Was the mega Phantom nerf really needed?

(VIXIVIXIV) #1

Cast your vote. Explanation of your choices is encouraged.

(LifeupOmega) #2

All they need to do is remove the turn limited on heavy melee attacks, lower the hit interval time on the katana, and then give him some sort of spotting ability. For a merc who’s supposed to be the close and personal recon he sure is bad at all of that.

(SaulWolfden) #3

The nerf from his original form was needed, but I think they overdid it and made him mostly useless. I still find him fun to use, but I think they should ease up on some of the nerfs they made to him like his visibility which was totally unnecessary after he got brutally beaten by the nerf stick.

(Dawnlazy) #4

The fact that his armor could absorb overkill damage was bull, he shouldn’t step on a mine with 1% charge left and walk away unscathed. Beyblading was also bad, but it was “fixed” in the worst and least intuitive way possible. Other nerfs were unnecessary, plus he is flawed by design and needs to get something that helps his team.

(watsyurdeal) #5

Personally I feel like people should have had more time to adapt to him, the bleeding into health change was more than enough imo, but they had to further since people didn’t like checking their back every minute.

(Grave_Knight) #6

There were other aspects that needed changing with Phantom. Nerfing his run visiblity, the damage bleed over, the immunity to certain damage types (gas).

But there are also certain aspects he needed a buff in. Like if his cloak gives him some sort of shield, shouldn’t it be immune to headshot damage. Also, I know that SD has it in their head that giving Phantom a spotter power would make him to powerful (somehow?) but spotter power isn’t the only way to do a recon ability. Like how about a motion sensor that pings when an enemy runs through it, or the ability to spot only a single enemy at a time, or something.

One thing Phantom really needs is an decrease in cloak visibility when walking. I can either walk up towards an enemy and hope they don’t rush off or notice me (you’re still visible even when walking), or I can go even slower and never make it to the enemy (which is annoying because I’m trying to kill an aura on her heal station).

(Amerika) #7

You could always just shoot the aura in the head that is sitting in her heal station. And by going all the way to the Aura it means you are most likely completely out of position to escape easily and you’ve most likely blown a lot of your ability time. Why would you ever put yourself in that position? I kill people with melee when it makes sense. But when it starts drastically decreasing my chances of survival and escape I look for other options. Especially when the Katana is not an ability and is pretty much a re-skinned cricket bat.

How come we don’t have thread after thread about melee Aura? I honestly think she’s better at it than Phantom. Hell, melee only Phoenix would be a beast since he has the right amount of HP and speed to move and a near instant heal doesn’t hurt.

(Grave_Knight) #8

[quote=“Amerika;116868”]You could always just shoot the aura in the head that is sitting in her heal station. And by going all the way to the Aura it means you are most likely completely out of position to escape easily and you’ve most likely blown a lot of your ability time. Why would you ever put yourself in that position? I kill people with melee when it makes sense. But when it starts drastically decreasing my chances of survival and escape I look for other options. Especially when the Katana is not an ability and is pretty much a re-skinned cricket bat.

How come we don’t have thread after thread about melee Aura? I honestly think she’s better at it than Phantom. Hell, melee only Phoenix would be a beast since he has the right amount of HP and speed to move and a near instant heal doesn’t hurt.[/quote]

Actually I wasn’t trying to melee her. I was trying to get close enough so I can unload my KEK-10 into her skull so the healing station wouldn’t help her. Problem is the distance for consecutive headshots with the KEK is inside the effective distance for the Hollunds. I got to move five feet before she notice me, at walking speed.

(Reddeadcap) #9

Really am between over nerf and was fine as is, my questions are…

Why decrease Phantom’s health if Refractive Armor’s recharge, visiblity and noise it produces were increased and length decreased?

Why apply the RMB turn speed reduction to all weapons?

Why decrease the katana’s range when the main issue was players beyblading.

Why decrease the effects of chopper and the 2 most used SMGS instead of upgrading the two least used SMGs?

Why change detection so that Phantom can still be invisible and have a red indicator over his head when before it made perfect sense for it to flat out deactivate Refractive Armor, especially when Redeye was just around the corner?

(Grave_Knight) #10

Another thing I want to say about Phantom is he needs more diversity in his loadouts. Three of his loadouts have the designation 94 with the Undercover perk. That’s three loadouts with the S&W, the Sword, and Undercover.

Like how cool would it be to have the C41 with the BL94’s perks?

(Amerika) #11

[quote=“Redcap;117489”]Really am between over nerf and was fine as is, my questions are…

Why decrease Phantom’s health if Refractive Armor’s recharge, visiblity and noise it produces were increased and length decreased?

Why apply the RMB turn speed reduction to all weapons?

Why decrease the katana’s range when the main issue was players beyblading.

Why decrease the effects of chopper and the 2 most used SMGS instead of upgrading the two least used SMGs?

Why change detection so that Phantom can still be invisible and have a red indicator over his head when before it made perfect sense for it to flat out deactivate Refractive Armor, especially when Redeye was just around the corner?[/quote]

Some of your questions aren’t Phantom specific. However, you can easily answer those that are yourself with a little information. The katana is not an ability and SD didn’t want a melee merc or a purely melee merc in the game or even encourage people to try and play him as melee only. Especially one that could pick and choose targets while being invisible giving people no chance to react.

Now apply that knowledge to your questions about Phantom.

The SMG stuff I’m not sure it matters much. They were barely touched with the so called “nerfs”. It was a way to get people to try/use the other SMG’s without actually doing much to the Kek and Crotzni.

(watsyurdeal) #12

@Redcap @Amerika

I think the biggest issue, imo, is that they have no clue what to do with a stealth class.

In my mind, a stealth class is a specialist at ambushing, catching the enemy by surprise no matter the circumstances. I don’t think insta kills really is needed for that job, I think the ability to just appear behind enemy lines in otherwise well covered scenario would be amazing. So then the questions are…

  1. Is Phantom able to get behind people without having to take a flanking route? Can he essentially become perfectly invisible to the enemy?
  2. Should be allowed to fire his weapon while cloaked? Does the enemy feel they have chance to react?
  3. Is the armor neccessary protection for infiltration?
  4. Should we have a melee focused assassin? Or a Special Ops guy with a gun?

I think honestly the answers to these questions are pretty obvious, everyone from comp to casual player has an idea of how they think Phantom should play, and all Splash has to do is make it happen.

I don’t believe in a melee focused character, not after TF2. BUT, a stealth character with a strong emphasis on ambushing and gun use can work. I just don’t think the cloak is good enough in it’s current state. I think trading the ability to attack while cloaked for perfect invisibility is a damn good trade, since I can get behind people from right under their noses. The only trick is deciding how fast he should activate and deactivate his cloak.

(Amerika) #13

I liked your idea in the other thread about giving him a decoy ability which could setup ambush kills by drawing attention or even masking the sound of your cloak.

(watsyurdeal) #14

@Amerika

EXACTLY, it’d could even draw people away toward another route.

Say it’s dome, first point, your team goes left, you throw your decoy straight ahead so the enemy thinks you’re going toward that route instead.

Fits perfectly with the Recon theme of intel.

(Ctrix) #15

Phantom is a bad design and there’s no fixing it. They need to redesign him, and until they get to that, the nerf is needed. I was here for the release version Phantom and boy did I rage hard.
I think that was the reason I first registered on the forum actually. To rage about Phantom.
Now he’s hardly worth it. If you don’t play him like a suicide bomber, he’s still “meh”. He can be an assassin of high value targets. But really, why do you need to play Phantom to do that. That’s the issue. He has no synergy.

(Naonna) #16

In my opinion, phantom should be able to pick off high-priority targets the same way a sniper would. By contrast, however snipers have been given spotting abilities: phantom has not and will not according to splash. If he’s to be considered ‘recon’ he has to help his team in some unique way. Currently, being unable to sneak past the enemy as advertised ‘through the enemy’s line’ (quoting the merc roll call) makes him difficult to place. If the cloak was at it’s full potential, he could act as a decent distraction from behind: forcing the opponent to split.

If he is made an engineer, he’ll be too frustrating in pub play (without voice communication) - not to mention unless his cloak is buffed, he’s basically a weaker and slower proxy.

If he’s changed to be more efficient at killing, he’d be considered an assault merc, and not fall in the same category as snipers.

Splash wants us to use his gun, obviously, so we need to stop from buffing his tanking power and focus on stealth. - Shooting someone in the back is a great way to get them to turn around. As said by Watsyurdeal, who’s opinions i occasionally disagree with, but in this case will, Phantom needs to be proficient at sneaking, if that’s all his ability will allow. Make him at least worth using even if just to get behind enemies. Punish him for running head-on into them while uncloaked.

My advice for the cloak is to keep it at it’s most effective visibility (as when he’s still) even while moving. - VERY careful players will be able to see him sneaking, but not as much as he is currently. - Perhaps removing the ‘attack out of cloak’ would be in order, but from a programming standpoint that’s difficult. (Phantom could just wait for the bullets to drain his cloak, then swing.) - A cooldown reduction would be very helpful if his tankiness is de-buffed further. Return it to six seconds so he has a bit of freedom once behind enemy lines.

Another bit of advice would be to boost his speed ONLY while cloaked (as I’ve stated in past posts) - He would be good at flanking, but less useful in a direct fight.

(thoughts/comments/criticisms/grammar police below. thanks)

(BananaSlug) #17

no he wasnt ok he could do a heavy attack and when you tried to tun away he still had his smg and if you tried to kill him well… you needed 2 magazines :confused:

(Lastprophet_cz) #18

Make him more invisible and bit more speedy.