Combat Medic Archive

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SolSpur wrote:

How do I protect myself from a cm, better yet how do I kill him
CMs are relatively easy to kill having only 6 ranged defense in their skills. In

the heat of battle healers are always targeted first. When you see an enemy stop

and throw a glowing ball in the air, that’s your target. Careful planning can

render a cm useless. Doctors are the counters to cms and necessary for any pvp

group. A good ratio is one doc for every three combat professions. Another way to

protect yourself from a cm is to aquire poison and disease resist tapes. With +25

poison and disease resist the cms potency will be reduced by 25%. Combine the chef

food cho-nor-hoola for an additional 20 – 25 % resists. With 50 poison resists that

130 potency poison will almost never stick. Doing a few tests with +50 poison

resists a 130 potency poison was resisted 7 out of 10 tosses. Another way to

further increase your resistances against cms is to use a rebreather which are

looted off high lvl npcs. And finaly its always good to have a fully buffed mind

with 2 420 brandy and canapé. Many players are run and gun, kill anything they see

kind of ppl. When fighting against cms teamwork is essential to you and your groups

survival.

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Nice post Axob. Very well thought out, non-inflammatory and detailed. You describe many of the issues perfectly.

Not sure the best way to deal with this is. I have one thought, but I would be the ONLY CM on here to support and the rest of the CM's would hate me for it - make area poisons and diseases not work against other players. A CM would still be potent at taking out targets one at a time, but they would not be able to single-handedly overpower huge crowds of people.

This does two things - gives groups a chance to try to counter - ie. docs MAY have a chance to keep up - and two - it makes it so that my skill points used are still very valuable and in PvE I can throw area poisons all I want.

I just know the rest of the CM community will bash me for this because they all want to be uber hehe

But hey, I been a CM for a while and I have a right to voice my opinion just as much as the next guy

I am in white, replying to SolSpurs comments in grey. My previous comments are in multi-colors.

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SolSpur wrote:

Combat medics rarely have only CM skills in PvP. That goes without saying. Coupled with rifleman, pistoleer, or even fencer, a CM can tailor his template to either have outstanding combat offensive, outstanding defenses, or a balance of the two. Your point of only having 4 ranged defense is moot. I would say this is a misconception on your part, but that would be rude of me.

For the purpose of this thread I did not discuss the effects of cm + (insert profession) and the combined offence capability but rather focus on what defence are in just the combat medic profession. Yes its true that combining cm and another profession will increase the the offence and defence mods but for the sake of this discussion cms only have +6 ranged defence.

I am talking about real applications of combat medics in PvP. Pure combat medics are used in probably less than 10% of cases. It is apripo to discuss them with another ranged profession because that is what we are discussing - PvP. If CM's rarely if ever fight as a naked CM, then that is not what needs to be discussed. We all want viable solutions to the real situations that are occurring. Discussing "imaginary" CM templates where they are only CM does little good when players are getting their brains blown out by CM/rifleman ingame.

Combat Medics are always my combat team's first target. The trouble is that some combat medics are incredibly smart, and even being able to find them can be very very difficult in combat. We have often engaged and enemy force, ascertained their skills, and selected which to target first (using teamspeak - a voice program), but often a CM is lurking far away. Once we are engaged, the first sign is that a CM is around are the "you have been poisoned/diseased". After the havla bomb has been dropped quickly, the CM runs away or pulls out a rifle and kites. After my team has cured themselves after thousands of unavoidable mind damage (docs can't cure everyone before poisons tick you know) the CM just reapplies. My point is that CM's who only enter combat to poison/disease (especially poisoning a preoccupied enemy), identification of a CM can be very difficult even with voice chat programs.

You mention havla which as stated befoe is buged. When will it be fixed or removed I dont know but the devs are aware of it. Not every cm uses bug and those who do theres no way to police them except a /report.

Do not fail to notice the other strong points in that paragraph by accident.

Doctors. I never fight without a doctor. The doctor makeup of my fighting team usually is around 25%. With a CM that uses havla to spam area poisons and diseases, even 25% doctors cannot keep up with cures. Also is a problem with combat medics of high skill. A skilled CM can douse a few areas with stacked poisons in about 6 seconds. After they come unplanted (with their team covering and protecting them) they run to the back of their team on the outskirts of the fighting. After a CM's enemy has cured itself (warranting thousands and thousands in unavoidable mind damage) they reapply the area poisons and diseases - wash, rise, repeat. It would take a fighting team to have 50% or more doctor composition to render a CM's impact on their offensive neutral. Be aware that the strong poisons/diseases aren't the only extremely powerfull weapon you possess. CM's strike panic into a force, in most cases instantly dissolving a teams combat focus. No other class can do this. Doctors can't cure real panic and mayhem. It is sad that CM's have both poisons/diseases and this incredible power. Ofcourse, no one mentions this effect.

You mention havla again.

I also mention the inability of doctors to deal with CM attacks...

About +25 disease/poison resistance skill tapes. A player should not beexpected to invest 10 million credits to have at best a very marginal defense against CM's. I've never even heard of a +25 disease/poison skill tape or armor attachment. The best i've been able to find was a disease +6. Even purchasing multiple tapes and attachments to sum up to 25 would cost 10 million or more. So now that we've established that even a player who cares about tapes and attachments (despite their ineffectiveness) could only afford around +6 to poison/disease (be reasonable here), that leaves with food (+25) a resist of around +30. Run your tests on +30 resistance. You fail to mention that most poisons are way upward of 130 potency anyway. What is +30 resist going to do against 200 potency poison??? Not much. The new poison resist food is worthless against CM's. Not to mention it's high cost vs. real life effectiveness is laughable.

I cant speak for your server but poison/disease resist attachments are fairly cheap. Those who do have +25 resists attachment and resist food are a challenge for a cm. With +30 resists a 130 potency poison will be reduced to 91 potency. And to your statment about 200. While running tests I did make a 220 potency poison which was not resisted but then again the damage was minimal.

Have you even been to your server's trade forum. A +25 poison/disease skill tape would run above 4 million on Bria (probably 5-10 million). Saying that they are cheap is eroneous to say the least, and downright blind. With +30 resists, a 130 potency poison will stick 9 times outta 10. I should not have to do the work equivalent to mastering 2-3 other professions just to earn the money to have some small chance at avoiding the 200 potency poisons that fly in modern PvP. Your point is extremely weak on this issue of having skill tapes be a "commonplace" solution (despite that even after buying them at exponential prices they don't really work all the well against the 200 potency poisons that are thrown). I don't concede you this point. I will move on.

My team flies with dual mind buffs, (2 doses of) brandy, canapes, and muon in emergencies. This does not change the fact that the single most deadly force I go up against is a team with a CM. CM's determine the offensive capability of a team to such a large degree over any other class. When I die in PvP,6.5 times out of 10 it is due to a CM. The other 3.5 times out of ten is to being outnumbered.

Actuly its not the cm doing the killing. The cm makes you easier for other team mates to kill you. The only way a cm can kill you with abilities in their profession is to poison/disease a stat.

I will be patient here and map this out for you. When upwards of 90% or even more of damage done to a kill is done with poisons, the kill is credited to poisons. The combat profession that hits the remaining 10% is credited with an assist. Your point is not conceded.

Combat medics are always my team's first target. 90% of all combat teams who hold thier weight also target CM's first. This is a testament to the power of the CM class. I sacrifice myself to instantly try to kill one, er.. incap one. Nothing is more deadly or harrasing to PvP than a GTEF'ing CM who constantly runs from the cloner. CM's are so powerful that we don't even treat them like normal combatants. We always choose to incap them, instead of deathblow because it keeps us more safe. When you say, "Many players are run and gun, kill anything they see kind of ppl. When fighting against cms teamwork is essential to you and your groups survival," you can be damn sure that my team is doing just that to try to survive. We stay spread out when a CM is found, we target the CM's first, and we call for heals instantly when we need them on teamspeak. Couple that with dual mind buffs and foods. Even preparation and tactics like that, and I have seen my team fall time and time again to skilled CM's. Unskilled CM's fall quickly, but there are those among you who "know how to dance". When a class can be deftly operated to smartly kill many, I have no problem with that, but when a class can be smartly operated to destroy armies single handedly (with combat professions serving only a "cleanup" role), that is a sign of being overpowered. At that point the CM class needs to be looked at for what it is and appropriately altered in a positive way, instead of apathetically telling everyone to relax because it was never meant to be that way.

You continualy mention how cms need to be looked at how it is now and not what it will/should be. Right now your seeing cm through an unbalanced skewed perspective. Many of us want to be healers but due to inbalances were left with our poisons. I have high hopes the combat revamp will balance us with the rest of the professions, make our healing more important for group success then poisons and diseases.

You say it above yourself, you see CM for what you want it to be. I see it for what it is and have givenpoints above to support it. You say that I see combat medic through an unbalanced and skewed perception yet when you discuss CM's it is how they will be in the future. I am talking about now. I do not concede this point to you either.

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Message Edited by Ternque01 on 06-25-2004 04:46 PM

SolSpur - from all indications I have seen the poinson/disease resist tapes do not work

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DoctorGriggs wrote:

Not sure the best way to deal with this is. I have one thought, but I would be the ONLY CM on here to support and the rest of the CM's would hate me for it - make area poisons and diseases not work against other players. A CM would still be potent at taking out targets one at a time, but they would not be able to single-handedly overpower huge crowds of people.

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That's a really interesting thought and the sort of thing I would actually like to see in a test environment (just like it would be interesting to see what a world without mind poisons would look like).

I think you may be able to accomplish your goal in alternative ways though.

For example, you could just decrease the damage of AOE poisons from 80% of single strength to 50% of single strength. It's always been a bit odd to me that the area is almost as powerful as the single target poison.

Or, you could reduce the area of effect. It's pretty easy to get areas of effect up to around 30m. This makes for a fairly huge area.

Or, you could scale damage of the area poison based on how far away the secondary target is from the primary. For example, if the primary gets hit by a 450 tick area poison with a 30m radius, someone at 10m would get a 300 tick poison applied and someone at 20m would get a 150 tick poison and someone at 29m would get a massive 15 point poison applied. This one even has the advantage of being somewhat real-life (presumably the dispersal at the edges of the poison cloud would affect those on the fringe less). This would be my favorite way of reducing the power of area poisons.

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DoctorGriggs wrote:
Well, I am a CM and have been for a while. I use it primarily for healing though. Contrary to your post, healing is still VERY important. In the Death Watch Bunker or the Corellian Corvette my skills prove invaluable. Can you name 5 other areas where healing is VERY important? Hmmm Nightsister caves..uhh...Geonesian Lab..uhh...wait, you only need stimB's!

As for PvP I rarely if ever use poisons or diseases in PvP. I have been on the receiving end far too many times and I know how not fun it is.

Our solution on Gorath is the "Gorath Convention" - it is still being drafted. It is a kind of take off of the Geneva Convention where we lay the ground rules for war. One rule we are working with is limiting CM ticks to 250-300 and range to like 32 or so. Still working on it. Range is already being addressed and going to be capped at 64m or less. Effectiveness? Wait till the revamp till you toy with that. The Geneva Convention is also violated or flat out ignored by more countries more times than you really wish to think about.

I just wish more people took CM for the healing because as healers we REALLY excel Yup, now if they just give us more stuff to heal. I hear rumors that the days of grinding through professions completely solo are going to be things of the past with the new HAM system.

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Message Edited by Brainplay on 06-26-2004 05:25 AM

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jkray8472 wrote:

Great thread, and great ideas from some people.

Just wanted to throw one thing that I didn't see on this post, but that vortexala posted for us a while back:

When the combat rebalance hits...mind will become healable again, thus making the mind pool significantly less of a target in PvP. Of course..it's likely that when that happens, people will just start using their AoE shots like StrafeShot2 and Fanshot and just try to spam health damage fast enough...

/shrug. There's no "happy" answer for everyone right now b/c everything is completely unbalanced. I wouldn't mind Griggs' suggestion about not having area packs working on people. It's not like I enjoy PvP anyway.

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Yeah the mind damage issue will change the whole game when it is fixed

As far as area vs singles - I think it would be a very fair compromise. I would gladly give up area poisons/diseases in PvP if they let us keep singles. This would definitely change things a lot because it means if a group comes with like 25% of their people as doctor they will be able to just about keep up.

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SolSpur wrote:

I’ve been a long time CM and read the forums daily. Everyday I see another anti cm

post pop up regurgating the same information. I thought it was just the player base

ignoring us till a few recent posts (ex what is cho-nor-hoola) began popping up.

I’ve come to realize its not that they’re ignoring us, its that they don’t know the

workings of our profession beyond whats stated in the faq and that we use poisons.

I’ve composed a list of common questions and misconceptions about our profession.

I hope this will answer many of the repeated questions that pop up day after day.

What is a Combat Medic?
We ask ourselves the same question. According to the developers we can choose to be

Healers with some combat skills or Combatants with a side of healing. Many combat

medics feel our healing capabilities are low for the amount of skill points

invested. Combat medics are required to master the medic profession as a pre

requisite, yet the strength of our healing does not increase. Medic requires 77

skill points while combat medic requires 169. That’s an additional 92 skill points

for the ability to toss ranged stims.

But most combat medics don’t heal, they poison. Whys that?
Many combat medics want to be healers but due to the current pvp conditions,

healing is relatively useless. According to the developers many smart crafters have

gone beyond what they thought could be made. Doctors are capable of crafting buff

packs that increase all non mind stats over 3 times that of a normal players.

Combining that with 40% stun 90% all else composite turns the average player into a

pvp god to most classes. Due to the high resists almost all damage is directed

towards the mind thus rendering the healing aspect of cm usless. As a support role

and a combat multiplyer, cms turn to their poisons and diseases to increase the

effectivness of their group.

How come the CM never misses when throwing poisons?
Combat medics do miss from time to time, even more when the opponent is prepared.

When a combat medic crafts his or her poisons or diseases there is a stat called

potency that effects the chance for the poison to effect you. Many CMs increase

potency to the point where the poison has a very high chance to stick but there are

ways around it which will be discussed farther down the article.

Why don’t CMs have a 75% damage reduction like everyone else?
The reason poisons don’t get a 75% reduction is because it’s a special kind of

damage. Poisons and diseases are on a healing platform instead of a damage

platform. Think of poisons and diseases as negative heals. By reducing our damage

by 75% we inadvertently reduce our heals by 75%. Another reason why CMs were exempt

from the 75% reduction is due to our dps (damage per second) being among the lowest

of all combat professions. A high end non venom area poison will do about 500

damage a tick once every 10 seconds. That comes out to 50 damage a second. A 75%

reduction would reduce our dps to 12.5 damage a second.

500 a tick poison is bull, I get hit for over 1000 a tick.
This is due to a looted sub component called spider venom. It is a rare drop and in

the hands of a good crafter can become very deadly. Spider venom is a replacement

for a sub component called a infection amplifier. A high end crafter can make 50 –

60 strength infection amps while the weakest spider venom is around 90 strength.

That 1000 a tick poison was from a pre nerf venom. I try to avoid personal opinions

in an article such as this but I have to say venom is overpowered. With any looted

sub there should be a cost. Rancor bile greatly increases the number of charges at

the cost of range. Dunkowa loot increases potency at the cost of effectiveness.

With venom there is no associated cost, its just overall better.

The cm hit me almost 100 meters away, why?
The developers capped the base range on poisons and diseases at 48 meters. A master

cm has a 2x range modifier essentially able to throw 96 meters. The devs stated

this was a bug and is being looked at. The typical cm won’t be able to reach the

48m base and is reserved for high end crafters. Putting experimentation points into

charges will increase the range but leaves little for effectiveness which controls

damage.

How come when the cm dies the poison keeps ticking?
Poisons and diseases are biological weapons. They are not sentient and continue to

do their job until they’re finished and die off or are cured by a doctor or

meditated away. If I were to poison you in real life and you in turn killed me the

poison wouldn’t stop, that’s the nature of a bio weapon.

A cm hit me with a poison and I died instantly.
The instant poison of death is just an urban legend. Poisons run on a 10 second

timer and diseases on a 40 second timer. Poisons by themselves will never kill,

instead they will leave your stat at +1. By combining poison and any wound dealing

attacks such as fire or disease you will incap. This is due to the nature of wound

dealing attacks. Poisons do straight damage while fire and diseases do damage and

wounds. If you have a 800 of 1000 health and are hit with say a 200 wound dealing

disease, 40 seconds later your health would be 600/800. An idea was suggested that

wound dealing attacks only effect your max stat. That way instead of 600/800 health

you would still have 800/800 and never drop below 1/1.

A cm hit me with poison at lightning speed. I thought the cap was 4 seconds?
The cap is 4 seconds and a stop and throw animation. CMs and docs are able to

perform healing actions at 1 per second using a bugged food called havla. It has

been presented to the developers as a hot issue by both the chef and cm

corrospondant. Havla unbalances the cm vs doc and should be removed.

A cm hit me through a wall, how?
A cms target must be in line of sight. Poisoning through walls occurs when a cm

hits someone outside and the area of effect goes through the wall. It’s a known bug

but not much can be done about it atm.

How do I protect myself from a cm, better yet how do I kill him
CMs are relatively easy to kill having only 6 ranged defense in their skills. In

the heat of battle healers are always targeted first. When you see an enemy stop

and throw a glowing ball in the air, that’s your target. Careful planning can

render a cm useless. Doctors are the counters to cms and necessary for any pvp

group. A good ratio is one doc for every three combat professions. Another way to

protect yourself from a cm is to aquire poison and disease resist tapes. With +25

poison and disease resist the cms potency will be reduced by 25%. Combine the chef

food cho-nor-hoola for an additional 20 – 25 % resists. With 50 poison resists that

130 potency poison will almost never stick. Doing a few tests with +50 poison

resists a 130 potency poison was resisted 7 out of 10 tosses. Another way to

further increase your resistances against cms is to use a rebreather which are

looted off high lvl npcs. And finaly its always good to have a fully buffed mind

with 2 420 brandy and canapé. Many players are run and gun, kill anything they see

kind of ppl. When fighting against cms teamwork is essential to you and your groups

survival.

How can I expect cms to change in the future?
Right now a good majority of changes have yet to be verified by the devs but we

know this.

Mind will be less of an impact on pvp

CMs will never get a 75% reduction

Mind mitigation spice is in the works

Some ideas have been mentioned on improving the healing capability of cms. Not all

of us are cms just for poisons : )

Allow cms to be the only class able to heal while engaged in combat, we are Combat

medics after all. All other classes will have to disengage from combat to heal.

This will give cms the place as ultimate frontline support healer and docs the

ultimate wound healer.

Give cms ranged/area cure stats. As it stands cms can cure only 3 status effects

while docs can cure 13. Being a front line support class, we would be more

effective at administering ranged cures.

Give cms a ranged healing dot, similar to poisons only positive heals instead of

negatives. This would allow cms to increase the life expectancy of their groups and

act as a counter to enemy poisons.

Give cms a passive group poison and disease resist. An idea but might be more

suited for a squad leader.

In conclusion I just want to say cms are not trying to ruin pvp. Cms are the scape

goats for a broken system. I hope this article has given you some insight on our

profession and cleared up some common misunderstandings. : )

*edit spacing*

Message Edited by SolSpur on 06-24-2004 09:38 PM

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oblivion3134 wrote:

Wow...CM mind heal and thus dominate PVP. Most vulnerable pool in the game is much more important than healing stun.

And forcing every PVP template to include doc is SUPER COOL.

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Yeah we MIND heal and take big wounds and a large chunk of our own MIND pool to do it. Thats why we do it very rarely. Most of the time its used in high content PvE when someone isn't DB'd automatically by an npc. If incapped by a player theres are really really good chance that the db is 1 second behind and you're 50m away.. Healing stun and dizzy is a big deal, so is intimidate and blind. Those states can determine who's getting incapped and who isn't since defenses, accuracy, speed is all lowered. Lay those states on a defense stack and watch their effectiveness go down.

Forcing everyone to get 2/0/0/0 doctor is Sony's fault. Who ever though that only ONE class in this entire game can cure poisons and disease. Hell they could have given that to CM's to cancel each other out, or squal leaders in a mitigation effect (poor SL need some serious love). Instead they gave almost all combat support features to doctors (who belong in a camp or city not the battlefield).

Next time research the class you're going to grief. Have a nice day

Message Edited by oblivion3134 on 06-27-2004 03:02 PM