I bought Phantom the day he came out, and I think it’s fair to say that he was just Blatantly OP. With an avarage triple, quadra, or even Ace per Life, there was little people could do to truly counter him without having to spend the entire game focussing him. (This will ofcourse differ between every player, but in general this was my feeling) In other words, he was sort of destroying the game a little.
Now he’s been nerfed and you see one from time to time, but Phantom has become a rare pick. I think all of the changes done to him where pretty fair. He was simply too strong, so a lot of things got taken from him, fair enough.
There are just two things that got take from him I don’t really agree on.
- Him rotating speed while melee hitting. Now a merc could simply jump, and you would lose sight him of fast. Made melee killing an enemy who spotted you, even last moment, very very hard and made Phantom feel slow and a drag to play. This was fixed in some of the previous patches, and from the second it was, Phantom felt a lot more playable again. For that I thank thee.
- His cloak visibility. It’s his thing, his gimmick, it’s part of what makes Phantom Phantom. If you payed some attention with your eyes and ears, you could spot him. And when you did, you can break his stealth and kill him fairly easy by back paddling. This is a good thing.
However, he become MORE visible while in cloak. It’s just too easy to spot him. While defending in Chapel,I like to play Red eye with his new gun and stand on the higher platform on the right. Looking over his iron sight (not even a true scope), I can easily spot cloaked Phantom running when they come around the corner after leaving spawn. That’s a pretty far distance to spot one in my opinion. Now getting seen for medium distance by almost every enemy player already makes your main ability feel rather redundant, but getting sniped for long distance while in cloak just makes it feel plane useless. When I play Phantom I feel like my cloak ads a little to sneaking up on the unprepared player, but in general it feels like there is little difference between having cloak on or off.
Therefore my suggestion: Give Phantom his old cloak visibility back.
He’s not meant to be tanky, his movement speed is fast enough to get close, but not fast enough kill catch up with back paddling opponents who’ve spotted you. That in my opinion is perfect. He’s meant to outplay people by slipping under there noses and picking off lonely targets, as mindlessly chopping into a team while normally get you killed very fast. But for this to happen, he has to able to get a little closer then he can now. Therefore, he doesn’t need any stat buffs, he’s perfect. Just a little push so he gets on equal footing with the other mercs again.
TL;DR: Make Phantoms cloak less visible again.
Thank you for you time.
Yours Truly,
Aerican.