Combat Medic Archive
Thread: What is the main problem you have with the +1 change
Kavedawg, I love you.
I initially disagreed with this change, but I am beginning to accept it and almost agree with it.
It really is not that hard to dish out 1 point of damage if you stay alive. The problem is staying alive. However, we are a SUPPORT class. We are NOT a combat class despite the combat in our name. I PvP completely with my PA and rarely alone. I ride with riflemen and pistoleers so them hitting the last 1 point should be no problem. I will still be extremely effective as support with my heals AND my poison.This should in theory help reduce the griefing.
As long as ALL dots are affected by this change, then i agree with it.
On the other side of the ball, i have relied on poison to save my life countless times when getting jumped or load attacked etc. Even if i'm down I can pray that the poison finishes them off before they get to me. It is my main weapon so it should kill right?
IMHO, the best way to solve the griefing hit and run CM without this change is to make the CM have to dish out the 1 point of damage at ANY time. So if i fire my gun and hitfor more than 1 point of mind then my mind poisonshould incap. While this may still allow us to shoot, poison and run, and least we will have to engage in some combat, and it will also stop AoE poisons from taking out an entire group unless you somehow manage to shoot them all. Just a thought tho.
If this change goes live, I will not fully agree with it. But I will understand that it is for the best interest of the game and grow and change with the changes(nerfs if you will).
Kavedawg, i believe you are doing an excellent job of getting the players input and rellaying that to the correspondent program.Thank you for your hardwork.
Z and Valkahr,
Some type of innoculation will be part of the solution to the issue of poisons/diseases in general. I'm becoming increasingly convinced of it.
But I do not think Docs will get proactive innoculation packs. This treads too closely on the role of Armorsmiths which provide proactive resists/damage mitgation to damage, and even for docs if it had any duration similar to a buff really is a closet nerf to having them out in the field where they deserve to be.
However, the crucial problem that exists in the CM poison/Doc cure debate (beyond PBAOE) is the ability of the CM to repoison 8 seconds later. As long as this exists in an unchecked form, the 'get a doc' card is worthless as a counterargument for us, because we can always win a game of attrition unless the docs get Ranged AOE, which they will never get because range is the defining attribute of our class.
What I see likely to happen, and reasonably easily coded is that a successful Cure Poison/Disease by a doc leaves a lingering timer (innoculation). It's either a timer that provides 100% resistance for the next 1-2 minutes whichI sincerely hope doesn't come to pass (then docs always win), or that it provides x% resistance for the next 1-2 minutes, which is a reasonable balance.
This issue is coming to us...not right now but fairly soon. It is one of the things that we will have to start discussing fairly soon. Mechanics must exist in a fight that limits the CMs ability to wage an attrition war with 100% success without letting the docs win 100% of the time.
Jacore MD/MCM, though currently an exotic dancer thanks to a Holocron.
P.S. On the issue of staying alive. A big help to the balancing of this change would be if the Combat Medic where to recieve some kind of defensive mods somewhere in the skill tree. We *ARE* a combat class partially, we had to learn how to use a gun and get ranged weapon support so somewhere along the line it would be nice to pick up some kinda ranged or melee defense bonuses. This would give us a better chance of staying alive long enough to dish out the last 1hp, because most of the time we are dead shortly after the poison hits.
Kave, maybe you can lobby for that? 
But mind damage isn't the problem being addressed. The Incap Dance is the problem.
EveningShadow wrote:
This fixes a symptom and not the problem. The only issue with mind poison incapping is the fact that it can not be healed. With no way to heal mind, Mind poison becomes leaps and bounds more powerful then the other types.
Ekko,
We may now see a bit of that in our future, but I think it will be modest.
Right now there are some pretty substantial mod changes going on to pure combat classes like pistol/carbine/rifle to give them better to-hit and defensive mods to bring them more in line with BH. Much improved defensive mods on PC melee classes to let them better tanks.
What I think you're seeing finally is a realization/fix of one of the worst oversights of the game, IMO: a lack of realization that people will become Master Dabbler to synthesize skillsets that are superior to straight Mastery.
Given that, we may see some slight mods added to our class in the future, but I would hazard to say that as long as no other class/monster in this game as an effective resist/defense to our poisons, we have very little chance in getting more defense on our side. If we can proactively get to the point of discussing it, I think we have a strong case to lobby for some of those mods (especially defense vs dizzy or posture change) in exchange for giving up some areas that we will be forced to give up on anyway.
Jacore
Fri'sk,
Now I am actually hoping to eat crow here (i really am), but please point me to a single instance in which a correspondent threw a tantrum and managed to avert a nerf.
The only instance I'm aware of was not pro-actvive but reactive, and that was the riflemen's T21. And that didn't come from rebellion, but rather from a cohesive demonstration that their numerical conclusions were incorrect.
From what i've seen (and I'd love to be wrong) every single time a Correspondent started publicly throwing a fit...nothing good came of it. Kave has a role to be a conduit of information and to try to make reasoned deliveries of our wants and defense of our powers.
The Rebellion is part of GCW, but quite honestly has no place within the Correspondent program. That isn't to say they shoudl be a rubber stamp. But when the boards have become such a flame war as they have, when hostility is this high, having that be by the Correspondents has a much higher chance of being ignored than being listened to.
Jacore
My point was that the only chance i see at all to stop it was a concerted action by both community and correspondent and that if the correspondent doesn't seem to be inclined towards opposition we're doomed to fail.
This nerf is really worrying me, not because i am against balancing, but because i see it as extremly unfair to hit our primary weapon that way.
Think what parameters you need to meet to make a real good poison which you can throw 64 meters and that ticks for maybe 540. All others that are affected simply press a button to apply a DoT and those classes still can incap with skills and abilities within there class.
We won't be able to do that. If the trend is to make us into ranged healers with very limted offensive uses in PvE and griefers in PvP tell me now and ill surrender my 169 skillpoints in CM.
I want to be able to incap as CM not as a Pistoleer or with Marksmanskills and i think 169 points entitle me to that.
I don't think you can put our DoTs in the same category as those of other classes and i don't think you can say poisons are overpowered per se. My server hasn't seen any decent liquid petro fuel class 2 in 4 weeks for example which hampers my ability to make decent poisons substanally.
Now i won't talk vision for our class crap, but inesting 169 skillpoints to be only viable in a larger group doesn't cut it for me.
Fri'sk
I earnestly have sympathy for those who've been victimized by server-specific resoruce shifts. I don't like the fact that power is this disparate across servers. Unfortunately, a rational argument cannot be made not to limit the capabilities of a class depending upon the instance of resources that are provided to it on a specific server. It must be done based upon their capabilities, which looks inherently at very good resource shfits/markets. However, to that point I would say that when the time for specific redress to range/potency comes it should come at the high end with experimental caps...i would never support an across-the-board base reduction that was fully regressive and didn't place at least some emphasis on experimental caps...
I also think as a result of this (presumed completion) that we may better be in a position for a PvE bump...but it will be modest (I don't think we'll double). Our largest chance for meaningful inreases in PvE damage will be when some type of resistance/mitigation to poison/disease exists on NPCs. You must keep in mind that we are among the most effective killers of Jedis and the other high-level NPCs in the game. Not quickest (I'd say TK Masters can drop things the fastest) but efficient interms of risk. Even those with 90% resists 'across the board' don't deflect one point of poison.
I'm not really sure I understand your point about a single button press, but I believe teh pending change will apply to all DOTs...just just single us out.
169 skill points is a lot to spend, and while I agree with Holocron's post that it should provide a slight edge to those who have spent more points, I'm not convinced that applies to us in combat. Keep in mind that we spend~70 points on medic, which has nothign to do with combat. Bounty hunters allocate the same to scout, which again has nothing to do with pure combat. Our 29 points to combat support count fully, but I think quite reasonably we could argue that half of the points in CM are spent towards healing...which is combat support not damage. So exactly how much damage are you expecting for~90 points? Whether or not it's half towards combat is clearly open to interpretation, but these sound bites of 169 skill points....they're easy to throw out, but I'm not really sure how much weight they count for.
To you last point, I'm sorry you find a discussion of our vision to be crap, but it encompasses everything your'e talking about.
Jacore
#1 poison stopping at 1 ham does NOT mean you only need to make 1 damage - buffed people will regenerate this 1 point VERY fast to where one shot will NOT finish the target. It's especially true for poisons affecting HAM on the attacks that are not targeted by specials ! (for example action poison for pistoleer against buffed person - you will NOT kill that person - no specials will do 100 action points regenerated in 1 sec).
#2 Anyone who put miserly 15 skill points (not even master doctor) will render MASTER CM useless.
This change is along the same lines (and proposed by the same person I might add) as boost to cure poison lines, very good boost for Doctor - big nerf to CM.
Zarlor wrote:
Well, there is the incap dance problem, whcih is what I beleive this change was meant to address. It does fix that particular problem, IMHO. Now whether or not that particular thing being fixed is a "positive" is apparently up for debate.
I have been doing some testing my self. Well unvolintary testing on myself is more the words. This is something that I noticed.
If you get hit down to a single digit positive number the very next blow you take will #1 incap you maybe(more on this in a second) and #2 directly determine HOW LONG you are incapped for.
Now I'm not sure how many of you have been killed outright. I mean you just loged into the game for the first time that day you go walking out into the world (ok so I was on lok) and see a big Kimo spawn 100meters form you and start walking away just to feel the hot breath of the one at your back. Then BOOM you are dead.One hit no DB just bam..dead. check the combat spam and he did 2200 points of damage to you. And you have a 800hp health bar.
I have noticed that this imaginary instant death is about -100. What if you have the posion continue after 0 HP but auto heal at say -99? Then unless you duel with your buddy and pray that you can hit -99 you will not get rid of the posion. And if you are posioned and incap you cannot be healed untill posion iscured or for 45 seconds after you hit 0 again if you waited for the -99 auto heal?
Then even if your buddy puts you down you have144 seconds before you can get a heal for anyone unless a Doctor hits you with a Cure. Call it after effects of the posion kinda like a state (ie on fire). So if you buddy puts you down you are unhealable (unless a doctor cures at anytime) for almost 2.5 minutes.
I'm sure there are more flaws in this idea but it was a start. What other resrictions can be put on this to cover the holes?
We gain nothing for Combat Medic from the Medic tree (unlike Doctor), all our skills come from our own tree.
That leaves us with 169 points spent for master and i want to see some decent bang for that. The group supporting abilities are imo overrated, as doctors got the revive skill that's all important in additon to the buffs. A competent doc will easily keep a group up and runnging, so we are really nothing more than a surplus commodity in that regard. But even if i'd accept that we only spend like 90 points on combat related skills we should then be on par with an Elite combat profession and i highly doubt that with the poison nerf, but you can ask a Master Carabine for a cripple shot treat and when he walks over to DB you with his 1 point of mind left you might even agree with me.
If it goes live i'll adapt but i don't think it's fair or balance to treat CM DoTs the same way as secondary attacks of other elie professions.
Sure, all we'll need to do is 1 finishing shot.... assuming we hit the same HAM pool that our poison was working on. If I threw a mind poison and my pistol does health or action damage, I'm pretty screwed.
We'll need a new ability in the CM tree: directed shot. There will need to be 3 of them: direct health, direct action, and direct mind. When you use direct health, your weapon does its damage to the health pool, no matter what weapon you were using. Let's divide the damage by 5, just to make sure this ability isn't abused.
Oh, it will need to be an area-effect attack, though, to complement our area-effect poisons.
If the dev's want this to be an adjustment, rather than a nerf, then they will need to do no less than add this ability. (And even then, it's still a nerf.)
MichaelF77 wrote:
2 biggest problems I have not seen mentioned:#1 poison stopping at 1 ham does NOT mean you only need to make 1 damage - buffed people will regenerate this 1 point VERY fast to where one shot will NOT finish the target. It's especially true for poisons affecting HAM on the attacks that are not targeted by specials ! (for example action poison for pistoleer against buffed person - you will NOT kill that person - no specials will do 100 action points regenerated in 1 sec). #2 Anyone who put miserly 15 skill points (not even master doctor) will render MASTER CM useless.This change is along the same lines (and proposed by the same person I might add) as boost to cure poison lines, very good boost for Doctor - big nerf to CM.
You're just convinced I have a personal mission to "nerf"CMs, don't you? Despite all my posts here and elsewhere defending CMs and expecially how I very vocally feel that CM poisons are definitely not too strong (possible a tad weak, if you ask me.) Yet you are just downright certain I'm here to nerf CMs.... /sigh
First off, I was asked about a solution to the incap dance. I offered the first thing that popped into my head and made certain I trolled these very forums to get all of your opinions on that idea. I passed along those opinions and suggestions at that time. I made it perfectly clear to our Dev that I was absolutely uncertain about the no-incap suggestion and all of the other suggestions easily got equal time. In other words I had reservations, and in no uncertain terms he was told abou them
Second, the poison cure change. I didn't ask for it. Ho-TronRex did. Yes it was on the Doc list, but when it came to the CM list it was there because some CMs asked for it. I didn't put anything on that list that someone else wasn't asking for, and everything folks were asking for went onto that list. I was a compiler of information and that's where it ended.
Some folks wanted to insist that somehow that being an issue for some other CMs what my fault. I pointed all of you to the thread that showed where I was no the one to bring it up. I compiled a list. Nobody else bothered to do it at all, so now I have an agenda to nerf CMs despite stepping up to the plate because other CMs asked me to do that for them? Dude, wake up. You seem to think I have a heck of a lot more pull than I have. I can barely get out Dev to type more than 2 lines to me every other week let alone enter into a conversation or convince the guy of anything.
It should also be noted that despite my request I personally had to do the testing on cures -v- poisons, and that once I had completed that test I was actually convinced that the change made onto Test Center at that time was, in fact, inappropriate for CMs. I publically stated my findings and publically stated my opinion that I had convinced myself that previous fears about lower level cures taking care of a higher letered poison were, in fact, founded. I made sure to pass along my findings and conclusion do our Dev. You'll have to ask Kavedawg about getting permission to make our Devs response public, though, because at that time is when Kavedawg took over as CM correspondent.
I do have listed on the Doc list that we NEED to have the effectiveness ratings of cures listed. WIth such a rating we can really get down and do som validity testing on comparing cures and poisons, but at this time I stand on the side that Cures are likely too strong at the moment. At least you can take comfort that no Doc can keep up with an AoE posion and that even curing any poison will cost them more mind than it costs you to throw it.
As for Regen Rates. That may be a problem. Timing could allevioate part of that, if you try to tie an attack to cover a tick. Regening of hundreds a second, though.... that might be pushing it on how fast a good regen actually works, I'd prefer to see some more concrete numbers opn that one. It is,I think, a very legitimate concern, however.
On your #2 section... I hate to say it, but I have no idea what you were trying to say there.