Field Medic

Official description

Whoever goes hunting without a field medic by his side must be very sure of himself. Whoever goes to war without at least one field medic is more or less lost already. Those masters of psionic can heal the wounded, shelter his comrades in arms, improve their abilities, and influence the opponent negatively. Because only monks have the perfect abilities for those tasks and have a hang for things extreme, many of them have out of a sense for complexity learned the art to do implants.

Job

Field Medics (also known as PPUs or Passive PSI User) are essential for high level hunting as well as Op-Warring. Monks are the only class used as PPUs as no others have a PSI level high enough to be effective. PEs are able to resurrect other players with specific skill setups however this limits their other abilities and so is generally not used. PPUs are reliant on other players for levelling by sharing XP as they cannot cause damage on their own which makes it harder to level. Other players are generally glad to have PPU support and so will team easily.

Classes and Skills

Classes available: Psi Monk

Primary skill: Passive psi use (PPU)

Implant tool

Secondary skills: Psi power (PPW), Psi use (PSU), Implant (IMP)

Starter Equipment

On awakening in Mc5 you will have the following equipment:

• Stiletto
• First Aid x3
• Stamina Booster 1 x3
• PSI Booster 1 x3
• Milky Ren x3
• Halogen Flashlight
• Crahn Shelter Vest
• Crahn 'Novice' Gauntlet
• Crahn Energy Bolt
• Crahn Heal
• Crahn Deflector
• BioTech IT-TL30 Personal Implant Tool
• Cryton RD-TL30 Recycling Device

Gameplay

You'll find some useful stuff from kk here although there have been some minor changes since then - foreign resist cap is now 30%, exact numbers of various spells tweaked.

Casting spells

For single target spells, look at who you want to cast on and click. You'll wave your hands around and cast it on them. To cast on yourself, don't target anything and cast. Group and sanctum spells however don't care what you are looking at, and are always centred on you. Casting spells require sufficent psi in your pool. This regenerates over time and can be found near your HP meter. Movement is limited while casting - you can go a certain distance from where you start and still have the spell work correctly, but beyond this the spell will "fizzle" at the end and not go off. You'll eventually get a feel for how far this is, and learn tecniques to deal with it. Because of the need to keep moving on PvP, this often involves croching, or running in a circular path. When rezzing under fire, you see the famous "rez dance" - moving as much as is possible without the spell fizzling. You will also occasionally see the "wavey hands bug". Sometimes, even though you should be able to cast, the game says "no" and puts your arms through a crazy dance with no spell effects. You can't abort this, or cast anything else during the time.

Survival and Priorities

PPUs shouldn't really die. They're very, very tough, having both the highest resist cap and the highest practically acheivable resists of any class by far, combined with their ability to heal at an impressive rate. On top of this, in almost all PvE, and many PvP situations, a PPU's self survival tends to be more important than anyone elses. This is because they can ressurect the other team members, combined with a tendency to dropping more valuable items in belts, being best equipped to actually escape, etc. To ensure that you as a PPU never die, there is one key point - be fully buffed at all times. Wherever you go, whatever you are doing, those 3 shields should stay up. If pulling off a ressurection under fire, NPC or human, abort if it is obvious you won't make it, rebuff and heal and try again.

Of course, there are times when because you can take it and your friends can't, you'll deliberatley want to draw fire/aggro. It's all a case of knowing your limits and reading the tactical situation. (And a neat trick in op-fights etc is to get in the way of whoever is gunnning for your charges.

Beyond ensuring your own survival, the key role of the PPU is to keep their team alive. This means keeping them buffed, keeping them healed, and quite often knowing what's going to be a problem before it happens. With practice, you can find yourself timing a Holy Antidote so that it finishes casting just as a barrage of poison stacks arive on a friendly. Doing this does require the damage dealers help - train them to call for buffs as they run. Use your own sense of timing and visual clues (but remember that heal bubbles can stick sometimes). Use voicecomms wherever possible.

The nature of the kind of people who play PPU, and the fact that the PPU doesn't target fixate in the way that other classes do mean that people frequently look to the PPU for leadership, or at least as the one who has the best overview of the tactical situation. Warn people who need to take cover and heal. Cal out wounded targets. Call a retreat if needs be.

Important Spells

Heal

Heals the target once a "tick" for 60 seconds. More damage = more hp/tick

Absorber

Protects the target from Energy/Xray damage for 180 seconds. More damage = more protection

Protector

Protects the target from Fire/Posion damage for 180 seconds. More damage = more protection

Deflector

Protects the target from Force/Piercing damage for 180 seconds. More damage = more protection

Important to note is that shields degrade over time. If you or your damage dealer is taking a real pounding from a certain damage type, recasting may be necessary before the 180 seconds is up. This does not reset the 180 second timer however (unless done in the last ~5 seconds before the shield times out)

Boosters/"Primes"

These spells provide 10 minutes of boosts to main stats - provided they aren't bugged, should tell you exactly what on the info.Stats don't matter here (other than frequency) - any cast is always the same. Any character can only have one booster of each type (IE One resist, one combat skill, one tradeskill). You'll probably be casting them before every fight, but not worrying about them much the rest of the time.

Resist Boosters - important for everybody, almost all the time. In the past, hazard 3 used to be the generic buff of choice. My hunch with the deadlinesss of the dissy these days means most people probably want Heat. Weaponskill Boosters - not sure how important these are, but people will always appreciate them if you have time. To be really handy however, you need to give each person the right one. There's no "one size fits all" combat booster (although they almost all boost WEP and TC) Tradeskill boosters - Tradeskillers might occasionally ask you for a CST booster. For everyone else, Spy boost is almost always what they want. Gives bonuses to agility, implant and hack.

Antibuffs and debuffs

Things you use on enemies, human or otherwise.

Antibuffs

There's a range of anti-buff spells available that remove shields (as per the spell name) or heals from opponents. Holy unprotector removes all three shields at once. Long cast and big psi-pool drain for most of these, but can get someone taken down fast if they get focus fired. Completely useless in PvE (unless you accidentally shield a mob or something).

Damage boost

Increases damage received on a target, given away by sparks flying off them (although like all graphical effects, this can bug). Useful for speeding up a mob take down, or just helping your fighter vs a human enemy. Not quite as powerful as it once was. I forget whether this stacks any more - experiment.

Parashock

Slows down the target. Nerfed into trivialness vs players, and not really necessary vs mobs. Huge numbers of spells, no idea if any of them are at all useful.

Anti-debuffs

Spells for making people better form weird effects. Simply target a player, cast them, watch the effects dissapear. Available for all DoTs and all negative statuses. Holy Catharsis removes all DoT-types while Holy Exorcist removes all negative statuses. However these do-all have rather long cast times and big pool cost. Practically, while I'm sure players will be happy if you remove their DB in a fight, there are normally more important things to do. Mostly, these spells come into their own in PvE. If you are going to crystal or swamp caves, or Graves, then a good anti-posion is a must, while anti-xray is necessary to avoid team-wipes on DoY tunnel runs.

Weird things

A collection of other spells that dont fit into the other categories, but have their uses.

Sanctums

They cast a short-lived version of the spell in question on everybody in a radius around you once per "tick". The shield sanctums are unreliable and should be avoided. Damage Boost Sanctum will annoy everybody in the vicinity. Heal sanctum actually works differently, and provides additional healing to nearby players. A must in PvE runs and sometimes useful to keep yourself alive.

Soulclusters

"Creature focus" spells. Really buggy, but still useful. A single cast should get a blue creature flying near you. A second cast, while targetting an NPC should get the soul cluster to attack the NPC. Note that you won't see any attack animations or even damage numbers. However, the NPC's health will decrease.

Ressurection

A key part of every PPU's arsenal. Brings another player back to their feet. There's a lot to be learned in the world of snipe-rez and rez-dance.

True Sight Sanctum

Decloaks and stealthed player in the radius once per tick. Ticks are slow enough, and lag a big enough problem, that it borders useless and is commonly known as "true shite".

See Also

• Psi effects

External links

Neocron Forum thread: PPU 101