Phantom: A compilation of recon ability ideas for the recon with no spotting ability

[Terminal_6]

I usually keep a few merc ability ideas in the back I’ve my head, but now you’re actually asking for them.

I suppose this is a bit of a SNITCH/HBsensor hybrid, I’ll just call it the Sparrow Drone. It’s essentially a heartbeat sensor that flies like the SNITCH, but a lot faster and only spots people beneath it for a short amount of time. It cloaks on deployment and dies on its own after a certain flight time, or if it crashes into a wall. That’s all the detail I have.

Since Phantom is the most offensive recon merc, I figured it would be fitting to give him a spotting ability of somewhat lower caliber than Vas or Aimee’s.

[Cuck]

@SzGamer227 since when do we care about the military definition of Recon?

youre not kidding right? i mean youre not serious about this right?

youre not that kid who says “hurr but im just pretending to be retarded”

im not saying that you retarded (please dont take it personally)
but im speaking objectively, you do sound like one.

[Cuck]

[quote=“Terminal_6;177245”]I usually keep a few merc ability ideas in the back I’ve my head, but now you’re actually asking for them.

I suppose this is a bit of a SNITCH/HBsensor hybrid, I’ll just call it the Sparrow Drone. It’s essentially a heartbeat sensor that flies like the SNITCH, but a lot faster and only spots people beneath it for a short amount of time. It cloaks on deployment and dies on its own after a certain flight time, or if it crashes into a wall. That’s all the detail I have.

Since Phantom is the most offensive recon merc, I figured it would be fitting to give him a spotting ability of somewhat lower caliber than Vas or Aimee’s.[/quote]

b-but vas is 30k merc and Phantom is 50k merc!

youre telling me that 50k merc should use meme flying bird that is somewhat lower caliber than vas??

hurr im mad

[Terminal_6]

[quote=“buffMonorail;177263”]b-but vas is 30k merc and Phantom is 50k merc!

youre telling me that 50k merc should use meme flying bird that is somewhat lower caliber than vas??

hurr im mad[/quote]

#MakeVas50k

[SzGamer2271]

[quote=“Terminal_6;177245”]I usually keep a few merc ability ideas in the back I’ve my head, but now you’re actually asking for them.

I suppose this is a bit of a SNITCH/HBsensor hybrid, I’ll just call it the Sparrow Drone. It’s essentially a heartbeat sensor that flies like the SNITCH, but a lot faster and only spots people beneath it for a short amount of time. It cloaks on deployment and dies on its own after a certain flight time, or if it crashes into a wall. That’s all the detail I have.

Since Phantom is the most offensive recon merc, I figured it would be fitting to give him a spotting ability of somewhat lower caliber than Vas or Aimee’s.[/quote]

So it’s a drone that flies by and spots people in it’s line of sight before hitting a wall and dying? Working out a practical amount of cooldown for that would be difficult, since it would be very underwhelming if the cooldown were too long and unfairly spammy if it were too short (almost like a HB sensor that covers more distance and can’t be found or destroyed). I’m just going to guess that a 14 second cooldown would be a reasonable middleground.

[JJMAJR]

SzGamer227
[spoiler][quote=“SzGamer227;176601”]The point of this thread is to compile ability ideas that work with Phantom’s solo play. I have to have a standard: I’m not just going to incorporate any ability suggested in the comments if it has issues or deviates too far from the thread’s goal.[/quote]
Phantom being focused on solo play was a very bad pain in his side for a while already. I can also solo play with a Bushwhacker and kick a lot more ass than Phantom. Phantom is extremely defensive and if I wanted more security for playing with one character, Bushwhacker completely overcomes Phantom under their current iterations.

TL;DR: Phantom isn’t a solo play character.

In the case of Comms Hack, you didn’t give an explanation how it would work, so I gave feedback based on an educated generalization, but I don’t have enough information for anything substantial in the main post. How long does it last? What’s the cooldown? Does it pulsate on and off like Vassili’s Heartbeat Sensor? Does it have any special effects or require special activation? Given substantial drawbacks, I can definitely see some sort of global spotting effect being a viable recon ability, even if it strays from the area-control seen by other spotting abilities.

From what I know for Comms Hack…
Comms Hack
Spots every enemy in a large radius for a nice, solid, and long period of time.
Long cooldown delay.
Empowers players that are extremely good at killing with very iffy weaponry.

The last point would be helpful for people that are carrying their team, and need to take an enemy by surprise.

As for your point about Debilitating Throwing Knives… A Rhino on a Heal Station wouldn’t be affected by Debilitation since healing abilities cancel the effect, so more damaging knives would once again be the preferred variant. That goes back to Phantom straying too far from the lone-wolf recon classification in any case, since it would not only be a combat ability, but would Debilitate and spot enemies, making it optimal when (or even entirly dependent on) having teammates with guns involved. This, as I have said, deviates too far from the standard of maintaining Phantom’s current solo style for me to consider it over pure-damage Throwing Knives or include it in the main post.

Hit a player in the face with a throwing knife and you could score 100 damage under the way you laid it out. I’d rather it be 70 to the face so it doesn’t instantly destroy everything in sight, and to compensate for that a damage bonus seems to be in order.

And, I thought that the debilitate status effect doesn’t go away when affected by Aura’s health station.

Anyways, saying that giving Phantom Throwing Knives would make his heavy pistols redundant isn’t very much of a concern, since you could say the same thing about Fletcher’s Sticky Bombs making his Shotgun/Revolver redundant, or Rhino’s Minigun making his heavy pistols redundant. It just doesn’t matter all that much if you look at Dirty Bomb as a whole. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

35 damage is still higher than the most powerful heavy pistol in the game. I wasn’t worried about heavy pistols being redundant.[/spoiler]

Ignore please.
[spoiler][quote=“Dysfnal;176972”]@SzGamer227 since when do we care about the military definition of Recon?[/quote]
Ever since people cared about Phantom getting basic knives instead of “OMG KATANA IN EVERY LOADOUT OR I RAGEQUIT F!@#%$ng F@!#$!@#$ N@#$$ F@#!!” and start growing a brain.

Since Phantom is the most offensive recon merc, I figured it would be fitting to give him a spotting ability of somewhat lower caliber than Vas or Aimee’s.

Pshehehaha ohh my sides! You clearly lack an extremely large amount of knowledge about Phantom.[/spoiler]

I think that we are on the right track though. Let’s hope this keeps going.

[SzGamer2271]

TL;DR: Phantom isn’t a solo play character.

Quoted from Dirty Bomb’s Meet the Mercs page:

“A powerful recon operative who uses his Refractive Armor to disappear on the battlefield. He can easily re-position himself even under enemy observation, allowing him to attack without warning. His main weapon is the element of surprise. Forces enemies to constantly watch their backs. Suits the lone wolf type.”

While that business about sneaking under enemy observation with ease is a joke, it’s obvious that Phantom was designed to be a sneaky assassin merc who operates on his own, which is very likely the reason he’s the only Recon merc with no recon ability. Letting him disrupt and spot enemies is just about as far from “lone wolf” characterization as I’m willing to stray.

[quote=“JJMAJR;177980”]From what I know for Comms Hack…
Comms Hack
Spots every enemy in a large radius for a nice, solid, and long period of time.
Long cooldown delay.
Empowers players that are extremely good at killing with very iffy weaponry.

The last point would be helpful for people that are carrying their team, and need to take an enemy by surprise.[/quote]

Not sure if what you say in that third point is a mechanic of the ability, but for now I’ll just include Communications Hack as a simple spotting ability that globally spots enemies for ~10 seconds with a 70 second cooldown. It occurs to me that a global spotting ability would actually be rather fitting for Phantom, since it would make it easier for him find targets for assassination without compromising his location in any way.

[quote=“JJMAJR;177980”]Hit a player in the face with a throwing knife and you could score 100 damage under the way you laid it out. I’d rather it be 70 to the face so it doesn’t instantly destroy everything in sight, and to compensate for that a damage bonus seems to be in order.

And, I thought that the debilitate status effect doesn’t go away when affected by Aura’s health station.[/quote]

We’re talking about a relatively slow-traveling projectile that realistically only has a chance to hit an enemy’s head if they were standing completely still. Keep in mind that Sticky Bombs deal up to 90 damage in an area and 100 damage on stick with similar cooldown, and that the Fel-IX and MOA SNPR-1 deal 150+ damage on headshots with hitscan accuracy. While Throwing Knives definitely have combat potential, they would still be glaringly weak as such even if they dealt 60 or 70 damage on hit.

[Naonna]

http://forums.dirtybomb.nexon.net/discussion/28897/phantom-and-thunder-updates/p1 psssst guys.

[Brycko]

Despite the recent changes made to Phantom (EMP field? WTF?) I’m Just gonna throw an idea in here.

Death Marker: Ace Mercs/Killstreak mercs/medal earning mercs can ‘peak’ Phantoms interest. They then get a ‘deathmark’, which allows Phantom to track his target (until someone else peaks his interest). By observing the movement of his target via the deathmark, Phantom can wait for the opportunity to strike whilst the enemy isn’t looking. Once he’s in a certain range, Phantom goes into ‘assasin’ mode; Target Player sounds become louder, to help Phantom stalk his prey. Players killed with the deathmark dont make any loud, obnoxious sounds when they die, and the sound of Phantom’s Katana is muffled allowing Phantom to get away to another target.
Without the deathmark, Phantom is just his regular old self to other players.

Essentially it’s a passive ability that helps Phantom become recon and better fulfill the stealth-ninja role.

[Drac0rion]

Looking back at this post from a while ago: http://forums.dirtybomb.nexon.net/discussion/19281/phantom-is-life-phantom-is-knife

It seems I already considered SNITCH damage buff or the EMP effect for Phantom, but applied through another type of ability.

Oh well, even if Phantom will never become a meta pick, I guess I’ll just remain a troll forever then…

[zrs1337]

What about just adding a spotting ability to his armor. When he is stealthed he marks enemies in his sight… Easy to implement, doesn’t make him OP, and not as stupid as giving him the EMP, because Thunder should keep that EMP, it’s his only useful abilty…

[SzGamer2271]

What about just adding a spotting ability to his armor. When he is stealthed he marks enemies in his sight… Easy to implement, doesn’t make him OP, and not as stupid as giving him the EMP, because Thunder should keep that EMP, it’s his only useful abilty…

Because that defeats the purpose of the stealth part of his armor.

If he’s not plainly visible, then his armor alerts any enemy in his line of sight that he is also in their line of sight. That’s just as bad (or worse) for sneaking as if the armor spotted enemies in a radius around him… it sends an even more obvious message to enemies that Phantom is nearby than the humming of the armor itself, and makes it next to impossible to pull off being a stealth assassin.

At least as an independent active ability you could use it while not in stealth, and you would only use it in stealth if you wanted to, so it doesn’t foil any assassination attempts by causing the intended victim to panic the instant you see them.

I don’t know what to think about that EMP thing, but it doesn’t seem like it meets any actual concerns than anyone had about Phantom.

[NetflixandKill]

I love all these ideas to be honest. My only suggestion is to rename the DUPE device to the “DUDE (Deployable Undercover Digital Espionage)” Device so that Phantom can yell out “Duuuude!” in a similar manner to “How about that!”. It could be the next “kawaii”. That’s really the only thing I have to add

[inscrutableShow]

My two cents on some of the ideas:

Aim Spotting: In my eyes, it seems to be too clunky to use effectively in a game as fast-paced as DB. While it might work in a slower game, I don’t think taking time to spot a passing enemy before engaging would be a good idea, but this problem would be circumvented in…

Tracer Rounds: I think this is one of the most applicable and yet balanced ideas. A tracer every ten rounds, rather than every five, seems better though, given the insane fire rate of the Kek. Unfortunately, that would be counter-balanced by the insanely low fire rate of the Blishlok, so maybe lower tracer intervals could be introduced as a new perk in the second gen cards.

Comms Hack: It seems OP to me, but it might work out, IDK.

Spy Drone: Meh, I think the idea of a drone has been beaten into the ground already, and there are much better ideas here.

DUPE Device: Good gosh, that is a great idea. While it would add to his lone-wolf potential, it could also be used as a distraction to support a rush, giving it a team-based application. Kudos for thinking of it.

Throwing Knives: I’m pretty sure the devs said no to throwing knives ever making a comeback, but it sounds like a decent idea.

Advanced Aim Spotting: Wouldn’t that just be a ripoff of Aimee? A cool idea, but it’s too similar to the SNITCH to go down well.

[SzGamer2271]

@inscrutableShow - I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. Just a few minor disagreements:

Aim spotting would work just as well as pointing and shooting; if Dirty Bomb isn’t too fast-paced for snipers then it wouldn’t be too fast-paced for a point-and-click spot ability. It certainly is slower and clunkier than other spotting abilities, but it would definitely be viable.

The reason I chose 1-out-of-5 for Tracer rounds is simply because spotting with every bullet feels excessive, and with every 5th shot spotting enemies, the ability fits nicely into any SMG magazine, so Tracers would be effective down to the last bullet. The KEK-10 has 45 bullets per magazine, so if the rounds-per-tracer were 10, then the KEK would have proportionately fewer tracers, with only 4 out of 45 bullets spotting enemies. It’s a minor but unnecessary inconsistency to have between Phantom’s SMGs.

Debilitating aim spotting would be just about as different from Aimee’s SNITCH as RedEye’s IR Vision is from Vassili’s Heartbeat Sensor. It strays into the same area that causing increased damage inevitably does, but Debilitating aim spotting would be less powerful but more personal and precise, i.e. rather than controlling an area with a lasting ability, it can be used to pinpoint specific targets and can be used with more versatility, not being tied to a single area. It could be used to interrupt more problematic enemies or set up an easy assassination, but it would lack the powerful area denial that the SNITCH has.

[SereneFlight1]

Some sort of device that would duplicate Phantom’s armor noise.
…or spotting ability that would cause target to receive less health from heals.