Improvement: New Medic Ability

[Neutral Calypso]

My idea: A medic ability that will auto-rez the medic when he goes down. Replaces the F-ability of the medic, and automatically starts working 3 seconds after death. After working, it would have a 5-10 minute cooldown before it can work again, and this cooldown cannot be reduced by using a terminal.

Certing into this would either reduce the cooldown or increase the amount of health the medic would be rezzed with.


Sound like a good idea?

(got the idea from the FF auto-life spell )

[Rothnang]

Yea, this would be a good alternate ability for the medic.

What I would like to see is an alternate medic gun that revives people much slower, but has an inbuilt tractor beam that pulls the corpse toward you if its too far away to be resurrected.

[OctavianAXFive]

I have a concern.

Suicide bombers. The ability to throw C4 at your feet when you're cornered and take some dude down with you only to auto-revive seems like it will be abused. Charging Sunderers on a wraith ATV with some C4 equipped will probably be a 1 way trip unless you have this.

And what about pilots? You can bail out of an aircraft that is being shot down without having to worry about the plunge. (Jennyboo would be even more displeased by bailers than she is now)

If you could somehow alleviate those concerns than all I'd have to say is that the animation should be very obvious to any enemies that the medic is being self-revived.

I like that tractor beam idea though, that sounds kinda awesome.

[Rothnang]

People already suicide bomb all the time. Maybe you haven't noticed it yet, but dying doesn't actually matter in this game, so if you can get 5, 6 kills or take down a Sundy by killing yourself you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

The self revive wouldn't change anything about that, what it would allow you to do is have a chance to bring a squad back if it was wiped out by a Liberator or something like that which kills you quickly, but doesn't stick around to make sure you stay dead.

[Neutral Calypso]

Originally Posted by OctavianAXFive

And what about pilots? You can bail out of an aircraft that is being shot down without having to worry about the plunge. (Jennyboo would be even more displeased by bailers than she is now)

Light assaults can already bail without worrying (too much) about the plunge.

Thinking about it further, this should make the medic only revive with a limited amount of life and certing should just reduce the cooldown. Losing the self-heal should hurt at least a little... at least enough to encourage the medic to drop infantry resources into medkits... which reduces the likelihood of the C4 suicide bombers (or if they do go that route, they revive with so little health that you can just one-shot them when they get up).

[OctavianAXFive]

I realize they already suicide Roth but what I'm saying is that they'll be even less penalized for it in some instances.

I read your post on why dying doesn't matter and I'm mulling that one over right now.

I realize light assaults can bail right now but that half makes sense because they are wearing a jet pack. Arguably that too is a problem because you really should pay the price of being shot down (even if it's not a big one).

Making medics cert into med packs won't reduce the amount of C4 bombers. They can just change out the med packs for C4 in their loadout if they're going suicidal. I suppose if the resource change makes keeping a steady supply of both more difficult that could curb the "casual" suicide medic but as Roth points out, you have everything to gain by doing this and if you can get back up after a suicide charge then the already low barrier to doing a suicide run becomes subterranean.

Making them revive with very little health is one possibility but with low TTK that really won't make too much of a difference since they'll die immediately if exposed in a firefight.

As for your example with a liberator Roth, the ability for one guy to get back up and revive his whole squad is actually what I'm a bit concerned about. If you were bombed by a liberator, no matter how annoying, you should pay the price. You're all about making deaths meaningful and giving medics a self revive like this seems counter to your main concern about the game's lack of depth.

How about the medic just explodes in a big wave of healing for nearby allies when he dies? I dunno if that would be as useful.

[Rothnang]

If the self res has a 10 minute cooldown and replaces your other medic ability it can be a very powerful tool if used right, but next to useless if the enemy is still around.