Doctor Archive

Rifles are limited in a way, i think. Correct me if I'm wrong please.

Rifles can do mind damage at the cost of mind pool. They cannot spam specials and regen their mind, as any carbine/pistol user can spam specials and just pop a stim. The cost of the stim in mind pool is far less than what we heal our action/health by, so that swings in favor of carbine/pistol users being able to keep up special attacks far longer. In heavy PvP, I use so much action/health on specials and so many stims JUST to regen the action, that I get low on mind pool. I suspect rifles cannot use near the # of specials...in a way they are self-limiting.

Eyeshot of course does mind and uses action...which makes eyeshot users a good first target in PvP.

Combat medics..I haven't yet experienced a mind poison/disease, but as some of you say, in theory they sound like they will in cap you unless you get a cure from a doctor, or unless you happen to have high enough mind to outlast it. (Food/spice).

So I suppose I agree that eyeshot and mind poison/disease are not self limiting like the rifle specials are. That, and using a rifle makes you take a lot more damage from melee.

>> My mind dot does 500+ mind damage every 8 secs and lasts 15-20 mins

>> ...u cant outlast that with any buffs....or course the poison ticks slow down

>> to about 30secs between ticks when after your first incap but do u know

>> anyone in the game that can regenerate 500 mind pool under 30s?

Exactly the kind of imbalance I'm talking about.

If there is a way to actively damage a pool to the point of death, then there should be_some_ way to _ACTIVELY_heal it (i.e. without having to leave combat). I don't care if it's chefs, tailors, entertainers, whatever. But for the love of Pete, please give some professionan active mind heal. (And no, I don't considerspice or foods to beactive mind heals, those are buffs - and those are already in a different category than heals -- Damage vs. Enhance)

GPF.

Valk- i agree with you that the way the mind pool works in PvE combat is great. I agree 100% that it works well as a sort of humbling factor, since regardless of my doctor skills there will be things that are simply too difficult for my group to tackle. My concern is in PvP combat, where 2/3 of my skill points can suddenly be rendered useless, and no tactic that I can use will do anything about it. I havent spent any time in PvP yet, so you may be right that it isnt unbalanced currently with respect to the rifle and the 2h swordsmen. I know from personal experience the weaknesses of a rifleman and have seen the difficulties faced by melee types. Combat medics have been weighing heavy on my mind recently, and I can see three possible solutions to balance them: 1.) remove their ability to poision/disease mind, since no other medical class can touch it, 2.) have the CM diseases and DOTS pass through the 75% damage reduction, allowing them to maintain some of their power in PvE, or 3.) change the nature of poisions, diseases, and doctor cures to these things to allow doctors a fair chance to heal them before they become fatal.

This is definately an issue that we are seeking guidance on...we do not have access to the raw data that would show whether this is a real problem, or simply a balance issue preceived as a problem by a few weary doctors. It certainly seems that the general consensus is that there may be a huge problem lurking here, and that we would really like to hear some of the development ideas that are going on to support its continued existance.

Two people have now accused me of not wanting to nerf mind damage because it helps my play style the way it is now. But if you'll read what I've said, I point out that pretty much the only consistant, across-the-board vulnerability I and my teammates generally possess is mind damage. Yes, I am playing a race with a larger-than-normal mind pool and excellent mind-regen rates. But if I was in this for selfish reasons, I'd want mind damage to be nerfed immediately, rendering me and my party basically invincible. I don't.

Granted, in PvE, this isn't nearly as big a deal, as NPCs rarely heal themselves or each other as far as I've been able to tell, and creatures never do. But I still like the fact that we have a pool that prevents us from being in combat all the time. I could see the use for a medical mind-buff (though wouldn't that be a smuggler nerf just the way that CH pet stims are a medic nerf?), and I've already said I'd favor an entertainer war march to boost mind regen, but I still don't think that mind damage should be directly healable.

I'm just not convinced this is the huge, unbalancing deal that everyone seems to think it is. If it were, you'd think you'd see a ton more people going for it they way we had millions of CHs before the big patch. It seemed that everyone and his neighbor had a pet they'd use to tank. If mind damage was the gigantic unbalancing factor everyone says it is, why aren't more people going Rifleman or Two-Handed?

I say, recognize that combat is dangerous and deal with it. If something must be done, don't nerf mind damage, but make H and A damage a lot easier to cause. I've always thought that all players don't dish out nearly enough damage.

Hi,

Here is a fairly simple solution. The mind bar is expendable, but not damagable in any way.

A doctor will not be able to 'heal forever' because the mind bar will run out. Also no one will ever become incapacitated by this bar because it is not targetable.

It's as simple as that. Of course a ton of attacks will have to be changed. That's why we're beta testing this game. I mean... what?

The way I see it, Doctors and Combat Medics are the closet thing that SWG has to mages and clerics until Jedi are implemented. We're talking about a profession (class) that isn't directly combat oriented, at least not combat through ranged weapons or melee. Mind/health/action poisons are simply really, really nasty spells. And it's my guess that to achieve the kind of damage Elenora is talking about requires mastering Combat Medic and scrounging several planets for specialized ingredients. Something that takes that long to get should be able to take pretty much anybody out. It'd be like casting Finger of Death on someone: it's gonna kill just about anybody you care to mention. Mind poison is, however, counterable by the Doctor ability (spell, if you will) of Cure Poison. This also takes quite some time to be able to use effectively, but if you've got a Doctor handy, it can be effectively remedied. And while the CM is trying to apply poison, and the Doctor is busy curing poison, the tanks in the various parties will be busy beating the crap out of both of them.

In other RPGs, if a fighter tries to take on a high level mage, then regardless of the class of the fighter there's a pretty good chance that he's going down. Just cast a few status modifying spells and top it off with one or two high-damage spells and you've got yourself one nicely baked fighter with a free trip to town. To take out that mage, you need another mage to give him something to think about. SWG, like almost every combat situation, is all about combined arms, working as a team. It seems that most of the complaints here are about people trying to solo. Well surprise, you can't solo against everything effectively, because you do have weaknesses, and there's someone out there who specializes in hitting that weakness. You can either modify your play style to minimize your weaknesses, or travel with people who can cover for you. If your mind is susceptable to poison, be sure you travel with a doctor. If you can make a kick-A rifle but can't actually use it very well, be sure to travel with someone who can. You shouldn't be able to expect to solo everything and everyone you come across. The system is designed to encourage teamwork, and the more the devs let people solo (like giving CH pet stims), the more like EQ this is going to get. I don't want that to happen. I like interdependencies.

Now some seem to argue that since mind damage is kind of a weakness for everyone that what we have here isn't a tactics problem but an actual balance problem. I don't think this is the case. Sure, Bounty Hunters, Two-Handed Swordsmen, Riflemen, and Combat Medics can target the mind pool in a way few others can. All of them are difficult to master. BH requires mastering both Marksman and Scout. Combat Medic requires Master Medic and Ranged Support Specialist. The Swordsman elite has the fewest prerequisites, but you're using a beating stick against people with blasters, so it's not exactly a fair fight. All of these are either well balanced (Riflemen and Swordsmen have easily exploitable weaknesses), or hard to get (Bounty Hunter and Combat Medic). As poison is easily removable by any reliable Doctor, and the Bounty Hunter will eventually deplete his mind pool (though from what I hear, Eye Shot could probably use a bit of tweaking), I don't see what the problem is.

--> As poison is easily removable by any reliable Doctor, and the Bounty Hunter will eventually deplete his mind pool (though from what I hear, Eye Shot could probably use a bit of tweaking), I don't see what the problem is. <--

The problem is that the only way to regenerate the mind pool is by sitting and waiting. By the time a poison is cured the damage is done. Bleed damage for example takes 4-5 /firstaid by a master doctor. That takes 12-15s. By that time, the player is incapacitated.

It isn't even about curing poison or bleed damage. It's the fact that this pool has a completely different set of rules that governs it, yet it can be damaged in exactly the same way as the other two healable pools.

There is no reason to target these other twopools, because they can be healed. Why not just hit the pool where there is no way of recovering from except a trip to the cloning center, or sitting down for a couple of minutes.

I'm not sure how the lack of balance escapes you.

--> Sure, Bounty Hunters, Two-Handed Swordsmen, Riflemen, and Combat Medics can target the mind pool in a way few others can. All of them are difficult to master. <--

You can not argue that these are so much more difficult to master than many of the other combat professions.

no doctor right now outside of a zabrek who equilibrums can survive a level C mind poison from a master doctor...

my mind poisons ticks 8 secs...u can stim urself at 10sec. curepoison takes about 3-4 applications...tested this with a master doctor

so u do the math...unlessu equilbrium as a zabrek...u will go mind incap...

not to mention that i can just reapply it..oh and while u are curing...ill probably be shooting at you or ur grp so how u gonna heal that damage...of for that matter how are you gonna heal the rest of ur grp?!

fact is doctors need a effective cure pack and possibly a AOE one for master doctors

---

Valkyryn wrote:

Now some seem to argue that since mind damage is kind of a weakness for everyone that what we have here isn't a tactics problem but an actual balance problem. I don't think this is the case. Sure, Bounty Hunters, Two-Handed Swordsmen, Riflemen, and Combat Medics can target the mind pool in a way few others can. All of them are difficult to master. BH requires mastering both Marksman and Scout. Combat Medic requires Master Medic and Ranged Support Specialist. The Swordsman elite has the fewest prerequisites, but you're using a beating stick against people with blasters, so it's not exactly a fair fight. All of these are either well balanced (Riflemen and Swordsmen have easily exploitable weaknesses), or hard to get (Bounty Hunter and Combat Medic). As poison is easily removable by any reliable Doctor, and the Bounty Hunter will eventually deplete his mind pool (though from what I hear, Eye Shot could probably use a bit of tweaking), I don't see what the problem is.

---

Simple fact. If you can damage the mind pool by shooting it, poisioning it, or hiting them upside the head with a sword wouldn't logic dictate that someone would beable to heal that damage? Don't try to tell me that mind damage is shock or something stupid like that as that is what battle fatigue is.

Sure poison can be removed by a doctor, but after how many ticks has the poison done? 1? 2? at 500 points per tick you can't last more than 2 or 3. By then the damage (yes damage) is done and it is not curable unless you rest. As for Bounty Hunters with Eye Shot, that special uses action to use not mind, so they can use that all day long and just heal theirself and be fine.

All I want is someway to heal mind damage. Like make another stim but limit it to have the max healing of like a B stim so you can't heal all your mind wounds in a single shot. Also make the mind stim take away from your health & action pools at the rate that a /tendwound does from your mind pool.

If they are going to keep mind damage the way it is they just need to get rid of battle fatigue all together as it is just redundant. Just add the fatigue to the mind wounds that battle fatigue has now. I mean if mind damage is just psychological damage that can't be healed, then what is battle fatigue?

Anyways ive rambled on long enough

I totally agree with your post but the fact is and the devs had said it in the devs response to the rifleman...mind damage is unhealable and working as intended....

Oh the kicker is that the devs told rifleman that the slow speed of fire and poor accuracy up close and all those other fun fun penalties that riflemen endure was in exchange for the ability to damage an unhealable mind pool...

funny the devs forgot that BH and CMs do mind pool with way less drawbacks

Elenora, you seem to be forgetting a large part of my argument which is that you can't expect to be able to solo all the time. A person who gets hit with mind poison while alone should expect to die, plain and simple, even if that person is a doctor. But I still believe that mind poison and like damages are surmountable through teamwork. Even if the only purpose of mind damage being unhealable is to force us to work together in teams, I'm for it.

And no, the fact that a pool is targetable does not suggest that it ought to be healable. Nothing of the sort, in fact. IRL, combat is a dangerous, messy thing. If you get hit, one of two things are true: the hit does the kind of damage that can be ignored, or you're out of it for quite a while. The fact that we can completely heal a person who has no health points left is already a massive concession to fun by realism. By real life standards, medics are already incredibly overpowered. But it wouldn't be any fun if engaging in any kind of combat means that you're out for the next week. But it also wouldn't be any fun if all damage was instantly healable. It's the risk of being inconvenienced that makes combat fun. If you allow the mind pool to be healable, you totally remove that risk.

I think we may be overlooking something though. There remains one profession that has yet to be implemented and/or unlocked. The Jedi are still not among us, and as such, a pretty important set of skills is yet to be discovered. It would not surprise me if they were able to heal mind damage. We'll just have to wait and see. Jedi, and other introductions like player cities and vehicles, will totally change the balance of the game. So don't get too upset if the current setup seems a bit out of whack: the game isn't finished yet.

Most people think of mind damage as it concerns PCs, but it's trueFUBAR-ness is on NPCs (case being faction pets). I have 3 AT-STs andwill not call them now that rebels are finding ways to combat them (some of the exploitive nature) while in any city with a cloning facility. Sharpshooters continually use a mind bleed on one of my AT-STs and then get slaughtered. They then clone and use their revenge temp flag to bleed the AT-ST again (some bleeds take 7-8 applications of First Aid by me, a master doctor, to cure and do 700 damage to a pet that has a AR of 3 and 70% in everything, that's idiotic). Any rebel rifleman with a mind bleed can kill an AT-ST byusinga mind bleed and taking advantage of the ludicrous system of instant-cloning-back-in-PvP-for-eternity thingif the owner doesn't store it as soon as he can.

If my pet does survive the battle, I am now stuck with an AT-ST with barely any mind pool who regens at the insanely slow rate of 18 points every 30 seconds or so (18.8k of ham at that speed is going to take a while, all of which I have to be overt and not get attacked by anything).

Fico Feafip

Master Doctor of Scylla