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Strong Nerf for Medic

MrtPsr

Grizzled Veteran
May 16, 2020
54
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I frequently come across with this scenario in 6p hoe games:

- Whole team dies within the first minutes, except the medic.

- Medic runs around for 20 minutes and successfully, solos the rest of the wave.

- Even if it is boss, medic doesn't die into 10 minutes.

- Hemogoblin and hrg incision have high damage for big zeds&bosses. These weapons cause medic to focus on H.V.T. instead of healing.
Especially hemogoblin has nearly higher damage potantial than Rpg-7.

- Noone wants to be waiting for 1 player long time. If your team doesn't have teamplay, you deserve to die altogether.

- Combat medic never needs help, you know medic will easily save himself from big threads. It brokes the synergy.


These problems were relating to combat medic's durability. On the other hand these are also full medic's extremisms;

- Medic gets hrg healthrower and buffs teammates constantly, it makes them tank with random healing left-click fires.

- Existance of op full-medic in the team, makes useless other healer perks (survivalist, support's HM-301, swat's HM-201, commando's 401&501). It is not big problem but it causes to high difficulty changes for this game. If you don't have medic in your team, suicidal mode may be harder than hoe with medic (especially 3p is much harder than 6p due to the control of zed spawn areas&camping chance disadvantage, this is another pair of shoes).

- Most of veterans (1000+ hours) want to new difficulty like abandon all hope&infernal nightmare that is beyond the hoe. The main reason of it, existance of the op medic in this game, imo. Balancing the medic can fix all these issues without new additions.


My suggestions:

- Decreasing ammo pool of hrg healthrower or removing/nerfing healing potential of dart.

- Nerfing hemogoblin's base damage, because it courages medics to focus on big zeds directly. It causes tons of assault medic in this game. This weapon also gets slower all enemies and deal high damage potantial (melts them quickly) even "as a last man standing against Matriarch 6p hoe".

- Medic sniper has 400 base damage in comparison with sharpshooter's railgun has 560 base, it is too much.

- Resillience is also op. Lower percentage values may be better instead of %60.

- or removing passive %10 movement speed may be good with adding extra armor (from 150 to 175-200), because these changes gives error margin to compensate damage taken instead of immortality.
 
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Please also see this thread by yours truly and this thread by another poster from the TWI forums...

...and parts of this current megathread on the Steam discussion boards, or really just about every other topic from the Steam Discussion boards...

...and please search for "medic" in the r/killingfloor subreddit to bring up basically any medic-related thread...

...and NOW we can get started.

Yes, Field Medic is absolutely overtuned for this game on all accounts. In exchange for not having innate damage boost skills it has basically every superpower in this game that's ripe for abuse even in 6P HoE:
  • High survivability? Check.
    • Above-average max health and armor
    • Boosted self-healing syringe that recharges extremely quickly. Combos with runspeed to keep yourself alive because it recharges extremely quickly and you can abuse this while running away from pursuers.
    • Symbiotic Health is still very powerful even after the slight nerf to its per-heal value, although I complain less about this because it does encourage Medics to heal other players to take advantage of it.
    • Resilience's DR is absurd. Even if it is on solo, this video should give you an idea of how good Medic is at just eating damage. It's only slightly worse on multiplayer. In an amusing twist, even on CD servers I see medics stay at -50% health and insist I not heal them because it's better that way. Which is interesting, but sure, I guess.
    • Insane movespeed, which can be boosted via left-side buffs. Runspeed is currently a malignant tumor on this game at high-level play and promotes extremely sloppy play where you don't have to worry about being efficient at shooting/killing Zeds if you just outrun them.
      • This is particularly problematic where Last Man Standing is concerned, as Medic practically cannot lose in LMS. It may take the Medic in question an extremely long time to win or die, but as long as they can run, they basically can't be killed. They benefit
    • Self-healing gas. See below for more on gas.
  • Strong buffs? Check.
    • Left-side skills are awesome when you're getting them from a Medic, but they make Berserker legitimately unkillable unless the Zerk in question gets completely surrounded or stands in Matriarch's plasma beam.
  • Weapons that are too good in current meta? Check.
    • The HRG Healthrower is completely busted on all accounts. Darts and gas. See below for more on why gas is dumb, but this is the only weapon in Medic's arsenal that lets you reliably clear trash like a Firebug without having to aim. Buffs entire groups for little cost, goes through Zeds, etc. Arguably the strongest weapon Medic's ever received, which is saying something considering how good some of the other weapons already are.
    • The HRG Incision is a weapon with such a bloated kit that I'm still stunned it made it through testing. Probably says something considering it's always overlooked in favor of the Healthrower. I'm not going to re-type everything I've said about it before, so please refer to my post in a previous thread on the weapon in its entirety. About halfway down that post.
    • The Hemogoblin has been steadily buffed over time to the point where I regularly see it in maybe every other game I play where Medics are involved. I get why; I'm still of the opinion that the Incision is a superior tool for Medics who have the technical skill to make the most of it, but the Hemogoblin at this point is basically "not as good as the Incision, but almost as good while being mucheasier to use." I hate the fact that every other Medic who uses it does so in a completely unhelpful and counterproductive manner, but I cannot deny that it still gets results even if you're not very good at using it.
      • I've noticed a similar pattern to this gun like the Quick-Fix from Team Fortress 2 went through: it started out just bad in execution, then the dev team kept giving it powers other than the thing that would make it good, then they gave it the thing that made it good and now it's just in a bad spot balance-wise with all the stuff it has.
        • It instantly bodies trash without headshots and does enough damage on medium Zeds to body them quickly.
        • It has good dart uptime (3 shots from full).
        • It has excellent heal-per-dart, beaten only by the Incision.
        • The debuff now happens after one shot to anything it doesn't kill.
        • The debuff is weird in that it doesn't really help teams that are already good at killing HVTs, but it's yet another "punishment mitigation" tool on top of Medic being a perk that mitigates and undoes team mistakes to begin with. It encourages spamming at HVTs while chaos perks (namely Berserker) spam the thing to death, but does absolutely nothing for, say, a calm HVT being killed by a Sharpshooter before it reaches the team. Thus its very existence promotes the sloppy play so prevalent in pubs: the exact stereotype I see all the time with players wielding this thing.
    • The Freezethrower.
      • "But OnionBubs, that's not a Medic weapon!"
      • No, but it gives Medic an easy-to-use incap source that nothing except raged FPs have resistance to, and it can be carried with most of Medic's good weapons. If your team is already decent-to-good at dealing with HVTs then this just makes the game that much easier for them.
      • Medic is the most obvious candidate for off-perking this weapon.
  • Gas? Check.
    • Gas needs to be completely reworked or looked at. It wasn't an issue in earlier years, but right now there's too much of it in the game and it's breaking things in a bad way.
    • Gas penetrates through Zeds and players alike, heals players, deals damage and DoT to Zeds caught in it, and stacks buffs with every tick. Which means an entire team can be fully buffed in about 1.5 seconds, if that.
    • FIrst of all, 5 throwable grenades, maybe more if you have a Support. This part, I don't consider an issue. They're strong, but you only get 5 of them, which means you need to ration them out in principle and wait for an opportune time so you don't waste 'em. (Like using them on yourself and only yourself...)
    • Airborne Agent. Still pretty strong but not too bad; spawns the equivalent of a healing grenade on the Medic that follows them around. Encourages you to stick close to other players to buff them, limited time, dependent on your team bestowing/renewing Zed-Time in the first place. The main complaint here from a balance perspective is that it deletes anything with less health than a Gorefiend so you basically have trash immunity for the next few seconds each time this triggers.
    • Zedative. Not too much of an issue either but that's because this skill isn't that great to begin with and Airborne Agent is better. Less obtrusive to your team.
    • HMTech-501. Can be carried with Medic's best weapons and gives you a not-that-good gun in exchange for 10 more healing grenades, which brings you up to a total of 15. Deletes groups of trash better than molotovs and adds another 10 charges of God Mode for your teammates. Or yourself. Can be increased with ammo boxes or Supports. I should note that a Commando can top off their team with this, which is kind of insane for a perk that doesn't have any healing boosts.
    • HRG Healthrower. This is where problems really start to arise. Having all the benefits of gas on demand puts this thing head-and-shoulders above most of the Medic weapons, especially when you take into account that it still has darts for when players are out of range. I've seen Medics go through matches literally hosing stuff down like a bizarro-universe Firebug. The gas deals damage and flinches Zeds, the toxic damage causes them to panic just like fire DoT, rinse and repeat until the wave is over. This thing has at base 600 ammo units and benefits more from boxes/Support supplies than any other weapon.
      • Medic shouldn't have this level of trash-clear without at least having to headshot stuff. I can get the 401 and 301 still being strong at this while having good darts and requiring aim, but this thing is excessive. Medic is supposed to require at least some team support; this invalidates a lot of threats posed to them.
      • The only thing fair about this gun is that you can't heal yourself with the gas.
    • Corrupter Carbine. Technically a gas weapon even though it doesn't act like one in the manner way other weapons do; the seed's gas works on players like usual, but on Zeds like one instant explosion with no lasting DoT or anything else. Anyways, Medics don't use this anyway, it's much better on Sharp.
  • Right now there's an odd balance point with the skill trees where LLLLL is overkill for keeping your team alive, while RRRRR sucks at Medic's job (healing/buffing) but is overkill at keeping the Medic alive. There's a reason new players are often given a suggestion to go Zerk or right-side Medic for beating any challenge in Hell on Earth solo.
There ought to be some changes to Medic's kit to balance out how overturned it is. A 10% runspeed nerf would be my starting point, and taking away Healthrower's ability to damage Zeds would be step 2. The rest could be worked out from there.


EDIT: On a related note, I'd be really interested in seeing the internal statistics on the pick rate for Medic and Zerk.--really, I guess all the chaos perks--in all difficulties, but especially HoE. My guess is that the pick rate for those is substantially higher than the precision perks, and their win rate is probably disproportionately higher to match.
 
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I feel like the nerfing of combat medics is a pretty delicate subject matter. Yes, it does get ridiculous at times, though I also think that it's worth it to keep the HRG Incision around since more often than not, I find myself playing in a lot of games where most players will neglect to pick the Demolitionist, often forcing the healer to also grab a high damage weapon. The Incision isn't even the best weapon at killing larges since it's far from strong enough to be a proper big zed takedown weapon like the RPG-7. Rather, it comes off to me more as something intended for focus fire tactics.

I dunno how you'd nerf the Healthrower in a way that would still make it a meaningful pick to grab, since the main reason it even exists in the first place is due to how some players have an uncanny ability to dodge your auto-aimed healing darts. Now if only they could use those same dodging skills on Patriarch rockets and Husk fireballs.

Take away the weapons I mentioned above, and you'll more likely see competent medics being punished for his teammates' mistakes.
 
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Thank you both for the detailed feedback and reasonings here. I have pinged out to make sure design has some understanding of the opinions expressed here.
I was absolutely not expecting a direct response from Yoshiro himself, but noted!

Note that my insistence is not to have Medic nerfed into the floor, but rather to have some of its kit tapered down. Right now it's a very powerful perk for how easy it is to play compared to other perks, and it only gets stronger as teammates fall since it's very easy to win on attrition with a perk that can outspeed Zeds and heal every couple of seconds.

And it would probably be best to have a thread with more comprehensive responses. I know these boards aren't nearly as active as they used to be but other opinions from high-level players would be a good idea.

I would like to @ some of the people who still frequent this discussion board and get them in but IDK if that's allowed...

more often than not, I find myself playing in a lot of games where most players will neglect to pick the Demolitionist, often forcing the healer to also grab a high damage weapon.
Sharpshooter, Gunslinger, and Support also exist; Firebug can do it with endgame loadouts, etc., etc....

By the time a team gets to Suicidal and Hell on Earth, failure to pick--out of 6 players--a competent anti-HVT perk (or kit a perk with the expectation they will have to deal with large Zeds) is both a failure on the part of the individuals for not filling that role and the team in its entirety for not stepping up for that. As it is a failure on the part of the team to follow accordance with team roles, they should suffer for it.

But the logical answer to "the team refuses to kit with a large Zed specialist" is "the team should be killed by HVTs and lose, because they didn't kill HVTs," not "give the speedy healing tank anti-HVT weapons that also heal," as that goes against basic tenets of team design and game balance. The game's original answer to that problem was the Hemogoblin, which had the offensive debuff at the cost of bad healing (and a problem where the DoT contributed to rage but let's just forget that happened) and was overall mediocre, a thing that only sort of no longer applies because of all the buffs it's received.

That, however, was far more in line with the Medic's original design than EMP sniper rifles. Medic is supposed to be weak in exchange for being a healer that corrects mistakes and a force multiplier for the team using buffs.

I dunno how you'd nerf the Healthrower in a way that would still make it a meaningful pick to grab
Currently the healthrower has 4 distinct parts to its toolkit, and 3 of them are tied closely together:
  1. Heals all teammates in the particle radius on demand (healing gas)
  2. Kills anything below a gorefiend in durability (healing gas)
  3. Staggers whatever it doesn't kill due to poison panic (healing gas)
  4. Darts, with basically identical functionality to the starter pistol (slightly better than the HMTech-201's darts)
Eliminating the ability to kill trash would be a good start so that it players can't W+M1 their way through matches, or out of getting surrounded, etc. Like I said in the above post: I'm not against Medics being able to kill trash but they should at least have to aim to do it well, just like when all we had was the 101/201/301/401 for self-defense. We did just fine back then.

Taking the darts away with that would make sense because it's so ridiculous at close range healing to begin with; force players to get close to use it. Basic risk/reward design: if you want to heal the team even faster than darts, you either have to spend grenades or force yourself to get in close without the horde shredding you. And there's always room for another healing weapon in the player's arsenal with unlimited darts, which is fair given the Healthrower's huge ammo reserve.

since the main reason it even exists in the first place is due to how some players have an uncanny ability to dodge your auto-aimed healing darts.
That's not players dodging, you silly goose. Either you didn't lock on or the darts got blocked due to bad positioning on the players' end.

The darts automatically lock on to players and home in during flight; making healing even easier was a bad move. Healing--especially on left-side Medic skills--is already very powerful with just darts. Adding on-demand gas outside of the grenades allows too much mass healing for too little downsides.

Take away the weapons I mentioned above, and you'll more likely see competent medics being punished for his teammates' mistakes.
Competent players of all perks get punished for other players' mistakes. Some more than others. Such is the monkey's paw of team-based coop games. But right now Medic has far less to worry about in its current state.

If the team is collectively bad and keeps making mistakes, then it makes sense that they should lose, especially on the game's hardest difficulty. I'll grant that Hard and Normal are one thing, but by the time a team queues up for Hell on Earth, a Medic spraying the floor should not be able to single-handedly drag an otherwise incompetent team to victory. Especially if the rest of the team wipes and the Medic literally can't die because they can just outrun the Zeds and keep sticking their arm with happy juice every 4 seconds.
 
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Nudging this thread back up because of a relevant and very recent thread on the Steam forums, titled "Why do some people hate combat medics?"

To make a long story short, OP made a post asking why players dislike right-side/"combat" medics. A snippet from his post, emphasis mine:

"If you pick medic - you must heal others". Why is that? I picked medic not because I want to be support, but rather because after the Zerk was nerfed to the ground it's the most durable class there is, otherwise I would pick Zerk instead. I just want not to die, that's why I pick medic. Why people still think it's somehow "improper" to play full combat medic? The whole combat side of talents for medics is there for a reason after all.
What is more funny, is when they die and you are the last one standing, they blame you for dying. And when you actually try to heal your team - you constantly get distracted by zeds that always surround you, because nobody seems to care about the medic when there is one, as if the medic was there only for blaming him for your death.

The remainder of the thread's posters justifiably call out OP for being a waste of a slot since OP outright admitted to not healing people when they play Medic.

But this got me thinking: Why is this even a viable strategy, even in 6P Hell on Earth--that one can play the support class not because they want to kill things or because they want to help the team, but because the perk's survivability is so powerful that they can use it to skirt what should otherwise be a team-based game about shooting Zeds first-hand?

Was this a particular playstyle the devs had in mind when developing this game?
 
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Resilience's DR is absurd. Even if it is on solo, this video should give you an idea of how good Medic is at just eating damage. It's only slightly worse on multiplayer. In an amusing twist, even on CD servers I see medics stay at -50% health and insist I not heal them because it's better that way. Which is interesting, but sure, I guess.

This is very useful video to show combat medic extremism. Medic should need for help in multiplayer games like other perks (I don't want to mention about solo because it is too easy). Each perk should have weaknesses and should help each other with their strengths (specialties). I want to summarize what I wrote in the above title with these figures:

✓ Medic Perk Bonuses;

medic passive skills3.jpg

✓ Medic Perk Skills;

1651061671925.jpeg

✓ Hrg Healthrower is op like old Hemoclobber;

1651052469771.jpeg

✓ Medic sniper and Railgun comparison and suggestion to nerf for Hrg Incision;

SNİPER COMPARİSON.jpg

✓ The hemoglobin shouldn't be so strong that the medic neglects teammates;

hemogoblin3.jpg
 

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Thank you both for the detailed feedback and reasonings here. I have pinged out to make sure design has some understanding of the opinions expressed here.

Wow very nice to see you're still looking into the forums feedback, I ask you humbly, on top of this specific issue many players on these forums have filed other issues that are as important as this one, and I do not demand you to allocate time to read everything on the forum but it would be great to have a way for us to summarize our feedback, let's say every few months or so...

Here would be my list:

1. IMPORTANT/CRITICAL PROBLEMS

  • Medic survivability is too high compared to other classes.
Proposed solution:
- Nerf Medic natural speed bonus from +10% to +0% (perk-specific speed bonuses still apply)
- Nerf Medic "Resilience" perk from 60% max to 50% max.

  • It becomes too easy to solo the wave once most of the team is dead. ("Everyone spectates medic for 15 minutes")
Proposed solution:
- HoE only: The number of live spawned zeds (MaxMonsters) is no longer decreased after player death.

2. MEDIUM IMPORTANCE PROBLEMS (for me)

  • The community game surveys lead to some questionable balance changes.
Proposed solution:
- Make certain balance changes specific to HoE. For example the MaxMonsters changes suggested above.

  • Spawnraged FPs are disproportionally punishing for certain classes and difficult to balance.
- (Controversial) solution: remove spawnraged FPs.
- (Alternate) solution: make spawnraged scrakes instead of spawnraged FPs.

  • Healthrower is too strong with medic.
- Healthrower spray no longer applies buffes (darts still do).

  • 5p/6p is too easy especially when compared to 2p/3p.
- Increase the number of scrakes/FPs that can spawn in 5p/6p. From squads of 2-3 to squads of 4-5.
(Note: I prefer not to change MaxMonsters due to technical reasons nor 6p Zed HP because it would disrupt the game balance.)

  • Very difficult to solo for classes with no self-sustain, especially if the change above is implemented.
- Knife "Parry" bonus increased from 20% to 40%
(Note: will probably not be enough, and might make medic more busted, but it's a good start.)


Based on what I read on the forums, I think most people agree with the problems, although maybe not on my specific solutions.
 
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I agree with nerfing things that deviate the medic from their primary role of healer and secondary role of trash/small zed clear.
Main points:
• Nerf or repurpose Resilience since it looks more like a skill you'd find on a Tank instead of a Healer;
• Nerf HRG Incision DAMAGE (only!) since that works as a Large Zed takedown weapon, which is not the medic's role;
• Nerf or remove the ability to self heal with the grenade launcher ar since it induces selfish healing and can be abused (though I despise that weapon, so maybe this is personal);

I completely disagree with everything else. Especially the bits about HRG Healthrower and Hemogoblin. The Healthrower has low range with primary fire; weaker darts when compared to other weapons with the same weight; struggles to kill medium zeds; deals a damage type with typically bad multipliers and the worst incap of all (panic, which can be detrimental instead of healpful, as we all probably know very well *stares at the nuke spammer*); it has lots of ammo but once empty, it gets considerably weaker; if an ally is not a large zed killer and needs your assistance to do an emergency takedown, Healthrower is useless where a shotgun or AR would be much more useful; sluggish reload; etc.
As for the Hemogoblin, I wouldn't mind it's damage (again, ONLY the damage) being toned down, since that is not what it should be used for, but I don't think it's necessary at all. This weapon, as far as I'm aware, is unable to decap zeds (though "extra damage on decap" still applies for some reason, so you can still oneshot the likes of Sirens and Fiends when +1 and hitting the head) and part of it's damage is a DoT, which means body damage only. These things alone already make it very inefficient to kill larger zeds, especially FPs since they have more health, and that means they'll enrage multiple times before you can kill them. Also, no Zeds resist Bleed, but also none of them are vulnerable to it. I don't know what game you people are playing where the Hemogoblin is this OP, but I wouldn't mind knowing since it can be useful when 4 out of 6 in your squad don't know what they're doing.
Anyways, I do agree that these weapons are strong (which is why they are my most used weapons as a medic), but I don't really see how they are problematic at all. I even find myself constantly feeling frustrated for going full utility and then regretting not having a shotgun when people ignore the QP chasing me down. Overpowered to me is like the Kaboomstick, where you can go an entire wave without touching another weapon as long as you have a support or ammo boxes (the same weapon can clear trash, kill large zeds and also give you mobility, answers to every encounter, etc). None of these two medic weapons answer to every encounter, since their inability do decap efficiently means you'll waste a lot of (utility) ammo trying to kill a single bloat blocking your way, and neither can reliably kill larges (not that I know of at least).
 
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I agree with nerfing things that deviate the medic from their primary role of healer and secondary role of trash/small zed clear.
Main points:
• Nerf or repurpose Resilience since it looks more like a skill you'd find on a Tank instead of a Healer;
• Nerf HRG Incision DAMAGE (only!) since that works as a Large Zed takedown weapon, which is not the medic's role;
• Nerf or remove the ability to self heal with the grenade launcher ar since it induces selfish healing and can be abused (though I despise that weapon, so maybe this is personal);

I completely disagree with everything else. Especially the bits about HRG Healthrower and Hemogoblin. The Healthrower has low range with primary fire; weaker darts when compared to other weapons with the same weight; struggles to kill medium zeds; deals a damage type with typically bad multipliers and the worst incap of all (panic, which can be detrimental instead of healpful, as we all probably know very well *stares at the nuke spammer*); it has lots of ammo but once empty, it gets considerably weaker; if an ally is not a large zed killer and needs your assistance to do an emergency takedown, Healthrower is useless where a shotgun or AR would be much more useful; sluggish reload; etc.
As for the Hemogoblin, I wouldn't mind it's damage (again, ONLY the damage) being toned down, since that is not what it should be used for, but I don't think it's necessary at all. This weapon, as far as I'm aware, is unable to decap zeds (though "extra damage on decap" still applies for some reason, so you can still oneshot the likes of Sirens and Fiends when +1 and hitting the head) and part of it's damage is a DoT, which means body damage only. These things alone already make it very inefficient to kill larger zeds, especially FPs since they have more health, and that means they'll enrage multiple times before you can kill them. Also, no Zeds resist Bleed, but also none of them are vulnerable to it. I don't know what game you people are playing where the Hemogoblin is this OP, but I wouldn't mind knowing since it can be useful when 4 out of 6 in your squad don't know what they're doing.
Anyways, I do agree that these weapons are strong (which is why they are my most used weapons as a medic), but I don't really see how they are problematic at all. I even find myself constantly feeling frustrated for going full utility and then regretting not having a shotgun when people ignore the QP chasing me down. Overpowered to me is like the Kaboomstick, where you can go an entire wave without touching another weapon as long as you have a support or ammo boxes (the same weapon can clear trash, kill large zeds and also give you mobility, answers to every encounter, etc). None of these two medic weapons answer to every encounter, since their inability do decap efficiently means you'll waste a lot of (utility) ammo trying to kill a single bloat blocking your way, and neither can reliably kill larges (not that I know of at least).
I agree with all your points, but I still believe that more needs to be done.

-The Hemoclobber is surprisingly effective, even as a medic and not as a zerk. Sure, you have to be within MELEE range to use it, but even there... The sheer healing/poisoning power of the gas clouds can make it very easy to survive long enough to kill everything along you.
-The Mine Reconstructor is an even worse example of overpowering within the medic perk. A medic shouldn't be able to blast away FPs, no matter what, and I feel like your criticism regarding the Incisor could very well apply to the Mine Reconstructor, at least when you have a "battle medic" build, which brings us to my latest and more crucial point...

-The medic's skill tree is an absolute mess. It could be argued that he got one of the best of the bunch though : he got two paths, which are very different and caters to different roles. But it poses other problems all the same.

1) Crossperking allowed many perks to engage in multiple roles. Which wasn't helped by the very numerous additions each perk received along the years.

2) Ideally, choosing between two skills should be tough and require a lot of thinking. That's a problem with most perks : usually, one skill is far superior to the other. This means that every player will play more or less the same way, while the interesting of having different skills as you level up should instead provide you with more flexibility and choices

3) Even if playing two different roles within one perk sounds promising, as it adds some depth, it should still fit the perk thematically. In a sense, I believe the SWAT and Gunslinger perks should have been two different ways to play the Commando and Sharpshooter respectively. But even if we don't go that far, the medic shouldn't be THAT binary, including a role that is almost straight-up "anti-teamplay". If you have an ounce of consideration to your team, all the skills giving up boosts as you heal should be no-brainers. On the flipside, you'd have no reason to pick them if you're playing alone. Playing a "battle medic" shouldn't be possible in a game so reliant on teamplay anyway, as you'd have much more self-preservation and damage, but to the detriment of what you should be doing : healing, supporting the team. I believe, instead, that you should have the choice between increasing your healing capabilities straight... or limit it, in exchange for interesting boosts. Think of it like ubercharges from KF2 : do you prefer to heal faster and pop more ubers? Do you prefer raw damage? Straight invulnerability? The choice is yours, and all of them can make sense.
 
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I agree with nerfing things that deviate the medic from their primary role of healer and secondary role of trash/small zed clear.
Main points:
• Nerf or repurpose Resilience since it looks more like a skill you'd find on a Tank instead of a Healer;
• Nerf HRG Incision DAMAGE (only!) since that works as a Large Zed takedown weapon, which is not the medic's role;
• Nerf or remove the ability to self heal with the grenade launcher ar since it induces selfish healing and can be abused (though I despise that weapon, so maybe this is personal);
You know what, all of that is fair.

However...
The Healthrower has low range with primary fire
The range isn't that much of an issue and, more importantly, it heals in a radius and around/through Zeds and other players.

weaker darts when compared to other weapons with the same weight;
But you can have at least two guns that heal, and range limitation is also there to balance out on-demand group heals from close-mid range.

Even having the 101 with it basically means you have constant dart uptime regardless so that's largely a non-issue.

struggles to kill medium zeds;
It's not the best but that's not what it's there for; it's there to buy you time so you can let others kill it, because medium Zeds shouldn't be making their way to you in the first place. Or just pistol it to death if it's a Bloat, which are slow and can be 9mm'd by anyone.

deals a damage type with typically bad multipliers and the worst incap of all (panic, which can be detrimental instead of healpful, as we all probably know very well *stares at the nuke spammer*);
So with the trashiest of trash, that's not an issue, because they get staggered by the stream, usually stumble away panicking from poisoning, then die due to DoT. Same reason as why Airborne Agent effectively makes Medic untouchable by trash. Clots, Crawlers, Stalkers...nah. Not even close.

The CC on the Healthrower in general is kind of silly. It makes a wall that most Zeds can't really get through except larges.

it has lots of ammo but once empty, it gets considerably weaker
Most weapons are like that. But most weapons also don't get healing darts, either.

if an ally is not a large zed killer and needs your assistance to do an emergency takedown, Healthrower is useless where a shotgun or AR would be much more useful; sluggish reload; etc.
The buffs are there to help them do a large takedown, unless they're hopelessly out of their depth and are about to eat the L. There's also up to 4 other players besides you and them.

This weapon, as far as I'm aware, is unable to decap zeds (though "extra damage on decap" still applies for some reason, so you can still oneshot the likes of Sirens and Fiends when +1 and hitting the head) and part of it's damage is a DoT, which means body damage only.
The DoT doesn't matter if the headshot damage just kills the Zed, which this thing is capable of bagging most things in 1-2 headshots, maybe except for Bloats and Husks. Which are both slow and meant to be killed by other perks regardless.

These things alone already make it very inefficient to kill larger zeds, especially FPs since they have more health, and that means they'll enrage multiple times before you can kill them.
Which is fine, because Medic shouldn't be able to EZ solo HVTs with anything in the first place TBH, at least not on 6P HoE.

Also, no Zeds resist Bleed, but also none of them are vulnerable to it. I don't know what game you people are playing where the Hemogoblin is this OP, but I wouldn't mind knowing since it can be useful when 4 out of 6 in your squad don't know what they're doing.
The bleed itself is not the OP part, the part where it heals basically better than most of the Medic guns at base level on top of having solid anti-trash damage combined with a mini-boss debuff is the OP part.

Toning the healing back down would be a start.

I even find myself constantly feeling frustrated for going full utility and then regretting not having a shotgun when people ignore the QP chasing me down.
That's the rub when going support in a team-based game; your teammates are supposed to kill things for you.

Overpowered to me is like the Kaboomstick, where you can go an entire wave without touching another weapon as long as you have a support or ammo boxes (the same weapon can clear trash, kill large zeds and also give you mobility, answers to every encounter, etc).
Which is fair, and to also be fair, I have been metaphorically screaming against the Kaboomstick since it debuted. That is undoubtedly a ridiculous unlock for Demo and there are few things that brokenly good in the entire game.

The Kaboomstick is so many levels of problematic I don't know where to begin.

None of these two medic weapons answer to every encounter
These two together cover 99% of situations that actually matter to a Medic.

Unless your team composition is all hitscanners/precision and your team is so good at headshotting that it would be a waste to not run the 401/Incision combo, there's no reason not to use these two weapons, except for memes.

I care about function over form, so here we are.

since their inability do decap efficiently means you'll waste a lot of (utility) ammo trying to kill a single bloat blocking your way
9mm; other perks.

and neither can reliably kill larges (not that I know of at least).
Which, again, they shouldn't be able to. Two perks should be able to do that reliably without help: Sharpshooter and Demo.

------

Just because the loadout doesn't mean allow the Medic to solo HVTs doesn't mean it's not OP or not a bad idea to have in the game. I get that you're focused on the offensive ability these things have, which is noteworthy, but--even if the Healthrower is better than it should be on that front--that's not my biggest issue.

Right now, the Healthrower further dumbs down an already extremely easy (and very powerful) perk because of how good it is, and considering how easy it is to use. It takes the power of healing grenades and gives it as an on-demand click that the user doesn't even have to commit to when compared to something like the 501 (which is also kinda broken, just not as much). Literal on-demand group healing that can instabuff everyone in about a second, can't miss unless you're literally out of range, has healing darts for when you are out of range, and can be carried with another weapon of choice.
It being not ideal against mediums means little when a) it gobbles trash anyway, and b) you can carry it with other weapons.
The closest thing to competition was the 401, which I bet if you compared pick rates, that has long since been surpassed by this thing. Why would most people opt to play 401 when the Healthrower just covers literally 99.5% of use cases in pubs, and it kills the least of the trash almost as well but without having to watch your aim and spacing?

Currently the Hemogoblin also has a lot going for it in a single kit; it's just not quite as broken as the Healthrower. But it still packs an incredibly good dart system, more than enough single-target damage to kill trash, and a guaranteed debuff for everything it doesn't kill.
 
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I agree with all your points, but I still believe that more needs to be done.

-The Hemoclobber is surprisingly effective, even as a medic and not as a zerk. Sure, you have to be within MELEE range to use it, but even there... The sheer healing/poisoning power of the gas clouds can make it very easy to survive long enough to kill everything along you.
-The Mine Reconstructor is an even worse example of overpowering within the medic perk. A medic shouldn't be able to blast away FPs, no matter what, and I feel like your criticism regarding the Incisor could very well apply to the Mine Reconstructor, at least when you have a "battle medic" build, which brings us to my latest and more crucial point...

-The medic's skill tree is an absolute mess. It could be argued that he got one of the best of the bunch though : he got two paths, which are very different and caters to different roles. But it poses other problems all the same.

1) Crossperking allowed many perks to engage in multiple roles. Which wasn't helped by the very numerous additions each perk received along the years.

2) Ideally, choosing between two skills should be tough and require a lot of thinking. That's a problem with most perks : usually, one skill is far superior to the other. This means that every player will play more or less the same way, while the interesting of having different skills as you level up should instead provide you with more flexibility and choices

3) Even if playing two different roles within one perk sounds promising, as it adds some depth, it should still fit the perk thematically. In a sense, I believe the SWAT and Gunslinger perks should have been two different ways to play the Commando and Sharpshooter respectively. But even if we don't go that far, the medic shouldn't be THAT binary, including a role that is almost straight-up "anti-teamplay". If you have an ounce of consideration to your team, all the skills giving up boosts as you heal should be no-brainers. On the flipside, you'd have no reason to pick them if you're playing alone. Playing a "battle medic" shouldn't be possible in a game so reliant on teamplay anyway, as you'd have much more self-preservation and damage, but to the detriment of what you should be doing : healing, supporting the team. I believe, instead, that you should have the choice between increasing your healing capabilities straight... or limit it, in exchange for interesting boosts. Think of it like ubercharges from KF2 : do you prefer to heal faster and pop more ubers? Do you prefer raw damage? Straight invulnerability? The choice is yours, and all of them can make sense.
Agreed. I didn't even think about the Hemoclobber, since its more a zerk and surv thing than medic. It was great as a defensive option and for some AoE burst heal, but then it got nerfed and...it is still spammed by the two melee classes. It's hard to balance that thing when these three very different classes can use it in effective ways and for different purposes. Crossperk is cool on paper but it really makes the already not so good balance even worse.

As for the Mine Reconstructor....I didn't think of it because I find it horrendous lol. I got really disappointed when I found out it didn't have darts. Then I tried it out (with healing intentions, obviously) and got shocked at how bad it is for medic. Sometimes you need to heal a lot very quickly and, even after the buffs, it is very slow to use. It's slow to charge, slow to reload (which would be mitigated if it had some darts going on) and even the swap speed is atrocious. The only use I have ever found for it is using on welded doors to clear mobs that are hitting it. Feels too cheesy when it works for something, and feels like garbage the rest of the time. It should have darts on the alt fire, and the right button should be the detonation command. Why does that thing have an ADS anyway?

Anyways, if it deals too much damage for a medic, I don't mind a rebalance. I just can't support the idea of weapons that can't at least clear trash reliably. Having weapons that induce you to iddle or run in circles until someone takes damage don't sound like a great idea. We already have so many perk training servers teaching the worst of habits to people. Let's just not reinforce that.
And the reason I disagreed so strongly regarding these two weapons, especially the Healthrower, is because we were pointing out the strengths while failing to acknowledge the weaknesses. Saying the thrower 'doesn't need to headshot' sounds op until you remember that it basically CAN'T headshot. It takes several sprays to kill a Gorefiend that the shotty would send flying in a single point blank headshot, which takes an instant. Saying that it is op for healing and buffing sounds op until you remember that it has limited range. Darting with any other weapon of the same weight is considerably more reliable and effective when your allies are not next to you. Increasing it's weight to 8 is the only change that I'd find reasonable, to prevent a medic from amassing too much easy AoE healing (though surv would still be able to, and with increased radius too) by combining it with the AR. Though I don't think that is needed in the slightest.

As for the skills, tripwire can rework the right side of the tree ANY DAY, imo. It should be about enhancing weapon usability to make healing easier, such as swap speed or dart flight speed/homing darts penetrate zeds to heal allies(+something else for weps with no darts or special darts) and other utilities like the ability to cleanse blinds and prevent sonic/explosive deafness, or literally anything. I don't get why there is even a skill that gives +20% damage. What? For what, solo? If you want damage, don't play a healer. Medic base stats don't include weapon damage for a reason.
And about buffs in solo mode: It IS more limited than when playing coop since no symbiotic health, but we now have the Corrupter to reliably buff ourselves when killing trash. It's irky, yes, but it makes much more sense than picking selfish skills while "'cooping'". Overall, I think all medic skills should reflect the role of healer, and give benefits only when healing. Otherwise, selfheal medics with skills to increase own damage only and PoIsOn RoUNds are always gonna be common sight. This is why I love Symbiotic Health, it's a perfect example of what a medic skill should look like.
 
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I believe the excess in survivability, at least with buffs, can be addressed by preventing self-buffing through self-healing. Buffs could be adjusted to automatically apply a stack to the medic, everytime they apply a stack to someone else, instead of when healing self. Currently, reliable self-buffing comes from self-healing and Symbiotic Health (but only when healing someone).
If you buffed yourself only when buffing others, this would: Limit last-man-standing potential when using buffs since no allies = no buffs, force the medic to rely more on team, and allow for proper balance on tier 1 skills (I currently don't use Resilience even though I know it's broken, since the other gives you the benefit of your buffs more frequently since it is considered a heal). As an added benefit, pre-buffing would be more rewarding since buffing someone at full health would buff the medic as well, which currently doesn't happen.

Another thing: Since Resilience is doing too much and works in a way that enables griefing, maybe reworking it into an anti-burst/body blocking tool would be better? Something like "Reduces incoming damage by 40%, but only while at 85 health or more". This would be effective at keeping you at high health but would leave you vulnerable if careless, and the more audacious would find it useful for tanking FP and maybe even boss hits when fully armored.

Thoughts?
 
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I believe the excess in survivability, at least with buffs, can be addressed by preventing self-buffing through self-healing. Buffs could be adjusted to automatically apply a stack to the medic, everytime they apply a stack to someone else, instead of when healing self. Currently, reliable self-buffing comes from self-healing and Symbiotic Health (but only when healing someone).
I agree with symbiotic health should heal you only when you heal your teammates. They should remove self buff after self-healing besides nerfing resillince skill from %60 to %45 (combined with 200 passive heavy body armor which can give the medic margin of error.) If it is done this way, there will not need to remove the passive %10 movement speed that I suggested before.

If you buffed yourself only when buffing others, this would: Limit last-man-standing potential when using buffs since no allies = no buffs, force the medic to rely more on team, and allow for proper balance on tier 1 skills (I currently don't use Resilience even though I know it's broken, since the other gives you the benefit of your buffs more frequently since it is considered a heal). As an added benefit, pre-buffing would be more rewarding since buffing someone at full health would buff the medic as well, which currently doesn't happen.
These will encourage the medic to play much more team-oriented perspective.

Another thing: Since Resilience is doing too much and works in a way that enables griefing, maybe reworking it into an anti-burst/body blocking tool would be better? Something like "Reduces incoming damage by 40%, but only while at 85 health or more". This would be effective at keeping you at high health but would leave you vulnerable if careless, and the more audacious would find it useful for tanking FP and maybe even boss hits when fully armored.
Resillience's issue is mostly about the unarmoured medic when his health between 0-100 hp. Fixing the resillience bonus to 80+hp obliges the medic to be more careful when he is stay last man alone. Because medic will have only 1 chance not to be die under the 80 hp without resillience contribution. Maybe 40% damage reduction makes this skill a little bit fragile, so I suggest that it should be combined with buffing the passive armor skill to175-200. This perk absolutely shouldn't be in god mode, has to need teammate's protection. Any perks that are too strong on solo will break the game and the harm is more than the benefit. If medic makes a big mistake, medic should be punished like the other perks.
 
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Imo, Medic needs a pretty hefty rework, not just a rebalance on numbers. The perk tree and passive could both seriously do with some tweaks, as could some of its weapons.

Here's my take on it:

Passives:
  • All remain the same except for the following:
    • Movespeed bonus is removed
    • You now have Symbiotic Healing as a passive, but it only heals 5% of your health on each trigger.
Perks:
  • Level 5 left = Rapid Response. Grants elite reloads to all medic weapons.
  • Level 5 right = Bulk Up. Grants +50% magsize to all eligible medic weapons. Weapons unable to benefit from the magsize bonus (like HRG Incision, for example), are instead granted elite reloads.
    • Imo, this is how all magsize perks should work (meaning, giving elite reloads to the perk weapons it cannot boost magsize for).
  • Level 10 left = Adrenaline Shot. Remains the same, but reduced to 7% movespeed bonus per stack, and capped at 20%.
  • Level 10 right = Threat Suppression. Every perk weapon attack you do to an enemy reduces its movement speed by an amount equal to 10% of your weapon's damage for 5 seconds. This slow effect is stackable, but the slowdown is capped at 30%. NOTE: Grants slowdown from bleeds/toxins ticks too.
    • This means if, for example, a HMTech 301's entire shotgun swarm hits an enemy, you deal 150 damage to it. This would slow it down by 150 x 0,1 = 15%. Doing this twice reaches the 30% slowdown cap.
  • Level 15 left = Focus Injection. Remains the same.
  • Level 15 right = Battle Surgeon. Every perk weapon attack you do to an enemy increases all of its damage taken by at least 3%, or up to an amount equal to 7% of the weapon's damage for 5 seconds. This effect is stackable, but the damage vulnerability is capped at 20%. Grants stacks from bleeds/toxins ticks too.
    • This means if, for example, a HMTech 301's entire shotgun swarm hits an enemy, you deal 150 damage to it. This would increase its vulnerability to damage by 150 x 0,07 = 10,5%. Doing this twice reaches the 20% vulnerability cap.
    • The minimum amount of damage vulnerability a perk weapon by less than 3% per hit. This means even if a weapon deals less than 43 damage per hit (as 43 * 0,07 = 3,01), it will always add at least 3% damage vulnerability regardless.
  • Level 20 left = Coagulant Booster. Remains the same.
  • Level 20 right = Gaseous Coating. Perk weapon attacks will poison enemies (same as current Acidic Rounds - but now also buffs the poison damage of weapons which already deal poison damage, like Healththrower, Hemoclobber. Bonus is additive to their innate poison damage), and "attacking" allies will heal them for at least 2 health, or up to 10% of the perk weapon's instant damage (meaning, any poisons/bleed etc will NOT cause heal over time on the ally - only their instant first hit will heal allies - further, the healing potency is NOT affected by Focus Injection), but also never more than 30 health per shot.
    • This means if, for example, a HMTech 301's entire shotgun swarm hits an ally, you heal the ally for 150 x 0,1 = 15 health.
    • It also means that if a weapon deals less than 20 damage per shot (as 20 x 0,1 = 2), it will heal an ally for 2 health regardless.
    • Max healing bonus from this perk is 30, so that more hardhitting medic weapons like HRG Incision, HRG Vampire and HRG Medic Missile don't heal too much per shot.
    • This attack-ally-to-heal them effect WILL boost the healing effect of weapons which already heal allies by attacking them (like Hemoclobber).
  • Level 25 choices remain the same.
Overall, this means a lot more team-supportive effects, and less about tanking on your own.

Weapons:
  • Healthrower = Damage reduced to 12 (from 27). Spare ammo reduced to 400 (from 500).
  • HMTech 501 = Spare bullet ammo increased to 360 (from 270). Spare grenades reduced to 8 (from 10). Now has 100 energy too, utilized for the bullets only. For every bullet hitting an ally, 30 energy is used and heals them for 10 health. Full recharge time is 12 seconds. Effect fully stacks with Gaseous Coating's healing.
  • HRG Medic Missile = Always detonates, no matter the firing distance.
There's probably more that could need tweaks, but that's all I could think of for now.
 
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Solo is definitely contributing to at least some of that survivability because of how much solo nerfs the elements of the game compared to six players.

Still...dear god. That Matriarch bit was...Man, Medics really do play a different game from the rest of the players.

I'm carbon dating myself here, but if you're familiar with In the Mouth of Madness, watching footage of perks living through punishment that would've killed anyone else ten times over brings to mind a reaction not unlike John Trent's laughter turning into horrified sobbing:

watch the whole scene; it's one of Carpenter's best movies and one of Sam Neill's best bits ever
 
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