Combat Medic Archive

(This post is working off the assumption that it is not "fair" for a player, in particular a combat medic, to have a decisive impact on a battle when not engaged in combat. If you do not agree with this assumption, you are likely to disagree with this post.)

One possibility which does not seem to have been considered so far is to implement a 75% damage reduction for all DOT attacks (in particular, poisons and diseases, but for bleeds and for being on fire as well), but only when the victim is not in active combat. When the victim is in combat with somebody or something(in an attack position and combat music is playing), DOT attacks will continue as they currently exist.

The reasoning behind this is that if you have time to take a break, you are not aggravating the wound. For example, in real life, if you are on fire and calmly lie down and roll around, you will be injured much less than if you are running at full speed and fanning the fires. If you have a significant cut on your arm, if you are punching and kicking everything in sight you will cause a lot more injury to yourself than if you sit quietly and hold your arm above your chest.

The result of this change would be that a combat medic's strength in combat would not be exceptionally decreased, but a would be victim has a much better chance of surviving a post-combat medic encounter if he or she can kill the combat medic (or otherwise withdraw from combat). This would prevent the "poison you, clone, and kill you" phenomenon which I have heard exists. This would also reduce the possibility of throwing an area poison outside a base and poisoning everybody inside of it, then walking in 2 minutes later and one shot killing all the defenders. However, if there is an active invasion of the base going on, a combat medic's offensive power would not be decreased.

A byproduct of this is that the duration of a poison becomes much more important. If you have a poison lasting 3 minutes, it will subside much sooner and let somebody return to combat faster (assuming they weren't killed). If you have a poison which lasts 8 minutes, even if it is weaker, it can keep somebody out of active combat for a much longer period of time, unless they get it cured first.

To clarify, my original intent was that this would only affect PvP combat, not PvE combat.

And also of note, this would help against the "poison you, run as far away as possible for 2 minutes, then return to kill you" trick combat medics currently use.