Thats was an awesome looking model for the Apo, aside from 1 shoulderpad being noticeably larger then the other. But thats all fixable (or i hope they will fix it). As it stands the class looks fun to play, and its good that they allow them to be both melee and ranged variants to better adjust to the squad composition they get into/are put into.
The model looked amazing, great job there... On the minus side... I know that the narthecium has charges and need to be recharged, but... What I saw today is a HoT healer with an added DoT attack, that is supposed to not be healer because he wears armor instead of robes and carries a gun instead of a staff... There must be some serious tweaking (like lessening the time of the HoT and blocking the use of the narthecium on 100% health friendlies, and above all, blocking any stack effects on the multiple HoT's). As it stands ATM, I see very clearly the possibility of Heroes running around with their squad of pocket apothecaries, keeping the HoT's on him all the time...
Like five Apothecaries gathered around a hero? Right now it looks like one heavy bolter would still mince that group. Even with HoTs up. The HoT looks like it'll make you a badass shooting out from cover, or an assault jumping in and out. But wading through a hail of fire probably kills quick enough to counter. Not to mention the melee charge attack wiped out the shields and health instantly on that chaos marine. They didn't show the Narthecium used while moving. Perhaps both units need to remain still. If that's the case you're doomed if you're not in cover. Now the sorcerer, the dev said could heal at distance. Apothecary has to be base to base. I do agree HoT stacking would be silly. But it seems so obvious they have probably considered this already.
Remember that the narthecium will be upgreadable...if they mess up the scaling just a little, problems will arise... Also, I don't like the idea of "throw me a HoT before I step out of cover, to keep me up"...better to keep apothecary closer to a role of a combat support medic in FPS games, than to a role of a HoT healer in MMORPG's...I guess that's my main objection... One thing past experiences taught me, is that there never is such a thing like "obvious" in any major project, like game development, so better be safe than sorry, and point out the obvious...
It's clear that the HoT will not stack, the whole reason for the HoT, is so that you don't constantly have to heal. Maybe it would be better, if after healing someone there was no HoT, but a debuff that restricts the ability to heal the same target again for 30 seconds. I hope the poision mechanic will get tweaked, so that for example it leaves the enemy with 1 Hp if he was hit with fulllife.
Nothing like a shot of painkillers and a dose of nanobots autoinjected from my Narthecium! In that aspect it'd make sense to allow at 100%. We're probably about thirty years to that point from today. I don't see any issue with that myself. It'd definitely allow melee unit to jump through some gunfire. I guess what I saw just seemed entirely controllable and made sense to me. The stacking of HoTs would not make sense, but everything else looked great.
It will be a matter of math. The HoT as described is a good enough reason to be cautious after receiving it. If it were a direct heal for the full amount it would be OP of course. It's smart making it a dual effect I doubt very much it's enough to sustain a break from cover against 2s TTK weapons or better but if it is then it will probably be nerfed or the HoT buff removed as soon as the target hits 100% health. I liked everything I saw today on the Apo. I like that a lot of it was almost identical to what Brent described as his plans way back in the Combat in EC thread. Satisfying.
I wonder if we will be able to use the two flashlights on his back. I also wonder how much damage the narthecium does compared to a chainsword in terms of pure melee. I guess it would be weaker since the narthecium can also apply posion. But how much weaker, like a normal combat knife?
Narthecium is designed to penetrate Power Armour and even TDA rapidly afaik. It's only about the size of a combat knife but it's fixed and can't be wielded like a free blade. I don't know how a Narthecium will be used in EC but it's a little like an anti-infantry Chain Fist I'm very much pro-flashlight too
