Seeing the most recent changes to Phantom, I didn’t waited too long to come back in game and try the new changes. I’ll be blunt : they were not satisfying. Basically, the dev team nerfed Phantom without really taking into account the real issues that Phantom has ! The fixed the symptoms, not the disease ! And the worst of all, it even had collateral damage ! If you have tried to use melee since the most recent update you probably noticed that your character now gets a cerebral attack every time he tries to use melee that prevents him from using it effectively : that change was totally unneeded, probably as well as a lot of changes involving Phantom.
Phantom already proved in the past that he was a balance nightmare. Reworked two times since the closed beta, once strongly overpowered, once strongly underpowered, and once fun ruining merc for everyone in the enemy team that does not play him. That last status is what was though buy a very large majority of players, coming from every sides of the internet. Extremely annoying, fun ruining, downright overpowered… The complaints were numerous, with a lot of arguments (very oftenly understandable). And here are the main reasons :
- The armor system, that does not fit a stealth based character, and encourages cheap plays like rushing down someone and spam melee.
- Extreme lack of teamplay. Most of Phantom players didn’t cared about anything but their K/D ratio. Probably due to the lack of teamplay options that Phantom suggest. A new system was introduced that allow someone to grab support xp for being a human shield, supposed to work with the armor system. Yet, the armor system is not used to cover an ally anyway, because it’s much more useful to use it to rush at people than wasting it to cover an ally. It’s not used like that, and let’s face it : it never will.
- Is extremely infuriating to fight against. Like a good Vassili, but mastering Vassili is far from being easy. It’s on the other hand very easy to play Phantom, and he feels extremely cheap.
Notice that I only took the three main issues into account.
So did the nerfs solved the issue ? Absolutely not. The main strategy and actually the only viable one is still rushing down people since you can’t count on your stealth as much anymore. Teamplay is still not encouraged… Okay, at least you’ll expect to die against him in the most cheapest ways much less than before, but it does not mean that it’s fine ! Phantom players need to have fun too, and those melee turn change has to go : they are terrible ! You are free to hate Phantom, but he deserves to be respected ! His current state is an insult to the character and every players who picked Phantom as their favourite character. Phantom deserves much more than that ! He deserves a rework !
The armor system is the cause of 80% of Phantom’s problem ! It’s simple, you can’t balance that ! I can’t think about something that makes the idea balanced ! Phantom need to be stealth based. If you are detected the enmy should punish you ! You shouldn’t have that “get out of jail free” card that is the armor ! This is an horrible design choice ! The other part of the issue is the lack of freedom the invisibility gives you. What can you do when you are invisible ? Move and… That’s all. You can’t play an objective while cloaked, you can’t help up a teammate while cloaked… That lack of versatility does not help at all. That’s another poor design choice ! If Phantom was able to make some contextual actions while invisible, he would have been a much better teamplayer.
I guess the post is long enough. I won’t waste your time anymore. Here’s just what I suggest and highly recommand as a rework for Phantom. Of course, get rid of EVERY SINGLE changes done in this update before. We’ll take the Phantom before the nerf as a base.
- Remove the Armor system !
- Decreased hp to 110 is fine, let’s keep it.
- Increaseed CD to 10 for six seconds of invisibility is fine, lets keep it too.
- Allow Phantom to perform any actions while invisible (helping up, playing an objective, etc…) ! This includes shooting and meleeing ! If Phantom attacks however, he’ll become much more visible as long as he keeps attacking. This should make the invisibility much more versatile.
- Damaging Phantom will no longer drain his invisibility, but he’ll breifly blink if damaged or if he bumps against an enemy. So if you damage him, it allows you to try to keep track.
- If needed, tune up or down the invisibility. This will depend of the feedback. IMO the invisibility level could be reverted back at it’s previous state.
- You may also want to extend the cooldown duration further, but also expand the invisibility duration. This is actually a buff : if you use six seconds of your invisibility you’ll stay at 10 seconds CD. Buf if you wish to use more, the CD will extend further of course. Tell me if you don’t understand.
Finally, remove every other Phantom nerfs besides the weapon specific ones. About melee weapons, I think the lasting hitbox nerf of the Katana is also fine, but remove the turning speed nerf ! It just makes melee worthless. It was not needed as a Phantom nerf too. Also, bring back Chopper to +20% melee damage : +15% changes nothing on the Katana’s efficiency : +15% or +20%, you’ll still be able to one shot Vassili with a lunge. That perk was okay before, but now it’s ruined.
@Watsyurdeal also suggested some very nice augments that could fit Phantom a lot. I’ll let him add his augments ideas by himself.
Feel free to discuss about it.