SpaniardInfinity Posted March 30, 2013 Share Posted March 30, 2013 (edited) [Originally posted in the PTS forums for 2.0] So after testing the changes on the PTS for Combat Medic, I have to say there has been significant progress in improving the class, with very welcomed changes in the group healing and utility departments. The problem is that there have been several other changes, some indirect, which have undermined these changes: - The heavy diminishing return on critical rating complicated ammo efficiency - 5% lower damage reduction from heavy armor, weakening our survivability (note: this will likely be offset in future tiers of gear) - The removal of Advanced Tech (a first Tier talent) reduces our healing received to 2% and also removes our only healing done +% passive in the skill tree. This further lowers our effectiveness, while compromising our main strengths. The consensus that I have heard, observed, and experienced is that Combat Medics have gotten improvements, but relative to the others, it has either remained unchanged in the meta or is now worse than before. To address this, I have six suggestions which I think will improve Combat Medics. Most of my propositions are utility adjustments since it is my opinion that the advanced class already has the abilities it needs, it's just that they do not synergize well enough to achieve their potential. Although the majority of these suggestions will be PvP-oriented, I have taken PvE into careful consideration. In fact, many of the ideas seek to make the tree more "universal" in that these changes will benefit players regardless of the content they enjoy. 1. Pardon my Spanish, but lower the *********** cooldown on Tech Override Tech Override is a great utility. It allows Commandos to make their next ability with an activation time apply instantly (bet you didn't know we could do that!) There are many situations where this is useful, such as healing an ally or yourself (Advanced Medical Probe or Medical Probe), attacking an enemy (Charged Bolts or Grav Round), denying the enemy an objective (Plasma Grenade), or instantly applying a mez to an enemy (Concussive Round). In other words, it gives Commandos an opportunity to play strategically by giving them meaningful choices when activating Tech Override. Few abilities in our arsenal come close to offering this kind of flexibility for tactical gameplay. So what's the problem? Tech Override is on an unwarranted two minute cooldown. Most abilities that can be used in combination with Tech Override are on long cooldowns or are expensive. Others are critical for generating important procs for each Commando's respective tree (Field Triage for Combat Medics, several procs for Gunnery, refresh of High Impact Bolt for Assault). In short, Tech Override is the perfect solution for the biggest problem of not only Combat Medics but all Commandos: their vulnerability to interruptions. The ability is already in game and compliments other recent additions like Electro Net and Hold the Line, but its long cooldown compromises what would otherwise be an exceptional ability. Suggestions: Lower the cooldown of Tech Override to 60 seconds for all Commandos, and allow this to stack with Overclock in the Gunnery tree (which is out of reach of Combat Medics). In my opinion the cooldown could be lowered further to 45 seconds, but I think one minute is a fair compromise at this point in time. As a challenge for you non-Commandos, I dare you to provide one good reason why the cooldown shouldn't be lowered, especially when there are countless abilities which provide more meaningful effects on shorter cooldowns (ie. Guarded by the Force) In addition, allow Tech Override to affect Emergency Medical Probe (our in-combat revive). Emergency Medical Probe meets the criteria (it has an activation time) and thus should be affected by Tech Override. This would also give us a fifth option and would also be a Commando-exclusive way of reviving an ally in combat (no other AC can do so instantly). 2. Remove Frontline Medic as a prerequisite for Probe Medic, or redesign it. There are several problems with Frontline Medic (which is conceptually a great idea). Problem is, from a PvP perspective, it's a liability. You cannot afford to be healing yourself by attacking enemies. It's risky, it encourages poor gameplay, and it is counter-productive to teamwork. The upside is that this is a clear attempt to improve our mobility by giving us an ability to self-heal and kite on the move, but its downside undermines this otherwise valiant effort. PvE Combat Medics have a different problem entirely, which is that Frontline Medic has no value to them. Why? When healing during an operation, Trauma Probe will most likely be on your tank and not yourself. As a result, you cannot even benefit from the self-healing it provides in PvE. In summary: Frontline Medic is passingly useful for PvP and worthless for PvE. Suggestions: The simplest solution would be to simply remove the prerequisite restriction, since Probe Medic is a must have for both PvE and PvP Combat Medics anyway. An alternative solution, which would only address the PvP side of things, is to allow Frontline Medic to also trigger when healing an ally with Hammershot. Another option would be to make Frontline Medic not break sleeping targets out of CC. The more universal solution would be to make Frontline Medic valuable in both PvE and PvP. This could be accomplished by changing Frontline Medic to the following effect: "When an ally under the effect of your Trauma Probe takes damage, you heal yourself for the same amount. This effect cannot occur at maximum health." The most obvious effect of this is that it effectively applies a second Trauma Probe on yourself whenever you cast it on an ally. In PvP this will be handy for your guard or another healer, and in PvE this could help you focus on group healing since you receive healing whenever your tank takes damage. 3. Refresh Kolto Residue's slow or make it more valuable. On the live servers, Kolto Residue is applied by using Kolto Bomb. Allies affected by your Kolto Bomb receive 3% more healing from all sources for 15 seconds, while the first five affected enemies have their movement speed reduced by 50% for 3 seconds. In the expansion, Kolto Residue is not only applied and refreshed by Kolto Bomb but also by each tick of Kolto Pods (an AoE HoT akin to Salvation that is left behind by Kolto Bomb) on any ally within the radius. The 50% slow on enemies, however, is not refreshed by Kolto Pods. The effect of this is that it isn't possible to keep this slow up at all times (the effect lasts 3 seconds, the cooldown is 6 seconds) although enemies will most likely have you slowed the entire time. Suggestions: Enable Kolto Pods to refresh the Kolto Residue 50% slow on all affected enemies, which would enable Combat Medics to achieve 100% up-time on this slow assuming they remain in the radius of Kolto Pods for the third tick and use Kolto Bomb on cooldown. Such a change would synergize well with Hold the Line for quick escapes while also being handy for controlling a group of enemies, both of which are great utilities for competitive PvP. Instead of refreshing the 50% slow, remove it entirely and replace it with a 5% damage reduction debuff to all affected enemies called "Adverse Reaction". In addition, "Adverse Reaction" should refresh with each tick of Kolto Probes. This change would benefit both PvE and PvP, since Combat Medics could indirectly increase the damage of allies by reducing the enemy's damage reduction. 4. Make Bacta Infusion worth the 36 points. Bacta Infusion is our 36-point skill. In the expansion it is our second strongest heal, but Advanced Medical Probe can heal for just as much due to its scaling (especially if you consider its HoT, Preventive Medicine). This is something of a shame, because this undermines the value of our capstone ability. The two primary benefits of Bacta Infusion are: it is instant and it costs nothing. This is balanced by a relatively long cooldown (18 seconds counting the set bonus). In practice, it is most commonly used in one of two ways: for burst healing (at the tail end of a Medical Probe or Advanced Medical Probe) or to heal two targets simultaneously. In my opinion Bacta Infusion needs a revamp. Other healing advanced classes should be jealous of it. Suggestions: Increase the healing such that it is the biggest single heal in the game. As an alternative, enable Bacta Infusion to also refund 8 ammo when activated. The number could be adjusted as necessary, but the main point is for there to be a clear point in the Combat Medic rotation where they can catch their breath and replenish some ammo during a fight. As another alternative, introduce the following mechanic: Activating Bacta Infusion grants two stacks of "Don't Die on Me", increasing the critical chance of your next two tech healing abilities by a considerable percentage (ie. 50%). A successful critical hit consumes one stack. Such a mechanic is a necessary quality of life change because of the new diminish returns on critical rating that makes reliable healing harder to achieve on Combat Medics. As a result of this inconsistency, it is harder to manage ammo since the resource system, even with alacrity's regeneration and the new 100-pt pool, is very unforgiving of under-healing. 5. Improve Kolto Wave numerically or mechanically. Kolto Wave is a new talent high in the Combat Medic tree which allows Concussive Charge (our knockback) to heal all allies within the radius for a moderate amount. It is less than Kolto Bomb, but more than Kolto Pods. As it stands, the talent is only borderline valuable because of the relatively long 30-second cooldown of Concussive Charge. Although you generally need the healing when you use Concussive Charge in self-defense, I've found that the group healing opportunities this talent is intended for do not occur with enough frequency to warrant 2 skill points. As an added complication, in the PvP setting Kolto Wave suffers from the same problem that undermines Frontline Medic: it's poor design to be breaking CC or filling resolve as a method of healing! Suggestions: Increases the healing of Kolto Wave so it is more reflective of its 30 second cooldown. 5% would be a fair starting point, possibly granted by a talent lower in the tree or a new one in Tier 7. Instead of increasing its healing done, allow it to trigger when activating Supercharged Cells in addition to Concussive Charge. A short cooldown on Kolto Wave could be introduced if necessary. 6. Supercharge really isn't that "Super" and it is inferior to Upper Hand (with no clear counterweight) I wrote another lengthy post on the PTS forums comparing and contrasting Scoundrel's Upper Hand healing mechanic to Commando's Supercharge. The point I made was that Supercharge is inferior to Upper Hand and with the removal of Advanced Tech, it is so inferior that Commandos will always heal less -- even with maximum effort -- than a Scoundrel can passively (at least in terms of healing done) and therefore no effort. At least presently, although these are two different classes, their mechanics and abilities are strikingly similar to a point where it can and has been argued that these are different classes with the same mechanic. To cut to the chase, I think Supercharge could use an improvement in one way or another. I by no means want Combat Medic to play like a Sawbones. I would however like to achieve the same healing output, or if I cannot, at least offer enough utility to offset that difference. Suggestions: Put Advanced Tech back in the skill tree. Its removal is kind of baffling since it leaves us with no healing done passives and less healing received -- which lowers our output (and thus ammo efficiency) and survivability albeit at of a factor of 2%. Revert the "number" nerfs of Patch 1.2, specifically: a) Increase the healing done by Combat Support Cell to 5% at 30 charges; b) Increase the healing done while Supercharged to 10%. It would also be useful if Kolto Residue increased healing received by 5% and Charged Barrier increased damage reduction by 10% -- also changes in 1.2 -- but I think the changes to Supercharge (a and b) would see the most immediate results while bringing us back in line with Smugglers in healing passively. Of course, this works under the assumption that all 1.2 ammo nerfs are respected and are NOT reverted. I believe it would be balanced if we have good healing output but are difficult to manage -- our current problem is we are difficult to manage with subpar output. If the above change is deemed to imbalancing -- which I'd debate -- Supercharge should at least build faster than it does now. Right now, assuming a 1.7 second channel time on your Medical Probe, you can only Supercharge at best every 18.5 seconds which isn't even practical (you'd be out of ammo). So if Bacta Infusion generated 6 charges (as an alternative to my suggestion to Bacta Infusion before) and each tick of Preventive Medicine generated 1 charge, it would be considerably easier to reach Supercharge. This would also help with regenerating ammo if no changes are made in that department. Another alternative could be to have Supercharge increase healing done by 5% (as it does on live and in 2.0) but also increases tech critical chance by 5% for the duration.This would indirectly benefit First Responder, which is generally an optional talent unless you have minimal alacrity on your gear. Edited March 30, 2013 by SpaniardInfinity Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay_Stocker Posted April 2, 2013 Share Posted April 2, 2013 As much as i agree, i feel youve put more effort into trying to fix commandos than bioware ever have. Its too late, and they dont care. RIP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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