The first aid activatable ability is learned early on by Nurse Deena, and much later by Opbot. It allows for some regeneration of HP to all heroes in the same room for 6 seconds once every 3 doors. The regen rate is 12 hp/s



In practice, this is a remarkably tiny amount of healing especially later in the game. At most it heals 72 hp in 6 seconds for up to 4 people at the same time. Mid game when you have 800-900 hp per hero, this is negligible. When you'd like to use it to slow down the hp loss of heroes that are getting hurt too quickly, even then it doesn't help enough. You are better off just packing more food and using that. Right now I view this as the worst support ability in the game.



If instead it offered 6 seconds of %hp regeneration per second, it would be far more useful as it'll scale into late game. For example, even letting it regenerate 25% of all heroes' hp over 6 seconds would greatly improve it without making it terribly over-powered. It would in effect save you 20-25 food from healing at a 3 door CD.



I don't know if this was originally implemented before Heroes scaled up to quite where they are now, but something needs to be done. No other active ability has such a negligible effect.



If anything I would also bring all HP regen items/modules/abilities into a %hp/time mechanic rather than a set number. For example:



Autodoc Shards

Level 1 current 9 HP/s changed to 2%/s (roughly 8 hp/s on a 400 HP target)

Level 2 current 12 HP/s changed to 3%/s (roughly 12 hp/s on a 400 HP target)

Level 3 current 15 HP/s changed to 4%/s (roughly 16 hp/s on a 400 HP target)

Level 4 current 18 HP/s changed to 5%/s (roughly 20 hp/s on a 400 HP target)



Placebo

Currently heals 4 HP/s changed to 1%/s (roughly 4 hp/s on a 400 HP target)



This would give the players a good reason to upgrade Autodoc shards to higher levels as the healing would be more noticeable on their higher hp Heroes. It would also allow them to scale like all the other hero buff modules do, since they similarly rely on percentage changes. Further more, it would still take a level 4 Autodoc 20 seconds to fully heal a Hero, or 4 of them 5 seconds, which is still a long time in combat if you set up a medical room to retreat heroes to.



As it is, once you hit mid game, it starts getting better to just pile on more dust field generators and out live waves, than to actually try to keep heroes healthy through the wave.

I agree with this.

Me too. Other abilities also increase stuff by percentages so having a flat-value is not going to scale as smoothly as that.

Sounds reasonable.

Ail wrote:
Me too. Other abilities also increase stuff by percentages so having a flat-value is not going to scale as smoothly as that.

In fact, nearly all the abilities have flat values, with some exceptions. But yes, the "First Aid" may be one of them

How about having abilities improving with higher levels?

That way one could keep flat-values but still have scaling.



If not, I really feel all abilities should be percentage-based.



+25 Attack is awesome when your hero only has 40 to begin with.

But if I imagine a level 12 hero with a phat +150 Attack-weapon it will feel quite insignificant.