They could perfectly balance Phantom by adding a DECLOAK animation.

(Azure Emulation) #1

TL;DR below. Here’s the implementation that I have in mind:

  • Give Refractive Armor a half-second decloak animation, coupled with sound, in which Phantom is unable to use his weapons.
  • If the attack button or the ability button is pressed, he goes through the decloak animation before being able to attack again.
  • The extra HP from Refractive Armor remains in play while decloaking, but is completely lost upon finishing the process.
  • If more damage than neccesary is dealt to take down Refractive Armor’s HP (ex. sniper or shotgun shot), then the damage DOES NOT overflow into Phantom’s base HP. The decloak animation activates and plays normally.
  • NO invulnerability while decloaking.
  • Phantom says “BOO!” while decloaking (jokes)

But why does Phantom need this in the first place? Because the current problem with him is that he’s essentially a tanky Spy.

Refractive Armor is already an awesome ability for getting behind enemy lines. It has the cloaking, an extra layer of HP, and a short cooldown. Top that off with the achievable speed and verticality in this game through long jumping and wall jumping, plus the many alternate flank routes in different maps, and it makes Phantom a damn near-perfect stealthy infiltrator, mechanics-wise that is.

However, Refractive Armor is also great for straight-up bumrushing people with any powerful choice of Katana, KEK-10, or Crotzni due to said extra layer of HP given. This is why he’s the most frustrating, most hated Merc in the game. It’s one thing to get killed or crippled weak because you didn’t spot Phantom’s silhouette. It’s another thing to get killed or crippled weak when you HAVE spotted the silhouette, but then you fail to chew through his crazy high effective HP in the time it took to close the distance, WHILE he was barely visible. This is a terrible counterplay experience, and it completely breaks the flow of the game. Plus, if we account for his access to the melee damage buff augment and extended ability time augment, then it ultimately makes the Phantom experience a living hell, discouraging inexperienced players and decently skilled players alike from continuing to play this game.

All of the nerfs and tweaks suggested so far have been along the lines of reducing his HP while bumping up speed, removing Refractive Armor’s HP layer, replacing SMGs with Machine Pistols, nerfing the Katana, and others of the like. I have not seen a single mention of a key mechanic that’s vital to Phantom feeling like a fair fight: decloaking.

Adding decloaking mechanics is what can separate Phantom’s infiltration capabilities from his combat potential. A separate, slightly vulnerable decloaking animation can penalize Phantom for making dumb rushes, because if he has to shed his Refractive Armor to attack, that also means he sheds the tankiness from when he was cloaked. Engagements with Phantom will be shifted into a battle of positional advantage and reaction timing (and, of course, aim), where he may have a slight, not game breaking, advantage in both. Decloaking is eve n how the freaking Spy in TF2 is kept in check from having an otherwise overpowered ability.

With these changes, Phantom can keep on at it with staying under the radar and getting behind enemy lines. He’ll just have to take more care with how he strategically approaches his potential victims, and in the end, he’ll have fights that aren’t completely one-sided anymore. Heck, they could even do BUFFS by deleting the logic of Vassili’s heartbeat sensor uncloaking Phantom, or even make him 100% invisible. It wouldn’t make difference in fairness because as long as the decloaking delay is there, he’ll HAVE to expose himself, both audibly and visibly, before engaging in combat.

TL;DR: Current Phantom is a living hell to fight. Of all nerfs and tweaks suggested, no one has mentioned decloaking. TF2 Spy has it, so it’s a good idea to give it to Phantom since he’s a Spy on steroids. Decloak mechanics separate infiltration from combat. They penalize dumb rushes and enforce more strategic play. Phantom has to expose himself BEFORE engaging in combat. Implementing these changes will provide more satisfying counterplay, which greatly reduces frustration and makes gameplay fun again. They are vital to correcting the experience when playing against Phantom.

Also, pardon any sloppy writing that you might spot. I wrote this past midnight and I don’t function well at that time.

(capriRocket) #2

theres many way to fix him but i agree that it shouldnt be a hp or weapon nerf.
he currently is both, a tanky in your face samurai and a sneaky ninja.

if they removed the shield hed become a ninja.
if they removed the cloak (my wish) buffed his shield and made it so that he can only use melee while his shield is active - thatd make him an in your face samurai.

(watsyurdeal) #3

To be honest that wouldn’t work.

Since sprinting is a thing, catching people who are moving at that speed would be impossible without opening yourself up for a kill. So by the time you even got a chance to make a swing, you’d be dead. So while it might seem fine to you, for the Phantom it’s infuriating, and that’s not the kind of balance we want.

We want the game to be fun for both the victims and the users, the victims would have more fun killing Phantom if they were rewarded for outsmarting him. Like sticking together, or hearing the noise the cloak makes, or baiting the Phantom to come out of hiding and kill him once he does.

(Gi.Am) #4

hmm that Idea would kill Phantom. What would happen is this (imagine I was a top class phantom which i’m not).
I sneak trough enemy defenses, I see my target a camping Vassili or a repairing Proxy, all by themself. I move behind them, unseen like a ghost. I raise my katana… weee weee weee for some reason my cloak gives of a warning alarm I fumble with the controls trying to get the sound down, somehow its monday morning 4:00 all over again. Finally the alarm is out. I look up to land the deadly blow… my target gone replaced by the barrels of 4 other guns.

Alternate ending I get killed imidiently, most weapons have a TTK that is lower than 0.5 sec.

Now that might be in jest, but still. There is a huge difference between Phantom and the TF2 Spy. The spy has two roles assassination and sabotage. And he has two skills to enable that. cloak for sneaking through to reach the structures and disguise to get close to the enemy for the instant backstab.

Phantom on the other hand, is only build for killing and he has one tool to bring him into position, his cloak/armor.

(Azure Emulation) #5

Decloak time doesn’t even have to be a slow half-second, nor does the decloak sound volume have to be high. Both are variables that are subject to balancing based on the reaction timing of players.

I don’t think you guys are considering how Phantom can also wield very effective SMGs. The Katana itself can one-shot any Merc that has a base HP below 100 (with the melee damage augment). But hey, he may not even NEED to struggle close that distance because he has an SMG. Since a good Phantom will always have a first-shot advantage, adding decloak delay wouldn’t make him any less useful.

The fact that he has armor to go on top of his cloak is what’s setting this community on fire. It makes sense for him to have it for transportation purposes. When you have a barely visible silhouette coming at you with effective HP between that of Fragger and Rhino, that’s when you know that there’s a problem with him.

The worst part is that Splash Damage even stated they don’t want to change the way he functions, only tweak variables. They likely won’t be removing Refractive Armor HP, but they may reduce it. This isn’t gonna matter because as long as the silhoutte can shove his Katana right through you from your peripheral vision or blind spot, then he’s effectively going to kill the fun of Dirty Bomb for a lot of the majority casual audience that inevitably makes up this game (or any game with a decently sized playerbase).

This is why I proposed a decloak animation. It gives the victim a slight fighting chance without having to spin his head around paranoidly to look for slight differences in lighting. Dirty Bomb has no good form of “spy checking” other than this as of now, or keeping a Vassili that not everyone is going to have. The humming sound that you hear when he gets close to you? It’s barely helpful because by the time it gets noticeably loud, he’s already stabbing you with his surprisingly long-ranged Katana. They could actually REMOVE that to facilitate his infiltration capabilities, because that’s not directly hurting anyone. Replace that with decloaking just so there’s a way to know he’s coming at you.

The labor that goes into countering Phantom is utterly disproportionate from what looks like he’s just running at you. And God forbid a good player is clever enough to use cloaking to get a ranged positional advantage, then start ambushing you with Crotzni gunfire. Decloaking mechanics can at least minimize the frustration of those scenarios that makes him such a hated Merc. He wouldn’t be any less useful depending on how decloak variables are tweaked; he can feel balanced. The tankiness of Refractive Armor will be used solely for transportation purposes, and the status quo will be stabalized again.