Understanding the Quick-Fix and its Utilities

Everyone hates the Quick-Fix. They hate using it and they hate being healed by medics who use it. The reason is that few people understand how to use the Quick-Fix and treat it like the Kritzkrieg or standard Medigun.

In this guide I'll explain how to PROPERLY use the Quick-Fix and how you can rock the other team with it.

Quick Fix Stats and What They Mean

From the TF2 Wiki:

+40% heal rate
+25% ÜberCharge rate
ÜberCharge increases healing by 300% and grants immunity to movement-impairing effects
Share explosion force from patients.
Move at the speed of any faster heal target.
-50% Overheal

The heal rate is the best thing for your team. The standard medigun heals at 24hp/s while the Quick Fix heals at 34hp/s. For you, this means that you can top off a patient's health faster and move onto another patient sooner. This makes the Quick-Fix better for healing patients:
-Under fire
-Retreating
-On Fire
-Bleeding
-Rocket/Sticky Jumping to objective*

Your goal for healing with the Quick-Fix is not to push forward, but to act as a fallback. You heal patients faster so that they can go right back to the front lines without having to run all over the map for a medkit. Do not pocket patients with the Quick-Fix, you are better off with any of the other mediguns for pocketing** and you are more useful healing the majority of the team.

*Situational due to the behavior of your patient. This is assuming you are pocketing your patient, which I will get into later.

**Depends on the class. Classes with larger amounts of health are better off with mediguns that give the health buff.

The increased Ubercharge rate is the same rate as the Kritzkrieg. It builds up really fast if you do your job correctly, and you can pop ubers pretty often. The main benefit to this is that it opens up your melee slot to something other than the Vita-Saw and the Ubersaw, as Uber is a lot easier to gain. I personally prefer the Solemn Vow.

The Ubercharge is the distinguishing factor of the Quick-Fix. I will delve into it in another section.

The shared explosion force was not originally a part of the Quick-Fix, but was added in as a buff. It also makes using the Quick-Fix a lot more fun and a lot more deadly with the right teamwork. Basically, if your patient rocket jumps and you are healing him, you will recieve the rocket jump in the same direction as your patient. I will cover more of this in another section. This allows you to fly with your patient, but is very hard to utilize because RJ'ing is a very independent activity and theres normally a gap between the skill levels of you and your patient in RJ'ing. You also fly farther than your patient because you are faster than them.

The speed bonus of your patient is one of the greatest perks of the Quick-Fix. You will mostly feel this effect from Scouts, but you still recieve the bonus from whipped players, eyelander demoknights, and even charging demoknights. The best way to understand this perk is thinking of the Quick-Fix as a dog leash. Latch onto a Scout and hold on tight to keep the speed boost. This and the shared explosion force can get you to the front lines a lot quicker.

Recently the Quick-Fix was buffed from no Overheal to only 50% Overheal. Now you can survive quick-headshots during ubers! This buff now makes the Quick-Fix a viable choice for mediguns.

The Uberheal-The bread and butter of the Quick-Fix

You are ready to pop your uber. You call your team to charge and activate your uber. Your pocket soldier gets backstabbed and you die immediately from the Sentry shooting your unhealed ass. The rest of the team subsequently dies by being sentry food since you never destroyed it.

The problem here is that you treated your Quick Fix Ubercharge-which I will refer to as the Uberheal for this guide-like the standard medigun's invulernable Ubercharge. Shame on you.

There are four main parts to the Uberheal:
+300% Heal speed for BOTH you and your patient.
You are IMMUNE to knockback via explosions and airblast.
Since you are not invulnerable, you can cap points, intel, push the cart, ect.
Since you are not invulernable, you can still DIE.

The Uberheal basically turns you and your patient into damage sponges. This allows you to push forward into an area full of enemies or a sentry nest with your patient. However, your patient will die if the damage he is taking in is greater than the heal rate. An example scenario would be a Soldier taking on a Sentry nest. A heavy is shooting at him, the level 3 sentry is loading him up with bullets, and the pyro guarding the nest is torching his ass. He is most likely going to die, but you can prevent this! As long as you are healing a patient, you recieve the 300% heal rate. With the standard invuln Ubercharge, usually medics will rush in front of their patient to soak up sentry knockback so their patient can get close to the sentry. With the Uberheal, you can rush in front of the sentry (as long as you are healing someone) and help split the damage, or run in front of your patient to distract the other team from the Pyro flaming everyone.

Recall that the Quick-Fix is best utilized for the entire team. The above scenario is assuming you have a competant powerhouse that can take on a sentry nest. If you lack a powerhouse class, or you have a lot of teammates with not a lot of skill, the Quick-Fix should be used to heal all of your team mates that are pushing. All you do is rapidly change targets while ubered to those who are damaged and they are topped off in less than a second. Your Ubercharge % will drain faster, but it is like you are Uberhealing two patients at once! Note: you can do this with the standard invuln Ubercharge to make two players invulnerable at once. This even earns you an achievement.

The immunity to knockback arguably makes the Uberheal better than the standard Ubercharge. Pyros can't airblast you away from your target and Sentries can't knock you away from the nest. This allows you to concentrate on your objective, be it destroying a sentry nest or capping a point.

This final, MOST IMPORTANT perk of the Ubercharge is what allows teams to win matches. With the standard Ubercharge, you cannot cap points or push the cart. If you try grabbing the intel you lose your invulnerability and will most likely be killed by a Sentry. However, with the Uberheal, you are an immovable, solid threat to any team too cocky to remember that they are playing ctf_turbine and not dm_mariokart. Case in point:

Two sentries, a demo, a heavy, and a pyro. The Uberheal didn't bat them an eye. The Uberheal allows you to complete the map objective in the face of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of resistance. You can't be airblasted away, and you are incredibly hard to kill. If you are trying to grab intel, just pop the uber, walk in, grab it, and walk out. If you have a scout you can do it in less time since you both share a high speed. If you are capping a point, grab a pyro and just push anyone who tries to defend it off. Or get a Fists of Steel heavy to help soak up the damage from the 3 sentries who are guarding the point. The other team only has two options to counter this: 1-Kill you 2-Stand on the point where your patient cuts them in half with their Half-Zatoichi or Minigun. Different classes work better for different objectives, which I will cover in the next section.

Unfortunately, you can still die while in the Uberheal. Here's a list of things both you AND your patient can easily die to.
-Stickies-2 stickies can kill you if you are directly on them
-High DPS (see 4th paragraph)-Try to avoid Jarate and nests with 3+ sentries
-Backstabs-Your patient is usually too focused on killing stuff to watch his back
-Headshots-Usually not a problem if you run around
-Axetinguisher Pyros-While they can't push you away, puff and sting still works
-Crits-Crockets are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Remember, you only retain the 300% heal if you are healing someone. Keep your patient on a leash!

Patients and Healing Priority

Due to the perks of the Quick-Fix, healing certain classes earns you benefits. Here I will cover good pockets and what you should be thinking of when healing them.

Scouts:
Scouts are the preferred patient when not in the front lines. Healing them earns you a speed boost, which becomes even faster if they use Crit-A-Cola or the Baby Face Blaster. Since they have such little health, they fill up really quickly. Latch onto a Scout to reach the front lines, get to another patient, retreat, or grab a health kit in a fraction of the time it would normally take. If you see a Scout crying out your name, take the few seconds to refill his health.
On the front lines, however, Scouts can be a nuisance. They die easily due to their low health, and the lack of the heal buff doesn't help either. Most Scouts know where the medkits are in each map, and will normally run to the health kits instead of a medic since medics should heal the combat classes and Scouts can reach the medkits faster. This leads to Scouts screaming for a medic while retreating but don't bat you an eye as they burn to death a foot from the closest medkit. Even if you do manage to heal a Scout, they will take your healthkit even if you are about to die because that's how Scout is normally played. And it sucks.
Pocketing Scouts is a risky but rewarding decision. Since Scouts aren't used to being pocketed by a medic, they tend to forget about your health when they encounter an enemy. Scouts fight by running around in circles to avoid fire, which makes them pretty hard to keep healing as they weave in and out of your healing range. Also, you will lose him if your healing beam breaks while he goes around a corner. You should remember that you have the same speed as your Scout, so use the Scout playstyle of running around your enemy in circles to avoid fire.
Scouts are best ubered for retrieving intel and "ninja caps". The intel one is self-explanatory, but ninja caps are caps where there is no defence on a control point. You and the Scout will make 3x on the control point, capping it pretty quickly. But on guarded control points, pick a class with more health and firepower, as the enemy team will hop onto the point to stop you.

Soldiers:
Soldiers are good pockets regardless of what medigun you are using. The only thing the Quick-Fix adds is that you can Rocket Jump with your Soldier. Doing this requires some teamwork and preferably a mic, but allows you to follow your Soldier to a lot more places. You can jump with him to the attic in the first stage of Goldrush, or wait in ambush on Blu's forward spawn in Gorge. The only thing you should be wary of is fall damage from Rocket Jumping.

Demomen:
Same rules apply as with Soldier, but Demomen can Sticky Jump much farther than Soldier can Rocket Jump. On Badwater, have your Demo lay down two stickies at the right Blu spawn gate. At the start of the round, jump with him behind the front lines to get to their spawn. Now your demo has a medic to help him spawn camp!

One more note: you will be loved by your patients if you help them when they use the Jumper weapons. While its not exactly practical, its pretty fun helping your patient jump across the map and shovel someone to death.

Heavies:
Heavies are usually your bff as a medic and make great pockets. Same rules apply as without the Quick-Fix, but be wary that your Heavy won't start out with 450 health when he charges into battle.
Heavies are the best option for capping guarded points and pushing the cart. They soak up damage easily and have high DPS for anyone who comes near them.

Pyros:
Pyros are alright pockets as long as they know what they're doing. Ubering a Pyro isn't as practical with the Uberheal simply because everyone in the group will be running and shooting the Pyro as he charges toward them, so he might die more often.
Airblast makes Pyros pretty useful for capping points and pushing the other team away from the cart, though nothing beats killing your enemies.

Medics:
Heal medics that are on the front line. If their patient dies, the medic is left extremely vulnerable, and nothing is worse than dying with 97% uber. Also try to heal medics that just popped their own Uber. A medic might leave his invuln with only 50 health and a Kritz medic is still wide open to be killed.

Engineers:
Same rules as without the Quick-Fix. Help them survive while thier buildings are under fire.

Spies/Snipers.
Top them off and leave them alone.

Final Thoughts

The Quick-Fix is a weapon that requires a lot of TEAMWORK to be used properly. Use a mic to communicate.

If your team does not have a medic, do not use the Quick Fix. An Ubercharge is more important to your teams success than an Uberheal and is much easier to understand what to do. The Quick-Fix is an amazing supplement to a team that already has a Uber/Kritz medic as it relieves the one medic from having to focus on healing and pushing.

Focus on the objective, not your enemies.

Use good judgment on who to heal and uber, and when to push.

I have not tried the Quick Fix in MvM. If you have any suggestions as to how to use it there, please post below. I will try using it myself and posting results here later.

[AODqw97 (50+)]

Been playing TF2 a very long time but only just now venturing into playing medic. Wanted to know more about the different media guns and I know feel considerably more informed. Fantastic article well written, thank you.

[Chips (✿◕‿◕)]

I love this guide! Quick-Fix is my favourite medigun due to its many perks (fast heal and Uber build rates, resistance from knockbacks, mirror jump) but I didn't know you can cap points and capture intels while Ubered until I read this guide. I'll make sure to try that next time I play Quic-Fix Medic!

Also, I agree with what you said in the guide; the Quick-Fix should be used as a supplement rather than as an offensive tool. Since it got buffed, I've seen many players treating it like the default Medigun, which usually ends up in failure. So, this guide is very welcome, it helps people understand the Quick-Fix better so that they can actually use it to benefit themselves and their teammates. Thank you for your time and effort writing this guide! :)

[Chara the Explorer]

Quickfix got buffed! Update this guide quicksharpish please!

[Healer]

Make your guide really good looking with this =D
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=149154975

[atomicfurry]

@Asura-No I do not. But I could name mine that if you could tell me why I would :v

@Dedemaru-I dont think the Overdose needs a guide really. If I wrote a battle medic guide I might include it, but I don't see why it needs its own guide. The QF needed one because a lot of people dont know how to use it and because the medigun is the main purpose of the medic.

[Hat wearing Bacteriophage]

At mvm you can make the quickfix overheal and it can rapidly recover a fleeing teammate. Upgrade both healspeed and uber speed to be a healer that heals a teammate in a blink of an eye.

[Dedemaru]

Do you plan to make a guide for the Overdose?

[Supev]

You should heal sniper all the time.

[sigma female]

quick fix is awesome

[Captain Jack Miouf]

Thanks billy mays now i can be as good as you!