Doctor Archive
Thread: One Doctor's Experience (or lack thereof)
I signed up for this game primarily to play with my girlfriend. She chose to play a creature handler. I chose a doctor because I figured we'd need someone to keep us alive. I never exploited the ability to gain crazy amounts of medical exp from healing her pets, although I saw the potential in doing so. I figured I would gain master doctor in time from simply healing her and her pets when they needed it. We had a deliriously good time roaming the planets and defending ourselves from its denizens.
Well, the patch that took out medical exp for healing pets fixed me up good. When it's just me and her in the group, I only get exp for healing her. Since I run with one guardian non-CH pet and she generally has two pets out, that means I only get exp about 20% of the time. Actually, since our combat strategy involves pets doing most of the tanking, 20% is a generous estimate medical exp I see now.
The end result is that I don't really even feel like logging on anymore. My only other option for medical exp seems to be camping the med centers (which many other doctors seem to be driven to do as well) or searching around for some kind of larger hunting group where the opportunity to heal players will be more abundant. Neither of these options is appealing to me, especially since everyone seems to have a tank pet these days.
If I had a dollar for every heavy-handed fix aimed at exploiters that inadvertently smacked me as well, I'd be a wealthy man. What surprises me more than anything is that no one in the gaming industry has come up with a better way of dealing with game loopholes.
In summation, now thatI no longer get exp for playing the game the way I desire, my desire to play the game has gone. I figure that the dev team has about a month to put something in the game I find interesting before I cancel my account. This is not an ultimatum; it's just a statement of the facts. Perhaps it will provide insight to those interested in creating a better game.
What's her secondary profession? If she's fighting herself (like using a pistol) she's probably burning action or something. If so,don't buff her relevent secondaries (like quick/stamina if she uses her action pool) and make sure she styles a lot so you have a lot to heal. And go ahead and give her pet max buffs, and buff her action and health as much as you can. Then when you're waiting bored out of your mind for someone to take any damage, craft adv bio components.
It is a tough situation. I got to master doc with most of my exp from a creature handler. I hardly had to heal him, but I did heal the pet a lot. This was before they nerfed pet exp. What's sad isif your groupmmates are well buffed you don't end up healing very much at all, but they still end up dying from mind damage. If I go out hunting as a doc, I spend way more time buffing and rezzing than I ever do healing, and frankly it's pretty boring.
I understand what you are saying about the pet med xp gone. i was pretty upset because I on the other hand don't own a pet or roll with anyone that does. I heal other peoples pets and I still do just to help out fellow Rebels. There are many ways to get alot of med xp still. go to a cantina and heal the entertainers. they use up action like crazy and you get good xp if you have stim C's or D's. Another option is what i did and still do and that is to go to Anchorhead's tavern. Even if you are Imperial go there covert and you will level in no time. Imps always raid AH and rebs always come back from a Bestine raid really hurt. I still need the last two crafting skills for Master Doctor but I am completely maxed out on my med xp. a couple of hours for a few days in that place and you will have all doc skills but crafting.
Oegin
Good suggestions, all. And thanks for your kind words. However, the answer should not be to go to some far-flung tavern or bumaround the cantina. No offense to the entertainers who might be reading this, but healing just the action bar in a very safe environment for hours on end does not sound like much fun to me. I enjoy interaction with other players, but I've never been much of a social butterfly.
About encouraging your hunting partner to waste action points, that's just backwards. My girlfriend knows that she can use her special commands (she's a pistoleer as well as a CH) pretty much nonstop, but even then the medical exp is rather pathetic. And every time I heal one of her pets for 1000+ health and action I get nothing. I agree that the amount of exp gained before was too high, but why this ham-handed flop from too much to nothing at all?
I have put up with the numerous bugs that made playing this class frustrating, but this is an insult. We get virtually no attention on issues of class balance in PvP and the bugs that nearly prevent us from making the class work and the first time the dev team turns its attention to us, we get a nerf? And a stealth nerf at that?
Believe me, I am used to poor communication between a dev team and its players from my previous experiences with MMORPGs. And I certainly appreciate the work that Q3PO, Xahn, Zarlor and others have put into improving the lines of communication, but this last nerf really takes the cake. I sincerely hope for the sake of those who still care about the success of this game that this move was merely a temporary fix until they can come up with a better permanent solution to pet healing exp. Alas, since there has been no official word on this, I guess we'll have to remain in the dark until the dev decides to let us know what the future holds for the Doctor profession.
The ways I made my med xp:
1. Bounty Hunter Carbiners - Thier specials take action AND health
2. Melee Classes - They just suck up the damage
3. Cantina - No Risk and Social
4. Pets - Oh well
5. Med Center - I can't stand that place
On the fips side my stim sales have TRIPLED after the pet heal change. Folks will not heal injured pets for free so my biz is WAY up.
Remeber each change can have many facets. Though you may no longerreceive med xp from pets a huge stim market was just created to bleed those soloists of every cred.
SwolenOstrich wrote:
Since I run with one guardian non-CH pet and she generally has two pets out, that means I only get exp about 20% of the time. Actually, since our combat strategy involves pets doing most of the tanking, 20% is a generous estimate medical exp I see now.
Change strategies. Don't use the pets. Fight something YOUR levels, and NOT the Pet's level. Buff and heal your GF while she tanks. Viola, Med Xp comes flowing in.
Have you met anyone yet that you even remotely like? This is not a flame or anything crass like that, but you may want to consider inviting one or two people to join you both in hunting. I would suggest any melee class. This way you will gain more xp when the melee needs healing, (in my experience, Melees can pull aggro off a pet pretty darn easy in the advanced professions) and you have made another players gaming experience much more enjoyable. Also you might make a couple new friends.
I personally hunt in any sized group. And when I needed xp, I could gain a severe amount fairly easy by being in a group. Rez, enhance, wound touchups add up in addition to HAM healing.
Then again, there are those of us who do it for nothing when asked. It all depends on your outlook.
RoboRoidMaster wrote:
Good luck finding anywhere to get ST commandos healed, then, cuz I would definitely chargeAT LEAST double if I get nothing out of healing faction pets (besides credits, that is).
Good suggestions, all. And thanks for your kind words. However, the answer should not be to go to some far-flung tavern or bumaround the cantina. No offense to the entertainers who might be reading this, but healing just the action bar in a very safe environment for hours on end does not sound like much fun to me. I enjoy interaction with other players, but I've never been much of a social butterfly.
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Yeah, that was a bad stealth nerf. They really should have simply reduced the XP gained, and made it so you don't get XP for healing your own pets, much like you don't get XP for healing yourself - I think that might have caught the bigger exploiters?
Though I might get flamed for this, hehe,I think Doctors earn XP in this game *way* too fast, moreso than any other class, and most of our skills require a lot less XP to get. Most people I know hit Master very fast and once you get there it's kinda anticlimactic...
I've been a Master Doc for a while and I'm kind of bored now. I get no XP for anything I do. I still enjoy hunting with friends, buffing, healing, resuscitating. I get Combat XP in a group - not that I need it for anything, hehe. =)
If we do faction missions I get next to nothing.
Sometimes I'll just hang out at the Medical Center if I see lots of wounded. You'd think people would tip better when you heal them to full from 500+ wounds in under a minute, but they usually don't. Inevitably some Novice Doctor or Medic shows up and complains because they want the XP and I don't need it so I leave. =)
I don't like that I'm basically forced to become an artisan / merchant to make a viable living in the game's economy. Granted it's fun to scout out theresources in dangerous locations and get the operation up and running. I make my own meds and give crates of stims to all my friends, but I don't want to spend all my online time crafting. I'm a Doctor not a Pharmacist. =)
Providing buffs seems to be a good revenue model as well, but for some strange reason I don't want to sit around in town spamming "Get your Doctor's Buffs here!" all night. =)
Most Doctors (like myself) just end up training a weapon skill up so they can do things like get faction XP and participate in the GCW or participate in badge quests which invariably involve killing things.
I don't know, personally I think Doctor is one of the least broken professions compared to others - most of it works as intended. It just suffers from having a non-existant revenue model that relies on the (mostly non-existant) generosity of others and absolutely no in-game incentive to continue to play as a Doctor once you reach Master.