Medic Archive
Thread: Mind Damage: A Serious Problem For Medics
/ooc
"Group seeks Chanter/Bard!"
*** Sorry I couldn't resist, but I havedreamed of thisseveral times in the past couple of days ***
I totally agree.
Plus, it was funny to picture your beefy Transdo friend falling over from metnal fatigue. USing that gun that long just hurt his head.
I think you guys are thinking too hard in terms of the balancing/playability issues of head damage.
Trust me, I think it's safe to say that the Dev Management behind this thing have enough experience to recognize a problem such as this when it's hitting them in the eyes... if they don't well then they have GOT to be blind.
That being said, it's great we're all recognizing these complexities, but the largest problem (at least as I see it) is being brushed under the carpet here...
Medics heal:
Health and Action Damage, both on the field, and off (for stat heals)
Entertainers heal:
Mind Damage (off the field... camps won't count for the sake of argument in that they aren't always readily accessible)
So the real question of the day is...
Who heals Mind damage... not the stat damage... but the rate at which the mind bar regenerates???
THAT... my friends, is the true problem here.
Avari, that's it exactly: who heals the mind damage right now?
(anyone that just said "entertainers" does not understand what mind damage is. we are *not* talking aboutmind wounds.)
That is *exactly* the problem here. Because no one heals it, but it's possible to conciously do damage to it. In PvE, it can get annoying - my Beefy Trandoshin (as we'll call him) eventualy passes out after any protracted fighting, no matter how much anyone heals him.
In PvP - it will be sinister. Why not do mind damage? Can't be healed.
That's the issue. But, again I agree Avari, the devs have got to see the problem - they're proffesionals, they know their buisness. I simply feel passionate about the subject because it is such a fantastic game. =)
-C
Here we go again.
You CANT have medics healing mind, because then you undercut entertainers.
Low mind on fighters is what gives others an advantage. The developers don't want anyone to be invincible. It's what keeps that game interesting. People love to keep fighting for more power, and nobody likes to think they're totally helpless.
There aren't any tanks in this game in the sense of other fantasy MMORPGs. What makespeople somewhat like tanksin this game is armor and fighting style (melee), not their body's endurance against damage.
Medics will always have a purpose in the field : To heal action and health. You use special attacks right? So how about instead of putting a hojillion points intoaction and health and leaving mind to rot (as you would if this were a traditional MMORPG) balance it out a little bit more so you still have decent mind. Medics will take care of the action/health damage you lose from attacks/using special abilities -- and your mind might still hold tight.
People have to get used to thinking in a different game mindset. If you wanted to play the same game over and over, then do just that, play the same game over and over. You have to think smarter in SWG - which is one of the things that makes it so cool.
Your solution isn't bad -- that is, have LESS mind damage in combat -- but we can't get rid of it entirely, it's what gives some people the edge, and makes EVERYONE in a group important.
No, reducing mind damage will only do one of two things:
1. reduce it so much its not effective to be a rifleman anymore.
2. leave it such that you can still attack the one HAM pool that can't be treated in the field.
Don't miss the point here - this isn't about medics being uber. This isn't about medics healingtheir own mind damage(which they shouldn't, obviously.) This is about the mind pool being untreatable in the field. It's frustraiting enough in PvE vs the occasional npc sniper who starts picking everyone off one at a time - but in PvP it will be downright vicious:
-lets say you're a rifleman. Lets say some rebel scum you've decided to attack is a carbineer. You both open fire, you do mind damage, he does body damage. - Lets say he's got his HAM bars pretty well evened, and has head armor - like you say. It might even be a fair fight.
-now lets give you a medic. Thats a problem for him, your HA bars will get patched up.
-now lets give him a medic. Not much point, is there? He'll die just as fast.
This isn't some "slight" advantage that riflemen have. This is about a currently exploitable weakness that one class can take advantage of - while the *healing* classes can do nothing but... well, run around and look silly I guess.
Currently, it's not a rampant problem with the game - thing's are early yet, and I'm 99% sure something is going to be done about this in short order. It'd be nice to get a dev's opinion on this? Please? =)
-C
Minddamage is the only counter to medics. Or am I wrong? What else can prevent you from healing someone or yourself infintely long? How much does the best doc-stim heal? 400, 500, 600? How much does one such heal take from your mindpool?I assume your healrate is close to the maximal damageoutput some carabine/pistol user can have. Actually your healrate must be bigger than this, because you're complaining about rifle but not about pistol and carabine. You do this, because youare notafraid of these weapons. Right? You assume that you could beat pistol/carabine users as long as your opponent has not equal regeneration skills (+heal) like you. Right?
So now if you take the right race for a big medical oriented player (doc+CM etc), max all his mindstats, minimize all his action and heal regeneration, and put the rest to action and health pool, what could beat him if there is no minddamage (or if he could heal his minddamage). Such a char could beat everyone with an uncertified and untrained weapon, as long he makes more damage than the opponents regeneration. We would have a situation like in AO where a Doc could completely heal his HP every 8 seconds and noone could dish out enough damage in between these 8 seconds to kill all his HP - as long as you dont remove his healing abilities. And exactly this is minddamage. Its a counter only for you. (We dont discuss brawlers atm.)
Even when Rifle and Mind-/Headshot are uber, it's better that a weapon is uber than the whole medical line. Because most players need any weapon and if its ubar they switch to this weapon. But if medicine and the whole MedicalSkillsare ubar, than a lot of player would be upset, because if they want to compete with you, they would have to switch to a different playstyle (medical/healing) which is a bigger hit than changing just a weapon.
As long docs and CMs aren't useless in PvP (and currently they are neither useless nor not competitive) I wouldn't support any change to that.
If you try and max out a 'Tank', sure you'll be in trouble against a rifleman.
The concept of a 'Tank' though doesn't really fit with SWG.
If you're going to PvP you will need to spread points out a bit so that you aren't going to be overly vulnerable to one type of damage because you'll never know what weapon an opponent will be using. There's also nothing to say that a brawler can't also be able to shoot a rifle and send headshots right back at the sniper.
PvP is usually over very quickly anyway. In beta it was the body shots from pistols everyone was moaning about because they did a lot of damage very quickly because pistols fire very fast by comparison.
I'm sure if things are overly problematic they will be changed, but I think it's a little early to say.
As for mind damage in PvE, sure if you're just doing brawler it can be a pain. I remember having a trando one with only about 300 in mind IIRC. But i never really saw a problem having a sit down after a few fights for a mintue or so to regen the mind points. If you just spread a few from the health pool (who needs 1250 Heatlh anyway) it will help a lot.
kinnah wrote:
Minddamage is the only counter to medics. Or am I wrong?
People still die from health/action damage with a medic around. It's just harder. Mind damage (when in play) is what makes the medic proffesion *worthless.*Limitations are put on medics by mind-pool, increased mind cost with high-skill stims, re-use time between stims, very limited range on stims, and lack of any offensive power.
muranwrote:
I'm not sure you're looking at this from the right angle.
If you try and max out a 'Tank', sure you'll be in trouble against a rifleman.
That's not what we're really talking about at all. This isn't Tanks vs Rifleman. This is Tank + Medic vs Rifleman. Or Pistolier + Medic vs Rifleman. Or Guy With Basket of Nuclear Bombs + Medic vs Rifleman. The point being, anything that's doing mind damage will negate the whole medic/doctor/combat medic class - be it monsters or players.
kinnah wrote:
you're complaining about rifle but not about pistol and carabine. You do this, because youare notafraid of these weapons. Right? You assume that you could beat pistol/carabine users as long as your opponent has not equal regeneration skills (+heal) like you. Right?
Wrong. I'm not assuming I could beat any player, no matter what they're armed with. Healing in combat is a very clumsy thing, and is really only good for keeping yourself alive - not for dealing out any significant damage.
In addition to that, I'm not complaining about rifles. I'm pointing out that mind-damage, as a game mechanic, completely negates the healing classes. A comparative analogy is this - pretend there is a skill tree that, upon reaching a certain level reduces all pistol damage against you to 0, all the time. That skill would sure make the pistoliers unhappy - when they met anyone that had that skill, they could onlystand there and look stupid.
It's the same thing with medics and mind damage. As a medic, if something hits my friend with mind-damage, all I can dois stand there and look stupid. It's something that needs fixing.
I haven't met anything that just hits for mind damage except other players.
The ratio of mind damage to the other types always seems pathetically small to me.
If you do find something that does just mind damage, you just have to be more careful and take them down quickly so you can then happily rest for a bit to recharge the mind pool after the fight while going through their pockets and looking for loose change.
If you had 2 guys with pistols, medic or otherwise vs a rifleman. I'm sure if they were equal skill level the rifle wielder would be lying on the floor in short order.
This is an interesting topic to look at. Before discussing tho, I'd like to say that I was a Zabrak Doctor with 900 willpower and various Rifle Specialists skills, and I did duel a few times a day back in beta. My char could with stand the overpowered bodyshots since I could do full heals myself, the only problem I had was when the opponent uses mind-damaging moves, HS, or eyeshot (BH). I'd say I was 50/50 in the later cases, and 90/10 to those that don't hit my mind, why? Simply because I was not able to heal AND deal damage in that case.
I'm for combat medics getting ability to heal mind damage ONLY if it is not abusable:
1. make it only desirable to bring someone back from a mind incap (heavy mind cost, so one cannot use it over and over)
2. no exp granted: 2 combat medics healing each other's mind over and over for xp?
Slothy suggested this in beta and I was in support of his views, I wish the thread was still here, it had many good ways of balancing it, right now, many suggestions here will make medics overpowering (for one, lol).
For those that complain about Mindshot, it is just as deadly as other bleeding attacks, if I got hit with a bleeding attack during battle I immediately do /firstaid regardless of what's hitting me (unless they're almost dead), better get rid of it than not being able to later. Same goes with PvP, if someone hits me with Healthshot or Actionshot, I usually find some terran that I can hide behind and apply firstaid to myself a couple times.