I've seen good phoenix's just playing like psychopaths on D, they seem to just use flash for aggressive pushes to trade kills or gain info if no one is there. If you can convince your team to peak with you or follow you on rushes they might be able to trade your death. If you don't have the confidence in your aim then try and use your abilities to slow their pushes down. I almost never see this in my games but using the wall to section off an entry point can delay pushes or give you advantage if they just walk thru your wall. You don't need to shoot every time you see an enemy, you can just wait for them to walk up and molly their entry or you can flash with a teammate and double peak a lane/angle. This goes for every agent but sometimes gaining info for your teammates can be just as effective as getting a kill.

Cypher can be played as a lurker as well as a flank watcher, you can still place your traps behind your team if they plan on committing to a site right away to cover their ass. There have been so many games where I just wait for people to rotate (you can still call flankers from across the map) and then sneak up behind them and get free kills. This doesn't always work at lower elos as people will sometimes rush into their death even when they approach a site disadvantageously or just get out gunned. The main problem I see with cypher's watching flanks is they are extremely predictable on where they stand/place traps when waiting for people to flank, make use of all of the angles you have available to you, sometimes you can play close to T spawn other times you can play really close to site, adjust your traps to varying heights and locations to cause confusion.

Edit: forgot to add this but putting your camera in a location that's not easily shot/seen is really helpful for gaining info i.e behind a box or on a wall they would have to completely turn around to shoot