WaffleHousChef

Oops, that wasn't medicine!

Playing a Medic is an important part of maintaining a team in the field in TF2. It can be a rewarding experience even if you're not the one making direct kills. Starting off with the Medic's tools, the Medic only has a few inventory items to use.

Syringe Launcher

Your main offensive weapon is the Syringe Launcher. It has a 40 round clip of Syringes which is a fairly long clip with a decent rate of fire. The Syringes fire in an arc and have significant drop over distance and travel fairly slowly. This can be both a blessing and a curse. Close in on targets, the drop and slow moving projectiles don't affect your fire too much. The skill in using the Syringe Launcher is when targets are at a medium to long distance or are fast moving. When playing the medic you should try and get a feel for how the drop varies your target over distance. Due to the length of your clip you can volley a long patch of Syringes into an area to attempt to score some hits that a direct fire weapon couldn't access (such as a second story window or targets up on the battlements.) Sometimes it is good to let your targets walk into a volley of Syringes if you can manage to set up a stream ahead of your target in a set location that they are travelling toward they will walk into the fire.

While the Syringe Launcher is generally a very weak weapon it does have two distinct advantages going for it. First, along with the large clip the reload time is extremely fast compared to other clip based weapons like the shotguns or grenade launchers. If you can manage to avoid enough fire to live through an enemy clip you can reload faster then them giving you a small window in which to act more agressively to eliminate them. And secondly, the Syringe Launcher tends to cluster criticals, and once you've hit a target successive shots tend to chain crits. I've had numerous times where a crit comes up and the next 3-5 Syringes crit on successive hits. While this tends to be somewhat random due to the nature of the crit system it is nice to score successive crits when it does come up.

As a medic your weapon is far from the top of the line, but once you become more familiar with your weapon it can manage to be fairly effective in a pinch.

Bonesaw

Each class has a melee weapon, and the Medic's is the bonesaw. I'm not sure how it compares to the other melee weapons out there as I tend to avoid using it, and consider it a last resort. Although, many people seem to use it to good effect for those that try and get close in on your heal target (especially spies on top of your heavy.)

Heal Beam

The "weapon" you will end up using the most as a Medic is the Heal Beam. After you equip the heal beam, you target a teammate and click and hold your fire button to heal them.

If your teammate is at full health you can grant them an additional 50% base HP on top of their normal pool. The extra HPs will reamin as long as you are linked to them with the Heal Beam. When looking at your teammates HP cross when you target them, any additional HPs will be reflected as a pulsing white border to the normal HP cross. The larger the border is the more of the extra HP bonus you are giving them. Any damage done to your teammate is first taken from the extra HPs then from normal HPs. So the extra HPs are part of the HP value of a player, and not a seperate pool. Once you stop healing your teammate those extra HPs will start to drain until they reach their normal maximum HP. It is not an instantaneous drain, but happens over time.

Your heal beam, while active, will also heal you at a very slow rate. If you are down HPs and have no way to quickly replenish your HPs make sure you are actively healing anyone on your team (even if they are full) and you will slowly recover HPs.

When playing a Medic you will notice in the lower right hand corner of your screen your Ubercharge meter. To fill your Ubercharge simply heal your teammates. In fact, it is always a good thing to be actively healing your teammates even if just to provide bonus HPs just to work on filling your Ubercharge. Healing damaged teammates will fill your Ubercharge faster then healing completely healed teammates or providing HP bonuses. So it is a good idea while you are locked on to a player to actively seek your fellow teammates that are down on HPs so that you can top them off, and get extra Ubercharge at the same time. Another consequence of this is that if your teammate you are actively healing is getting in fights where they take damage but never enough to outright kill them you can charge an Uber pretty quickly. When you are actively healing a player, on their screen they will see a box on their screen that says, "Healed by: You Ubercharge:xx%". So the person you are healing knows exactly what the status of your Ubercharge is, and you will also provide an audio cue when you reach 100% along the lines of "I'm fully charged." Yet another visual cue for you is that when your Ubercharge meter is full your Heal Beam Nozzle will crackle with lightening of your teams color around the edges.

Now that I've gone over how to get an Ubercharge, what does it do. Well, once your meter is full it begins flashing. At this point you can right click to use your Ubercharge. This will make you and whomever your are actively healing invulnerable for 10 seconds. When invulnerable both you and your active healing target will be shrouded in a visual shield effect the color of your team. One thing to consider is that if you are locked onto player X and shift to player Y while in Uber mode player X will stop being invulnerable and player Y will become invulnerable at the time you make the shift. Sometimes your opponents will simply ignore an Uber'd target to fire at a non-uber'd teammate along with both of you. You can take advantage of this by switching Uber targets mid-Uber to provide invulnerability to the target under fire while the original Uber target continues uncontested.

While you are Uber and linked to a player you are still affected by the physical effects of being hit with weapons even if you take no damage from it. For instance, if a Demoman hits you in the face with a grenade you will still be popped in the air and thrown back. This can be very bad if you are in an elevated position or on a walkway because you have to be actively healing your target to provide invulnerability, and if you are knocked out of range, they will be come vulnerable again. Typically, explosive type weapons are your worst enemy for this.


---===General Medic Strategies===---


Use Cover

As a Medic you are a primary target on the battlefield. Every single enemy is going to attempt to throw the kitchen sink at you to take you out if they notice your presence. Half your job is healing your teammates and the other half is continuing to keep yourself alive so that you can do the first part. Cover in various forms is a large factor in this. The first thing is that quite a bit of the time you'll be healing Heavies or various other teammates that are larger then you are. Use this to your advantage. The person you are healing is your primary shield. Use them as such. If you are taking fire from a lone enemy make sure that your heal target is between you and them. You have to keep a sharp eye on this though and move with your teammate becuase if they move and you don't you are now in the direct line of fire and can be a quick casualty.

Another form of cover that is good is walls and corners. The Heal Beam has a good bit of distance to it. Use this to your advantage. If your target is in a doorway or choke point, try an put walls between you and the enemy. Corners are espeically good for this, so that you can't be hit by rockets or bouncing projectiles.

Enemy spies are your bane as a medic. Make their job as difficult as possible while healing by moving in random patterns and changing direction as you can under the two previous points. Don't stop moving unless it is to avoid direct fire, and even then you can move back and forth with your heal target between you and your enemy.


Avoid Explosive Projectiles

Explosive projectiles can be avoided due to their slower moving nature. The problem is that while the person you are behind healing can see them coming, you might not be able to if they are blocking your vision. Keep a contstant eye out for explosives (rockets/nades.) Also, while you are constantly moving to avoid spies you have to remember that if you walk over an enemy grenade that is on the ground it will explode and 9 times out of 10 insta-gib you. So, while ducking and weaving be sure to know where the enemies are dropping nades and avoid pathing into those areas if you can.


Health Kits

One of the things about the Medic is that the only way they have to heal themselves is though a very slow trickle on the Heal Beam while healing others. Not very useful tactically. But, one thing to keep in mind is that if you can manage to keep your various teammates topped off on HPs is that a full player will not pick up a ground spawn pill bottle or med chest. This way you can hoard these objects for your own use if people who are walking over them are always full. Also, always take mental note of any nearby dispensers, they will save your life.


Mass Bonuses

While prepping for an assault with a large number of teammates against a position where you expect heavy resistance you can spend a little while giving many people the 50% HP bonus. Do it quickly (because those HPs will fade) and you can send a good chunk of your team to the battle with enough life to hopefully survive longer and win the skirmish or take the point.


Doc Chains

If you don't have a lot of high priority targets for healing, sometimes it is a good idea to heal a Medic who is in turn healing a teammate. If the final target can withstand the heat and not get instagibbed you can keep the other doc healing them so when your enemies try to eliminate that Doc you will keep that Doc up and healing your pointman. Using the length of the Heal Beam between the two Medics in the chain you can keep well away from the original skirmish being the most vulnerable position in the chain.


Doc Loops

Using two or more docs you can sometimes force a control point by using your healing abilites and avoidance skills to cap a point underneath a defense. Doc A --> Doc B --> Doc C --> Doc A. Make a loop of healing where every doc is healing another then move as one to the point. This makes it such that every Medic is getting the trickle heal from themselves and a full heal from another Medic. The weak point of this strategy is explosive projectiles again like rockets and grenades that threaten to either do damage to multiple targets or instagib. This can also be used as a tactic for a fighting retreat when the primary healee in a Doc Chain dies.


Uber strats

The first thing about Ubercharge is "Use it or Lose it." If you have a full Ubercharge, and either you or your heal target is going down and in jeopardy of death pop it immediately. You will get another later on, and even if it feels like a waste to Uber on one or two guys it's even worse to wait the time to spawn and be back on the back lines.

Communicate with your Heal target. Remind them in VOIP you have an Uber ready. Coorindate when you're planning on using it, or wait for them to recommend a place to use it. I will usually say something like "Icky, got an Uber, call it" or "Ultra, Uber ready for next push." You can potentially waste an Uber if your target isn't expecting it to be used, so it's a good idea to warn them in voice even if there are many in game indicators becuase they could miss those in the heat of battle but calling their name will get their attention.

Which leads me into the next point, try to coordinate your Uber use with your teammates. If you are alone on the front with your heal target and push a heavily defended point with an Uber the end result most of the time ends up being that you push in, make some kills, and have to fall back after 10 seconds. If you can gather some additional teammates that can rush in after you break/scatter the initial defense with your uber they can come in and clean up. This makes your Uber use more effecient. Try and warn your teammates that a push is coming and get to the front lines near your target, or where the push is coming from so they can ride the wave even if it is from a different location.

The last point is that alot of times you will run into other medics on the prowl with their own Uber, and the interaction points here are interesting, but as a rule of thumb you want to burn your Uber later then the other guy (but don't hold it long enough that you die.) If they burn their Uber, and you can survive 5-8 seconds of fire through cover, dodging, or any other mechanism it puts you in a very good position to strike back at them with your own Uber becuase once theirs is worn out (and possibly they are out of ammo,) yours is still going strong and your buddy is full on ammo.

Happy Docing!

DirtyLude

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The Dirty

sc1ence

Your post was most helpful waffle. Much thanks. I am still trying to figure out how to play the game and guides like this really help me be a better player faster.

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Daxx

My only gripe with the new Doctor is I can't use the heal-beam to infect the enemy team. I loved spreading those diseases!

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Avs

A word on the syringe gun: This gun is powerful. You can kill any class with one clip. Of course this depends on your aim. The gun itself has 40 rounds, like said, and deals a LOT of damage per hit. The trick is however, to hit. Firing one inch above your target gives you basic shotgun range. Firing two inches gives you a nice arc for long ranges. If you are skilled at playing demo, this gun isn't a problem at all. I've killed 4 guys with this gun, one of which was a scout. It is important to understand that you need to "lead" your target. Imagine using a sniper rifle in a game where bullet physics exist. Therefore you need to fire ahead of where your target is moving, how fast hes moving, and how far away he is in order to score hits. This gun is so powerful that I often use it for almost all targets unless "The Castrator" (bonesaw) can take them out in one hit (spies, scouts that get too close).

Like the demo nade, I use this gun to arc my shots and destroy turrets and other engineering buildings. I also use the gun to take out people from long long ranges as they wont see the darts coming. This usually forces them to run away. The gun's full clip can kill a level 3 turret in one go. That tells you how much power is in it.

About the bonesaw and how damaging other melee weapons go. First off, you must understand that it doesnt matter how cool or powerful the item looks, everything has its uses. The spy's butterfly knife is the most powerful melee weapon simply because it kills with backstab. Then you have the medic's bonesaw, which deals high damage (2 hits kills light classes), but has a slow swing. The list below is the relative power of the melee weapons. Notice how the medic and engineer have powerful melee weapons.

Butterfly knife
Bonesaw
Wrench
Fireaxe
Boomerang Knife
Shovel
Bottle of Rum
Baseball Bat
Fists

Protip on regeneration: The medic naturally regenerates health. You do not have to be healing to regenerate health. You regenerate anywhere from 1hp/sec to 3hp/sec. 3hp/sec being the maximum. Your regeneration depends on how well you are doing as a medic, and tends to follow how ubercharged you are. If you are plodding along doing medic stuff, then get hit by a rocket to the face, you will notice that you start regenerating slowly, at 1hp to 2hp a second. Eventually you will speed up and heal at 3hp a second. This means at max heal rate it takes 30 seconds to heal. Pretty good, if you can survive under pressure for that long. If you can, then regeneration didn't matter in the first place.

Protip on spies: Spies that dress like medics do not have ubercharge. Therefore, you spies out there, don't be a medic unless the other team isn't highly trained.

Teamplay tip: Guys, don't be greedy and take medkits when medics are nearby. These medics need these kits to heal themselves and they can heal you anytime. Trust in your medics (unless they are newbies).

Helpful strategy on ubercharging: While invul, you also heal your target. The absolute best time to go uber is when your target has taken damage and is about to die, thus allowing you to be in combat with ubercharge used for the whole 10 seconds, plus healing your target and prolonging the charge by 2 seconds!

In higher level games look for your teammates that rocket and demo jump up to roofs as they will need healing.

Pre-charging: Before everygame starts you get some setup time. In times like these find a soldier or demo who knows what they are doing to help you charge your ubercharge meter faster. While overhealing (healing someone whos buffed at 150% already), you only gain 1% per second for uber. If you are buffing people or healing normally, you gain 2% per second. Have them shoot themselves so you can start with uber and make that push on well or gravel!

Lucky Shot

To me, the pre-charging is really exploiting the engine. I heard this on the server last night as someone requested someone else to hurt themselves so that the medic could uber quicker before the round started. Yea, if a demoman hops on top of a roof then heal him, but if your only doing it in order to uber faster then this is a questionable tactic. Understand, I am not saying charging before fighting begins, I am saying intentionally and repeatedly hurting a player in order to charge faster is questionable.

Lucky Shot

Arf

Early Ubercharges have no negative effect on game play. On Assault maps the defenders have plenty of time to set up their sentry guns and block the gates with sticky bombs. They could suppress the gates with grenade spam and high level forward sentry guns (if they used multiple Engineers to build one at a time). On many parts of the Assault maps the Pit is not blocked off to the enemy team and they can rush it to kill all the players pinned down inside.

The problem with that is that it's a Dumbed Down Tactic. While it works and is technically a tactic it requires very little thought, planning, or coordination from the defending team. At the same time it's extremely effective because we've placed a heavy handicap on the attacking team and they're already disadvantaged because they have to attack a prepared defence. Those circumstances are very unhealthy for the community because we require one team to be coordinated and work together while the other can get away with very little and still be effective. We should always strive to require both teams to use as much teamwork as possible even if we want one team to have an advantage.

The positive effects of early Ubercharges is that they force the enemy to build a deep defence which requires greater planning and coordination then setting everyone up in a wall on the front. The attackers have a fair shot of getting out of the Pit but will have to carefully coordinate themselves to take down the defence piece by piece. Both teams are required to coordinate their usage of Ubercharges to stop heavy enemy pushes or directly counter enemy Ubercharges. The alternative is deciding the fight on the initial rush which will usually end in either the attackers being camped at their spawn exit or the defenders being wiped and leaving the flag open. Early Ubercharges enforce the use of teamwork from the very start of the round to the finish and despite how unusual the tactic is it works well in the context of the game and is a boon to teamwork.

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icky

Good intel on the medic, Waffle.

One point I would like to make is that I -always- prefer that the medic chooses when to use the uber. I know when it is ready, and I know how far away it is, because I can see the charge of my medic, so I will time my move in appropriately. Communications may not be necessary, but if anything, I will tell the medic what I intend to do and when I hope for uber to be used. It will still be at his discretion. The reason for this is that the medic has a good view of my health, his health, and the overall situation, and the time taken to communicate the need for uber may make it too late.

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Zoopy

Or if you are Lyra, you use it whenever a Pyro comes close to you.

Luxx_Jorge

This is very useful information. I haven't had a chance to play much TF2 yet, but now I will be much better prepared when I do. Keep the great info coming!

Luxx

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Lyramion

I declare Pyro as the best class to uber - seriously I will abandon my Heavy sometimes just to uber a Pyro. While the Heavy is nice to attract fire he cannot really reach anywhere in those 10 seconds. The Pyro on the other hand has excellent movement speed.

Sure you can say his Flamethrower has no range when rushing forward but you will capture all heeavy/med combos and soldiers easily while punshing everyone else back. FAR back if you do it right. I had Pyro rushes that pushed the enemy team all the way back from the entrance of our base to theirs.

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WaffleHousChef

Healing Pyros is fun and rewarding (if the player is a good pyro.) Most classes can benefit from a Medic shadow. Heck, I've even shadowed a sniper for a while before because they were making the most impact in the area, and the healing let him not have to duck for cover every two seconds.

You will notice that I try and avoid naming specific kits in my write-up, and while I spend a lot of time healing heavies it's not always the best course of action to get locked into a specific mindset. Keep in mind that the people who are making the most impact on the field could benefit the most from staying alive longer regardless of the kit they are playing.

Zoopy

Uber spy FTW

WaffleHousChef

Hmm Uber or Cloak.. Which one wins in the battle of Pixel Shader Precedence? We may never know.


Cloak : 10 seconds
Uber: 10 seconds

The devs are sending us a message here, I think...

Nemesis

See, I disagree on who should have a say over the Uber. Most medics try and stay under cover or around corners and have no battlefield intel other than what is being told them.

Yes, I can see my teammates health as I'm healing them and know where my Uber status is, but I'm essentially in the follower position. I tell the person I'm healing to let me know when they want Uber and leave it in their hands. That way, I don't make that choice ahead of time and possibly nullify a great rush because I popped it too soon thinking there was more bad guys then there actually were.

Honestly, I can see both ways working and it's what's most comfortable within the Medic/Patient combo. The essential is good communication though. So each of you know's what the other is doing/seeing so you can be the most effective for your team.

Geat guide, Waffle!

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