Combat Medic Archive

im an expert CM and med tactician , heading the master path, and lately ive been in the forums, and our class has been baragged with nerf calls on our precious diseas and poison. now i think they are fine, aside from the corpse exploit.We get no defensive or weapons mods, and we will only get the terrain neg mod(much appreciated btw). we are tied in second as most costly class skillpoint wise.we are fairly balanced.yet, i AM a CM and perhaps im a bit biased. so i want some CM opinions...not some 12 year old whiner. i dont want this thread to get flammy and bicthy. are we overpowered? if so how can we rectify this.

simple answer, no. the only thing that makes us overpowered is the fact that doctors do not have AoE cures. if they did, CMs are countered by docs, and the argument is over...

all those whining about us being overpowered are just a bunch of sour loosers when it comes to pvp cause they forgot to bring a doc along to counter us. its as simple as that

When compaired to eye shot, flame DOTs, and simple bleeds we do far less damage over time and unlike the other classes we have to spend a lot of time and money to make our poisons. People cry neft cause our style of play is different then the typical run and gun commandos and we actuly use stratagy. Most of the whining comes from 10 - 12 year olds who can't accept the fact their profession isn't all powerful.

I'll give it a shot, though I think you'll find some much stronger opinions coming (or may beat me to the submit button).

I would submit that they are not overpowered. Duration may be an issue but not the power.

Common retaliations to this claim:

1. We're one of the hardest to master with skill points. True but in reality this doesn't carry a ton of weight, IMO. Our offense should mean something but comparing our skill point usage to commandos and BH implicitly carries an argument of our offensive power relative to BH and commandos which I don't care for. IMO we shouldn't have offensive power near either of these two, because we have healing defense.

2. DPS. Highly experimented single poison on a per tick basis(8 sec) yields damage ~500; this is less than 100 per second (much less than BH Eyeshot). Again true but not quite apples to apples. BH is single target, and pistoleers and commandoes do get cone attacks. Ours are spherical with a much larger radius and that sphere can be 'thrown' a good ways. 1 on 1, BH will own us and should. Group on group we can dominate. DPS isn't readily comparable I think.

3. We get resisted, and it's not 1 shot kills. Valid, strong and underappreciatedcounter, IMO.

4. We have to close within BH range to throw. Mostly valid. We can experiment to have good range, but at considerable expense to potency. I think this is a reasonable counterpoint in terms of our balance. We are exposed similar to commandos. The notion that we should have to be within 16m like commando is pure BS.

5. We have no defense mods. Valid and good, but that shouldnt' be translated into we'll take a cut if you give us defense against all of these. We shouldn't trade power for defense, but rather a better picture of our niche, IMO.

6. It's not true that we didn't take a 75% PvP reduction. We took a tweak to tick rate. And, it's really the case that we're 75% underpowered in PvE. This is a compelling argument, and I think the strongest one we have.

7. Get a doc. Yeah the docs are intended to be our counter. This gets to no doc AOE issues, the 1 cure<= 1 poison issue and others. This argument IMO has some merit but is vastly overused to be to the same worthless, provocationaleffect as BH's proclaiming if everyone used a composite helm, took spice, buffs, food and wore a PSG everywhere including the bathroom, it'd be fine.

8. Our poisons/diseases are charged based weapons that take tremendous time and money to gather/craft. This is an exceptionally valid point against BH arguments and still good with commandos, who have charged based weaponry. However, it must be presumed that eventually people's resource needs are covered, and this cannot be a justification for us to have a permanent edge at the master on master level.

9. Distinguish raw power from RTEF/griefing issues. In the first round of combat, I think it is very hard for someone to proclaim that a CMs power is unbalanced with their fragility/risk. It's tactics, relative skill, and a bit of luck. But once RTEF starts, the power of CMs climb considerably as AOE rolls allow us a free shot on anyone within AOE range of someone we have an RTEF on. This is a bug, and I think one of the main reasons behind a lot of the nerf cries (that and corpse diseasing). I know I'm in the minority here, but it's just silly that everyone within x meters of a CM RTEF target can't do anything about our approach except run. A single free shot for a BH or others is painful, but a single free shot for a CM is often death.

Well, this is what comes to mind for me...I'm sure by now a littany of responses have followed.

Jacore

/cheer jacore

If you read most posts, most gripes they pick on poison, but its really a TEF issue. Poison damage is below BH and Commando and many other professions but some have issues with it cause simply put, they cant cure it and they have to rely on a doctor for help. Lastly, there 2 a few bugs people have legitimate issues with, if SOE takes care of those bugs you will see alot less griping. The bugs draw attention to CM's like flies on...you know what.

/bow jancore

you made lots of good points i had not thought about. alot of our problems are exploits and bugs that we already acknowledge. but as for comparing ourselves to bh and commando, im not saying we should have the sheer power of commando or versatility of bh's, but rather thestrategic advantage in pvp, with our AoE stuff. if u single us out, we are dead no doubt, but should u leave the CM untouched, your group will die. in my eyes, CM's are weapons of mass destruction. our stuff does damge in a wide area, but we ourselves are quite vulnerable in 1v1. CH pets and meleers are the tanks, pistoleers .bhs commandos etc are the infantry, we are the nukes.

I would submit that the majority of our class sees us as you describe. And for that to come true, and our niche and value to be realized, changes to RTEF and combat in general must continue to favor/encourage group based combat to street brawls.

I am encouraged by the changes we've seen recently in that direction (Squad Leader and commando vision [flamethrower dot not included]). I'm optimistic that the venerable political question of "...are you better off then you were..." will hold a positive answer for us in the future.

Jacore

CM's have an obvious weakness being that we can either heal or toss a poision then we have to wait a few seconds before we can perform another "medical" action. So, it's not like we're invincible poision tanks just running the field. Also, we must become master (I feel) to be the most effective in combat simply due to the effectiveness and schematics available at master. And the dmg from a BH's eyeshot is greater than if not equal to that of a finely crafted poision, also a BH doesn't pay 1.5K per eyeshot or give up the mind cost it takes to throw a single poision, nor does he have to hunt for resources and craft a dozen packs to make a decent one. That aside, CM doesn't have any other skills to aid in battle; heal or poision DoT that's it and in some cases you might only have enough time for one choice given the circumstances. Overpowered? I would advise anyone who thinks this to take the time and money to get to MCM then see what they have to say.

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Jacore wrote:

2. DPS. Highly experimented single poison on a per tick basis (8 sec) yields damage ~500; this is less than 100 per second (much less than BH Eyeshot). Again true but not quite apples to apples. BH is single target, and pistoleers and commandoes do get cone attacks. Ours are spherical with a much larger radius and that sphere can be 'thrown' a good ways. 1 on 1, BH will own us and should. Group on group we can dominate. DPS isn't readily comparable I think.

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It should be noted that our spherical, radius attacks have a significantly lower damage than our single shot attacks, while in general the conic attacks of other classes have an increased damage over many single target attacks.

I just don't understand how anyone could think that a combat medic is overpowered, heck we're underpowered!

I honestly wish they would just stop trying to balance the game based on PvP when their own poll clearly shows that the majority of players want Solo PvE.

I'm quite tired of watching MMORPG's tank because of whining PvP players. Every game I've seen has attempted to balance PvE and PvP into the same game. I've never seen it done.

As far as CM is concerned, I've been killed several times from poisons and you know what? I don't think it was unfair at all. In fact, I honestly think I could've won if I hadn't been attacked while I was still loading into the game

9. Distinguish raw power from RTEF/griefing issues. In the first round of combat, I think it is very hard for someone to proclaim that a CMs power is unbalanced with their fragility/risk. It's tactics, relative skill, and a bit of luck. But once RTEF starts, the power of CMs climb considerably as AOE rolls allow us a free shot on anyone within AOE range of someone we have an RTEF on. This is a bug, and I think one of the main reasons behind a lot of the nerf cries (that and corpse diseasing). I know I'm in the minority here, but it's just silly that everyone within x meters of a CM RTEF target can't do anything about our approach except run. A single free shot for a BH or others is painful, but a single free shot for a CM is often death.

When the revenge TEF is fixed this will be negated. Right now, its definitly a raid breaker. However this can be counteracted with proper tactics and a doc who knows what the heck he's doing.

As an example, tonight my group fought 2 CMs, both i belive to be MCMs. 1 a carbineer, the other i think was a pistoleer, It broke down to the revenge TEF war on both sides, but I could control the poisons by having the group spread out and engage them so that only 1 or 2 people were hit by the AoEs. Im a master doc also, so I would be curing while the others fought. I was hit by poisons several times, but still managed to keep most of the group from being incapped/dbed. Too often I see groups huddling together around a cloning center and they are just sitting ducks for a CM when they do this.

Just a note on the BH eyeshot ability vs our poisons, BHs can also immediately incapp you again when you recover from your first incap, our poisons have given them a grace period now before they start ticking again after the first incap. More than sufficient time for a doc to slap a cure on it.