Specialist Medic is useless

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wardensc2
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 7:32 am

Specialist Medic is useless

Post by wardensc2 »

I'm on the way to finish commander LW2 1.4 with all plasmas weapon, 3 liberation areas and codex brain is researched.

After many battles, I think we should buff Medikits.

Medikits should not only heal our soldiers in battle it should make whoever has full health bar will not be counted as injury.

What is the point of healing when our soldiers still go to hospital after battle, I'd rather choose the specialist with hack tree to have more punchs and options in the battle.

The whole healing perk tree of Specialist in major focus on Medikits is useless because Medikits is useless. Beside Revival Protocol which is useful in the first few months. After 4-5 months, I'd rather take the panic or mind control of Sectoid than let's him shoot.

By making whoever still has full health after battle finished will not go to hospital, that's making me think alot when choosing Specialist Medic or Specialist Hacking especially when go to supply raid, troop ambust, or liberation missions later in the game when even 100% infiltration still lead to many enemy.

Thank for reading
ginyu549
Posts: 26
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2017 3:58 pm

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by ginyu549 »

There is a mod called "make heals persist" that does exactly that. Not sure if it works with LW2 or not, but you can try it. :P
DaviBones
Posts: 75
Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:30 pm

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by DaviBones »

In the original Long War, medics were useful because they could heal a soldier's armor hit points, which were a lot like ablative in this game. This meant that if you healed soldiers before they took actual HP damage, you were much less likely to see wounds after a fight. Perhaps a similar approach could be taken here; allowing medics to heal ablative HP would make them far a more viable Specialist build.
wobuffet
Posts: 92
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 3:09 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by wobuffet »

DaviBones wrote:In the original Long War, medics were useful because they could heal a soldier's armor hit points, which were a lot like ablative in this game. This meant that if you healed soldiers before they took actual HP damage, you were much less likely to see wounds after a fight. Perhaps a similar approach could be taken here; allowing medics to heal ablative HP would make them far a more viable Specialist build.
How about just
Field Surgeon also grants 2 ablative per Medikit use.
?
stefan3iii
Posts: 319
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2017 3:49 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by stefan3iii »

DaviBones wrote:In the original Long War, medics were useful because they could heal a soldier's armor hit points, which were a lot like ablative in this game. This meant that if you healed soldiers before they took actual HP damage, you were much less likely to see wounds after a fight. Perhaps a similar approach could be taken here; allowing medics to heal ablative HP would make them far a more viable Specialist build.
Eh, medics were pretty bad in lw1 as well. Problem is that xcom damage is very spikey, a medkit does nothing when an alien can one shot your soldiers. Or even if they're not one shot, they get sent to the medbay. You're better off bringing more damage or cc to prevent Allen actions in the first place.

I'd like to see field surgeon perk just become part of the medkit item. The more kits you bring the shorter the wound times. Would be great thematically, and would make bringing medkits an interesting decision.
RookieAutopsy
Posts: 80
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 9:35 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by RookieAutopsy »

I take Field Medic on hacker/support Specialist Officers, but never take any other medic skills, because as said above, its always better to prevent wounds by killing/CC than healing them back afterwards (which also requires more investment in science and manufacturing too). Medkits fall out of use completely pretty much as soon as Hazmat comes online because they provide immunity to a number of damage types and extra HP anyway. But more importantly they provide it upfront and as wound timers are % based, reduce infirmary time for the same damage taken.
Psieye
Posts: 829
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by Psieye »

My unorthodox 8-man GOp squad (Veteran, non-Ironman, June, Peek from Concealment) mandates I bring 2~3 specialists of which at least 1 is a medic. Preferably 2.

Instead of lots of 4~6-man squads with a "nobody should ever take wounds" doctrine, I have one 8-man squad doing 10% infiltrations and "up to 2 tanks are expected to be taking wounds". A large fraction of my barracks are "spare parts" to slot into the tank slots when wounds happen. The sniper/medic core of the 8-man should never be taking wounds.

Whether this unorthodox approach is viable in higher difficulties is a valid concern. But where it is viable, this strange doctrine likes having 4 remote heal charges per medic.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Thrombozyt
Posts: 76
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2017 10:37 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by Thrombozyt »

The more experienced I get with LW2 the more I regret training specialist medics in the first place. In my C/I campaign I now start sending them on suicide hacks to catch UFOs (which often pop with just 2 days or so) so that I have SOME use out of them.

The one shot spike isn't that much the problem. The build actually shines when a soldier goes down, because stabilize/revive/heal can bring him fully back into action. The problem is that as such the medic only has a purpose in long drawn-out mission or where you still need to cover a ton of ground to the EVAC. Having a crit knock someone out in the first engagement of a 5-man GOP mission really sucks and brings you down to 3 man (1 out and one carrying the guy) active. However, to prevent that situation by basically fighting one man down the entire time just isn't worth it.

The problem is that medic specialists only come online at staff sergeant when they have 4 charges on their gremlin and can routinely save people that got crit-spiked. However - aside from the aid protocol and haywire their do nothing else.

The problems/solutions with the medic build from my perspective:
1) Revival protocol is great, but popping drones reliably with combat protocol is better 80% of the missions. Revival Protocol should be usable to cure poison/burning status effects as well.
2) Trojan is THAT MUCH more valuable on stealth missions as you can pop drones from concealment - which are the vast majority of missions pigeonholing the medic even more into the large scale assault missions. Having the right side tree go Failsafe - Trojan - Airdrop would mean that you can mix hacker and medic tree.
3) Gremlin upgrades should grant more charges of GREMLIN Heal/Stabilize. The extra HP are pretty much useless. More charges allows for keeping soldiers topped up.
4) Field Medic should not require an equipped medkit.
5) Savior should enable healing back ablative hitpoints. Cut the bonus healing (or at least reduce to 2 HP), but buff the absolutely useless nano-medkits to heal 4 more instead of 2.

That way, a specialist could be spec'ed into medic by different degrees and a full medic could proactively keep the squad in shape by topping up ablative. Also nanomedikits would have a use.
dwhansen777
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun May 07, 2017 4:39 pm

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by dwhansen777 »

Medics play a larger role if the "red fog" option is used.

Granted may not heal completely, but even 4-10 HP's restored makes troops more effective for the rest of the mission wrt aim, mobility, etc. and also helps to increase chances of surviving the rest of the mission.

I always bring a full medic spec'd specialist...also the ability to hack a roving sentry drone early in the mission in order to extend full squad mission concealment is great in conjunction with the mod that doesn't start the reinforcement "clock" ticking at mission launch.
TheDarkZero
Posts: 18
Joined: Sat May 20, 2017 9:31 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by TheDarkZero »

dwhansen777 wrote:Medics play a larger role if the "red fog" option is used.

Granted may not heal completely, but even 4-10 HP's restored makes troops more effective for the rest of the mission wrt aim, mobility, etc. and also helps to increase chances of surviving the rest of the mission.

I always bring a full medic spec'd specialist...also the ability to hack a roving sentry drone early in the mission in order to extend full squad mission concealment is great in conjunction with the mod that doesn't start the reinforcement "clock" ticking at mission launch.
This is a lie, I always play whit red fog all, and in the past red fog would buff the medic role a bit, but in 1.4 red fog was nerfed to a very small debuff, for both you and the aliens, while medikits are not useless and healing is not a complete waste, the medic spec is the only 100% useless build this mod has.
But to fix it would be very simply, make heals whit the savior perk also avoid the time in the infirmary later, making the medic specialist the only class who can avoid after battle wonder after soldiers are wounded, problem solved.
fowlJ
Posts: 198
Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2016 1:45 pm

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by fowlJ »

TheDarkZero wrote:
dwhansen777 wrote:Medics play a larger role if the "red fog" option is used.

Granted may not heal completely, but even 4-10 HP's restored makes troops more effective for the rest of the mission wrt aim, mobility, etc. and also helps to increase chances of surviving the rest of the mission.

I always bring a full medic spec'd specialist...also the ability to hack a roving sentry drone early in the mission in order to extend full squad mission concealment is great in conjunction with the mod that doesn't start the reinforcement "clock" ticking at mission launch.
This is a lie, I always play whit red fog all, and in the past red fog would buff the medic role a bit, but in 1.4 red fog was nerfed to a very small debuff, for both you and the aliens, while medikits are not useless and healing is not a complete waste, the medic spec is the only 100% useless build this mod has.
But to fix it would be very simply, make heals whit the savior perk also avoid the time in the infirmary later, making the medic specialist the only class who can avoid after battle wonder after soldiers are wounded, problem solved.
Up to ~25 aim and ~7 mobility is not by any reasonable definition a 'very small debuff' - a badly injured unit is still reduced to near uselessness, especially now that evac points spawn much farther away from objectives much of the time, making the mobility loss potentially fatal without healing.
Psieye
Posts: 829
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by Psieye »

My Squaddie assault who was limping at Mobility 8 from 1 HP is turning in his grave. The rest of the squad got out after the shinobi punched the dark VIP, got Sectoid panicked, survived, picked up the VIP body and ran. All while my Lightning Reflexes guy trolled 10 enemies by running around and only ever taking graze wounds. The wounded assault got overrun as the able bodies were ordered not to stick around and kill everything when the objective was secured.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Steve-O
Posts: 124
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 8:00 pm

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by Steve-O »

I agree that medics are less useful in XCOM2 than they were in XCOM1, although I don't think I'd call them "useless" personally. Having never played vanilla XCOM2, I can't really comment on how much of that is due to Long War 2 and how much is just because of how Firaxis made XCOM2.

I will say that the addition of ablative armor HP has been a big difference, for obsoleting the need for early game heals, though I don't know if that was added by Pavonis or not (again, never played vanilla XCOM2.) Being able to take one or two HP before "it really counts" makes a big difference, I find.

As for what can be done to fix it... I dunno. I'm not entirely convinced it needs fixing, TBH. Sure medics are less useful than before, but when you do need them, boy do you need them. Even as-is, I think it would be a tactical error not to maintain at least a couple of medic-spec'd Specialists for the bigger, hairier missions. Train them up like rookies as add-ons to full squads and then leave them in the roster for when it really counts.
JulianSkies
Posts: 301
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 12:17 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by JulianSkies »

Steve-O: Shields for everyone was a PI invention, yes, in order to replace the 'armor health' that X1 had.
Exquisitor
Posts: 53
Joined: Wed May 10, 2017 4:50 pm

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by Exquisitor »

Specialist should have the Gremlin healbot as an innate starting feature. That'd make a big difference in their utility.
wardensc2
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 7:32 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by wardensc2 »

ginyu549 wrote:There is a mod called "make heals persist" that does exactly that. Not sure if it works with LW2 or not, but you can try it. :P
That's exactly what I want, thank you. I will try it at home, base on the comment of the mod, it works fine with LW2.
Just 1 small change, everything's much better.

Thank you
wardensc2
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 7:32 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by wardensc2 »

Psieye wrote:My unorthodox 8-man GOp squad (Veteran, non-Ironman, June, Peek from Concealment) mandates I bring 2~3 specialists of which at least 1 is a medic. Preferably 2.

Instead of lots of 4~6-man squads with a "nobody should ever take wounds" doctrine, I have one 8-man squad doing 10% infiltrations and "up to 2 tanks are expected to be taking wounds". A large fraction of my barracks are "spare parts" to slot into the tank slots when wounds happen. The sniper/medic core of the 8-man should never be taking wounds.

Whether this unorthodox approach is viable in higher difficulties is a valid concern. But where it is viable, this strange doctrine likes having 4 remote heal charges per medic.
What is the point of tank when they can tank only a mission then sleep a month in the hospital. Most of your team will stay in the hospital much more than the time they go to mission.

I dont know about Legend difficult but with my Commander difficult, my specialist only get the support role with hack, combat protocol and overwatch. When you're in the end game of Commander your reliable damage dealer is only Sniper, Ranger, all nades and rocket. Everything else is a lucky shot if it's hit unless you stand right in front of enemy.

I'm a save-scum, but even the save-scum like feel the medic specialist is worthless. Maybe in ironman mode, medic specialist will have more roles to save soldier live than bronzeman.

I understand you guys really want to enjoy challenge with ironman, but sometimes I feel it's not fun with ironman, especially when you're near endgame when many ironman finisher choose to stop doing every missions to avoid injury and lost and do only the golden path. What is the point of having big guns but can't go to big battle to test it.
Psieye
Posts: 829
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by Psieye »

wardensc2 wrote:
Psieye wrote:My unorthodox 8-man GOp squad (Veteran, non-Ironman, June, Peek from Concealment) mandates I bring 2~3 specialists of which at least 1 is a medic. Preferably 2.
What is the point of tank when they can tank only a mission then sleep a month in the hospital. Most of your team will stay in the hospital much more than the time they go to mission.
The 8-man GOp doctrine is a midgame paradigm shift (which I'm not sure is viable for higher difficulties): normally you want as many 5-man GOp teams as you can to infiltrate lots of missions simultaneously. The 8-man GOp team does nearly every mission all by itself after about 1 day of infiltration (just to slightly reduce detection radius). I don't need my barracks to support lots of 5-man teams so I have a lot of soldiers standing around in reserve. So I 'just' need 30 tanks to guarantee I always have a tank for my 8-man GOp if they go on a mission each day and the tank gets wounded. In reality they don't go on missions that fast and my tanks never are in the hospital for a month: they're out in a week.

I expect this is just a midgame (June/July) timing opportunity. We'll see how it goes as the force level rises.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
wardensc2
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 7:32 am

Re: Specialist Medic is useless

Post by wardensc2 »

Psieye wrote:
wardensc2 wrote:
Psieye wrote:My unorthodox 8-man GOp squad (Veteran, non-Ironman, June, Peek from Concealment) mandates I bring 2~3 specialists of which at least 1 is a medic. Preferably 2.
What is the point of tank when they can tank only a mission then sleep a month in the hospital. Most of your team will stay in the hospital much more than the time they go to mission.
The 8-man GOp doctrine is a midgame paradigm shift (which I'm not sure is viable for higher difficulties): normally you want as many 5-man GOp teams as you can to infiltrate lots of missions simultaneously. The 8-man GOp team does nearly every mission all by itself after about 1 day of infiltration (just to slightly reduce detection radius). I don't need my barracks to support lots of 5-man teams so I have a lot of soldiers standing around in reserve. So I 'just' need 30 tanks to guarantee I always have a tank for my 8-man GOp if they go on a mission each day and the tank gets wounded. In reality they don't go on missions that fast and my tanks never are in the hospital for a month: they're out in a week.

I expect this is just a midgame (June/July) timing opportunity. We'll see how it goes as the force level rises.
Yeah in endgame where many enemy has AoE skill like Super Heavy Mech or Elite Rocketeer or Gatekeeper it is impossible to one shot all the whole pod of Mech. Even shinobi with Incoming skill is not enough to withstand many explosive hit. I already have 5 Psi soldiers rotation with Bastion to survive in these missions.

Even your 30 tanks rotation will be not enough if you constanly eat rockets or grenades every mission.

My super squad always include Spark with sacrifice go to front to take the hardest hit, behind him is Psi soldier with Bastion, grenadier with denser smoke most of my squad gather around my Spark and Psi soldier. Spark is better than high cover because with Bastion he doesn't get any hit with fire, explosive, acid and poison. When you get hit by many rockets or grenades even high cover will be blow away.

My strategy help our squad to survive Supply or Ambush 0% Swarm ++++ in Advent 11 strength region.

In near end game, even you full control a sectoidpod for a full mission, it just help you to draw the fire for a few turns if you do 0% supply raid in a high strength region when many enemy has armor destroy skill and hit very hard.
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