What are the uses of Field surgeon?

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josna238
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Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 4:09 pm

What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by josna238 »

I can't find the reason to pick up this perk. When 1 HP is an important % of the damage received (in early game) we don't have acces to this perk and in late game 1 HP isn't a lot when we receive something like 10 damage in a hit. And it happens not very often. So in my opinion is a perk that isn't used very often and when is used it does a little effect.
stefan3iii
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by stefan3iii »

josna238 wrote:I can't find the reason to pick up this perk. When 1 HP is an important % of the damage received (in early game) we don't have acces to this perk and in late game 1 HP isn't a lot when we receive something like 10 damage in a hit. And it happens not very often. So in my opinion is a perk that isn't used very often and when is used it does a little effect.
I think of it as converting 1 regular HP into ablative HP. Or a squad wide upgrade of Ceramic -> Alloy or Alloy -> Carapace. I think it's an ok perk. In the new 1.3 specialist tree it's probably the strongest perk on that tier.
josna238
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by josna238 »

How do you know about that change? In the patch Notes doesn't specify about this.

Anyway I still see it not very useful, most of the time (mid and late game when perk come) my soldiers don't receive damage and when it happens is something like 10HP or even a bleeding. And decreasing a 10% of the time is no much in my opinion. Even if I receive 2 HP and reduce the time to half, how much is it?4 or 5 days less?
stefan3iii
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by stefan3iii »

josna238 wrote:How do you know about that change? In the patch Notes doesn't specify about this.

Anyway I still see it not very useful, most of the time (mid and late game when perk come) my soldiers don't receive damage and when it happens is something like 10HP or even a bleeding. And decreasing a 10% of the time is no much in my opinion. Even if I receive 2 HP and reduce the time to half, how much is it?4 or 5 days less?
Video here shows the new perk trees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rWWX51gNvc

In any case, I don't think it's a great perk, just saying the other stuff is weak too. It's up against Ever Vigilant, which is great if you built an overwatch specialist, but the problem is that an overwatch specialist is still terrible. The third option is Trojan, which is effectively +1 duration on hacks. Really, the entire class is weak, bring them on a mission when you want to roll for hack rewards.
josna238
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by josna238 »

Yes, all this rank is weak. And the class is too. In my game they are a must because I play with Red Fog but for the rest they are dead weight, sometimes I can hack a "Mimic Drone" but even this perk is dangerous because could activate a new pod.
Zyrrashijn
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by Zyrrashijn »

Trojan is excellent on stealth missions. See a solo drone sweeping the area? Go for the shutdown hack and hear it explode in the FoW without breaking concealment.
Jacke
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by Jacke »

Don't think of Field Surgeon as +1 HP. Think of Field Surgeon as getting wounded troops well faster and back into action. I've not taken a game far enough to test it myself, but I've been told on good authority even in LW2 1.2 it's significant.
DonCrabio
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by DonCrabio »

Field Surgeon somewhat lacking in current state, not sure how it can be fixed. 1 hp is around 20% early game - which is good, and 6-8% late game - which is unworthy. What if we make it more scalable with 15-20% cut of healing time?
Jacke
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by Jacke »

DonCrabio wrote:Field Surgeon somewhat lacking in current state, not sure how it can be fixed. 1 hp is around 20% early game - which is good, and 6-8% late game - which is unworthy. What if we make it more scalable with 15-20% cut of healing time?
From what I've been told, I think it is still significant. You'd have to compare the recovery time of soldiers wounded a given amount on a mission with a Field Surgeon to those wounded the same but without. So it's either test it out or dig through the mod code to figure out what LW2 actually tells XCOM 2 to do.
josna238
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by josna238 »

Zyrrashijn wrote:Trojan is excellent on stealth missions. See a solo drone sweeping the area? Go for the shutdown hack and hear it explode in the FoW without breaking concealment.
How much damage does it do? In the stage of the campaing when we have acces to trojan the drones have a good amount of HP...
JoINrbs
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by JoINrbs »

It does all the same things putting a Scientist in the AWC does. In the same way that you ask "do I value wound time being reduced enough to give up a Scientist's contribution to research to have him/er contribute to wound reduction in the AWC?" you ask "do I value wound time being reduced enough to give up the other perks on this tier to have the Specialist contribute to wound reduction with Field Surgeon?".
DonCrabio
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by DonCrabio »

JoINrbs wrote:It does all the same things putting a Scientist in the AWC does. In the same way that you ask "do I value wound time being reduced enough to give up a Scientist's contribution to research to have him/er contribute to wound reduction in the AWC?" you ask "do I value wound time being reduced enough to give up the other perks on this tier to have the Specialist contribute to wound reduction with Field Surgeon?".
Scientist in AWC make your soldiers heal 50% faster, it's huge, and you can put in on and off AWC as needed. Surgeon perk effect much weaker.
JoINrbs
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by JoINrbs »

You don't have to choose between the two though; if you think the Scientist is good enough to put in the AWC you might also think that Field Surgeon is good enough to take as a perk. Added together they are more effective than either would be on its own.
josna238
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by josna238 »

I get the point, but the help for a scientist is 50%, and we can choose when to use him. Do I have several important soldiers wounded? then I use him. Do I have one squadie wounded? I don't. Field Sourgeon means the sacrifice of two perks (I admit they aren't awesome though) and would need several field surgeons in the rooster to achieve a small fraction of the work a scientist do.

To me would have more sense that it mitigate a % depending on damage, because as it works now a 2 HP damage is reduced to 50% time but a 10 HP damage is reduced to 90% of time.
JoINrbs
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by JoINrbs »

josna238 wrote:I get the point, but the help for a scientist is 50%, and we can choose when to use him. Do I have several important soldiers wounded? then I use him. Do I have one squadie wounded? I don't. Field Sourgeon means the sacrifice of two perks (I admit they aren't awesome though) and would need several field surgeons in the rooster to achieve a small fraction of the work a scientist do.

To me would have more sense that it mitigate a % depending on damage, because as it works now a 2 HP damage is reduced to 50% time but a 10 HP damage is reduced to 90% of time.
Field Surgeon essentially turns one of the hp of every soldier in your team into an ablative hitpoint. It's not an extremely strong perk, but it's comfortable. Compare it to Formidable, which will be giving two ablative hp to one soldier. Is giving two bonus ablative hp to a soldier stronger or weaker than turning 4-12 hitpoints on your squad into ablative hp? It's clear that ablative hp is better than regular hp, so turning 4-12 hitpoints into ablative hp clearly has some value, but how much? I think it ends up being a little weaker than Formidable, but not by a huge amount.
Tuhalu
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by Tuhalu »

The AWC Scientist makes your guys heal 50% faster (on all difficulties other than Rookie). It doesn't make their healing take 50% less time. The actual effect is for healing to take 33% less time.

I believe Field Surgeon works on your base health, not your health after armor, so it is probably better than you think (the game converts your % of health at the end of a mission to your % of health on the avenger). Few XCOM soldiers have more than 10 base health at MSGT (usually 12 at the most). If your health with armor is 22 (warden armor + tac vest = 12 health!), then field surgeon effectively eliminates the first 2 hp worth of damage in combat.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by chrisb »

Tuhalu wrote:The AWC Scientist makes your guys heal 50% faster (on all difficulties other than Rookie). It doesn't make their healing take 50% less time. The actual effect is for healing to take 33% less time.

I believe Field Surgeon works on your base health, not your health after armor, so it is probably better than you think (the game converts your % of health at the end of a mission to your % of health on the avenger). Few XCOM soldiers have more than 10 base health at MSGT (usually 12 at the most). If your health with armor is 22 (warden armor + tac vest = 12 health!), then field surgeon effectively eliminates the first 2 hp worth of damage in combat.
Pretty sure this is not correct. Every soldier has an attribute called 'least HP' which tracks the lowest your soldier had during the mission. If the armor were not included then this stat would become negative after removing armor for wounds greater than base HP.

I also completely disagree that Field Surgeon is like getting +1 ablative although this is more about the edges where field surgeon does nothing. If your soldier is bleeding out or receives only 1 HP of damage, Field Surgeon provides no value at all, it simply does nothing.

Comparing it to the AWC is even more absurd, since not only does the AWC lower bleed out wounds, it lowers 1 HP wounds and it scales! If you have 18 HP of damage, the AWC is removing 6 HP worth of recovery time! If you have field surgeon, this will lower it to 17 initially, and the AWC will take that to 11.33 days instead of 12. So not only does the AWC work better, it actually makes Field Surgeon even worse than it currently is.

Add all this to the fact that most of the time the soldier wounded is likely to recover before they are needed anyway and you have a perk that is useless. The ONLY time this perk has any relevance at all is if you get a situation where you are < 24 hours from recovery and you need that soldier, otherwise it has literally 0 value at all. I can never remember having this situation in any campaign I have run, and if it has happened I always had another soldier which is why I probably didn't notice.

I think the perk simply needs to do something different. It is boring, bland and useless in almost ever case. Replace it with something relevant and shove this in the AWC perk list or just dispose of it in the trash bin where it belongs.
Tuhalu
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by Tuhalu »

chrisb wrote:
Tuhalu wrote: I believe Field Surgeon works on your base health, not your health after armor, so it is probably better than you think (the game converts your % of health at the end of a mission to your % of health on the avenger). Few XCOM soldiers have more than 10 base health at MSGT (usually 12 at the most). If your health with armor is 22 (warden armor + tac vest = 12 health!), then field surgeon effectively eliminates the first 2 hp worth of damage in combat.
Pretty sure this is not correct. Every soldier has an attribute called 'least HP' which tracks the lowest your soldier had during the mission. If the armor were not included then this stat would become negative after removing armor for wounds greater than base HP.
As I already said "the game converts your % of health (least hp) at the end of a mission to your % of health (base hp) on the avenger".

The game actually creates a project to heal each wounded trooper as they come back on the Avenger. At this time it determines how many blocks (points) of health need to be healed, how long it will take to heal back to full (based on % of health remaining) and how long each block will take to heal. As the project progresses, points of health are recovered.

However, while you are on the Avenger, you can add and remove items and armor as you like, which can change your maximum and current health. To avoid a wierd situation where your character has 0 health because you took off some armor, the game converts your least hp value from a mission into a percentage and then gives you that percentage of your base health. Any armor and items are then added on top of that.

My thinking is that field surgeon adds on +1 to least hp (and current hp) after the conversion to base health and so making more of a difference with high health characters than if it happened before.
LordYanaek
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by LordYanaek »

JoINrbs wrote:
josna238 wrote: Field Surgeon essentially turns one of the hp of every soldier in your team into an ablative hitpoint.
A regenerating ablative hit point which is better than a pure ablative hit point.

However, even thought i agree with what you said, i also tend to agree with others as i think the big issue with FS is it doesn't scale at all. Formidable doesn't really scale either (apart from the usually useless explosion part) but at least it comes earlier (unless FS drops in rank in 1.3, i don't really remember).

Also i'm not sure how it works on single HP loss (does it reduce the recovery to 0 days?) I definitely had a specialist with FS suffer exactly 1 point of damage and still have recovery time. Or maybe it doesn't affect the specialist himself.
Dlareh
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by Dlareh »

Comparing FS to the other things on that tier, if you are overwatch spec then you obviously want EV, so that's its own case

In 1.3 (video) FS is competing with Trojan instead of 1.2's Failsafe.

For many (most?) people, Failsafe was an auto-pick in 1.2, since it lets you try for rewards you wouldn't otherwise choose to risk failing, and that is part of why FS seemed so irrelevantly weak.

But now, Trojan? It's okay, but it can be skipped in favor of FS, if you expect to be sending that specialist on a lot of large-squad missions. And that being the case, that specialist is virtually guaranteed to also want to be a Medical Protocol (since it's at Corporal now) and Field Medic guy as well. Savior then starts to seem likely as well, you may as well go all-in at that point and only deviate at Gunnery/MSgt levels.
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LordYanaek
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by LordYanaek »

Dlareh wrote: For many (most?) people, Failsafe was an auto-pick in 1.2, since it lets you try for rewards you wouldn't otherwise choose to risk failing, and that is part of why FS seemed so irrelevantly weak.
Failsafe was only an auto-pick for me on Specialists doing a lot of city-based missions (for those towers), so in my 1.2 campaign : the 2 specs i had in my 2 stealth squads quickly chaining missions with 4-5 infiltration days to 200%
Specialists operating in larger squads doing real fight most of the time couldn't care less for Failsafe as i never attempted 30% Haywire anyway.
The choice between Trojan (actually useful in large fights) and FS seems much more difficult to me than the choice between FS and the failsafe niche.
DonCrabio
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by DonCrabio »

Probably I will have dedicated medic Specialist for combat heavy missions and I will take Field Surgeon. For all around guerilla ops Specialist I will take Failsafe any day, it feel so good when you can hack towers or try to override enemy mech units without any consequences, except lost action.
Dlareh
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by Dlareh »

Well in 1.3 you can do both (Field Surgeon and Failsafe). And it's fine, although now that most will be taking Medical Protocol, Savior has become quite compelling vs. Failsafe.

On the subject of Trojan or Failsafe being better, in 1.2 Failsafe was clearly more compelling overall. Specialists were in high demand for a very large amount of small squad missions, which is what made Failsafe an auto-pick. Trojan never has been, although it's fine if you like it.
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Autoclave
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by Autoclave »

So i got 1 hp damage, exactly 1 hp. I still get the wound recovery after mission despite having a field surgeon that is supposed to heal that 1 hp!!! I hate this perk. The description of how it works is terrible to say the least.
Tuhalu
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Re: What are the uses of Field surgeon?

Post by Tuhalu »

Autoclave wrote:So i got 1 hp damage, exactly 1 hp. I still get the wound recovery after mission despite having a field surgeon that is supposed to heal that 1 hp!!! I hate this perk. The description of how it works is terrible to say the least.
Yeah, it's kind of a glitch with the way the perk interacts with healing. It heals the 1hp, but the fact you had taken any damage means it considers you as wounded for the absolute minimal wound category.

However, there are 10 wound categories cut into 10% chunks. If you have less than 10 HP and take 1 HP of damage, your wound category is garaunteed to be improved at least once and you'll only be out for a few days instead of several.
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