Doctor Archive

Quote: Both of those solutions still nerfs Rifleman, IMHO. Primarily because Rifleman have the added advantage of a ranged DB. Take away either the ability to have mind do an incap or for a DB to occur from Mind Incap and you take away the rifleman's ability to get Faction and creditfor a valid kill.

I disagree with this. The rifleman would still be able to get the kill, it would just take longer after the target is dropped to get the kill finalized. The balancing factor to this additional time is the fact that (in a solo engagement at least,) the rifleman can finish off the target in relative saftey.

In a group dynamic, the rifleman would probably get less of the kill credit than they are getting now, due to more of a reliance on their team mates to do the finishing damage, but gee whiz, aren't riflement currently one of the few profressions that are getting ANY of the points right now?

"You seem to imply that Riflemen are currently out of balance with the other professions, solo. "

Actually, If we're talking about plain-jane solo vs plain-jane solo, then yeah, they're balanced. A pistoleer can't heal the mind damage being done to him by the rifleman, and the rifleman can't heal the health damage being done to him by the pistoleer. HOWEVER... Perhaps it's because I've chosen to be a doctor/merchant, but I haven't met alot of players who both 1) tend to solo and 2) DON'T have at least novice medic. so, assuming both the rifleman and the pistoleer have novice medic in a 1 on 1 face off, the rifleman wins, so long as he can keep his range and get his heals into his combat queue fast enough.

"Let's go back, though, to how a rifleman is going to plinck away at some incapped guy trying to do non-mind damage to them. How are they going to do this? With the rifle? Hmm... ok. So, some rifleman can jsut stand over me after he mind-knocks me out, then take their sweet time sending mind-shot after mind shot on me, never knocking health or action down enough, causing me more and mre wounds, painfully slowly to my mind, all while he laughs wtih glee until the piint finally comes where he no longer wished to toy with me and I finally get a DB (after another 10-15 minutes of this rifleman trying to figure out how to damage my H/A anyway)."

Ok, I see your point when it comes to grief. perhaps if they make this change, they would need to adjust it so that any damage to mind after the mind-incap gets spread to H/A. As far as a rifleman keeping you pinned down repeatedly and indefinately, there's nothing to stop the pistoleer or carbineer from doing the same thing if you don't have novice medic.

If the discussion had to be about making mind healable, then I would suggest that it takes a special stimpack to heal mind, and it costs the medic mind points to heal mind on a 1 to 1 ratio. That way, he would be unable to heal his own mind, thus preventing that exploit, but he could heal the mind of his team members, trading his mind for theirs (and he probably has maxed mind regen anyway). Putting mind on a different stim allows the medic to heal just H/A and still have control to decide when to spend mind points to heal mind.

My preference is also for a seperate Mind Stim, perhaps stepping in power from A through C, but not with the 1:1 limitation. I would prefer to see it not be usable on self, only coming available at OC3 or higher (say As at OC3, Bs at OC4 and Cs at MM, or even only As at MM with Bs and Cs only available in the Doc and CM lines and not AoE version in the CM line.) These stim levels should probably be less effective than what we think offor a stim of those levels, and an added disencentive for use could be forcing mind wounds and/or BF for use (much in the way /tenddamage and /tendwound does now).These wold work GREAT when you hit the battle fresh, but over time you are really going to start hurting with something like that.

This would also allow us to maintain our current role of keeping the action going (we heal carbineers and pistoleers and surveyors and entertainers of the damage they do to themselves) by adding in a few new classes that we can keep going, including ourselves to some extent. But we'd also have a penalty for doing so.

Finally, as mentioned, balance passes would have to be made to mid-damaging professions to ensure they are properly balanced with this capability.

Mind issue is a very hard subject, pistoleers hate it, and along with people that do health and action damage, and combat medics, rifleman and bounty hunters love it. im not sure what to do, but there is a huge inbalance of skills regarding what damage is givin for each class. even it out a little more and i think more people will be happy

Master Doctor

Master Combat Medic

Rebel

Why remove the rifleman ability to incap and DB instead of reimplementing Mind Pool Damage Healing? Why change around all sorts of specials, rebalance professions etc instead of putting back the mind damage healing which was taken away?

I just don't get it..

TrimpleEpic: Most of the arguments you've made seem to rely on teh one assumption summed up when you stated:

"In a group dynamic, the rifleman would probably get less of the kill credit than they are getting now, due to more of a reliance on their team mates to do the finishing damage, but gee whiz, aren't riflement currently one of the few profressions that are getting ANY of the points right now?"

You seem to imply that Riflemen are currently out of balance with the other professions, solo. Yet your examples implied that the Rifleman had a medic behind them healing the damage they are taking from a pistoleer or carbineer. (It must be someone else, after all, since we were discussing a plain-jane Master of those professions without extra skills, right?) Of courseI would counter that if Riflemen are unbalanced (and I'm not at all convinced that they are) then it is a balancing issue between those classes which has nothing to do with mind damage. It is consideration of what a Medic can do when it comes to healing where the Devs have cited that having an unhealable pool is what gives riflemen the counter to all of the great disadvantages to that class. But as we have seen that, in itself, is causing problems.

Let's go back, though, to how a rifleman is going to plinck away at some incapped guy trying to do non-mind damage to them. How are they going to do this? With the rifle? Hmm... ok. So, some rifleman can jsut stand over me after he mind-knocks me out, then take their sweet time sending mind-shot after mind shot on me, never knocking health or action down enough, causing me more and mre wounds, painfully slowly to my mind, all while he laughs wtih glee until the piint finally comes where he no longer wished to toy with me and I finally get a DB (after another 10-15 minutes of this rifleman trying to figure out how to damage my H/A anyway).

I'm kinda lost how any of this is really better than balancing out how riflemen resolve damage by having them hit a healable pool, just like the other two classes, and modifiying the damage and penalties to bring them in line with that idea.

All I can say is that in the groups I have been inI have found it more likely that a Pistoleer or Carbineer (especially buffed ones) are more likeley to get the points you assert are going to the rifleman (especiallybuffed ones, since it doesn't do the rifleman any good to be buffed since their primary special pool isn't buffable by Doc buffs, so they cannot get those kinds of benefits from the other mind buffs that are available.)

In all I simply do not agree that Rifleman are superior, and in fact I am more likely to lean towards their being underpowered, as compared to the other professions and that this proposed method would only further hurt their profession a great deal more instead of bringing them in line. It would also allow them to be much more of a griefing class as well, and I just don't want to go there.

Umm... I guess I should say I think Texxie really has the point of it, far more succinctly. No matter how you look at it, though, I think some rebalancing of the classes will have to occur no matter what the solution selected. But I do think the proposed methods would end up being more trouble than just making a mind stim.