The Medic's primary role is to keep his team-mates alive using his Medigun. The Medic is the only class to be able to provide invulnerability in Team Fortress 2 via his ÜberCharge. This ability is often invaluable to his team both offensively and defensively and can turn the tide of battle.
General strategy
- You constantly regenerate health. If you can escape a fire fight, you can survive. Don't run into situations with a suicide mindset as with some other classes.
- Since you cannot heal yourself directly, always ask your allies to leave Health pickups for you, promising to heal them directly in return.
- Unless you are forced to defend yourself, you should always be preparing your ÜberCharge. Find someone nearby and heal him, whether he is damaged or not. Your ÜberCharge meter will fill up (albeit more slowly) even while healing a team-mate with full health.
Weapon Specific
Medigun healing
The Medigun is a straightforward device, but remember that once you've started healing a target, you will stay "locked-on" to him until you release the fire key or the target moves out of range. This has several implications:
- Never stop moving! As a Medic, you are a prime target to enemy Spies and Snipers. Constantly jumping, ducking, and strafing makes you a harder target to kill.
- Check behind you often. Since you don't have to face your healing target once you have started healing, watch in every direction. You may spot a Spy or a hidden enemy well before your team-mates do. Alert them with voice commands or voice chat.
- Constantly move your crosshair over other allies; keep tabs on all of their life totals, and heal whoever needs it the most. This also helps you boost your ÜberCharge faster.
- Keep in mind that your Medigun beam is visible to enemies. Don't assume that just because you are not immediately visible that foes won't target you.
- If you have an ÜberCharge and are in any danger of being quickly killed, activate it. It's better to survive and potentially ÜberCharge an ally than to die with a full ÜberCharge meter.
- The Medigun beam can bend around short corners: use this tactic to keep you out of direct enemy fire.
- If you are forced to choose between keeping any other player alive and another Medic, choose the Medic. He probably has some charge built up: in which case it maybe better to keep the Medic alive and sacrifice another class than to lose time waiting for the Medic to respawn and recharge.
- Heal damaged players first. Even if you heal them a small amount, it is often better to heal someone low on health than to boost another to 150%.
- You charge up your Über faster by healing anyone under 150% of their max health. If you can't find someone to self-damage themselves to keep this fast rate going, find a group of people to heal up to 150% over and over one at a time. This will essentially build it just as fast as a Soldier or Demoman hurting themselves for you.
- Since you heal over time, you should use this advantage even when you have full HP. If the player you are healing is low on HP and/or is reloading, and there is not risk of immediate death from enemy gunfire, running in front of your buddy to take a shot or two is sometimes a good way to defend a point. This is especially effective if you have another medic healing you while you are healing another class.
- If there is any reason at all to suspect that someone is a Spy, try to go through them with your Bonesaw wielded.
Syringe gun
The syringe gun's arcing shots may be annoying in mid-range combat, but it does give you a few strategic advantages.
- You can fire over barriers and obstructions, allowing gravity to pull your needles down to hit targets that are not in your direct field of view.
- If you fire at a steep enough angle, your needles can actually rain almost straight down onto targets on the other side of a wall, making it difficult for them to determine where the attack is coming from.
- Although Engineers and Spies may intimidate you in a 1 on 1 fight; remember that you move faster, regenerate health, and have a high capacity, quick reloading weapon. As long as you dodge effectively you should be able to defeat them if necessary.
- Despite its weak damage output, the Syringe gun has a very fast rate of fire.
- Your syringe gun can prove effective against unattended sentries. Simply find some cover, and arc your shots across, allowing you to safely attack the sentry.
- If you find yourself having to retreat without an escort to back you up, the syringe gun works well for suppressive fire.
Bonesaw
- The bonesaw has more frontloaded damage than the syringe gun, but suffers in terms of damage over time. This makes it good for getting in the first strike on a distracted opponent. It also has a higher crit rate than the needlegun, giving you a better chance at a crippling hit.
Blutsauger
- Whenever a projectile hits an enemy, three health is added to the medic who fired the shot. As compensation, the Blutsauger is unable to fire critical shots except in the rare event that a medic gives his kritzkrieg charge to a medic wielding the Blutsauger.
- It's useful for Spy checks, any 'friendly' that gives health when shot is a Spy.
- With the Blutsauger regenerating your health, it makes a much better retreat weapon when your Medic Buddy has been killed than the normal Syringe Gun.
- Classes that run at the normal (engineers, spys, pyros, snipers) run speed can just barely gain ground on a medic (who runs faster than all classes other than the scout) running backwards away from a fray. This allows the Blutsauger weilding medic to spray his pursuers with blood sucking needles. So, even if he is damaged, he can outpace a chasing Pyro (for example) and recharge his health while simultaneously draining enough health from the enemy that the pursuer will either die or retreat to refill his health. The pyro will never get close enough to use his flamethrower, and if he changes to his secondary weapon, the medic can use his superior speed to dodge the shotgun blasts or flares.
Kritzkrieg
- The Kritzkrieg relies a lot on how good your 'Patient' is; if he has good aim you shouldn't have any problems. Kritzkrieg ÜberCharge cannot be used on yourself, so if your patient dies it's wasted, and because it doesn't have any invulnerability like the medigun, your patient can die if he isn't careful enough (especially from spy backstabs).
- It should also be noted that the Kritzkrieg effects aren't nearly as obvious to the player receiving the charge as the normal ubercharge (with the glowing outline around the player models). This will require more dilgent communication between patient and medic.
- The Kritzkrieg can prove to be a powerful combination with a soldier, it can wipe out a team in matter of seconds due to crit rockets. But the enemy team can concentrate their fire on the soldiermedigun ÜberCharge due to its invulnerability, but the KritzKrieg charges 25% faster than the medigun so you can use it before the enemy can, as well as more often. (Crits count as normal damage against buildings so it won't help against sentries). so he can die just as quickly. It's useless against a
- Kritzkrieg charges can also be very effective when used on a Heavy, primarily because the crits don't have the same damage falloff as regular shots. This effectively increases the heavy's useful range.
- Try using your Kritzkrieg charge on a class that normally isn't very threatening. For example, the Engineer. At up to 180 damage per critical shotgun blast and 45 damage per critical pistol round, an engineer can make a lot of chaos in those 8 seconds (and with 6 shotgun shots and 12 pistol shots, he probably won't even have to reload). Better yet, give the Kritzkrieg to another medic. The syringe gun crits at 30 damage, and with 40 rounds in the chamber, that's a potential 1200 damage in a couple seconds and top that off with a fast reload time. Alternatively you could Kritz an undisguised spy or even a sniper, but their smaller clip size and basically only 1 medium range weapon can limit their effectiveness for the full duration of the charge. There is another advantage to Kritzing the less powerful characters on your team. Enemy players typically see these as easy (engineer away from his sentry) or high value (medic without a strong buddy) kills. So, they'll be chasing after you, even after you activate the charge. Even if they don't chase you, they surely won't be prepared for what you're about to unleash on them. That makes them as easy target.
Übersaw
- It is especially useful for taking out Spies that may be attempting to Backstab the Medic's heal target.
- The Übersaw has a 20% slower attack rate than the Bonesaw, but will charge any secondary Medic weapon by 25% per each successful hit