Please, DON'T NERF Phantom again...

[kdagisz]

Make a noise to the cloak or/and make the cloak more visible if it’s visible?

[Darkwolf3802]

@Eox said:
No matter what you say, if your merc ruins everyone’s fun, has almost no counterplay but a single merc and spreads faster than a rat colony in Paris’ sewers, you need to get nerfed.

This said, there’s a clear way to nerf him without ruining him. It’s just not allowing him to attack right off the bat while cloaked (you’re going to need 1s to uncloak before attacking). It doesn’t ruin Phantom, requires him to plan his actions, and it’s enough to ensure a little bit of counterplay for everyone.

Also a longer cooldown for going invis and an even monger cooldown for emp. 10 sec is nothing and an emp every 10sec completely negates any kind of deployable. Its op as all hell.

[Meerkats]

@Geno2222 said:
He does not ruin players fun, a lot of merc can 1shot withuot giving you time to react.
He ruins my fun.

Please nerf Phantom.

Two things:

A stealth merc doesn’t belong in a run and gun FPS. I signed up to shoot dudes, not to try to figure out a shitty stereogram.

The notion every single merc should be competitive / viable / have similar pick rates is pure haberdashery. Once you hit the point where there are more selections than team slots, pick rate / viability arguments go out the window because no matter what, pick rates will not be equal.

Think about it this way: you make a 1v1 game with three fighters. One is a hot chick, one is a cool dude and the other is essentially Jabba the Hutt. Besides aesthetic elements like personality, animations, etc. they are the same. Same HP, same hitbox, same speed, same moves, same frame data. Guess what your fighter selection distribution is gonna look like. You gonna buff Jabba until he is objectively superior so he has an equal pick rate?

Sure aesthetics is a trivial aspect, but what about playstyles? Same thing applies. Should all playstyles be treated equally? Should an UFC guy be effective in a weapons tournament ( “Now that I have you in an arm bar and am stationary, please stab me at least twenty times with your concealed knife before I let go and bleed to death.” )?

Neither Phantom saw the other until they were touching each other. This is the game casuals seem to want. LUL

[Splicerrr]

[TheStrangerous]

The current state of DB forums:

[OCB-Wildcard]

@Splicerrr said:

To be fair here Splicer the guy asked for it by how he worded his post; he came off in the same way as the casual players whose whining led to Phantom getting the nerf-hammer pushed so far down his gullet that he became meme-tier. The only difference here is it was done in the opposing direction.

Phantom is not a melee Merc, as there are no true melee Mercs in the game, and right now it’s hard to gauge how severely or lightly tweaks need to be because he is being spammed by everyone; this is always the case when its a new or reworked Merc in DB, and everything in this game is obnoxious to deal with when spammed in copious amounts. You can tell that he needs tweaks made but the only thing I will agree with is that any final decisions should wait til the data isn’t being influenced by artificially inflated returns; which is, again, similar to how this same situation mixed with whining for nerfs led to him becoming meme-tier (not trash tier, as he was still situationally useful, but more a niche pick) in the first place.

So let’s not rush to statements on the matter and avoid a witch hunt as well, where we dog-pile on people for differing opinions on the matter. Simply put, such posts should’ve been held off for a bit but its already here so we deal with the situation at hand; meaning we need to keep in mind the facts of the situation and act accordingly.

[Zalamael]

He will probably need a nerf, solely on the basis that his kit has too much to benefit lone wolf play, which will make him popular as a crutch for bad players to get easy kills with if the devs make him too strong/uncounterable (and miserable for everyone else). This is nothing new, stealth classes always have this problem.

Stealth classes either need to be balanced around pro level play, in which case they are usually too powerful in casual play (which leads to massive forum complaints, class stacking, which results in players quitting due to shit quality matches) or they get balanced around casual play, in which case they are usually useless in competitive play.

The problem with Phantom, is that he feels like his entire initial design was for casual lone wolves, with a few later crowbar adjustments to attempt to make him more viable in competitive play. The emphasis on his kit needs to make him viable in team play (as in his EMP, or preferably some other mechanic) and less in his stealth ability. His design is too heavily focused on being a lone wolf who ignores their team and just wants to TDM. That shit needs to be de-emphasised and discouraged, and the skill floor raised enough, so the Phantom player is forced to ‘git gud’ and ‘L2P’ to benefit his team, rather than just button mashing for easy kills on their own.

Saying that, at this point, I am starting to understand the negativity the long term players are having with DB. I recently came back to the game, and already I am starting to notice the game feels very much like a hard-counter style game, where the meta will be very stale due to OP abilities needing OP abilities to counter them, leading to more OP abilities to counter those etc, until the meta settles into a position where only dev intervention will shake it up.

Which is basically saying, the meta will be solely in the hands of the devs and their buff/nerf cycle, and not an organic meta that is decided by top end competitive players using different tactics and strategies.

[Wulie]

It would help to a) take away his katana (so his choices would end with beckhill and stilnotto) and b) exchange his smg mains with just mps… so he would lose a little bit of his kill potential.

[STARRYSOCK]

Let’s see if you can break the record for most disagrees on a single post, lol

[Mc1412013]

@STARRYSOCK said:
Let’s see if you can break the record for most disagrees on a single post, lol

That was what 40 or 50??? I cant remember what the post was

[STARRYSOCK]

@Mc1412013 said:

@STARRYSOCK said:
Let’s see if you can break the record for most disagrees on a single post, lol

That was what 40 or 50??? I cant remember what the post was

I don’t think I ever saw it actually. The most I remember was 20 something I think?

If anyone has it, please link it to me lol

[SiwaonaDaphnewen]

@STARRYSOCK said:
Let’s see if you can break the record for most disagrees on a single post, lol

@Mc1412013 said:
That was what 40 or 50??? I cant remember what the post was

“…We made a mistake, my friend, we challenged an idiot…” - Quote from comic movie
Pls stop this discussion right there or somebody will try to break the record.

[Guziol]

Only thing i’d change is make it so he is way more visible when taking damage while cloaked and then wait a while before touching him again.

[watsyurdeal]

You’re all LEETLE GIRLY MEN

Now shower me with dislikes

[ClemClem7]

@watsyurdeal said:

@Eox said:

@TheStrangerous said:

@Eox said:

1 whole second is long in a game like Dirty Bomb, half a second would be more than enough.

And half a second feels way too short.

Then 3 quarters or 2 thirds is the golden middle!

0.8s is the lower I would go so far. But not without trying 1s first.

There is no reason for it to be that long

The decloak time in TF2 was fine because the average ttk was roughly 1 second to at best, 3/4 of a second if the player was invite level in terms of aim.

The average ttk of most guns in this game is about 0.25 seconds for headshots, about 0.66 seconds for bodyshots. The cloak delay should be comparable to this and strike a good sweet spot, 1 whole second is enough to be killed TWICE, that is way too long, it needs to be about 0.5 seconds to 0.66 seconds, considering the average reaction time of players here is about 0.25 seconds plus 0.055 for ping differences, so about 0.305 seconds, half a second is more than enough time to react and get first shot on Phantom, and scales based on player accuracy, reaction time, and how distracted they are, which is entirely depedent on your team.

For evidence refer to the Dirty Bomb ttk sheet and this thread: http://forums.dirtybomb.com/discussion/24086/so-three-questions-id-like-to-ask-you-all/p1

And if I don’t reply, it’s cause I am busy at work.

Its not about the TTK, but about not decloack in front of you. He should have to decloack hidden, behind enemy lines, not in front of your face.
A 1 full second delay make him have to decloack further before taking you down.
His invisibility must be used to go behind the enemy lines to flank them, not to surprise people like a screamer.

[watsyurdeal]

@ClemClem7 said:

Its not about the TTK, but about not decloack in front of you. He should have to decloack hidden, behind enemy lines, not in front of your face.
A 1 full second delay make him have to decloack further before taking you down.
His invisibility must be used to go behind the enemy lines to flank them, not to surprise people like a screamer.

And Phantom is more likely to die because the ttk is so fast compared the TF2, half a second is more than enough time, 1 second means if your cloak gives out or you decloak in a spot where enemies will inevitably see you due to spawn waves being a thing, you’re boned. And if you have to decloak so far away that it takes you a bit to get over there where your weapons are most effective, it kinda defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

Phantom is a close range class, he should be able to decloak and attack in close encounter spaces, a 1 second decloak would not help that.

[ClemClem7]

@watsyurdeal said:

@ClemClem7 said:

Its not about the TTK, but about not decloack in front of you. He should have to decloack hidden, behind enemy lines, not in front of your face.
A 1 full second delay make him have to decloack further before taking you down.
His invisibility must be used to go behind the enemy lines to flank them, not to surprise people like a screamer.

And Phantom is more likely to die because the ttk is so fast compared the TF2, half a second is more than enough time, 1 second means if your cloak gives out or you decloak in a spot where enemies will inevitably see you due to spawn waves being a thing, you’re boned. And if you have to decloak so far away that it takes you a bit to get over there where your weapons are most effective, it kinda defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

Phantom is a close range class, he should be able to decloak and attack in close encounter spaces, a 1 second decloak would not help that.

If he decloacks under ennemi fire or on the line of sight if the enemy, he is a bad flanker. You used in your argument a ttk of 0.25s which is full headshot burst, which is very unlikely if you start by deckloacking behind people.
As for spawn wave, you should be conscious of wave timer, especially when you’re a flanker.

And phantom doesn’t have shotguns or mp as weapons (close range) but smg (mid range). I don’t count katana as a primary weapon here intentionally and I really expect you to do the same and not being a full katana phantom. If you are that kind of phantom player, then we never gonna agree on this.

[watsyurdeal]

@ClemClem7 said:

@watsyurdeal said:

@ClemClem7 said:

Its not about the TTK, but about not decloack in front of you. He should have to decloack hidden, behind enemy lines, not in front of your face.
A 1 full second delay make him have to decloack further before taking you down.
His invisibility must be used to go behind the enemy lines to flank them, not to surprise people like a screamer.

And Phantom is more likely to die because the ttk is so fast compared the TF2, half a second is more than enough time, 1 second means if your cloak gives out or you decloak in a spot where enemies will inevitably see you due to spawn waves being a thing, you’re boned. And if you have to decloak so far away that it takes you a bit to get over there where your weapons are most effective, it kinda defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

Phantom is a close range class, he should be able to decloak and attack in close encounter spaces, a 1 second decloak would not help that.

If he decloacks under ennemi fire or on the line of sight if the enemy, he is a bad flanker. You used in your argument a ttk of 0.25s which is full headshot burst, which is very unlikely if you start by deckloacking behind people.
As for spawn wave, you should be conscious of wave timer, especially when you’re a flanker.

And phantom doesn’t have shotguns or mp as weapons (close range) but smg (mid range). I don’t count katana as a primary weapon here intentionally and I really expect you to do the same and not being a full katana phantom. If you are that kind of phantom player, then we never gonna agree on this.

You’re ignoring my point entirely, look at the maps, if you’re choosing a place to decloak, think of places that aren’t close to a sniper, ammo box, an aura health station, a respawn point, a place where people have a direct line of sight on you, etc

Despite what people will have you believe the game isn’t a sit in one place and camp style of shooter, players are all over the place, and moving into different positions constantly. Having to wait 1 second to decloak is a heavy nerf in the context of Dirty Bomb’s TTK, Map Layout, and overall pace. 0.5 seconds is enough time for you to hear Phantom, turn around, and engage before he begins to fire. At the point you are engaging Phantom in a fair 1v1 and he has lost his first shot potential. And the sound it will emit as well WHILE he’s cloak will be enough as well. By going with a long decloak you are giving people far too many chances to hear, see, or predict Phantom which basically negates his role as the best flanker.

And his SMGs are nothing compared to assault rifles, they still have significant enough dropoff and random bullet spread to limit the fights to close range. By the time the SMG’s fall off ENDS, that is where Assault Rifle’s begins, refer to this sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lfrz5hOUaihkviy1VIPo4-aCy7hKnMm8y7W4g269t6E/edit#gid=222941849

And aiming down sights doesn’t really negate that either since you can’t ads and attack before cloak, you have to decloak, then aim, then fire, which will take time. 1 second is too long, 0.5 second is a good sweet spot that allows enough time for counterplay, while not making Phantom’s job harder than it should be.

[bgyoshi]

What a god…

3 posts in and you have the most controversial post on the forums

1 second decloak time is probably a death sentence for phantom, he’ll be unplayable. Half a second or slightly less would be fine, you have to have the balance between rewarding him for good flanking, and punishing him for being caught. 1 second decloak is just punishing him in every possible situation.