Team Fortress 2/Medic

Health: 150 Type: Support Special Ability: Ubercharge Description: The Medic is an indispensable part of any Team Fortress 2 team. His ability to heal saves a lot of people from death and respawning, and is, along with the Ubercharge, one of the best ways to turn a battle around.


 * Primary Weapon: Syringe gun - Max Ammo: 180 - Max Clip: 50

The syringe gun does very little damage, and is, basically, only good for attacking from behind if the target is occupied elsehow, or to kill a spy if you spot one. In any other situation the best idea is to try and get away before you are killed. It should also be noted that the projectiles of the medigun are physically simulated, meaning they lose height rapidly when flying through the air. It is extremely hard aiming.


 * Secondary Weapon: Medigun - Infinite ammo - No reload needed

The medigun fires a healing beam on the targeted friendly player. It also has an ubercharge ability that, when fully loaded, makes you and your target immortal for a period of 10 seconds. The ubercharge charges faster if you heal players who are more wounded, meaning the more effective you are as a medic at saving lives, the more rewarding it is in the end, both for you and the team. During setup time, however, the medigun charges at a rate just fast enough to give you ubercharge in around 40 seconds, even if you stay at a target not hurting himself/herself.


 * Melee Weapon: Bonesaw

The bonesaw is not different from the bottle or any other melee weapon. As a medic it is not recommended for use except from behind or against a cloaked/disguised spy.

Using the Medic
One of the most important things to remember when being a medic, is that you are strictly a team player. Your foremost task is to keep people alive, and you would, contrary to most other classes, be a bad medic to be more concerned about your own points, than the team's results. Therefore it is a bad idea to constantly stick to one target (even a heavy) when other players are around, not only because it is a serious breach of the front line if two or three players have to respawn and walk all the way back, but also because if you heal more hurt players your ubercharge will get ready faster, and for every ubercharge your team gets a chance at breaching the other team's siege or defence. On this account it should also be noted that it is a good idea to move your crosshair around on the players in your proximity, in order to see if anyone needs healing. You cannot expect people to be aware of their own health all the time.

Prioritizing who you heal (and for how long) can be extremely important during intense enemy encounters. Always obey the honour code of the medic and heal your fellow medics first. Two medics can heal your team a lot faster than one. Typically you should try to keep all teammates at "white" health level, healing those on "red" health first. If there are two people on red health, try to get them both to white health before you heal either one of them completely. However, sometimes it may be important to heal one player fully and ignore another. For example if a soldier and an engineer are injured then usually you should concentrate on getting the soldier to full health before healing the engineer. It is also a good idea to keep an eye on the scoreboard and know who the better players on your team are. This way you can heal them in priority to less experienced players. This might sound harsh and unfair but typically less experienced players will also live longer if the more experienced players are alive to kill off the other team first.

Using your ubercharge correctly is a core element of being a medic. Do not just fire it at the first given opportunity, but wait until the situation is just right. For instance, if you are healing a sniper your uber will be no good unless you are the only two left in a Sudden Death, neither is it a good idea to uber someone if you are only facing one enemy. Normally, the two classes which are most suitable for an ubercharge are heavies and pyros, depending on the situation and availability soldiers and demomen will also work. When you are facing a big amount of sentries in a relatively compact space the best thing to do is ubering a demoman, who can put stickies on the area and destroy most of the sentries. If, on the other hand you are in a tight defensive situation the best way to use it is usually a heavy. It can be very hard to time your ubercharge correctly, but normally it is a good rule of thumb to fire it when you hear a sentry, spot a lot of enemies within a short proximity or if you or your target is just about to die.

When using ubercharges there are a couple of tricks you can make use of. When you use as ubercharge the other team will typically take one of three actions; run away, try to run past you to attack teammates who are not ubercharged, or be brutally killed. Remember you don't have to stick to ubercharging one person. If the enemy tries to attack a non-ubercharged teammate you can switch the ubercharge to focus on them until they are safe. Typically however it is best to just focus on one team member as ubering multiple players can lead to a lot of confusion, and thus a wasted ubercharge. When dealing with sentry guns it is best to try and stand as close to the gun as possible during the first 3/4 of your ubercharge (and run away during the last quarter). This blocks the gun from being able to fire at other non-ubered teammates; allowing multiple players to attack the sentry gun instead of just the ubercharged player. Additionally ubercharged pyros can have a hard time getting near a sentry gun because the sentry will push them back when it hits them. By taking as much of the fire as possible you allow the ubercharged attacker to get close enough to do serious damage to the sentry.

An important thing to remember while ubercharged is that members of the other team can't walk through you. It sounds silly, but you can seriously hinder the other team by just standing in their way while you are ubercharged. This can block them from shooting other non-ubered teammates, block them from reaching a capture point, and/or hold them in position so your teammates can shoot them. A great example of this is when playing as blue in cp_dustbowl. On one of the maps the final capture point is located above and in front of the room where red spawns with a small passage leading out of the spawn. As an ubered medic, standing in the passage and blocking opponent players from reaching the point can give your team time to capture.

A fun tactic with ubercharges as a medic is to quickly switch between ubercharge and bonesaw/needlegun. While ubercharged you can run behind enemy players, switch to bonesaw, hit them in the back (increasing your chances of a critical hit) and then switch back to uber. This is a lot of fun if you get it right, but is usually extremely difficult to do and the other team will catch on pretty quickly. Usually you will only get a single kill, or two if you are very lucky. This tactic is usually pretty silly to employ if other members of your team are around as ubering another teammate instead of just yourself will get you a lot more kills. However the satisfaction of bonesawing people who have been shooting rockets at you for the last thirty minutes is an unbeatable thrill.

One of the few ways of disarming an ubercharge is using a demoman to plant stickybombs in the path of the ubercharged players and detonating them just before the charged medic walks over them. Sometimes the force of the explosion can be enough to throw the medic some distance from the player they were ubercharging, creating a window of a few seconds to kill the attacking player before the medic reaches them again with the uber. Note that this typically only works in open areas, not enclosed spaces. As an ubercharged medic you should obviously try to avoid stickybombs placed like this.

Having a mic is a very good idea when you are a medic. It makes it easy for you to tell other players where you are in case they need healing and you cannot move, and you can easily find the desired class for your ubercharge, without having to take a break from the game to write for one.

Although healing other people and providing ubercharges are important parts of being a medic the most important goal of any medic should be staying alive. Every time a medic dies, there will be about 2-4 other people who will die because you were busy waiting to spawn instead of healing them. The qualities of a great medic are knowing how to avoid getting hit and knowing when to run away. Learning how to size up a battle and determine if your team has a chance of winning is extremely important. There's no point charging into the line of fire to heal a soldier who is battling it out against three pyros no matter how many times he calls for a medic. Be wary of people who charge out into a fray then try to call in a medic. Maybe your target wants you to follow, but it would be a great loss to the team if you lose a 50% progress on an ubercharge. A lot of the time it can be strategically better for your team if you let one or two of them die and just run away. By surviving you can find other skirmishes where a medic can turn the tide of battle and apply your skills there.

After playing as a medic for a while you might start to think that everybody is after you, and most of the time this is true. It helps to think of yourself as having a giant bullseye on your back. Most experienced players know that you always shoot the medic first and this is exactly what they will do. As a general rule of thumb if you are a medic you should be looking behind you at least once every 5-10 seconds, probably more. Paranoia pays off here. Never, ever, ever stop moving. By moving around you can avoid backstabs by spies and cause snipers to miss you. Spies and snipers are only dangerous when you don't know they're there. Once you've located a spy or sniper you can avoid them by moving erratically or hiding behind cover respectively.

Your worst enemies as a medic are scouts. You can run away from every class except scouts. A veteran scout player is just as sneaky as any spy, can take a medic out as fast as a sniper can and will chase you down if you run away. Worst of all, you have almost no defence against them. In enclosed spaces you have a chance of bonesawing them, but in open areas they are deadly. They are way, way too fast for the needle gun and the bonesaw is useless at range. The better scouts spend most of the time double-jumping in the air which makes them even more difficult to kill. Your only hope as a medic against a scout is that one of your teammates will shoot them for you, or you manage to pull off a very lucky bonesaw attack.

On this note, the offensive abilities of a medic are pretty limited. They have the worst attack of any class, even snipers and engineers are better equipped to defend themselves, but this doesn't mean that you are defenceless. Trickery and deceit are your best tools when defending yourself as a medic. Most players view medics as being easy kills when they are unprotected and you can use this to your advantage to gain the occasional kill. When a player starts chasing, you should always immediately run away as this heightens the impression that you are a defenceless easy kill. Once you have rounded a corner, stop, turn around, draw your bonesaw, and plant it into their face when they round the corner after you. This works incredibly effectively simply because nobody expects it. Keep in mind that if you are being chased by more than a single player you should usually just keep running. You might also notice that players will often break off from the main pack of attackers to chase down a medic. If you do draw off a single player you can employ the tactic above with the bonesaw or lead them into a group of your teammates for disposal.

Most non-assisted kills that a medic gets will be targets of opportunity, the lone engineer that wasn't watching his back, the heavy on 3hp that ran out of ammo or the spy that uncloaked too early. Engaging other medics in one on one encounters can also be lots of fun. The best open combat tactic for a medic is alternating between needle-gun and bonesaw, changing the battle from melee to ranged frequently; as most other classes are unaccustomed to these quick switches. Charge them with a bonesaw, get a hit in, wait for them to switch to melee, change to the needle-gun, shoot them for a bit until they switch out of melee then charge them with the bonesaw again. It is difficult to time this correctly but if you get it right they will spend most of the time trying to change weapons instead of shooting at you. This works particularly well against spies, snipers and demomen.

Remember that medics are the backbone of the team, everybody else is busy shooting at things, but medics have a unique third person perspective on most battles which makes them very effective at calling the shots and organizing the team. Always stay as close to the battle as possible, but try to keep away from the line of fire, and heal the people you can see. Let your team mates know via mic where they can find you, and let your target know when you are not willing to go any farther.

Defeating Medic
The best way you could defeat a medic is as a sniper, spy or scout. Good medics usually stay outside the line of fire, to avoid losing the progress they have made with their ubercharge, which is also why most other classes have a problem getting to them, unless the attackers he is healing get killed very quickly.

As a sniper you have a decent chance at a good shot at a medic. The chances he sees you until you fire your shot are very small, as he will be focused on healing his team mates. However good medics are always moving about which can make this a little tricky.

As a spy naturally you would have to get behind the medic before you uncloak and attack. Getting the medic is then usually fairly easy, as he is focused on healing his teammates and avoiding enemy fire and won't notice you until it is too late. Experienced medics are usually fairly wary of spies, so it is important to attack while the medic is distracted. Usually when the player they are healing has just come under attack and the medic is still trying to get out of the line of fire.

Scouts are arguably one of the most effective classes for disposing of medics, especially on more open maps, as they can attack and retreat before the player the medic is healing has a chance to respond and because the medic will have a hard time attacking the scout. Running up behind a medic and attacking with the scattergun before anybody realizes what's going on is most effective.