DB's Major Medic Problem

(hawkeyeguy99) #1

There are LOT’s of matches where every player is calling for a medic and the team is losing quite badly because there are no heals, and yet even though 4 or 5 players have a medic in their squad they won’t switch. In the past we’ve chucked this up to the fact that people are assholes (which they are) but I think that’s not the main issue as to why so few people play medic and instead opt for more assault oriented classes. And it’s not just about kill potential.

See the main issue with DB’s medic class is that literally none of them (save for Sparks) are fun to medic with. They all involve throw and forget abilities to heal up other players and none of them are actively fun to use. Phoenix’s is the closest to a unique healing ability, but even his gets boring after awhile. You can only throw so many med-packs on the ground for your teammates to avoid before you get fed up with it and start playing the fun classes.

We need more unique and fun healing mechanics in the game. (I hate comparing this game to Overwatch so much because they are so different but in this case I think it’s a fair comparison.) Look at Overwatch, they have so many unique healing abilities, none of which are the same in mechanics. Moira has healing orbs that bounce off walls, Zenyatta has healing orbs that are only assignable to one character at a time, Mercy has a healing stream, Ana is a healing SNIPER, etc. DB needs some more variety and most importantly FUN in it’s healing mechanics to encourage more players to play the class because right now, it’s the least unique, diverse, and class to play consistently.

(Teflon Love) #2

But does Overwatch have a healer that can’t heal? :guardian:

(Press E) #3

More diverse abilities apply to everything in DB, not just medics. Objective specialists, all the throwable explosives, snipers, etc. They all suffer from the same issue.

Coming from a medic main who loves playing medic, medics being undesirable isn’t only caused by the lack of diversity though (not like there’s much you could do about that anyways), because snipers and engineers arguably have it worse. Medics all suffer from a bunch of different problems.

  • Aura is very squishy, and with the recent addition of things like hunter’s EMP and one-hit kill crossbow, the instagibbing felix, buffs to stoker, Phantom (everything about him basically), combined with a series of major nerfs to her healing capabilities and cooldown means she’s very frustrating to play unless you’re already very good with her. The only reason she’s so popular is because she’s free.

  • Sparks has the same squishy issues as aura, though less-so because she’s not tied to one spot with a medstation. She’s fun to play, but the high skill required to do anything in combat means most sparks players will just stand behind cover and revive teammates from it without leaving, which isn’t fun for most people.

  • Sawbonez is good in combat, but honestly kinda boring. He still gets use, but personally I’d rather just play a full assault or full medic instead of someone in between.

  • Phoenix is fun and very unique, he’s probably in the best spot currently, though his self heal is pretty low for the cooldown it has, considering he’s a combat medic imo.

  • Guardian is a cool idea but not executed that well. Without some kind of healing ability she’s not very practical as a full medic roll, but her revive ability isn’t good enough to make up for that unlike Sparks. Teammates rarely die next to each other, so the cooldown on her revive makes it fairly useless. She’s fun, but more practical to play a full assault or full medic.

TL;DR, imo most of the medics are actually fine and fairly diverse compared to other mercs, they’re just painful to play sometimes. Sparks and Aura hurt the most, being bad at combat in a game of constant explosive spam and one-hit kills. Phoenix is fine, Sawbonez is boring but fine, and Guardian is fun but impractical as a medic

(Muddy Muddy Mud Nade) #4

Symmetra

(Teflon Love) #5

According to her hero page her role is “damage”.

(Teflon Love) #6

IMO Dirty Bomb is one of the most fun games to play as medic because you are still fit for combat instead of being reduced to a carebear that has to hide most of the time.

However I pretty much stopped playing medic in the past months because there simply was no point to it anymore. Today’s standard meta on public servers is playing assault, ammo support or recon and go for kills kills kills and plenty of shooting and lots of action Leeroy Jenkins style.

If you revive or partially heal one of these players they just dive head first into the fight again. Healing stations remain unused even if only a few steps away. Sawbonez medkits get interrupted by being shot without even trying to get into cover. Phoenix basically is on a permanent cool down. Sparks can only patch them up a little before they get killed again. And Guardian, well, is just useless.

Sure, you can get a lot of doctor badges from reviving the same clueless people over and over again but it’s still not fun.

(Muddy Muddy Mud Nade) #7

She was a Support up until a few days ago.
If we’re going into the argument of “Character who doesn’t do their character role very well”, then I can point to Brigitte who does heal, but not too well. Most of her support output comes from armor and anti-flanker playstyles.
Guardian is kind of in the same boat, to me. While Brigitte does have the ability to heal, it’s not her main job or shtick. Guardian obviously can’t even heal, but that’s because that’s not her job. She’s anti-air and multi-revives galore.
But yes, you are correct, Symmetra is technically a damage character who was a support for 2 years before a few days ago.

(HadronZodiac) #8

Well when you create MULTIPLE medic concepts, and people spam NO GOD NO, then maybe people WANT boring medics. Just my experience tho :slight_smile:

(Szakalot) #9

overwatch as an example of fun medics?

whats that one called where you just hold LMB and follow the teammate, with absolutely nothing else to do?so much fun!!

In DB being a medic is just a part of the story: gotta know when to fight and when to GTFO. If you play a medic like you would in overwatch, yeah that would get boring real fast

(Press E) #10

Wanting more exciting medics doesn’t mean you want “MEDICATOR 9000 WITH AUTOMATIC REVIVES AND MEDPACK AIMBOTS, PLUS TWO SNIPER RIFLES FOR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY, AND A SHOTGUN MELEEEEEEEE, THIS SUNDAY AT YOUR LOCAL DEMOLITION DERBY ARENA”, lol.

Of course people are always going to be picky, but that’s just because we love this game. We want something that fits it well

(Eox) #11

It recently switched. She used to be classed as “Support” for a very long time despite having no healing whatsoever.

(D'@athi) #12

Playing medic on pub is fun… because …reviving useless teammates is… fun…

(ostmustis) #13

why play as a target practice merc for the other team when you can pick something else and fight back?

(hawkeyeguy99) #14

Strawmanning my post isn’t helpful for any form of discussion. I never said all of the meds in Overwatch are fun. It’s about variety and uniqueness, not just one character being unfun to play. None of the healing mechanics in DB are fun to use save for Phoenix’s healing pulse. We need more unique and fun healing abilities to use that require precision and or skill to use.

This is my point. Right now medics are just “throw down med-station/pack, and revive the idiots that run in and die”. That’s not fun to play at all and a large reason why no one plays medic and instead goes for the kills.

(Muddy Muddy Mud Nade) #15

My question is, would a medic with healing darts/bolts/needles work in DB? It works in TF2, it works in Overwatch (granted Ana isn’t exactly top tier anymore, but that’s more because of how the meta works around her not her own shortcomings), and it works in Rainbow Six (kinda… Doc’s thing isn’t really healing, more overhealing and self-sustain), but would it work in Dirty Bomb? A medic with skill based healing would take a good amount of skill to be good with, but they would need to have good healing output to supplement it. But then the follow question would be, how much healing should he/she do? Too much, and they’d basically be able to sustain someone forever from a safe spot, but too little and she’d basically just be a worse version of Sparks. And how would that synergize with her reviving ability, if she even gets one? Sawbonez has the most “ranged healing” while still using defibs, but that “range” isn’t exactly huge, so he’s usually able to get to someone he’s trying to heal with one long jump.
I dunno, rambly thoughts.

(Jigstraw) #16

This is a problem that won’t be addressed for awhile, as we have 5 medics but only 4 engineers and assaults, and a new engineer was added more recently than a new assault, so I’m pretty confident the next merc is going to be an assault.

Things are going to get worse before they get better. lol.

Unless, instead of adding a new medic, they completely rework the existing ones. But that runs the risk of upsetting people.

(Szakalot) #17

@hawkeyeguy99

and i never said you did. I see your double strawman and raise you a fire extinguisher.

I dont want any silly magic bullshit, this is not a hero shooter, its a team-oriented arena FPS.

Virtually all medics have very high skill ceilings, primarily because it takes a lot of time to learn when to get into firefights, when to retreat and when to go for revives. Aura has to constantly be on guard, as her dying is very punishing for the team. Sawbonez can do some really cool long distance medpack throws, and is the beefiest of the medics: knowing when to push up and punish the opponents is quite crucial. Sparks is an entire category of her own, Phoenix is all about poke rambo-medic-ing a 1v1; Guardian indeed is a bit more simple, though a clutch shield can be really fun.

If you play a medic by always hiding behind your team and charging at downed teammates with defibs, yeah that would be boring.

Mercs in this game have only subtle differences in gamestyles, majority of the game is arena shootem’up; the only question is whether you find THAT fun

(D'@athi) #18

Probably something in the way of the old ET-medic. Heal or revive people and get temporary hp-stacks like the augment that’s availible for Proxy?

(Your worst knifemare.) #19

Imo the medics playstyle is fine, all of them have a high damage potential while also being valuable to the team.

(HadronZodiac) #20

Ahahaha ik, im just saying i like to throw out concepts, (they dont even have to be implemented exactly) but so many people are so closed to new ideas

So it becomes a circle of “we want more mercs” and then “oh god not new merc ideas…”

Some can be a little boring imo, which is why guardian is so interesting in comparison lol