Doctor Archive

Hello Fellow Docs,

As many of you found with the lastest patch, Enhance Ds brought a lot of light to our profession. Well, now that they work a little more reliably. Some may consider it even too powerful. I can just see that an outcry of pure combat classes thatwill start pouring in soon about killing the only thing I've been waiting for while leveling my DOC. In case the decision makers on the SWG development teamwill wantto reduce the effectiveness of our buffs, we need to start a thread discussing what are the possible balancing alternatives. I personally don't have any ideas but with the breadth of the player base someone might come up with one.

For example, right now the buffs that I can make last about 3 hours. IMO this is great, you don't wanna be buffing repeatedly; YOU wanna have fun! However, if they wanted to reduce the effectiveness (let's say) by 75% (to bring it in line with PvP), I'd rather have the duration of the buff reduced than it's amount. I hope you get my point.

I'm hoping that I won't get replies that are completely flaming and unconstructive. I understand that some of you feel like there is no need for this thread, if you're one of them then please do not respond.

Thank you for your consideration.

If anything the combat classes will WANT our buffs to stay at the level they are now...

Until we start charging for them

They are not too powerful. I actually have people willing to pay for a buff cycle now. I thinka fully experimented kit lasting 3 hours is great (probalby inline with a casual player's night of playing). They can pay once, and if careful, keep them for the entire night.

We finally can charge for something other than Stims. Few will pay for healing since they can go watch a sitcom while they are sitting in the MC. Does it help people who like to spam specials ? Heck ya, but if you die, you lose them, so I don't see a problem here. If you reduce the effectiveness of them, you may as well just not be a doctor. The buffs are one the of the main reasons for going this route.

Jun Horde, Master Dr., Tarqinas

My two creds. . . I think that good buffs are the anti-nerf. What do I mean? I think it's *GREAT* that SOE has adjusted up the action cost of using knockdown for fighter classes (I will say that they perhaps overdid it, as I've been hearing a lot of people saying they are now having a lot of difficulty solo'ing mobs that are the same level as them, because they try to use specials, the specials fail/miss, and then they don't have enough action left to try again, so perhaps SOE was a little too agressive with the changes.

However, generally, I like the idea of increasing the cost of specials to the point where Doc secondary-stat buffs have meaning. If you can, unbuffed, spam out your specials, why would you bother to ever get those secondary stats buffed? But by having stiff health/action costs associated with specials, those 1000+ point buffs that Master Docs can do to the secondary stats suddenly starts to make a big difference in how powerful a character is. So I say, Kudo's to the devs, and don't listen to the whiners who want to go back to spamming unbuffed.

Actually, I also think that the devs timing of this change was just about perfect. For the first month of play on a new server, there aren't going to be any/many master Doc's to give out buffs, so you kind of need to give players a break for the first month. Then once the Doc population starts to increase, throw in these adjustments that make Doc buffs desirable and valuable.

I must be having bad luck with enhance Paks after the patch. I made a new batch of D enhance paks, all lasting 2-3 hours and having a base enhance of 500-700. Well off to Dantooine I went and buffed all 6 stats, none of them buffed for more than 400. Usually they do a lot more that that.

Buffs effectiveness seems to be getting reduced along with damage healing and wound healing if you have a droid out with a low medical rating. If you're using a med 1 module, you're only going to get about 1/3 of what the pack would have done. It also seems to be using the droid's rating even if you're in a medical center and should be receiving 100% of the stim's value.

I can't understand why anybody would call them too powerful.. If you want them, either become a doc or find a doctor to buff you. Its not like we areoverpowered as a class because of this, unlike bounty hunters. We can do this to everybody, not just ourselves. Also we can not buff mind pools, so we are nerfed there. Also our buff packs require resources, time putting them together and have limited charges.

And have you fought against some of those top level monsters? You almost need everybody max buffed in your group just so you don't all get wiped out.

A pvp raiding party running into a town with everybody buffed out is a good tactic.. not overpowered.

Also this doesn't increase anybody's damage output.. Just think of it as like putting on a lot of temporary armor. I supposed you'd consider wearing lots of armor overpowered too, eh?

I am alos of the mind that nerfing enhances would be downright dumb. If a fighter thinks to themself that some buffed guy is just too pwoerful for them, then they can always go get buffed themself. It takes a good bit of dedication, learning one of the more complicated professions and lots of skill points to make it to Master Doc. MORE skill points than it would take to Master Pitoller or Rifle, for example. We SHOULD have a pretty powerful ability compared to what they need to spend to get what they do.

So buffs now look attractive to those folks and can be quite useful. It looks to me like we were finally broght back in line, not like we ended up with an overkill ability.

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Petao wrote:

Well, now that they work a little more reliably.

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Wait a sec, how do they work more reliably now? My best enhance packs are performing worse after the patch because of the droid changes, and still seeing a wildly variable range of buffs. Just last night my best enhance pack D buffed someone for 347 with my surgical droid next to me. The person after that got buffed in the upper 900s.

Do I think that Enhances are great? Yes

Do I think that they need to be nerfed? No

Sure I have had people complain about my buffs, and people who try to taunt me saying that they will be nerfed soon. But the reality is that anyone can get these buffs, all you have to do is ask. Just because I may have every buff on and then I kill you does not give you the right to complain about my abilities and wanting them nerfed. If you are so worried about balance and what the other classes see as fair, why don't you stand in the med center shouting that you are selling buffs to people to even the playing field.

People need to think up ways to be construtive with their abilities and find new uses for them not initially thought of instead of crying nerf after the first sign of them being useful.

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Dumahim wrote:

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Petao wrote:

Well, now that they work a little more reliably.

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Wait a sec, how do they work more reliably now? My best enhance packs are performing worse after the patch because of the droid changes, and still seeing a wildly variable range of buffs. Just last night my best enhance pack D buffed someone for 347 with my surgical droid next to me. The person after that got buffed in the upper 900s.

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Put your droid back in your datapad and buff in the med center. I realiably get buffs of 1500-2000 every time when I do this after patch.

Nerfing buffs is silly since they're not even a class-ability. Anyone can have them, just go find a doctor.

They're more reliable because you can cross town boundaries with them.

I'm just happy that we finally have a semi-reliable income source. People can get free (slow)wound healing, but they can't get enhancements from anyone but us.