New and updated medic guide (other post removed)

Eugene

1. Introduction
2. The needles
3. The melee weapons
4. The mediguns
5. Uber vs Kritz
6. Know your ubersaw
7. The midieval medic set
8. Tips & Techinques
9. Oh shit I've been spotted
10. What to do vs classes
11. The different types of spy
12. Conclusion

Intro:
I know I wrote a basic guide before but this is to be my most complete work and basically this is how I play medic and my thoughts on it. My aim is not only to teach someone how to play medic, but also provide understanding for non-medics into how medics work.

Needles
Syringe Gun:
The Needle Gun is my choice for the primary weapon slot, mostly due to my playstyle. I try to play a passive style that focuses more on overhealing, building an uber and surviving. The Syringe Gun allows me to have my maximum health/second regen and allows me to be as aggressive as I want to be. However, the Syringe Gun isn't as great when it comes to escaping from pyros and scouts, unless you can guarantee a kill and are near health.
Blutsauger:
The Blutsauger picks up where the Syringe Gun fails, this gun makes you a beast at the cost of the health regen. However an aggressive medic playstyle such as that of Vlad makes up for that by having the Blut give you more health then you would have regened. It's a very unorthodox gun that is not a bad choice at all if you don't mind the loss of passive health regen.
Overdose:
The overdose is the weapon I should be using, it allows for quick escapes, the same amount of health regen as stock, at the cost of damage. Now generally I only use my needles for kiting, where damage isn't my goal but at the same time againt Scouts such as Atatme who are relentless in their chasing the damage is important and I would rather have the damage of the stock over the speed buff (since I can't outrun the scout anyway).

I will discuss the Crusader's Crossbow in a section below.

Melee weapons
Bonesaw
This is crap, don't ever use this. Seriously there is no reason to ever use this item, ever. The Amputator and the Solemn Vow are strictly better than it. Seriously, don't use this unless you are poor and don't have anything better. Seriously though, this sucks, ugh. I hate this.
Ubersaw
I am in love with this weapon. I'm not even kidding, if this weapon was a girl with long blond hair, big green eyes, world class breasts, ass that won't quit, and legs that go all the way up; I would marry it. It's the slowest melee weapon the medic has but on hit it gives you 25% ubercharge (not against cloaked spies, they removed that due to terrible DR spies). This is where Pharaoh and I differ in opinion, he doesn't like pulling out a melee weapon; personally this isn't a melee weapon this is cheating. It can completely destroy an enemy medic's timing of your uber, not to mention I have had great times where I uber in, melee 4 people, and reuber. God I love this weapon.
vita-saw
So at the cost of 10 health you get an extra 19% uber to start with, which is great if you are behind. Also if you never die this weapon is great, however the 140 health means that you can take less hits before you are in one-shot range(120 health). It's a good weapon if you can make it work, and I recommend this on egypt O. However on D it isn't as good since if you are using kritz(Like most medics) you will beat their ubercharge every time anyway.
Solemn Vow
Personally I think weapon is useless, since if your team is telling you things you know the general health of everyone anyway. However in a non-ideal server, this lets you have more co-ordination with your team which is never a bad thing. Use if you want, but in my opinion there are better weapons.
I will talk about the Amputator in a section below. All though Vlad swears by this weapon, and has more experience with it than I do.

Mediguns
Medi Gun
Standard Medigun which grants 8 seconds max of invulnerability. All the info on charge rates can be found on [url]wiki.teamfortress.com[/url]. What I want to talk about here is how to fight the uber as a general strat. While the uber does provide 8 seconds of freedom, you can still block the medic in. While it's obvious to use airblast, and explosions to seperate the medic and their target it is also possible to shut down the medic by running into them which I don't see too many people doing. Sure it gets you killed but it also puts a medic into a more vulnerable position when the uber fades.
Kritzkrieg
Most medics use this on Defence as it allows for early gibs, and a possible stop to an enemy uber. It also has a faster charge rate, and generally a kritz soldier or a kritz demo can clear a room in seconds.
Quick-Fix
Look Vlad wrote an excellent piece on this weapon that summarizes everything. Here is the link:
[url] http://www.ctpirates.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5298 [/url]
If you want some of my words on it then: Its situational but the loss of overheal holds it back.

Uber vs Kritz
Ok, so this has been a matter of debate for awhile. This is also where the opinion of Vlad and myself differ the most. I live by the uber, this is the whole reason I felt attracted to the medic class. An uber can push through defenses, save your team, stop an enemy kritzkreig, and stall a whole offensive. While the same could be said of the kritz, the invulnerability of the medic also gives him an uh-oh button in case he gets caught. However, the kritzkreig's faster charge rate provide a tool to fight the ubercharge, not to mention a blitz play with a kritz can win a round in less than a minute. The kritz also has the taunt self heal for 11+regen health which means an aggressive medic such as Vlad can be in the fight alot quicker than an ubercharge medic. In the end it comes down to preference and play style like most things in this game do.

Know your ubersaw
I mentioned my lust for the ubersaw above, and here I want to go over some tricks to know with the ubersaw.
-If you don't get 25% boost of a spy kill, it's a dead ringer
-the boost doesn't apply to cloaked spys
-if you can get the taunt off its an instant uber
-If you can do sting tactics and don't be greedy. A.K.A. hit them once and move on to survive, the fact that you got 25% charge is a boost enough.
-Never get into a melee fight with the ubersaw, it has the slowest melee speed and you WILL lose, especially against a scout.

The Medieval medic set
This set means that as a medic you can survive alot longer than other medics. It also gives you the most healing power of any other loadout, at the loss of offensive ranged power. However the ability to mass heal, on demand burst heal, and huge passive health regen makes this set very powerful. Its biggest weakness is spys, pyros, and scouts; you can't be caught alone because you will die. The set rewards a team that plays together. As for the individual weapons, the cross bow isn't great without the amputator but the amputator can work with anything. Seriously go try playing with the amputator and doing some AoE heals on points. If you want more in-depth analysis of the weapons ask me, but honestly outside of the amputators taunt heal they aren't anything special.

Tips & Techniques
First of all I would like to apologize to Vlad and Nony for my statement of false "facts" in my previous post.
Now the most obvious technique is the split uber, although you lose some ubercharge time (50% additional rate past first target, but the game remembers so it's not too much.) you get double the destructive power out of it. A soldier and demo both ubered at the same time will destroy more and cover more ground than one demo.
Know all the hiding places and more importantly all the health packs on the map. This is the difference between life and death; for example you need to be able to know that there is only one small health pack on egypt1 in the hallway at point 2. There are 4 big healthpacks: point 2 backdoor, the room next to the sniper ramp between point 1 and 2, the indent close to the arches at point 1, and the ramp right across from point 1.
Know when to retreat, basically if you are under 120 health run. Outside of crits that is the DANGER ZONE(wrote that in the voice of Archer), where you can be gibbed easily.
Do not be afraid to use ubers, seriously if it means you living pop it. I have a clip of me being in the air and goss looking right at me while being surrounded by 3 teammates of mine. I popped that uber without a second though. Basically I either lose an uber and goss dies, or goss died maybe kills some of my teammates but more importantly I love which means more of my teammates can live.
This comes from playing medic and you won't get it right away. Try to have an idea of the enemys uber timing, this means you can take more or less risks depending on the threat of an uber. This works best when your team talks to you and lets you know if the medic died, got them with an ubersaw, etc.
Know sniper spots and spy paths, this is really the biggest difference between life and death. As a medic you will have snipers and spys gunning for you, being able to dodge them is the biggest part of playing medic. Fighting a team of docs, courier, draco, and atatme on scout was one of the hardest things I have ever done in any video game due to the pressure of having to always look behind me ahead of me, looking for them. This is where communication with your team comes into play the most.

Oh shit I've been spotted
If you are spotted hide behind your team, if a sniper sees you chances are you are dead. Seriously though, rely on your team to protect you run towards them, let them know you are being attacked. If you have a sniper always gunning you, let them know and see if you can get someone to take out that sniper.

What to do vs classes
Medic isn't an offensive class, the same strat will generally apply for all needle guns:
Scout: Kite them back towards a healthpack with your needles, if they get in close with scattergun try to ubersaw them or hit them with enough needles to kill them. This is the hardest matchup as a scout's scattergun will make quick work of you. Try not to get caught alone with one.
Soldier: Try to jump right as their rocket hits the ground to run away. Seriously most soldiers will have no problem dying to make sure you die. RUN RUN RUN
Demo: Always be on the lookout for their stickies, try to avoid pipe bombs. If you can get in melee range and run around with an ubersaw. Most demos won't let you get in there, so if you can RUN(notice the pattern)
Pyro If you have a blut this matchup is 100x easier. Basically kite them and dodge flares, if you get cornered you will die.
Heavy: You can outrun them or run around and melee/needles them to death.
Engie: 1v1 use needles, if they have a sentry just run.
Sniper: Either run or if you find yourself in a position try and melee them.
Spy: see section below
Medic: Depends on loadout, usually I try to kite with blut needles and avoid melee. In needle vs needle its simply who has aim and what type of gun they are using.

The different types of spy
So there are two types of spies for me to deal with:
Traditional (weed, courier) and Aggressive (Docs). The Aggressive is alot harder to deal with because they are gunning for you and they are tricky, they have untraditional paths and most importantly if they die but they kill you. They won.
The Traditional spy follow more routine paths and can cause more mayhem among your team. They are still gunning for you but they will also take out more along the way, these types of spies give engies a much harder time than the aggressive spies.
For both either catch them in melee with their backs turned or stay and kite with needles. The spy is a very dangerous opponent and deadly from all ranges.

Conclusion
In conclusion I hope everyone found this guide insightful in to the minds of a medic. Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong, etc. I'm sure my class v class strats aren't the best but I try not to do 1v1 duels as much as possible. I also want to leave with an expilnatin of the path of medic by Vlad since I moved the other topic.

Vlad Piranha wrote:

1. Punch-clock Medic

This is the guy who gives medics a bad reputation. He's new to the class or is just filling in due to the necessity of having at least one healer on a team and would rather be doing something else. Unclear on many concepts of an effective medic's responsibilities, he relies on pocket healing to get points and make his paltry skills useful to at least one player, usually a heavy weapons guy or a friend. His distinctive behavioral feature is his tunnel vision. Aware of little else happening on the battlefield outside of his healing target's immediate area, he'll be ineffective at keeping more than one or two people alive at best and is highly vulnerable to Spies and Pyros attacking from a flank or behind. His insight that allows him to detect spies in disguise is poor. His knowledge of the situational usefulness of items will also be poor.

2. Accomplished Medic

This is probably the medic that most players come into contact with. Familiar with the general concepts of how to make the most of his slot on the team roster, he does what he can to help the most injured members of his team. Situational awareness makes him a much harder target for spies and snipers, which makes it that much more likely that he will achieve a maximum Ubercharge. He will most likely give his Ubercharge to a Heavy or Soldier under most circumstances due to getting the maxiumum effect out of this combo. Reliability and routine is important to this Medic's playstyle. Due to his preference for adhering to a single tried and true formula, he will use a single set of items the vast majority of the time and swap items out only under very certain circumstances. He will periodically thwart spies attempts at killing him and will recognize their disguise as often. His strategy will be more conservative in order to get his Ubercharge. It is unlikely that he will approach the front lines for fear of being killed too easily. This Medic can best be described as enthusiastic and effective at what he does.

3. Master Medic

A rare Medic to find on a public server outside of a clan or other organized group, he is exceptionally familiar with the class. He will most likely play this class the vast majority of the time, if not nearly exclusively. His extensive knowledge of maps will grant him the ability to navigate in a coordinated manner while healing allies and fleeing incoming enemy fire, especially when running backwards. This will synergize with his high accuracy. The same accuracy will make him effective at multitasking: spinning in circles to overheal all of his allies while looking for spies while dodging enemy fire. He will more often be able to effectively avoid sniper fire and Spies will have a difficult time approaching him except when he is distracted. He will see through their disguises more readily and can defend himself well in melee combat if necessary. His knowledge of items will be superb and his loadout will change to adapt to the status quo. His ability to prioritize and make snap decisions will be much more calculated. He tends to be aggressive and stays near the front lines to be as effective as possible and to reach full Ubercharge faster from injured players, as opposed to healthy ones. Game mechanics such as health regeneration, taunt healing and maintaining an Ubercharge on two players at once will feature prominently in his play style and choices. For lack of a better description, this Medic's most prominent feature will be his ability to cheat death while helping his allies to the same.

Pharaoh Man · Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 7:20 pm Post subject:

I can tell you've put in the time with the class. It's a very rewarding class for skill levels and game types of any kind.

Here are some additional notes from my own brain.

The #1 Rule
For any intermediate medic or better, the #1 rule should be obvious. However, in case you're new to medic, survive. Dodge, run, grab healthpacks to recover 20hp, stay behind your team around every corner, dash madly across sniper spots, and leave people to die while getting a headstart on your pursuers if you must. Your life is worth the most out of anyone on the team. Every enemy should be sacrificing his life to attempt to kill you, and every teammate should be sacrificing his life to attempt to save you.

A Cool Trick
The medigun beam stretches after it connects, like a rubber band. You might have to be 6 steps away from a friendly player to start healing them, but after it connects, you can back off to around 9 steps away. This can let you put a lot of space between your pocket and your fragile body if they're popping around a dangerous corner or hill. Warning, if you get disconnected, you might have to chase them for a bit before you can heal them again, but your increased speed helps.

Priorities
I firmly believe that healing and overhealing several teammates is more important than popping an uber most of the time. Sure, ubers take out sentries and kritzes take out armies, and that's fantastic. However, if you're not in a tight spot and you're at 100%, just sit at 100% for a while and heal people. Even if you pop your uber and destroy a sentry, will there be 3 overhealed flankers rushing in with you simultaneously, or will you destroy the sentry, get overwhelmed and fail your goal? Don't be afraid of sitting on a full uber and waiting until a great moment. If you don't see an obvious great moment, try watching the scoreboard and waiting until 33% of the other team is already dead before pushing in.

The Ubersaw
I am of the old school, purist breed of medics, who follow the philosophy "If you don't have your medigun out, something has gone horribly wrong." Sure, I'll whip out the syringe gun to chase away a spy or panic from a scout. There are few good reasons to ever pull out your melee though.

I swore by the ubersaw for a while. However, going into melee range against any class makes you risk death. Any class can crit melee you, except for spies. Spies can sidestab you. A good medic never dies, therefore a good medic risks his life as little as possible.

I've done some absurd ubersaw-charges before, where I ramp up the ubersaw meter and pop another uber. This felt great, but I believe that consistently healing people while simultaneously charging your uber bar is the absolute best use of your time. Let's think about the time you're using. In the time it takes you to just change to melee and change back to medigun, you've "lost" 5% charge that you would have if you had just kept healing. If you swing the ubersaw 3-4 times, you've lost a full 25% charge, and put your life (and possibly everyone else's) in danger.

Sure, it's not too much if you connect every single swing and save your life, but even if you charge your bar to full, I repeat what I said earlier and believe that healing/overhealing is more important than having a little extra bar. Even one second of not healing your team could result in deaths.

I certainly don't think the ubersaw is bad. Its effect is the most powerful out of all the melees. I prefer the Solemn Vow or Vita-Saw though, which have worth when you're not directly swinging them. I have never used the Amputator taunt and I submit that the Amputator is worse than the default bonesaw, because you might be tempted to use its horrible effect.

This really just comes down to playstyle, but I thought I would offer a dissenting opinion. I'm personally not a fan of the blutsager because I don't like attacking as medic, but I've seen some medics use it quite effectively.

Personal exceptions to the "never-melee" rule:
- I'm not using a mic and I see a spy who's too close to needle.
- During an uber, I get blasted behind some enemies and have to fight my way out, beelining towards my nearest friend and bashing whoever I can on the way.
- If I'm using the Solemn Vow and can catch a low-health target unaware.
- If my only pocket is a Demoman and we are in close combat. The demo is weak at close combat, so if we're fighting one target I may assist him with needles or a melee bash.

I will never charge a target that is actively firing at me or has his melee weapon ready.
I will never chase someone more than three or four steps.
I will never chase someone around a corner.

---

Nice guide though sleeples. To all you medic-virgins, try it out if you see one of your friends playing an offensive class. It feels good when you and one of your buddies runs through a map and wrecks everything.

Eugene · Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 7:59 pm Post subject:

Dammit I knew I forgot to add in a bit about overhealing. Pharaoh sums it up perfectly though. He is also right on the Ubersaw I have seen medics, myself included get greedy with it and try to get a full uber out of it. Don't do it, be smart about your play.