I mean, technically, you can hit them with splash damage, but good luck with they're entirely invisible and running around with a reaper shooting you and a Ronin creeping nearby. Considering the potential magnitude of these changes, Respawn clearly recognized it was too effective in too many contexts and requiring too little effort to effectively use.
Phase shift and grapple may be more annoying, but they require a considerably greater amount of competence and strategy to use to achieve any level of effectiveness. The problem with cloak was that it was a passive tactical in a game where every other tactical is active. It was inevitable that they would change it to be in line with the entire design philosophy behind tacticals.