User:Lolimsogreat21/Sandbox2

General strategy

Survivability

The most important skill for a Medic to learn is how to stay alive. Dying as a Medic deprives your team of their primary source of health, greatly weakening the team as a whole. Not to mention that Medics lose all of their ÜberCharge upon death, requiring yet another 40 seconds to be spent on building up that Über again. This is especially problematic if the enemy Medic has an ÜberCharge of their own. Due to all of this, you are often enemy team's number one target. So take note of the following tips.

• Stay with your team: Medic's self-defense options are very limited. As such, your only defense against hostile attackers are usually your teammates. So make sure to stick to them at all times and all cost. Never allow yourself to be isolated from their support, as this will most likely result in your swift demise. If the group of teammates you've been accompanying die, do not be afraid to retreat.
• Gamesense: Having good teammate support is always desirable, but of what use is it if you are not aware of your surroundings. Certain classes, such as Spy or Sniper are able to completely nullify your team's protection, while certain situations, such as an enemy Kritzkrieg charge, can completely wipe out your team in an instant, and you alongside it. All of these problems can be avoided with good gamesense aka. knowing what is currently happening on the map and where. For example, knowing how much ÜberCharge an enemy Medic has can allow you to predict future pushes, and subsequently not be surprised by them. Knowing what are your team's strengths and weaknesses serves as a good indicator to where an enemy might attack, and thus which areas need to be reinforced or avoided. Gamesense also allows you to decide which positions are best to occupy, and where to strike the next blow. Because of this, being aware of the general situation of the battlefield is very important, assuming you want to increase your survivability.
• Do not overextend: Avoid straying to far past your team's frontline, even if you are with a teammate or two. Pushing too far forwards enables the enemy to either flank you, or cut you off from support. And if those two teammates accompanying you happen to die, then you are right in the middle of hostile territory, completely alone.

Healing

As a Medic, you provide the delicacy of being able to heal your team nearly anywhere at nearly any time. There is no limit to how long you can heal someone, and continuous healing gives the target a temporary health boost of +50% their maximum health. However, you can only heal a single target at a time, usually at +24 health per second assuming they were recently injured. This introduces a list of priorities and who you should heal first once you roll out onto the field.

• When in combat, heal whoever is currently fighting the enemy team: This is the golden rule of healing, you need to heal whoever is engaged in active combat and is consequently taking damage. If your teammate is shooting at the enemy, that teammate will have become the enemy's main concern and will have crawled their way up to the very top of their priority list on who to kill. By healing this person, you massively increase their chances of winning the fight they are currently participating in, thus lowering their chances of dying. The whole point of playing Medic is to save lives. If you constantly heal teammates who are not in danger while other teammates are fighting, then you let the teammates who are in real danger face a real possibility of dying. No matter who is being hurt, you always heal the player who is in immediate danger. If a Spy blows his cover and is in danger as he shoots enemies with his Revolver upon retreat, heal that Spy to help him escape and try again. Keep in mind that he usually doesn't make for a good Medic buddy, and following one into combat is a bad idea all around. Unfortunately, chances are that there will be several teammates dying at once, so you will need to decide who should live and who should die. This should be determined by how far up the teammate is, how low on health they are, and what class they're playing. If they are at the front of the push, try to keep your sights on him, but take the other factors into effect. If someone is very low on health and they are still at the front lines, be sure to heal them so they can either escape or keep fighting. Finally, be sure the class you are healing is worth your time. Always keep tabs on friendly Medics, heal them whenever you get the chance even if they have full health, because if they die, it's all up to you now, if you die, it's all up to them now, and if you both die, it's all over. Stronger offensive classes like Heavies, Soldiers, Demomen and Pyros are others you want to keep alive, as they are better at killing the enemy and keeping you alive. Finally, Scouts, Engineers, Snipers and Spies should rarely be healed. If they're about to die, it's okay to take a little time out of your day to heal them for bit as long as you switch between him and your original healing target. However, if a Sniper or undisguised Spy just charges into the enemy team as if were a Pyro or Heavy, do not follow them. It should be evident that this player has no idea what they're doing and deserves to die anyways (Note: don't bite yourself if you let a teammate die because he overextended, remember that your survivability comes first and if you didn't save someone from dying because they went somewhere that you determined as way too dangerous, you aren't at fault).

• When out of combat: When your out of combat such as traveling to the frontlines or simply having a small break before the next team fight begins your are going to follow another heal order. There is obviously no combat happening around you so the heal order which dictates that you should heal whoever is engaged in a fight falls out of the water here. According to this new heal order you heal the person who is going to leave you the quickest. For example, lets say that you, Scout and a Heavy are traveling to the frontlines. There is no combat around you yet, so using this non-combat heal order you are going to want to heal the Scout first, this is because the Scout is a flank class meaning when he reaches the front lines he should separate from you and go and do his own thing somewhere behind the enemy lines. Since the Scout is about to leave you soon, you should heal him first so that he doesn't have to spend his time looking for health packs instead of doing his job, meanwhile, the Heavy is going to stick around with you for a bit longer giving you enough time to heal him up before you find a new healing target and combat begins.

• Crit heals: "Critical healing" is a hidden stat built into all of the medi guns, an important mechanic which the Medic has at his disposal. The stock Medi Gun heals at a rate of +24 health per second, or +24 h/s for short. However, if a player hasn't taken damage in the last ten seconds, the heal rate of the Medi Gun starts linearly increasing over time, ramping up to a total of +72 h/s (Which is triple of the usual +24 h/s!) for that player only (if a player hasn't taken damage for 10 seconds and you start healing them for the first time since then, the rate of the Medi Gun starts at +72 h/s for that player). The Crit heals allow Medics to be able to heal both the players at the front lines and the ones in the back. Theoretically, a Medic can heal a patient who is currently in a fight, meanwhile another injured player who is not in direct combat can patiently wait behind the Medic. When the Medics original patient has won the fight he was participating in, the Medic can turn around and very quickly heal up the injured player who has been waiting behind the Medic for more than ten seconds allowing his Crit heals to activate thus making the Medic heal him up super fast. As you can see, Medics can use the Crit heals to execute the "combat" heal order and then quickly heal up the teammates who have been waiting for his attention. Another thing about the Crit heals is that they apply to freshly spawned teammates too, this means that if you see a teammate coming out of spawn, you can, for a brief moment, stop healing the patient you were already healing and quickly overheal the freshly spawned player to 150% of his max health using Crit heals.

• Additional tips: Here are some more tips and tricks you can use to improve your healing and save more teammates:
  • Overheal: Overheal is an important aspect when playing Medic. Overhealing is an act where you give more health to a player that is already at full health, thus buffing him up to 150% of his normal health. In most cases, you don't have time for overhealing as you would prioritize healing low health players first, but if your team's health is all caught up and mostly full, you can focus on buffing them before the next fight rolls around in order to give them all an advantage (You of course do this by following the non-combat heal order and by overhealing the players who are going to leave you the fastest). Overheals work best in combination with Crit heals, as mentioned before, you can use Crit heals to quickly oveheal a player and prepare him for combat.
  • Communication: Just like with survivability, communication is also important when it comes to maximizing your healing potential. Injured teammates can tell you where they are so that you can go over to them and heal them up instead of running around the map, wasting time searching injured players. Your teammates can also tell you when they are able to receive Crit heals so that you don't have to keep track of that. You can also tell your team when to play safe because you are temporarily retreating out of an area and won't be able to heal them.
  • Utilizing other sources of health: Sometimes, a Medic just needs a little help with making sure that his team is alive and healthy. Your 24 h/s in the grand scheme of things is very slow and it often takes up to 10 seconds to fully heal a player, meaning that sometimes just one Medic might not cut it. It's always a good idea to have a Dispenser or another Medic on your team to spread the workload of making sure that your team is healthy, let alone still alive.

ÜberCharge

ÜberCharge is the Medic's most powerful ability, and is one of the most horrifying tide-turners to pull from your sleeve. A well-timed ÜberCharge can singlehandedly wipe an entire group of enemies, prevent them from passing through a choke point and keep them from taking control of an area. However, ÜberCharge can only be used once your ÜberCharge meter is full (which in most cases takes around 40 seconds to a minute of healing); therefore it is very valuable to you and your team.

ÜberCharge effectiveness

• The stock Medi Gun's ÜberCharge is best used on Soldiers, Pyros, Demomen, and Heavies due to their high-damage output allowing them to make short work of the enemy team. Scouts are also a surprisingly effective ÜberCharge target, as the complete invincibility the stock ÜberCharge provides negates the Scout's main downside of low maximum health.
• The Kritzkrieg's ÜberCharge works well on Soldiers and Demomen, as crit-boosted explosive weapons can potentially demolish an entire enemy position with only a few well-aimed shots, as each shot can deal up to over 300 damage. Pyros can similarly damage multiple enemies due to the Flame Thrower's ability to damage multiple enemies at once, but their short effective range combined with the Kritzkrieg's complete lack of damage protection puts both you and the Pyro at a higher risk of taking lethal damage, makes this less effective than other options. Heavy's already-high maximum health helps with the Kritzkrieg's main downside of not providing full invincibility, and since critical hits do not have damage falloff, the Minigun's normally-short range is greatly extended, making the Heavy a threat to almost every enemy within their line of sight.
• The Quick-Fix's ÜberCharge should be treated as a less powerful stock ÜberCharge, with the additional benefit of full knockback immunity. Heavies work best with the Quick-Fix ÜberCharge due to their high maximum health increasing the amount of damage they can absorb and their slow movement speed making them vulnerable to knockback.
• The Vaccinator's ÜberCharges, due to their quick charge speed and the ability to store up to four, should be used on teammates in combat as needed to keep them alive. Alternatively, you can use all four charges on one teammate to make an offensive push, but it is better to reserve a stock ÜberCharge due to the Vaccinator only providing partial resistance to one damage type.

Über tracking

Über tracking is an act of trying to predict the enemy Medic's Übercharge. Über tracking is an important skill to have for a Medic as knowing the enemy Medics Über can help you make future predictions about incoming enemy pushes. For example, if you know that the enemy Medic has a fully charged Kritzkrieg and you only have a half charged default Über, you can expect that the enemy Medic will probably try and make a Über push soon so you'll need to play safe in order for you to not get caught (and killed) by it. It's the same in reverse, if you have a Kritzkrieg with 100% Über and the enemy Medic is running the Medi Gun for which you know that it isn't fully charged yet, then you understand that if you were to execute a kritz Über push the enemy Medic would not be able to retaliate and would probably be caught out. To Über track, simply use your own Über percentage as a reference to how much the enemy Medic has Über. When the round begins, you and the enemy Medic will spawn at the same time which means that you will start healing at the same time. Since you both have the exact same job (to heal your team and build Über), you can assume that you both should have around the same percent of Über within your first life; once you build Über, the enemy Medic most likely has it built as well. If you happen to die before deploying Über, assume that the enemy Medic will have full Übercharge by the time you respawn or make it back to the front lines (it takes 40 seconds to build 100% Übercharge from scratch, and most respawn times take around 20 seconds. Therefore, your enemy Medic will have, at the very least, 50% Über ready and waiting).If the enemy Medic were to die you simply wait until he respawns (you can know when he has respawned by using the mini hud at the top of your screen which tells you which teammates and enemies are alive and which are currently dead) and then when he has respawned you start counting up from 0 to 40 second, once you had reached 40 seconds you can assume that he has Über since 40 seconds is the time it takes to build an Übercharge. Keep in mind that certain outliers may be introduced, such as the use of the Ubersaw or the Vita-Saw, and they can skew these predictions greatly. Be wary of what weapon your rival Medic may be using, and play with caution.