I forked SublimeLinter plugin and replaced `php -l` with `phpmd`.
Now in addition to a syntax checker I have a tool that looks for several potential problems in code:
* Possible bugs
* Suboptimal code
* Overcomplicated expressions
* Unused parameters, methods, properties
You can read more about PHP Mess Detector here http://phpmd.org/
My fork lives here https://github.com/gornostal/SublimeLinter