Combat Medic Archive

Thread: Combat medics intentionally misbalanced

jfang
Tue May 11, 2004 9:51 am
#1



Many player say that combat medics are too strong. "They ignore armor, they ignore damage mitigation, they are extremely hard to resist". Many other player say they are too weak "Our damage per second is less than a master marksman, if in a 1-1 fight we die easy". And, to a great extent, both are true. However, this is very possibly the intention of the devs.


Combat medics to a constant amount of damage. The low resist rate, and the fact that it bypasses armor and mitigation means that no matter what you are fighting, you can expect to do x damage by the 30th second, y damage by the minute mark, and pretty much completely determine your affect on combat before even seeing your opponent. As a byproduct of this, we are (likely intentionally) very strong where other classes are weak, and very weak where other classes are strong.


As extreme cases, imagine fighting adiseased nunawith 1 health point. A combat medic would functionally have no effect at all, and be literally useless. as a poison has no chance to tick. However, if you are fighting a creature with heavy armor and 99% resists to every type of attack, a combat medic's poisons and diseases are the only real practical way to damage it, and the combat medic will do 80% of the damage to the creature.


If you analyze the effects of poisons and diseases, they also mimic this. A fighter is strongest in a short battle. As time goes by, HAM costs from attacks start to add up, damage pools start to add up, and in theory they lose effectiveness, and buffs might even start to wear out (such as spice downers). A fighter is also strong when soloing (if properly armored and prepared). Contrast this with a combat medic, who actually becomes stronger the longer battle wears on (get past the 10 second delay for the first tick, disease cause BF which makes the disease stronger, and you have a chance to stack poisons). And if a combat medic solos anything, bugs not included, the lack of defenses can become a serious problem.


Even if you look at the scenarios presented by both sides, you see this is the case. In areas where combatants are strong, such as fighting storm troopers or laturn birds, a combat medic has much less than par effect. However, in areas where combatants are weak, such as in PvP, or against high resist nightsisters and tusken overseers, a combat medics do a very disproportionately large amount of damage.


Those who argue that a combat is too weak in generalPvE and needs strengthing, and those who argue that a combat medic is too strong in PvP are both right. However, they are ignoring the fact that this was likely as designed by the devs. To simplyshow thenumbers to the devs (who havelikely run the numbers themselves countless times) and expect change is unlikely. If you want to instigate change, you should attack the vision ofhow poisons affectcombat, rather than the implementation.


But then again, do you really want to turn a combat medic's style of fighting into the same as pistoleers, commandos, bounty hunters, fencers, and pretty much every other type of combatant out there...
SioBabble
Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
#2

I'd suggest that the problem is not CMs.


The problem is player defenses, particularly the fact that with doctor buffs, the wearing of composite armor is trival and has no down side, unlike the original intent, that is, armor incumbrance would reduce offensive damaging power of any player wearing armor. Damage mitigation obviously also plays a role in heightening the effectiveness of a CM attack as opposed to a pure combat player attack.


CMs seem very powerful because their attacts ignore the armorand mitigationthat insulate players from far more devastaing attacks dished out by pure combat types.


We're seeing the result of 5 months of combat imbalance, starting with the nerf of creatures in pub 5, exacerbated by changes in doc buffs and enhanced chef buffs in subsequent publishes that make poison and disease attacks much more powerful than they'd appear to unarmored, unbuffed players. Under that circumstance, you'd be dead from other attacks long before a CM's attack tick gets to you.






Tazz vonMannstein Baron-Administrator of Corellia, master navigator of Corellia, captain of the Gregarious Gurreck

Sio Babble MBH/MCH/Cabana Boy; master of Tyson, the GNORT OF DEATH

Jeffn Akbar Nerfed from here to Lok MD/MCM

Zanti Agaesia Bothan MBE, 12 point Master Chef, Havoc Squadron Ace pilot


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