Medic Situations (and how to handle them)

Often times, I will find myself in a lot of situations as medic unique to the class that pop up more often than you'd think and are really something that I see amateur medics screwing up on.

1. A pyro (or some other class) comes between you and your medigun target.
- For gods sake, RUN away! The biggest saving grace of the medic is his 107% speed. This allows him to escape bleak situations. Fire your syringe gun at the pyro (Or whatever other class it could be) that is chasing you. If you don't suck at aiming, you can more that likely kill him. Make sure to dodge around if he pulls the flare gun/shot gun out. Also, if it is in fact a pyro, you might often times find yourself burning to death after the encounter, assuming you've made it out alive. Normal classes take about 60hp worth of burn damage before the flame goes out. Blutsauger medics take about 45. However, syringe gun medics take only 30. It is for this reason that I use the syringe gun. If your team is good, you won't have to focus on combat very much, but more on withstanding damage. The syringe gun ups your health regeneration rate substantially. Don't take this for granted, it's very noticeable.

2. You find yourself getting blown to bits far too often when healing a target that is harassing a large group.
- This used to happen to me all the time. I'd be medic-ing a target, he'd peer around a corner, and bam, stickies would fly over and kill me. Now I know that this isn't really a specialized situation, but it leads me into my next point: ABUSE THE LENGTH OF THE MEDIGUN'S BEAM That thing goes FAR man. Most medics stay very close to their targets. In reality, it's more worth it to stay as far away as possible. Sure the beam might break (only once in a while once you understand the distance better) but it's worth it to not die every so often. Your target won't die from one less second of being healed while he's fully overhealed, and that distance between you and him is a nice buffer zone. And also, people are trying to kill your target, why would you want to be close to him?

3. You find yourself getting backstabbed and sniped frequently
- Not that specialized a situation, but once again, it introduces a tactic that medics around the world don't seem to understand.

DON'T STAND STILL

- As a medic, your finger should be impulsively hitting the spacebar every couple of seconds. This keeps snipers from getting a clear shot on your head. And being faster than most other classes that you heal, you really don't need to follow your target's actions directly. Be unpredictable. Run in circles, squares, up and down the staircase, whatever! To fend off spies, look behind you frequently., especially after you've just rounded a corner, because this is when spies tend to hop behind you and stick a knife in your cerebellum. The medibeam doesn't break when you spin around, so there's no reason not to keep an eye out 24/7

4. Your target is running a suicide mission and expects you to follow him
- To elaborate on the title a bit more, basically what I'm saying is that you are healing a player and he decides that he is going to run straight into that heavy with a medic and three soldiers beside them. His chances of survival are basically nil, but he expects you to follow him. Being the loyal medic that you are, you have to make a choice; to follow to near certain death, maybe taking one enemy out, or leaving and joining the rest of your team at some other point on the map.

-This is an easy decision. He who learns to run away, lives to fight another day. Abandon that bastard. Smart players will be able to judge the odds of survival based on their skill levels and will only head in to situations that they think they can win. If you die, your ubercharge percentage is back to zero and a vital component of your team is out of service. Believe it or not, a good medic is more important than a good soldier on a competitive team. Heal that sucker for as long as you safely can, but then get out of there. Maybe, if you retreat behind that wall over there ( |<------that one) your whole team will be rushing forward. They will be in need of your expert medicine, and if you provide it, they can defeat the heavy, the medic, and the three soldiers. If they are burned by a pyro, you will luckily be alive to keep them from burning to death. As a medic, your teammates are counting on you, and if you commit suicide, you're not helping.

5. A spy suddenly appears behind your medigun target
x ---> 2. This makes you call out "SPYY!" Smart targets will listen and flip around. Also, if you find hitting x, then 2, to be a bit uncomfortable, you can always bind it to another key in the console.
Also, if you have an uber, just pop it (Assuming you're using the regular medigun). Hopefully you can save your target, and not only with they kill the spy, but they might get to the front line in time to take out some other foes.
If you're lucky, you can hit the spy wit your ubersaw to boost your uber meter. (Always use the ubersaw, its benefits much outweigh its cons)

6. You pop a kritz uber on a target and rush in, only for you/your target to be killed quickly
- I would recommend using the normal medigun. 10 seconds of complete invulnerablity outweighs 10 seconds of triple damage. The whole role of an uber is to take down sentries and provide invincibility in near death situations. The kritz offers a different sort of play style. I have seen good kritz medics, I will admit, but with the new items that provide mini crits being used often, (Jarate, Buff Banner) more damage isn't really needed. When mini-crits are flying all over the place, it's best to keep yourself alive. Sure, the best defense is a good offense, but a good defense makes a kickass offense too. To put it simply, A kritz uber can help you deal damage, but it can't save you from death. A normal uber can do both, which makes it superior in my opinion.

-HOOWWEEVVVEERRR, if you do decide you want to use the kritzkrieg, you need to make sure that your healing target realizes that you are using it and reacts appropriately to the new situation. Just like before, when I instructed you to run away if an enemy was in between you and your target (and your target is unaware) keep running away here! Just because you have a kritz popped doesn't mean you need to stay with the same guy the whole time. Maybe your demoman in front of you isn't aware of the pyro between you guys, but maybe that soldier behind you is. Turn around and give him the final 50% of the kritz, and he may just save your life, rather than having both you and your initial target dead.

That about wraps it up, I'll post more situational things if I think of them and remember to.

Nice guide Young Greezy! Must have been a hell to write...
Not much to add to it except for heal others even when sticking to a player. A heavy/soldier can easily survive 3 seconds without you and your team will last longer. Also, spycheck or tell people to use the voicechat before you heal them so you know if they are on your team. Nothing more embarasing for a medic then healing an enemy spy. Even more embarasing is ubering an enemy spy

When deciding who to heal, make every second count. The goal is not to "save" anyone... the goal is to get as many hitpoints out as fast as possible.
Heal burning patients first to keep them from taking damage (stop once the fire goes out and re-assess), then overheal whoever was injured least recently (you heal as fast as possible that way). Ideally, you want to keep people from dying... but only because if they die it lowers the maximum health you can distribute. Don't keep wasting time on the guys who just got hit.

If your patients are in combat, your goal changes. You want to help your patients deal as much damage as possible (and the best way to to that is to keep everyone alive — as long as they have one hitpoint left, they still deal full damage). Helping the point-man survive is an important part of keeping everyone alive — as long as the point-man lives and keeps doing his job, the majority of enemy fire will be directed towards him (and thereby ignoring most of your other teammates). The point-man should usually be the recipient of any invulnerability. It is usually inadvisable to give the point-man a Kritz-charge unless he is already invulnerable (he is usually in a bad position to deliver the pain).


Don't abuse the range of the Übercannon when your patient is fighting a Scout (so long as there aren't more pressing foes). Stay close to your patient: you want to keep on the opposite side of your patient so that the Scout can't hit you.

Remember that activating your ÜberCharge (either of them, Kritzkrieg included) will immediately remove fire and Jarate from both you and your UberCharge target. Make sure to use and abuse this when using the Kritzkrieg.

The Kritzkrieg's taunt heals 10 for each time you use it. Keep that in mind when you're burning to death in a safe place.

Lord Zurkov wrote:

The Kritzkrieg's taunt heals 10 for each time you use it. Keep that in mind when you're burning to death in a safe place.

Wow thats helpful i didn't know that. Thanks for all the tips Greezy and Zurkov.

Oh and a question i have noticed that sometimes when i heal my patients i notice the healing goes way faster then with other patients. How does this work?

Well Eraserhead, it's all based on how long it's been since your healing target was hurt. I'll quote valve on this one because the explanation is a little complex.

"If it's been greater than 10 seconds since the target was hurt, the heal rate is increased. The amount of increase ramps linearly up to 3 times the base heal rate at 15 seconds since the target was hurt. So if you're healing a target who's been hurt less than 10 seconds ago, you'll only be getting the base heal rate of 24 health a second. If the target was hurt 12.5 seconds ago, you'll be healing at 48 health a second. If the target hasn't been hurt for over 15 seconds, you'll be getting the maximum heal rate of 72 health a second."

So basically, it ramps up.

But... but... I just said that. In my earlier post, I said "then overheal whoever was injured least recently (you heal as fast as possible that way)."

Yes i read that zurkov but i suppose it didn't got through to me.

Btw something strange happened today, i was healing Fubar and his health was stuck at 50% and wouldnt go any higher, really freaky. I think it's maybe because he had rolled buffed health just before. I also saw him go to the medicine cabinet while already having made that roll.