Team helping ability for Phantom.

[Despaniard]

After reading through several posts I’ve discovered that Phantom is considered by the majority of the community to be a useless addition to any team. He has no useful abilities that can help the team and his sword is not even his signature item.

[Someordinaryguy]

Reminds me of Sabotage from BF:Hardline but it would also be cool to booby trap ammo boxes apart from obj :3

[watsyurdeal]

Personally I’d rather have some kind of decoy tool, something to draw enemies away from the point or your team pushing in.

[signofzeta1]

Hey, here’s an idea, and I am going to mention Aimee too.

I had this idea, where Aimee throws a third eye cam, just like how Vasili throws his hearbeat sensor, and looks through the third eye cam, just like how redeye looks through his IR goggles, and spots deployables.

Here is what I think:

Phantom spots deployables, just like Aimee
Phantom spots via an area of effect spotting radius, just like Vasili’s heartbeat sensor
Phantom’s spotting comes from himself, not an object, just like Redeye.

To put it together, Phantom should be more invisible and less audible while standing still, but be less invisible and more audible while moving. He should have less armor when his cloak is on than he already has right now. When he activates his cloak, (hopefully mines and turrets don’t trigger when he is invisible), there is an area of effect circle emanating from Phantom himself that spots, in that circle, all mines, turrets, ammo stations, and health stations, but NOT PLAYERS.

I mention that Aimee and Phantom shouldn’t spot players is to make each recon merc situational. If you want to spot players, use Vasili or Redeye.

There are 3 questions with 2 responses to spotting.

What can you spot? Players or Deployables?
How can you spot it? Looking or Area of Effect
From who or what does it spot from? Player or Object.

For each response, only 2 recon mercs gets one response, while the other 2 get the other response.

For a specific recon merc that answers each question with a specific response, exactly one merc, of the original 4 recon mercs, is allowed to have the same response to exactly one question.

Let’s look at my idea of Phantom’s spotting ability, and what I said about Aimee.

What can Phantom spot? Deployables. So does Aimee. Vasili and Redeye spot players.

How does Phantom spot? Area of Effect. So does Vasili. Redeye and Aimee spots by looking at the target of spotting.

From who or what does it spot from? Player. So does Redeye. Vasili and Aimee spots from a thrown object.

[Grave_Knight]

Personally I’m in love with my Motion Detector idea. It’s a device you can plant on a surface and anyone who passes through it’s area off effect notifies allies someone pass though it. Maybe give Phantom two or three of them so he can set them in various locations. They don’t spot the enemy so you won’t know for sure how many people are at that location, but it also doesn’t notify the enemy. You can also pass through it without notifying anyone if you walk through it, and Phantom won’t have anyway to know if one of his Motion Detectors has been deactivated.

[Reddeadcap]

My take on Phantom being able to spot would be a copy of an operative’s ability in Brink called Comm’s Hack, since many abilities are pretty ripped from Brink one way or another.

Phantom Down’s or Kills an enemy, he interacts with them with a phone, all enemies are located for 30 seconds while it has a larger cooldown than Vasilli’s, Redeye’s or Aimee’s detection abilities.

[Grave_Knight]

[quote=“Redcap;118178”]My take on Phantom being able to spot would be a copy of an operative’s ability in Brink called Comm’s Hack, since many abilities are pretty ripped from Brink one way or another.

Phantom Down’s or Kills an enemy, he interacts with them with a phone, all enemies are located for 30 seconds while it has a larger cooldown than Vasilli’s, Redeye’s or Aimee’s detection abilities.[/quote]

Problem with that mechanic is that it’s way to powerful. You detect everyone. And 30 seconds is extremely long. Hell, 12 seconds is extremely long (which would be the duration with Enigma).

[awesomePenguin]

I was thinking, maybe he could have a special weapon (as an ability) of some sort to use, like Nader or Sparks. So what would be a stealthy weapon? A throwing knife?

Or how about a temporary speed boost to make closing in for melee easier?

Just some ideas, it’s cool if they sound awful.

[scavazzi4]

@awesomePenguin throwing knife sounds great on him.
I’d like it to deal moderate damage on impact and some bleed DoT.
I’d like bleed DoT to be powerful but not letal.
I’d love phantom to have a combat ability/weapon, imo he’s shouldn’t become a support merc by any means.
It’s just my opinion though, i’d like everyone to say something about this and trying to make phantom better.

[Reddeadcap]

[quote=“scavazzi4;118638”]@awesomePenguin throwing knife sounds great on him.
I’d like it to deal moderate damage on impact and some bleed DoT.
I’d like bleed DoT to be powerful but not letal.
I’d love phantom to have a combat ability/weapon, imo he’s shouldn’t become a support merc by any means.
It’s just my opinion though, i’d like everyone to say something about this and trying to make phantom better.[/quote][quote=“Grave Knight;118203”][quote=“Redcap;118178”]My take on Phantom being able to spot would be a copy of an operative’s ability in Brink called Comm’s Hack, since many abilities are pretty ripped from Brink one way or another.

Phantom Down’s or Kills an enemy, he interacts with them with a phone, all enemies are located for 30 seconds while it has a larger cooldown than Vasilli’s, Redeye’s or Aimee’s detection abilities.[/quote]

Problem with that mechanic is that it’s way to powerful. You detect everyone. And 30 seconds is extremely long. Hell, 12 seconds is extremely long (which would be the duration with Enigma).[/quote]
Maybe for 15 or 10 seconds while the cooldown on the ability would be about 30 seconds?

[darlingClaymore]

Trap yes, insta kill is sorta to strong, and spotting, CMON we got enough of those guys, redeye, vassili, and maybe aimee.

[Naonna]

boost cloak invis a bit, decrease cooldown back to 6, let him place his own ‘proxy mines’ which spot instead of explode. - I repaired your merc for you.

[Ctrix]

I would LOVE a close range recon. Absolutely love. I like Vasilli, but when I play him I’m just like, “I could just go up to them and kill them, but my weapons are garbage”.

Phantom was clearly initially meant as a counter to high value targets. Go in and murder the medics in the back, for example. Issue being that people didn’t do that, they just went for melee kills ambush style.

I feel like an instant kill ability would be very hard to do right. But if you could at least mark the Sparks in the back that keeps reviving everyone. Something.

Really I feel his shield should’ve never given him armour. It’s supposed to get him behind enemy lines so he can kill that Sparks, not walk through fire and rain. What’s even the purpose? How is that being a recon?

His cloak should make him less visible than he is now, and shouldn’t provide armour, that’s what I feel would be the best change at the moment. The sword still destroys single targets. Most phantoms are just bad in switching back to their primary to finish of a target who longjumps away. All he needs is the ability to get in there and use it on the backline.

He got nerfed because he could just run up to your face and spin2win. How did people not see that the armour is the issue?

[Gung-ho]

Give Phantom a remote controlled drone-copter that works similar to the Strogg covert op of ETQW.

[Naonna]

@Gung-ho this ain’t battlefield or black ops. (Also, that doesn’t fit with his close-range nature, and i’d feel bad for the devs trying to program that.)

[Gung-ho]

Well I wasn’t mentioning an ability from BF and I haven’t played a CoD game; I was mentioning an ability from ETQW (a previous SD game) that the cover op class had. True Phantom is intended to be a front/behind enemy line covert op which is why I like it.

Phantom can stealth into a safe position, launch drone (whilst remaining stealth unless the timer has ended), use the drone to target a specific player or perhaps make the drone deal deployable damage only/EMP disable but deployable damage is better than disabling. Coordinating with his team, Phantom breaks out of stealth and is in prime location to take out some unsuspecting enemy mercs.

The way I see Phantom should be played/made is as the ultimate flanker, surprise attacker and/or high value target attacker; the merc that could flank when/where another merc could not.

Phantom would actually do better and be more useful if he wasn’t balanced with the use of a katana in mind (especially since most of his load outs don’t have a katana) such that the invisibility strength of his cloak were increased to help him move into position more effectively. Ergo as long as the katana exists I don’t think Phantom will ever be all that Phantom could be.

[Despaniard]

Thanks for the interesting comments. This poll is closed.