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Specialisation Deep-Dives

Field Medic

Review signals

Start with the scale and shape of the thread before reading the asks.

678 Messages excluding OP
22 Participants unique contributors
42 Reactions thread total
10 Primary asks Multiple (Balance Change / Bug Report / Rework Request / QoL Improvement)

Summary and sentiment

The short read before diving into the detailed asks and evidence.

Overall summary

This thread is a wide-ranging design discussion about the Field Medic spec — covering both the Combat Medic (healing-focused) and Tactical Pharma / Oxic Medic (damage/poison-focused) subclasses.

Players identify a cluster of bugs (broken skill mods, non-functional Aggressive Defense chip, armor strengthening mod not working, healing station damage variant not functioning), argue that base Combat Medic heals are too weak to justify the spec, and call urgently for Oxic Medic to receive damage-penetration against armor/DR and better survivability.

The most heated sub-debate concerns whether Combat Medic's Hypershot should be nerfed and how it should be rebalanced if so.

Sentiment read

Oxi Medic players are the most frustrated voice in this thread. LaClown's 6-reaction message kicking off the Oxi discussion carries genuine exasperation: the Community Manager's prompt focused on Combat Medic, but the players who actually main Oxi feel entirely overlooked.

Their complaints are specific: poison doesn't penetrate armor or DR in PvP, they die instantly in any open engagement, the armor strengthening mod is bugged, the aggro system punishes them for deploying their core ability, and the 0.03% HP regen is insulting. This combination makes Oxi feel like an incomplete spec.

Combat Medic players are more analytical and less emotional. Ventz, jim, and others debate Hypershot's balance with genuine nuance — acknowledging it currently ignores armor (a bug) while arguing it's the only viable damage tool medics have and removing it without compensation would destroy the spec in PvP.

There's a constructive subthread on exactly how to balance Hypershot (range cap, partial armor penetration rather than full ignore).

Players also share build data openly, comparing engineering stat contributions to Oxi damage output and testing tactical layering OS effectiveness.

A small faction (Facu, gianlucag, chewybarka) insists Combat Medic is overpowered and Hypershot should be removed or heavily nerfed regardless of impact on the spec. This position is the minority view and is rebutted effectively by Ventz with DPS figures.

Primary asks

Actionable requests extracted from the synthesis.

#01
Bug

Fix multiple broken Combat Medic skill mods and chips — healing station damage variant does nothing, healing swarm damage variant does nothing, Aggressive Defense chip does not function, armor strengthening skill mod does not apply armor in EU at all (confirmed bugged), auto-trauma chip revive does not work in Dark Zone

Raised by
Ancient, Ventz
Echoed by
LaClown, Caelan, Brock Landers, Pix, RoundedSpine
#02
Balance / Rework

Give Oxic Medic (Tactical Pharma) armor/DR penetration — poison/corrosion should logically bypass physical armor and DR; currently its damage is reduced to near-zero against high-DR, high-armor builds in PvP

Raised by
LaClown
Echoed by
Caelan, Ventz, mt0386
#03
Rework / Balance

Give Oxic Medic a survivability tool (better armor, a shield, or a passive extra-health buffer) in place of its current laughable 0.03% HP regen — Oxi is insta-killed in PvP because it must be in the open to apply poison but has no defensive tools

Raised by
LaClown
Echoed by
Ventz, mt0386
#04
Balance

Buff Combat Medic base healing output — 30k HP/s at 500k+ HP is outperformed by tech operators and even by talents/OS; if Blitz OS and DR are nerfed as discussed in the sister thread, medics need a compensating heal buff or the spec becomes unplayable

Raised by
Ventz
Echoed by
LaClown, mt0386
#05
Bug / Balance

Fix Hypershot — it currently ignores armor in PvP (should not); at minimum cap its effect to within 20m range or make it not fully ignore armor rather than outright removing it, since without Hypershot medics have no viable PvP damage output

Raised by
Ventz
Echoed by
mt0386, Crip, tib, Ancient
#06
Rework

Rework Combat Medic's damage-dealing skill options — healing swarm damage chip scales off firepower/engineering while medics must build toughness, making all offensive skill options useless; skills should scale off toughness or the class needs a dedicated DPS alternative

Raised by
Ventz
Echoed by
nitrozipp3r, mt0386, Ancient
#07
Balance / QoL

Give Tactical Pharma a speed buff equivalent to Combat Medicine's 20% speed — Oxi Medic is the slowest spec despite needing to reposition constantly

Raised by
Apophis
Echoed by
(no explicit echo, but positively received)
#08
Bug

Fix Oxic Medic aggro bug — when Oxi applies poison, it draws full aggro from all nearby NPCs, not just those directly engaged; this forces Oxi to hide behind cover to survive which makes the gas cloud ineffective

Raised by
Ventz
Echoed by
Revoker, LaClown, EzioRAW
#09
Bug

Fix bug where enemy team's Oxi/Tactical Pharma poison on a friendly Bulwark or Combat Medic makes that friendly player invincible (confirmed PvP bug)

Raised by
EzioRAW
Echoed by
(thread-specific report, no echo needed)
#10
QoL / Rework

Rework or replace healing syphon chip so it triggers off damage dealt rather than kills/assists — currently useless in PvP and largely useless in PvE group content

Raised by
mt0386
Echoed by
LaClown

Community voices

Representative comments preserved from the synthesis.

Voice 01 Discord thread
WHY EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT COMBAT MEDIC?!?!? James, please let dev team give some love to OXI Medic! Corrosion 'thing' in real life is — duh, corrosion? I understand it's purely gaming concept, but giving some armor/DR penetration to corrosion would make complete sense lol
LaClown Jun 3, 2026
Why it matters

Highest-reacted player message in the thread; speaks for all Oxi Medic players who feel ignored in the broader medic balance conversation.

Voice 02 Discord thread
100% Give pharma %hp dmg. Bypass armor and damage reduction. Self sustaining heal. 0.03% regen is laughable. Increasing survivability means 0 dmg. Nothing in between.
mt0386 Jun 3, 2026
Why it matters

Concise summary of the Oxi design problem: you cannot build both survivability and damage simultaneously; the spec forces a binary choice with no middle ground.

Voice 03 Discord thread
100% agree on this. Corrosion needs to ignore armor and damage reduction. But then again, they need to add resistance against poison when this is implemented. So now tanks are no longer able to stick with just Dr and hp. They have to balance it out with other stats.
Caelan Jun 4, 2026
Why it matters

Shows the forward-thinking paired consequence: if Oxi gets armor penetration, a poison resistance stat needs to be added so tanks have a meaningful counter.

Voice 04 Discord thread
buff tactical pharma in darkzone pvp plz. also decrease the aggro he get from mobs. .... currently a bugg making enemy team's bulwark and combat medic invincible if my team's tactical pharma use poison on bulwark or combat medic. fix it plz
EzioRAW Jun 9, 2026
Why it matters

Reports a specific reproducible PvP bug: Oxi poison applied to enemy team's tank/medic inadvertently triggers invincibility. This is a critical bug report.

Dev notes

Editorial synthesis for developer review.

This thread is in practice two parallel conversations that only occasionally intersect: a Combat Medic thread about Hypershot, DR caps, and base heal output; and an Oxic Medic thread about being an overlooked and underperforming spec with multiple active bugs.

LaClown's opening salvo — calling out that everyone is discussing Combat Medic while Oxi Medic is left to rot — captures the structural dynamic well. Developers reading this thread need to treat both subclasses as distinct subjects.

On Combat Medic: the clearest technical finding is that Hypershot currently ignores armor (confirmed as unintended behavior by the players most familiar with the spec). Fixing this bug is the most targeted intervention available.

Players have already modeled what a fixed Hypershot looks like: capping it to 20m range, or making it only partially bypass armor rather than fully, would substantially reduce its PvP dominance while keeping it viable for PvE.

Any nerf to Hypershot must be accompanied by fixes to the currently broken offensive skill mods — if you remove the only working damage tool and don't fix the broken alternatives, medics have no offensive contribution at all.

On Oxic Medic: there are at least four discrete bugs (armor strengthening mod non-functional, Aggressive Defense chip broken, auto-trauma DZ revive non-functional, enemy Oxi poison triggers friendly invincibility).

Beyond bugs, the spec has a fundamental design tension: it needs to be in open areas to apply gas effectively, but its survivability tools are useless, forcing it to hide in cover.

The community's proposed fix is logical — give corrosion some armor/DR penetration (perhaps partial, with a corresponding poison resistance stat added to the game) and give Oxi a shield or armor buffer instead of the current insignificant HP regen.

LaClown's suggestion that Oxi should be reconceptualized as a debuffer rather than a pure damage class is worth developer consideration.

The thread also contains actionable engineering data: players have empirically tested that Oxi damage scales primarily with engineering stat, that tactical layering OS substantially increases damage (20–23% increase, though inconsistently), and that with full optimization Oxi can reach approximately 1M DPS in elite missions.

This suggests the spec's ceiling is not low — but the floor (for players who don't min-max engineering, don't have Tactical Layering OS, or face armored PvP opponents) is very low, contributing to the perception that Oxi is underpowered.

One broader structural note: several players mention that the game provides no in-game explanation for how DR, armor, multiplicative stacking, or skill intensity interact.

The consistent community confusion about these mechanics (multiple players believing DR stacks additively when it is multiplicative; players not understanding why their healing stat increases barely affect actual heals; players unable to distinguish which skill mods work vs. are bugged) suggests a QoL ask for better in-game stat transparency that runs beneath this entire thread.