The new phantom

[TheStrangerous]

Well, gotta say he got gud.
But sadly I see the inevitable nerf…
Then it’s back to garbage tier again.

[Xenithos]

@llSquishyll said:
Phantom has been easy to spot, just look behind your friendly auras and snipers and you usually find some distorted cloaked figure chasing them…
In both playing him and playing against him in high level play (including the FF on collision community servers versus only level 30+s he’s actually pretty fine for me atm. I can still tell where he is, and at least for me he is HARDER to spot, but you can still see him even crouched if you’re paying any attention. In an already hectic firefight the addition of the Phantom is much more real and painful though.

Personally, I think the only thing they should do is that if he’s shot his invisibility has a small blinking or something. Other than that, he’s fine. He doesn’t have any armour now, and he’s still visible to the trained eye… I do need some more gametime against him and with him and all.

I will say one last thing, playing as him, it’s hard to see my own weapons sometimes, rofl.

[Eox]

@TheStrangerous said:
Well, gotta say he got gud.
But sadly I see the inevitable nerf…
Then it’s back to garbage tier again.

Not if you do the nerf right. Straight out nerfing how visible Phantom is when invisble will without a doubt not be a good idea. But adding a delay to get out of invisibility (before attacking or just leaving it) will make the matchup much more fair. Phantom still gets a potent relocation tool, but now he has to think before decloaking and plan his actions.

[Mc1412013]

As someone that lokes to main phantom i am extremely happy with his buff rework.

[STARRYSOCK]

“Phantom can be frustrating to play against, so we’ll be making him totally impossible to see because that’ll somehow probably fix it”

[henki000]

First impression was that he is top-tier now, but not undefeatable. But I’ll let the dust descent before making any hasty suggestions. I just thought that Hunter was a Phantoms counter, it seems it is other way around.

[STARRYSOCK]

@henki000 said:
First impression was that he is top-tier now, but not undefeatable. But I’ll let the dust descent before making any hasty suggestions. I just thought that Hunter was a Phantoms counter, it seems it is other way around.

Phantom is an everything counter now, lol

[Xenithos]

@STARRYSOCK said:
“Phantom can be frustrating to play against, so we’ll be making him totally impossible to see because that’ll somehow probably fix it”

… What is everyone here on about. You can still see him. He’s like… obvious almost. He’s a glimmer, so used to seeing them in HOTS, and so used to looking for him in DB that this update barely affects me except for the fact that i now know I don’t have to look for him immediately after the health station disables because if it does I’m probably dead

[Lord_Coctus]

@STARRYSOCK said:

@henki000 said:
First impression was that he is top-tier now, but not undefeatable. But I’ll let the dust descent before making any hasty suggestions. I just thought that Hunter was a Phantoms counter, it seems it is other way around.

Phantom is an everything counter now, lol

Redeye

[Xenithos]

@Lord_Coctus said:

@STARRYSOCK said:

@henki000 said:
First impression was that he is top-tier now, but not undefeatable. But I’ll let the dust descent before making any hasty suggestions. I just thought that Hunter was a Phantoms counter, it seems it is other way around.

Phantom is an everything counter now, lol

Redeye
That’s what I’ve been thinking this entire event. rofl.

[STARRYSOCK]

@Xenithos said:

@STARRYSOCK said:
“Phantom can be frustrating to play against, so we’ll be making him totally impossible to see because that’ll somehow probably fix it”

… What is everyone here on about. You can still see him. He’s like… obvious almost. He’s a glimmer, so used to seeing them in HOTS, and so used to looking for him in DB that this update barely affects me except for the fact that i now know I don’t have to look for him immediately after the health station disables because if it does I’m probably dead

I’ve noticed he’s fairly easy to see at range now, but close up when he’s moving slowly it’s next to impossible. Even worse that the sound is gone, so you don’t even know you’re about to be stabbed.

When you’re busy focusing on other important things, he’s far from obvious. It’s not so bad if you’re an assault, but if you’re a medic busy looking at your team’s health and what the enemy team is doing to yours, watching every corner for a shimmer just doesn’t work, especially since DB is supposed to be a fast paced game, not one where you have to check everything carefully every 2 seconds.

[Ptiloui]

I think Phantom gained more firepower by sacrificing utility. He’s less noticeable, but imo the emp aura was more useful than the pulse we have now. I don’t think this is really what the community waited for.

[watsyurdeal]

Stealthy merc is good at being stealthy, immediate cry for a nerf

I heard this all the time with Spy, till people stuck together and started calling him out.

Before we even begin to talk about nerfing him learn how to fight him first. Then try seeing if he needs more potent counter play or counter picks.

A merc that capitalizes on exploting weak team work should not be nerfed immediately because of that, especially in a TEAM game.

[geefunkster]

As several have pointed out, the change just makes Phantom into another merc with a “free kill every time my cooldown resets” button. To play against, just more surprise deaths out of nowhere.

To be honest, Phantom’s whole concept is stupid to me. Flanking, imho, should be a high risk, high reward activity. No need for a merc specializing in it, let alone making him fully invisible and basically giving even bad players a free kill every 25 seconds they spawn and run their same little route.

[llSquishyll]

Its gonna kinda suck tho now that everyone gonna be playing him tho…It felt nice to have a merc that you honestly didn’t run into often, and it was fun to top score with phantom when hes a very challenging merc to play. But the change is welcomed IMO, most people will figure out how people play him, and how easy he actually is to see and eventually he will just be a decent merc. I can understand how hard it is to balance a merc like this and honestly this seems to be the best way to set up his cloak ability. I can agree with a lot of people tho that it is kinda annoying that when you shoot him you still cant see him, there should be a damage threshold that pulls him out of it. and for some strange reason hunter cant spot him when hes shot.

[STARRYSOCK]

@watsyurdeal said:
Stealthy merc is good at being stealthy, immediate cry for a nerf

I heard this all the time with Spy, till people stuck together and started calling him out.

Before we even begin to talk about nerfing him learn how to fight him first. Then try seeing if he needs more potent counter play or counter picks.

A merc that capitalizes on exploting weak team work should not be nerfed immediately because of that, especially in a TEAM game.

Except a team with weak teamwork will usually lose anyways, and all phantom does now is annoy people who can’t even see him to fight back properly.

Countering phantom is basically just “constantly check every corner”. Stealth is great, I love stealth in games, but it really doesn’t fit DB very well. It’s supposed to be a fast paced game, and looking everywhere for the slightest shimmer only slows it down.
Having a merc to piss off people with poor vision and bad teamwork isn’t a benefit to the game, because a weak team isn’t going to do well anyways.

Games are supposed to be fun. They’re games for a reason. Having a merc who’s infuriating to play against, especially for new players, isn’t a good idea at all.
Yes, obviously people need time to get used to him more, but that doesn’t mean their observations of him are useless.

[Lord_Coctus]

As cheap as he’s become…
…Kiras still better at melee.

[Darkwolf3802]

Just as I figured would happen, a merc that can become invis and emp shit is now god tier op. Now besides proxy mines phantom needs a nerf. This buff went too far.

[Da_Mummy]

@Xenithos said:

@Lord_Coctus said:

@STARRYSOCK said:

@henki000 said:
First impression was that he is top-tier now, but not undefeatable. But I’ll let the dust descent before making any hasty suggestions. I just thought that Hunter was a Phantoms counter, it seems it is other way around.

Phantom is an everything counter now, lol

Redeye
That’s what I’ve been thinking this entire event. rofl.

So when is Redeyes rework.
If he gets the same treatment as phantom I can prepare my swimming pool for the summer with vasilli-main tears.
Would love to do that.

[SiwaonaDaphnewen]

Hello

Got to add my wall of text here.

Phantom change is bad.

Originally he had no EMP. SD just moved EMP from Thunder to Phantom to implement any kind of team play to his lone-wolf concept. I honestly don’t like the whole reasoning about his armor giving any EMP but whatever.

After years of complains about useless Phantom SD decided to change him but sadly they missed the original goal of implementing EMP to him.

Refractive armor
Ability to sneak&flank better doesn’t make him more usefull for his team. Poking 80-90 HP mercs with Katana, insta-headshot out of nowhere make him far stronger and inability to spot him make that OP as fuck but he is still useless for a team play.

We had this stage already at Phantom release and it didn’t get us anywhere exept global Phantom nerf at next update(s). Why do we have to pass through it again to understand things don’t work this way?

EMP
The EMP was aimed to improve team play for Phantom. Main issue was that you had to use both at once when you needed only one a time: when you used cloak you didn’t need EMP and when you needed EMP you didn’t need cloak. Now EMP is activatable so it doesn’t give away your presense and you may use it at the end with surprise attack(better say “will use it” because u don’t get choice anyway). That just makes him even stronger for sneak&flank situation i wrote earlier. But it still forces you to activate armor in order to get EMP(not to mention it requires time).

Did SD decide there is no reason Phantom could create EMP without armor or something?

EMP must be separated from armor completely in order to be a valible ability.

For years we had a lot of good suggestions to implement EMP for him like:

1. Making him charge EMP (without having to use cloak)
2. Turning his joke-knife into throwable with EMP on it
   [spoiler]
   
   
   [/spoiler]
3. Creating new armor mode where it would cover him with “electric shield” for more HP and produce EMP as side effect turning him into assault-ish merc
   4,5,6,…) Incert your idea here
   ect

But SD sent us and all our feedback to hell and implemented what they call new Phantom.

I’m disapointed by this update.