Combat Medic Archive
Thread: State of the Combat Medic Profession
Combat Medic State of the Profession:
Combat Medics (CMs) are one of the most undefined profession in SWG.CMs spend a lot of skill points (second only to Bounty Hunters and tied with Commandos)just to master their class, then have to go and spend more before they can be either a good support or combat 'template'. Combat oriented CMs have trouble finishing off foes in PvP and PvE without spending skill points in a combat profession, especially since poisons can no longer cause incapacitation. Support oriented CMscannot fully experiment on their healing componets and have no state cures, buff abilities or res type capability without spending skill points in the Doctor or Entertainer professions. Many CMs would like to see some sort of combat finishing ability or support type ability (or both) that is intergal to the CM profession. In a support role CMs do have the ability to heal mind damage, but the wound cost associated with this makes it almost impossible for CMs to function after the 4th time they use the mindheal ability. Some sort of ability to incapacitate needs to be implemented, either by re-instating the ability for poisons to incap, or gining CMs some sort of direct damage ability through 1 time damaging attacks or their own weapon certification.
Interdependancy: CMs can advance solo by getting med exp from poisons. This is very hard to do at first so for the most part, CMs depend on healing others for experience, at least until later in the profession. CMs requirea wide varietyof resources for their meds, so either need artisan survey abilities or rely upon others for resources. CMs cannot fully experiment on healing stim comps so depend upon Doctors to make schematics or must take those skills themselves. Support oriented CMs do not get destroy mission payout increases even when they could probably handle it with thier abilities. Because of the high skill point cost of CM and the inability to get combat skills if you decide to specialize as a support type character, Support CMs must rely upon customers either through crafting or selling commodites to fund their resource heavy profession.
Money: Medic is still the only starting profession without a mission terminal. Combat Medics do not get destroy mission payout increases. For all practical purposes, tipping in medical centers is not worth the effort.
---Results from a poll on how CM characters get money (44 CMs responded, a couple could not be easily catagorized)
Type of CM Destroy missions Crafting Other
Support 4 6 6
Combat103 3
Mix3 0 4
Of the 9 crafters, only 5 rely on crafting CM meds. The other crafters have Doctor skills and craft Doctor meds for sale. The CMs in the other column typically rely on buffs (Doc skill) or selling resources. The majority of responses indicate that the most money spent by CMs is either buying resources for meds or travel and harvester cost for gathering those resources. Only 3 CMs stated that they run group missions working in a support role for cash. Money is a big issue for CMs, especially those who chose to take support skills because they cannot get well paying missions. Please see the following threads...
Making money
Cashflow poll
Resources: Resources are also a huge issue with combat medics. It requires more resources to make one poison stimpack C than it does to make an FWG5 pistol, and you get a lot more milage out of the pistol. Then you need resources for your ranged stims. And resources for your area stims. And resources for your diseases. And resources for the small stimpacks, if you use them. You get the picture. Doctors have increased resource needs for advanced components but with the exception of class 4 liquid petrochem fuel and dolovite iron, these resources are always available. There is always lokian wheat, domesticated oats, herbivore meat, dantooine berries, talusian water, and tatooine fiberplast.
Of the CM advanced component resources (class 2 liquid petrochem fuel, class 1 radioactive, eleton reactive gas, tolium reactive gas and titanium aluminum) there is a significant amount of time where none of these are in existance. In addition, each planet must be individually checked for these resources, every 5 days if you want to do the job properly. Many galaxies report 1) an advanced comp resource that has never shown up in the 6 months SWG has been live or 2) a resource that has shown up a limited number of times, but has never been above 350 OQ. There are even reports of a CM corresondent that has never made an advanced resiliency compound because it has been 6 months since class 1 radioactive has spawned on the Flurry server
resource issues
The following is a very short summary of Gameplay and Balance issues for CMs:
- Poisons can no longer incap (also known as +1HAM or no-incap issue) CMs would like to see this reverted back to the way it was originally, or at least looked at again.
- Faction points for DoT damage
- Faction points for healing
- Another examination of cure rate for poisons/diseases using different level packs (i.e. cure Bs vs poison Cs) for each
- Flamethrower cures
- Mind wound cost for /healmind
- Usefullness of disease needs to be examined.
- Poison damage in PvE needs to be examined.
- Healing on mounts
- DoT duration vs time between ticks examination
- Full CM experimentation on ranged stim components
- Increase range for /mindheal
- Money/ destroy mission difficulty for CM
- Damage mitigation for CM
- Resource availability
CM Bug list:
- Ranged healing stims have been reduced in distance since publish number 5. Distance heals have a range of less than double the range of what they were rated for Master CMs when double the range used to be normal. This hurts CMs a lot.
- AoE stims are not healing faction pets, such as Storm Troopers and Rebel Commando types. Reports include loss of a charge on the pack and visual effects going off, but no healing.
- AoE stims give a 'you cannot perform this action on that target' when trying to heal valid in-range targets. This seems to happen most often in city PvP fights under laggy conditions.
- Poisoned NCPs will cause PCs sharing the same first name to become poisoned, even if they are on other planets.
- Droid medical modules have a negative effect on /healdamage
- Reports of moderate successes in poison experimentation in one catagory will lower stats in another catagory. We are trying to reproduce this at the moment.
- Line of Sight limitations are preventing CMs from using meds when small (knee-high rocks and logs) are present in fromt of the CM. CMs consider it unreasonable to not be able to heal targets when you can see the body from the knee up.
- Stim charges being used up healing a target that has no damage to heal.
- CMs not getting a mind heal off in time end up targeting a corpse but still recieve mind wounds.
- Experimentation failures in catagories that affect 2 stats will raise one stat and lower another stat.
- Experimentation failures will lower stats that should not be affected by that experimentation catagory
- AoE DoTs are drawing agro only from the targeted mob when thrown at a group of non-agressive mobs.
- AoE stims that target yourself only heal yourself, and not others nearby.
Wishlist:
- Bio-weapon cert (be aware about new combat changes TH is proposing and the fact that they will be adding certs) or perhaps a weapon cert in the ranged support branch of marksman (the required branch for CMs)
- damage mitigation
- poison/disease mitigation for CMs
- short term group resists for CMs
- area state effects
- Better method for inventory organization (little black doctor bags, etc)
- Do something with survey/medicalforage!
Possible Bugs/Exploits that need a ruling with CMs:
- DoT done over time with damage and wounds allows for incap (examples are using CM poisons and diseases at the same time and flamethrowers) Is this working as intended?
- Poison/Disease range is still beyond 64m.
- Medical experience is awarded for multiple applications of the same poison/disease on a MOB. Since poisons can no longer incapacitate, this allows for CMs to get a very large amount of medical exp in a short amount of time.
- Z axis for area affect stims needs to be looked at. Depth area effect is very large and currently passes through the ground. Is this working as intended?
Thanks for your interest in the CM profession!
Pahdbacca
Excellent indeed.
One additional issue I've been pondering about is poison damage in PvE, which seems to be rather lowish (unless superstacking with adv. poisons). Not calling for a major upgrade here, just wondering if this will be included in the re-balance?
Off course, I realize even hinting that poisons are underpowered will engulf this post in flames 
NoBrains_pt wrote:
Looks good
Will there be feedback to it?
Probably not. SoPs are generally provided by us to basically report on where the profession is at to the Devs based on something of a format they requested from us. It's not something we really expect to get any feedback on, like the Top 5 lists.
Xytroncore wrote:
Runesaber did say he looked forward to reading this though, so maybe he will post since he didn't have much to say about combat medics in the other thread (hopefully he posts since we could use some dev critisim)
I sent Runesabre a PM about 1 hour after he started visiting the Proff forums. I gave him a heads up to check out the rough draft of this SoP that was already written in the Correspondent Development forums. He replied to that PM and said thanks. I was going to let my replacement finish the SoP in their own style but since Runesaber kinda hinted he wanted it out, I finished it and posted.
Message Edited by Pahdbacca on 01-27-2004 06:53 AM
this looks good. hope the devs or someone sees this.
would be cool to throw waterballoons at someone on fire 