Phantom Feedback by Einde : who ya gonna call ? Phantombusters !

(Eox) #81

[quote=“Nord;43763”]This topic keeps talking about reworking the cloak and removing the armor but why not do it the other way around? The armor would work like the planet side 2 over shield without the slowdown. This would allow him to close the gap and melee someone or an edge in a gun fight.

Plus Phantom already looks more samurai then ninja so the skill could be called Bushido with a longer cool down of about 20 seconds and a duration of 6.[/quote]

That guy is supposed to be the “invisible” merc. He’s named Phantom for a reason, heh.

(watsyurdeal) #82

Because he doesn’t need to close the gap if he’s able to get there undetected.

This is the goal in my mind, to have cloak be powerful enough that he get there unseen, but not so forgiving that he can ignore 75 damage and shrug it off like it never happened. The best way to do that is get rid of the armor, but give him perfect invisibility like the Spy in TF2, except have him flicker/shimmer while running, jumping, or taking damage.

(Nord) #83

[quote=“Eox;43765”]

That guy is supposed to be the “invisible” merc. He’s named Phantom for a reason, heh.[/quote]

True, but his name is the only thing stealthy about him unless he is standing still in a corner.

(Gi.Am) #84

argh so many posts already. may I comment (mostly on some of the older stuff)?

@Watsyurdeal Regarding bodyblocking for the team. problem without the shield there are better mercs for that. The point of the shield in that regards is that phantom can do that without dieing in the process (atleast if its just a single grenade). if it kills you noone is going to do that.

@Jojack While I’m not against switching him to MPs I would like to point out that the described tactic works with every SMG the TTKs are so close together that the moment of surprise/reaction delay will let you win those encounters with any weapon (propably even with MPs). Try it with the Blishlok you might have problems with it in direct encounters but shooting from stealth should be roughly the same.

Promoting his melee? I’m assuming that the spinning exploit gets fixed. Give him a double damage bonus on his melee strike from stealth. That would allow him to one hit medium-heavy classes aswell. That would have 2 effects

  1. melee becomes more attractive then ranged shooting.
  2. it spreads the grief across the team. Right now Phantom always goes against the weak classes. With that change he really have to take his pick (if I see a fragger and a sparks you go for sparks but with the change fragger could be more important if your team has more problems with him).
    The katana could be further nerfed for regular melee emphasing a true hit and run style, he would need the stealth to do real damage and can’t go full berserk against the full team all at once. If it is overall to strong other aspects could be nerfed to rebalance.

@Eox Rework hm I can get behind half of it. But the armor changes don’t work (and I like the idea of a assassin/bodyguard hybrid Phantom) problem I see are 3 things.

  1. The biggest problem is the 1 second activation delay the point of a team helping armor is that you can negate incoming sudden high damage. With 1 sec activation you couldn’t do that you have to be able to jump into an incoming nade and the armor needs to be ready.
  2. along the same line the either or mechanic you couldn’t stand invisible infront of someone and than shield them quick enough since they now live from the same cooldown pool
  3. You are creating a second Rhino with MPs instead of a minigun. One that lacks the biggest drawback of rhino, getting into a good position and folloing the fight. Problem is that you allow shotting and tanking at the same time in exchange for movement speed. But you could stealth run into a good spot switch to armor and be someone that is nearly impossible to kill especially with medic support around.

Got me thinking tho I think I would change him like that. The melee buff + a new toggleable ability a 0.5 Shield with gate (one strong attack can be blocked) that he can activate but instantly drains the complete stealth and sets it to 6 second cooldown. Same happens with the double damage melee strike instant depleting the full stealth and 6 second cooldown.
Would look like that.

stealth like now can be activated deactivated as usually.
double damage attack cloak gone 6 sec cooldown no matter how short the cloak was up
grenade comes in hit shield, cloak / double damage gone 6 sec cooldown.
Shield gone if too much damage broke it or duration of 0,5 is up.

I think this would on one hand, allow him to shield sudden damage, but instantly take away his damage potential when he does it. It would also mean that he can only kill one target at a time and has to either fight with reduced capabilites afterwards or adopt more of a hit and run technic.

(Eox) #85

@Gi.Am

  1. The biggest problem is the 1 second activation delay the point of a team helping armor is that you can negate incoming sudden high damage. With 1 sec activation you couldn’t do that you have to be able to jump into an incoming nade and the armor needs to be ready.
  1. along the same line the either or mechanic you couldn’t stand invisible infront of someone and than shield them quick enough since they now live from the same cooldown pool

Well, good point, but I felt like making it instant could lead to exploits. I wanted to avoid phantoms suddenly becoming tanky in front of you. It didn’t seemed okay gameplay wise. See one guy, get tanky, get easy win… That one second CD is made to avoid this. I don’t think it won’t make you unable to protect someone that badly, you would just need to anticipate a bit.

  1. You are creating a second Rhino with MPs instead of a minigun. One that lacks the biggest drawback of rhino, getting into a good position and folloing the fight. Problem is that you allow shotting and tanking at the same time in exchange for movement speed. But you could stealth run into a good spot switch to armor and be someone that is nearly impossible to kill especially with medic support around.

I though it would be okay if that guy had weaker weapons. Rhino have a fearsome 300 dps Minigun, imprecise yet deadly. Phantom would only tank a bit of damage for six seconds while relaying on more ranged yet weak weapons.

I tried to avoid what you said in the last sentence by making the cooldown of invisibility linked with the cooldown on the shield (and vice versa). Still not enough ?

(Gi.Am) #86

Oh it’s not that find the idea unbalanced, its fine. Just that it creates more of a stealth assassin/frontline assault hybrid. while I would prefer a Stealth assassin / Guardian angel hybrid.

(watsyurdeal) #87

Forget that I just want a Stealth Assassin, we already got Guardian Angel, her name is Sparks.

(Eox) #88

Well, on paper, he’s not wrong. Sparks is already a sort of Guardian Angel.

(Eox) #89

I just came back from a game where two Phantoms were just raping everything without even taking the objective into account, or their own team. It seems like a very current problem with phantom players.

Removing the shield and making him less frustrating to play against is nice and all, but we also need to make him help his team.

(Gi.Am) #90

Sparks functions totally different. She can’t block incoming damage from you. she can only revive you after you died or try to refill some of your HP. A guardian angel Phantom would shield you from incoming damage which means you can keep doing your job without the delay and possible gib of a kill/revive combo.

And it would be a team centric function nudge nudge

seriously tho technicaly if those two were killing the enemy team they did help their own, asuming they didn’t use their own team as decoys (Like bad Vassilis sometimes do).

half jokingly things that would make phantom more of a teamplayer

  • Some form of spotter ability (you already suggested one I think other variants float around
  • Let phantom do objectives invisible, the enemy will hate it till they realise cloaked phantoms that defuse are cloaked phantoms that don’t stab
  • Make phantom a stealth assassin / medic hybrid instead allowing coaked help ups
  • Remove shield and give him spike traps instead that are hard to spot and slows players and the EV down.
  • Replace his regular katana with an ancient mythical weapon, that stores energy when it kills someone. If phantom strikes an ally with the charged up blade, he fully restores health ammo supplys and cooldowns for that ally.
  • When a team has 5 or more phantoms they can fuse together and form a gigantic mecha Phantom (not sure how usefull that would be but it would be awesome).
  • The shield change Idea I had in the last post. Maybe even add a slight AOE to the shield to cover more than one ally (remember its only a 0,5 sec shield)

Ok gotta stop here I’m running out of reasonable ideas :wink: .

(watsyurdeal) #91

After playing some more, two things

  1. He’s only as good as the enemy team allows him to be, he exploits bad teamwork. Which is why he’s so effective in pubs.

  2. If you wanna give him another ability, take Phoenix’s pulse, and modify it to reveal enemies instead

(Whoisthis) #92

I guess my biggest frustration is that with Nader, even if I see a Phantom rushing me and I open up with my SMG, I still don’t kill him. He closes fast and the shield just eats up damage. Personally, I think slowing him down or making the invisibility not soak up damage would be good choices. I know plenty of spies in TF2 that kill tons of people with invisibility, but they don’t get to have their invisibility also be a shield.
I personally prefer reducing his run speed. Why? People say he is as slow as Skyhammer, but that doesn’t count that Skyhammer’s speed isn’t based on melee being his best weapon. With the Katana, Phantom runs fast while other players defend against him moving slower with guns. People point out that I’m faster than him as Nader, yes, while I’m using my knife, but that is always going to be a losing proposition for me against Phantom, he will always kill me first in a knife fight. Slowing him down would make him more of a defender and spotter soldier, not the powerhouse he is now. When I say powerhouse, I say that because after playing probably 30 games this weekend, Phantoms are scoring 10-16K all over the place while other soldiers are only getting 5-8K max. That is a BIG difference.

(Eox) #93

A spotting ability would be a prime candidate IMO. The idea of the “sensor pulse” is something that I mentionned in the first rework. It can fit.

Dafuq.

(Ghosthree3) #94

[quote=“Gi.Am;44346”][list]
[] Replace his regular katana with an ancient mythical weapon, that stores energy when it kills someone. If phantom strikes an ally with the charged up blade, he fully restores health ammo supplys and cooldowns for that ally.
[] When a team has 5 or more phantoms they can fuse together and form a gigantic mecha Phantom (not sure how usefull that would be but it would be awesome).
[/list][/quote]

http://i.imgur.com/16CNe57.jpg

(VincentRJaeger) #95

T’was a good read! Cheers to you @Eox , @Jojack and @Watsyurdeal for this discussion and bringing up ideas!

Giving Phantom the Spotter Wave would be the most viable to make him more teamplay-based, yes. It’s safe to say it’s the Armor that has to get ditched, and if it does, the Spotter Pulse is more viable as compensation and it puts Phantom into a more versatile class that can inform your team of the enemy whereabouts.

However, should this Spotter Pulse be visible? Unlike Vassilis Spotter (of which you can destroy if you find it), making the Pulse visible would give away Phantom if he himself is invisible, but at the same time making the Pulse invisible renders the team clueless as to why their positions are suddenly known. Maybe it’s just me, but something there is giving me a raised eyebrow (or I am just a bit paranoid, hell if I know.) It’s worth mentioning atleast.

(izu) #96

I think tweaking the visibility so that he’s a little harder to see while removing the shield is a good idea. It promotes smart play and punishes bad decision making.
I also think the katana should be made his primary weapon with MP’s for secondaries.

Now, when your cloak just runs out you get the regular 6sec. cooldown.
However, when your cloak gets shot down you will have to deal with a 15sec. cooldown. Not to mention that you took damage and have to find a medic.

Cheers

(avidCow) #97

A good example of how a spotting ability can be done. Also an example of a balanced cloaking class.

Phantom players who treat their cloak-shield purely as a shield get the most benefit from it as they engage in the fight near its maximum bullet-soaking charge, rather than running it down by trying to be clever and sneaking about. I hope SD see this as an issue.

(Gi.Am) #98

Ah come on you know you want those. Think about it a giant 5 meter Phantom just sitting on top of the final objective in underground legs dangling in the water…Besides it would work exactly like a super sentai show 5 phantoms and each controls 1 function. They have to work together as a team, phantoms as a team imagine that :wink: .

Anyways
@Jaeger Vassilis spotter gives out a audioque, when it spots you (a ping like sound) I would guess that phantoms would be the same.

@avidCow the spotting is indeed cool but the killzone scout is made for long distance (and the maps look larger and more cluttered aswell) not a good comparsion. I see what you mean tho and I agree the shield def. could be changed that it isn’t as effective in that capacity.

(Suave) #99

I appreciate your tests, though the nerfs are a bit silly if you do all of them together.

We are talking about a killer like Fragger/Nader/Rhino. They specialize in combat so “should” excel at it.

One change i feel that is 100% justified, is that the shield should should act as extra hp and not absorb the 100% of the dmg tick if you’re at 1% shield.

This, imo, would make him 100% balanced, annoying, but balanced.

Annoying deaths in this game(IMHO):
-Nader’s Martyrdom
-Fragger’s grenade
-Vassili headshot
-Sparks headshot
-Proxy Mine
-Phantom stab

In many of the times the Phantom player’s doing great, that player would’ve been as great or better/more useful to the team as another merc.
People will always cry or complain, i always try to test the merc myself before judging him.

I used to think Rhino and Nader were crazy OP, i tried them and they’re fine, u learn to jump away from Nader after killing her and run away from Rhino.
Fragger imo, is still top pick, always useful to the team giving cover fire and tanking, easy to revive since he’s usually with the team, covering the objective and his nades are AMAZING.

Phantoms are usually on their own taking down enemies who move alone, he’s an opportunist.

People also say “KEK-10 this KEK-10” that … It’s a good weapon but not the only good weapon.
Imo the M4 beats it very hard, it’s a rifle that’s extremely accurate and easy to use and is used by some of the most popular mercs, Skyhammer(with infinite ammo) and Fragger

About Proxy being Phantom’s punching bag; imo Proxy is one of the best overall mercs as it is, she gets tons of free kills and the combination of her mobility with a shotgun is crazy deadly.

(SchwaD) #100

[quote=“savoryLettuce;41675”]I in general think though that people just need to get used to him as long as i have him now there was a big difference when you had a team playing together and even remotly working together i had a hard time killing anything with Phantom, because you get spotted while approaching and get butchered by the enemy.
The problem is when people are not playing together, when they mistake the game for a Team Deathmatch and walk off alone, then they often die and i get nice killstreaks.
[/quote]

The last games I played with my friends against some phantoms, our main goal was to kill the phantoms. We walked together as much as never before and when we saw them, we all focused on killing him. Doing objectives and everything else where not important at this moment. We don’t had the time to do them, we are no robots, we couldn’t focus on that much things.

It also brings some kind of fun. But it wasn’t the dirty bomb we played before this merc comes out, it more feels like a zombie game like Left 4 Dead.

In a normal pub game, when you play alone, or more special when you are a new player playing this game the first time you will not have any chance against a phantom, he will completely rule the game. Nearly every Phantom is on top of the stats with most Experience and best kill/death streak, at least when we are not building such a anti phantom wall when we are 3 people playing together.

This merc failed. He has a wrong compination of abilities for this game or at least his abilities have to get highly weaker. Less time invisible, more time to be the next time invisible, no armor when invisible.

Than the players of that merc really needs to have skill to get behind enemy troops and kill them. And I am pretty sure that good players will still rule him. Than its like with every other merc.