Development Cycle Archive

What defines theCombat Medicrole in combat?

In PvE, a Combat Medic is purely for healing. The poisons and diseases are completely useless. 600 damage every 8 seconds on any hard level mob is a drop in the bucket to what I can do with Pistol 4.

In PvP, it is throwing poisons and diseases, and occasionaly providing a heal right before dying.

What basic combat elements should they possess?

Group support with healing and enemy suppression attacks.

What offensive abilities?

Poison and disease. The damage currently is about right for any other damage output.

What defensive abilities?

Natural defensive stats added as you progress up the skill tree. Put a seperate one in each tree so you would have to go MCM to get all bonuses.

What unique abilities?

Ranged/area healing. Poison and disease.

Should add what advantage or asset in group combat?

The ability to contribute to the total damage output with poisons, and to heal groups with ranged/area heals.

How could/should they interact with other professions?

Use other professions to obtain resources and equipment. Require the use of other combat professions to "tank" enemies and provide defense.

What interaction / dependencies should exist with other combatants?

CM's currently have NO benefit in combat other then PvP. Doctors get status(read combat inflicted) cures, cure poison/disease (no food poisoning yet), enhancements,and res abilities. Due to the nature of enhancements, which have made conventional healing OBSOLETE in combat, doctors are the preferred choice in PvE. In PvP, Combat Medics are welcomed into groupsBECAUSE of their poison and disease ability, not because of area/ranged healing ability.

What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?

If everyone thinks that Combat Medics should be purely combat support, I say ok. Just make Combat Medics the ONLY medics who can heal, revive, cure overt or fighting players. For Doctors and Medics, supporting someone in combat would not even be an option. Stick to the rear with the gear if thats what everyone wants.

That aside, I think things are fine now with afew exceptions:

1. PvE poison/disease is VERY weak.

2. Mind heal is worthless due to the extreme amount of wounds cause. It would be better to res someone.

3. Buffs have made healing damage obsolete. Anything that causes enough damage to overcome the enhancements will kill you faster then the CM can throw stims.

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rLHitman wrote:

"lmfao and that isn't a nerf? bloody hell you people are stupid."

Why should every other combat profession geta 75% pvp damage reduction but not combat medics? Haven't you noticed this?

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Vagabond1101 wrote:
What defines the Combat Medic role in combat?
This should be geared more towards healing, keeping players alive, temporarily curing disease and stopping bleed wounds. The traditional role combat medics have played in most movies I've seen is a fairly simple one, keep a patient alive long enough to reach a hospital or to patch 'em up and send 'em back out.

What basic combat elements should they possess?
Maybe basic weapons skills, novice marksman or 4 in a specific weapon instead of Ranged Support
or give them a choice between a ranged weapon or melee weapon

What offensive abilities?
None, with the exception of the weapon they've specialized in

What defensive abilities?
There again just the fallback weapon

What unique abilities?
Short term buffs ( ie doctor buffs but less effect and less time )
Medical e-vac = the ability to use a vehicle to transport an incapacitated/diseased/bleeding patient to a point of safe treatment

Should add what advantage or asset in group combat?
Short term buffs, fast healing, Maybe the ability to use poisons and diseases but not to manufacture them. Diseases and poisons are the realm of bio-engineers.

How could/should they interact with other professions?
Bio-Engineers = Use the poisons and diseases they manufacture
Commando's and other combat profeesions - healing, short term buffs, poison & disease use
Artisans and crafters - Specific and specialized components or agents necessary in buffs

What interaction / dependencies should exist with other combatants?
The combat medic should be relied/depended upon for a quick heal, quick buff, medi-vac, and so on

What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?
Provide in-combat rapid and precision healing.

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Everyone is allowed to have an opinion but there are a few things wrong with this. This suggestion would make CM's less usefull than doctors yet would still require the higher skill point cost. IMO Commandos and other combat professions shouldn't be able to heal, this takes away from the role of doctors, CM's, and medics. The current damage that commandos can deal with their arsenal is just fine without the addition of a Medical DoT, another profession should apply the DoT and I am just wondering which "other" combat professions would you suggesthave the ability since it is clear you don't consider CM a combat profession. This post also screams to nerf doctors by removing the doctor's ability to craft the components required for buffs, stimpacks, cure packs, and cause them to depend on an artisan crafter. Currently Doctors, CM's, BE's and medics are required to take artisan and scout in order to collect their own resources and since the Dev's have blocked every attempt to change this, I feel this requrement is enough to justify doctor's, medics, CM's, and BE's being able to craft their own components. Although I am not totaly against the crafting of poison/disease being moved to the BE tree, a CM with no other skills will not be able to generate the cash flow needed to support his proffession specific needs. Ifall other weaponswere changed so they can onlybe used40 times before they fall apart I will go for this proposal.

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Kavedawg wrote:

CM progression

Although CM's are forced to grind the crafting experience requirement, I think the amount of experience needed is in line or slghtly low. As it stands now, crafting is the limiting factor on how quickly someone can master CM and it still does not take long to reach master level from novice. There is a heated argument against CM's that they should not be a combat class and should not be allowed to apply poisons and diseases. I dissagree with the argument but since 75% of the experience required to advance a CM is medical experience some change to the experience requirement could be made. Since medical experience is easily attainable for a CM with area heal, I suggest again that combat experience be used to advance the combat medic support line instead of medical experience. you seem to have a decent grip on the profession, but when was the last time you went to go PvE as a CM? unless you are suggesting that the devs give xp to CM's for psn and disease in PvE, you obviously haven't niticed that CM's have no good way to get combat xp without another combat profession. In one of the last patches the devs took away the combat xp from psn & disease, making combat xp nearly impossible for a CM to get.

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Grozzer
DSB
Master Combat Medic

"Health, Action, or Mind, it's still your ass..."
-Adopted Combat Medic Motto

I like Combat Medic and it's current role as a Chemical Warfare Specialist. In fact I like virtually everything about CM just as it is.

I would like to see2 changes to the Combat Medic:

1) To make the PvPers shut up, impose the 75% penalty in Player-vs-Player combat.

2) Allow ranged stims to heal mind also.

A 1000 tick mind poison... hmmm.. that's 100 damage per second (poisons tick every 10 seconds, not every 8, feel free to have your CM friendstime it from when they launch their weapon). A 75% reduced T21 even through armor does more damage then that.

The problem here is not the damage amount, it's hitting an unhealable pool. Hopefully we will see a more accessible mind healing ability after the Combat Revamp and that problem is taken care of.

The other problem would be AoE. Docs have long been pushing for a proper counter, usch as an AoE cure or immunization method. The Devs, when presented the latter idea as a possible Master Doc benefit, listed it as one among several ideas that they liked. We don't know if it will be implemented, but the Docs are trying to get something done on that front.

Let me put it this way, though, if you got 1001 points fo damage to health every 10 seconds, would you still be screaming nerf?

Ok, how about a complete and total cure for disease that will completely cure you of it without your taking any damage whatsoever? Will that do?

Simplymake sure you bring alonga Doc for your raids and you're covered. Not having a Doctor with you is like playing chess without any Rooks. That's what mass PvP battles in SWG are, a big chess game. Bring the right pieces and you've got it covered.

Of course I personally think there are still some issues involved, such as the inability of a Doc to properly counter AoE DoTs and Mind Damage simply being unhealable in an accessible fashion, in the way Health and Action are, but at least the latter should be addressed after the Ombat Revamp and the former is presumably being looked at.