General

Phantom

Phantom Guide Post 5th Job

-This is going to be VERY VERY long so I am going put headers if you want to skip some parts. But a lot to write since I am currently second maining a phantom and had made many false assumptions on the class prior to me actually playing it to a decent funded level (still not nearly as amazing as my DB though because DB is my primary main). I am still more of an expert of Dual Blade, but I have learned a lot about how Phantom works based on phantom mains that told me, many of my friends, and also based on my general understanding of the game.

Well Anyway Here is the Guide~~~~~~
-Made specifically for returning phantoms or new phantoms
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Phantom: The Jack of All Trade but Master of None

Table of Contents:
I. Pros and Cons
II. Phantom DPM in detail
III. How DPM charts are calculated and why Phantom is placed very low
IV. How to fully optimize Phantom
V. How to correctly fund a Phantom
VI. Overall Conclusion on the class and Grading of the class
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***I.Phantom's Pros and Cons:***
PROS:
-Best versatility in the game and able to be DPM, Tank, Support, Healer, Ranged etc (ability to steal skills)
-Can adapt basically to anything (switch out skills to suit yourself in bossing, mobbing, support, survivability, or a hybrid of all different roles depending on what you need)
-Can basically adapt to specifically counter a certain boss by switching out different skills to fit the situation in bossing(like using sancrosantity to have invincincibility against bosses that have 1hitko attacks or for bosses that have attacks/terrain attacks that are hard to dodge, using arrow platter to wave clear, using heal in potion cooldown bosses, darksight, or use magic attacks to attack bosses with weapon cancel etc)
-Has access to many utility skills(sacrosantity for invince, darkthirst for lifesteal, holy shell, dispel, hs, final feint etc)
-God Tier mobility and dodging potential (penombre is a backstep/dash blink that also provides a PDR debuff, shroud walk is amazing in helping you to get far away quickly to safety in bossing and you can also attack while moving with mille, tempest, joker, rapid fire, etc. Mobility is very important for bossing these days due to how bosses work with special attacks that need to be avoided and etc.)
-Free revival skill that also provides invincibility for a duration when revived
-Tons of invincibility (30 second invincibility with sancrosantity and invincibility from joker and final cut)
-Great sustain (you proc judgement draw alot so you get heal card alot, also you can steal healing skills)
-Can steal pesky boss buffs with Volde Ame (steal DR or weapon cancel)
-90% dodge rate (still good in bosses that have hp% attacks as so you do not take any touch damage)
-Very VERY good scaling(scaling is the rate at which you increase your damage or range with funds)
-they are just average at getting unbuffed range- its the buffs that make it multiply to insane amounts
-Phants range goes from 800k unbuffed -> 4.3mil buffed so in combination of all buffs you get a 5x mutlplier on
your range or damage assuming ofc you go full DPM combo
-Scaling is not based on inflated total damage, it is pure final damage which multiplies every single damage
source including boss% (total damage %, a common multiplier used in many classes, does not multiply boss%)
***more details on the DPM in the Phantom DPM section***
-Great bossing class and decent mobbing class in general (still decent at bossing/mobbing at unfunded even though damage may not be good the crazy amounts of utility mitigate that)

CONS:
-VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY weak DPM output if unfunded
-Can be very squishy and die easily in the beginning if you plan on using a full DPM build
-MANY MANY different buffs you need to use which hinders their overall bossing potential greatly because you can potentially die easily while buffing
-Very reliant on a few stolen buffs like cross surge (possibly final cut) to do good enough damage at a low funded level (this is a con because it forces you to always have cross surge in your build if you want to do okay damage at an unfunded stage of the game, which also limits different variations you can do in comparison to a funded phantom who can utilize all builds but still retain enough damage to actually kill the boss)
-Very expensive to fund (thief equipment,their secondary equipment sucks, and require at least 200bil funding to achieve powerspike in scaling)
-Very complicated to use at their full potential (so many skills to choose from and you also need to know how to set up the right skill combo for the right bosses. On top of that there are some mechanics that you need to learn in the class to efficiently use it)
-Definitely not beginner friendly at all
-Must always look at patch notes of not just Phantom but the explorer classes to keep an eye open to any updated stolen skills
-1st - 3rd job are beyond hell to train (worse than any other class in my experience of leveling 24 characters to 120 or 200)
-Worst buff duration in the game which generally means more rebuffing all those buffs (stolen buffs give a lower duration)
-REQUIRE setup to truly gain high DPM (skip to the section "How to full utilize phantom" in the table of contents for more details)

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*II.Phantom's DPM in Detail*
-How hard does Phantom hit if you fund it?
Phantom is all about scaling (rate at which damage increase with funds or other damage sources earned). At an unfunded state phantom's DPM is not good at all and is not the best(nearly all mules I have trained I struggled with phantom in terms of damage the most). That being said, their scaling is amazing if you pour in funds (battle analysis tested: I outdpsed a xenon that had 2.5mil range unbuffed with 300% boss on a 550k unbuffed phantom with 190% boss. I outdamaged many different classes with nearly double my unbuffed range (matching some classes dps with an 1/8th of their unbuffed range). Soloed Chaos Zakum with ease at 800k range 160% boss and 70% pdr at around 6-8 minutes (many players say you need 2m2m range to do chaos zakum). Quote from a friend: "How the fk do you do so much more damage yet I have more than triple your unbuffed range and double you boss%?" Range goes from 550k -> 2.6mil with buffs, 800k -> 4.3mil with buffs and etc. (you basically get a 5x multiplier on your range if you use all your buffs including hypers). In many cases my Phantom actually hit much higher damage PER line than other classes with similar funds not taking into account how fast Phantom attacks. (Mille and tempest are roughly 4 line hurricanes with carte noir and 5 lines in the duration judgement draw procs. Their 5th job skill Joker hits around 50-55lines a second. At 800k unbuffed range 160% boss joker was hitting 40mil per line, mille was hitting 12mil per line, tempest was hitting 35 mil per line, and carte noir was hitting 42-45mil per line. Basically, if you fund a Phantom, not only do they hit extremely fast (in most cases the speed makes up for lack of damage) but also extremely hard! Also my phantom has at most 1 or 2 skill nodes since I do not actually farm that many stones and with bad rng (so nodes are hardly a factor)

-The math behind why Phantom hits so hard at higher levels of funding
It is no given that Phantom hits very very fast. But one may ask how they hit such high numbers per line at that type of speed. The reason is simple- final damage multipliers from cross surge and final cut. Most classes have low amounts of final damage or none at all- most sources comprising of total damage, boss%, or weapon attack. Those common sources are additive (attack additive to attack and boss % is additive to total damage and other sources of boss%, stat % is additive to other stat% and etc.) This means that bonuses from scrolling or potentials eventually give diminishing returns to those stat bonuses so you do not get as big damage increases. So what makes final damage so special? Final damage is not only scarce (which would make them very good at multiplying other sources of damage) but is also multiplicative of itself. What I mean by that is if you have 1.2 final damage, 1.25 final damage, and 1.2 final damage% you will have 1.2 x 1.25 x 1.2 =1.8% final damage, whereas if you add it you would only have 1.65% final damage. This means final damage does not receive diminishing returns and actually makes a bigger impact on your range and damage the more funds you pour in (also means you can never have too much final damage). So when you get boss % and other sources, your final damage will multiply it and as such you scale very hard the more funds you pour in. Final damage even multiplies stats that do not scale with potentials (like character cards that give 80 final luk or arcane symbols that give 300 luk but don't multiply w/ luk%)

-The math behind why Phantom hits so weak at low levels of funding
Now I blabber on and on about how great their scaling is. So if its that amazing why would they be so weak unfunded. The answer is simple-very low damage%. Scaling at low levels of funding does nearly nothing to damage increases. For example a 30 weapon attack buff can give comparable bonuses to 80% final damage buffs at low tiers of funding due to the final damage not multiplying a strong base (since they are based on a percentage rather than a flat bonus). Because scaling will not affect unfunded damage output by that much, that means their weak damage % makes them hit well, very weak.
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*III. How DPM Charts work and Why Phantom is placed so low*
-Sources: friend who plays KMST and actually witnesses how the DPM charts are made

DPM charts are calculated assuming every class has 1000 weapon attack, equal range and using a claw multiplier as the standard multiplier with level 60 traits, and 5 link skills. All classes attack using all their buffs with the highest DPM combination. RNG skills are ommitted in DPM calculations to have a level of consistency. The issue with DPM charts is they ignore different weapon multiplier values (weapon multipliers are basically how much range you can get off potentials or scrolls), assume equal starting range (class passives can alter this greatly), and also equal weapon attack (not to be biased but DB has way more weapon attack than any other class, especially if you perfect both their weapons). Another flaw is they ignore certain scalings (like xenon allstat, DB katara). Classes unless they have innate boss % will have 0 boss% in the starting calculations (this means that total damage will give similar bonuses as final damage since their wont be as much boss and thus total damage doesnt really give diminishing returns in this type of situation). Scaling is basically not accounted for in DPM charts (because the purpose is to measure each class "naked" and not account for every little outside factor). However, these charts are quite accurate for unfunded classes as I mentioned before, scaling does little to nothing at low tiers of funding. Phantom being a scaling reliant class will be placed low for obvious reasons and also carte noir is not calculated because the rate at which it procs is based on the amount of critical rate and there would be far too many variations in this so it is ommitted.

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*IV. How to fully optimize Phantom*
-Setup
I talked a lot about how they work now there are a few "setups" you need to specifically gear to make phantom optimized fully. The first is buff duration. Not only due to the poor buff duration phantom has but also to be able to achieve unlimited final cut (final cut has a 60 second buff duration and 90 second cooldown but you can increase the duration of the buff to make the duration = the cooldown). You get this through inner ability and the mechanic character card. You also want to get as much crit rate as possible through character cards or link skills (more crit rate = more frequent carte noir procs and carte noir does roughly 60% of the overall DPM output of Phantom). The good thing is Phantom has very high innate critical rate so this will not be too hard to achieve. Get the standard link skills that provide damage, pdr, boss%, and etc.
Make sure the character cards include mechanic and wild hunter (wildhunter is total damage but thats amazing for phantom since the final damage will multiply the bonus of total damage)- otherwise its pretty customizable to suit your needs. Try to get decent sharp eyes either through fifth job or nebulites to increase critical rate and critical damage.

-Stolen Skills
By far the most complicated part of phantom. Also you should take advantage of switching out skills DURING a boss fight by hotkeying loadout (this means you can adapt more and with practice this will become easy).

KEYPOINT: I will give variations of builds BUT this is Phantom! Like I said they are limitless meaning limitless builds! In order to really use it well you need to be creative, imaginative, and understand how each skill will work. That being said I will provide a few good "standard" variations of builds but there are tons of combinations to use so try out different ones to suit your playstyles.

****Stolen Hyper Skills will be placed at the end of the list****

****Training/Bossing****
1st:Magic Guard, Haste, Darksight (to avoid terrain attacks like meteors and etc), Energybolt (hit enemeies w/ weapon cancel)
2nd:Rage(Damage), Bless (for parties), Monkey Magic (for parties), Heal (survivability)
3rd:CrossSurge(A MUST IF YOU WANT GOOD DAMAGE), Platter (if you want super long range and waveclear for certain bosses like gollux), Holy Symbol
4th:Final Cut (mandatory if you want the highest possible damage output), ChainLightning or Cannon Bazooka (Bazooka for flat maps and lightning for maps with lots of platforms)
******Training/Bossing(slight more emphasis on bossing)******
-same thing as the previous build but on the 3rd job slot swap out holy symbol for holy shell so you can protect your party members or yourself from certain fatal boss attacks
****Pure Bossing****
-Same thing as the first build except swap out Holy Symbol for reckless hunt (if you want an easier buff to use and to switch out final cut since final cut can be risky to use on hard to dodge bosses) or holy shell (extra protection). Swap out the 4th job mobbing skill for either rapid fire (instant safe range dps) or hurricane (slightly more dps than rapid fire with same range but less mobility in terms of pure movement, but allows jump). In bossing you will sometimes switch out final cut for rapid fire or hurricane to have safer ranged DPS.
****Support****
-Pretty much try to get speed infusion and other support buffs
****Stolen Hyper Skills****
-Sancrosantity (I dont care if you like full DPM alot but you always get this because you will definitely need to use it at times because not only is it 30 seconds of invincibiltiy which on its own is amazing, but it is a true godmode invince since some invinces dont block all attacks unlike sancro)
-Fire Aura (assuming you land all procs this will give the highest DPM output because you bust out more judgement draws and cartenoir
-BullsEyeShot(if you lack crit rate and pdr this skill will be the most optimal DPM combo. Also it is more consistent than Fire Aura because Fire Aura requires you to be close to make the DPM useful, so at times even at high critrate/pdr bullseye may win)
-DarkThrist(Big damage increase albeit less than marksman and aura but gives a lot of lifesteal, great for survivability)
**There is much more you can look at since there are tons of good hypers to steal****

->Mechanics
-Understand what skills you need to use in certain situations
-Switching skills in mid combat
-Utilizing Penombre (quick tip: you dont actually fly up in the air, your hitframe stays on the ground where you teleport to)
-When to shroudwalk vs penombre

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*V. How to fund phantom*
-Standard funding rates to aim for
-90-93%pdr
-300%boss (not 250% because remember, Phantom scale very very well with boss-better than most classes)
-Get full CRA gear and fafnir
-Get SW glasses and tattoo
-Tyrant Cape (hardmagnus)
-Tyrand boots/tyrant belt(hardmagnus coins to spend in shop)
-Tyrant Gloves
-Superior Gollux set and all the different gollux rings (superiors aside from ring are achieved by hellux and rings can be earned by collecting green gollux coins)
-Heroes Emblem
-Ghost Ship Badge
-Primed Heart (last thing you prioritize, make sure everything else is done first)
-You can cookie cut scroll your armor equipment and rings (make sure gollux uses gollux scrolls only though) but you need to perfect you cane with at least 15% spell traces- dont scroll it otherwise
-Epic pot all your gear then focus on getting weapons to legendary then armor pieces to unique since potential scaling comes mostly from your weapons (das why DB so good )

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*VI. Overall Rating of Phantom*
They have many many different strengths and can adapt to anything but there is one core that will keep Phantom from being overly broken and that is the trait of being Jack of All Trades- Master of None. That means if a Phantom goes full DPM build they will be very powerful DPM but not number 1 DPM. Same goes for support or tankiness, they can be very good at those roles but not number 1 in those roles. That is because stolen skills are nerfed versions of the original skills as copies are always weaker than the originals. However, they do have the luxury of being able to mix a bunch of roles together so good nonetheless. Although the damage is bad unfunded, you can still play them and get relatively good results with them unfunded because they have insane amounts of utility and versatality to adapt to situations (similarly to how paladins do not have high damage but can get a lot done due to tankiness and utility).

I made a grade Rubric from F(bad)->A(godly) to measure their capabilities. There will be variations of course so it will take a range of the stats.

Bossing:C->A
Mobbing:C->A
Mobility:A+
Utility:A+
Survivability:B+ (B+ because even though they can have crazy amounts of survivability, there are still a good amount of classes that beat the full survivability potential of phantom like paladin, mihile, demonslayer, dark knight, kaiser, hayato, blaster, demon avenger, etc)
Support:F->B- (still alot of better support classes but they can do a decent job)
Damage:F->A(dependant on funding and whether you use cross surge/finalcut but if you are unfunded the highest rating is C-)
Attack Speed:F->A+(most of the time A+ but if you use slow attacking skills then it is obvious why it can be F)
Overall a difficult class to really utilize but extremely good if you can make use of them.
P.S If anyone requests me to do so I can also make a Dual Blade guide!

January 13, 2017

12 Comments • Newest first

ieatrice08

@mssplayer: Thanks for your feedback and really glad you liked it ! It is a very long text so definitely some grammatical errors and etc, but feel free to ask me any questions if you have any. Also this is my very first guide I have ever written so I am glad I could help . I plan to make one on DB soon, but have been busy lately

Reply January 22, 2017
MSsplayer

Love the guide, glad someones finally putting in the effort! Will most def use this as reference as a returning phantom

Reply January 21, 2017
ieatrice08

@xlgunshotlx: i just saw that... gonna fix that too and thanks again

Reply January 20, 2017 - edited
xlGunShotlx

@ieatrice08: huh, second belt slot? There's two slots for pendants so ideally you'd probably use something like 2 superior gollux pendants to keep the set effect and one tyrant belt. c: The tyrant belt is also conveniently available from the magnus coin shop.

Reply January 20, 2017 - edited
ieatrice08

@xlgunshotlx: I will make edits to those. A few careless typos but thanks for pointing them out (wrote this pretty late a night so there may be things I forgot to mention or pair). Also forgot to mention about the second belt slot to use w/ tyrant belt haha.

Reply January 20, 2017 - edited
xlGunShotlx

Tyrant gloves aren't from that shop, and you didn't mention belt?

Reply January 20, 2017 - edited
ieatrice08

@hpecha99: No one compares to my DB's burst w/ blade tempest and asura tho f3.

Reply January 18, 2017 - edited
hpecha99

my phantom just ran thru galicia unfunded and funded in a matter of days .. #1 class!

Reply January 18, 2017 - edited
ieatrice08

@piana: going full buff mode is fine I guess, however one of you should use final cut because although there is not much of a difference between sharpeyes and final cut at low levels of funding, final cut will still win and the difference gets bigger and bigger the more funds you pour in. Sharp eyes is fine for unfunded since there wont be too big a gap b/t fc and sharp eyes. However, keep in mind you can get decent sharp eyes nebulite and there are better buffs like reckless hunt, fc, elemental force, crossbones, etc (albeit they are not party buffs). Going full buff mode is fine, but I recommend you stealing a few attacking skills so when the situation calls for it you can use those skills to adapt (like using hurricane for ranged dps).As a party buff SE is fine but be prepared to ditch it for other party skills since you can both obtain nebulites for that skill. I still recommend one of you get more utility skills like smokescreen,holy shell, dispel, freezing breath, etc.

Reply January 16, 2017 - edited
ieatrice08

@piana: i am assuming you mean two people playing phantoms and partnering up, but correct me if I am wrong. If two phantom were to train, one would use final cut (if you want to keep using mille but 4th job mobbing skills from other classes are better) to be the attacker and another would use cross surge on the 3rd job slot and move over hs to the 4th slot. If you are talking about bossing, both phantoms can honestly go full DPS using cross surge and final cut because phantom already have so much innate utility (if you two are doing normal hilla you have two volde ames to use which isnt affected by cooldown unlike binds that have a cooldown where a boss will resist binds for a while so you cant double bind). In gollux one phantom can use arrow platter or chain lightning to take care of the mobs in the bottom while other uses final cut to act as the main dps. Other things you can do include one phantom stealing frozen breath and using it to stun lock a boss while the other phantom chunks it down. Or if you need healing you can have one phantom go heal and the other phantom use rage for more damage. If you duo hard hilla, one could use shadower smokescreen to avoid hhilla drain if you lack the DPM- but sancrosantity should cover for that already. For CRA one phantom could use rapid fire for safe ranged DPM while the other phantom either uses final cut for more DPM, smokescreen for party tank, holy shell to stop fatal boss attacks, dispel if you struggle with abnormal status, or ressurection if you want another revive aside from guild skill. If one phantom is unfunded and another is funded have the unfunded go full utility and the funded go full DPM (because a funded phantom will have a much bigger multiplier as mentioned in the guide above)

TLDR: It is all situational and tbh you will need to experiment with what combo is best for the situation or a stolen skill build to cover all your needs. I hope my comment helps you come up with combinations but like I said, phants have tons of skills to use so make sure to experiment with everything

Reply January 16, 2017 - edited
ieatrice08

@hicreation: ^^totally agree with you xD
just did not want to list every combination since it would be tiresome haha but I made sure to mention to be open to other builds and skills . And Thanks!

Reply January 14, 2017 - edited
HICreation

for training i would suggest showdown if you can 1 HKO the monsters while using stolen HS, good guide overall though!

Reply January 14, 2017 - edited