@-OCB-Wildcard said:
Though I do feel the need to point out that my only real objection is due to how quickly SD could mess this up in implementation.
I can’t disagree with that. If there’s a way, they’ll find it.
I honestly don’t know all the implications myself but I know that it seems the only reason he doesn’t go fully invisible is because “but that would be OP!” or at least I haven’t seen any other reason beyond that.
The benefit of full invis is you can be, as intended, sneaky. As it is, you can’t really cloak and then run around a bunch of enemies. You’re way too visible and the moment you get shot once, you’re screwed. There’s no recovery. The best uses of cloak currently are crouch walking in a corner, or getting behind the enemy and cloaking as they run past out of spawn.
Similarly, cloaking is given immediately away by the emp. If you see friendly deployables and mines suddenly get zappy, you get on high alert for a phantom right away. This is why the EMP ability needs to be a manually deployed ability using E. Q to cloak, E to EMP (or the reverse).
If phantom is fully invisible, you can run past packs of enemies to do a few nasty things:
- Flank support
- Ninja plant
- Ninja repair
Likewise:
- Invisible melee is pretty good
- Sortof invisible gun play is pretty good
- Constantly keep the enemy on their toes
Similarly, being able to plant/repair and defuse while cloaked and full invis means that people would need to be less able to push the offense back to spawn (think Underground) or keep the offense in spawn (think Terminal) because Phantoms can easily sneak around, or sit on point in cloak repairing or planting. It’ll require more attention on the objective in those cases.
That being said, proxy mines should absolutely trip when a phantom runs past them, unless disabled with an EMP. The emp should be noisy, like a low vibrating hum, so others know when it’s been used. This would make mines on point a little more useful, since phantom will need to shoot them and give himself away.
You can’t just give someone invis plant powers without changing other things to give it drawbacks. Also, I’m not saying Phantom should be an engineer… hell no.
Phantom should be a spooky dude. Staying cloaked while shooting isn’t unreasonable, but the high impact of sound and gun kickback should make him somewhat visible. Give phantom the ability to obscure himself in a firefight by being full invis when he stops firing. Give him some versatility by letting him shoot, switch to sword, and finish. He should be completely invisible during melee attacks. People should be worried that there’s a Phantom around and should be on alert.
However, such a strong ability would need a reasonable cooldown. 8 seconds isn’t nearly enough. Letting people cloak, kill, cancel cloak, and have cloak up again in 10 seconds is just… insane. Cloak should be forced to run the full cycle and always incur a full cooldown due to the new power of it. You shouldn’t be able to manipulate it in a way that lets you be full invis in every firefight. I was thinking of a cooldown somewhere in the 35 - 50 second range so that enemies can at least have a full respawn timer not needing to worry about phantom cloak.
Similarly, the damage shield when invis would need to go. You get no damage reduction while cloaked, you get to be full invis instead.
It’s more just a fleeting idea, not really something I’ve fleshed out in full and think has to be implemented. I just think full invis would make phantom a lot more versatile and powerful, and that there are a lot of options to balance the strength of the ability (like a longer cooldown and being vulnerable to mines and damage).
But you’re right, SD could easily mess it up.