Doctor Archive

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MDK_man wrote:

Ok on CU i mastered Doc to see what it would be like. Well there are alot of diffrent enhancers (sadly none docs can craft :smileysad but i got some of the blue frog and tryed to use the enhancers and none seemed to work i tryed double clicking i hit use. Am i just stupid and am doing it wrong or are other people not being able to use these. If you can use the ones you got off the frogs how did u do it?

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I'm crafting some now. Send Matta a mail on TC3 and I will send you a waypoint and leave a bag of goodies for you to test.

I crafted a full set with my MBE toon, then took them out to play with my MDoc/MCM toon (the latter reflecting one of my live toons). Here's what I found:

Enhancers are not skill buffs. They do not make your existing abilities better. They do not have a duration.

Enhancers *are* the advanced skills, available for rent on a per charge basis.

As an MDoc/MCM, everything I did with enhancers was identical (within a reasonable margin) to the advanced/improved skills. At a guess, what they're meant to do is give a leg up to work-in-progress docs/combat medics and/or dabblers. At master level, they're worthless. That would explain both the high resource cost and the high number of charges - one enhancer would probably be useful for quite a lot of play time.

I was *extremely* disappointed in them, especially after spending over a dozen load-proceed two steps-crash cycles getting the resources from the frogs, making the schematics, and firing up seven factories.

Enhancers appear to use the base skills of the user, just as stims/woundpacks/etc do now. Someone posted in another thread that he was getting 300ish heals at MDoc (+125 healing efficiency). At MDoc/MCM (+200 healing efficiency), I consistantly got 700ish heals from both skills and enhancers. Buffs - both skill and enhancer based - were identical.

We've all figured out by now (I hope) that there's less cooldown time when shuffling between multiple healing skills rather than spamming the same one over and over. Unfortunately, using an enhancer and then the identical skill is the same as using the skill twice in a row - doing so results in the full cooldown time. No advantage there.

The only real benefit I can see for these would be for non-masters - get a diluted "improved" or "advanced" skill at the same time you get the base skill.

Handy? Maybe. Worth the effort? Not in my opinion. Enhancers will not be part of my play style.

The only thing I can't figure out at this point is what the experimental power is for. Given the mediocrity of the resources available and the fact that my best enhancers came in the 60% range, I'm wondering whether the power value is completely meaningless (and thus the 0.0 effectiveness froglick enhancers being perfectly legitimate). The only plus side to this would be that you could focus experimentation on charges to get the most use out of them.

The devs told us at one point that the enhancers weren't essential. I now understand why.

MC

On a related note:

I also made some stims. Experimentation (10 points) went towards filling power first, with leftover points making only a marginal increase in charges. (Typically around 1-2 per 2 experimentation points.)

Instant Stim D: CL60, 16 charges, 837 power.

Instant Stim C: CL35, 16 charges, 608 power.

Instant Stim B: CL15, 17 charges, 296 power.

Instant Stim A: CL1, 12 charges, 161 power.

The power of the froglick stims might be within reach with some really good resources, or at least that number may be the theoretical maximum. The charges are another matter entirely, and are a far cry from even the 50ish charge stims we have in live.

Nobody needs to feel threatened by these. With the minute per use timer, even the high end stims are far less effective than a live healer, and the low charges will keep the churn high. Best use: Emergency coverage when the healer is already providing emergency coverage to someone else.

(I did a lot of my testing by going out to the Tusken v Jawa battlefield (which, with the lack of faction, was a bunch of tuskens and a bunch of jawas hanging out and glaring at each other). When I got swarmed periodically, I was healing myself three or four times in a row - once per minute would have resulted in my death fairly quickly.)

MC

(Edited to include exact stats now that I'm back in game, and to include Stim B and C stats.)

Message Edited by mcorey on 04-17-2005 10:18 AM

Message Edited by MataHairy on 04-17-2005 08:56 AM

Point 2) is because of the GCW healing restrictions - as civilian you can only heal other civilians or on-leave players.

At novice doc (I finally dropped to do some more testing), I got the same buff from enhancers and skill:

Nutrient Injection - 10% Health, 36 minutes.

I was able to overbuff this lower level buff at MDoc with the 10% Health/10% Health Regen/40 minute advanced nutrient injection.

I was unable to use an enhancer for which I didn't have a base skill.

This brings us back to the question asked by the subject of this thread: Are enhancers working as intended? Right now, they simply appear to be a mechanism to invoke the same skill you already have. Are they meant to offer the next skill up (for example, advanced nutrient injection when you only have the basic) or perhaps something in between?

MC

Message Edited by MDK_man on 04-17-2005 01:48 PM