You can instantly revive people but it gives them only 40HP. If you charge you can revive people with up to 100HP. But it takes time, an when you charge you’re running with the same speed as when you’re shooting, so you’re easy to pick off then.
Nerfing defibrillator is a bad idea. Efficient reviving people is a skill as well. Charging defibs already takes a while and if you don’t charge revived player is dead again in 2 headshots max. Adding difficulty using support class simply won’t work. How often do you see ammo supply guys hogging all the ammo for themselves? And all it takes for them is to press a button and instantly drop ammo pack. Now imagine how often you will see successful revives if there’s a mandatory charging period. Also revive ‘hitbox’ would need to be huge to make sure that missing with charged defib won’t happen. It’s decently big now, but misses happen and they already are costly in time. Additionally this would make the gap in healing efficiency between Aura and other medics even larger. It’s easy to use up all your medpacks with Sawbonez. For a short period you’re left with nothing but defib as your medic ability. Aura’s healing station can work indefinitely if hidden from enemy fire. Taking away defib from other medics by introducing cooldown would result in them being relatively useless.
If you experience situations where medic picks up entire downed team it just means you prioritize targets poorly or you’re not using AoE attacks to their fullest. I’m certain this is just another problem that can be easily resolved by simply playing more and learning how to properly use mercs’ abilities, so a skill gap essentially, not a game balance problem.[/quote]
Well, have you tried prioritizing when the whole crew in front of you plays Aura/Sawbonez ?
Aside from that, as Sawbonez if my second merc, I had the opportunity to play him a lot during that second beta weekend. And the hitbox to get downed targets from the defibrillators seemed really huge to me. I managed to revive an ally from a very unsuspected range (I was sure I was missing the targed, but I revived him anyway). Furthermore, while using Sawbonez, I could just revive the downed guy with a not even mid-charged defibrillator shock and then throw a medpack at him. In a fingersnap that guy was able to fight back without even fully charging my revive tool. I guess Aura can do the same with the health station. I can just negate someone’s hard work too efficiently, using Sawbonez or Aura.
Giving Defibrillators charges really does not seems unreasonable to me. If you are really afraid that Aura becomes much stronger after that, then we could still create an upgraded Defibrillators with a faster recharge rate of more charges for other medics if Aura is really above them. Two charges with a reload rate of 15-ish seconds for each charges seems fine to me. We can go for a 10 second reload for other mercs. With maybe a reduced time before being able to revive someone.
