To start things off, all of this is based on my experience from the game and as such is subject to opinions, experience, interpretation and errors of those three dreaded words. Also a bit of context about me (or skip to big bold text) I'm not a beginner. I'm one session away from BR100. I "main" medic on TR and I love this class and the varied roles it can fill. I don't see the Combat Medic as purely "the healer" but as a misnamed Rifleman/Assault class. "Shoot first, revive later" being my main mentality when it comes to the dead. But I do prioritize healing someone over shooting. Because I feel the job of the "designated medic" if I am playing in an organized squad is to keep people FROM dying, not rewinding the clock. Death should come with a much bigger penalty then giving an enemy a cert point. I do feel the pain about people not getting revived. But I understand that a great medic knows when not to heal or revive. A good medic will go through fire to help you, a great medic will know when to let you die, so he and three others could survive. And again, this ties into my thought that death should have a much more meaningful penalty then just 15 seconds of map and a 30 meter jog. And don't get me started on it being quicker to shoot and revive a nearly dead ally then it is to heal them, that's the epitome of idiocy. On to the point of this topic: I hate the revive grenade. It's cheap, boring and goes against everything I feel a medic should truly be doing. Mechanically it works unfairly by seemingly going through walls and being something you can not truly "counter". It further favors zerg-rushing and promotes "lazy medics". Sure it doesn't revive you to full health and at times you get instantly cut down, but it doesn't fix the issue of it being spammable. At some point, the enemy is out of ammo and your guys will be the ones doing the shooting. So how do you tweak the revive grenade? I got a few ideas, starting from the most effective (and personal favorite): Remove it. If your squad gets wiped, you were either outplayed or your squad got stupid (kind of the same thing, but not). And if there's a friendly dead nearby, you should not be given the lazy option of G to revive. Use your legs or use your brains. Either run over and revive with your tool, or let the corpse rot because it's not worth the risk. Know your triage, learn to prioritize. Will not revive through walls and will have a debilitating effect on the revived, comes with a considerably longer "reviving time" with a clear AoE, much like the healing grenade. Meaning the grenade has to land on you, and you wake up stunned. And the grenade's revive time is considerably longer. You can never truly tell when and who of the enemy group is being "rez-naded" in the room you just wasted. And even then there are some rather finicky things about the game showing you who's up and shooting and who hasn't made up their mind yet. 3) Revive Grenade has no IFF. If you throw it at a pile of corpses, this grenade will not care who it revives. Friend and foe both will be getting a rez. Think of it like a frag grenade thrown at live people, but on opposite day. I understand that the rez grenade is a tactical tool. But like any tool it must have a clear and defined time and place where it is meant to be used. To revive two suicide LA in the middle of a squad they just killed by jihaad C4 is not one of those moments. And I personally question about the need for this particular tool. The final option is more of a general fix I believe would further add a bit of flavor to the gameplay. Just a small thing that I think just might have an interesting and positive impact. Corpses can be shot to "finish them off" and to cancel any revive process, this includes MAX's. Thus making them unrevivable. This argument lies on the idea that when you are "dead" you are merely critically wounded and thus incapacitated. You are not actually dead yet. And the "revive" is just the medic pumping you full of enough painkillers and healing nanites to get you back on to your feet. It should not take more then a few bullets to finish someone off and there should be a very short grace time between the person actually dying and this option becoming available as if it was instantly, most people already put enough bullets into someone to kill them two times over simply because of animations. This "execution" should only be available when the body has gone through the full "Argh I'm dead! Must fall to the ground." animation. So, now that at least some of you have had their jimmies properly rustled. Your thoughts? Are you a person who relies on the revive grenade to try and "save" a botches assault or a poorly organized defense? Or are you like me, who grits their teeth every time one of these cheeseballs rolls in through a door after you just single-handedly killed half the enemy squad?
No, Res grenades are a useful tactical asset, whereas there are other things that need to be buffed, like tanks.
Not arguing against the first point. It is a useful tool. But I argue that it is too useful or at the very least, too easy to use. As for the second part, not part of this thread.
I play a fair bit of medic on both my characters but have deliberately abstained from even buying revive grenades for reasons similar to the ones you have delineated. They just seem so... cheap, and I find it quite infuriating when the enemy use them if you've just done an especially skilful or tactical bit of lead dispensing. Meh, but that's just me. I'm sure many disagree. Probably the biggest defence of them you'll find is they're a cert bomb for the guy who's throwing them.
If anything buff healing grenades, I can count on 1 hand how many times I've seen them used in my two years of playing, rez nades are fine I kinda wish they would work on maxes though.
That would, in my opinion, be a terrible idea, considering how potentially difficult MAXes are to eliminate (especially high level//highly certed ones). At least manually reviving them takes a lot longer than other units, but picking them up with revive grenades... imagine if you were the dude to finally take down a troublesome MAX, just to have an enemy medic throw a grenade and instantly spring him back up, then watch him run back to his engie buddies. You wouldn't be p*ssed?
Healing grenades are an iffy subject for me. I honestly haven't used them simply because I love my frag grenades and if I want area heal I'll just press T for ability. As for rez grenade buff? No. Most definitely not. Especially no to MAX's. You will hear more people yelling for MAX's not to be revivable, period. Rez grenades are cheap, cheesy and lazy, they undermine the negative impact of dying. This is especially noticeable against organized groups. I'm not saying "nerf teamwork" I'm saying "nerf dumb, unimaginative teamwork" Ah, a like minded person. I bought these grenades simply because my commanding officer (I'm in a pretty heavy military style outfit) gave me a direct order to. And I have on more then one occasion gone against orders to use them. And just like you, it's an issue with our personal "code of honor" so to speak. As for proponents, it's convenience. Simple as that. No one wants to give up something that's easy to use. A low risk, relatively high rewards item. As I mentioned, organized units make very effective use of this to maintain a push or a defense that otherwise should have failed. In essence, saving crappy defenses and messed up assaults. When one of your tactic's main supporting pillars is some guys ability to press G to save squad, something's off.
I like your number 3 the best. THAT option actually requires thought when tossing a revive grenade. Bravo!
Would like a display option for the dead that shows how you're being revived. I would opt not to use a revive grenade revive and wait for an actual medic revive. (how many times can you type revive in a sentence?) The only purpose I have found for the revive grenade is for Light Assault dying on roofs where medics cannot reach. A medic revive from their hand tool in most cases means the area is secure enough to raise the dead. From actual play experience, a thrown grenade typically means the area is not safe, the medic did it for themselves and xp gain and you as the player have less health when revived and will probably die the second you accept the revive. Sure there are instances where a grenade will revive a room and medics have their aura running to bring up players health quickly, but those - from actual play - seem to be a rarity. The healing grenade, I haven't even certed into it on my secondary accounts. No passion from me on revive grenades, I don't view them as game breaking, just annoying.
Indeed! If I get hit with a revive grenade I usually wait until the last second or two before accepting as more often than not they're tossed into areas the medic him/herself cannot safely reach. More experienced enemy players will identify that a revive 'nade has been thrown and will train their sights on the nearby corpses.
If anything needs to be changed, its the super quick res tool that brings a guy to 100% health in 1/2 - 1/3 the time it takes to heal them. Resurrecting a person to 100% health is a BIG deal, and should be balanced by a longer res time or putting a cap on the HP the revived player gets.
I agree, it is silly but on the other end you have to realize that without proper limitations in place as to where exactly soft-spawns (anything not a spawn room) revives have to be shorter then it is to respawn and run back into the fight. And you also have to consider progression. How would you make revive tool work? Unranked tool revives you to red health, and max rank to half? I agree wholeheartedly that medicing should be a bit more "engaged" then aim at target hold RMB. But we also much take into consideration the feel and aesthetic of the game itself. Planetside 2 is to ARMA what Saints Row 3 is to GTA5. If we make the act of healing and reviving too much of a hassle or complicated, less people will roll medics, and it will go against the general feel of the game. Hairball idea: We don't change any existing revive mechanics, but people have a "perk" so to speak that allows someone to be revived. Once you get revived, the perk stops working and goes into a cooldown. If you get killed BEFORE the cooldown finishes, you can't be revived. Respawning resets the timer and reactivates the perk. But not resupplying. Think of it as you, physically not being able to take the shocking and drugging of the revive. Again running on the idea that when you are downed, you're not dead, just critically wounded. And your body can't take a second dose of revive juice before the last one has worn off or your brain will melt and heart explodes or something.
never forget that when you choose to use the revive grenade, you actively forgo the frag grenade for more offensive play. thats probably its biggest downside. with a revive grenade, you can only help fallen teammates and not harm enemies in any way. in a shooter game where you're constantly encountering hordes of enemies, this is a pretty large disadvantage in my book
I don't think you thought it through. A frag grenade at best might kill two people. Mostly it just injures them. Revive grenades on the other hand can raise any number of people from the dead each of whom can have their own grenades, not to mention their firearms. Yes, frags are very useful in softening up enemies and getting the lucky kills. But you are effectively giving away your power to harm enemies directly, by reviving multiple allies each with equal or greater capacity of violence to you. You don't need a frag grenade to clear a room when you've got 3-5 freshly revived people doing the shooting for you. You don't get the credit, obviously, but you can not argue with results. Just now, I was frustrated to no end by the undying legions who just kept on getting revived over and over again by rez grenades, chipping away at our side each new time. We had the point, the enemy were dead, slaughtered. But then in rolls a grenade and they're all up and kill a few of us before we cut all of the undead down. Then a new grenade and a few more of us die before we can get revives out. And so on and so forth. It's not something you can't defeat. But it's a cheap tactic that I think should not be rewarded. Or better yet, should not exist.
How about this: Keep them as present but players can only get 1 life back? It would only work ONCE per respawn. So you can revive buddies that die in a bad spot, but not over and over and over.
That is more like a general revive thing. And something similar to the post I made above yours. Rather then a strict "You only get one revive per life". A system where you can get revived only after a certain period of time has passed from the last revive. Lets say 90 seconds. So you spawn, fight your merry way and die, a medic revives you and if you die before that 90 seconds is up, you can't be revived. Longer for MAX's Lets say a solid 2-3 minutes for a MAX to be revivable again. If it was just a solid 1 revive per life. It would be too strict and would specifically punish players who manage to survive for longer periods of time. But this is getting off topic. Though I personally would like to see many changes made to the game with regard to reviving and namely spawning. I have come to see that in the game only small changes can happen, and so I'm right now aiming for the revive grenade as I believe it's just too cheapshot in the gameplay this particular game provides. Fights are too close, too hectic to make effective defenses against this thing.
It should've been this way with MAXes from the off, I think. Always hacks me off the number of times they can get revived. I guess the 'nades don't work on them but it's still frustrating. Anyways, like the idea.
Maybe some kind of priming animation so you can't just spam 4 of them across an entire biolab in 3 seconds.
