Improving the Medic?

[Warlust]

I play exclusively as Medic and I'm having a tough time healing when I need to. Because of both net lag and the animation lag of the healing process, I can't tell if I've actually healed a marine or not. It would be useful to see the little cross next to their icon also over their character. That way, I know who I'm healing, and when my heal registers. It's frustrating to waste heals because of the lack of some response, even a sound effect or something would be nice.

Other than that, medic's are much improved from before, and still pretty balanced. Great job!

[Blitz]

agreed.
make the animation appear faster or let the marines say something like "aahh much better" (duke style) or some beep sound.

[Warskull]

The targetting on medics heal could use a bit of work too, you have to be point blank and facing the person to be able to target them. This makes it easy to waste a medpack healing yourself when you have only a few points of damage when trying to heal an ally. Even worse is when your allies decide not to hold still for a while, you pretty much can't heal them.

A new key should be added to heal yourself, it will use a medic's satchel packs first and then a personal medkit if you have no satchels (because you can use F for the personal kit.) Then the ability to heal yourself using the 'E' Key would be removed. This solves the problem of a slightly hurt medic healing another marine being such a pain. The range of heal should probably be slightly increased too.

[LionsPhil]

Better would be to change the F key slightly to be:

if( you have a personal medkit ) { use it }
else if ( you have a medical bag ) { use it }
else { swear }

Alien Swarm already uses quite a lot of keys - adding more will just make it harder to control.

[Angel-of-sIX]

you don't need to be next to the person to heal completely...I mean..just go next to him right click his portrait and then run away you will see it works just as well...
you only have to be next to him to initiate the healing..


[add]: Forgot to mention this is how you can heal 4 marines at once during intense fights...just get in the middle of them and right click their portrait one after the other real quick...good healing

[Metamorphosis]

Yeh what Angel said.. also you can just keep on right clicking the portrait. You won't use another medpack if they're already being healed by one. So if your not sure just right click a few times on their portrait. Although I agree something like a big red + over their portrait would be very helpful for when you have multiple medics in a game.

[Warskull]

you don't need to be next to the person to heal completely...I mean..just go next to him right click his portrait and then run away you will see it works just as well...
you only have to be next to him to initiate the healing..


[add]: Forgot to mention this is how you can heal 4 marines at once during intense fights...just get in the middle of them and right click their portrait one after the other real quick...good healing

Didn't know about that method, thanks

[Swiss Mercenary]

Better would be to change the F key slightly to be:

if( you have a personal medkit ) { use it }
else if ( you have a medical bag ) { use it }
else { swear }

Alien Swarm already uses quite a lot of keys - adding more will just make it harder to control.

Would that mean that a medic with flares would not be able to use them? I'd still prefer a seperate button. Solves hastles like that.

[LionsPhil]

Flares are 'f' too? Drat. So much for that idea.

[DusKer]

Hm was a good idea, but for the fatal flaw =)

[Warlust]

The healing-by-clicking-on-portrait method has been mentioned before and is not that great. Your mouse is up in the corner trying to right click on an icon, forcing your view towards that corner.

What would be really nice is if right-clicking on a portrait sends your medic walking over to the wounded marine to heal once in range, although pathfinding may be asking too much.

[Padders]

Would it be possible to get the medic's view to turn automatically towards their target marine, once the pointer is over their portrait?