Since talk about the medic is all the rage, the purpose of this post will be to consolidate all those ideas and present a future direction for the medic.
Let me begin by saying I love being able to kill and heal. This was always appealing to me throughout any game regardless of genre. However, when you think medic you don’t naturally equate the class to killing machines. Thus, despite the fact I’d love to be able to run around, heal myself, and kill people as easily, we need to bring the medic’s support role to the forefront. That way other classes like soldier, fields ops, and recon can be focused on killing and/or doing damage.
First, What Not to Do
The focus for the medic should be to increase his survivability while highlighting his support mechanics instead of his ability to kill efficiently and effectively. Keeping this focus in mind, we do not need to nerf a medic via reducing his damage amount. A medic should be able to compete with other classes when they engage in an one on one fight. If they are engaging in fights with multiple enemies or chaining one on one fights after another their ability to continually kill should be diminished. The real truth here is that other classes need buffs to give them better killing abilities over medics.
Another Thread for Health Regeneration!
I really do believe that the medic should be the only class with health regeneration or, at least, the only class with two rates of health regeneration. The idea here is to increase the medic’s survivability as a tradeoff for diminishing his attack prowess (which we will discuss later). Also, a medic having an innate ability to regen (or a faster regen) will promote the use of medpacks to heal others instead of themselves.
Medics should start with a low percentage health regen when recently damaged. The low percentage regen should kick in almost immediately after taking damage (maybe 2 seconds after taking damage). After a longer designated time (perhaps 5-7 seconds) of not taking any damage then a secondary, higher health regen rate should kick in. This would allow medics to be able to run for cover and quickly survive hostile encounters or at least push up with their teammates without worrying as much about taking damage when making a run to heal or revive a teammate.
Now, what about the rates for which they should regen health? Maybe the low/high percentage regen rates should be equal to what their medpacks do. Let’s talk about that…
[B]Healing over Time is HoT.
[/B]This is something that has been mentioned before and I have grown to like the idea. The medic, as he currently stands, carries 4 medpacks. A medpack he throws should regenerate health over time (like a health potion in Diablo or Torchlight) instead of being an instant heal.
When a player picks up a medpack he should immediately receive the benefit of being able to regenerate 50% of his health capacity at a rate of 10% of his total health per second. So, if a player has 25/100 health then when he picks up a medpack he will begin to regenerate 10 health every second up to 75/100. This scenario would mean it would take the injured player 5 seconds to regain 50 health.
Now, if a player picks up a second medpack, while the regeneration of the first is still active, then the heal over time effect will be doubled. This would mean the player would be regenerating up to 100% of his health at 20% of his health regenerating per second. Let’s say an injured player has 10/100 health left and he picks up one medpack. Immediately he would start regenerating 10 health per second. Then, a second later, he picks up a second medpack, which activates a two times stacked healing effect healing the player for 20 health per second thus taking four additional seconds to reach 100/100 health.
This effect will be capped at two times and no extra healing bonus or benefits would be gained from picking up a third med pack. Perhaps, the player is even unable to pick up anymore medpacks once the two times healing power effect is reached. The type of healing effect the player is receiving should be noted by a small icon depicting “1x” or “2x” regeneration power.
Finally, I do like Anti’s idea that if a player takes damage while regenerating health from a medpack, then regeneration immediately ceases. Any 1x or 2x bonus goes away and he will have to pick up another medpack to start the process all over again. Also, forgive me if my math is dumb or doesn’t make sense with the numbers I use. The mechanics still stand and I am sure better numbers could be used.
How Much Ammo Could a Woodchuck Shoot if a Woodchuck Could Shoot Ammo?
We already talked why just straight up reducing the damage amount a medic can dish out is silly. So, what do we do instead? I think the amount of bullets the medic gets is the answer to diminishing his killing ability without completely negating his ability.
Right now, the medic gets three clips of 35 bullets or 35 bullets in the gun and 70 bullets in reserve. This just seems like a lot of ammo, especially with the gibbing mechanics the way they are now. Instead I think the medic should get slightly less ammo per clip (like 25 or 30) or one entire less clip to carry. Perhaps, even both of those mechanics together make sense.
The former idea would mean the medic spawns in with 25 or 30 bullets in the gun and 50 or 60 bullets on reserve. The latter idea would mean 35 bullets in the gun and 35 bullets on reserve. Either way the idea here is to reduce the amount of kills a medic can rack up by himself to instead highlight his survivability and support abilities.
Alternative Medic Class: The Combat Medic!
It is apparent that classes are going to have different loadouts with differing abilities (see: “‘Dazzler’ is out! ‘Conker’ is in!”). What about a version of the medic more suited to killing without so much survivability? This would allow players to play the medic as a killing machine that heals himself and maybe with even a little more of a push in this direction.
A Combat Medic would have an increased clip size in comparison to the regular medic (such as the now current 35 plus 70). A possible secondary of the combat medic could be a machine gun pistol like the Recon class has now. That would be a pretty abusive one-two punch combination if you ask me.
So, what’s the tradeoff? Well, the Combat Medic would lose his innate ability to regenerate health on his own. He’d have to use up one of his precious medpacks in order to heal himeslf, which means less for his teammates. And, that’s not all! Also, his medpack’s regeneration rate would be capped at 1x with no stacking of the buff. The original 1x amount was regenerating 50% of health capacity at a rate of 10% health per second. Collecting a second one of the Combat Medic’s medpack would allow for another 50% of the player’s health to be restored, but still only at 10% health per second. Obviously, this all assumes that the medic is the only class with the innate ability to regen (or at least have a faster regen).
Maybe, this is a crazy idea and non-sense you should ignore. This post is already getting way too long and I might be giving some posters a run for their money for over-thinking things! I got more where that came from…
Some After Thoughts: Things that probably don’t fit.
Finally, some random ideas I had that could be cool additions for alternative medic classes. An alternative medic character could have a medpack that increases player sprint speed, amount of damage delivered, or a decrease in amount of damage received. Also, an off the wall idea would be to have different medic classes that revive players with increased health after revival.
If you made it this far…Thanks!
I know that was a long post and I can only hope I explained myself thoroughly. Which is probably part of my problem and why I ended up making DirtyBombers.com. I am a wordy typist. I do that. But, agree or disagree, hate it or love it, I thank you for reading!
