My Thoughts on Phantom

(AdmiralTeddy) #1

Hello all, hope you’re having a wonderful day

These are my opinions on phantom and what I think needs work, open to criticism :slight_smile:

He is a new merc, so just like rhino where everyone cried OP on its first day people need to get used to him.
I will break down my argument into a pub vs comp (dirty cups) scenario.

The invis right now is a very powerful tool in pub games, most newbies dont pay attention to their surroundings and dont see the phantoms coming, but there is a problem, the only major counter to phantom is a heartbeat sensor.
This means for the most part, in a competitive scene where players cooperate and call out places and happenings, phantom should be a normal fit but in a scenario where the teamwork is even a little off the mark, phantom ends up as we call overpowered.
One thing note worthy is, phantom’s invis is much better in darker areas (e.g. chapel) because his sprinting invisibility gets masked by the dark of the wall, meaning that sprinting or not he is pretty much invisible.
The main issue is, I’m a sawbonez, I see the phantom coming (yet even running he is still hard to track) and as much as I shoot him, unless i’m pinpoint accurate on a moving invisible target, he will get close and stab me.
With lighter mercs, because of their movespeed they can backwards jump and avoid him for a period of time which should suffice killing him.

I like his armor, its a good thing, he can sponge up damage while he closes up on a target.

Here are my suggestions in regards to his invisibility (the best I come up with for balancing him out) these can be taken solely or as a combination of:

1- If he stays stationary he gains invisibility and moving breaks the effect.
2- His invisibility degrades by distance, the further he is, the less visible he becomes.
3- only invis if he walks (not sprinting)
4- his “invisibility being more visible while sprinting” and by this I mean more visible than it currently is. (say right now its 80% while running, make it 70%).
5- if he could only choose armor OR invis (still have both in his arsenal)
6- the lower his hp, the more visable he becomes (imagine wear and tear where bullet holes make it harder for you to stay hidden as, part of your tech, is destroyed until healed)

Right now I love phantom’s armor because it opens up new play styles but his invis is overwhelming for the most part and it either needs to be tweaked or switched out for something that fits the role it was supposed to fill. (ganking and sneaking).
I like playing him, hate playing vs him, annoys the hell out of me, especially on chapel which its so dark that you cant see the phantoms.

The best way to balance this out imo: is to make his invis go to 60% when he’s sprinting, 70-75% when he’s walking and 85-90% when he’s stationary. (Still visible, but takes more attention to see it) and also separating the armor from the invis (the charge is still shared between the two so he has to choose wisely before going invis or activating armor, he shouldnt be able to just switch from one to another). This way

Another decent tweak would be taking a leaf out of crysis’s playbook, you have a battery and with different actions come different charge costs, so if you run while invis, it takes more energy, depleting the battery faster and hence invis coming to a premature end whilst standing still or walking slowly requires less energy giving you more time.
Attacking to break invisibility should instantly empty the charge.

if the route taken is the one where the armor is removed, I think it’d be good if he gets more movespeed to counteract the effect, he is more vulnerable but more agile and still an assassin.

Please share your opinion and keep playing dirty <3

Admiral Teddy

(wittyChicken) #2

Except that the fact he has a cloak is not the thing that is wrong with him. He makes enough sounds to announce that he is nearby and when you know phantom is nearby he is not that hard to see.

Don’t try to balance him from where he isn’t broken.

(Reddeadcap) #3

[quote=“wittyChicken;45064”]Except that the fact he has a cloak is not the thing that is wrong with him. He makes enough sounds to announce that he is nearby and when you know phantom is nearby he is not that hard to see.

Don’t try to balance him from where he isn’t broken.[/quote]
The only thing broken about him is that his katana’s rmb stab can be used while turning, letting you kill everyone around you with less than 100 hp in a single attack, when it is meant to be mostly for taking out people who don’t notice him, the people at Splash Damage confirmed that this was a bug that had been overlooked.

My only pet peeves is that he also has what many people see objectively as the best smgs, I like the Bilshlok the most but to each their own and believe he should have machine pistols as primaries, aswell as having a sword in each loadout as it is pretty much his defining weapon, more than any firearm in the game, hopefully when the stab issue is fixed.

The Cloak/Armor people mostly complain about I’ve been suprised by how few people have adapted, but one can only hope that Redeye comes around soon.
As many people dont play Vasilli enough due to not being able to snipe, and ones that do or try too much when it comes to sniping forget that their heart-beat sensor is their best friend, not only for themselves but for their entire team.

My only complaint could be that his armor should have a tad longer cooldown.

(AdmiralTeddy) #4

I honestly think his running invis is in need of a tweak, especially on chapel which has dark textures and makes it hard to see him.

As @Redcap mentioned, all it takes is a sniper, but rarely anyone plays them, and if they do, they usually suck and deploy the sensor in random bad places.

Im not calling phantom OP just yet, but right now he can drive away so much attention from the objective just because you’re team needs to focus on not letting the phantom reach you and keep the objective safe/attack the objecitve at the same time.

the reason I believe the problem is in the invis @wittyChicken is that, his armor + invis combo makes it so that unless you’re landing off headshots on an invis target moving towards you, you’re pretty much dead.

I’d love to hear what you think is the problem, instead of just saying that isn’t and leaving it there.

(Reddeadcap) #5

The only known problem really is the sword’s stab issue, as the parameters that should force you to not move your mouse while stabbing were forgotten they say.

My personal thoughts are replacing his SMGs with machine pistols, making Phantom an even more close range character and make the katana available in all his loadout, along with making the complete cloak cooldown twice the length of its charge, or make cloaking only possible when completely cooled down.

That said, as playing both against competent and incompetent Phantoms, he is alright besides that sword thing, which is confirmed to be a bug. “He’s OP because he has a high score.” isn’t really much of an answer when his main way to kill people is his katan, giving him not only his long kills in x second chains, kills in a single life, but also gaining bonuses for it being kills with a melee weapon, if there were badges for X ammo provided or X health provided, objective repair/destruction badges, similar how there are revive/kill badges or kills of x type badges I believe the scoreboards for the most part would be different.

Finally what really matters is player reaction and that could be said about any merc.
A few days back I was defending the generator for the barriers on Bridge, the enemy at no point thought of entering through the back of this room, or have they thought of simply throwing explosives at the generator, which is funny since about 4 of them at the time were Naders, sure it would’ve been lengthier but it would still be easier to do.
The same could be said about one instance where I was ontop of the lamps in the room with the stairs in the third phase of Chapel as Rhino, Someone came in with a datacore, I defended the datacore until it was sent back due to the countdown rather than someone returning it, then it happened about 5 times and not at one point has the enemy team chosen a different route, but have resorted to the expected “Rhino is OP because he works well in small, confined spaces and I am not trying to watch out for the obvious minigun wheering.” for a lesser extent, think of every moment someone reacts with “Nader is OP, because Martyrdom.” as a Nader.

Another example is that people will also try to find a reason to complain, when it isn’t even related to what has happened, I’ve come across a player as phantom simply sitting on the bridge in chapel, the bridge with the Machinegun nest, firing at enemies that had recently spawned under him since his EV has past the second CDA LED board, he was shooting at people, no less than 5, at not at one point has any of them reacted to the deathrattle of their teammate, the obituary, or the fact the person 3 feet to their left had somehow just fallen, this happened until 6 players died and instantly cried out that its obviously because of the refractive armor’s damage reduction.

(wittyChicken) #6

As this is probably the Phantom thread 54264, I’ll just copy paste you some of my older responses.

As response to potential phantom nerfs/tweaks:
[spoiler]IMO the katana also should be “nerfed”. Or more like fixed. I don’t think the original design was about him using the heavy attack as a more powerful version of the slash.

The high damage should come with a downside. Currently the longer animation is NOT a downside. The active frames should end the moment the blade is fully extended and it should be a thin forward hitbox instead of 360°. It’s a katana sword after all, not a lightsaber.

Currently the katana is almost purely a no low skill pubstomper weapon. Raising his skillcap would make him a lot less infuriating.

KEK nerf is hard as it indirectly affects other characters too eg Bushwanker.

[list]
[] Drop health to 110
[] Change the way the cloak absorbs damage (muh proxy mines)
[] Fix the heavy attack to make the pubs a lot healthier
[] Somehow adjust the cooldown on cloak. Maybe put it on a higher cooldown, if he or enemy breaks it.
[/list][/spoiler]

As response to Phantom’s ability to one-hit weaker classes:
[spoiler]Phantom isn’t really that much of a problem, if you are out in the open as you can backpedal faster than he runs. As long as he is outside the leap+right-click range you can beat him easy, if he wants to melee you (90% Phantoms).

If you are indoors or the Phantom plays more recon style (cloak + smg), then you are going to have a problem. Also if there are +2 Phantoms in the enemy team, but that’s true for almost any class (3 Fraggers, 3 Naders, 3 Proxies, 3 Rhinos).
Fix the 1-hit invincibility on shield.
Fix katana’s right-click.
Maybe drop his HP to 110 as the @$!# has a KEK.

I don’t think he would be too crazy after that. Mainly because you would atually need to aim katana’s right-click. Maybe make it more lunge-like so that you get a small movement bonus when you use it, but it will lock your camera to certain direction and you get huge movement speed - after using it.[/spoiler]

So in short, is only real problems are that his right-click is too forgiving, which makes him somewhat broken at melee range. Also his shield will tank any hit as long as it has 1% left (a proxy mine for example). He also has 120HP and access to best SMGs in the game. Either one of those should probably go and as health is easier to nerf than reworking loadout cards, he health could be dropped to 110, putting him on bar with Sawbonez and such (He would still have the tweaked shield).

So yeah, the fact that he is hard to see is not the problem. That is actually his whole idea. It already makes a ton of sounds and is pretty easy to see.