Squad Leader Archive

One recurring theme in my group adventures is that we always have a recurring problem with mind. Medics run out of mind from stimming people, I lose my mind from being hit in the head and there's nothing you can do about it besides rest. This results in downtime at best, and losing the whole group at worst. If squad leaders had a way to work with the mind pool of players, it would be more realistic and grouping with a squad leader would be a lot more desirable for PvE and PvP.

I know lots of suggestions like this have been made before, but here's my idea.

1) Give a skill that lets us recharge mind of individual players, and yes this should include ourselves if we are group leader. Call it Encourage or something. I think it should cost health, since health is the "opposite" stat of mind and everything else costs action and mind anyway.
2) We should either:

a) have a skill that rebalances mind damage across the group, or
b) give a passive willpower bonus (I think +800 Group Willpower for master SL would not be unreasonable).

Though I like B, I think A has a better chance since it takes the whole group into account and rewards large groups. Perhaps we can also have a skill that temporarily provides a large group willpower bonus.

Anytime in a game (MMORPG) when you have the ability to recharge yourself fully of all your health, etc pools your run into people who will take the class and add it to something else and you will wind up with endless loop characters that are super tough to kill because they can just keep recharging themselves. I.e. Doctors in AO, Sages in AC2..etc...etc.

Additionally, we should consider solutions that do not screw riflemen in pvp, which mine probably do.

What I'd like to know is if there is ANYTHING in the game that can heal the mind faster than it can regenerate on its own. At first I thought Entertainers, but I think they only heal Mind Wounds and Battle Fatigue. I don't think they actually make your Mind bar fill up faster. So how would this work in PvP? Acouple head shots, mind shotsand you're @#$%ed? You either die or you have to run away to let it regenerate? That's not a very good system for a Squad Leader whose abilities rely entirely on the Mind. Basically, a Squad Leader either dies every time he uses his skills (because after he uses his skills, a Head Shot or two will take him out), or he runs away. Truthfully, I don't know which alternative would be worse for a Squad Leader.

Clearly there is an imbalance in the system. Rifleman have a clear advantage in that they can target the pool that can't be healed. Furthermore, when they incapacitate the person by sapping his mind, medics cannot heal him to let him get up sooner, so he's that much easier to Death Blow. To balance the system, there should either be a significant disadvantage to using a Rifle, or a mechanism should be implimented to offset the devistation that a Rifleman can do to the mind (i.e. Squad Leaders who have mind healing capabilities). I haven't had a chance to PvP much yet, so this is mostly theoretical, but I predict an unfair advantage to rifle usage in groups (one on one might be a different story).

Well, I don't want to be too hard on riflemen because the upcoming pvp damage nerf is going to be tough for them. Targeting mind is the only advantage they have, pistols are just as accurate at long range and do more damage more quickly. They actually have a tangible accuracy penalty while moving and are annihilated by melee.

But we need some way, any way, to do a quick mind recharge on someone. If someone loses their health I can heal them for 500 damage with my Novice Medic skill and put them back in the fight immediately. If they lose their mind (medics are susceptible to this for obvious reasons) then they are out of the fight for 90 seconds and they face the potential of being deathblowed. Like I said, an overall group willpower bonus could help prevent medics from killing themselves in the middle of a battle.

Or, for the medics...a skill that gives a FOCUS bonus to an individual group member.

Everyone is calling for some way to regen mind. Combat medics and doctors believe it to be them. I have even seen entertainers calling for a war drum-type instrument. It all doesn't make sense. I strong believe Squad Leaders should gain this ability. Further, I am sure the Devs will give the ability to regen mind to someone and if we want it to be us, we need to start screaming now.

I believe:

-Boost Morale should be changed to spread mind damage across all members. I said damage, not wounds. The Squad Leader himself should be included in those that have their mind damage spread. At Master Squad Leader, we should get +10 boost morale which lowers the HAM activation cost.

-At Leadership II we should gain some ability, Encourage is a fine name, that increases Willpower to all group members. It could be passive or active...but if its active it needs to not cost a ridiculous amount. At Leadership III, we should get +10 Encourage which will decrease casting cost and increase effectiveness. A further +10 bonus should be received at Leadership IV and then again at Master.

-HAM costs on Squad Leader abilities are already too high and this should be kept in mind if these skills are implemented.

I don't believe Squad Leaders should get the ability to do a healing-type effect on an individual group member as this will turn the class into a healer which is against the "squad leader" role. I believe that a strong regeneration bonus at low levels of Leadership and then the damage balancing at Boost Morale would make the class stand out in a hunt, contribute to a hunt and make the tree very usefull.

I can't stress enough, if we are not vocal about this issue, this ability will go to another class.

Advanced Entertainers already (supposedly) have this skill. It is called Mind Enhancement and is found in the Technique lines. The description on this skill is that it heals Mind Damage faster (as opposed to Wounds, which is covered in the Wound Healing lines).

That being said, I am not sure how effective this skill is, or if it works. My character is a Novice Dancer (will be dropping this to advance SL), but I'd like to get the first level of Technique and do a "before and after" test on mind damage. Or you could just group with a Master Dancer to test this out in a camp after depleting your mind pool in the field.

Again, this is a "resting" form of mind damage healing, not an "on the run" type which is what you're looking for.

That's interesting, I'll have to look into that. But as you mentioned, it's a resting form of mind damage healing, and we can't be resting everytime someone's low on mind. Unfortunately, calling "time out" doesn't really work when you've just deathblown their Guildmaster's mistress.