Last week I was: skipping around the battlefield gleefully reviving everyone with my defibrillator.
This week I've been: pondering how reviving three downed comrades in a span of two seconds might actually be a bit OP if it stays the way it is.
It's safe to say that defibrillators in Battlefield 6 might be a little OP, but I still love them. There's nothing more fun for me than sprinting around the battlefield chucking smoke grenades and sliding past corpses, zapping them back into the fight with my magic electric paddles. It doesn't matter if they've just been riddled with bullets or decimated by a tank shell—all they need is a little jolt to be right as rain, as if every soldier is Jason Statham in Crank or something.
Support (or Assault/Medic, depending on the game) has always been my favourite class in Battlefield—having some healing you can deploy mid firefight as you duck behind a wall, before popping back out full health to gun down a foe, is extremely satisfying. And most of all, I like rezzing people. I've always enjoyed playing the healer, and it's nice to be nice, especially in a genre as inundated with toxicity as the first-person shooter. Happily, though, the Battlefield 6 open beta has surprised me.
I don't know if it's the fact that the defib is so easy to use, but everyone is reviving. I do have a theory: I think it's the new drag and revive mechanic. In Battlefield 6, you can now pull squadmates out of harm's way as you revive them, grabbing them under the arms and scooching them to a safer spot before stabbing them with the magical revive syringe. It's perhaps one of the most realistic-feeling revives (besides the syringe) I've ever seen in an FPS.
In a series as concerned with the "feel" of warfare as Battlefield is, I can see why players love it so much—it's a nice touch of realism as you literally drag your squadmate out of the fire. It definitely seems to be encouraging revival-centric play, too. As a defib-wielding support, I've found myself racing other supports to revive a lot of the time. Something has obviously clicked for players; that in life ticket-centered game modes like Conquest, it's a good thing to, y'know, save lives.
That said, while the drag-and-revive is a fun inclusion, the defibrillator is 100% OP at the moment. If you've been in any kind of chokepoint or point-based shootout over the weekend with supports running around constantly reviving, it's easy to see how the weight of numbers can easily overcome any engagement through sheer grind. The problem isn't the revive itself, though, it's just how quickly supports can get other players up. Even if they die out in the open, it's simply a case of tossing down a smoke grenade and sprinting over.
The defibrillator does currently have a cooldown after you've revived a few people, but I at least didn't notice this once. The issue is more that you can revive, like, three people in the space of one second. Maybe it would be better if you had to charge the defib before a revive? Or if it had a small cooldown after each one?
This might make defib use a bit more tactical, as you choose someone with the best chance of not just getting killed again, versus the current tactic of zapping every corpse in sight and overwhelming the enemy with your army of juiced-up zombie soldiers.
Another point in favour of the defibrillator is also that you can run around the battlefield like a madman, shocking enemies in close quarters and just generally making them poorly from too much electric. It isn't the easiest feat to get a defib kill, but it's by far the most satisfying as a support. I give life, I take life away. Is this what it feels like to be a god?
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