Doctor Archive
Thread: Significant Healer Nurf in Test Center
If they do add mind heals back to stims, it still is a bit too much power, unless they adjust it somehow. Maybe having a % of the stim pack heal doing special damage. (and have the % go down for higher stim types. Would differenate between a B and a C stim pack). Just adding back mind healing would still be a bit too much in combat, (especially with the 75% PvP and the damage migration[or whatever] that can reduce it another 60%)
Zarlor, or any doctor on TC, Has anyone checked to see how this works with buffs?
--Doc Rorrimot
If anything, secondaries are doubly important now. In the current system, you can get away with just buffing health and action, and using stims to compensate for low secondaries. If you can't use stims to heal "damage from specials", then the secondaries are even more important, since you have to either lower the HAM costs or speed up the regens (or both).
JuJutsu wrote:
That keeps a market for Health & Action buffs, what about the secondaries?
Malir wrote:
The more I think about the "shrinking ham" the more I like it... from the standpoint that it makes a certain amount of sense.
On the other hand, with the amount of pets tanking these days, medic exp is MUCH harder to come by. I am a MCM (have been for many moons) and now am working up the Doc tree. I thought that I would get tons of med exp this way. WRONG. 95% of my heals now go to pets. Almost all of my med exp is from buffing my party, or from using poisons in combat.
As soon as the char copy works, I'll wander over to test center to try it out. I do get concerned when the devs seem to take away more than they give. As a medic & carbineer, this change _could_ hurt me on several levels, but I'd like to see it play out. But at the same time I want healing exp back for healing other people's pets.
It seems like the devs are trying to "back door" the fast med exp problem by removing what can be healed for exp when instead maybe they should have raised the exp caps instead. (I do agree with Zarlor that med exp USED TO BE really easy to get. Now it is significantly harder.)
Yeah, but I think the TC changes also include the new changes for CH [If not now, then soon]. Drastic reduction in most pets armor and resists, AND increases in what skill boxes are needed to control pets too (no more 2200 grauls).
One other thing to consider is the new damage migration [or whatever]. You have to geta ranged and melee professionto get both reductions [And master to get the lvl 3 (60% reduction)]. That means any doctor/XXXX or CH/XXXX will not have enough points to get the full reductions in both, so they will always be weaker to 1 type of attack (ranged or melee).
--Rorrimot
1.) healing will no longer mind damage us. We won't get incapped by baddied for healing.
2.) people we are trying to heal won't get killed fast by using big specials (sometimes there is lag, and it is hard to get off heals.
3.) Mind heal stops being an exploitable loop, so the ability to fix mind damage could come back to all of us (as Z mentioned). (thus making combat practical at high levels).
4.) Docs, medics and CMs that want to use weapons, or other skills, will have more time in combat to use them.. I have trouble using first aid al lthe time, becasue I ahve to chain heal a special spammer in my group. With this change I don't need to heal him as much, and can heal stats, bleeds, poison etc. without getting him killed by sucking his own ham while I use a non stim heal on him.
As for the rest of it... as Z says, I have been going through this with a comb.
1.) buffs. Main HAM buffs make the special bar bigger too, so a buffed HAM = more specials. Buffed secondaries... 2nd secondaries, still control special move cost.. High second HAM stats, will still want buffs to keep costs down... especially since the new non-lethal special costs, may bump soem very big specials up a lot in cost. 3rd HAM stats... will still regen main HAM... not clear if they will affect Spoecial HAM regen in the final system... may take a loss on buffing that 3rd HAM stat.
2.) heals. Mobs are also affected by this system. Mobs also do specials, so mobs will die a bit slower.. + the overall lessening of PC special spamming = longer fights.. so Combatants will take more damage (and wounds) then they do now... there will be damage loss (increased instance of Mob damage will be less then damage garnered by speed spamemrs, but 100% will not be lost).
3.) "cheap XP heal" like dancer, survey, and tumble healing go bye bye... These were cheesy to begin with. It is hard to defend them.
4.)Stim B sales will nto take a huge hit. Novice medic soloers will still need stims... Stim B's are pretty overpowered ATM and most peopel don't need a lot of stim B'd even spamming ATM (because most guns are overpowered compared to mobs.. and we can solo reds with 2 stim b charges), so conservatively they may need 1 less stim charge a fight.
This is a great foundation for an overall rebalancing of everything, not just combat.
A little slowing in healing XP, is a cheap proice to pay for all te good stuff that can happen to the game overall.
-T
Malir wrote:
It seems like the devs are trying to "back door" the fast med exp problem by removing what can be healed for exp when instead maybe they should have raised the exp caps instead. (I do agree with Zarlor that med exp USED TO BE really easy to get. Now it is significantly harder.)
No, it's still way too easy to get. A good friend of mine had a Holocron tell him to master Combat Medic. At the time, all he had in medical skills was Novice Medic. He was a master CM less than a week later. So, he was able to go from nothing to mastering TWO medical skills in under a week. This was just a couple weeks ago, long after we had exp for healing pets taken away.
I honestly don't see a problem with this. Yes, by itself it may look bad. But look at the big picture. At the same time of this change on TC, creatures got seriously toned down. Melee professions got damage mitigation and extra defenses. As a result of those two changes, there's a very good chance that we will see a shift in "tanking" from creatures to players, which will give us a whole lot of damage to heal that we'll actually get experience for.
The GOOD things that may come out of this:
1. We'll be able to heal for much longer. All accounts on TC say the HAM reduction from using specials regenerates much faster than damage. We couldn't heal the mind damage we were taking for all our healing before, so we had to rely on regen. With this system, faster regen=more healing with less risk and downtime. This advantage will transfer to all professions with mind-heavy specials.
2. It will put a top to the "tumbleto" method of gaining medical exp, which I've always viewed as an exploit. Your mileage may vary.
3. Those medics who spend all their time in a cantina and don't want to go out in the field will be more likely to spend their time back in Medical Centers, where they're actually needed. The action the entertainers use can be regained very quickly simply by waiting a couple of minutes. The wounds players get while fighting are very difficult and time consuming to be rid of without the help of a medic.
I'm actually rather excited about this change, but as has been said before I need to try to reserve judgement until we have a lot more information. It could be good like I think it may be, or it could suck like others are predicting.
Falin
Zarlor wrote:
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
First impression: I like it!
Among my concerns are the question of buffs. As Traigus says, strength and quickness should/will still reduce the amount of HA pool used for specials. I am interested in finding if constitution and stamina will improve the speed that the temp HA wounds regen at.
It does look like this takes the focus from healing the specials spammers and puts it back on actually healing damage. Good deal! Means I can stand next to the pikeman for the fight, instead of pinballing from one groupmate to the next as they go crazy with thier weapons.
I like the side-effect of nullifyingmost of thecheezy exp gains. I didn't get my exp from the cantina, and I don't like the fact that all the medics in Coronet are too busy with the dancers to heal anyone's wounds.
I intend to make a TC character to check this out myself, as Zarlor suggests. See you there!
Ruda, Master Doctor/Merchant, Naritus
Currently the regen rate is a set rate. I think it's 25 seconds for a full regen of a special's cost. So a 100 pt special will regen 4 points every second once it is used, or if it were a 1000 pont special it would regen 40 points every second. The secondary stats currently have no effect on that. That's not to say that they won't in the future, since they've said they expect to do a lot of tweaking, that's only to say that this very moment they don't affect the specials' regen rates. That might be something for us to bring up.
ZeligtheLiar wrote:
Among my concerns are the question of buffs. As Traigus says, strength and quickness should/will still reduce the amount of HA pool used for specials. I am interested in finding if constitution and stamina will improve the speed that the temp HA wounds regen at.
The reaons really don't have anything to do with fixing the tumbling for heals problem.I just tossed it out as a secondary effect. I would also note that one of our issues for a long time has been the speed of advancement, expecially in comparison to the crafting line.
Medical XP is one of the FASTEST to get in the game. The reduction of XP we might be able to get from stimming the damage given by specials is also minimal compared to what we already heal for normal damage. A reduction the rate of Med XP gain is something that some of your fellow Docs have actually been calling for since back in Beta. (It's the Ease of Mastery Issue on the Balance list, for those curious about it.)
So in a way this may actually address several issues we already have.
As for Secondary Buffs, rumor has it that what we are seeing right now on Test is just a starting point and that LOT more tweaking will be involved. I haven't tested any of this myslef, but I think your secondaries may still reduce the cost of specials and obviously they still assist in the regen rate for normal damage. They may also increase the regen rate from specials at some point as well.
The other rumor here is that there will probably be a LOT of tweaking to be done on this system and that this is likely just a starting point. An initial test for a quick and dirty method to provide a glimpse into a more complex system that might be a consideration for a later date. There's just too much that is up in the air on this right now, from what I hear.
So just keep all of that in mind. If med XP seems to be coming in too slowly because of the change I have heard that considerations may be made for making changes to accomodate that. So there is a whole lot that is going to be affected and used with this and anything we can do to help and provide feedback with will only help us to better help ourselves as well.
The other thing I think this may help us out on is that IF they decide to start using this method for things like Helaing actions (where it reduces our Mind instead of damaging it) we'd then have every reason to push for Stims that heal all 3 pools, because we couldn't exploit a never-ending heal mthod that way. We'd get to push forMind Healing in the same way as we can heal the other 2 Bars. And I think that would be a HUGE step up for us. Just a thought, though.
The issue most of the people are listing here is this. Under what circumstances now can a medic/doctor get medical exp.
1) Wound Heals
2) Enhance Buffs
3) Cure Status(Dizzy,disease,etc.)
4) Damage
2) and 3) require you to achieve fairly high standing in the Doctor tree. So in order to make it up to that level, you have to do 1) and 4). Now that they propose to change the way HAM burn is calculated, you can only gain 4) by healing someone getting beat on. At most levels though, it is difficult to use a melee to beat on. So, we use pets! But we dont gain medical exp from healing pets anymore!! So with no HAM burn from specials, there is almost no way to gain the Damage medical exp.
This leaves us with only 1) as a viable source. With the decay on death system now, most people are insuring(and more often cloning too). So there are less mega wounds deaths from going to a non-cloned terminal. The largest wounds novice medics will run into typically will be the wounds in the 20-50 range with the occasional PVPr comign in with burn/disease wounds. Again, with the relative ease, and cost of buying some woundpack Bs, a lot of players stay as a novice medic and take care of those wounds in the 20-50 range with their own medical droid. So 1), which was already an overall slow means of medical exp through manning the med centers, is even slower today then it was near release.
It'll be a very, very slow and painful grind for any enterprising medics to grind up high enough to a point where they can start using enhancements/cures/etc. Heh, mark my words...if this does go live: the best and most consistent exp near the novice level is going to be firstaid for bleeds. 
Ocybasso
Chilastra Server
Right. And that is whyI say that it is likely that if the XP from damage healing ends up being too low, they will likely make some changes and tweaks to it, perhaps even giving us pet XP back again (which they actually said they would likely do, but never got back around to revisiting that item with us, and it's not been up there high enough on our lists to force the issue from my end.)
The one thing that seems to have been reiterated a LOT on the Corre forum, and I don't think there is a problem with leting this slip at all, is that they expect to do a LOT of tweaking on this. And I mean a LOT of twekaing and that this is really just a starting point to see how some considered changes MIGHT work.
Like I said I haven't been able to play with this at all. So it may just flat suck the big one, for allI know. But I am willing to keep an open mind, try it out and then see if I can help provide some commentary on this with the things I'm seeing. I'm not the kind of person that is all that worried about XP gains, though. (Most of the XP related Issues I never even knew about until someone else brought them up on the forum.) So I would strongly suggest we get more folks out there who do like seeing XP rates and have a good feel for what is a good rate of XP gain and what would not be a change for us, but a true nerf. You folks definitely need to get on and see if you can give us your opinions after getting in some good testing time.
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.