TF2 Medics check in

So I was playing TF2 the other night and despite my valiant efforts our team still lost the match. I made a comment about how our pyros sucked and was told that I don’t even get to talk since I’m a medic and get hardly any kills. I was deeply wounded by those words, since I believe that the medic is more important for the team then all other player classes. A medic that knows enough to stay back and run away when things get rough and uber often is vital to any offense or defense. Plus the needle gun is great for using over long distances and taking out far away sentries.

Doper medics how much longer are we going to put up with this? Lets stand up and be heard!

I started playing Medic the last couple of weeks and I understand totally. Often I have heard other guys screaming for more Medics constantly when everyone gets wasted before capturing a point. We do have a TF2 thread here that has other players commenting as well, albeit a month old now…I think it’s not zombified yet…add to it if you wish. Welcome aboard, CT.

I think one of the big problems is that gameplay as a good TF2 medic tends to feature long periods of tedium punctuated by short bursts of intense fear: it’s tough to precisely and effectively triage a whole group that’s getting lambasted, and it can be somewhat hairy looking after a command point or another strategic element, but my sessions always seem to boil down to “Glue thyself to the heavy and stand behind him until someone needs a spot heal”, which gets dull after a while.

I played a medic almost exclusively when I played TF2. I tend to be the healer when the option is available though, Cleric in EQ, Priest in WoW, Templar in EQ2. Don’t poo-poo the Pyros though. A good pyro with an ubercharge in confined spaces is a thing of beauty.

Medics suck until they need us. Then they’re crying like little bitches.

Those heavies don’t get half as many kills without a good medic - they don’t heal, so damage is cumulative and it’s easy to wipe as a heavy if you’re not paying attention and don’t have a medic or have a shitty one. I know because I play both depending on the makeup of the team at the time.

When I played medic exclusively, about 90% of the time I was at least in the top 3 of our team. So yeah, medics may not get any kills, but if you’re with a good enough team and healing everybody, you get all of their assists.

(Yes, I was healing everybody fairly, not just the ones who I thought were about to get a kill. It wasn’t my intention to get all the points, it just happened that way)

I saw the other thread but figured us medics deserved our own exclusive one :slight_smile:
Its hard being a medic. You gotta be staying back while building uber, but you can’t be too far back or your team might get overrun. And then there is the overzealous heavy who goes in too deep and gets both of you killed. And the pyros that run away from the enemy just as you punch uber. And of course there is always like 20 spies and scouts screaming for healing as you are trying to keep the heavy who is the only thing between the other team and a capture alive. I actually enjoy seeing people shouting for healing, that means you are good enough to the point where they think that if they shout they might get healed. Whenever I join a newbie server(to instruct and enlighten, not just wrack up points of course) I enjoy seeing my team transition from never using the call medic button to using it too much. We should get paid for doing this.

I only play medics when there are no other medics on the team (it’s rare to see a team win without at least one medic) but I I love medics. No such thing as too many medics on a team. Except for the punk ones that only heals his buddy on vent. But I don’t like playing medics for the same reasons Omi mentioned.

My favourite TF2 moment was seeing a 3-medic chain capping a point in the granary, I think it was.

It was the red team, heading towards the blue’s second-last point. The medics had all been healing heavies and soldiers when a bad set of hits with a sentry took 'em out. One of the soldiers got off a couple of rockets which took out the SG, but died just as he did it. The medics all lived, and all had uber up so they chained, ubered and jumped on point until some other guys came back up to take over. It was a beautiful thing.

I have a story of a game that wasn’t nearly as elegant, but it was still extremely satisfying. I’d been playing for about an hour and a half on a server that rotated through all of the default maps, and since both teams (this was a pick-up game) were extremely good, each match was essentially between the same two 12-person teams. Most of us were cooperating with each other and our strategic abilities seemed to be about the same, so red and blue had each won around 50% of their matches.

Anyway, my team had won on offense in the last several Assault rounds by opening with a fast, extremely aggressive soldier + demo push that was supposed to (and usually succeeded in) steamrolling the defenders before they could establish decent turrets. The other team caught on to our tactics, and so two of our players took to starting each round as scouts, rushing ahead to soften up the defenses, and switching to a medic + heavy combo once they had been killed. This worked ideally for a while, as the scouts raised enough havoc to keep the front line soft enough for our soldier/demo force to stay effective, and if our heavy caught up with the rushing force it was typically because we’d run into a well-guarded area, and the extra firepower really helped break through.

However, the opposing team began to seriously screw with our day: as best I can tell someone had the bright idea of forming a heavy-hunting squad, since a group of three coordinated, depressingly effective players started hanging just behind their defenses, and went straight for our heavy every time he tried to break through. We didn’t catch on to this tactic for a few minutes, which was more than enough time for the other team to build a crapload of third-level turrets and related nastiness around their final command point. We only had one medic-heavy combo at the time, and after several failed uber-rushes someone on our end suggested an extremely mean strategy: our medic-heavy team continued to spawn, uber, rush, die, and spawn, partly to keep the other team from scouting ahead and mainly to make them think that we didn’t have any better plan than “Keep ubering, maybe it’ll work *this *time”.

What they didn’t realize is that while that single medic-heavy team was acting as a distraction, eight of our remaining ten players had formed four additional medic-heavy teams and had fully charged their uber. (Our last two players had changed to spies, which becomes important in a second.)

When we finally had everything set up our decoy squad charged and hit their uber. A few seconds before it was due to wear out two of our remaining four teams stepped in and ubered, acting as a shield that was (hopefully) intended to keep our now-vulnerable decoy from taking more damage than his medic could handle. Once the newcomers were vulnerable we repeated step 2 with our last two teams, leaving five heavies and five medics advancing on a defensive line that had, by this point, been largely reduced to rubble.

The greatest part, of course, was the fact that our spies had both cloaked and sprinted to the last command point when the last of the turrets had been taken down. Our heavies had, by this point, gotten close enough for their guns to reach the command point, so all that was left was keeping the squishies alive long enough to register the capture. :cool:

I’ll usually play Medic if there aren’t any others on the team. It’s nice to actually get some gratitude from the more thoughtful players. The ungrateful ones are not so much fun to be on a team with.

I’ve never had any issues with anyone hassling me for how I play my medic. Or any of the classes, to be honest.

My biggest problem is spies and snipers. I hate friggin’ snipers.

I had a guy a couple of days ago who was hogging the voice chat complaining in a grating voice that no one ever ubered him. It was somewhat grating, and I started going out of my way not to (childish, I know, but it’s a game so hell with it).

Ahh, I’ve never had that problem. In that case I’d just chuck him on /mute and go about my business. If he came by whilst an uber was up he might get it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to do so.

Most of the guys on the AU servers are pretty good. It’s almost always PUGs and whether we’re winning or losing, everyone seems to have a pretty good time and a decent attitude about it (lots of “GG guys” whether we’ve won or lost).