SWAT as a second medic?

[Humam2104]

Introduction:
SWAT is a perk that causes low damage and mainly concerned with killing trash (small zeds), something it has in common with the medic.
So How about improving its healing capabilities since it has:

• Lower damage than the Commando
• Doesn't see the hp of zeds
• Doesn't have night vision
• Lower cross-perk options that the Commando
• Doesn't have frag grenades that can kill FPs,
• Doesn't have zed time extensions
• Doesn't reveal cloaked zeds
• Doesn't have a skill to increase its damage.

One thing I know is that Saber doesn't want to corrupt the gameplay of the game by adding OP skills, that's why they're always giving players surveys to know how their updates are affecting players, so this could be something they could accept.

Calculations:



This weapon is somewhat hard to be used by SWAT for healing, very slow dart regen, 40% Ammo cost (Darts), 13 seconds recharge.
Which means that the darts can be used 2 (30hp) times or a max of 3 (45hp) from a full charge.
Also, 13*0.4=5.2 seconds recharge (as SWAT) when the darts are empty (regenerating)
Let's say we upgrade it to get 13*0.4*0.85=4.42 sec which is still a high number
Can we somehow buff these things?

Compared to the 401 that has 30% ammo cost, 10 sec recharge.
It can be used 3 times (45hp) or 4 times (60hp).
Also, 10*0.3=3 seconds (as Commando).
so the 201 has almost twice the recharge time as the 401 or 1.5 the recharge of the 401 (1xupgraded)
Can we do something about this? It wouldn't harm the SWAT to have more syringe potency, dart cooldown or something since it does low damage anyways.
This would compensate for the benefits that the Commando has without making SWAT OP or changing its objective to kill trash.

Suggestion:

• Giving the SWAT a passive syringe + dart cooldown of 100% and a syringe potency (30%) just like the survivalist? (since he just has one medic weapon unlike the survivalist - This would result in a 2.6 seconds cooldown for the 201 SMG which is slightly less than what the commando has (3 sec)
• Giving the 201 a buff that can also do the job (but this would affect the survivalist too)

Conclusion:
SWAT is a perk that causes low damage, and people are complaining about its weakness for some time now.
giving it some medic buffs won't hurt it, and won't change its objective in killing trash since it has a common feature with the medic (low damage).

 

[Aleflippy]

I believe you're not looking at the problem the right way... See, the goal is not to make it a medic-lite, but rather to differentiate and improve upon the perk as to make it worth your while. We discussed quite a lot with Aze and Breadsticks on the latter's topic related to the SWAT, but one way could be to improve upon the armor of the perk (or add another "Riot Armor" as he called it) to make it more resilient. That way, he could have a better chance at surviving (and making him the somewhat second tank of the game, after the zerk... But tanking in a different way)

Alternatively, he could also regenerate the armor of his teammates partially. I remember an old idea that asked for the welder to be able to repair armor. The idea was for the support originally, but maybe it could be brought back for the SWAT? Albeit in a way that doesn't reward cheesing... So maybe a flat +25% armor per wave (similar to the demo and support bonuses) could be done instead.

Because honestly by your logic...The support, gunslinger and commando should also get healing bonuses considering they can also use medic weapons. That's ridiculous and would make the game way too easy. It's already great that they have access to such weapons (unlike in KF1, when another medic had to basically purchase multiple MP7 and give them to the team).

Plus, you even mention the problem... without actually bringing a solution to it. If the SWAT's damage output is too low... Then how will extra healing capabilities change that? It's not because it doesn't change "anything" that it doesn't affect the meta as a whole.

 

[Humam2104]

I've seen the posts talking about the right armor and the region armor and they're good. They're even better than this one but this is an idea that I have brought up is only considered in case the developers don't decide to implement such ideas.
Making swat another medic is a small tweak to do and won't take too much time, effort or coding.
The points you've mentioned are the primary points for this what but this is something that can be considered as a secondary backup

 

[mrnok14l]

In my past experience, I actually fookin tried to make SWAT as an even more combat-oriented combat medic work.

Allow me to jump to conclusions:

• It works moderately well as a secondary medic alongside a maxed-healing primary medic, but we all know the typical condition is that a maxed-healing medic plus a couple of HMT101 pistol will prove sufficient enough for keeping everyone kicking and alive, combat effective and killing floor (unless you're in Russia).

• On higher difficulties, the effort of building around a HMT201 SMG is generally not worthwhile given the performance yields from the base stats of a HMT201 are lower than the demand on those levels, however upgrading at the cost of carry capacity (weight) will eventually harm the perk's own expertise that is the ammo count for not being able to equip as much on-perk weaponry and firepower that you otherwise would have.

• Even if you did invested heavily on 201 SMG and bumped it up beyond the tier-3 status, you'll find a lot of your projected return missing the mark and went down the drain due to the weapon's inherent accuracy. At this point, a tier-4 201 SMG wins out a Vector plus a 101 pistol only by the readiness to seamlessly dispatch a Zed and heal an injury without changing tools as a SWAT perk; compare from the perspective of a Medic, you'll be better off using a 401 AR that offers many more favorable traits, such as better per-hit damage, better hit rate, and all around better darting performance.

• At the end, this build only grants the SWAT perk said readiness between darting people and shooting Zeds, yet none of the Medic's collateral effects like the movement speed and the damage resistance (which are potent and oftentimes decisive factors in helping your patient regain or remain combat effective) are included, let alone forgoing the firepower you'd otherwise have just to have a less powerful 401AR.

• The current upgrade system we have is a letdown wraps in shallow promises of some plain increment of basic values. It is interesting to see low-tier weaponry performance on a higher standard - and it does help a bit when you do have extra weight to spare to upgrade without any real downside, but the upgraded weapon will fail to return a worthwhile end result proportional of what's invested and taken unless they have any kind of speciality unique to them or excel by them above all else. One case I found working kinda well is Medic using 401AR plus Berserker's Static Striker so you can safely takedown a large Zed by comboing the EMP effect skillfully.
• Of course, none of these really matter below suicidal difficulty.

• We should have per weapon unique upgrade instead, like:
• 101 Pistol -- Auto-trigger; saves your trigger-finger.
• 201 SMG -- Faster dart recharge (near or at the level of a 401, so it's an adequate option just to dart except shooting poorly).
• 301 Shotgun -- Shotgun pellets can heal ally (each only packs a very small potency), or the shot explodes into a small ~0.8m radius healing cloud if hitting within 1m.
• 401 AR -- Replace half of the reserve ammo pool with on-board factory 3D-printing ammo gradually at the rate of 10-round per second.
• Hemogoblin -- Rework so that syringe can cling on ally that applies a lasting healing effect out to an amount of 20 to heal at the rate of 10 health per second.; does not stack collateral bonuses as the effect is applied only once upon clinging onto an ally. Syringe doesn't use ammo; each syringe fired spends the weapon's dart meter by 8%; increase heal per dart from 20 to 70; reduce 0-t-100 fully recharge speed from 10s to 15s; cost per dart is still 30%; reloading to fully recharge dart meter. Upgrade to add a consumable alternative fire, ammo pool is 1/15, shoots the whole cylinder as mega syringe that last 10 times longer on hostile target or indefinitely until the 3-times more amount is redeemed on ally target.
• Hemoclobber -- Doubles ammo reserve.