At first, I was skeptical about the Phaseshift. The slow velocity makes it terrible at long range engagements, and I wasn't really doing too well with it at any range past 150m. Then I put a silencer on it and started doing close range work and the possibilities really opened up. There's this awkward range with bolt-action silencers where velocity isn't really a problem--you're close enough for it to not matter--but the extra bullet drop from a silencer can really throw you off. You can do a proper bolt action with 6x sights and lose situational awareness but gain mildots to make your shots consistently, or you can do a 4x sight or reflex sight and keep your situational awareness but have no consistent way of judging drop other than winging it. That awkward range, about 75m to 125m, is where the Phaseshift seems like it can really shine. If you can get to a good angle, you can stealth-kill people with the charge up shot all day without showing up on the minimap. And, since that range is at high risk for people closing on you into CQC, you have the semi-auto mode to deal with them. The problem is that you're stuck using at a minimum the 6x scope. It's not really ideal for that range. What we have is a rifle that has long range optics but is terrible at long range, and has great short range benefits but not the optics to really utilize them. Now, I haven't had a chance to use this in the wild all that much yet, but I don't foresee a problem with it. I'm pretty good at quick-scoping with the higher magnification optics at close range. But that's an unnecessary barrier to using an otherwise nice weapon. Can we put the right optics on it that actually match its effective range?
I bought it yesterday and made a similar observation to yours however if it was a low zoom rifle without sway and such it would stop being a sidegrade and would become the clear option to use over the other 2 low optics rifles. Simply it would be a upgrade or "overpowered" as it is popularly called around here.
Fair enough, though it's still close and could be easily overcome by some tweaking. It already has a lower ROF in semi-auto mode than the Phantom, and a lower ROF in bolt action mode than the Ghost, plus the delay to charge it up. On top of that, the Phantom has less recoil, better hipfire, etcetera. If you just gave it, maybe, a slower ADS speed when you gave it the scopes, maybe slightly slower than the Phantom's (which is already slow), then I think it'd be a fair sidegrade. Right now it feels a little silly doing CQC work with a 6x scope is all.
