Phantom needs to finally be a TRUE RECON MERC

(KayDubz) #1

Its very simple:

  • 100 to 120 HP (find a sweet spot based on monitoring game data in the aftermath of the below changes)

  • No shield, no loud whirring noise…but make his cloak a little less visible to compensate (maybe add a slight delay to when phantom can attack coming out of cloak…if data proves that he’s too formidable without the cloak sound and being less visible)

  • Get rid of the EMP…as its lame as a recon/scout tool

  • Give Phantom a spotting pulse…similar to the healing pulse. But as soon as Phantom detects anyone…the enemy is also aware they have been detected. Give it a 10 second spotting duration, and a 25 second cooldown perhaps.

Id say all of this balances Phantom out well, but makes him a REAL SCOUT AND RECON MERC. I dont see why its so hard for the devs to figure out how to make the guy the stealthy, recon assassin he’s supposed to be. How in the world is this guy the only one of his class that doesnt spot? Right now, hes a highly visible and loud whistling idiot running around the map. Not recon or stealthy at all.

All the medics heal right? All the support mercs give ammo and provide area denial right? All the engineers repair quickly and have useful deployables right? All the assault mercs are decent killing mercs right? So why the hell is phantom not a true recon merc thats of use to his teammates.

(_Sniff_) #2

If he is a recon class doesn’t that mean his weapons will have to reflect that as well?

(KayDubz) #3

Recon doesnt mean he HAS to be a sniper. Being able to be that lone scout who spots in the field and takes the assasin role would make him a good recon merc.

Right now hes a pseudo-stealth assault merc whos also a wannabe tank.

(SamillWong) #4

[quote=“Kay-Dubz;29493”]Its very simple:

  • 100 to 120 HP (find a sweet spot based on monitoring game data in the aftermath of the below changes)

  • No shield, no loud whirring noise…but make his cloak a little less visible to compensate (maybe add a slight delay to when phantom can attack coming out of cloak…if data proves that he’s too formidable without the cloak sound and being less visible)

  • Get rid of the EMP…as its lame as a recon/scout tool

  • Give Phantom a spotting pulse…similar to the healing pulse. But as soon as Phantom detects anyone…the enemy is also aware they have been detected. Give it a 10 second spotting duration, and a 25 second cooldown perhaps.

Id say all of this balances Phantom out well, but makes him a REAL SCOUT AND RECON MERC. I dont see why its so hard for the devs to figure out how to make the guy the stealthy, recon assassin he’s supposed to be. How in the world is this guy the only one of his class that doesnt spot? Right now, hes a highly visible and loud whistling idiot running around the map. Not recon or stealthy at all.

All the medics heal right? All the support mercs give ammo and provide area denial right? All the engineers repair quickly and have useful deployables right? All the assault mercs are decent killing mercs right? So why the hell is phantom not a true recon merc thats of use to his teammates. [/quote]

Phantom no longer has the ability to soak up damage like he used to before. I disagree on making his cloak even more visible, as he’s already visible enough and Phantom is supposed to be a stealthy merc, suiting his lone-wolf playstyle.

I like your ‘spotting pulse’ suggestion, maybe make it tag all enemies globally for around 3 seconds, with a 20/40 seconds cooldown. It is fairly difficult to make Phantom a RECON merc while having a katana as his signature weapon, I’d say. Since there is no way you can give him a sniper rifle like the other recon mercs, Phantom is the ‘odd-one’ compared to all other mercs in the 5 classes. I agree with the removal of the EMP field, it’s kinda obvious for the enemy team that there is a Phantom nearby, when their healing stations and turrets go sparking and sh*t.

(ElDingDong) #5

A recon class is based on being hidden, and giving other team mates intel about enemy location. I don’t define a recon by their weapons, but by their ability.

Phantom does need a recon ability to be classified as one. As of now, he doesn’t really fit in anywhere in the traditional class system properly.

What I am suggesting is a similar concept. Instead of the emp field, give him a spotting field. Any one within this radius will be spotted (similar to @Kay-Dubz proposal). However, make this ability separate from the cloak and give a cooldown penalty if both his cloak and spotting field is activated.

I agree with the health increase, and with the removal of the shield for a quieter and less visible cloak.

Edit: Give him a short radius sonar ability with a cool animation like the one in Metal Gear 5 :smile:

(KayDubz) #6

[quote=“SamillWong;181815”][quote=“Kay-Dubz;29493”]Its very simple:

  • 100 to 120 HP (find a sweet spot based on monitoring game data in the aftermath of the below changes)

  • No shield, no loud whirring noise…but make his cloak a little less visible to compensate (maybe add a slight delay to when phantom can attack coming out of cloak…if data proves that he’s too formidable without the cloak sound and being less visible)

  • Get rid of the EMP…as its lame as a recon/scout tool

  • Give Phantom a spotting pulse…similar to the healing pulse. But as soon as Phantom detects anyone…the enemy is also aware they have been detected. Give it a 10 second spotting duration, and a 25 second cooldown perhaps.

Id say all of this balances Phantom out well, but makes him a REAL SCOUT AND RECON MERC. I dont see why its so hard for the devs to figure out how to make the guy the stealthy, recon assassin he’s supposed to be. How in the world is this guy the only one of his class that doesnt spot? Right now, hes a highly visible and loud whistling idiot running around the map. Not recon or stealthy at all.

All the medics heal right? All the support mercs give ammo and provide area denial right? All the engineers repair quickly and have useful deployables right? All the assault mercs are decent killing mercs right? So why the hell is phantom not a true recon merc thats of use to his teammates. [/quote]

Phantom no longer has the ability to soak up damage like he used to before. I disagree on making his cloak even more visible, as he’s already visible enough and Phantom is supposed to be a stealthy merc, suiting his lone-wolf playstyle.

I like your ‘spotting pulse’ suggestion, maybe make it tag all enemies globally for around 3 seconds, with a 20/40 seconds cooldown. It is fairly difficult to make Phantom a RECON merc while having a katana as his signature weapon, I’d say. Since there is no way you can give him a sniper rifle like the other recon mercs, Phantom is the ‘odd-one’ compared to all other mercs in the 5 classes. I agree with the removal of the EMP field, it’s kinda obvious for the enemy team that there is a Phantom nearby, when their healing stations and turrets go sparking and sh*t.[/quote]

I said no shield and to make him LESS visible. I didnt say he needed to be more visible. Right now he’s easy to hear and spot and take down.

(SamillWong) #7

[quote=“Kay-Dubz;181820”][quote=“SamillWong;181815”][quote=“Kay-Dubz;29493”]Its very simple:

  • 100 to 120 HP (find a sweet spot based on monitoring game data in the aftermath of the below changes)

  • No shield, no loud whirring noise…but make his cloak a little less visible to compensate (maybe add a slight delay to when phantom can attack coming out of cloak…if data proves that he’s too formidable without the cloak sound and being less visible)

  • Get rid of the EMP…as its lame as a recon/scout tool

  • Give Phantom a spotting pulse…similar to the healing pulse. But as soon as Phantom detects anyone…the enemy is also aware they have been detected. Give it a 10 second spotting duration, and a 25 second cooldown perhaps.

Id say all of this balances Phantom out well, but makes him a REAL SCOUT AND RECON MERC. I dont see why its so hard for the devs to figure out how to make the guy the stealthy, recon assassin he’s supposed to be. How in the world is this guy the only one of his class that doesnt spot? Right now, hes a highly visible and loud whistling idiot running around the map. Not recon or stealthy at all.

All the medics heal right? All the support mercs give ammo and provide area denial right? All the engineers repair quickly and have useful deployables right? All the assault mercs are decent killing mercs right? So why the hell is phantom not a true recon merc thats of use to his teammates. [/quote]

Phantom no longer has the ability to soak up damage like he used to before. I disagree on making his cloak even more visible, as he’s already visible enough and Phantom is supposed to be a stealthy merc, suiting his lone-wolf playstyle.

I like your ‘spotting pulse’ suggestion, maybe make it tag all enemies globally for around 3 seconds, with a 20/40 seconds cooldown. It is fairly difficult to make Phantom a RECON merc while having a katana as his signature weapon, I’d say. Since there is no way you can give him a sniper rifle like the other recon mercs, Phantom is the ‘odd-one’ compared to all other mercs in the 5 classes. I agree with the removal of the EMP field, it’s kinda obvious for the enemy team that there is a Phantom nearby, when their healing stations and turrets go sparking and sh*t.[/quote]

I said no shield and to make him LESS visible. I didnt say he needed to be more visible. Right now he’s easy to hear and spot and take down.[/quote]

Oops, my bad for misreading the post.

(LifeupOmega) #8

Good thing the katana isn’t his signature weapon and he has guns that can make him an effective pick merc and not the suicide swing at people wildly merc that pubs like to play him as.

Would have rather got no changes to the cloak, kept the cooldown low so you can juke people with it and not this instant 7 second garbage, and given him a heartbeat EMP or a battlefield type spotting/mark for death ability. None of this close range garbage that pushes him even further into a useless melee/cqc role, where he’ll get torn apart by better players.

I don’t even use the cloak as a cloak, I just run it to avoid taking damage when I cross a firefight and flank around. It’s amazing for escapes when you have a bit more health as you get away, so I try and keep it off cooldown for those moments.

(watsyurdeal) #9

Honestly, I’d trade the EMP field for a spotting field, and the whole the damage absorption to be able to walk normally, fully invisible.

(Sinee) #10

I also found it weird that he was given an EMP ability. It just seems really cheap and Phantom deserves better than just being the dev’s afterthought. Like instead they just gave Thunder’s EMP ability to Phantom like some sort of leftovers? lol

They don’t seem to understand what “recon” means, and were just too lazy to give the merc a proper rework. They saw he needed team viability, so tossed him something random that doesn’t fit him or the class at all, just to get people to stop complaining. I just expected better.

The whole design of Phantom is flawed. They’re trying to make him be too many different and conflicting things at once, and we still have a broken merc because of it.

IMO, Phantom needs to undergo the identity split that Dazzler did when he was split into Fragger and Thunder, that way we can have two properly balanced mercs out of Phantom. The ideas in Phantom’s make-up are good, but conflict. We want a speedy stealthy assassin, but instead we have a slow faux-shielded tanky dude. These elements can easily be split and evolved on a bit to make two interesting mercs in two different classes.

(watsyurdeal) #11

Really he just needs to be sneaky

He needs to be able to get in, get a pick, and move on.

That alone would make him a great merc, he doesn’t need an EMP field, Spotting Field, or dumb cloak armor to do all that.

Just give him cloak that actually does it’s job, and a secondary ability to fit anti deployable role, since nothing else in the game has that currently.

(TheStrangerous) #12

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, give him a saboteur ability, which turns enemy deployables into friendly. Any kill/healing/ammo giving score from converted deployable, will go to him.

(KayDubz) #13

1 more thing. I think to properly balance phantom having no whistling noise and being less visible, you should be able to hear him cloak up or decloak. Only a slight sound for the trained listeners.

Add in a .5 to 1 second delay before he’s allowed to shoot, and I think he will be balanced. This way a skilled phantom isnt face charging people, and is properly being stealthy to make his kills. But also, an enemy aware of their surroundings has a chance to take him out if they listen for his decloak , or if phantom used his spotting ability.

(KayDubz) #14

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;181832”]Really he just needs to be sneaky

He needs to be able to get in, get a pick, and move on.

That alone would make him a great merc, he doesn’t need an EMP field, Spotting Field, or dumb cloak armor to do all that.

Just give him cloak that actually does it’s job, and a secondary ability to fit anti deployable role, since nothing else in the game has that currently.[/quote]

How about this. Instead of spotting enemies…his spotting radius picks up deployables? No EMP either. His radius picks up where deployables are so either he or teammates can take it out.

Imagine this…making phantom less visible…with no whirring sound…and making him about 100 HP. He can easily slip through enemy defenses unseen, but the 100 HP means youd have to play him skillfully or die easily.

You would throw out your radius before entering an area to make sure you dont trip mines, bombs or turrets. But of course if you take them out, the enemy knows someone is near. But you can cloak up to stay hidden until they take their attention off of you. Then you attack.

Now if someones worrying about phantom being able to easily take too many people out unseen, and being OP. Like I said before…he should be similar to Spy for TF2, where he cant attack as he’s coming out of cloak. There needs to be a .5 to 1 second delay.

This eliminates the face charging that a recon merc isnt meant for. And this forces phantom users to go the recon and scout route, giving intel to the team and also being a QUIET assassin.

(sagaciousHarp) #15

Reading your posts makes me think that you guys didn’t understand that phantom’s role changed drastically with the EMP ability, and I wholeheartedly disagree with people saying it was an ‘afterthought’. Being able to instantly disable (and keep disabled) ALL equipment in a 10 meter radius (I think its radius and not diameter) is not what I’d call an ‘afterthought’ by any stretch of the imagination. Aura station? No problem, just stick to the nearest wall and let your teammates ravage the area. Hear a turret? Deploy refractive armor and disable it. 5 seconds is more than enough to kill it. Fletcher targeting you? Bait him into using his stickies and then surprise attack him while he tries to swap weapons, with Phantom having superior firepower and speed.
Phantom now fills a very specific niche, turning what could be a meatgrinder into an easier fight for the attackers. He is in a wonderful position right now. Hes just as good as before on pubs but also very viable on comp.

(TheStrangerous) #16

[quote=“sagaciousHarp;181864”]Reading your posts makes me think that you guys didn’t understand that phantom’s role changed drastically with the EMP ability, and I wholeheartedly disagree with people saying it was an ‘afterthought’. Being able to instantly disable (and keep disabled) ALL equipment in a 10 meter radius (I think its radius and not diameter) is not what I’d call an ‘afterthought’ by any stretch of the imagination. Aura station? No problem, just stick to the nearest wall and let your teammates ravage the area. Hear a turret? Deploy refractive armor and disable it. 5 seconds is more than enough to kill it. Fletcher targeting you? Bait him into using his stickies and then surprise attack him while he tries to swap weapons, with Phantom having superior firepower and speed.
Phantom now fills a very specific niche, turning what could be a meatgrinder into an easier fight for the attackers. He is in a wonderful position right now. Hes just as good as before on pubs but also very viable on comp.[/quote]

Not to mention, SD denied giving him spotting ability.
EMP wave turned him into saboteur class instead. And why not? There are no saboteur mercs in DB.

(KayDubz) #17

[quote=“sagaciousHarp;181864”]Reading your posts makes me think that you guys didn’t understand that phantom’s role changed drastically with the EMP ability, and I wholeheartedly disagree with people saying it was an ‘afterthought’. Being able to instantly disable (and keep disabled) ALL equipment in a 10 meter radius (I think its radius and not diameter) is not what I’d call an ‘afterthought’ by any stretch of the imagination. Aura station? No problem, just stick to the nearest wall and let your teammates ravage the area. Hear a turret? Deploy refractive armor and disable it. 5 seconds is more than enough to kill it. Fletcher targeting you? Bait him into using his stickies and then surprise attack him while he tries to swap weapons, with Phantom having superior firepower and speed.
Phantom now fills a very specific niche, turning what could be a meatgrinder into an easier fight for the attackers. He is in a wonderful position right now. Hes just as good as before on pubs but also very viable on comp.[/quote]

His role? People still face charge to use him as a melee tank whos always running off alone and getting killed, while barely helping the team…emp ability or not… Thats NOT what SD meant for him…and thats not what a recon merc does.

Right now he’s the poorest merc design from SD. I agree with the earlier point that he needs to be split into two mercs the way Dazzler was. A tanky, psuedo-invisible, face charging melee merc does not fit into this game well.

No one is using Phantom the way the devs intended because his intended design is poor.

(watsyurdeal) #18

I don’t mind him being a saboteur, my gripe is that I’d rather have just a Nade, and have it display disabled deployables to my team, like what bomb squad does.

That and I rather have actual cloak

(TheStrangerous) #19

Assuming he gets a spotting ability.
Would anyone choose “hearbeat sensor pulse” (think Phoenix healing Pulse + Spotting ability) over Vassili’s heartbeat sensor, Aimee’s snitch or RedEye’s IR Vision? Yeah, I don’t think so.

Just forget about spotting ability. This will never be given to Phantom.

His sword can be good, if used properly. Guns for long range and Sword for close range, depending on situation.

(Equanimity) #20

If he gets a spotting ability it needs to either be a very short global spot, literally 2 seconds every 30 - 40 sec, or a point and activate kind of “death mark” w/ a decent duration, maybe something like the dmg boost from the snitch added in or a “take more damage from phantom” debuff. Even if he only spots enemies for himself, he needs something like this. I think this on top of his EMP w/ a health boost of 10hp to match his speed (or a speed boost to match his health) is all he really needs. I wouldn’t mind him getting some kind of a throwing knife CD either, though, that’d be a cool mechanic. Help him burst enemies. Hell, he could spot through that. Maybe even some kind of a “poison mechanic” added in that could spot in that fashion. Oh snap!