As of now, I personally think Phantom is underpowered. He is almost completely useless in competitive, against players with eyes, and does not provide much to his team. With Redeye being the next merc, he will become one of the worst mercs in the game, if not the worst. I find him really fun to play as, but he does not help his team much at all.
Phantom underpowered?
Eox
(Eox)
#3
A rework should be done. He’s supposed to be stealthy, and a stealthy merc shouldn’t run around with an armor. This was a huge desing flaw, and it was the main reason why he was so much hated.
Right now, he’s no more a stealth merc, you just use the armor to tank damage and rush someone to melee him. The Refractive Armor totally lacks of versatility and has no purpose in competitive.
I suggested in one of my threads different ways to rework him. In my opinion, the invisibility should be reverted back to its previous state, and he should be able to do whatever he ways while invisible (helping up, playing an objective, etc). This would make him more a teamplayer IMO : helping up an ally while invisible could be very useful. Of course the armor system while invisible would be dumped. @Watsyurdeal had also some rework ideas that did not seem to be bad at all, like giving another skill to Phantom that would increase his teamplay value.
ATTEM
(ATTEM)
#4
They nuked Phantom so much. The biggest problem for me is that SD changed melee system for the worst. At least I didn’t buy him with real monies.
Reddeadcap
(Reddeadcap)
#5
@Eox have to admit, being someone who bought him right away because of the hype, the main problem with phantom wasn’t his amour’s ability to absorb damage.
His refractive armor could take some damage but remember it also drained over time, even more when moving.
The obvious problems were how quickly he could regain it all in 6 seconds, which was dealt with by making it take longer, along with making damage that was high than the armor wouldn’t be negated entirely and would damage Phantom’s health.
The Katana had many problems with its Rmb stab, which could’ve been resolved by decreasing its frames or damage, they did both and changed chopper as well to make it less effective.
So what are the problems with the changes they did to him in my opinion?
Playing both against and as him, making him more visible when moving, he was somewhat visible before in every setting for me and I don’t really use that powerful of a computer, it took a slight double take to notice him at D distance and in close range, his cloak’s noise would be a dead give away of his presence, as it stands now Phantom is very visible, in a thread someone said to use props around the map to stand out less, but even then he stands out very much so.
-10 health wasn’t really necessary either as 120 is basically the games standard health, as I said before main problem of dealing with a Phantom was that their sword was too effective and their armor which was simply used to run right into people, use the sword and run to have it recharge, in most cases running right into people and simply pressing rmb and spinning as seen in the one beyblade video, but obviously not as exaggerated.
Finally the only buff that seemed off was making him still cloakable when detected, in the case of Vasilli Phantom has a large area when he can’t hide, in the case of Redeye, he’s already in his line of sight, in the case of Aimee if what one can bring up with console commands when alone, she has the largest area of effect at the price of not directly being the one capable of attacking Phantom if spotted, hence the need of good communication.