Phantom poll with unbiased options

(Eox) #21

Voted OP, mainly because I feel like he needs a lot of little changes (lots of little makes a big one). I’ll argument in another thread.

(Gi.Am) #22

I say balanced but depending how things turn out after we get used to him. he could also be slightly OP/UP.

(crimsonYouth) #23

[quote=“Clown;13798”]All the polls I’ve seen on Phantom have been extremely biased, I wanted to create one that has options to actually fit everyone’s (or as many people as possible) opinion.

I, personally, am voting slightly OP, I think the cooldown is a bit too short.[/quote]

Thanks for making a real poll… the others are pseudo polls trying to get people to push the OP/remove vote XD

I think they just need to tweak his armor amount.

(Sagan on Roids) #24

I think he’s fine. He’s annoying, and it doesn’t feel good getting killed by him, but you could say the same about Vassili. He doesn’t have as much killing power as an assault class, but he seems on par with Vassili.

He’s the first merc with an emphasis on melee kills, and I think that’s where most of these complaints are really coming from, because it doesn’t feel good being killed by melee.

If I had to change one thing: reduce the damage of the katana so a body shot doesn’t 1-hit kill light mercs, BUT add headshots to melee weapons so that they require more skill to use.

(crimsonYouth) #25

[quote=“Sagan on Roids;41644”]I think he’s fine. He’s annoying, and it doesn’t feel good getting killed by him, but you could say the same about Vassili. He doesn’t have as much killing power as an assault class, but he seems on par with Vassili.

He’s the first merc with an emphasis on melee kills, and I think that’s where most of these complaints are really coming from, because it doesn’t feel good being killed by melee.

If I had to change one thing: reduce the damage of the katana so a body shot doesn’t 1-hit kill light mercs, BUT add headshots to melee weapons so that they require more skill to use.[/quote]

I would love to see headshots with the katana …i want it to remove heads :smiley:

(umberInlet) #26

Lower his cloak health and increase the cooldown time. Maybe lower his health to 110 as well. He should be punished for being seen.

(triteCherry) #27

I would change one thing at a time so it’s easier to figure out the sweet spot. If you start nerfing several things at once and his performance tanks then you can no idea what the cause of it is besides theory crafting.

Splash Damage has been pretty decent about baby step balancing and they have the numbers that show what areas he’s over performing in so i’d leave it up to them after they gather more data.

(Andy) #28

Adding phantom has ruined the game for a lot of people, it is not fun to be constantly back stabbed by an invisible demi god with a sword that has the reach of a double decker bus.

(crimsonYouth) #29

these types of over exaggerations are the real problem.

(Ghosthree3) #30

Exaggeration it may be, but I’ll give him that the sword is frankly too easy to hit.

(MTLMortis) #31

Blanket statements like this do nothing to help balance the class. Play the game, provide pertinent feedback. Otherwise you are wasting everyone’s time.

(savoryLettuce) #32

Exaggeration it may be, but I’ll give him that the sword is frankly too easy to hit.
[/quote]

Why ?
His sword together with cloak is his speciality…its also to easy to hit with airstrike or Naders launcher but you don’t even have to get close with them.
The Katana has to be different to the other Melee weapons because its part of the speciality of Phantom its not just another melee weapon.

(watsyurdeal) #33

Um…this is why

(savoryLettuce) #34

While it might look funny but in which way couldn’t you also get that amount of killing with other special abilities ?
Air strikes can kill whole teams…

(watsyurdeal) #35

Are you serious???

He’s blatantly missing the first strike but can twirl around to compensate.

You could still get chain kills if you line it up and pierce two people with one lunge.

This is not the case here, he is literally just spinning around and it’s connecting, it’d be like if the Sniper Rifle drew it’s hitscan line and it lasted for half a second, anyone’s head touches it, dead.

Do you seriously not get how broken that is?

(crimsonYouth) #36

If i spin around in a circle with a sword out in front of me i would expect it to hit things XD …but yes it lasts a little too long.

(FlyingSquirtle) #37

Having played for a good few hours with him yesterday, the conclusion I’ve come to so far is that yes, he is too strong in his current form. With his kit as it currently is, he has too much and just becomes a pain to deal with. However, I believe this can be mostly remedied and balanced with one single, simple change.

  • His cloak (the invisibility part) is honestly fine. He stands out just fine and you can spot him at range. (Standing at the by the generator/bridge area on Chapel, you can easily spot him running along while cloaked by the defender’s spawn/by the bus.)
    Even if he’s crouchwalking, or hell, just standing still, you can still pick the outline and shimmer of his cloak out. Guess for most people, getting used to looking for the shimmer and spotting it will become more natural and easier with time. (I mean hell, it’s like Infil cloak in Planetside.)
    Granted, being able to fire/swing or do any other action immediately from cloak is very strong, as there is no delay on decloaking this way (there is if you manually decloak by pressing Q again, though.) But honestly, let him have it.
    Fully depleted cloak recharges in six seconds. Rather fast. But that’s fine. Also takes a while to activate the cloak, with there being a little delay on it.

However, the cloak is also what tips him over towards being OP/broken. The culprit of this? The shield/damage reduction bit. It currently absorbs… what, 75 damage before being depleted, with a fresh cloak. Or anything that can do over 75 damage in a single hit, with it simply instantly decloaking him and forcing him back to a 6 second recharge. Things like direct hits from Nader’s GL/Proxymines/Fragger nade, hell even a headshot from good ol’ Vaseline. And of course, none of this damage carries over to his actual health, even if it overkills the shield-portion of his cloak.

And that is what allows Phantom to currently do the kamikaze charges at people while swinging his katana around like a madman and cutting people up one after another.
I mean, that’s what was the most common thing to see yesterday. Bunch of Phantoms running straight at people like idiots while cloaked and mashing M1/M2. Imagine you’re Kira/Arty with the Dreiss. Phantom runs around the corner in front of you cloaked. You need three bodyshots/two headshots/a single headshot and bodyshot -just- to decloak him and allow you to actually start depleting his actual healthpool.
And that is dumb.

So what to do regarding the shield? Remove it. At least against regular firearms (including Vassili’s snipers). Could possibly keep the shield working against -explosives-, but… yeah.
This changes how Phantom has to approach things, and he can’t just run at you like an idiot with his cloak on and katana out. If he does, and you spot him? You can just mow him down. Even if you’re Aura/Proxy/Sparks, you can defend yourself without having to go through a 75 damage absorbing shield.

  • KEK-10. It’s a universal issue, as it isn’t a weapon exclusive to Phantom.

  • Katana. Honestly, I don’t find this to be a problem. You can do the same kind of damage with the chopper perk with most other melee weapons. Hell, -EVERY- single melee weapon in the game, when augmented by chopper, will oneshot the four light classes. (Aura/Sparks/Proxy/Kira.) With a heavy swing, that is. The only unique thing about Phantom and the katana is that it also oneshots Vassili with a heavy swing (with Chopper) and that the M2 (thrust/heavy attack) can pierce through multiple people if they line up for you.

Other than that, apparently he can return objectives like EMP charges -while- remaining cloaked, but I personally didn’t try that. So there’s that, too.
But yeah, that’s Phantom in a nutshell as it currently stands.

TL;DR - Remove his damage-absorbing shield against guns at the very least, keep it against explosives if you want or not. This requires Phantom to play and move much more cautiously, he cannot run at you while cloaked with a beefy shield protecting him as he prepares to chop you into pieces anymore, and such.

(watsyurdeal) #38

absolutely nailed it, agreed

(triteCherry) #39

I did that once when killing a proxy in the middle of the street, cloaked and waited for an Aura to try to revive then killed them both when the proxy was in the revive animation with one stab.

I don’t think that the spinning would be a hard fix, just need to remove damage after the peak of the stab animation.

(savoryLettuce) #40

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;41720”]Are you serious???

He’s blatantly missing the first strike but can twirl around to compensate.

[…]
Do you seriously not get how broken that is?[/quote]

It probably lasts a bit long but the general posibility to “turnkill” to some degree with one attack seems to me not broken.
You have to get into that position first which is not that easy and then most of the times get at best 2 kills out of it.
There are certain abilities (Nader, Skyhammer for example) that allow way more kills while you don’t even need to get really close.
Piercing two people because they are behind each other is more or less a luckshot nothing else, with the game being as it is people are moving way to much to make that really a noteworthy thing.

As stated before some tweaking can be done but if the possibility of striking and turning is taken completely because broken how are then Nader and skyhammer not broken ?