Doctor Archive
Thread: Significant Healer Nurf in Test Center
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=TestCenter&message.id=39592
As I understand it, and to be sure this is subject to change great deal before it ever get published, that new system temporarily reduce the max HAM instead of doing damage.
Well I think that is big nurf to us doctors and healers in general.
Why? cause we are healers. we HEAL damage. So we are useful when people get hurt.
The new system remove the damage player take from using their special, damage which us healers can and do heal and instead make it into a temporary wound-like reduction in max HAM which we cannot heal.
As some Riflemen pointed out, this bring every ranged combatant down to riflemen level since now they are all depended on natural "heal" to deal with their special cost instead of having healers do it.
This is doubly significant for us Doctors since many people who use specials get buffs on their secondary stats from us doctors because it increase their damage recovery and amount of damage they take due to use of their special. We haven't been able to test the new system to see if it take that into account but it is my fear that it does not. This seriously hurts us doctors as well as everyone who use special with buffs. That is to say all ranged combat profession except riflemen.
Also anyone who chain-spam specials can run out of HAM in about 15 seconds with fast specials(like pistoleer & BH), thats why they have their healers with them to heal them constantly. In most hunting group pets do most of the tanking so healers heal their groupmate who are using specials. This new system would make healers useless in group as well as stop any kind of chaim-spamming specials.
To me this system only benifit those who use special that have long recycle time and who hunt without healer and hurt everyone else.
Again lot of this hasn't been tested and I am sure this would go thru lot of changes, but only if we test this more and let our opinion known.
First off I want to note that the Devs have stated (at least on the Corre forum) that this change is a TRIAL only! It is in no way even being considered as a definite change to go live. It's in the testing phases to see how it works, to see how it affects the professions and to see how usable it really is. So for anyone who may want to overreact about this being a definite change, please keep that in mind. And if you really want to help out in the debate, get onto Test Center and TRY IT!
We've been having a TON of discussions on this on the Correspondent forum. The final conclusion pretty much is that the change is fairly sweeping and that the best way to figure out how it affects things both positively and negatively we just need to try it out.
In other words, the bast way to provide commentary is by starting a character on TC and giving it a try. THEN provide comments (I would guess on the TC forum, but you could provide insight on the Doc stuff here as well if you like) on how it is working and what the positives and negatives are with such a change.
I think the healing community needs to be very concerned about this. If I understand the change correctly this is going to eliminate two of the very best sources of grinding med xp, namely cantina dancers and teammates spamming high cost special attacks (I LOVE my carbineer teammates).
Don't get me wrong I'd rather go hunting with some melee types and keep the xp flowing by healing them as they get damaged but unfortuanately its much more common for me to end up with a hunting group that is going to rely on pets to tank.
I wonder what the motivation is for this change. Like what is supposed to be broken that it is fixing. I can think of a million places the dev team should put their attentions before they rework that system (DE's anyone?).
This is alarming imo. I went to TC to read the thread; still a lot of questions but its very hard for me to see how this is anything but bad for Doctors.
HoTron-rex wrote:
well Z, the description is pretty thorough and I think many of us can make some educated guesses on how this new system works without even bothering to test. what was stated previously that this basically brings every special-using profession to equality is entirely true. its also true that this could easily completely invalidate most doc buffs and basically remove the need to have novice medic or better yet a medic/doc out hunting with them. then of course theres questions as to does the special take from the top or the bottom of the pool? we know how taking from the bottom sucks for buffs wearing out... you're right, it needs to be tested cause the potential for bugs and huge imbalance changes is enormous. just please do us one favor Z. please keep reminding them that more time in testing is better and they dont need to push something this sweeping fast. i know you said thats what they've said, but I just dont want them jumping the gun on this one
They know the concerns.
This is not bad for buffs, though. Buffs still boost your Max. So that means the bars go higher meaning you can still spam more specials and take more damage. No real difference there.
The biggest problem I see for us is only that when someone does a special instead of smacking themsleves to do it (by taking damage) they changed the way the HAM handles it. We still need to heal damage, they still take wounds. The difference is that you won't be stimming specials "damage" anymore and that specials damage regens MUCH faster than normal damage anyways.
So there is a hit to the smaller percentage fo damage taken from specials that we won't be abel to heal. Truthfuly that is more of a problem for Medics and CMs, the primary damage healers, than it does us. (Especially since once you hit Master, and lets face it it doesn't take long to do that, who cares about the XP you get from healing anyways? You only care about the ability to heal that damage to keep folks alive.)
As for educated guesses,I agree we can do taht, but I'm completely conviced based on teh massive educated guesses from the dicussions on the Corre forum that you relly need to see this in action and try it out. It's very different and the guesses just don't do the system any justice until you've really had a chace to see it in use and work with it.
That's no to say that IF (very big IF there) this thing does go live that it will be a good thing for healers, it may very well be a bad thing. Only that I think we really ned to help out testing it objectively first (and not putting the baggage of calling it a nurf right off the bat onto it.) All I'm saying is give it a chance and try it out before making any real decisions. Heck if nothing else it eliminates tumble-healing. 
I don't know what the consideration is for any kind of timeframe on this thing might be. I do hope they give it lots of time to have the kinks worked out and tested. The descriptions of the system made me think that even if they did decide to go with this new method that it wouldn't be ready for this next publish anyways, but there ae no guarantees. They may want to push it thorugh that fast, I just hope they don't and would reccomend they don't.
BTW, Traigus has been hot and heavy on the dicussions over there so you might want to check back in on the Medic forum and see if you can get his opinions this change too.
Zarlor wrote:
They know the concerns.
This is not bad for buffs, though. Buffs still boost your Max. So that means the bars go higher meaning you can still spam more specials and take more damage. No real difference there.
That keeps a market for Health & Action buffs, what about the secondaries? I know, I know I'll go do my own homework when character copy gets fully implemented 
Similarly, what will happen to the Market for Stim Bs? I don't run a pharmacy but lots of Docs do...
Thanks for the posts Zarlor.
Zarlor its a good reply and you are right we gotta keep from flying off the deep end without knowing all the details, but it seems clear that at this point med xp is going to be much harder to come by if they do something like that. I would point out that the reason its not all that hard to get med xp now is precisely because they allow us to heal special move damage. And pointing out that this won't affect masters doesn't really have any value in this debate.
And stopping med tumbling is fine, but this is a completely roundabout way to do that. Its like the +1 DOT change in order to stop the incap dance. The problem and the solution only line up to an extent. Oh well I don't want to get all premature here, after the last major patch I can say that SOE does respond to input from the community to an extent and I'd be surprised if this gets implemented. With Stim Bs as easy to use and potentially as powerful as they are I think the last thing this game needs to introduce is even LESS incentive to bring a healer type with you. Seems like that would be contrary to the direction they are taking in other areas (ie making it harder to get good missions without grouping and whatnot). Ok that's enough from me on this for a while, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled and see how this all shapes up.
Several other forum posts are saying that the Specials are being taken out of a pool that is EQUAL to the HAM but not ham itself. Meaning if you have 1000/1000/1000 HAM, and are fully healed, doing a special reduces your specials pool to 900/900/900, BUT your HAM are still 1000/1000/1000. I've not been able to get on TC to confirm this though.
ALSO, if this goes in, it will be going in at the same time or AFTER the CH changes and the damage migration changes. So expect to see a general decrease in the number of CH running around (since they will no longer get most of the benifets of bein a CH with 4400. AND by going CH instead of 1 melee and 1 ranged, they will be losing one of the damage migration types) Expect to start seeing more melee additionally, Pistollers, who were nearly as good as melee, won't be getting the melee damage migration reduction. So unlike a master TKA who only takes 40% damage from melee, they will take 100%.
The changes sound wonderful to me. I'm a rifleman, so i've never been able to use stims to heal my mind for special use. And I never did think about what Zarlor said, about seperating specials from damage, means there is NO reason not to change stims to healing mind additionally.
--Rorrimot
Zarlor wrote:The difference is to differntiate what we are seeing as a change and what we are seeing as a nerf. We just have to keep and open mind and view this as a n opportunity to help ourselves out by providing good feedback on a system that is in testing for just that purpose by actually puting that system through its paces.
True that.
I guess I jumped the gun a bit on calling it a nurf when it hasn't even made it to test server patch note let anone live server.
I think this wouldn't be so bad if secondary buff affect this new system like it affect the old system. Then our secondary buff would be ten times more important since this is only way to "improve" recovery from special cost with new system.
I think we might also push to let wound pack heal under new system so we use wound packs instead of stims. I mean the way new system works sound very much like wound, except that it regen naturally. (This is important to me because lot of pistoleer & BH I group with can go thru their entire HAM in 30 sec with their .3 second specials)
Heck after giving CM mind heal I think they owe us Doctors some.
Anyway hope TC come back up quick like so we can test some more!!!
IlyaMasool wrote:
I guess I jumped the gun a bit on calling it a nurf when it hasn't even made it to test server patch note let anone live server.
Naw. It's just the kind of vocabularywe have to watch out for when talking about stuff, especiallyon TC. Nurf has such HUGE negative connotations. Then again, this could be a huge nurf, we'll just have to try it out and see.
I think this wouldn't be so bad if secondary buff affect this new system like it affect the old system. Then our secondary buff would be ten times more important since this is only way to "improve" recovery from special cost with new system.
This actually has me wondering if they do follow this out the whole way (and yes, I have also heard the intent is to go for a seperate specials pool IF they like how some of this stuff works out) if they would even keep the seondaries. While they do provide some bonuses for us, they are also a pain to deal with in some ways. I mean it's not like we have a ton of inventory room and removing the need for us to have to have secondary stat buffs might be a good thing.
I think we might also push to let wound pack heal under new system so we use wound packs instead of stims. I mean the way new system works sound very much like wound, except that it regen naturally. (This is important to me because lot of pistoleer & BH I group with can go thru their entire HAM in 30 sec with their .3 second specials)
Heck after giving CM mind heal I think they owe us Doctors some.
Anyway hope TC come back up quick like so we can test some more!!!
Yeah,I don't know if there is any intent like that. Although these "wounds" not only heal naturally but at a much faster rate than even a fully buffed out damage bar does. (And I know that the rate they are using is very much up for tweaking.) It might provide some extra places to do things to. Either by giving us new "drugs" to affect this specials section, or new spices, foods or foraged items to handle such things. It might open up some extra possibilities. We'll jsut have to see how it plays out, I guess.
Anyone who does get a chance to play with this better definitely let us know what they think of it!
Just thought a little more about adding back mind healing to stims. Stims would get a bit too powerfulin combat. BUT, if the ham costs for stims was increase a bit, i think it would even out. It would keep novice medics from using stims all the time (it would take out their special pool), and that would mean doctors would have to do more. Which would most of you doctors perfer?
- Keep stims the way they are (HA), no mind heal for little HAM costs
OR - Stims heal HAM, but the special costs for them are increased.
--Doc Rorrimot
Doctor/rifleman
Well, if they moved the system currently in test over to healing actions, so that when you stim you are not damaging your mind, you are reducing the total mind availabel for a short time, then stimming of the mind would not be exploitable. You wodl be healing mind damage (which stimming won't cause anymore) but reducing your total available. In other words stimming would not be refilling the pool that it pulls from.
Therefore mind stims would be unexploitable and there would be no problems adding it right back into stims like it used to be in Beta.
Message Edited by Zarlor on 11-26-2003 03:57 PM