Combat Medic - re-tune abilities for PVP viability

Cawdeen · Jan 21, 2023

The combat medic profession needs re-tuning to be a viable profession in group PVE/PVP settings.

Problem areas:

-Heals are group-focused, but offensive abilities are single-target-focused.
-Offensive abilities are mostly only useful in PVE.
-The very long cooldowns of offensive abilities are not conducive to PVP. Being single-target only makes this problem worse.
-Several abilities like Infect, shock, and thyroid rupture are useless in PVP. The amount of battle fatigue given for Infect for example is way below the threshold needed to affect healing strength. (It takes 11 Infects to make a player get enough BF that their heals are affected).

The result of these conditions makes 3/4 of the combat medic tree worthless in PVP environments and poor in most PVE environments. The 'combat' part of combat medic is really only useful in PVE when attacking a single high-level mob (think krayt farming, or bosses). Many of the dots and debuffs are not useful in PVP and are almost not worth using in PVE because of the extremely long cooldowns and single-target factor.

Suggested improvements:

1. Add an AOE to a few offensive abilities/debuffs.
This would bring the offensive/debuff side of combat medic more in line with the group focused heals that the profession currently has. The result would help shift the profession from solo player high-level mob farming profession to a more group-centric role for PVE and PVP alike.
Suggestions for AOE are 1 ability in each line of the tree. Spreading the AOE abilities between lines would make a master more effective and prevent OP partial profession builds (for example if all the dots were AOE in x4xx). The AOE's should not be in a cone from the combat medic but rather in a radius around the target hit. (ex.- deuterium toss hits enemies in a 3m radius around the target it was thrown at. This is a much smaller radius than Bacta Spray)
A possible AOE setup of one in each tree- Bacta Spray, Deuterium toss, Hemorrhage, Thyroid rupture.

2. Tune infect to be more viable in PVP. I would suggest either of these two options-
Option 1- Increase the battle fatigue given so that the target goes over 250 bf from a single toss of infect (the threshold where healing is affected).
Option 2-Change infect so that it does to players what it does to mobs- reduce the target's action in regular intervals. I believe this is what is in the tooltip description of infect under the HAM. This would make Infect viable in PVP without adding all the dreaded wounds that everyone complained about.

3. Increase the effectiveness of Thyroid Rupture.
Simple- just make it more powerful. Right now the attack speed reduction is so low that it's not even noticeable in testing with a timer and apparently only noticeable over very long periods of time. If over the duration of a single use of Thyroid Rupture, the target's number of attacks has not been significantly reduced due to the time increase then it is not worth using and needs to be adjusted.

sabz · Jan 23, 2023

Thank you for taking the time to make this PV, some neat ideas, will try to address them as I understand

1- I feel giving CM's a full toolkit of AOE attacks would bring is back to a very OP class, especially in PVP as people are grouped together, for the benefit of the group heals and it would not be possible for a doc to keep up, I could be wrong on this mind-you
2 - Infect, this is like a roller-coaster, it used to do something similar to what you mention, and was pulled back to what we have today, which is tbh way to weak and it does need some more love to find an equal balance. The idea of BF was to limit self healing and to make mDocs and mCM's have more purpose/need in a battle as masters could carry on healing with a higher BF. This is a regular discussion and hopefully a positive change will come our way soon
3 - Thyroid Rupture and our other dots, are still weaker compared to other attacks, and factor in the cd, makes them feel under powered, again like point 2, they have been improved from what they where back at launch, but agree they still need a tweak

jacksabib · Jan 23, 2023

sabz said:
Thank you for taking the time to make this PV, some neat ideas, will try to address them as I understand

1- I feel giving CM's a full toolkit of AOE attacks would bring is back to a very OP class, especially in PVP as people are grouped together, for the benefit of the group heals and it would not be possible for a doc to keep up, I could be wrong on this mind-you
2 - Infect, this is like a roller-coaster, it used to do something similar to what you mention, and was pulled back to what we have today, which is tbh way to weak and it does need some more love to find an equal balance. The idea of BF was to limit self healing and to make mDocs and mCM's have more purpose/need in a battle as masters could carry on healing with a higher BF. This is a regular discussion and hopefully a positive change will come our way soon
3 - Thyroid Rupture and our other dots, are still weaker compared to other attacks, and factor in the cd, makes them feel under powered, again like point 2, they have been improved from what they where back at launch, but agree they still need a tweak

I like the ideas that OP posted generally, but also I think saying CM isn't viable in pvp is a little overstated. It has pvp power but the offensive abilities do not scale very well with group size. I do agree that some of the abilities like Thyroid suffer from potency issues. While CM can be very effective against people who have not taken steps to lower dot potency, it is one of the most counterable professions in the game.

That said, I think aoe dots would be manageable as long as the aoe application had a slightly lower base potency, had a more significant action/mind cost and could be countered by a doctor. One of the things that make group balance weird here on Resto is that dedicated group healers are not really required since most people take some heals in their templates. Personally I don't mind something being very strong if it has a hard counter, which CM does.

AOE dots that are effective could open up a niche for a dedicated group doctor and I personally would love to see it. Either AOEs or a combat medicine speed modifier that reduces the round time on CM abilities that can be taped. Both would go quite a long way in making CM play better. Right now my biggest frustration of the CM experience is the long GCD timers.

I agree fully with your statement on point 2 & 3. I loved infect being an ability that could be used to grind down a tanky/heal heavy matchup over time. It needed tuned down, but I agree with the sentiment that it was nerfed too hard.

Cawdeen · Jan 30, 2023

Certainly good points.
I want to point out that my main goal with the pv was increase the scalability of the profession when it came to multiple targets but the specific suggestions were just to get the conversation started.
AOE’s seems like a fun way to do it -but there are probably other very simple solutions that could achieve the goal.

Adjustments to specific cooldowns might do enough to make the profession more scalable and is probably the least time consuming for devs.

Hearing other suggestions would be great, but it looks like this PV might not be a priority for resto at the moment.

RoHRemis · Jan 30, 2023

I think neurotoxin should be AoE since doc has countertoxin spray.

Kazhar · Jan 30, 2023

i think jewelry sets for CMs making their dots/debuffs AoE would be a great addition in like 2030 when we get heroics

jacksabib · Jan 30, 2023

Kazhar said:
i think jewelry sets for CMs making their dots/debuffs AoE would be a great addition in like 2030 when we get heroics

This is a good idea. Though if we're thinking 2030 maybe it should drop from droid army. At least then that dungeon would have good loot.

RGViza · Feb 8, 2023

Deuterium toss should stack the burn, neurotoxin should be aoe, more potent, and affect mind instead of action, or change the name from neurotoxin to something else ;-)