@c4Te said:
I have posted some details on reddit. We will share more in the upcoming weeks.
- Phantom`s Cloak and EMP are not separated but the EMP can be triggered manually
- Phantom`s EMP will change from a constant aura to an EMP Pulse
- Disabled deployable are highlighted for team mates.
This will not be enough. This will barely have any impact to change Phantom.
Playstyle will remain the same, team coordination will remain about the same.
If deployables don’t each get their own icon highlight then it barely matters. For team play it’s nice, for solo players they still have to call out where Fragger will have to nade when the EMP pops and everyone rushes in since Fragger won’t have a clue which highlighted deployable is the health station, which is usually the most surrounded deployable. If Fragger won’t be able to throw a blind nade, it won’t matter.
The point that Cloak and EMP are still linked proves that SD has wrong focus with Phantom imo.
He will still have to put himself in same danger, just in slightly different conditions if the cloak visibility and sound don’t get adjusted along with the rework.
What’s the role that SD intends for Phantom? " Team orientated assassin that is hard to spot, not frustrating to play against and has high gameplay impact."
What the hell is a team oriented assassin supposed to do with a poopy cloak and gimmick of an EMP?
Both the cloak and the EMP can already have high gameplay impact.
If there’s a Phantom on the enemy team with good movement, the cloak can have quite a lot of map pressure, as there’s always the possibility of Phantom being behind you, until he appears in front of you or in the kill feed.
While the sniper recons look for a safe position to pick off kills, Phantom looks for a safe flank to pick off single targets. Even worse is when that Phantom hits you from the back while his team comes rushing from the front.
The EMP as an aura or pulse serves a complete different purpose. Instead of doing your own thing, being limited by short range, EMP forces Phantom to put himself right in the middle of things and have him fully commit to the fights with no real cover or escape.
While it’s great that there’s more than just one way to play Phantom, the EMP aspect has been extremely poorly added on to his kit. His kit as a whole simply has too bad synergy and too little value to be worthy of being picked over something with more firepower.
Also to consider offense vs defense as Phantom.
The current cloak heavily favors defense, since you’ll only have to find great chokepoints for ambush and wait for the enemy players to run into you.
EMP on the other hands is far more usable on offense because the enemy defense will select an area where they set up their defenses and pile up their deployables.
And before even trying any playstyle with Phantom you have to take into account that he has more counterplay than any other merc. In addition that his own abilities give him away with noise, the amount of visibility and EMP effect, he’s also hard countered by all the other current recons. Yes, the noise is a much needed counterplay ability, but if reworked well, Phantom shouldn’t require more counterplay mechanics than only that.
I understand that those aren’t all of the upcoming changes for Phantom, but if SD is afraid to actually rework Phantom then he’ll just remain a meme of a merc forever.
Phantom isn’t necessarily useless, but considering the effort-reward ratio, every single merc in the game has more value than Phantom. Unless Dirty Bomb requires hard counters, Phantom will NEVER be actually useful. Either that or until he gets a decent rework. Depending on how Guardian abilities and stats get adjusted, she might share the same fate sooner or later considering the role she currently fills.
I’m sorry but I barely have any faith in something as such “dev experience”.
I mean, look at what dev experience got for games like Battleborn and Brink.
After 2.5 years, maybe put some actual effort into making something out of Phantom?
