Doctor Archive

You know when I heard Zarlor was stepping down from Doc Correspondant I should have been prepared for something big and nasty but.....

Well it is little too early to say seeing as how they are still in planning stage.

And before this is all over I might have changed my mind about it half dozen times.(in fact I would bank on that fact)

But reading Thunderheart's "SWG: The Art of Combat",

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=14605&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

I can't help but think

Where does that leave us healers?

Well first of all, the reason they are making change make sense.

And all of the change they are proposing also make sense. And I even agree with the order they are proposing the change.

And I will say the HAM change they propose would actually go great length toward addressing the issues theya re supposed to address.

BUT, as Doctor, this would pretty much leave us hanging in the wind in terms of our place in group dynamic.

As I understand it, currently the way it works is all the tactical decisions are made before the first bullet is in the air. You pick the who, when, where and how fight gonna happen and once bullets start flying, it is just spam spam spam till death or glory.

Now they are changing it so that you fire seveal rounds, step back to regroup, then jump right back in for more fun, putting in ebb and flow of the fight to make it more interesting.

Great idea.

Lot of issues.

First I see is on PvP (which seem to be why this is implemented).

You rush in, do you special(hopefuly KD) and start blasting. After you get some good shot in, you flow out to "recharge". Meanwhile the one you been shooting it stand up and hit himself with stim-B totally undoing whatever work you did. He rush in toward you this time and we have happy cycle of rush in take a few shot. step back wait for other guy to restore himself then reutrn the favor.

This would make us doctors pretty good fighter seeing as how we can undo almost all type of damage done to us given the opportunity.

It also make every combat entirely relied upon wound damage and mind damage.

Ofcourse this would lead to stimp-B and wound-B nurf otherwise how would fight ever end unless they give every combat profession mind pool targetting specials? It takes time to do the damage but healing in the game is pretty much instant.

The first issue with PvE I see is who exactly are we going to heal?

If they make it so that CH pet are no longer the "tank" then I guess it is pretty simple who our patient would be. But it depend on what kind of damage player take and what kind of pool is used up (CoB is currently using mind pool I believe)

And if Combat Droid is big success as tank, then well there you go.

In any case I hope we are not treated as after though as it is often seem to be the case, and I do hope we have old EXPERIENCED correspondant to voice all this issues. (No I am not implying anything here Zalor, you go ahead and abandon us in time of need. we'll be all right *sniff* *sniff*)

A lot of healers have a lot of concerns abotu the new system.. Yeah, we do take a hit on stimming.

[as for Zarlor
He's not abandoning anything. He has a real life. We are also trying to get a plan approved that will keep him on the Correspondent team.]

There will still be plenty of healing to do.. Just not for spamming specials. The peopel on the wroing end of speicals (or PVE mob attacks) wil lstill need to be healed.

Wounds will become more important... Docs gain here bigtime.

The thing you gain the most of it ... time.

Time in combat to do things a lot of the time we have not time to do now...

While we are busy dumping stims on everyone spamming away, we often have no time to use /healstate, or /firstaid, /curepoison or /curedisease.

Those healers that do stuff besides healing (infamous TKA/Docs and all the other Docs with combat skill;s [not to mention CMs]) have time to shoot, or throw gerenades/poison etc.

It gives everyone more things to do in combat.. and more time to do them. It makes the other / commands more useful.

I'd like to see a more complete implimentation, but this seems to be going in the right direction as it was.

-T

Message Edited by Traigus on 12-05-2003 11:13 AM

I am generally for it. Being a Fencer, I see how quickly I accumulate wounds. Wow. I knew that the CHs were nerfing doctors, but this told me just how badly they nerfed doctors. No one needed wound healing.

More brawlers means more wounds. Whohoo. More brawlers means more people to heal in combat. Whohooo.

This change will effect everyone deeply, not just medics and doctors. Much has yet to be revealed.

= Dr. vema Gara =

Sounds like its a GREAT system they have in the works. If it seriously effects Docs, I think it will only be for a limited time, until play styles can adapt.

I also think that our Buffs, especially MD buffs, are goin to be even more sought after than they already are. Since a player with a 2k ham will be able to do specials for a much longer time before pulling out than a player with a 900 ham.

This will also prolong battles, causing increases to wound amounts, as well as giving more chances to apply stims to heal up the damage.

PvP will no longer consist of short spam battles (I hope), and will become fluid and intense, lasting for minutes instead of seconds.

I for one, will be welcoming this change with open and optimistic arms.

As Traigus mentioned, there is a possibility I'll still be around. Thanks for the vote of confidence, though. Good to know I'd be missed.

At any rate I am of two minds on this. I THINK it will work out fine. For all the resons folks have already mentioned, plus I think it will get Mind Healing back into stims alleviating the HUGE problem with that as a damage source.

On the other hand it could make not only wounds more important (good), disease more important (good for CMs, and to a lesser extent us as well since we need can heal disease) and whould give us some time making states more worhtwhile to heal (and possibly increasig their effect making them worth healing to begin with, but (boy this is a long sentence) it could make Mind Wounds more important, which is something we can (and shouldn't) be able to do anything about. That may not be a huge problem, because wounds are likely viewed as a downtime modifier and not something that is as feasible to heal in combat anyways.

In all I would have to say that my crtystal ball still isn't getting all the angles on this. The lack of mention of how healing will fit into this new system does give rise to some concern that maybe the Devs re taking a good look at how healing rolls into the new system. But we've all pointed out some places where this could turn into something good for healers, too. So it's just too hard for me to say at this point how things will all work out.