Combat Medic Archive
Thread: To the Combat Medic Correspondant : Is Havla functioning as intended?
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PinnerAugustin
Mon Jun 14, 2004 8:59 am
#1
My question to is simply, "Is havla functioning as intended when utilized by Combat Medics?"
The Facts: Havla is a food. It's function is as follows, "Reduces the player's heal recovery time." The havla I have seen has a fill of 33 and 24 uses.
My Encounter with a CM using Havla: I'm a MTKA/MD. I was at a base defense on Saturday night. I was inside the base healing and buffing. A certain CMwho doesn't like me for various reasonsbegan circling the base attempting to find holes in the walls to throw poison at me. Once he was able to find a hole he began to throw area poisons inside the base. I know that he was targeting me specifically because the CM's name would come up as having poisoned me. If he was targeting others andI was just getting hit from the area effect,the poison application would have simple read, "You have been poisoned". This CM was using havla to throw a poison every two seconds onAction and Mind stats. Soon all of the doctors in the base found themselves with zero mind and action, unable to even heal themselves. All TKAs with Meditation IV, myself included,were unable to heal their poison because the new poison application every 2 seconds or so would break us out of the meditation stance. So after about 75 poison applications the CM's stomach had reached 99 and he was unable to throw anymore poisons.
The Result of a CM using Havla: Taking into account in terms of time,the CM having to find new holes in the base wall and player recovery times from the poison effects, All bases defenders were totally combat ineffective for approximately 6-7 minutes. If the CM had been using Disease in conjunction with the poison, many of the players without high secondary stats would have been triple incapped. The only reason that we were able to all survive the encounter was that our opponents did not take out our Turrets. Thus they were not able to enter the base. I guess they didn't have any swordsman in the party.
The Argument against Havla: From a common sense standpoint, a single CM should not be able to absolutely negate the abilities doctors and TKA meditation to heal poison and disease for 6-7 minutes.
Havla is stated to reduce heal recovery time. It may be a matter of semantics but heal recovery time should have nothing to do with a CM's ability to throw poison.
If anyone wants to debate the points that I have outlined above, that's fine, but I'm really looking for a response from the Combat Medic Correspondant (or even an Adminstrator/Developer). I have written this post as constructively as possible and cannot control players responses to it. I should hope that I can get an official response to my question before it is locked or deleted. If you feel that it should be lock or deleted for some reason I would appreciate it if the CM Correspondant/Adminstator/Developer would be so good as to post their response in a new Thread.
Thank you very much,
jfang
Mon Jun 14, 2004 9:06 am
#2
Texxie (the combat medic correspondent), the chef correspondent, and possibly the doctor correspondent have brought this to the attention of the devs. They are pressing very hard for an official line, but have not received one yet.
The majority of the forums agree that Halva crossed with poisons and diseases is a PvP breaking system, and hope it will be addressed.
This is something of a dead horse by this point... 
Edit: removedpotentially insultingclause.
Message Edited by jfang on 06-14-2004 02:01 PM
Ternque01
Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:40 am
#4
jfang, I do not believe in any way that PinnerAugustin is trolling. Raising awareness about the problem is probably the best thing at this point to reach a solution. While the devs might be aware of the problem, so many more players need to be educated on certain imbalances.
vortexala
Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:57 am
#5
This issue has been discussed and reported by me, with generous information and data provided by the Chef correspondent. It was presented to the devs as a 'hot issue'.
There is no further information available in regards to this issue at this time.
There is no further information available in regards to this issue at this time.
jfang
Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:59 am
#6
I agree that it is not likely a troll. I was in a hurry when I wrote up my response, and like I said I assumed it wasn't a troll. Your right though in that my response was not phrased well... Sorry.
Let's see, where is that edit button...
Templar1865
Mon Jun 14, 2004 11:00 am
#7
Ya know, I'm pretty new here as a CM, but I'm already stunned at the number of non-CMs posting in this area. As a MBE, I saw my fair share of tailors, CHs, and chefs in the BE forums, but that made sense--we all were interdependent. Most of these "CM" issues need to be posted in the general gameplay forums or in the development forums dedicated to the combat rebalance. I feel like if you have a question for the correspondent, use the correspondent's e-mail/personal messaging system that SOE provides on this site. Using the general message board inherently asks the entire community to respond. If you have a question for one person, ask one person.
Secondly and more specifically, think about the mechanics behind Havla. It reduces, for lack of a better term, a generic "medical" timer that each character has. Anything that the game has tagged as a medicine is going to be affected by it (out of curiousity, has anyone used havla with pet stims?). I believe that buffs and poisons are considered medical supplies (in addition to the "healing" supplies like cures and heals), so when havla affects the generic timer, it affects all of these. Don't know how deep the coding is to make category changes like this, so not sure how high on the to-do list it might be (if the devs are entertaining any changes in the first place).
FWIW,it's probably a good idea to avoid sweeping, over-generalizing statements like, "Get rid of Combat Medic as a profession as all it ever does is grief players and break dynamics...." My primary use of the profession is to--gasp, shock--heal my teammates during combat. I personally find the PvP system in SWG broken and illogical to the point that I avoid it unless it is a guild/multi-guild battle event. Comments like the one above really don't do anything productive.
PinnerAugustin
Mon Jun 14, 2004 11:22 am
#8
vortexala wrote:
This issue has been discussed and reported by me, with generous information and data provided by the Chef correspondent. It was presented to the devs as a 'hot issue'.
There is no further information available in regards to this issue at this time.
Oh cool, thanks for the feedback, Vortexala....
Pancrazio
Mon Jun 14, 2004 11:47 am
#9
Templar1865 wrote:
Ya know, I'm pretty new here as a CM, but I'm already stunned at the number of non-CMs posting in this area. As a MBE, I saw my fair share of tailors, CHs, and chefs in the BE forums, but that made sense--we all were interdependent. Most of these "CM" issues need to be posted in the general gameplay forums or in the development forums dedicated to the combat rebalance. I feel like if you have a question for the correspondent, use the correspondent's e-mail/personal messaging system that SOE provides on this site. Using the general message board inherently asks the entire community to respond. If you have a question for one person, ask one person.
Secondly and more specifically, think about the mechanics behind Havla. It reduces, for lack of a better term, a generic "medical" timer that each character has. Anything that the game has tagged as a medicine is going to be affected by it (out of curiousity, has anyone used havla with pet stims?). I believe that buffs and poisons are considered medical supplies (in addition to the "healing" supplies like cures and heals), so when havla affects the generic timer, it affects all of these. Don't know how deep the coding is to make category changes like this, so not sure how high on the to-do list it might be (if the devs are entertaining any changes in the first place).
FWIW,it's probably a good idea to avoid sweeping, over-generalizing statements like, "Get rid of Combat Medic as a profession as all it ever does is grief players and break dynamics...." My primary use of the profession is to--gasp, shock--heal my teammates during combat. I personally find the PvP system in SWG broken and illogical to the point that I avoid it unless it is a guild/multi-guild battle event. Comments like the one above really don't do anything productive.
templar, I think your argument is rediculous. You sound to me like you can't stand the fact that cm WILL be nerfed. I will
not say anymore on this (in fear that you might embarace yourself more) except that this thread subject was thought out
well and makes great points.
Pancrazio
Templar1865
Mon Jun 14, 2004 1:08 pm
#10
"templar, I think your argument is rediculous [sic]."
Fair enough--what argument, though? To sum up:
- If you want to ask a person a question, ask them directly (no need to use the public forum for it)
- I think Havla affects the medicine use timer (others have further clarified the concept, probably 3 (or 4 timers, if you include petstims) timers), and to eliminate its impact on poison might take some programming work or else you'll eliminate its benefit on true healing actions as well
- Avoid sweeping generalizations about any profession. There are going to be jerks no matter what profession you're talking about--from what I've seen so far, there are some great CM players out there and there are major griefers as well.
Which of those three things is ridiculous?
(And as far as nerfage goes, big deal. At some point, every profession gets love, every profession gets nerfed. My character concept doesn't focus much on using CM for combat any way).
jkray8472
Mon Jun 14, 2004 3:14 pm
#11
Happymob wrote:
This should be possible to change without huge code changes. I do not believe that there is a general medical timer. Instead, there appear to be 3 separate timers (healing, ranged healing, and wound), each with their own base time and each with their own skill mod that affects the timer. If skills can affect the different healng speeds differently (for example, notice as one advances in medic that wound healing speed stays the same even as regular damage healing speed improves), the food should be targeted as well.
Now, one problem might be that poisoning and ranged healng are on the same timer (I don't know this for afact, but I supsect it's true). We may lose fast area stim throwing if we lose fast poison throwing (while docs maintain fast regular stim throwing). Considering how damaging havla is with poisons, I can live with this.
I can confirm that poisoning is governed by the "ranged injury treatment speed" mod. I have +25 mods to that on my outfit, and it increases the speed at which I toss area stims, and my poisons/diseases.
The problem with Havla is that it increases all three of these mods. Perhaps if it was only used for Injury Treatment--no more insta-buffing. Perhaps make it less filling (maybe a use of 10), and only for Injury Treatment. Then Doctors could spam CurePoison/Cure Disease packs, and actually help manage the area poison/disease effects of the Combat Medics. Lowering the filling would allow a doctor to use it many times in a row, thus taking care of his group for long enough to potentially eliminate the CM.
I do think that allowing Poisons/Diseases to have no timer is game-breaking. I can toss one every 5 seconds (yes--one second after my animation ends) just with my +25 speed suit. That's plenty fast. The only time I would ever use Havla in this situation is to teach someone a lesson (i.e. grief a jerk). I could pop a havla and disease all 9 of his stats. 
But in PvP situations, it is game-breaking. I hope they fix it soon...
haho
Mon Jun 14, 2004 5:12 pm
#12
lool love that last comment, its typical CM...
'Id pop a havla to grief a jerk' - my friend, you are the jerk for doing that.......
PoisonPeZ
Mon Jun 14, 2004 5:58 pm
#13
I have made my point known in other posts. I have been playing this game since it was available to the public and this is the first time I have come out in support of nerfing a profession.
First spider venom and then havla...what is wrong with the quality control department?
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