Combat Medic Archive

Ok I am tired of people complaing about how bugged teh Combat medic proffesion is. Some of teh "bugs" that I am seeing reported are not bugs at all, they are ignorance of how the game uses items in inventory. Sure tehre are broken areas effecting teh Combat medic class, but some things are just ignorance on how to play this class

1. Hotkey your meds. If you use the radial menu, or you hot key a /command to heal damage, the game will automatically use the highest quality med that is in your inventory. So, if you havea stimpack D that heals 500dmg and a ranged stimpack D that heals 499dmg the game will use the Stim that heals 500dmg. Example, You have both of the above stimpacks in your primary inventory. You right click on your target and choose heal damage, the game will know that you want to heal damage, and use the highest quality stimpack in your inventory. If your target is more then 6 meters away, you will get an out of range message, becuasethe game used the highest stimpack, which in this case was the normal stim C. To counteract this place the actual stim packs into teh hotkey slots by dragging them to the hot keys. I use the F12 slot for normal stims, and Shift+F12 for ranged, and guess what, I can keep my stims in my backback. yes you heard me, stims can be used from a pack. I have two cargo packs, one is filled with stimpacks, the other is filled with poisons, both cargo packs reside in my backpack. I hot keyed both cargo packs as well, so I can quickly open each bag, and replace the hotkey slot with new meds/poison when depleted. I also use the hotkeys to place Stat dmg heals, so I have a row for blind/stun/ and what not.

My typical hotkey bar

two rows F1-F12 and Shift F1-F12

F1 =Stand F2= Kneel F3= Sit F4 = Drag incap player. F5= burst run F6= warning shot F7= bodyshot 2 F8= threaten shot F9 = Follow Target F10 =stop follow F11 = Peace F12 Normal stimpack D

SF1= Blind stim SF2= Stun stim SF3 = Dizzy stim SF4 = Firstaid/stop bleeding SF5 = blank right now SF6 = action poison SF7 = Health Poison SF8 = Mind Poison SF9 = blank SF10 = poison cargo bag SF11 = Stimpack cargo bag SF12 = Ranged stim pack D

Ok now to explain some hotkeys. I use the Follow target hotkey, because I can target someone in my group, by clicking on their name in teh group list, then hit F9 and I will auto run to them, no matter where they are, so that I can get in range to cure/heal them if I need to.

Notice I don't have prone, Well since you cannot heal while prone, never get in that position.

Peace is somthing that should always be hotkeyed! While in battle, I might have 7 Bodyshots qued up, and I notice that I am hurting, or a team member is hurting. In the case of me hurting, here are my hotkeys CTRL-1 to target myself, (always do this first, if you peace, and the MOB hits you, you will auto target it again.) So CTRL+1 target me, F11 peace F12 heal myself instantly, Tab to regain target, F7 to bodyshot. When a group member is hurting well its pretty much the same, Target the person, F11 to peace, Shift +F12 to Range heal them. You do not have to make regular stims if you do not want to. You can target yourself and use a Hotkeyed range stim on yourself. I personally dont do this, because when you use a Ranged stim, you will stop running, in order to throw the stim. and when I am solo, if I am running, I dont have time to stop.

When running mission solo. Get to the lair/objective. Target critter one, Shift F7 throw health poison, Tab to next critter, F7 to body shot. So I am shooting one critter, while my poison is killing another. I use health poison, becaue I use a pistol, and it does health damage. This way I hit the MOB for the same damage type that my pistol does. Use the appropriate poison for the damage type that your weapon uses. That way if your poison has not finished off the 1stcritter, you can kill it in about one shot, or move to a third target, poison the third, and finish off the1st with a bodyshot 2. To make poison that do not get resisted very often, and still kill critters, see my post of guide to making poisons. I use Poison C packs for this, Poison A will prolly not finish off a critter, and they should'nt. Posion A-B are starter poisons, and should be weaker then C.

Thats the major issue that I see people complain about, that is not actually a bug with this class. Use the HotKeys. Place the med packs INTO the hotkeys.

To get a second row of hot keys is simple, just place the mouse curser on the bottom of the hotkey bar, untill it goes into the resize option, and drag down. To place an Item in the hotkey bar simply drag the item to the hotkey. To quickly cycle thru Hotkey banks use CTRL + F1 thru F12

Useing the radial menu to heal damage and wounds will cause you to use the wrongs meds at the wrong times, and people will die. I just accidently used up one of my Revive kit charges because I used the radial menu to heal a health wound, well I did not have any health wound med packs in my inventory, so the game chose the only thing it coudl find that woudl heal a wound, the revive kit, Imagine my friends surprise, when he got incapped, then instantly rose back up, with his health wound healed, but all HAM bars at 1/4. (on a side note, you can use a revive kit to bring someone out of a Mind incap, but it sets all HAM to 1/4. use this in extreme emergencies, unless you have a ton of revive kits and do not care about wasting them.)

Now more about using the radial menu. If you have State packs in your main inventory, like Dizzy or blind, and you right click on someone to heal a wound, you will not get an option to heal thier wounds, because the Heal Wound opton gets replaced by the Heal State option. Is this a bug with the Medic profession? Not really, it more of a bug with the radial menu that happens to effect Medics that use the radial menu.

Using a /comand such as /healdamage to heal people in your group,or teh radial menu to healdamage/woundthe game will always use what ever the highest quality med is in your primary inventory. Is this a bug with the Medic class? NO. If you do not tell the game specificaly which med pack to use, it will choose one by default. In this game it will choose the highest quality med pack. That is teh easiest way for the game to choose an object in your inventory. Now there is one other default choice method that works occasionally. It will judge distance, and look for a ranged stim if the target is out of normal stimpack range, but this seldom works, and you usually get the message, No medicine of that type was found. That indicates that the game cannot see the Ranged object name, when searching your inventory, and this is a bug. Does this bug make the class unplayable? Nope. Just hotkey specific meds.

Most of the Bugs that are reported about CM crafting are valid, and need to be fixed. Some of the bugs about poison are debatable. High resists to poison have a lot to do with the quality of the resources that you are using to craft your poisons. The way that you use your expermentaion poinst when crafting are also key. Please refer to my thread Guide to making poisons. Once the servers are back up, I will try to write a better guide to poison crafting, with the resources that I am using, and the experment points that I use.

Now are the poisons as effective as say a 1400 damage special move from a TKA, or a 1400 point Mind shot from a riflemen? NO. Should they be that powerful? Well thats a debate. On one hand I would love for my poisons to do 800dmg per tick, but if they did, the CM would become the most powerfull class in the game. So we have to draw the line somewhere.

I want to say this one more time to stop the flames that I might get by critizing other Combat medics ability to craft high quality poisons. Go shoping for a Weapon, You will find a lot of weapons made by weaponsmiths of the same skill level with different qualities. There is a reason that Weapons smith A can make a DW pistol that does 57-180 Dmg with a speed of 2.6 and weaponsmith B can only get 40-110 with a speed fo 3.2. weaponsmith A took the time to locate high quality resources, and he did not use any failed items.

Combat medics need to take the same approach to poison. Use high quality resources. Use your experment points wisly, and you will find that your poisons work a lot better then you think they do. Dont want to lookfor high quality resources? Dont want to have to craft? well buy them or play a different class. Crafting is part of the Combat medic class. As the game progresses, and more people play, you will find the componets that you need for sale. Elenora has a thriving medicine buisness on Ahazi right now, and I am sure there are people on every server that will sell componets/packs.

So lets stop complaing about radial menu issues, command issues, and poor quality crafting, and get the Devs to focus on the primary issueseffecting combat medics

1, Area Effect stims and poison/disease do not work.

2, Combat medic crafting componets fall under the catogory of General Med Crafting and should be under Combat Med crafting

3. Area effect stims require general Med use, and they Need to use the Combat Med use skill

4. Ranged stim E has a typo and requires 13 identical Chemical release components, and only 3 eachof Liquid suspension, and Bio effect.

When thesemajor class killing bugs are addressed and fixed, then we can start talking about the resist rates of poisons, and the damage that they do. And about radial menu issues that effect all classes. But we need to focus on the major broken areas of our class, and stop whining because we feel that we are under powered. Look at what they are doing to creature handlers and droids.It takes time to balance all the classes. Lets get our broken features getfixed now, then we can compare ourselvs to other classes.

No matter what they do with balance, everyone will always complain that the class they chose in under powered. Its the same with every online game.

Daxonte

Master Combat Medic on Ahazi

so have you found a purpose for diseases yet?

very nice post. this will help me considerably. I am still trying to master medic and support range right now. (3000 xp away from master medic and just touched specialist range) So your post will help me considerably with organizing all my meds and how to use them properly...just one question (for now )

I made stimpak c's but I can't use them? it said that I do not have the required skill. what do I need to use em?

hey troglar, what server do you play on?

"Ok I am tired of people complaing about how bugged teh Combat medic proffesion is."

Rofl... but sorry, CM is broken in many ways- you list the problems yourself.

I still had fun playing one mind you. But it's a lot of skillpoints just to get ranged heals.

Troglar,

Well written! Though nothing was new to me, its good to see a veteran combat medic give some good pointers about the class.

If I may, I'd like to add my .02$ to this and say that I've had issues with running with multiple packs and dying (I was on Lok and the party got over ran, thats my story I'm sticking to it ). Some items would disappear from my inventory when I recover my body, hopefully this has been fixed with the latest round of hot fixes, but its one thing to keep in mind.

TECalen

Kasha Svol
Combat Medic/Master Surgeon/Carbine Specialist
Lowca

"Many Ikopi, Gnorts, and Nightspiders where killed to bring you this medic"

My concern with poison about being underpowered is granted a problem that can be discussed and dealt with as its not a bug preventing us.

My concern was that would any other hybrid class tolerate a ability in their tree that missed more that 50% of the time and did less damage then their weapon did?

problem with quality crafting components and I have 9 experimentation points in doc crafting so i can make more than average components is that there has been a complete lack of any radioactive over 100 OQ on my server in 2.5 weeks...every reactive gas i have found has a PE less than 50. So given that the resources arent there to even begin to make quality component, this amplifies the poison problem. Granted the lack of resources is another problem totally seperate.

As for whether or not we should do as much damage as TKA/rifleman...you're right this can be debated...I dont think we should be as powerful, but right now even with only pistol specialist, my gun outshoots dots. So considering that applying poison take the place of an attack the same way healing does. There should be comparable damage. Also the tic of dots is so slow that i can bearly get a tick in before I pretty much gun the mob down. In effect, the slow tick rate, high resist rate and mediocre damage renders DOTs complete ineffective IMHO...

Remember we are a hybrid class...that means we have to put in a large investment of skill points in order to reach CM. Compared to smugglers (underhand shot) BH (knockdown) we are completely underpowered.

yeah, I entirely agree elenora. we're rediculously underpowered per time invested per skill usage.... think about it. we have to run around and find exotic resources and pay for space travel and factory time and pray that the resources we need are even spawned. and after all that we get a few charges of an attack type skill. and that skill doesnt even compare to a single body shot 3 or a knockdown shot, or an underhand shot. I dont think its reasonable to say that for all this time and effort we have to put into crafting, that we should get a skill at LEAST as powerful as one of the other upper classes. not to mention all the skill points we need to surrender to get there... I understand we're a hybrid profession and I should spend my time going around finding resources and such, thats fine. I actually enjoy travelling and dont mind throwing down a harvester here or there to get resources. the problem is though, after I spend all that time, I get no reward.

/cry

Well posted. The Area effect poisons/diseases issue is a big one though. And the resist ratio. Oh yeah... Poison+disease+pistol bleed kick ass. I use that combo and just run from the mob and it will usually be dead before it can get to me. Just using the /healdamage macro works well. If you're in range to use D's the system will use the Stim D on player or self and If you're not in range to use Stim D's but Ranged stims it uses that. Works quite nicely. Oh yeah and if you have factory you should only have all of the same heal ratio because factory will make everything for you and you will still get the crafting exp if you are logged on. IE 505 heal Stim D... you should only have those because if you got a D that high you should of turned it into a schem and make a few batches. I did. And was able to do other things as well while the factory was making the items. You have to pay attnetion though, sometimes you have to stop and restart the factory to get your exp coming in.

Oh and there should be a single target Poison/ Disease D's not aoes.

ok, I mainly started this thread to help new combat medics overcome soem of teh difficulties in playing this class. At teh begining of teh post, I stated that YES there are broken area of teh Cmbat Medic class.

My main concerns for this post was to help people overcome soem of teh issues with inventory useage, and radial menu /command issues.

As for poisons being underpowered, high quality resources impossible to find, I completly agree. I spent a long time getting to Master combat medic, and I want to be feared. I mainly choose Combat Medic for teh poisons. When you see me in game, I proudly wear the tittle Chemical Warfare Expert. I wear this tittle so as not to cause any confussion on what I want my primary roll in a group to be, I am there to poison the enemy, healing is secondary.

It would be great if my poisons were powerful enough to make a chemical Warfare Expert a desired member of a group. As it stands now, most groups wil ask me to just heal, becuase the poisons dont do enough damage to make up for the fact that I am not healing them. I would like to see this change. I am willing to wait for class balance, and focus on teh major broken issues of teh class tho.

This is a nice rant posthow we areunderpowered. But i agree that the first priority should be to actually fix the bugs that affect gameplay and no playability...

as much as i scream and shout about the how unplayable some of the problems have made CM...in actuality, none of use really know how playable with class is because we haveyet to play it at full capacity due to the bugs...

granted i will still probably make similar arguments when and if the immediate gameplay bugs are fixed...we should really try to focus on current bugs that we can fix quickly...

But a nice rant thread is always nice...misery loves company

> If you use the radial menu, or you hot key a /command to heal damage, the game will automatically use the highest quality med that is in your inventory. So, if you have a stimpack D that heals 500dmg and a ranged stimpack D that heals 499dmg the game will use the Stim that heals 500dmg.

I just tested it extensively and game does NOT use highest quality,it always uses first in your backpack (counting left to right / top to bottom starting from top-left corner).

Here is the test I ran: 2 stimpacks C, both crafted by me, same "Required Medicine Use", one has 249 dmg.
- Put all stimpacks in the bag.
- Take out just those 2, first take out big one, then small one (so in inventory they go one after another, first the one with 276 then the one with 249).
- /healdamage on myself - 276 one get's used.
- Put all stimpacks in the bag again.
- Take out just those 2, first take out small one, then big one (so in inventory they go one after another, first the one with 249 then the one with 276).
- /healdamage on myself - 249 one get's used.

I have series of screenshots demonstrating the test if you are interested to have a look.