Call it Echo Sense or something, the suit sends out a sound wave that bounces off enemies, revealing them to Phantom and his team.
This way you can play Phantom and figure out enemy positions before you go running in. This of course is assuming that EMP field thing is removed, cause I don’t think it’d be remotely fair for Phantom to have THAT much power.
This still gives away that you’re close enough to the enemies to spot them.
I wonder when will devs realise that Phantom’s got too much counterplay.
Every spotting device will give him away, really loud audio and now the EMP field.
His visibility is at somewhat ok level, as you can’t really move around with it right in front of your enemies but you can still slip past the corner of their eyes.
Visibility itself is balanced because you can’t have Phantoms just katana rush and one-hit- kill smaller mercs, but as of now he simply lacks the information on the enemy to sneak around, instead of running in front of them and then awkwardly “play invisible” till they start tearing down his pixelcloak.
If your suggested ability would pulse spot the enemies for a maybe something between 0.5 - 1sec without actually marking and alerting them it would be great.
If Phantom could check those dangerous corners, lets say every 8sec, it would already be the biggest buff for him yet as it would actually improve his sneaking capabilities.
If Phantom can get behind a spawn wave he can at least get enough information on how to proceed with his target picking. Coming from your own spawn moving in without any knowledge on the enemies the pixelcloak simply isn’t sneaky enough for you to pick your fights, which currently leaves Phantom a very defense favored merc as you can basically always let the attackers spawn wave pass you and then make your picks.
I used very small values for the spotting itself so it wouldn’t possibly require alerting the enemies giving away Phantom’s position again. I also don’t think it would be too strong as dirty bomb got high mobility making the ability not nearly as accurate as other spotting devices, but it would be effective enough for Phantom to get the general idea of his enemy locations and numbers to either avoid or deal with those targets.
Don’t feel we need another spotting ability merc. The spotting thing has been done to death.
Phantom is best suited as a saboteur class, thus jamming enemy deployables is the right direction in my opinion. Great for taking out these medstation/landmine nests and especially those pesky stickies.
@TheStrangerous that’s like saying we need medics that don’t heal or revive or fire supports that don’t have ammo.
Why not make one that’s very wide but in the process of deploying it Phantom is vulnerable along with a really long cool down.
[quote=“Redcap;183860”]@TheStrangerous that’s like saying we need medics that don’t heal or revive or fire supports that don’t have ammo.
Why not make one that’s very wide but in the process of deploying it Phantom is vulnerable along with a really long cool down.[/quote]
Well he can’t have both abilities as OP said. It’s either EMP or Spotting. Unless they could let us try Phantom with both abilities.
I feel pulse radius wouldn’t be enough. Maybe if the current EMP ability was replaced with spotting, then it’d be useful. Running invisible and marking enemies, that’d be more interesting.
Why can’t he have both? If you’re going to force his spotting mechanic in to a small radius around him just like his EMP then it would simply make sense to have both, and not be OP whatsoever. The balancing would be in the short range and the cooldown; with both mechanics it MIGHT be acceptable to have the minimum cooldown on his armor be 7 seconds… MIGHT… I am really missing hit and run phantom w/ 1sec minimum cooldown.
Just give him a new ability which will create a field that causes both - Disable buildings for 7 seconds and spot enemies for 5 seconds (recharge time of 22 seconds)
And maybe change the cloak to work like Redeye’s IR goggles (can enable/disable whenever you want) but it won’t block damage.
Now I’m concerned why SD refuses to give him spotting ability.
If they wanted to give him spotting ability, then why the EMP instead?
If the EMP is supposed to stay in Phantom’s kit, it should at least be something throwable, a nade, knife(suits his theme) or a snitch kind of thing.
Current EMP field proves well how it’s more of a giveaway than a buff to execute his flanks and be a team player. If they would have just given Phantom Thunder’s nade with only the EMP effect on it, he would have been much much stronger with the current update.
I’m not a fan of the idea behind the cloak change suggested by FrostyVampire, sure Phantom could disappear behind every single corner and move most of the time cloaked, but he isn’t visually that hidden, so more than often you’ll run into people who can spot you from afar and take their shots. At best you manage to run away alive, but even after that there’s no way for you to pull off any kind of flanks as your position is known to the enemy and you require healing. And assuming you were caught mid flank, you’re probably away from your team, so you most likely don’t have any medics nearby.
Right now if you get caught mid flank, the shield usually absorbs most of the damage, if not all of it. That’s why I think that idea in the end would probably hurt Phantom more than help.
If the 7sec penalty from the last patch would be reverted that’d be fine.
Letting Phantom spot in a radius basically makes him a dm lord since he will essentially have wall hacks and prefire every firefight.
No. Because that still makes me get close. And I don’t want to get close.