Please Leave Phantom's Visibility Alone

[Cordyceps]

I can agree with others that phantom is currently frustrating to fight against, but I think changing his visibility is the wrong choice. Making him so much more invisible has made him so much more fun to play as. I think a better way of changing phantom would be to make it so he has to fully decloak before attacking. This way you can still get behind enemy lines undetected, but you can’t just go invisible and ram right into someone with the katana.

[henki000]

I agree with visibility thing, but dont agree with decloaking delay. Instead, I think Phantom should have health (-10hp), speed (-10 units) and decloak viewkick nerf (+20% viewkick). Maybe cloak should be slightly shorter period (-1,5 seconds) and have longer cooldown (+5 seconds). Numbers are directional.

[JJMAJR]

I think the full decloaking requirement would be necessary for phantom. I don’t like having Phantom become more like a TF2 spy because in TF2, it’s a lot harder to respond to spies because a lot of your weapons fire very slowly, or your character is extremely slow relative to spy’s OHKO backstab ability. In Dirty Bomb, nearly everyone has SMGs, assault rifles, or machine pistols, or revolvers that destroy people with headshots.

If Phantom can’t hold his own against combat medics/engineers/recons/fire supports in a fight, that would lead to him being garbage again.

[kirinichiban42]

@Cordyceps said:
I can agree with others that phantom is currently frustrating to fight against, but I think changing his visibility is the wrong choice. Making him so much more invisible has made him so much more fun to play as. I think a better way of changing phantom would be to make it so he has to fully decloak before attacking. This way you can still get behind enemy lines undetected, but you can’t just go invisible and ram right into someone with the katana.

I couldn’t agree more. This is exactly what would allow Phantom to retain full invisibility cloak and be fair to play against. I honestly don’t get why SD did away with the decloaking delay thing even when they said in the rework video that they were going to implement it (Still love them though). Phantom is supposed to be a high risk high reward merc and now there is almost no risk in playing him.

There is a reason why the Spy from TF2 is always brought up in conversations about Phantom’s ability (another good example is Sombra from Overwatch). This is because they have almost identical play-styles. Both characters are assassins which specialize in dealing high burst damage to a single target.

Just as a hypothetical exercise, imagine if a merc with a shotgun (let’s say an Aura with the Remburg) had invisibility up until they fired the first shot. How would you fight back? How could you prevent this? The unfortunate truth is that you can’t do much but wait for the first strike which already puts you at a huge disadvantage. The right-click on the katana is pretty much like a merc with a shotgun attacked you point blank. So its pretty unfair, to say the least, that Phantom can perform high damage attacks with little skill involved.

Again, OP has a great idea for how Phantom could be balanced.

[ZenVirZan]

Turning him in to TF2’s Spy isn’t the solution. The problem is that the stealth is too much of a crutch for bad players to use. The stealth is just too powerful.

Give us back low base cd Phantom (just after he was nerfed to garbage tier), give him inbuilt Tough then re-install the current EMP system.

Basically:

• Old super-visible when moving stealth
• No shield
• Reduced base cooldown for better stealth toggling
• Regen delay reduced so you can heal up a bit if you manage to get out of a fight (pick up a kill or two and retreat)
• Current EMP-on-demand system.

What we want:

• Carefully choose when to stealth to sneak past enemy lines and harass from the back and pick off medics

What we don’t want:

• Invisibility so you run straight at the team and get kills because they couldn’t see you coming.

Right now you don’t need to be good to get close to an average team. If the changes above are applied, the stealth doesn’t provide the shield, but also doesn’t grant the super invisibility that it does now, so bad players can’t use it as a crutch to run around and mash leftclick.

Disclaimer: Phantom main.

[GrinReapZ]

Well I have thoroughly enjoyed Phantoms rework, OP but very fun and EASY.

Prior to his rework, if I wanted to have some melee fun, I would choose aura, sparks w/ cricket bat or kira with her sword and have more success in melee than the old phantom.

Why ?

Because of their speed. They are harder to hit and crouch jump the hell out of there.

It kind of deflates phantoms ability as melee master.

I personally feel the direction of phantom would be to emulate that sort of setup with him. Lower health, faster movement speed with a reduced time on his stealth ability, which also depletes faster when you sprint. That would set him up for the classic hit and run attacks.

Shorter stealth just to close the distance, get in, then run away. With the old cloaking setup the squishy’s such as aura, proxy, kira etc they can hear you right at the wrong time and can easily kite away. With a shorter stealth it makes it more difficult in flanking opponents.

Or define him as a pure melee with weaker guns.

He is OP with his current setup, but making his cloak less “invisible” would just shelf him again. Since he has been reworked I am already noticing players seeing him better whilst he is in stealth. First couple of days I was literally running right up to players in front of them and stabbing away.

I would like to see phantom keep his invisibility, as time goes on it won’t be as effective because people will learn how to see the cloak.

• Drop health to about 80 or 90
• Increase movement speed to somewhere around kira
• Reduce cloak to 5 seconds
• Reduce the Cooldown as well.

[TheStrangerous]

I hope the next rework in 2020 will DIVORCE EMP from cloak. Cause they are in a toxic relationship…

[Rokon2]

I want Phantom to work really similarly to TF2 Spy because his mechanics reward players with proper gamesense and map knowledge. The idea behind cloak is to disrupt and sabotage the backline so that the enemy is pinched between the Phantom and his team. The mechanic of moving slowly to remain pretty well cloaked contradicts each other because the point of being invisible is to quickly get to a destination without being seen. If that were the case, I’d just B-Hop with Proxy and get the same result, only I can plant mines around and deter would-be pursuers.

[Craikn]

Best way to fix and balance phantom is an lil easy thing…make him spotable by snipers again…vasilli and aimee…thats all i ask for…see´n a lil red point running around is the best way to balance phantom and dont nerf him to death again =)

[LifeupOmega]

Needing a recon to counter a recon is shit game design and the entire reason this game has been drifting away from long ttk fights, while I wouldn’t be against him being able to be spotted again - it’s a bad fix if that’s all that happens.

[Sorotia]

@Cordyceps said:
I can agree with others that phantom is currently frustrating to fight against, but I think changing his visibility is the wrong choice. Making him so much more invisible has made him so much more fun to play as. I think a better way of changing phantom would be to make it so he has to fully decloak before attacking. This way you can still get behind enemy lines undetected, but you can’t just go invisible and ram right into someone with the katana.

Phantom is a failed experiment, he just wont work in this game…amazingly in a team game…at least in pubs…people don’t work as a team. People just care about the pew pew…firing bullets at stuff and rarely pay attention to anything else.

Even if Phantom had a longer decloak time odds are he still will score lots of easy kills because people just don’t pay attention…they don’t watch other peoples backs…all they care about is racking up lots of xp and kills.

So you’re still going to have casuals and scrubs complaining about him, and we know the devs love to cater to the casuals.