Doctor Archive
Thread: Are any of you retired combat medics?
I'm in the process of giving up my CM points for Doctor, here's a recap of what others have said that affects me and my own reasons:
1) WAAAY too strict crafting requirements for CM
2) WAAAY too steep points cost (I stil need Novice Artisan (at least) and Novice Scout to help with terrain Negotiation, harvesting meats/hides and surveying for my harvesters, + some sort of pistol training so I can actualy live on my harvester runs)
3) Devs' seeming ignorant or our class-- THIS IS NOT A DEV BASH (per se)-- but I honestly don't know of many groups, many BHs or many SOLO people that don't use pets (whether they're CH pets or faction pets) and yet the devs took 100% of pet healing exp away. If they felt med exp was rolling in too fast they could have at least nerfed pet healing exp, taken away exp for healing your own pets, both and/or raised the med exp needed to gain levels. Why on earth would someone in 200k Composite armor want to tank a 10k-14k HAM mob instead of using their 9-10k HAM, nearly free pet(s)?
4) As its been said before, what is a CMs 'unique' ability? Ranged healing? After Doc Buffs anyone taking hits have enough time to run to the doc or the doc to them.. Poisions/Diseases? Dead/incapped before I can usually apply them in PvP or if I'm SOMEHOW lucky enough to get one off **AND** stick, everyone not in battle will auto-target me and THEN I get incapped/dead. Please remind me why I spent 6+ factory runs making subcomponants, all those planet specific resources and all those VERY specific resources for again?
5) Buffs/Revive >>>>> ranged heals/poison/disease (in returns, expense and usefulness)
6) Docs can do the 'bread and butter' of the Combat Medic line (healing) and still have quite a few points left over to spend on themselves, even after keeping Artisan/Scout -- unlike CMs
7) Sure, ranged heals are great, but have you ever tried to target someone running helter-skelter up and down hills? Even if they're in your group, I hope they're only in the top 10 names on the left side group bar.. If they're not in your group (or off that name bar list) its nearly impossible to target them to toss a ranged heal their way.
8) I'm tired of an 'all or nothing' approach to CM changeswith absolutely *0* feedback/discussions with our class. The one above poster is right: You guys spent a thousand times more effort/feedback/discussions/posting time/patch notes to ONE RIFLE than any medical problem (Combat medic, doctor OR Medic). Fine, poison got a LOS change to be more 'in line' with all other weapons, then where's our range compensation to be more 'in line' with weapons? Where are our dizzy, stun, intimidate, etc packs, weapons have these abilities..
9) I have no 'combat' in Combat Medic.. What little I *had* has been nerfed or put on a timer to the point of near uselessness: poisons=shortest range of any attack + LoS is needed = we're dead/incapped by the time we get one off ifwe're that lucky; the only marginal useful thing in our laboriously earned Ranged Support line (Suppression fire) was recently changed to the point that ifI use it on a standing target I can only force then to kneeling once--last I knewppl still can shoot weapons just fine while kneeling. On the other hand a Doctor/Pistoleeris MUCH more combat oriented than a CM -- ESPECIALLY with allof the Pistoleer combat mods to+defense.
10) A lot of stuff seems'missing' from CM: Terrain Negotiation, combat defenses, etc. If CMs are supposed to be out in the fieldin COMBAT and doctors are supposed to be in the med centers why do we not havemany different combat mods between the 2 classes? As far as I remember the only different combat mod between CM and Doc is +10 Terrain Negotiation - big whoop..
All in all I'm really disappointed in CM. At first I thought, WOW, finally someone has gotten it right and made a healing class (CM) that can also do damage! It certainly didn't take long for the nerfs to start rolling in and totaly kill that idea. Looking at it now, 2 months after I started playing, and seeing the game mechanics in motion, I guess the question is now "Why WOULDN'T someone chose Doc/Pistoleer over Combat Medic?"
OK, my biggest beef with this profession is this. You have to go out of your way to put your radioactives in a safe place, ie house or deposit box. And here's why. Harvesters do not discriminate between energy sources. As a combat med that relies heavily on radioactives this is beyond expensive. It prevents you from travelling to other worlds to place harvesters at good % spots because in essence it's 2 trips, Unless of course you set up a bank on the world you are harvesting. But since the resources switch, you will constantly be moving items in and out of banks as you move. And should you forget just once to drop off your radioactives....
Highly annoying and truly expensive, not to mention added time to have to do this over and over again. And what makes matters worse? You guys decided to make it more of a burden on your character when u sample radioactives. A neat twist which I like, however because of said problem, even more annoying.
I do concur with previous statements in refererence to poison/ diseases. Your mind pool gets way too drained for the amount of poison your dishing out. And on top of it 1/10 times it only works. You try poison twice and a heal on top and ur as good as dead.
Lastly, if a comat med is so good with chem warfare, then why do they not have better resistances towards it? Combat meds need a weapon to get by unlike say a tera kasai artist who can rock you without. The whole purpose IMO of this tree is so that you rock people with packs of chemical nastiness.That doesnt happen period. You need some pistoleer skills or a good ranged weapon aka rifle etc to do anything. All poison or diseases are is annoying but hardly damaging enough to win a fight.
So in conclusion, this tree is one that is lacking the meat with it's potatoes. And other issues (aka harvesters) make it even harder to get things done let alone resource for what you need. I love the concept and am planning to stick it out, but if changes aren't made to beef it up abit.... does anyone need a docotr?
Everything had been said. Still, can I ask YOU one question?
Why the catch 22 on medical professions (doctor and CM)?
A/Low kick: Ressources
Specially if you go CM, keeping artisan for survey is not realist (THREE starting class). Still, our ressources requirement is as fanciful as any other crafters. Meanwhile, medical forage is useless and Holocron promised a fancy system when everyone will be happy with survey/sample.
With all the bugs you have in SWG, why can you do something simple like survey for ALL crafting professions?
Survey is tedious for EVERYONE. Even for 10k, we can't hire a artisan to do it! The one who choose to be ressources reseller are rare and ask for heavy prices. Furthermore, we need ALSO scout help for meats. Please, check any bazzar for the meat market..depressing.
B/High jab: No Income
Like entertainers, we have to survive on tips. At least, they buy a dress/instruments and it's all for them. We have to craft to work.
The money crunch is so hard that 90% of doctor/CM will not visit a med center again once maxed. Already, I am only working for my PA. You are worried about us leaving the CM profession? Be worried about us leaving the patients!
But all these things have been said well into BETA, you didn't listen then, why now?
Mastered CM then we hit the high end stuff, and throwing a little globe of healing was pointless against a Kimo or a Kryat. Deleted the entire profession, climbed to Master Doctor and Rez packs are 100 times more effective then those throw globes =)
Shug_Ninx wrote:
We're wondering how many of you doctors were once combat medics that decided to migrate into the doctor profession. If you did "retire" from the life of the combat medic and decide to take up the role of a doctor, can you tell us why you made the switch?
Haden Blackman
LucasArts Producer
I did. I found that while grouping, I was using my Master Medic things more often than my Combat Medic things. I couldn't heal wounds any better than a medic. 3 out of 4 poisons were resisted, and didn't really do any damage in PvE compared to my gun anyway. Ranged stims were nice, but really they're just a convenience so you don't have to walk.
And the worst thing, I was supposed to be a Combat medic, and it was the docs who spend all day in the med center who were able to give combat buffs and bring combatants back from the dead. When was the last time you needed 2500 HAM in the med center? Or died in the med center and needed a rez? Those things are only useful on the battlefield, and they weren't given to the battlefield medic.
Didn't take me long to figure out that doctors are FAR better combat medics than Combat Medics are, so I made the switch.
Yes I was a Master CM the second one on Scylla in fact. I played master CM for about 3 weeks and was deeply in love with it. But i slowly fell out of love due to the incapability to actually craft advanced components and therefore more powerful medicines. I made my switch to master doc because the game system at the time hindered, trading instantaneous ranged healing for group survivablity. Personally though my life as Master Doc now isnt as glamourous as striding accross the battlefield saving the lives of my friends, i have made a lot of extra cash selling stims. If you couldnt gather it, i made the switch before the "big" patch and could not really reap the benefits of the CM as it is now. Perhaps i'll go back to CM some day, definitely if granted 50 extra skill points 
but until them i'mquite content for buffing myself and my friends for over 2k and making wads of credits selling crates of stims.
That's my two cents
Seijuro Hiko
Master Doctor - Master Rifleman
Scylla Server
I was about 3/4 of the way through CM when I got a group with a master doc on Dantooine.It was an educational experience, to say the least.By the time I targetted a team mate to do a heal, the doc had already done the /follow, /healdamage dance. IfI did any healing at all, it was healing the little bit of damage that had landed onmy buddybetween the timethe dochad already broughthim back from the 'danger' zone and my ranged stim landed. So much for the advantage of ranged heals.Then there were the guys that fell from mind damage. Well, the doc just drags the poor bugger off to the side, revives and goesback tohealing.What would I have done? Nada. Then there were the buffs the doc threw on everyone when we camped....wow, I definitely couldn't touchTHAT! So, I looked at my little poison packs that didn't seem to do anything at all, looked at my ranged heals which were so cool the first time I saw them, but now seemed kind of melodramatic and I made mydecision--surrendered CM on the spot and changed my title to Novice Doctor. I've since dropped Docexcept for med crating and reacquired CM for thecrafting tree only. Since Iwas spending so much timerunning harvesters and crafting anyway, seemed I might as well take up merchant and just be a pharmacist. At least I'm fortunate in the fact that I actually enjoy crafting...I sell to a lot of medic types that don't.
Ketty Onari,Pharmacist
Kettemoor, Talus,Nashal
I am currently a CM and would like to stay a CM, but it is getting harder and harder to justify.
I know it was mentioned earlier, but it should be brought up again. The lack of terrain negotiation in the CM tree makes it hard to be effective in a group. Most of us end up investing in the Scout tree for terrain negotiation. We are already pretty tight on skill points, and with out some terrain negotiation trying to support a group is hard. It would be nice to be able to put those points someplace else.
Pets are too prevalent and too powerfulin SWG. I am not necessary in most groups. Most everyone in a group hasa critterwith 10k ham they use to tank for them. When you get more then 1 or 2 people calling pets in a group it does not even seem like the pets take much damage. When something manages to get past all the pets and the worst does happen, i.e. death of a group mate,I cannot resurrect. I have actually been told, "Well then, what good are you?" I do not think CMs should get the ability to resurrect, leave that to the doctors, but it would be nice if we brought something to a group other than healing up special attack HAMdrainage. Possibly the ability to heal Mind damage 
Offensive stims need to be looked at. The range is too low for them to be useful in most combat situations. The amount of damage seems to be out of line with other weapons/attacks, and the resist rate should be adjusted. What I assume are bugs from killing something with poison should be fixed. If you are not familiar with this, when you kill something with a poison you are not awarded any exp orfaction points, and are unable to loot your kill.
Healing players that are taking damage using ranged/area stim pacs, especially in PVP, is almost impossible. In my opinion battles in SWG are dynamic, fun, and exciting. Generally people are running all over the place shooting and swinging. Stims take too long to use in these conditions. Ranged and area stims, specificly, are troublesome because of the nature of SWG battles and how you would assume you should be able to use them.You would assume you would be able to get in range of someone and then heal them, but people usually run out of range before you can throw your stim. I have resorted to the pick a target /follow /heal method most doctors and medics use. It is about the only way you can effectively heal in SWG, but it kind of defeats the purpose of being a CM, hence, the migration to doctor a lot of players are making.
Also, the area on area stims should be increased. Currently, you are lucky if you catch 2 people with an area stim because of the nature of how people fight in battles.
The amount of different resources required to craft CM supplies is a bit steep. I think in general CMs end up trying to maintain at least a few harvesters to help keep down resource costs. As you start to progress further up the CM tree skill points get pretty tight. I would like to be able to surrender my artisan/survey skills and just buy my resources off the bazaar, but I am notconfident I could easily find all the resources types I need on any given day at a reasonable price.
Trying to carry around a radioactive for crafting purposes and maintain harvesters at the same time is impossible. I have accidently dumped my high quality radioactive into a harvester on more than one occasion. It is frustrating, andthe onlywork aroundis stashing your radioactives in a bank or your house where you do not always have easy access to them.
Why does a Master "Combat" Medic only pull low level missions from a terminal? This seems a little out of whack to me. Our poisons are not great, but I think we could handle better than a mission with difficulty 6, especially when grouped with other players of a comparable skill level. Please note, I understand that mission difficulty is based on your weapon skills. I just think this could be adjusted to accomodate a CM who does not have the inclination or skill pointsto delve seriously into a weapon skill.
The only thing I found tolerable about having to invest skill points intoall of the ranged support skills from the Marksman tree was Suppression Fire. With the recent changesSuppression Fireis now fairly useless. I would now reclaim those skill points in a heartbeat if possible. Oh wait! I can if I drop CM and become a doctor. Just kidding...kind of 
Bottom line: Considering the amount of skill points it takes to master CM the "payout" in skills and abilities isnot high enough when compared tobecoming adoctor. To be honest, most CMs could go back to being Master Medics and not notice too much of a difference as far as healing is concerned, and probably would not miss poisons/diseases too much.
Also, pets probably need some more re-thinking. There are just too many of them around and they are too powerful considering anyone can use them. Perhaps reserve fighting pets for CH's and let everyone else use droids if they would like. I would suggest death for droids bepermanent or at least require a DE to repair. Pets were implemented poorly and if left as is will hurt the game long term. For proof, watch the way most groups currently function. People will eventually get bored of playing Pokeman on their computers and go back to their Game Boys.
I probably won't add anything that hasn't already been touched upon by at least one other person in this thread, but I'll include my list anyway...
1) Almost ALL our CM crafting subcomponents have experimentation based on the Doctor line. BECs, CDs, LSs...hell, even my Dispersal Mechanisims are capped at 5 experimentation points.
2) Waaay too many resources required for CM crafting. This should either refelect in the "power" of CM products or be cut down.
3) Silly typo's in our crafting line still have yet to get fixed.
4) Our skills are useless in PvE and highly bugged for exp/looting.
5) Our class has ZERO economically viable skills. Sure, we can make meds, but in that sense, we are just 2nd rate poor substitutes for doctors (whose higher experimentation allows for better quality). Plus doctors get buffs and revives (both of which can carry a service charge). Why not give CMs a "buff"? For instance, I noticed that MOBs are sometimes dropping poison-enhanced weapons now. Why not allow CMs to buff player weapons with poison % chance(much like weapon attachments work now)?
6) With the high cost of the CM-line, the ability to keep survey (artisan) becomes next to impossible down the line. This is more of a general Medical issue (but it effects CMs the greatest). The skill "medical forage" is utterly useless, why not replace it with a stripped down survey ability for medics? As for relying on the bazaar, heh, just try finding our lengthy list of resources in any decent quality and price on the public market.
7) Players in general are rather "simple" creatures. Just because they have residual DoTs tic'ing away on them after they took out that CM (nevermind we had to suicide to get close enough rangeto plant it), they believe it's over powered. "Hey, I killed that CM and I'm still incapping from this stupid DoT....nerf!". Of course, what they don't realize is that a master rifleman hits for 500+ mind, BHs...well, heh and try meeting a master TKA up close. We as a class are hardly"uber" in comparison...but I am worried continual juvenile cries of NERF! will cripple the class even further in their ONLY viable function at the moment...PvP.
8) Where is the combat in Combat Medic? As far as I can tell, we recieve no combat or field mods for that marksman tree...., it would make more sense if we had a line in Bio-engineer instead. Terrain negotiation is something I guess...but what about some field defensive mods?
The bottom line is usefulness. Docs are a useful class, and unless something changes next patch, that's where I'm going. CMs are not useful. We have no "sellable" skill. We have no PvE usefulness. We are a pain in the ass to upkeep. Our usefulness in PvP is arguable (we are suiciders a lot of the time).
Where exactly do CMs fit in the SWG universe?
You can now officially add me to the list of retired CM's. only 3 boxes from mastering doctor which is much more useful, and the skill points will let me run up rifleman, and maybe i won't be as worthless in pvp as I was as a CM. If the stuff finally or ever gets fixed, I might give it another go, it's just not the headache right now. Also now i can get artisan back, since I can't make my meds with out it.