Phantom Playtesting

(Jojack) #1

So, I figured I’d document my play testing as Phantom and my impressions and try to get some good, productive discussion going without the emotional flaming a lot of Phantom topics turn into.

So far I only have one match. I joined Chapel on defense when the EV was on the last home stretch to being parked. So I played the final phase and the end of the escort part. Granted, it was just pub and there weren’t a lot of high levels in there, so take it for what it’s worth.

I’m a pretty average player for being level 22. I can stomp most pubs to a degree, but I get stomped by really good players pretty hard. There’s a big gap between me and really good players. I think the first game shows, at least, that Phantom is not “unplayable” in his current state as a lot of people are claiming.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/449583189760336301/1ECC4462D8A2F60C2D2340BC8637BDC811CB9D75/

My Impressions:
I didn’t really notice any change to be honest. The few times I was in a good position to use the katana it felt fine. I lunged and followed with a normal swipe to backstab a Bushwhacker. I lunged Kira quite a few times as she had her lasor out. I lunged a Fletcher and then finished him with my pistol. I gibbed a lot of people with the sword, it felt fine.

I was able to consistently get into good position to get first shot opportunity and kill groups with the KEK (didn’t notice the nerf to the KEK either.)

All in all, it’s one game, but so far I’m not really feeling the effect of the nerf bat yet.

Granted, I never played him in the manner a lot of people do, charging face first into groups and meleeing. I’ve always relied on the KEK as my main DPS, and used the Katana situationally. So far, this playstyle works fine still.

Anyone else care to post their experiences so far and get a discussion going?

(watsyurdeal) #2

Well people were spotting me from one end of the street to the other on Chapel, while cloaked…

I really wish they’d drop that armor thing for actual cloak, if you’re taking damage while cloaked you’re likely dead anyhow. Just delays the inevitable, and it doesn’t help him much in terms of getting within his effective range.

(Jojack) #3

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;51694”]Well people were spotting me from one end of the street to the other on Chapel, while cloaked…

I really wish they’d drop that armor thing for actual cloak, if you’re taking damage while cloaked you’re likely dead anyhow. Just delays the inevitable, and it doesn’t help him much in terms of getting within his effective range.[/quote]

Yeah, see, I think these changes make him very much defense oriented. I wasn’t using the cloak to really get into position. I would get into position in areas where fights normally occur, cloak when the enemy team arrived, then uncloak and start killing when their attention was occupied. Then cloak to escape and re-position or to retreat to my teams base camp to heal or ammo up.

I’ll update this when I play some on offense, but I’m waiting a bit for my ping to come down. I don’t really want to test him on 120 ping.

(Jojack) #4

Played a few more matches on min level 10 servers.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/449583189760910180/CC20DB8EBCFF2777BFDD49F24C89A3E35E563774/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/449583189760909963/F90610944B9D13F77D732213322EF01236638393/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/449583189760909703/ACDA177A8BD216BA84FD2C96A740F9FAC03363CA/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/449583189760908935/27BBED3E601CF5D5034EA25B981637C2C447F359/

My impression. He plays a bit like Bushwhacker with no turret and slightly better flanking ability. He’s viable, but hardly as the stealth assassin he’s supposed to be. I was 1st or 2nd on my team in kills in every match but points are hard to come by because even when you are defending, you aren’t on top of the objective. You are out on the periphery, trying to flank. He just doesn’t feel right. Sort of feels bland, not very fun or rewarding. I think I’m done playing him for now, but would love to get some other opinions of people that have tested the changes.

(Gi.Am) #5

Pretty spot on. Statswise he is pretty much bushwhacker/sawbonez (both survivability and damage) without the team centric abilities. Whos only advantage over them hinges on, wether the enemy is blind or not. Guess who is more valuable in a comp setting.

(frolicsomeCrane) #6

He’s not useless. I mean I played a game earlier and I was still top of the scoreboard, but the melee system now is actually punishing you for going melee, I hate it.

(Suave) #7

While i had decent scores with Phantom still, i’m quite sure i would’ve gotten WAY better scores with other mercs. He got hit by too many nerfs at once imo.

  • Just the katana nerf was probably enough. If you miss a lunge u have a BIG chance of death because they just need to strafe a bit and you have lost him because of the superlow sensitivity all of a sudden.
    I hit a Rhino from behind with the lunge and he immediately strafed sideways and managed to kill me because i had a rough time readjusting my crosshair due to the strange sensitivity, this might get better with practice but Phantom’s not really my main.

  • People spotted me VERY easily while stealthed, even when standing still, i had people even turn around and start shooting me while i was behind a crate, where even a non-stealth merc would sometimes be able to hide from the enemies :slight_smile:

-Kek-10 nerf: barely noticable, it’s still a great gun, what i don’t understand though is how they could leave the m4 untouched while nerfing smg’s. If there’s one weapon that should get less accurate while going full auto, it should be a rifle, no? I use the m4 on skyhammer and Fragger.

-Stealth cooldown increase to 10s: not as big of an impact as it sounded

-hp reduction: This one is not too bad on its own, but with the shield nerf, the crazy visibility and more, it seems unnecessary.

Conclusion:
Imho, Phantom is still viable but barely, most of the time your team would be better off with another merc, which btw, was also happening in competitive mode most of the time, Fraggers yes, Phantoms no.
Phantom, imo, was a great pubstomper, while being very painful for people new to the game, experienced players were less afraid of him, especially once people actually start using voice.
Like someone said; he’s like playing sawbonez/bushwacker but with some cloaking abilities, no turret/fast defuse and repair or medpacks/revives.

For an Assault class now, there are better picks. Phantom is more situational, when the good situations do occur, he can shine, though killing multiples in melee is going to be a lot harder now and frankly, already hardly happened vs teams knowing what they were doing.

Suave

(Jojack) #8

[quote=“Suave;51977”]For an Assault class now, there are better picks. Phantom is more situational, when the good situations do occur, he can shine, though killing multiples in melee is going to be a lot harder now and frankly, already hardly happened vs teams knowing what they were doing.

Suave

[/quote]

But he’s not an assault class. He’s a recon. Which, to SD, seems to mean a picking class. It would be nice if he added team utility with a spotting mechanic. Or @Watsyurdeal had a really cool idea of giving him a spotter grenade like vassili that spotted enemy mines, turrets and such. I think that would be neat.

Overall, he requires a lot more care to play now. But he is still viable in his role of flanker/picker. It’s just kind of boring.

(watsyurdeal) #9

[quote=“Jojack;52482”][quote=“Suave;51977”]For an Assault class now, there are better picks. Phantom is more situational, when the good situations do occur, he can shine, though killing multiples in melee is going to be a lot harder now and frankly, already hardly happened vs teams knowing what they were doing.

Suave

[/quote]

But he’s not an assault class. He’s a recon. Which, to SD, seems to mean a picking class. It would be nice if he added team utility with a spotting mechanic. Or @Watsyurdeal had a really cool idea of giving him a spotter grenade like vassili that spotted enemy mines, turrets and such. I think that would be neat.

Overall, he requires a lot more care to play now. But he is still viable in his role of flanker/picker. It’s just kind of boring.[/quote]

I wouldn’t say boring, just…if I wanted to win a match, I can’t see a tactical advantage to using him.

I’d be better off using someone else, cloak is all he has and a smart player will pick me out of a line up really easily. Or at least I would assume, if I can do it so can they.

(Jojack) #10

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;52485”][quote=“Jojack;52482”][quote=“Suave;51977”]For an Assault class now, there are better picks. Phantom is more situational, when the good situations do occur, he can shine, though killing multiples in melee is going to be a lot harder now and frankly, already hardly happened vs teams knowing what they were doing.

Suave

[/quote]

But he’s not an assault class. He’s a recon. Which, to SD, seems to mean a picking class. It would be nice if he added team utility with a spotting mechanic. Or @Watsyurdeal had a really cool idea of giving him a spotter grenade like vassili that spotted enemy mines, turrets and such. I think that would be neat.

Overall, he requires a lot more care to play now. But he is still viable in his role of flanker/picker. It’s just kind of boring.[/quote]

I wouldn’t say boring, just…if I wanted to win a match, I can’t see a tactical advantage to using him.

I’d be better off using someone else, cloak is all he has and a smart player will pick me out of a line up really easily. Or at least I would assume, if I can do it so can they.[/quote]

Well I would argue that what your saying was true before the nerf too. There was never a tactical advantage to picking him. I can’t imagine a situation where Phantom was helping his team win a match as much as any other merc choice would have been. He’s always been useless to team play/match winning. Fragging is important, but he wasn’t the best fragger by a long shot. He added nothing else to the team.

The difference was, he was fun to play pre-nerf. Now he’s boring to play. That’s really what the nerf boils down to…and of course, bad players can’t do as well with him which makes 80% of the playerbase happy (source: my ass).

I really think they need to just shelve him for a month and give him a whole new make over. No shield, better invisibility, better picking ability that won’t take out entire groups, more utility etc.

(Jemmy) #11

I was having lots of fun rushing people even though I was dying often (getting the kill was really great). Usually Id rush into places like that tunnel pump in terminal, but melee isn’t too viable as a primary means to kill others.

(Snark) #12

From what I experienced, he’s still quite good stomping public games. Like most mercs, I consider him significantly stronger in certain maps/locations than in others. I also don’t use him for camping or katana so I can’t speak to that. Was generally running him on offense on objective servers.

On a particularly badly matched chapel offense (majority of players under level 10 on both teams and not many good shooters) I went 26/1 and I’m an above average shot, nothing special.

The shield remains a strong tool for flanking, disengaging, and a decent tool for opening head-on firefights (aimpunch nerf probably reduced that last aspect somewhat but I was playing with that in mind.) When I lost firefights, it was because my aim was shit and I deserved to lose or I had too many opponents. I feel very comfortably entering 1v1 engagements with most mercs up and including nader head-on because of the kek and extra health. Even without the shield, he’s still a good merc via weapon/hp/speed. I do not understand people complaining that he’s garbage now and I have to assume they were using the katana as an aim crutch.

I also don’t like the stealth+melee aspect of the character. If it were removed, I think his ability would be far easier to balance for the low player caps of “competitive” matchmaking as well as the crowds/visual clutter in public servers. With it, I think people are unreasonable to expect a stealth character to be balanced for both player counts in a game like dirty bomb.

As it is, in games with decent players all around, I’d use a fragger over him in most situations. However, he’s still really easy against less skilled players. I can’t think of one that’s easier in that context unless the enemies are actually not able to return fire effectively in head-on engagements in which case fops for ammo.

(ghostBase) #13

Phantom isn’t bad as in useless, it’s just that there are other mercs that do the same thing, but also have a nice extra. Bushwhacker handles plays exactly the same, he even has the same guns, but on top of his strong weaponry he has the turret.

(Jojack) #14

[quote=“ghostBase;53685”]Phantom isn’t bad as in useless, it’s just that there are other mercs that do the same thing, but also have a nice extra. Bushwhacker handles plays exactly the same, he even has the same guns, but on top of his strong weaponry he has the turret.
[/quote]

But no stealth shield. They may play the same if you play the same with them. But if you like to flank, Bushwhacker is not as good as Phantom. If you like to camp, Bushwhacker is better than Phantom.

(Ronan) #15

What they should do, in the “Scrubs” trailer, Phantom had a semi-automatic pistol and katana. Go back to those routes; still makes the melee damage and ability duration modifier viable in any and every loadout for him, allow him to get different handguns. I personally prefer to use the Smith and Wesson based revolver. Powerful, good in close quarters if your target gets out of the way of the katana.

For anyone who’s played Payday, you know when you can mark enemies by pressing “F”? Why not let Phantom do that when he’s cloaked, let it have a limit per cloak usage. 2-4, maybe. Mark crucial targets like Rhino, Bushwacker, Aura/Sparks/Sawbones.

Phantom was made to be good at killing. And that’s what he was good at doing. You didn’t see Phantom using his SMG like some brusier in the scrubs trailer, he arose from his cloak like some badass spooky ghost, and stabbed the fuck out of Vasilli, because he wasn’t seen.

– Right now, he’s just some dude running with a blanket over his head, swinging a stick around that moves half as fast as Rhino walks.

(Ronan) #16

I question how many people watched his Merc Rolecall. The Phantom displayed there is how Phantom should’ve stayed. Plain and simple. Maybe some TWEAKS, but not nerfs.