Phoenix

(tokamak) #1

I hope I’m not double posting but the search didn’t really give any thread for phoenix.

I love this guy but there’s a few blemishes.

Aura:

-Right now it appears that phoenix heals everyone, including himself at a flat rate within his aura. This is a great mechanic and constantly trying to find the right way to include as many plays as possible within your aura is a fun challenge. Best of all, it keeps you in the thick of the action as a medic.

  • The issue is the way phoenix gets to heal himself. Because the regeneration time is so short, I often find myself just constantly spamming the aura, even if it’s just to heal myself, or worse, get a slight edge in combat.That’s bad.

-I would like to see the rate at which the aura heals me be a factor of how many players benefit from it. The aura should hardly heal anything if you’re the only one in it. The heal rate should then grow exponentially with every extra player you heal through it.

  • The aura should be able to do more things. Though this may be a way to have different versions of the Phoenix merc later on. I would like to see an aura that gave 50% damage absorption and 50% heal (relative to the current effect of course, otherwise it would make players temporarily invincible). The difference here would be that regen-phoenix will need to time his aura after the peak of the fight while shield-phoenix would need to activate the aura before it peaks, preferably even before the fight started.

The Gun

  • His MP5 is really powerful even at a long range and it seems to be offset by his low ammo. I think that’s a shame because I found myself killing more people with this guy than with most other mercs. I’m not saying that we should go back to the pellet gun. I just think that Phoenix really needs to stick in his support role. Perhaps just sticking to a hand gun (with lots of ammo) would be better here.

  • Which brings me to weapon switching. Switching between weapons and revives is too slow. Especially if you want to utilise the fully charge revive. I found myself too often inert in either the paddles or the gun. Switching is too often more of a gamble than really adjusting to the situation.

  • Right now I find myself foregoing actual combat just to have my pads ready to revive the team mates that are soon too fall. That’s awkward.

  • The switch doesn’t have to be equally fast both ways. I mainly want to be able to grab my pads faster after a fight. Being able to switch back to my gun again isn’t as important. At least that way I can protect my team-mates and prevent them from dying. If then, after a revive spree I’m still being killed then that’s my fault for not having revived enough team-mates.

Self Revive

  • It’s fun however it doesn’t always feel deserved. Too often it’s just an ace up my sleeve that appears out of nowhere. I think it should be merit-based. I would like to see the self-revive not be a cool-down but a counter that fills with every revive you make or player you heal. Once the meter is full you get your self-revive and not before. In return Phoenix becomes harder to kill when down.
(Glottis-3D) #2

i feel, that his self-revive is useless mid-fight.
and this shouldnt be so.

i think the amount of HP after self-revive needs to be bigger. but the time to revive must be longer. a little bit.

as for cooldown-mechanics - it is easy to balance things with cooldown time. i dont mind it.

(tokamak) #3

Currently the self-revive only has valuable when being the first one downed in your team. And to be honest that should be the main function.

It’s just too random right now. Just trying it and failing is still a better choice than letting it slide and try another time. That’s why making it an earned reward would be more interesting. Players wouldn’t use it frivolously and the rate at which you get to use it could even be more than it is now (by lowering the required amount revives/heals required)

(jazevec) #4

SD are trying to avoid rambo medic domination, like in RTCW, W:ET, ET:QW. Fine. Phoenix is perhaps the closest to a rambo medic class. To stop him from dominating (other medics at least), his actual healing ability is severely weakened. Now that’s walking a thin line. Nerf his healing too much, and he becomes a pure rambo class indeed! At least he revive as normal.

Being under fire in DB stops health regeneration from medic abilities. This is fine and aimed mostly at preventing rambo medics. However, Phoenix’s Healing Pulse is not spammable. It has a cooldown of about 15s! If a single bullet hits someone under effect of Healing Pulse, your whole round of healing is wasted ! Wait 15 more seconds. Aura can heal forever as long as the station is up, I have yet to see a Sawbonez running out of medpacks (unlike RTCW, they’re full heals, so 4 is absurdly high).

My proposal: Healing Pulse is not cancelled by being under fire. At least make it that way for Phoenix’s teammates. It would heal a pre-determined amount of health (like 150), or something dependant on target’s health (say 100% times target’s max health).

This would also make Phoenix more unique among medics. “Medic that can self-revive” isn’t that good, because there are many situations where he’s gibbed right away. All 1v1 fights, explosive spam, miniguns, etc. Or maybe a medic is going to revive you, in that case self-revive is pointless ! Or respawn wave is 2 seconds away. Or you’re out of ammo. Or teammate is helping you up just as you died.

Rule lawyers will say that “You can heal while you shoot! No need to switch weapons!”. Under fire, you say ? Are those the same bullets that stop medic regeneration ? You still need to take cover, which makes it less useful than sounds at first.

(Glottis-3D) #5

it is a rare thing, when all the ppl you heal midfight are taking damage right after the pulse.
more likely some of them you take dmg and cancel the regen, but others will get some HP.

(jazevec) #6

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;530184]it is a rare thing, when all the ppl you heal midfight are taking damage right after the pulse.
more likely some of them you take dmg and cancel the regen, but others will get some HP.[/QUOTE]

It’s even rarer that several wounded people will be around you, and still alive. People focus fire, usually on targets in the front row of a group. Or just randomly - it’s pretty rare that each enemy will focus on different teammate around you. Ideally, you would want to wait a bit before activating heal so you heal each of them for 50% of health at least, but this is infeasible to pull off in the heat of combat, and you get only one heal.

And when it DOES happen, a healing station will often do better, because a teammate can be certain he will be healed if he steps out of line of fire. Automatic coordination (literally). Really, Aura has the advantage for healing several people at once. She can heal 10 or 20 point damage as soon as it happens. A Phoenix would hesitate to activate Healing Pulse just to heal someone’s 20 point wound. Sawbonez would be annoyed to switch to medpacks just to do that.

(Pakaa) #7

Just a side-note, that happens aaaall the time. I usually need to wait for cooldowns when healing people (which is good!).

(NeroKirbus) #8

I was thinking of this same thing, but make it a flat heal per second to make it extremely viable over fire fights, but not so useful for re-grouping. I would propose 10 or 15 HP per second for 5 seconds or so… his self heal would, of course, be reduced so he can’t rambo away.

It would make him an excellent off medic that takes most of the aggro due to his self revive and his healing capabilities.