I understand everyone want Phantom less visible, but I can barely see anyone bringing up arguments about the counterplay.
There’s a reason why SD has quit buffing the invisibility part of his kit. When standing still, with the Katana + Chopper he can already one hit kill near 1/3rd of the mercs, by just standing… still… and having them run into your katana.
But everyone wants to make him more invisible and give him more speed so that they can run around carelessly with their pixel cloak and just swing his weebstick since who needs to rely on aim in shooters anyways…
Phantom’s biggest weakness is the lack of intel on the enemy.
His pixel cloak isn’t designed to waltz around the battlefield like a ghost, you’re meant to take the less crowded routes and actually try to make a sneaky flank and then pick your target. And since nobody will ever pick double recon in a 5vs5, he will never be able to perform at his full potential.
Even if he could get like a damn hearing aid to locate his enemies within the same range of the current EMP field without alerting his enemies, that would already be THE biggest buff to his sneaking capabilities. Just the close range intel on the enemies, to avoid doing bad flanks around the corners you can’t see, as the pixel cloak simply isn’t that invisible to sneak by right between their eyes.
Right now, his reflective armor is punished too much.
Buffing his visibility would only push him into the OP territory, unless there’s a nerf to cripple him in some other way to compensate the buff.
The noise is just unnecessary, none of the new loadouts have Sneaky(for Phantom) or Big Ears(for enemies) anymore, but yet Phantom must be noisy while barely invisible for extra counterplay to his refractive armor, which isn’t needed.
The refractive armor is supposed to give Phantom the advantage over other mercs to perform successful flanks and reward him with first shot against the enemy.
Also when being caught as Phantom, first you lose the pressure of being off radar for the entire enemy team, secondly his armor isn’t too strong, so if you end up being caught in a 2v1 without any cover nearby, RIP. And as of the latest changes to him, he is already limited to a 7sec cooldown no matter what, even if he turns off refractive armor himself. Not to mention Phantom is pretty much spotting himself for the enemy with the EMP field. HP/ammo stations, turrets or mines not functional? Oh I wonder who could be nearby?
While I expected good things for the rework and gave the changes a few days before really judging them, other than the 10% shifted from Undercover to his kit, he really didn’t get buffed. EMP field is a change, it has it’s pros and cons, 7sec cooldown nerf not even mentioned in the patch notes as well as giving him the access to only the high damage/long reach melee weapons on top of which near half the cards got an augment to boost the melee effectiveness.
These silly buffs to his melee through 2nd gen loadouts already hurt his potentials at a decent buff as there’s a threat of him just becoming a weebstick ninja since he could become too strong in CQC.
Just like Fletcher is kind of assault/engineer, I’d also like to see Phantom as assault/recon.
But since Phantom doesn’t have an ability that deals damage, he could really use that +10hp and the right tools for flanking, for at least till he gets a secondary ability.
It’s too difficult for everyone to play Phantom as a team player, instead he should be balanced around his lone wolf play and let him do his own thing in the enemy back lines.