Feedback The Medic and Its Issues

[SirJustin90]

The medic as it is seems fairly overpowered.

The issues I see at this time are:

1. The heal rate is amazing, so much that I can solo commando, and out-heal fire damage WHILE BURNING (which never stops, unlike volkov).  The heal rate could be a bit slower to remove this commando ability.

2. The healing of groups. Since it isn't possible to make the medic work like it did in game (1 unit at a time), it becomes insanely overpowered in small games, and even in infantry matches of 10 v 10, as it is very much impossible to kill reliably with a huge team of soldiers running circles around it.

As a workaround, I suggested limiting the amount of heal packs it can use to something like 10-20 at most, to at least force it to not be able to continue an endless assault.

 

The flamer is now USELESS against them, as the heal can be spammed to get rid of the burn issue, and the healing out heals burning anyways. Even 10 packs would last, if the medic timed them each time the pack ran out. 20 would be overkill, but at least it's not unlimited. (This would finally make the pack tactical, either choosing constant heal, or choosing to keep it running longer, by using it when needed)

 

As for the weapon, I see no problem with it. My issue was that I am nearly invincible SOLO if I use my auto-heal correctly (which never stops, unlike volkov), rather than the weapon being OP. The issue is the mass survivability not the ability to fight.

 

Lastly, making increases to time switching between is POINTLESS, that isn't the issue that they can heal and fight... the issue is that they can heal endlessly, and that they can survive too well alone and become a mini-commando.

[Pushwall]

There's a thread for this already and I already plan to fix things.

Also you seem to be missing a very crucial point which is that it is overpowered on Pacific Threat and Fissure and nearly useless everywhere else. (e: okay this was covered in the poll but not at all in the post.) Why make it even more useless on other maps instead of finding ways to shift the balance to nerf it on those 2 maps while making it more relevant on vehicle maps, i.e. what I was going through in the other thread?

[moonsense715]

Oh but it IS possible to heal just one infantry at a time. [/engine features]

10 hours ago, Pushwall said:

There's a thread for this already and I already plan to fix things.

Also you seem to be missing a very crucial point which is that it is overpowered on Pacific Threat and Fissure and nearly useless everywhere else. (e: okay this was covered in the poll but not at all in the post.) Why make it even more useless on other maps instead of finding ways to shift the balance to nerf it on those 2 maps while making it more relevant on vehicle maps, i.e. what I was going through in the other thread?

If Medics heal themselves fast enough and do as much damage as Rifle Soldiers then he's useful on every map. Basically he's a Rifle Soldier then with an auto-healing upgrade for the price (I forgot the price). If that's useless, then something's wrong with Rifle Soldiers in the first place.

[Pushwall]

Just now, moonsense715 said:

Oh but it IS possible to heal just one infantry at a time. [/engine features]

Without making it also possible to heal enemies at the same time or requiring a ton of extra armour types?

[moonsense715]

1 minute ago, Pushwall said:

Without making it also possible to heal enemies at the same time?

Duplicate armor/warheads for the two teams if you want to prevent teamhamper. But then you can do the same with Technicians/buildings.

[Pushwall]

1 minute ago, Pushwall said:

or requiring a ton of extra armour types?

 

[moonsense715]

How do you prevent technicians from healing enemy buildings?

[Pushwall]

11 minutes ago, moonsense715 said:

How do you prevent technicians from healing enemy buildings?

Are technicians ever going to be in a situation where an enemy building and a friendly building are so close together that their aim may slip and heal the wrong one?

12 hours ago, SirJustin90 said:

Lastly, making increases to time switching between is POINTLESS, that isn't the issue that they can heal and fight... the issue is that they can heal endlessly, and that they can survive too well alone and become a mini-commando.

Fixing his switch time is not pointless. The way he stands now, he's meant to be able to fire his medic kit every 2 seconds but due to his switch time he can do it as quickly as every 0.5 seconds instead. Pretty hard for flamethrowers to interrupt the heal when it's being reactivated up to 6 times as fast as the flamethrower can refire, wouldn't you say?

Anyway here's the full list of things I was going to do to the medic.

• His auto-heal only kicks in after 1 second of not taking damage - so concentrated fire will put him down, Starshina/V2 burn will delay the regen by an extra 2 seconds and flamer burn will nullify it for a good 10 seconds.
• Health back up to 100, since his auto-heal will be significantly weaker.
• Medic kit can only be fired every 2.5 seconds; has a 2-second charge time and an 0.5-second cooldown (same as his switch time) so it is impossible to fire the medic kit faster than this. The slower fire rate also makes it easier for flamethrowers to interrupt.
• Medic kit does not heal infantry's armour.
• Has a "fortification flare" which creates a safe zone in which friendly infantry become uncrushable and have their armour refilled and temporarily upgraded to a version that reduces tank/artillery splash by 87.5% instead of 62.5%.

[moonsense715]

It's also possible to prevent healing damage from non-teammates in the engine.

[des1206]

2 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Are technicians ever going to be in a situation where an enemy building and a friendly building are so close together that their aim may slip and heal the wrong one?

Wait, are you saying I can heal enemy buildings as a tech/engine?

[JigglyJie]

I personally think the Medic is fine, as per my vote. But that doesn't necessarily mean I disagree on some of the issues raised regarding him. I will say though, do remember that Medic groups often require a number of people to pull off and yes whilst it makes defending a bit hard, it does often leave their base vulnerable to attack. I think it more depends on certain maps (which has been documented, strong on a few, often useless on others) and player counts. I don't mind the potential changes, especially the flamer being the first counter to them.

 

One thing I want to ask though, I know that Shock Troopers aren't really meant to counter infantry but I noticed that shocks now deal tiny damage (even when landing a direct hit) and will out heal the damage being done. Is that supposed to happen? In other words, the self-healing seems to override direct damage of time from the Shock Trooper.

[Pushwall]

4 minutes ago, JigglyJie said:

One thing I want to ask though, I know that Shock Troopers aren't really meant to counter infantry but I noticed that shocks now deal tiny damage (even when landing a direct hit) and will out heal the damage being done. Is that supposed to happen? In other words, the self-healing seems to override direct damage of time from the Shock Trooper.

Just checked this and this is completely untrue, the shock's afterburn effect totally works against medics. The medic's 3 healing per second just makes the shock's direct 10 damage per second seem less than it really is.

But that will cease to be an issue entirely when I do this.

7 hours ago, Pushwall said:

• His auto-heal only kicks in after 1 second of not taking damage - so concentrated fire will put him down, Starshina/V2 burn will delay the regen by an extra 2 seconds and flamer burn will nullify it for a good 10 seconds.

 

[Pushwall]

A little adjustment to the fortification flare: instead of completely refilling armour, it refills a negligible amount - sitting in the beacon for a whole minute will refill enough of your armour to take the bite out of maybe a single AK-47 headshot - but instead, your armour bar cannot be depleted while you're in the flare's range. Having even one point of armour is enough for its damage reduction to kick in as long as attacks don't also deplete said armour - which of course they can't - so this means that the beacon will merely prop up an attack team's armour, and allow it to exist for a short time on units that have lost it, instead of completely renewing it like I claimed before. So once the beacon's done for, an attack team will fall into its more vulnerable unarmoured state pretty quickly. Armour refilling is the domain of the ST/APC/LST, so this will make the beacon have less of an impact on inf maps (even Pacific Threat where LSTs don't see much play and are pretty fragile anyway).

[SirJustin90]

I don't find they are useless on other maps at all. If you can get them in a building, good luck getting them out. They can still survive insanely long. 

(This is the same as saying a captain shotgun rush in a building is useless except on those maps, which it sure as hell isn't.)

As for leaving their base vulnerable, that's a mute point, as units anywhere other than there base does the same thing, medic rushes are no different.

 

As you take it, they will be balanced on those two maps, but still have the problem of endless heals in the enemy base. The rate at which the medpack is re-shot most likely wont make that much difference. However, nerfing the medic's ability to be nearly invincible except under extremely focused fire will. Especially the burn, as at least shotguns can be bought without a barracks.

 

However, shouldn't the healing abilities on the allies under med-kit also be able to be stopped by burning as well? (If this isn't the case, which is hard to tell at the moment) With the slower fire of the med-kit and no armor, that would actually stop the problem a bit.

Edited June 20, 2017 by SirJustin90

[SirJustin90]

Also, I know there was another post. But I find having a separate one, with a poll to show the community as a whole was more appropriate, then a single post in a already flooded thread.

[Pushwall]

18 hours ago, SirJustin90 said:

However, shouldn't the healing abilities on the allies under med-kit also be able to be stopped by burning as well? (If this isn't the case, which is hard to tell at the moment)

The healing is stopped by afterburn damage, yes. But on the contrary, the afterburn is also stopped when a medic reapplies healing - which is not something we can change.

The latter is not that relevant though as the DPS of flamers' afterburn is negligible in a close-quarters fight; its primary use is to stall regens, cancel medic heals, and flush enemies out of cover as the flamethrower is one of a very small number of weapons whose splash damage is not completely blocked by terrain - and afterburn effects still apply at full effectiveness if the source of them causes any damage no matter if it's 0.0001 HP or the full 20+ HP.

18 hours ago, SirJustin90 said:

With the slower fire of the med-kit and no armor, that would actually stop the problem a bit.

Nah, medics still have armour, they just don't have any way to refill it anymore (either for themselves or teammates). Well, a proper way at least. The armour cache flare just puts your armour in stasis and provides a token amount to people who've lost all of it, and only temporarily and while camping inside a small area.

18 hours ago, SirJustin90 said:

However, nerfing the medic's ability to be nearly invincible except under extremely focused fire will. Especially the burn, as at least shotguns can be bought without a barracks.

Don't forget kapitans who break infantry armour much faster than any other infantryman does, even the flamer - pretty important in softening up infantry to make it easier for the low-penetration rifles/shotties/snipers to outdamage the heal if the medic's expended his armour cache or had it disarmed.

[SirJustin90]

So it seems, one of the things that will be important, as far as the med-kit goes is that it needs limited ammo or a greatly reduced fire rate, to prevent it making hordes near invincible indefinitely.

 

I favor limited ammo, as it allows it to still be strong, but not able to continue a siege indefinitely.

 

The only thing really stopping medic sieges I find are mines on vehicle maps, and to a lesser extent hinds, as rocket troops can deal with them easily.

 

Otherwise I think medic rushes would be just as powerful on vehicle maps if used, with the exception of the mines and lesser hind worry.

Edited June 26, 2017 by SirJustin90

[ChopBam]

Fixed the thread title.

Misplaced apostrophes trigger me.

[Pushwall]

56 minutes ago, SirJustin90 said:

So it seems, one of the things that will be important, as far as the med-kit goes is that it needs limited ammo or a greatly reduced fire rate, to prevent it making hordes near invincible indefinitely.

I favor limited ammo, as it allows it to still be strong, but not able to continue a siege indefinitely.

Not refilling armour doesn't help at all? Once infantry have lost their armour they effectively take 33% more damage from the flamethrower, 100% more damage from the AK/TOZ and 166% more damage from the Makarov/Kovshotty/Dragunov/Grenades. And the PKM only needs to cause a full health bar of damage to completely strip armour by itself, and the Flamethrower only needs a little more than that. We can always up some of the weapons' armour stripping abilities too. Once the armour is gone surely it's much, much easier to outdamage the healing? The projected medic won't be able to restore armour at all, only provide a temporary substitute for it in the radius of his temporary flare. So this means he'll only be able to continue a siege indefinitely if he's got a ST/LST/APC behind him which actually can refill peoples' armour indefinitely, and well, good luck keeping those first two alive even if you have a mechanic around as mechs heal vehicle health REALLY slowly.

[des1206]

So Tanya has the advantage here?

 

 

Edited June 27, 2017 by des1206

[Pushwall]

Yep. But you can't even get Tanyas on the maps where Medics are a big issue.  Besides, her lack of armour means that from the very moment she enters combat, she is taking far more damage from small arms than any armoured infantry are - sure, she has more health to compensate for that, but those small arms have an easier time of outdamaging the medic kit's healing on her right away. Plus the only benefit she gains from the medic's armour cache is uncrushable status - she doesn't become near-immune to splash damage like any armoured soldiers do, and she doesn't gain temporary armour like any armoured soldiers who've been stripped do. So that mitigates Medic+Tanya a slight bit, which you may think holds it back on the maps where it can be done, but if Tanyas could gain armour, that'd make them roughly twice as tough as they currently are against everything that isn't a PKM or direct hits of big projectiles, and survive headshots from sniper rifles, which might be just a little bit bullshit.

[SirJustin90]

On 6/26/2017 at 8:20 PM, Pushwall said:

Not refilling armour doesn't help at all? Once infantry have lost their armour they effectively take 33% more damage from the flamethrower, 100% more damage from the AK/TOZ and 166% more damage from the Makarov/Kovshotty/Dragunov/Grenades. And the PKM only needs to cause a full health bar of damage to completely strip armour by itself, and the Flamethrower only needs a little more than that. We can always up some of the weapons' armour stripping abilities too. Once the armour is gone surely it's much, much easier to outdamage the healing? The projected medic won't be able to restore armour at all, only provide a temporary substitute for it in the radius of his temporary flare. So this means he'll only be able to continue a siege indefinitely if he's got a ST/LST/APC behind him which actually can refill peoples' armour indefinitely, and well, good luck keeping those first two alive even if you have a mechanic around as mechs heal vehicle health REALLY slowly.

Hmm we'll see. That might make a difference. If it isn't enough it'll just be the same problem except a bit easier. I think the only reason it becomes a problem is that except at close range, damage tends to be more gradual than quick... and large groups tend to shred anyone who closes in.

Either way, without seeing it in action with multiple different groups, we can't say how much the removal of armor healing is going to make. The numbers look good, but we still need to see then in action to derive the actual affect this change will have.

 

Still is the medics own healing speed going to be lowered, as that is one of the major issues atm as well?

 

You say "His auto-heal only kicks in after 1 second of not taking damage - so concentrated fire will put him down, Starshina/V2 burn will delay the regen by an extra 2 seconds and flamer burn will nullify it for a good 10 seconds." However, the auto-heal in my experience still seems to function, and I take zero damage from burns. I don't heal of course, but I'm not being damaged either. This is especially true against flame turrets. (Is it intended to just stop healing, or prevent all Damage Over Time, that way?)

Edited June 29, 2017 by SirJustin90

[Pushwall]

53 minutes ago, SirJustin90 said:

You say "His auto-heal only kicks in after 1 second of not taking damage ,,, However, the auto-heal in my experience still seems to function,

 

On 6/19/2017 at 1:32 PM, Pushwall said:

Anyway here's the full list of things I was going to do to the medic.