is very good (in which case he could have gotten similiar results with other mercs) or the other team is very bad. But most of the time, Phantom really isn’t hard to deal with.

[Alchimi]

I just knife Phantom to the death.

I’m almost not even joking. Often enough when I find myself in cc with one, at some point, usually when my ammo runs out, I simply switch to knife and quick slash the air around me until one of us dies.
Surprisingly enough it works as good as against any other merc. And a great many phantom players are actually very bad, so it’s not that hard.

Plus the bonus of the very VERY BIG EVIL GRIN one can have after killing a phantom with a knife in cc with a light merc. >:)
If the phantom player switch mercs, or even better, ragequits the game, I consider my gaming session to be perfect. B)

[Ronan]

There were indeed some reasonable changes, and I can only list my suggestions as to what I’d like to have seen to him.

First off, Red Eye, or one of the other mercs like Aimee could’ve been released that were direct hard-counters to Phantom, put the two on free-week, and see how Phantom was doing against one of them, and I more-so mean Red Eye, since he’s a more close and personal type merc. Medium to long range, whilst Phantom was medium to short. Phantom could’ve been left alone/tweaked from that point in time, and not this… knee-jerking of a nerf.

Phantom now is basically a dude who has thrown a sheet over his head and running around with a stick that swings at the speed that Rhino walks(Which is being fixed, personally, it’d be as simple as ending the damage box at the end of the animation, but, that might not be as simple as a dev, nonethess!) It was unnecessary. He was already stupid visible, I’d go into ranked games and be seen immediately. I cloaked today, stood in the middle, and a level 1, someone who literally picked up the game, ran past me, whilst I was standing still and shot me to hell. That’s saying something, when a stealth based class is killed by someone who literally just started on the game, and asked after I was killed “were u supposed to be invisible cuz i saw u” That’s… saying something, y’know?

The duration is far too much right now, 10 seconds? Phantom was made to be stealthy, not a bruiser, at least, that’s what his trailers have been. He was made to be unseen, not run and hide behind a wall once a 10 second timer begins. 6 seconds was fair. 10 seconds in a game like this is too terribly long.

Why not instead give him a semi-automatic pistol as displayed in the trailer and the katana, and that’s his loadout, make him less visible again. Even in the trailer, Phantom was never seen as this guy rushing into combat. So, why not make Refractive Armor into a Refractive Cloak, or if you’re going to keep it as armor, make the visibility back to what it was? Maybe make it go a tad bit slower going down during him standing still, much like the “Cloak and Dagger” off of TF2, but, to not rip it off completely. I mean, lets face it. Being able to stand still and regain cloak is quite unfair.

Make it so if someone bumps into Phantom, he’ll flicker to visible for a moment before going back, meaning if he’s indeed sitting in a corner, someone can check them and find him. But, that’s also where Red Eye will come into super effective play. Throw smoke onto a point and IR vision when he gets to, easily spotting Phantom. Hell, make it so Red Eye, Vasilli, and Aimee could “mark” Phantom, revealing his outline for the team for a short time. But, for that to happen, the noise would need to be reduced slightly, if not back to visible, the timer back to 6, etc.

He needed to be tweaked. Remove the armor absorption, maybe make him gain around +50 health when he uncloaks for 1.5-2 seconds so he’s not blasted to hell immediately, since reducing his health by 10 is quite hefty.