Up Front i don't play a lot of Apothecary outside of testing waves with new gear, that being said I'm usually glad when one is around to help me out. From what we understand bE wants them to fill a combat support role ... the support role being secondary. I am behind on posting by one day with dirt and gritty so im gonna jump right in. Bolter loadouts. The bolter is very flexible and a solid weapon right now, i have to say on the apothecary i prefer it as stalkery as possible. but you can run the full gamut of the tacticals mods as far as i can tell... This is the only ranged weapon available to them so from ranged we obviously arent going to be tank hunting or gaining much CqC benefit from their ranged pools of weapons. I don't have a serious problem with them having a bolter im glad they have at least a single well rounded weapon. Nathecium has to be in every equipping of a apoth. and for good reason ... it basically makes them what they are. and personally on the whole i prefer the poison mechanic both in feel and effect to having a chainsword. Chainsword builds. makes me feel like GA when i don't equip the shield.... bad Tankiness Tankiness again seems much easier to achieve on the apothecary than on tactical or either assault which seems very backwards ...at this moment as previously stated the state of this patch buying defense is more or less pointless. Whats missing ? This class feels very boring and dry save 2 new narthecium vials its like playing a very boring tactical or a GA using no shield. your support function as a whole rarely comes into play as your allies go down like sacks of wheat if and explode to unrevivable incredibly fast in the current patch state, this is yet another class suffering from entirely too short TTL. Most times even with the damage reduction narthecium on you will see someone you stand up get killed again while they are still in animation lock of standing back up. outside feel and effect of its role i think there is room for a lot of improvement in equipment. Bolter :: Poison rounds, maybe some defensive modifications like quick reloading, bayonet, or some "paralyzing rounds" that severely slow people Narthecium :: needs a lot more support functions, like curing poison quickly, maybe delivering other debuffs besides poison like disorientation, or flaming(flammable chemical in vial), possibly a small smokescreen to help then get people out that they are ressing giving a reduction in incoming damage to anyone in the cloud. possibly a modification that makes it better in melee at straight up damage but forgoes the poison effect. Smoke grenades, concussion/stun grenades, Toxin grenades(poison/debuff/disorienting). equipment that provides incentive for them to prioritize picking up downed players, like a banner that gives them and the ressed ally either bonus damage or bonus defense for a few seconds after ressing an ally. When i realized how hard it is to res someone i thought it would be nice if anyone on your team could lift and carry or drag downed allies to cover or back from the engagement which would severely slow your death timer while they move you.
Honestly if there is a good Apothecary around it makes for a huge difference! In our clan we have a very good Apothecary ( @TARINunit9 ), who does a great job keeping us alive and you can easily feel the difference, at least in a squad of ~5 people. Equipped with a Boltgun he is as lethal as his Tactical brothers. I hope for him that it doesn't feel boring as he is doing a great job
i was more referring to the lack of meaningful choices not how fun or not fun sniping heretics and xenos is .... but i get what you mean. in each of the "dirt and gritty" series i am examining game design mechanics and class balance not so much "do i enjoy this" I'm speaking more on a "grand scale" for how i think people will react.
I play apothecary most of the time, and i have great fun, but it does feel like its missing somethings. I'd love if you could use the Narthecium without having to stand still. The amount of times i'm chasing people around and shooting them to get there attention to stand still, and by that time the enemy will be on us again!
I would really love to see the Apothecary have a slight, non-stacking, regen aura. That would reward people for sticking together. Also a poison grenade instead of a AoE healing station.
Actually the game is missing cool-down abilities and that passive regen aura would be very suitable for a manually triggered cool-down ability (better than a healing station which I have never read of in any of my >80 black library books I own) A passive regen aura could at least simulate that the Apothecary is doing active scans on his squad members to monitor their health status and remote adjust the internal medicals systems of their armor to maintain 100% combat effectiveness
We've been told that ammunition mods will be coming at one point, though whether or not they'll be magazine modifications or weapon base variations has yet to be seen. The mechanics are clearly there with the demonstrated sikky slugga, so all it really needs is balancing for damage, range, and RoF. If we had to see some mods unique to the apothecary on his bolter I'd suggest Hellfire rounds, Inferno bolts, and maybe some Metal Storm Frag rounds. Sadly unless they develop some sort of shock bolt and GW okays it as canon I doubt we'll see any stun rounds. And as for the bayonet its not a common bolt modification but there are some out there. Of course the issue with that is making a whole new addition to the melee weapons in the tiers, balancing, and animations which we won't see another round of mocap for before the two-handed weapon expansion. Another addition that would help make the apothecary a more unique combat support would be a bolt pistol loaded with Ulysses bolts that spot an enemy hit with them the same way spotting works while also dealing a a half of the damage the smart bolt pistol does. As for the narthecium it is supposed to instantly cure poison and was in before even though it isn't right now and that is weird as hell. Just gonna have to wait for a fix on that one. As far as delivering other debuffs I'm not sure how that would work and stay balanced. The apothecary is built as either a ranged support or a melee support. Ranged hits the target from afar weakening him and deterring a melee rush (in theory), while melee is up in there with his melee brothers dishing out damage and doing heals at the end of a confrontation. The narthecium is his holdout melee weapon in either case, whereas a ranged apoth may find his life saved by good use of his melee against a close opponent a melee apoth would probably just use his superior chainsword. Poisoning the enemy helps pull a ranged apoth out of a jam and might just let you outlive your opponent as their health ticks away, but I have problems seeing some other effect on it. Flame damage relies on heat buildup in this game and is essentially the same as poison with ticks making it wholly redundant vs poison. Any sort of damage taken debuff to his narthecium is going to make it pretty much just a better combat knife and would need to be re-applied repeatedly to be particularly deadly. I agree that a smoke effect that covers an area could be useful as smoke grenades are, but if so I think it should be in the form of actual smoke grenades equipped and thrown in the grenade slot. As for poison grenades we saw tha Ork sikky grenade not too long ago and the apothecary in DOW2 did have purification vials. That aside some blind grenades would be nice and we are getting the AoE healing station grenades. As for rezzing bonuses I think they could work well with something like a 20% speed increase for 5-10 seconds after being narthecium revived by an apothecary. Since they revive without armor it'd help them get out of harms way. I also think that dragging an injured teammate out of fire is a pretty good idea as a lot of apoths I see try to revive someone despite that person crawling away from the enemy that downed them getting both players straight up killed. Though I'd limit it to the apoth dragging a player away would let him safely heal his charge rather than just stand there like a big target.
