Is Phoenix being looked at currently? His primary heal is underwhelming and needs some love.

(DatAssparagus) #1

Hey guys,

I love playing medics but I just can’t stand how restrictive and unrewarded Phoenix play is healing wise.

(PurpleNurple) #2

Are you holding down the button cuz it feels fine.

(WaffleMonster) #3

His healing power is vastly inferior to sawbonez. He really need a reduction to his cool down on his ability.

(Ritobasu) #4

His healing is fine, don’t expect him to keep an entire team topped off like Aura or Sawbonez

(Gung-ho) #5

For healing a Fragger and up fatter Phoenix will struggle on sustain but his moderate hp and high movement speed combo make Phoenix a menacing battle medic. If you need to go harder on heals there is a load out with 20% cool down reduction and 20% heal throughput which helps a lot. The caveat is that it uses the hochfir which is okay but I personally find inferior to the crotzni and kek-10.

(Dawnlazy) #6

I think a small increase would be fine, even if just +10 HP. Also allow us to switch weapons without going on cooldown to cancel the heal.

(Amerika) #7

I think there should be a CD if you switch weapons but only something like a 5 second CD. It will keep people from running into areas with it fully charged, find out they don’t’ need it yet and switch to a gun without penalty. It’s similar in concept to “cooking” grenades or molotovs. Let people switch with a minor penalty in regards to CD as opposed to wasting a heal and going on full CD.

However, he’s still pretty good even without that slight buff/quality of life change.

(WaffleMonster) #8

The problem with phoenix is that he is only slightly better in combat than sawbonez but his healing power is inferior. ATM he can’t compete with sawbonez.

(gg2ez) #9

Saw doesn’t heal properly in combat. Phoenix’ heal is instant and can reach multiple people at once.

(WaffleMonster) #10

phoenix’s heal isn’t instant, you have to charge it up for it to be effective. Also the cooldown is really long which means you can’t sustain healing power.

One of the major advantages of sawbonez is he can place medpacks on the ground and still be able to throw medpacks at friendlies. This gives him vastly superior healing. Phoenix on the other hand can’t even heal some mercs up to full and is utterly reliant on all your team being really close to you to even make his ability partially work, a really bad idea considering explosives are in this game.

(bizarreRectangle) #11

Charge up for like 2 seconds? The heal itself is instant and overall it’s probably still faster or about the same speed as sawbonez’s med bags.

The maximum cooldown is 12 seconds. Considering you can heal everyone around and yourself while in combat, it’s not that long. And take into account that you don’t always have to fully charge your healing pulse, lessening the cooldown further. You could also give people a little less health than what they need, maybe a half charged healing pulse and regen will do it’s job. This tactic comes in handy when only one teammate needs health.

Phoenix doesn’t necessarily have to be right next to people to make his ability work. If you use the radius to your advantage you can hang back to charge your healing pulse and activate. Or you can charge healing pulse and get close to heal as many people. Many ways you can use it to reduce the risk of getting blown up.

Sawbonez can’t throw his med bags that much farther, and if you’re at the maximum range there’s a pretty high chance of simply missing or teammates dodging it.

([WAR]Larknok1) #12

The competitive scene speaks for itself – all Sawbonez, Aura, Sparks, no Phoenix.

If you think otherwise – that’s not just your opinion – you’re wrong.

Phoenix is often compared to Sawbonez because both are combat medics – as opposed to Sparks or Aura, who are too squishy and don’t pack a Kek or a Crotzni for sustained close quarters combat.

Here are all the reasons Sawbonez is superior to Phoenix:

  1. Phoenix is squishier than Sawbonez at just 100 hp, so he’s simply easier to kill.

  2. The additional movement speed Phoenix gets does not make him all that much harder to hit than Sawbonez.

  3. Competitive players are very good about gibbing downed mercs: especially Phoenix.

  4. Simply the way the meta-game breaks down:

In competitive play with friendly fire enabled, there’s often an incentive to perform a 3-2 split, with 3 team members on one side and 2 team members on another. The reason for this is to maximize firepower and minimize friendly fire while also maintaining death-squads for advantageous engagements.

To bolster the combat ability of the 2-side, Fragger is almost always present. The remaining merc must of course be a medic, so who medics Fragger best? Invariably and without question: Sawbonez.

Bonez has 3 packs on a short cooldown, each of which fully heal Fragger. Comparatively, Phoenix gets up to 100 hp healed, once every 12 seconds. So you might think: hey, Phoenix is better at healing on the 3-side – and you’d be right. But if you do that, now you’re sacrificing Sparks or Aura. Let’s consider that, shall we?

The entire reason to choose Phoenix is because he’s a combat medic. He absorbs a little bit more damage than Sparks or Aura, so you can maintain a front and refuse to give up ground with him just a little better. But on the 3-side, with the added benefit of 2 chunkier mercs beside you, this is simply not necessary. Sparks has arguably higher damage output, the only downside being that she is horrendous at holding down an area alone. With two teammates by her side, her only weakness is gone.

Much the same reasoning goes for Aura: Aura doesn’t need to be chunky if she has two teammates supplied by a well-placed healing station. She just needs to stay alive, keep her station up, poke away at enemies, and get well-placed revives. Moreover, her station allows teammates to autonomously decide when they should back up and heal themselves. This avoids having to coordinate two teammates to be injured at magically the right moment for Phoenix to swoop in and heal them for exactly the same payout – and let’s be honest, that’s simply not going to happen.

As for what he needs to viable? I’ll post that below.

([WAR]Larknok1) #13

Solutions:

The healing pulse simply doesn’t have a place in the meta-game. To use a bad analogy – it’s a bad, one-time-only Aura station heal. Sure, it’s an insta-heal. But the charge-up time and coordination required means that it’s only most effective in large groups, where everyone is injured, but nobody is dead. Even then, it’s just a heal.

There’s a couple ways to go with Healing Pulse so as to make it viable and desirable in competitive play:

  1. Make it very strong on a very long cooldown (1 minute +) that is only usable at max charge.

This solution would give him a unique place in the meta by actually immensely rewarding the coordination required to use healing pulse on several teammates. Think some grab-bag of a few of the following attributes: revive downed friendlies, over-heal friendlies above their max hp if they’re close to or at full health beforehand, temporary immunity to damage for a few seconds, 10% increased damage output on friendlies for a few seconds, 10-20% increased movement speed on friendlies for a few seconds, etc.

Alternatively:

  1. Give it 2-3 charges, just like Fletcher’s stickies, and allow Phoenix to release a small area heal (perhaps only 50-70 health) simply by tapping a button and consuming one of these charges – no actual charge-time or cast-time required.

This solution allows Phoenix to actually fit the role he’s intended to fit – change the tide of battle by providing active heals. As it is, the cast-time and the inability to use his ability more than once every 10 seconds means he can’t do much of anything.

(bontsa) #14

I like to shout “group-hug!” over VOIP when I see more than 1 friendly around needing either bandaging or sowing their head back into their neck.

Usually after 3rd time people understand what I mean.

(Szakalot) #15

the problem is noob phoenix healing for 25hp when you are almost dead and charging pulse to a 20aec cooldown when only 12 gives max heal.

a good phoenix that knows how to ration the heal between teammates and himself can be a huge swing in those big teamfights on a pub. 5v5 comp is a little too small for him to shine, but on a 7v7 or 8v8 pub phoenix is amazing

(DatAssparagus) #16

[quote="[WAR]Larknok1;123284"]Solutions:

  1. Give it 2-3 charges, just like Fletcher’s stickies, and allow Phoenix to release a small area heal (perhaps only 50-70 health) simply by tapping a button and consuming one of these charges – no actual charge-time or cast-time required.

This solution allows Phoenix to actually fit the role he’s intended to fit – change the tide of battle by providing active heals. As it is, the cast-time and the inability to use his ability more than once every 10 seconds means he can’t do much of anything.[/quote]

I very much light this idea, acts more like a pulse this way anyways. :slight_smile: