Not impressed with phoenix

(extraordinaryEmperor) #1

Played a couple games as Phoenix and I must say that his Q is a bit underwhelming. It’s functions like an aura station, in that it heals teammates in an area. However, I feel that it’s effectively worse than an aura station as while you charge, you’re vulnerable, and can only heal again once the CD is off. Meaning that a lot of the times, your teammates are going to be staring at you, waiting for heals when you just healed another bunch.

What was wrong with his original ability? I feel that the pulse regen fits into his phoenix inspiration, i.e. regeneration theme.

Also, although the self revive is a nifty tool of phoenix, and his trademark; the tradeoff of having the worst healing ability in the game makes him low tier for me.

(ttownjoe) #2

overall hes decent, I bought him, I like him a lot more than expected the 430 health versus 420 and the ability to top off his own health and really bring teammates up to full health instantly while in combat. All in all I find him to be well balanced and the top 1/3rd of mercs.

(activeClip) #3

agreed, he is a shadow of his Alpha self, while others are just as good and some better

(Szakalot) #4

you guys are kidding?

Phoenix is so much better now, previous pulse had a 10-12 sec cooldown, and self-regen was laughably small. Presently, Phoenix can bring himself up to 100hp with ease, in the middle of a fight. Perfect rambo medic.

Healing others is less potent than Aura or Sawbonez in the long run, but still better than sparks. However, the ability to add 80hp to somebody mid-fight can really help your teammates. The only issue is timing the heal so that teammates get healed before they die.

(Szakalot) #5

its 430 speed,not health, lol. Health at 100hp

(extraordinaryEmperor) #6

If you think you can Rambo as Phoenix, you must be playing against some very bad players. If you try to go around a corner and heal, it’ll take you several seconds to charge up, not to mention your vulnerability during that time. If you go out again and take massive damage, you’ll be spending a lot of time just sitting in the corner waiting for it to charge up. The regen was so much better as you could poke, hide and regen a bit, and even if the enemy shows up, you’ll most likely have more hp than them giving you the edge. The 12 sec CD also meant that you could use it frequently enough to heal both yourself and teammates.

Sparks isn’t really meant to be a healer but a long range medic. You charge up your shot as you see a friendly taking massive damage, and then you shoot them just as they go down, giving the enemies very little time to gib them.

(Szakalot) #7

[quote=“extraordinaryEmperor;79313”]If you think you can Rambo as Phoenix, you must be playing against some very bad players. If you try to go around a corner and heal, it’ll take you several seconds to charge up, not to mention your vulnerability during that time. If you go out again and take massive damage, you’ll be spending a lot of time just sitting in the corner waiting for it to charge up. The regen was so much better as you could poke, hide and regen a bit, and even if the enemy shows up, you’ll most likely have more hp than them giving you the edge. The 12 sec CD also meant that you could use it frequently enough to heal both yourself and teammates.

Sparks isn’t really meant to be a healer but a long range medic. You charge up your shot as you see a friendly taking massive damage, and then you shoot them just as they go down, giving the enemies very little time to gib them.[/quote]

in about a second charge you can get 40hp;

poke a bit with awesome kek, come back wtih full hp and finish the opponent off.

Phoenix definitely has the highest rambo medic capability of all medics, cause instaheal is much faster (even wtih charge) than any medpacks, except of course aura; who can’t push at all.

Obviously he can’t take it all on his own (still a medic) as 100hp is quite a dent and you fall easily if facing multiple opponents. But in teamfights where both teams are slugging it out to the last bullet n last hp, phoenix has much more swing potential than any other medic (again, assuming people would destroy aura’s station first)

edit:

i’d also mention you are hardly vulnerable during chargup time, as if being shot at, its typically fine to wallspam n charge more to regen even more health. I’ve beaten opponents who simply run out of ammo this way.

(extraordinaryEmperor) #8

like I said, you’re probably fighting people pretty bad

(RyePanda) #9

Though alone he may not be great, in a coordinated charge where every player on your team could get a 100 health boost instantly after taking damage, he could be incredible.

(bizarreRectangle) #10

Well, I’ve never played phoenix, and I’ve never been in the alpha. But what szakalot is saying makes sense, and plus you have no argument to counter that. You just keep insisting that he’s playing against bad players. Sawbonez can rambo too, but his health packs take the same or even a longer amount of time to heal you up as it’s a regen style, whereas phoenix can do it instantly with his pulse.

The instant 80 hp boost will really help out in a firefight, and he can revive people in a pinch. The only difficulty from what I see is using the pulse before your teammates die, and managing the CD (which is quite fair). Basically it’s just timing. You could also simply revive them without wasting time charging the defibs and then charge pulse for a second so they still end up with about 80 more hp, instead of wasting 12 seconds of cooldown, although in combat this might not be the best option.

To be honest I think people care about the self revive too much, it’s common knowledge to always gib people, it was rather obvious it wouldn’t be that effective. Nevertheless, if you
have teammates they can probably buy you enough time to revive and start healing again.

In comparison, sawbonez, the most used object of comparison, can’t heal you in the middle of the firefight since the regen of the packs gets interrupted by damage. All he can do is shoot back. Now I suppose he can revive his fallen teammates, but whenever I try to do that I end up dying myself and then my teammates just falling again. Sawbonez still has that awesome balance and mobility, I just think that in the middle of combat those health packs can’t compete with the healing pulse.

I’m still saving up for the 50k, I’m more than halfway there. All this stuff is just things I observed from watching phoenix play and stuff.

(ProfPlump) #11

All that Phoenix needs is a small reduction to the cooldown of his healing pulse - there definitely shouldn’t be any increases to the amount that the pulse can heal or any reduction in the time it takes to do so.

When you play Phoenix at the moment, it feels like you are having to hold off on your AOE heals until you have at least 2 friendlies in your vicinity - otherwise you use it on 1 friendly and then you realise that your other friendly missed out. This is because the time it takes for the ability to cool down is too long.

Sure, we don’t want Phoenix to be able to run around creating pulses for every individual damaged friendly because that’s what Sawbonez is for. But instead I’d like to see him be able to heal a bit more frequently.

(Szakalot) #12

[quote=“ProfPlump;79752”]All that Phoenix needs is a small reduction to the cooldown of his healing pulse - there definitely shouldn’t be any increases to the amount that the pulse can heal or any reduction in the time it takes to do so.

When you play Phoenix at the moment, it feels like you are having to hold off on your AOE heals until you have at least 2 friendlies in your vicinity - otherwise you use it on 1 friendly and then you realise that your other friendly missed out. This is because the time it takes for the ability to cool down is too long.

Sure, we don’t want Phoenix to be able to run around creating pulses for every individual damaged friendly because that’s what Sawbonez is for. But instead I’d like to see him be able to heal a bit more frequently.[/quote]

feels pretty frequent already, you have to budget the heals. If two people are at 10hp, its better to heal them both to 70 with a mid-heal, cause regen will likely give them another 20-30 before the next fight.
Alternatively, you can full heal one player and guard the next one.

(bizarreRectangle) #13

I agree, budgeting heals is probably the key. And when regen kicks in they will receive additional health. Still, maybe 11 seconds on max charge is a bit better?

(Szakalot) #14

ive fought both. Been playing Phoenix since he came out, on comp and pubs, including minvll10 servers.

I do agree that there are better ‘rambo’ characters. But amongst medics, he is the most combat oriented.

If sparks had a kek10, she would be better ofcourse - she also has an instantheal, good mobility, sniper-revivegun, very good revive (bringing people to full hp with hardly a chargeup).

Summarize:

  • best smg
  • best infight self-heal
  • situational self revive.

None of the other medics have anything close.

(VincentRJaeger) #15

ive fought both. Been playing Phoenix since he came out, on comp and pubs, including minvll10 servers.

I do agree that there are better ‘rambo’ characters. But amongst medics, he is the most combat oriented.

If sparks had a kek10, she would be better ofcourse - she also has an instantheal, good mobility, sniper-revivegun, very good revive (bringing people to full hp with hardly a chargeup).

Summarize:

  • best smg
  • best infight self-heal
  • situational self revive.

None of the other medics have anything close.[/quote]

Compared to Sawbonez though, do you think Phoenix will become the 1st pick in Competitive or does that spot remain to Sawbonez? Heard it somewhere that he was the top-pick when it comes to medics but I’ve been curious to find out if Phoenix might push him down or not.

(Szakalot) #16

ive fought both. Been playing Phoenix since he came out, on comp and pubs, including minvll10 servers.

I do agree that there are better ‘rambo’ characters. But amongst medics, he is the most combat oriented.

If sparks had a kek10, she would be better ofcourse - she also has an instantheal, good mobility, sniper-revivegun, very good revive (bringing people to full hp with hardly a chargeup).

Summarize:

  • best smg
  • best infight self-heal
  • situational self revive.

None of the other medics have anything close.[/quote]

Compared to Sawbonez though, do you think Phoenix will become the 1st pick in Competitive or does that spot remain to Sawbonez? Heard it somewhere that he was the top-pick when it comes to medics but I’ve been curious to find out if Phoenix might push him down or not.[/quote]

i dont play high level comp so its hard to say. Imo on defense sawbonez is a more consistent pick.

On offense, I’d imagine you would want one of each, one for pushing and mid-fight heal, and one for topping up between fights, where Phoenix lacks.

(Szakalot) #17

I’ve realized just now that Phoenix is even better.

The healing pulse HP is maximized when that circle is full. Thats around 12second cooldown.

Holding healing pulse longer DOES NOT GIVE MORE HP and is actually a waste, as it lengthens your cooldown with no benefit.

80hp insta-selfheal every 12 seconds - yup: thats a pretty good rambo medic.

(BananaSlug) #18

no he s fine. and the self revive is prfect because you cant revive yourself in midle of the fight because it will be just not ok

(Gh0st1e) #19

@extraordinaryEmperor I think you have missed the point Phoenix’s heal ability and where it really shines.

Sawbones has better healing when it comes to the total amount he can heal for but can only heal one person at a time, not to mention he cannot heal an entire team without waiting on a cooldown to get an extra medpack or two. On top of all of this, I beleive Sawbones’ medpacks stop healing if you take damage (correct me if I am wrong on this).

Aura can heal an entire team with her station and it heals quickly even while receiving damage but this is at the cost of a long CD between deploys and limited mobility of the healing station.

Phoenix, on the other hand, can heal an entire team instantly, but maybe not to full health depending on the max health of the teammates and damage taken. Basically he can heal more people than Sawbones and is more mobile than a healing station at the cost of how much he can heal for and how often.

(SucculentHeadCrab) #20

I like that Phoenix is a decent mix of Aura and Sawbones in terms of utility, as in a semi aggressive merc that can dish out damage and heal teammates on the move.

I’ve seen good use by Phoenix players laying back then rush pulse healing as needed, or as a semi safe fallback point to top off players on the front.

Best thing to take note for ALL players is that most Phoenix players WILL come heal you, don’t go waiting or running across the map for them. Just fall back a safe distance and most of them seem to be on point about healing you.

Same goes for Phoenix players, don’t be leading a charge, play like Sawbones, second line fighting to heal and revive. Works out if you get downed near teammates to have the opportunity to self-revive in a firefight with relative safety.