Combat Medic Archive
Thread: Master CM AoE Disease: What Should be Done about it?
To those star happy folks, I wasn't advocating one side or the other, one solution over another. I was simply attempting to start a discussion amongst the community to see where we should stand AS a community. Because we all know that the backlash will come, and it will come with the fury unseen since the Commandos were finally fixed.
I, personally, think that the wounds a CM can inflict upon other players via disease applications is a good thing. It's a viable, reliable, and worthy tactic that should be used to remove certain opposing forces from the field of battle. Wether those wounds are Health, Action OR Mind.
Some believe that mind wounding shouldn't be as bad as health or action because it would take longer for an Entertainer to heal those wounds, and I say rubbish. I've walked into a cantina before with full mind wounds(bored one night, wanted to test out my E-Woundpacks) and in a matter of minutes an Elite Dancer and an Elite Musician had my mind bar fully healed with an added buff to boot. Downtime for wounds is not a factor here, and shouldn't be.
The issue at hand is, what if anything should we propose for the AoE Master Combat Medic Diseases once they are fully functional? Should we seek to have their power reduced, or should we come up with a patent response to use in our defense against those who would call us griefers?
That is the reason for this thread, and many thanks to those who have weighed in. 
Well,
I guess I am taking a slight stand, and I'll happily take more 1 star ratings. I don't have a problem with single disease as anti-grief, and once doc cures are readjusted to be commensurate with poison/disease power I will care even less.
But the power behind AOE still worries me. I'm not at all sure that the ability to effectively sideline should belong to any one class (though I'd guess I prefer to be ours if any). If we as a class are going to say AOE Diseases are okay, the PR armor has to be here. Why should we have the unique ability to sideline? Why do we need AOE version of this?
If we want to keep them, and play the 'Get a Doc' card, we as a class will have to campaign to make sure Docs have an effective counter to AOE diseases. The notion a party should think 'We need 1 doc for everyN people in our group to counter their CM' is ludicrous on its face. Ibattle a party of 15 and hit 12 of them with an AOE poison, there's no way 1 Doc is a counter to me.
On the battlefield, in general, I agree with doc's being our counters. But those swinging the nerf bat won't be using battlefield examples. They'll be using griefer examples. And we will have to defend against them because some our ranks will use them in that fasion. Every contrary opinion I've seen seems to magically presume every one of our ranks won't abuse the power of AOE Diseases. If some of us are diseasing corpses you can bet they'll do this to. Bring a doc won't work here, and the nerf will be over nerfing all CM for the sake of griefers.
Yes, a viable cost of death will keep the honest person honest, and on the margin reduce some of the problem. But money's far too easy in this game and even if insurance is 5k per death, some of our ranks will pay it to continue griefing. Just to show they can. That is the way of it. And the battle will be fought here.
I think limitations on the duration (pvp only)are a reasonable bone to throw the community. And lest anyone think I want to self-nerf us into oblivion, you're wrong. I think this about offering up a compromise. Something that doesn't hurt us that much to help the game and give our class a firm position to defend against further cuts. If we offer up a PvP duration reduction or something like, we have a much firmly ground to play the 'few bad apples' defense.
But if we are willing to offer nothing....if we are willing only to think in terms of anti-grief, and battles instead of the grief potential, then we will fight the same losing battle that Bounty Hunters had, and the nerf they took was about as lucky as you'll get.
As to the power of diseases, yes they're less know. I'll reserve judgement on this finding though because Adv RC will go live when this proposed change does. Whether the ticks are light or not after that...we'll see.
Jacore, MCM, Tempest
Alexia19 wrote:
It should be FIXED, not nerf... How the hell could someone say nerf AOE Disease when it doesnt even work.
Because it WILL be fixed. It's being looked at now to be fixed in an upcoming publish. And when it IS fixed, all hell will break loose. Why? Because the Advanced Resiliance will be fixed as well. That gives the AoE Disease an extra bonus. And this will be the Master Medic Crafted Item, and if it goes the way I think it will then those amongst us who do currently grief-play will become notorious with their MCM AoE Diseases across their server...and then the whining will start...and then the nerf bat will swing. And when it hits us, it will hit hard.
Better to prepare for the coming storm now by either figuring a way to avoid it via compromise, or erecting a wall of protection by using the same defensive argument(which MUST carry weight) against any and all nerf-criers...
If that is aimed at me, I have to take issue. My complaint is NOT about taking wounds in the course of an honest fight and having to sit on the sidelines to get healed. That's valid and how they SHOULD work. My problem is the rediculous number and difficulty of repairingwounds a mind disease causes. I understand commando's can do nasty health wounds. Anyone with novice medic and a good wound pack B can fix that in a relatively short time. It takes agood doc to cure disease, or a long time with a good entertainer to fix the absurd amount of mind wounding a CM's disease can do.
And what about the BH mind attack? Each combat profession has their special attack. CM are offensive, as well as defensive. Our poisons and diseases are supposed to make up for what we lack, or have sacrificed to become CMs. Personally, I have a problem with those CMs who find it entertaining to go targetting people in cantinas or high faction areas relentlessly with poisons, but I understand that this is a war and things happen. Yes, innocents do get hurt. It's all a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
After reading some of the posts, I agree that the duration is a bit long, and that targeting corpses is a bit much, but I don't agree with people who think that the design should be resurfaced. There are simply CMs who abuse their abilities, and no matter the profession there will be those who abuse the system.
No matter which profession forum you go to there's going to be some complaint or another, and sure, there may be fifty or so people complaining, but even then that's such a small percentage. I believe that the problem isn't so much the system but the 'griefer' - everything from revenge TEF to the immature abuse of incapacitation.
what Sekir said, fix the corpse targeting bug and there is nothing to complain about.
people will always cry and complain, even if there is nothing to complain about. some need that to feel better - just ignore them and have fun.
CM is a tactical weapon, too bad this game hasn't anything yet to warrant it.
"Hey doc, I'll pay you 10,000 credits to fix me up so I don't have to sit here for 2 hours while novice medics tickle my HAM"
I'm sort of rambling here, but the fact is. 5 minutes of downtime sitting in the cantina, and 5 minutes or less with a doctor will easily get someone back in the fight again or off to do whatever they want.
Is 5 minutes really that much grief? Look at those 5 minutes and think how many stacks of 5 minutes go into gathering all the resources you need to make the disease packs that do this. Now think about how many uses of the disease pack are completely useless because the commando you were fighting (and diseased) killed you in 1 shot, then had his buddy duel and deathblow him before even 1 tick of disease damage happened.
people act like downtime in a massively multiplayer online game is unheard of.
Being able to disease a corpse needs to be fixed bigtime though. once AE diseases are usable, corpses will inadvertantly get hit with disease and that should not happen.
One more thing to note. Poison doesn't last 15 minutes. After each incap there is a significant delay before you start to take poison, bleeding, or fire damage again. Its that delay that makes it seem like the poison is lasting so long, when for a good portion of that time it is dormant.
fixing revenge TEF will solve some issues, no need to nerf AOE disease or posion, increase the damage and then cut down the duration length and reduce the tick time. AOEs are terror weapons, they're designed to chase people away, ie to get them out of the fight. who's fault is it if you keep coming back to be hit by them over and over again? I could say the same thing about BHs ruining my evening of play time by spamming eyeshot at me so i cant heal my group or whatever. Its pointless to complain about it though. All you have to do is find a way to work with it. Its not that hard. If someone is using revenge TEF in a town, well when everyone leaves for a couple minutes then comes back, guess what, no more revenge flag, stop shooting them to get TEFed in the first place. Go to another city.
Frankly I dont see the need to increase the effectiveness of cures either, I am a master doctor as well as a master cm, and I have had no problems curing either diseases or poisons with my own packs. Either my poison/disease or another CMs poisons/disease. I havent ran into one mob yet that i cant cure a poison or disease in 1 shot. IE mantigrues voritors etc etc. Maybe the docs using the cures are trying with an A pack, or substandard parts or something. I use all advanced components and the best resources I can find for my cures.