Aura's Healing Station


(bubblesKeyboard) #1

I’m probably not the only person who feels this way, but Aura’s healing station is a bit ridiculous. In the middle of the firefight she can just plant one down and it makes her virtually invincible. I just played a match where 3 auras from the other team planted healing stations next to our spawns and proceeded to buttsex us for the entire match.

I’m not sure how to fix it, maybe reduce the healing time? Sawbonez isnt as bad because it’s not continuous healing, so if I faced a Sawbonez and the placed a med pack and picked it up himself, it wouldnt be as effective because it takes a while for him to regenerate. Aura’s on the other hand is constantly healing them at a very fast rate. You could also disallow them to pick up their healing stations, but I dont know how much good that would do


(pliableUnicycle) #2

I have only played a few hours, but my first impression is that the healing station definitely needs some tweaking. There are a few things I could see working

  1. [left][*] Make it so you can’t be healed while being damaged. So if you take damage the healing stops and won’t start again until you have been undamaged for x amount of time. (maybe works like that now? but seems very quick to restart the healing)
  2. Have the healing occur in pulses so that you hopefully have time to kill someone in between pulses
  3. Just reduce the high speed of healing[/left]

I think number 1 would work really well, although perhaps too big of a nerf for how they see healing stations working.

On another note, I feel the stations themselves seem too hard to destroy. I have seen a grenade blowup right beside one and not even take it out. If they were easier to blow up it would help a lot.


(bubblesKeyboard) #3

Totally agree, and that first point is actually really smart, I think it’s perfect. I doubt that the healing station was meant to be an aggressive ability in the first place anyway, but rather a defensive one. Although I might have to disagree with the destroying of stations. In firefights against a not-so-smart Aura, I have been able to force them back into their healing stations, take it out, and then take them out as well. This was only possible due to the poor placement choice of the stations. For example if the station was placed in a manner where Aura could stand in front of the station and still be behind cover, it would take away my ability to destroy the healing station first because the merc would be blocking my line of sight.


(Reddeadcap) #4

Really think healing stations should release a powerful pulse every second or so rather than a constant stream of health, maybe a bit harder to kill and finally healthpacks themselves offering a large chunk of health right away rather than fast regeneration.


(Cyphre) #5

I agree, I was playing Aura earlier and that thing seems a bit overpowered for the type of game that this is. Limited time ‘medic bags’ like in Battlefield and such work in those games because you have time to find cover and use it. It is then used and you must have an additional one handy.

Ultimately, it needs some sort of time limit and a cooldown like the other special abilities, or some other limitation that prevents it from being infinite health regen.


(bubblesKeyboard) #6

I do agree to an extent, however I feel the problem is the rate of regen rather than the amount of regen itself. Standing on top of station allows you to eat M4A1 bullets all day and never die. If it was slower so I’d be able to kill someone standing on top of the station with 1-3/2 clips or so it would be a lot less overpowered. The idea is to take away the aggressive ability of the station - the ability to rush to a highly populated area (like enemy base), plunk one down and become a demi-god. It happened again to me last game when we were rushing the enemy territory to deliver the EMP to the building and the other team set up 2 healing stations around that rock before the delivery point and would roflstomp us. I’d empty a whole clip into an Aura to take her down to a bit more than half-ish health just to have her completely regen before I finish reloading.


(bubblesKeyboard) #7

Although the pulse idea is quite good just like the idea of not being able to be healed by a station while taking damage (I feel like the pulse idea is a bit better because the healing station maintains more usefulness), having health packs that give health right away practically pose the same problem as the healing station. You could then strafe in and out of cover, and every time you come out of cover be close to full health with a medic. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the medic didn’t have multiple health packs at their disposal at a time.

Another thing is that it would make it very hard to kill medics. Say you’re Aura chasing down Sawbonez with a shotgun, Sawbonez could just spam med packs in front of him and heal himself to full health every time he takes damage - or could heal himself to full(ish) health instantly and proceed to turn on Aura. The latter is also detrimental because it takes away the advantage of Aura having the first shot on him, which is usually a determining factor in whether she wins the firefight.


(sleeepy) #8

Of the 4 classes good at dealing with Aura stations, 3 were not available this beta. Not saying the station is 100% fine but try playing when Stoker, Fletcher and Nader are in the game and see if it’s still a huge issue.


(bubblesKeyboard) #9

That would make sense. Also (as per someone’s point earlier) I have an issue with Skyhammer’s indoor nade/Fragger’s nades not being able to destroy one. I’m not sure if the air strike has the same problem.


(Reddeadcap) #10

The airstrike does kill it, if one of the bombs falls right on it, same goes for arty, I guess the only thing we need to do is wait for more mercs to see if they can soak up or deal enough damage to destroy the station and hope for that pulse option, as for the health pack thing I said earlier I can see how that’d be an annoyance to fight against, maybe on a “direct hit” when throwing it at a team mate as oppose to having them walk over the health pack or picking it up yourself could heal a large chunk instead jump starting the health regen.

As for now, I’ve been using Fragger against Aura and its been wonders, doesn’t kill the station but it does damage Aura and other possible mercs on the station.

The only other issue I have is not being able to tell if the stations are friendly or not from a distance, maybe having enemy healing station’s aura be red instead of blue like Vasili’s heart beat sensor and the fact that I’m still seeing the area of effect animation after stations have been moved or destroyed leading to the entire map having blue glowing crosses on the floor.


(Amerika) #11

The healing station simply needs to be easy to destroy. I believe it’s mostly fine as is. Maybe tone down the healing it does a bit based on the amount of people in the aura (if there is 5 sitting in it make the heals pretty small).

However, it doesn’t need too much nerfing simply because it has one huge drawback…people want to sit in the aura and pop out and fire. Well, Fragger can cook nades and if you know people are doing that you can get 2-4 kills with one grenade pretty often and wipe their whole team. Where Sawbones can toss out healing packs and people can be a lot more spread out making him more effective against a more intelligent enemy.

I still don’t like that the turret takes 2-3 knife hits to destroy though and quite a bit of bullets. I think it should go down within a few bullets and 1 knife hit.


(bubblesKeyboard) #12

Although I understand the logic behind that, I have cooked countless grenades at enemies surrounding the station only to receive splash damage. I actually remember another Fragger and I as Sky chucked all our nades at the room to the left of the wall you plant C4 on for the first objective on Terminal and the station was still there. I have no problem taking out hordes of enemies, but when they have a healing station in proximity they become invincible.

The drawback you named isn’t so much of a drawback when you place one down in an important choke point. On chapel on the last objective, if the attacking enemy can get 2-3 healing stations down, they can hold down your spawn very effectively allowing the rest of the team to haul the EMPs over to the objective. Also, what happens with skilled Aura players is that as soon as they get tagged by someone or they’re going to engage the enemy, they plop one down and then attack them from the station, rendering them practically invincible to the enemy. I can’t count how many times as Sky I had chased a 25% health Aura around a corner only for her to plop a healing station down, turn around and attack me back - causing me to run away.

It’s practically always a losing battle. The only way I have been able to kill Aura on a healing station is with a shotgun blast to the face point blank. Otherwise you can empty all your ammo into her and she won’t die. The only way I’ve seen that works is to charge her and take out her station first, and then her. The problem with this is that even though you focus your attention on the station instead of her, she will probably be able to take a Skyhammer down to 20-30 health before you destroy it, and in most instances even kill him.

So the process is to charge the station, take it out and die, spawn, and then charge Aura again. K

Kind of ridiculous.

And this is when Aura is on the healing station. Imagine Sky or Frag, almost impossible. When you try to push an enemy out of an area and you see they have a healing station in the vicinity, you might as well give up.


(Amerika) #13

Aura goes down super fast if you go for headshots (as do most actually). And if you are only getting splash damage with your nades then you need to practice throwing them a bit. Go on a server by yourself and practice cooking/angles/etc. I did that and I can kill to the point of it not being fair honestly. And even if you don’t get the kill but you get good splash aoe (especially if you have the aoe card) you can rush in and finish a couple of people pretty easily as Fragger with his high HP even with the station still up.

Also, you shouldn’t really be chasing anybody in this game unless it’s a 2 second chase. To do otherwise opens you up to getting killed by pretty much everyone else and as a Fragger you will NOT catch a medic that knows how to move (switches to knife/wall jumps).


(bubblesKeyboard) #14

She will go down assuming I get all headshots, which is tough against an Aura that knows how to move. Its definitely possible but it makes her killing me a lot easier than me killing her. If she stands directly on top of the station the healing is near instantaneous. If I throw a nade into a room and wait for it to go off, by the time I rush her she’d be back to full health. A good tactic would be to cook the nade and then bum rush her straight up but her shotgun is a lot more effective than my MG face to face. If she didn’t have a shotgun it would be a different story, but the reason its so tough is that if she stays on top of the station, if I try to take out the station it puts me staring down the barrel of her shotgun.

By chasing what I really meant was shooting her in the back, getting her down to 20 ish health, then rushing the corner for an easy kill only to find her standing on top of a station with full health and a shotgun aimed at my face. Of course if she gets away from me, that’s perfectly normal and fine, but if she has the power to turn on, challenge me, and win while I’m at full health then that’s a problem.

My nading is fine and I can usually get kills easy but when there’s a healing station all I get is splash damage. It wouldn’t even be a problem if they destroyed the station. If I threw a nade and it destroyed a healing station that the team was sitting on, it wouldn’t even matter if it damaged them or not because I can take them out myself manually.

I can see Stoker being really good at taking Aura out with a Molotov. With continuous damage that can cancel out the healing from the station I can take her out easy. Perhaps the problem is the lack of mercs that are able to deal with her.

I see nades not being able to destroy stations as a problem


(bubblesKeyboard) #15

The airstrike does kill it, if one of the bombs falls right on it, same goes for arty, I guess the only thing we need to do is wait for more mercs to see if they can soak up or deal enough damage to destroy the station and hope for that pulse option, as for the health pack thing I said earlier I can see how that’d be an annoyance to fight against, maybe on a “direct hit” when throwing it at a team mate as oppose to having them walk over the health pack or picking it up yourself could heal a large chunk instead jump starting the health regen.

As for now, I’ve been using Fragger against Aura and its been wonders, doesn’t kill the station but it does damage Aura and other possible mercs on the station.

The only other issue I have is not being able to tell if the stations are friendly or not from a distance, maybe having enemy healing station’s aura be red instead of blue like Vasili’s heart beat sensor and the fact that I’m still seeing the area of effect animation after stations have been moved or destroyed leading to the entire map having blue glowing crosses on the floor.
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Arty’s and Sky’s Q does take it out but in comparison the cool downs are uneven. So you can take a station out and she can put another one down and then what.

I guess healing a large chunk by direct healing a teammate works but as it stands if you direct hit a teammate with a pack its basically instantaneous - just like standing directly on top of the healing station.

I don’t really have a problem with Auras healing teammates because its understandable that that’s what Aura’s role is, and if she happens to do it really really well then great. A Skyhammer on a station might be near impossible to kill without a Q but that’s (kind of) fine with me at the moment because that isn’t the issue. The issue is Auras healing themselves at a rate that makes them near invincible in a one on one gunfight without a Q, and even with a Q if it isn’t implemented perfectly so that she’s super low health from a nade and then bum rushed instantaneously, she will just heal back up to full health again rendering it useless.

Personally I’ve locked down spawns many times with Aura and died due to lack of ammo many many times. The heal rate is competitive and better most of the times with the dps of weapons. Its pretty ridiculous that I can stand in front of a Sky and take him out face to face while standing on top of a healing station.

Someone mentioned somewhere on another post that Aura’s station forces her to stay in one spot because her lack of health will get her killed against other mercs, but this isn’t true due to there being little to no penalty for her redeploying once the station was picked up. If there was a greater cool down after picking it up it would be much more balanced.

The healers are there for the team, and so they’re supposed to be able to heal their teammates efficiently. The healing station and direct hitting with a med pack does this. However as Saw you can’t heal yourself as efficiently by throwing yourself a med pack as you can heal your teammates. However, with Aura, you can. This is the main problem.