1. Does this thing do anything REALLY useful? It's shield regeneration speed is very slow. 2. You have to give up health regen aura in order to use shield bubble, effectively nerfing yourself. 3. Every single teammate in that bubble becomes shiny "shoot-at-me" beacon. More so, parts of bubble, sticking from the walls give away your team's location. By looking at this cons I wonder, why do some medics still use shield bubble? It hurts you and your team more, than helps. Maybe it is for medic directive, but it is easier to kill 800 enemy medics IMO (done it myself).
I tend to like to sit locked down in spawn rooms and at the top of towers when in a max or sniping. These bubbles have been used to harass placed directly at the feet of individuals or groups who aren't “taking part”. It makes everything blurry and forces me to move or endure glowing blurry vision...guess what happens?
The shield comes to great use during a point hold. when the ennemy stands outside, but can't come in due to suppression fire. Usually in this cases, you shoot until your shield is down, than, you duck in cover and wait for your shield regen to kick in. The Bubble helps to minimize this downtime, resulting in more effektive firepower pointed at that door.
Rank 1 regeneration, sure. But why would you use Rank 1? Health Regen isn't actually that useful- it's essentially a slower, AoE Medic Gun, which, when in a group, isn't that effective. You shouldn't be using the Shield Bubble for stealth- you should be using it to hold chokepoints.
It really depends on your personal style. Personally I stick to the AoE heal: it still gives me good xp, it makes me help my team, it doesn't give away our position that easily, it can't be countered by 1 single EMP grenade, it gives me fast recovery between fights and I can keep my utility slot for C4 instead of carrying medikits.
Decoy. A cat herding tool. Quickly restore shields after EMP or revive. Increase staying power at point hold for yourself and allies. Print certs like no one's business. It has plenty of uses.
While I agree that the shield bubble has merits and is certainly worth using in multiple situations, you are mentally ill if you think that health regen that affects yourself isn't that useful. To answer OPs question, the shield bubble is good for multiple things. 1: If you are in a zerg v zerg fight, placing one of these at one of those constant chokepoints where you expect people commonly getting hurt prints money. 2: It helps direct pubs around a fight. People will naturally gravitate towards shield bubbles given the chance because it usually means there's a medic nearby. It's like a little light that says "stand here, this place should be safe!" 3: When you're actually doing a pointhold with marginally coordinated players, it gives your heavies a big advantage when they're peeking corners and doorways; the shield regeneration means that there's very little downtime in between them taking damage and recovering it. 4: It gives YOU breathing room for when you peek since you also regenerate shields immediately afterwards. Combine this with a .75 ads gun like the carnage or the tar and it can be pretty strong. 5: It is a SOFT COUNTER to EMPs. EMPs, among other things, drain your energy and your shields. The bubble deployable works independent of energy and regenerates your shields, allowing you to quickly counteract the effects of an EMP. Using even just tier 2 EMP shield on top of that means you are basically invulnerable to EMPs, and given how commonplace and effective they are, this is invaluable. 6: It regens your shields. What I mean to say is, what other things in this game regen your shields faster outside of ASC? The AoE heal is nice, but you can always take medkits, and in most cases those will do the job of keeping you alive better since you can tank with them and the majority of the playerbase will not run out of medkits on a single life most of the time.
It works like the ammo box of the engineer. Place and forget for free certs. I have used it ever since it came out. I never had a use for the AoE heal thing anyway and the cert gain of the ability is pitiful. In a game in which everything revolves around certs, why would I stick with an inferior ability that barely helps me and my team when I could instead place a shield regen device that earns me certs and helps my team holding down choke points? If you wanna play stealth, medic is not the right class anyway. Try infiltrator or LA.
I play an aggresive, combat orientated Medic so I go with the nanite auto heal as it gives me a renewable, personal resto kit ability on top of being able to carry medkits (plus it does benefit others in the right situation). It also means I can equip Battle Hardened implant as an alternative to Regen...Just my personal choice. I did use shield generator for a while when it first came out. Not a bad cert generator but I found I was constantly having to place another one and another one as the battle moved around. And the were a lot of times when it didn't do anything becasue someone else had already placed one. Of course, there is a Directive for shileding. Easier than farming 400 Medic kills or Saviour kills..........
So basically it is being used to print certs and holding points with zerg swarm, I see. It isn't totally useless, but I just always thought that that bubble hurts your team more, than it helps. It obstructs your vision, illuminates you and it's shield regeneration is too slow. I've auraxiumed both medic and infiltrator. It's not about being stealthy, it's about not being shiny target.
It certainly is useful, but in a group (which is how you should be playing medic), shield bubble trumps health regen in every case but that of a squad moving down a hill. That "being a shiny target" thing can actually work to your advantage, as it is identical to the default NMGs, which can trick players into thinking you are a heavy at first glance, which can cause them to leave you alone.
Personally, I find that getting a guy back out there is the main purpose of the bubble. 500 Hp and 500 Sp, both are equally as important, the medical applicator can only heal HP, so no matter what, your guy will have to wait 12 seconds for his shields to start to regen and another 4 for them to completely regenerate, so instead of that, you can heal him up, let his shields regen from the bubble, and then he's back out sooner, while a regenerating medic can aborb maybe 2-3 bullets more while regening, a shield medic can restore shields to several allies while regening can only get them back to 500 Hp.
I can't speak in regards to certs, but the AoE heal is incredibly useful for several reasons. #1, it's a source of infinite health for yourself. No more retreating to infantry terminals, constantly wasting certs on regen kits. Just press F and enjoy, even if the process is a tad slow! #2, it's a great way to heal teammates without letting your guard down. Near a group of injured friendlies in a sticky situation? Press F to heal them without sacrificing your ability to shoot back instantly if the need arises. #3, it's a great way to simultaneously heal and revive. Near a group of injured AND killed friendlies? Press F to heal those that are alive, and use right-click to revive the dead. Two birds, one stone. Honestly, I don't see how you guys can stand not having the AoE heal. The shield bubble is nice for certs, I guess, but I can't see it being anywhere near as useful in the long run. After all, it's just a stationary device that covers a small area and regenerates shields incredibly slowly. To me, that's nowhere near as beneficial to you or your teammates as AoE heal. Also, with the exception of the slow-as-molasses Biolab perk, your health never regenerates. Your shield always does.
#1: fair point, I can't heal myself without medkits, but the slot is free anyway and I certainly don't need a brick of C4 on my medic. I already have the medkits certed since I needed it for HA, so might as well roll with them and use them if needed. I would have to play medic incredibly risky to ever go through all of the medkits in one life (and the heal is instantaneous, too) #2: You might regenerate a few HP, but with how the game works is that half your "health" consists of autoregenerating shields and the other half of you actual health. So, since the AoE heal only ever heals health and never shields, you and your teammates can only benefit from it when the shields are down. Now, since TTK of most weapons is really quick, chances are that if the enemy managed to take down a person's shields, he will do so with the health as well. Meaning that there are only two states that are mostly common: 1) Target is at full health and full shields 2) Target is dead Of course there are exceptions. An EMP grenade can take down your shields without hurting your health and most splash damage will often times only kill the shields and take a bit of HP away from you as well, but I find that this happens rather seldom. In the end, you are more likely to either die or be at full health, and if you ever get to the point in which you are merely at "red" health, chances are the next enemy will kill you before you will find the next medic. This means, that most of the time, you will use teh AoE for yourself only since you can't use it all the time and activating it when damage occurs will do little since the allies under attack will likely die quicker than the time it takes for you to realize they are taking hits and to activate your ability in response. Furthermore, since it will require for your allies to have lost their shields before you will be able to heal them, this means you will onlyever get them to 50% of their "potential health" anyway. Keeping in mind how quickly weapons can kill players and how slow the healing works, you cannot possibly "outheal" the damage and your patients will die anyway, getting AoE healed or not. It will not save them and merely buy them an extra second at best. See why I think it lacks purpose and effectiveness? #3: True, but this applies to the shield gen too, since injured allies will often time have no shields as well and revived allies come to life with no shield either (I believe?), so you will "AoE heal" something either way, be it real health or shields. The shield thing restores the first 50% while the AoE heal does so with the second half. However, the first half is more likely to be "lost" without the target actually dead, meaning you will realistically get to do more shield healing than health healing. Plus, you can still heal health with your medgun. You can, under no circumstances, "heal" shields if you haven't got the shield bubble equipped, thus limiting you to only ever do 50% heals, never the 100% ones. Sure, shields repair themselves automatically anyway, but why stop at 50% when you could help your patients to get to 100% faster? Just my opinion.
Why not? It is very effective against enemy MAXes and vehicles, and allows you to have explosive option while still having revive grenades.
mostly because I rarely even play medic and it thus isn't worth the cert investment into C4. That aside, I will only get one brick, I believe, which would never be enough to kill any vehicle worth killing, not to mention that I wouldn't be running around near vehicles as a medic anyway, since I would just get farmed.
When I'm playing medic and I care about something other than just farming, I'm doing ops, which means I'm running with an organized squad that has multiple heavies that know how to do their jobs well. I don't NEED C4 during those times, because I have a team that I can rely on to do AV and anti-MAX work, which allows me to focus on supporting them by placing things like shield bubbles (since it actually really helps with peeking people). Not just holding points with the zerg, but point-holds in squad-sized ops still makes it incredibly useful. To elaborate, let's say I'm a heavy assault, and I have a medic with me. Because I don't really need the explosives that badly with C4 (I already have a rocket launcher), I'm already using medkits. Additionally, the medic also has his medgun just in case, so I'm not concerned about having my heatlh back up immediately. What I'm concerned about is 1: my overshield and 2: my normal shield. Most heavy assaults worth their salt (not all of them, but the majority of them) run resist shield and ASC nowadays, so they don't have to worry about their overshield that much. ASC helps with normal shields, but there is still a bit of a downtime there, and the shield bubble helps minimize that downtime, so that when I, as a heavy, peek something, and take some damage, my shield is instantly starting to come back once the engagement is over. I just pop a medkit and don't have to worry. Bonus points if I didn't have to go through my health, because that means the bubble will bring my shields up to maximum even faster. Basically, what I'm trying to say is, the shield bubble reduces downtime on the shields for your heavies, which means that you don't have to cover for them as much, which means that both you and he are safer, and that kind of thing is ESPECIALLY useful for a pointhold. Additionally, one thing I haven't really touched on is its ability to counter EMPs. As the shield bubble, unlike most other abilities, works completely independent of your "ability power", you can place one down immediately after being EMP'd. It then regenerates your shields, which mitigates the EMP shield draining effect. With only EMP Shield 2, you can virtually nullify all their effects on you. Given how common EMPs are nowadays, this is also a valuable and often overlooked feature that the bubble has. Bubble doesn't really obstruct vision at all. That being said, it IS basically a big sign saying "nade here!" I still think the costs outweight the benefits, though, especially when people already sorta know/expect where you and your allies are going to be anyway. Not to mention it's sorta nice for mindgames when I 1v1 someone for fun on PTS, but that's a completely isolated facet of the game that nobody needs to care about.
