Goonhub
02-10-2021, 09:17 AM
At some point in the relatively recent past, the nukeop medic loadout was changed once again, with a bunch of things being removed in the hopes of giving them some actual inventory space, maybe. Unfortunately, it's left them with no effective method of dealing with some health issues, both common and not so common, experienced by nukeops.
The first, and the most important, is that the medic has no particularly effective method of dealing with bleeding and blood loss. While the capacity of their brute automender was buffed to a solid 500, styptic's ability to treat BLEED had been massively nerfed a few months back. The bandages and the synthflesh patch box are gone from the medic loadout, leaving the only meds they have that can deal with BLEED being the aforementioned styptic powder and the omnizine in the donk injector, neither of which are particularly good at it. Even if they manage to stop the bleeding, the blood pack is gone leaving only saline and the donk injector's omnizine as an option, and neither one is particularly good at regenerating blood quickly.
The second is that, with the loss of the pentetic acid high-capacity autoinjector, the medic has no way of flushing chems. Not halo from the MDir or armory, not curare from botany, and not whatever horrible things chem decided to cook up that round.
The third, and related to the second, is that the only thing in their kit that can treat TOX damage is now the omnizine in the donk injector. TOX isn't _that_ common, but it's still something the crew will happily toss at you.
For the record, the wiki is missing two high-capacity autoinjectors from the list of what the medic gets. I remember that one of them is saline-glucose, but I can't remember if the other is epinephrine or not, and I'm honestly not sure. If it's not epinephrine, then the medic straight up can't treat cardiac failure.
The fourth issue is that automenders just aren't good at in-combat healing, and that's what pretty much all the healing is going to have to be. It requires you to not move and your target to stay adjacent to you, both of which are awful ideas in a pitched fight, and the rate at which it heals simply isn't that great. At least when the synthflesh patches were in the kit you could slap one on anyone injured and have that heal a bit over time to either supplement focused healing or just keep them up a bit longer if you couldn't focus on them.
Anyways, from what I can remember, the more-or-less complete list of what the medic lost in their last rebalance is:
The syringe gun and the poison canisters. They're now left with their sidearm and their generic fire extinguisher as their only methods of offense. I can see why it was done, especially since the cyanide pills are no more, but it still kind of hurts.
The blood pack. Pretty much useless except when it wasn't.
The bandages. Once useless, they became more useful after changes to bleeding, styptic powder, and bandages. However, they were still inferior to
The box of synthflesh patches. Losing this hurts. Healing over time and fixing bleeding is great.
The box of burn patches. Losing this does not hurt.
The pentetic acid high-capacity autoinjector. The loss of this basically removes the ability to flush chems and treat TOX from the kit. Can't say I'm a fan of this removal.
The atropine high-capacity autoinjector. Sarin's less common and there are regular atropine autoinjectors on the Cairngorm now, but I'm still not overly fond of having an important part of a medic's kit not actually being in the kit.
I don't really have many suggestions here beyond readding the pentetic acid and the synthflesh patches, and just ditching the medical shoulder bag because it's pointless now that it contains two items and you spawn with a better backpack.
I honestly don't really have any ideas beyond that on how to improve the medic healing experience while still resulting in something that's actually balanced.
The first, and the most important, is that the medic has no particularly effective method of dealing with bleeding and blood loss. While the capacity of their brute automender was buffed to a solid 500, styptic's ability to treat BLEED had been massively nerfed a few months back. The bandages and the synthflesh patch box are gone from the medic loadout, leaving the only meds they have that can deal with BLEED being the aforementioned styptic powder and the omnizine in the donk injector, neither of which are particularly good at it. Even if they manage to stop the bleeding, the blood pack is gone leaving only saline and the donk injector's omnizine as an option, and neither one is particularly good at regenerating blood quickly.
The second is that, with the loss of the pentetic acid high-capacity autoinjector, the medic has no way of flushing chems. Not halo from the MDir or armory, not curare from botany, and not whatever horrible things chem decided to cook up that round.
The third, and related to the second, is that the only thing in their kit that can treat TOX damage is now the omnizine in the donk injector. TOX isn't _that_ common, but it's still something the crew will happily toss at you.
For the record, the wiki is missing two high-capacity autoinjectors from the list of what the medic gets. I remember that one of them is saline-glucose, but I can't remember if the other is epinephrine or not, and I'm honestly not sure. If it's not epinephrine, then the medic straight up can't treat cardiac failure.
The fourth issue is that automenders just aren't good at in-combat healing, and that's what pretty much all the healing is going to have to be. It requires you to not move and your target to stay adjacent to you, both of which are awful ideas in a pitched fight, and the rate at which it heals simply isn't that great. At least when the synthflesh patches were in the kit you could slap one on anyone injured and have that heal a bit over time to either supplement focused healing or just keep them up a bit longer if you couldn't focus on them.
Anyways, from what I can remember, the more-or-less complete list of what the medic lost in their last rebalance is:
The syringe gun and the poison canisters. They're now left with their sidearm and their generic fire extinguisher as their only methods of offense. I can see why it was done, especially since the cyanide pills are no more, but it still kind of hurts.
The blood pack. Pretty much useless except when it wasn't.
The bandages. Once useless, they became more useful after changes to bleeding, styptic powder, and bandages. However, they were still inferior to
The box of synthflesh patches. Losing this hurts. Healing over time and fixing bleeding is great.
The box of burn patches. Losing this does not hurt.
The pentetic acid high-capacity autoinjector. The loss of this basically removes the ability to flush chems and treat TOX from the kit. Can't say I'm a fan of this removal.
The atropine high-capacity autoinjector. Sarin's less common and there are regular atropine autoinjectors on the Cairngorm now, but I'm still not overly fond of having an important part of a medic's kit not actually being in the kit.
I don't really have many suggestions here beyond readding the pentetic acid and the synthflesh patches, and just ditching the medical shoulder bag because it's pointless now that it contains two items and you spawn with a better backpack.
I honestly don't really have any ideas beyond that on how to improve the medic healing experience while still resulting in something that's actually balanced.