Combat Medic Archive

nhilism,

I'd have to disagree with the city part. Some cities are better than others. Coronet is a CM's paradise...Bestine is rough. It's all about learning to adapt. Coronet's long straightaways and many buildings is wonderfully suited to CMs with long range poisons. Get near a corner, fire at range, duck around the corner.

Or if you get to time it right, throw the poison while strafing across a street just before losing LOS and your animation will be without LOS (now whether you're still open in the system to reprisal i dunno).

I woudl say you actually have a case for removing, or at least further shortening the delay if we have to close within range given this +1ham changes if it persists.

Your last statement I think is a complete non sequitor. The burden is upon you to show that CMs were intended to have longer range...and that we're supposed to be able to outthrow a rifle. I think an objective look at the classes in aggregate, as well as recent changs to turrets to put their range to 70m (and make them not pickable by rifleman) are fairly clear indications that rifleman are intended to have the max range of classes in the game.

Jacore

I disagree on the city argument only from the aspect that I choose my battles. You want to go into a building to smoke out an elite melee? You'll get your butt handed to you and you should. The issue of city tactics for a CM is purely are you going to be the aggressor or make them come to you on your terms? If you want to chase them downaround a corner, yeah you're gonna die. And you should. That's not the only way to fight and a balance argument can't be made based on a faulty strategy. Make them come to you and if they choose not to, either let them go or work on soem of their teammates that aren't seekign cover. Above all be patient. CMs can be as deadly in city combat as a TKM for those that are willing to have adaptive strategies.

Pt. 2. Again have just a bit of control on your blood rage and either make them come to you or figure out that it's okay not to have the advantage in every battle. A stalemate is acceptable. I would argue that the smart CM should realize when they'r'e not going to win and move on.

Pt. 3. As to a burden of proof, nhilism I have done so. You will see many many posts in this forum with my name on it, delineating the aspects in which we as a class do indeed have unfair advantages. I'm not going to regurgitate them here, as the list would be quite long. You can find them in historical posts, however.

Pt. 4, is that no class should dominate. Each class should have advantages and disadvantages. I currently have 88m poisons (before loot mods). I should not have a weapon 25m longer than any other class in the game. I think an objective, rational look to the classes as a whole lead most of the community (SWG not CM) that rifleman should have the longest range, not us. This is ultimately, like so many other issues with our class, yet another reason why the #1 need of CMs is for a developer statement of our vision and our place within this game.

Jacore

>>I disagree on the city argument only from the aspect that I choose my battles. You want to go into a building to smoke out an elite melee? You'll get your butt handed to you and you should. The issue of city tactics for a CM is purely are you going to be the aggressor or make them come to you on your terms? If you want to chase them downaround a corner, yeah you're gonna die. And you should. That's not the only way to fight and a balance argument can't be made based on a faulty strategy. Make them come to you and if they choose not to, either let them go or work on soem of their teammates that aren't seekign cover. Above all be patient. CMs can be as deadly in city combat as a TKM for those that are willing to have adaptive strategies.

OK so lets break pvp down then

Poor: CM solo agressor in city

Excellent: CM group agressor in city

Excellent: CM solo aggressor in the open

Excellent: CM group agressor in the open

Poor: CM solo on defense in city

Excellent: CM group on defense in city

Excellent: CM group on defense in open

Great: CM solo on defense in open

Excellent: CM group on defense in open

Now riflemen

Great:RM solo agressor in city

Excellent: RM group agressor in city

Excellent: RM solo aggressor in the open

Excellent: RM group agressor in the open

Excellent: RM solo on defense in city

Excellent: RM group on defense in city

Excellent: RM group on defense in open

Great: RM solo on defense in open

Great: RM group on defense in open

Which ones do you agree with/disagree with.

>>Pt. 2. Again have just a bit of control on your blood rage and either make them come to you or figure out that it's okay not to have the advantage in every battle. A stalemate is acceptable. I would argue that the smart CM should realize when they'r'e not going to win and move on.

Ah so you admit that a CM cannot win as an agressor in a city against a smart oppent (where most pvp happens) solo. Thank you. We are in the same boat as mele in that regards IMO.

>Pt. 3. As to a burden of proof, nhilism I have done so. You will see many many posts in this forum with my name on it, delineating the aspects in which we as a class do indeed have unfair advantages. I'm not going to regurgitate them here, as the list would be quite long. You can find them in historical posts, however.

Ok well I need to review your posts to see if I see anything new.

>Pt. 4, is that no class should dominate. Each class should have advantages and disadvantages. I currently have 88m poisons (before loot mods). I should not have a weapon 25m longer than any other class in the game. I think an objective, rational look to the classes as a whole lead most of the community (SWG not CM) that rifleman should have the longest range, not us. This is ultimately, like so many other issues with our class, yet another reason why the #1 need of CMs is for a developer statement of our vision and our place within this game.

You keep saying that we shouldn't have an advantage, and I keep saying that in most pvp battles we dont, since they are in cities. Maybe you are comparing a smart CM versus a not-so-smart opponent/group.

1. We can agree that CMs are poor solo aggressors in a city. We should be. While I won't claim to have read every post on this forum i read them daily, and you are the first person that I can recall ever claiming (if you indeed are) that we should be able to assault a city solo wtih effectiveness. Why should we? History will show that we used to be able to during the days of Revenge TEF, and it was not well received by the player base as a whole. CMs, Commandos, and BHs were the royalty of RTEF jihad, and I would argue that we caused more carnage than the others. Those days are gone and the overwhelming majority of players on both sides of the factional line, across all professions never want them to come back (I'm a card carrying member of that group).

Further to this point, why should anyone be able to tak a city, or be effective solo attacking an enemy city? The presence of someone being able to do it is strong anecdotal evidence of imbalance, because it highlights weaknesses within fundamental MMO strategy.

The best template I've seen for this is TKM with either master brawler/master medic, or TKM/Doc to cure poisons. Setis on Tempest is still feared in Bestine for doing this...lone reb walking in overt and begging people to knock him out. His kill ratio was like 30:1 or better before he fell, and he acted very intelligently. If any should be able to do urban solo, it's that template. But he got pushed out eventually in the overwhelming majority of occassions. Honestly, do you think we shoudl be able to solo a hostile city?

As to solo defense of a city, I couldn't disagree more. I can singlehandedly bust raids in Coronet with a couple AOE if i choose to use them. So can any MCM in a city wher the factional enemy doesn't have a recruiter. The key is in knowing the enemy, targetting the rezzers asap. During my time as a MD/MCM I was on the receiving end of this as well. Regardless of your size and your plan, 1 MCM can bust a raid. I think this has been acknowledged by several other CMs on this forum. There is no reason you can't...you just need to adapt your tactics and use the strengths of our class (which in some spots are imbalances). If you're defending say Coronet and anyone ever gets the jump on you, it's either your fault 99% of the time, or that you have finally found one of the few tactically cohesive strike forces in SWG who have successfully implemented a multi-prong attack on you. However, even if they did, if you knew your enemy, you'd see it coming merely by their presence in the city.

2. I agree with you only because if any CM who is foolish enough to be so tactically inept to be a charging aggressor in city combat deserves every bit of punishment that is given to them. You flank, you hit and fade, you harry the foe when you're outnumbered, you frustrate, assume defensive positions and make the aggressor come to you because that's what they came to the city for.As a defender you fight the battle on your terms, not theirs. These are basic tactical ideologies as there's no way that this game or any game should make it easy for a CM to go vials-blazing into the center of town in a Hollywood shootout.

4. I don't say we shouldn't have an advantage. I keep saying we should not dominate. I say we should have disadvantageous to go with advantages. We should have types of fights in which we're favored and types of fights in which other classes are favored. The mix of weaknesses and strengths should be enough such that no class is dominant in PvP in general, but rather there exists situations in which some classes (andhopefully coming soon to a galaxy near you...profession groups)in which advantages and disadvantages exist. This is the only recipe that makes it fulfilling for all professions and customers. I continue to compare classes basedupon the limits that we know they can operate, which is the relevant comparison.

It should not be our goal to be effective in every combat scenario.

Jacore

Hm, care to explain why a Rifleman exceeds in city fights? You cant argue that a CM sucks in city fights and then say that a Rifleman is excellent in the very same close combat scenario. A rifleman walking into a building with a TKA in it is a VERY, VERY, VERY (did I say VERY?) dead rifleman. You might want to revamp your line up.

Besides I still dont see your argument why something that requires a LoS ALL the time can be better than somethign that only requires LoS for the time it takes to press a button.

I agree that a TKA in a building is very likely to beat a CM/Doc (a CM/TKA combo like I am is a different story there), however any reasoning why a class other than melee is superior to CMs in cities has to be broken down to me, I might be too stupid to realize it.

Sigh, I really need an edit button


As a 4000 TKA AND a CM I can tell you the following. A friend of mine who happens to be MD/MCM tested his new poisons on me. We were both curious to see how I would fare (this was pre powerb days) when trying to meditate it away.

Now the poison we're speaking of was a killer poison back then, but due to recent shifts it became somewhat of my standard. Stats are somewhere along 33 range 88 pot 276 eff. This poison two shot me (1000 mind, 500 focus, 900WP) w/o meditating. With meditation I was able to survive another tick and died to the the third tick (Meditated it down from 524 to 400ish). With muon gold (1500 mind, 1000 focus, 1400 WP) I was able to survive 5 ticks and still incapped to it.

And if you always feel compelled to rush into dark alleys were large people with huge clubs raised above their heads wait, you really shouldnt take this into your argument. Just dont run into the building and let the TKA rot there, geesh.

Besides that you can pop in and out w/o breaking much sweat (due to some messed up coding the animation that makes you freeze is always delayed by a few secs).

If CMs were BHs the only CMs telling you that we're balanced would be the ones that were using CDEFs.

yup, put a 64m cap on it and all points above that go directly into effectivness or something like that.

so we could experiment only on charges and get higher effectiveness out of the deal once we hit our max range? That seems a bit overpowered to me. But then, 70+m range seems over powered to you...

Considering that the Combat Medic is the SLOWEST killing class in the entire game (Minimum 20 seconds with the most uber poison, more likely to be 30 seconds and with area poisons more like 50-60 seconds)... We have NOTHING that needs to be nerfed. ...And for every count I hear nerf for against the combat medic I can name two things that are broken within the class. So NERF-YOU!

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Sleksheea wrote:
Considering that the Combat Medic is the SLOWEST killing class in the entire game (Minimum 20 seconds with the most uber poison, more likely to be 30 seconds and with area poisons more like 50-60 seconds)... We have NOTHING that needs to be nerfed. ...And for every count I hear nerf for against the combat medic I can name two things that are broken within the class. So NERF-YOU!

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Are there any classes with less than two things broken?

OK... so our range is too long if it gets above 64 meters. What is your solution? Put a cap on it so it can't get above that even though we still have to experiment on range? Remove range from being experimental entirely so that only the CM Distance modifier affects it?

And I'm really getting tired of CM abilities getting picked apart one by one. non-LOS on poison is too powerful (which I admit it was) poof, its gone. Poison takes me out of the game for too long cause of the incap dance. poof no more incap. Now poison can be thrown too far...

And yet, we stop when we throw poison or healing which gives people an opportunity to catch up to us. The Mind cost for throwing poison is far more significant than even most rifleman skills. We receive no bonuses to defense of any kind in our elite profession. We have to make our own disposable weapons without the benefit of our own survey ability. No one tries to hire a master combat medic to go with them on hunts, they all want doctors. Very few people look to buy medicine from a combat medic (as opposed to doctor). Our combat mission difficulty does not increase as we improve in our profession so we have amazing monetary issues. Everyone targets the combat medic first when in PvP. Our primary attacks can be "cured" by dueling and cloning making them useless against organized groups in pvp even without a doctor.

Am I missing any other drawbacks? They seem to outway a range issue that only seems to matter in PvP to me...

then if we have to go to toe to toe give us OUR own **edit**ing wepon im sick of using **edit**ty as carbines. Give us like an anthrax gun.

I'm not too happy with the +1 DOT nerf, personally. My character is a Master CM and relies heavily on the use of poisons and whatnot. She's a support role, but being reduced to complete weakling doesn't sit well.

MCM*
Novice Dancer
Novice Doctor (0/4/0/0)
and Pistols II

The +1 DOT would really, really make things difficult. As for it being mentioned that we can toss our ranged attacks/heals 90 meters I'd like to say that you're seriously smoking a li'l somethin'-somethin'. My max range so far for tossing a poison is 40 meters.

KaveDawg had posted a thread about the state of the profession. I'm inclined to believe that his option #3 is the lesser of the evils; which is to incap once before applying the +1 DOT. It's not the greatest of options, but it's fairly acceptable in my opinion.

I personally enjoy playing a combat medic, and don't foresee myself giving it up anytime soon...yet. We're broken, and I'm glad that the devs are finally setting aside some time to try to fix us. I just hop that these 'fixes' aren't going to incapacitate my mediocre offensiveness.