The melee nerf coupled with his visibility nerf made him useless.As a merc that is meant to get kills up close with melee being his primary, how can you get kills if people see you coming especially with the lack of mobility while attacking?
I understand he shouldn’t be seen but he is so easy to spot now even from a far distance. The infiltrator from planetside 2 would be a great example of how phantom should work.
It is WAY to easy to spot phantom now, please put that back to the way it was. Melee should of been tweeked in a different way.
Prior to Phantom’s dreaded nerf he was already easy enough to see, I can agree here that the invis nerf was not needed, however I do believe the Katanas personal tweaks were in the right direction but not the universal melee turn limiter, that was the bad idea here.
No doubt phanto needed a nerf,
But, the melee thing was uncalled for though.
I would have even put his health at a base 100, but 110 is fine.
the cloak visibility kind of defeats his purpose a bit, but can be dealt with.
The melee slowdown however just isn’t the way to go; as an alternate suggestion I’de say that with rotation melee damage should be reduced but the slowdown is horrendous and unnatural. it makes it difficult to get kills with melee as often times when you attack people will just move out of the way ever so slightly, either by choice or unintentionally causing you to miss and feel silly. also you expose yourself and lose the element of surprise often times spelling your demise.
if there’s one thing that is restored if even slightly please, PLEASE; let it be the way melee was before. Thats really my only major complaint.
Maybe they should dump the cloak and make him like a Samurai instead of a Ninja.
Dump the cloak and keep the shield, but attacking deactivates the shield…maybe give him a bit more health…maybe make the shield only forward facing…so he is still vulnerable if he charges someone and someone gets on his flank.
well seeing that theres almost no one playing phantom anymore its hard to judge from the receiving end of the katana. but im kinda split between over nerfed and wrong way. but i think he got over nerfed because they did it the wrong way. I think they should make him a melee specialist and excel in that and somehow i feel they could’ve only given him a worse primary gun and let the rest be as it was. the general melee change nerfed him anyway so the rest was just pure overkill.
I say overnerfed but I also think he was nerfed in the wrong way, nerfing every melee weapon in the game is not a good way to go about things.
I was one of the people who said he should be nerfed…but yeah more I think about it and even played him a little…they went to far.
They really should get rid of his stealth or give him a more perfect stealth…
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.
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 @$!# 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.
He’s so easily seen now, and his shield barely holds up against fire. I’ve been sniped in cloak, headshotted, several times, so it’s no use for survivability. While it does help with flanking, it doesn’t help if the enemy is coming at you head first. The cloak is literally only usable as something for wall camping now, but the problem with that is that he doesn’t have the spy usability of having a one shot backstab.
While he does have the awesomeness of an SMG, I do feel that this character has no idea what he is. I wish the cloak would either not show anything, or a little “glimmer” like the cloaking in Heroes of the Storm. What is his role? Is he am Ambusher? An assassin? Because his katana, while strong, isn’t all that great, and it’s not good for covering ground due to the loss of the lung. The only real way to play him is to find a road less traveled by the enemy, sneak behind, and use your SMG to kill them while their attention is focused elsewhere.
TL;DR, his cloak is not useful at all, and his weapons are confusing as to what he’s supposed to do.
He either needs a lunge and a cleaving swing, or his thrust needs to oneshot kill, since it’s supposed to spear right through the enemy. There’s no reason to thrust anymore. The cloak also needs to have much less visibility, either completely, or make it so that when it breaks, it empowers your next attack to do double damage, that way it becomes a “leap in and kill” attack, guaranteeing a suicide dive is rewarded.
[quote=“bistreVittle;53726”]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.
Look at how fast the stealth/armor drains at 0:16 and 0:20. That seems way faster than it is/was in game. Maybe that’s the only real nerf he needed. He barely had enough stealth to cross the street on Bridge.
Stealth was never Phantoms problem, if you ask me. Armor slapped on top of stealth was, and with the changes they made to his health and to its cooldown, that should be fine. Katana being open to abuse should also have been fixed with the changes to the window, and Chopper changes ( I for one don’t mind that; it’s silly to have an augment that’s mandatory for any merc ).
“Phantom is a cloaking commando who is an action hero in his own mind”
He was supposed to this cloaking asshole who could take your sniper shot in the face and still kill you, people just didn’t want to learn to play against him.
“Phantom’s ability is refractive armor, that allows him to remain nearly invisible for prolonged periods of time. When the armor is used, he can sneak behind enemy lines, or even right through them.”
Can’t do that now
“With Phantom being added, we’ve introduced the katana, a hard to use but more rewarding form of melee”
Can’t use it now, should’ve just cut the damage frame at a certain point.
“His armor can also absorb incoming damage, soaking up grenades and sniper shots that’d normally kill other mercs, making him more resilient on the battlefield”. The 6 second cooldown was fine, now an ability that is the only ability he has, is on 10 a second cooldown? Bullshite.
His armor was made to cover the lack of team-play. He has good at killing. That’s what he did for the team, even now, he can hardly do that with people that have over 2 brain cells.
“Now it’s time to recruit Phantom, be a spooky sneaky ghost”
Or have everything that made him a spooky sneaky ghost become entirely useless in what it seemed to be designed for.
[quote=“bistreVittle;53899”]“Phantom is a cloaking commando who is an action hero in his own mind”
He was supposed to this cloaking asshole who could take your sniper shot in the face and still kill you, people just didn’t want to learn to play against him.
“Phantom’s ability is refractive armor, that allows him to remain nearly invisible for prolonged periods of time. When the armor is used, he can sneak behind enemy lines, or even right through them.”
Can’t do that now
“With Phantom being added, we’ve introduced the katana, a hard to use but more rewarding form of melee”
Can’t use it now, should’ve just cut the damage frame at a certain point.
“His armor can also absorb incoming damage, soaking up grenades and sniper shots that’d normally kill other mercs, making him more resilient on the battlefield”. The 6 second cooldown was fine, now an ability that is the only ability he has, is on 10 a second cooldown? Bullshite.
His armor was made to cover the lack of team-play. He has good at killing. That’s what he did for the team, even now, he can hardly do that with people that have over 2 brain cells.
“Now it’s time to recruit Phantom, be a spooky sneaky ghost”
Or have everything that made him a spooky sneaky ghost be removed.
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Sums it up pretty well 
Lol I love how Phantom players were all shouting to just learn how to counter. Well, guess what? Learn how to play him.
You can literally smell the salt in this post and vote.[/quote]
Lol what the fuck do you think this entire thread and poll is?! Phantom players being salty because they can’t get easy kills with no effort anymore.
You can literally smell the salt in this post and vote.[/quote]
Lol what the fuck do you think this entire thread and poll is?! Phantom players being salty because they can’t get easy kills with no effort anymore.
[/quote]
I can still pubstomp people easily as Phantom; that doesn’t change the fact that they overnefed him due to people like you constantly whining, instead of tweaking him to make him balanced.
Don’t worry about this guy, he/she/it is going around to every single Phantom post and spreading salt like this is some dish about to be served on Master Chef.
As Gordon Ramsey would say, never use too much salt. :>
Damn right I am. Because people like you still want to get away with easy kills with no effort and don’t see why that sucked for the majority of people. If you can easily pub stomp then there isn’t an issue. If take the people who said it was more fun and the same amount of fun with Phantom before the patch it still didn’t come to the number of those who said it was less fun. The devs simply listened to the players and now all the Phantom players have thrown their toys out of the pram because they don’t get to ruin the game for everyone else because as long as they are having fun, fuck everyone else. You’re fucking right that makes me salty.