I feel that phantom needs to be completely redone because he needs to capture the essence of the word phantom to be extremely fast and one of the glass cannon types. make it so that he is purely melee based and guns are for special situations. maybe he needs to be more like proxy in terms of speed and health but have the ability to go invisibly and take out high priority enemy mercs like rhino or that one medic that keeps the push strong. in my opinion if u know a phantom is on the other team and you are all by yourself your number one fear should be a lurking phantom, or maybe sneak in and assassinate that rhino or medic
maybe even have an ability where he can turn enemy deployables friendly for a time.
this is all in my opinion and i would love to hear feedback from the community or even better one of the devs
Phantom needs a big overhaul?
Not exactly a overhaul but some changes could be added and removed like making his refractive armor 100% invisible and removing his shield but giving him more health so he’s actually an assassin. And also not to mention he really needs to get rid of that lawnmower sound that comes out of his refractive armor. When was the last time you saw in a sci-fi movie where a cloak would make whale noises?
Giving him more health ? For an assasin ? Youre trippin or something ?
They should make his ability to be completely invisible, no humming sound, no dmg mitigation, limit him to katana and a handgun and reduce his hp pool to 70 hp max(or even less).
On the other hand he should superb speed, on par with reduced health. Deal critical x2 damage when attacking from cloaking stance and have various specialized perks that affect his melee attacks and stealth ability.
In general id love to see system that were used in CnC: Generals. Theres one particular class, that is different from all the rest, and count as average, with all its stats being ok. And then theres 2-3 specializations(for that class), where each recieves a huge boost to one(or several) of the aspects of the class, but also gain equally crippling penalties on everything else.
So, Phantom could be GI Phantom(vanilla), Hidden Phantom(stealth), Strong Phantom(damage) or even Toxic Phantom(his attacks dealing dot), or something along those lines.
Fully invisible cloak
Not able to attack while cloaked
Keep the armor
He has the weapons and now the cloak to become the perfect ambusher.
As someone who primarily plays the cloaker or stealth class in almost every FPS game ive played,i think he is fine as is. To explain why i will compare Phantom to the two games that he is closest to that come to mind, being Team Fortress and Planetside
First we have to break down the upsides and downsides to each cloak and how they function.
Starting with Planetside, the cloaker class here is an infiltrator, equipped with two different styles of cloak by default and a third you can rank up in game. These are the Hunter cloak, a fast recharging twelve second stealth field, a stalker cloak, which lasts indefinitely and recharges so long as you do not move and drains in 14 1/2 seconds at max rank when you do move but you can only use your sidearm, and nano armour cloaking, a slow recharging 10 second cloak at max rank that mitigates about 35% of all incoming damage.
In planetside each of the three cloaks are the same when it comes to the cloak itself, they all have four stages of cloak that are more visible depending on what your character is doing. Sitting crouched makes you almost invisible, and youre pretty much never going to be seen unless you are in a bad spot and are causing contrast issues and the other team is really stupid (rare) or if youre against an experienced player whos paying attention (also rare), standing still is the next, mostly invisible at about 30% more visible than crouch cloaked, normal walking, and sprinting.
Changing between these cloak stages is instant, and so long as youre not moving youll be pretty much invisible, but when you start to move any player who isnt blind will see you within about 20 meters or even possibly bit further if youre dumb and arent sneaky sneak.
In team fortress, the spy class has three cloak devices (back when i played things may have changed in 20 months), being the cloak and dagger, the invis watch, and the dead ringer.
All of these watches when theyre activated give you 100% cloak unless you bump into an enemy player or in the cloak and daggers case drain its battery, then you take on a team coloured shadow.
The cloak and dagger is infinite cloak if you stand still, the invis watch is something like an 11 second cloak, and the dead ringer activates when you take damage with it prepped and gives a 10 second cloak. You also recharge cloak when you pick up ammo with the invis watch and dead ringer.
Now dirty bombs cloak is unique from really any game ive played, because it provides the same kind of cloaking as planetside where youre more visible when you move than stand still, but its also an extra 115 HP (ish) and has an audio signature that drains faster when you move.
When you stand still ive timed the cloak lasting around 15-17 seconds with the undercover perk, and about 10 when moving without taking any damage. No matter how long you stay cloaked the CD is 10 seconds at most.
Now, at face value, it seems like dirty bombs cloak is the weakest. BUT, you cant just look at the cloak, you need to look at the class its on and what weapons they have and how the rest of it functions.
Across all games, the cloaks also have a cloaking/de-cloaking sound
In planetside, the infiltrator gets access to sniper rifles, SMGs, every pistol your faction can use, and knives, has 100 less HP than all other classes, gets a unqiue grenade that blows up or freezes all enemy deployables (similar to dirty bombs conc nade) and drains all class abilities/shields of anyone caught in the blast, as well as some automatic/semi automatic scout rifles. The automatic/cqc weapons they have are some of the weakest in the game, but as a trade off they get the best medium to long range guns.
In tf2, the spy gets a revolver and a knife that OHKs with a backstab and the ability to disable and eventually destroy enemy engineers buildings like turrets and teleporters, the lowest health of any class in the game (tied with the scout and sniper i think) and average move speed
In dirty bomb, the phantom gets slightly above average speed, moderate HP on top of an extra free health bar with the cloak, the best melee weapon in the game, the most powerful per shot pistols in the game, access to some of the best SMGs in the game for pretty much all engagement ranges (Bish, KEK-10) and with the chop perk, the ability to OHK 6/18 classes from full HP and at the very least against the highest HP class do 50% damage in melee range. Since he has fantastic close, medium, and with accuracy long range options on top of an extra health bar he is fine, just a bit of a pain to figure out. In any of these games running in front of enemies is usually a bad idea even when cloaked, go around and youll do fine.
TLDR: Because of his weapons (and to a lesser extent map design) and the extra health bar phantom gets when cloaked, and he doesnt have a cloaking delay to attack he is more or less balanced in my mind, the only change i can see done is lowering the audio volume mildly. Very mildly.
Honestly, stealth isn’t the thing to define an assassin, assassins usually have higher damage in return of having to deal with lower defenses(and that’s why often they are given stealth, as a form of defense and positioning) and Phantom’s ONLY higher damage is his katana on 3 loadouts.
That’s why I believe if SD wants to buff him, they can pretty much work on anything, extra ability/change current ability/extra hp/momentarily make the damage absorption persist after breaking stealth/some kind of temporary damage buff from cloak?(for assassination). I really don’t think that forcing Phantom more towards being a melee merc would be healthy, he would just become OP or weak or he remains as he is now, stabbing lower levels for many kills while getting shot at from a mile away by higher levels.
He needs counterplay and at the moment, he has too much of it, half-invisibility/ringing noise/ enemy spotting abilities. Currently Phantoms greatest allies are other recon mercs, as they give him the information he needs for positioning to avoid revealing to the enemy least of his weaknesses.
In my opinion the noise has to go no matter what, why have a mechanic to ruin your own flanks?