Medic Guide: The Essence of Multitasking

This guide is created to show people the tasks that you need to keep in mind when playing medic in TF2, and to demonstrate in deatails how you can complete them.

Greetings!

If you happened to stumble across my guide, welcome and I hope you'll enjoy the content.

This guide is the second installment of my "Medic Guide" series. In my previous guide, I talked about how you can increase your chance of survival when you are fighting each class in this game. You can go to that guide here.

In this guide, I will be going in-depth about what you, the player, should always keep in mind when playing as a medic.

About me

My name is Punish, and at the time I'm writing this guide I have about 500 hours on the medic class. I have experiences in Casual, 6 vs. 6, and Highlander. If you have read my previous guide, you should have a decent survival skills when encountering other classes. The reason for me to write this guide is to boost your overall performances as medic, to teach you what to do when you are in and out of combat, and to get you a lot more respect from other players.

Disclaimer

• Before I begin, I must say that this guide is entirely based on my point of view, thus the opinions about the tasks are limited. I must also say that there are plenty of medic mains out there that are better than me, so that they may handle these tasks differently than I would. If you have other thing you would like to add to this guide, don't hesitate to leave a comment.
  
  
• These tips can be applied to both casual and competitive (mostly Highlander), but I strongly recommend you to practice these in casual first before attempting competitive to polish your game sense.
  
  
• Throughout this guide, I will only use ONE medic loadout: Crusader's Crossbow, Stock Medi Gun, and Übersaw. I will not talk about the other medic loudouts as they would affect your medic playstyle overall.
  
  
• Some of the clips that I will be using in this guide are dramatizations. Keep in mind that the real games can be much more chaotic than those in the clips, but the ideas are the same.

What is multitasking?

Multitasking means that you perform two or more tasks at the same time. This skill is a necessity for medics because there are multiple things you have to keep track of. I will break down these tasks in a "priority" so you can a deeper understanding of what your duties are. For starters, do the tasks in the order I'm describing it in. As you get more experienced, keep in mind that you are expected to do these tasks simultaneously. On the bright side, you will be good enough to make the judgement calls, as to what your should prioritize over the others.

Now, let's get into the core context: the TASKS you have to accomplish.

Task 1: Positioning and Awareness

The medic is the weakest class in combat, which means that you will die a lot if you don't know what you are doing. Here are some common ways you can be killed:

• Headshots[streamable.com]
  
• Backstabs[streamable.com]
  
• Ambushes[streamable.com]
  
• Sentry guns[streamable.com]
  
• Sticky traps[streamable.com]
  
• Bombs[streamable.com]
  
• Explosive spams[streamable.com]
  
• Flanking scouts[streamable.com]

Although it is frustrating to have so many things that can kill you, most of these deaths can be completely negated by correct positioning and a keen awareness to your surroundings.

Part 1 - Positioning

Positioning is, without a doubt, one of the key things a medic needs to know in order to stay alive longer. It basically means where you stand. A general rule of positioning is that you always want to be behind your teammates giving them heals, and never walk in front of them unless you are under über. This will prevent you from most stupid deaths, especially dying to sentry guns.

As for the exact places you want to stand, you want to be in a place that satisfies these conditions:

• You are safe from being seen by snipers.
  
  This is one of the hardest conditions to fulfill, because as long as one sniper exists in the enemy team, there will be an area where you can be insta-killed by a headshot assuming that you have no overheal. To find a good place that won't let you be seen by snipers, you want to be in a position where the enemy sniper can't see you unless they take an extremely aggressive sightline, which can be easily denied by your teammates.
  
  In other words, you should never PEEK the enemy snipers, you want the enemy snipers to aggressively peek YOU.
  
  
• You are safe from explosive spams.
  
  This condition is rather easy to fulfill. The explosive spams are the most deadly in closed space, which means that they are mostly seen around chokepoints. Therefore, the easiest way to avoid getting spammed by explosives is to stay away from the chokepoints. This allows you to react faster when there are signs of enemies pushing toward you, giving you more room to breathe and back up from those threats.
  
  
• Enemies can't freely drop down on you from above.
  
  This condition is not hard to satisfy, but it's hard to understand. When you are on the low ground, the enemies can jump on you when you are off guard, particularly the enemy spies. This means that you should be in a position such that you can only be jumped by a soldier or a demo, and that the spy can only kill you from one direction: your back.

Here are some examples of positioning that satisfies the conditions above.

Example 1:



This one is on Borneo last as defense. Assuming that we have established a hold, we will examine it based on the three conditions.

• Here are a few places that the sniper can get you from.
  
  
  
  
  
  In both cases, the sniper has to get in an extremely aggressive position just to see you, which is impossible for them because they will get denied easily by your teammates.
  
  
• It is extremely hard for the enemy soldiers and demos to get in and spam you if you have established a hold. If there is a sentry gun like the one shown in the screenshot, most of the explosive spams will be directed towards the sentry gun instead of you.
  
  
• The only possible way for non-explosive enemies to get to you is either from the left side or the right side. This means that the enemy won't be able to kill you from above unless they play soldier or demoman, and the spies can only kill you from the back.

Example 2:



This one is on Badwater third as offense. Assuming that we have established a presence behind the payload, we will now examine it based on the three conditions.

• In order for the sniper to get you in this position, they have to push really far forward, which is impossible because they will be denied by your teammates.
  
  
• Since this point here is basically just a large choke, you will see a lot of explosives flying out from the right side. However, they won't affect you as much since you are staying far away from it. And when you see crit stickybombs/ crit rockets flying out, you should back up immediately because that's most likely a kritzkrieg über.
  
  
• It is very hard for people to jump on you since you are already on a high ground, and you can only be jumped here by soldiers and demos. More importantly, the spies can only get you from behind while you are in this position.

There are many places that are like these, once you understand the three conditions, feel free to explore the maps and find them on your own.

Part 2 - Awareness

Now that you have the knowledge of where to stand, it is time to be more aware of your surroundings. You can do the following:

• TURN AROUND, doing so will greatly reduce the chances of you getting backstabbed by an enemy spy or flanked by an enemy scout.
  
  
• LOOK ABOVE, doing so will let you see incoming bombs from the enemy soldiers/demos.

Make sure you do the two actions above constantly for maximum awareness, it is best to create a routine for yourself. Personally, I turn around once every three seconds and I check the sky immediately after. Once you get this into your habit, you will have the maximum chance of staying alive for your team.

Aside from being aware of your surroundings, you must also be aware of the state of the game. If you see that most of your teammates are dead and they have a lot of players alive, you must leave and fall back to the next point. Do not stop running until you've met up with at least one teammate that can offer you protections. This allows you to be alive for longer and benefit your team with more heals.

Task 2: Healing the team

Now that you have ensured your own safety, it is time to move on to how you can sustain your teammates longer in the front line. Furthermore, you must not only heal one person while letting the others die. This means that establishing that healing people in an order of importance is crucial . Keep in mind that the heal order may vary depending on the situations, but I will try and sum up a "generalized" heal order that you can follow most of the time.

Before I start going into the heal order, I must tell you a very important mechanic of the medi gun: CRIT HEAL.

As we know, a "critical hit" in this game deals 3x more damage than normal. For example, a crit grenade launcher projectile can deal 300 damage instead of the normal 100. Just like that, crit heal can heal your teammates 3x faster than the normal rate, granting you a healing rate of 72 HPS (health per second) instead of the normal 24 HPS. However, the patient must satisfy the following two criteria:

• The patient must wait for at least 15 seconds after they take some form of damage.
  
• During this time, the patient must not receive any form of damage (whether incoming damage, self damage, or fall damage), or else the 15-second timer will reset.

Although it's really hard for the patients to fulfill these criteria. But once they do, they will be able to return to the fight much faster than dying and respawn, especially on defense since the respawn timer is much, much longer than that on offense.

With the crit heal mechanic in mind, we can now proceed to the heal order.

First priority: teammates that are closed by

Your first focus should be on the teammates that are right beside you. In this scenario, your heal order should be like this:

FIRST, HEAL THE DEMOMAN, The demoman is the most powerful class from close to medium range simply because how much damage he can do with his explosives. However, with a base health of 175 he is extremely weak since one quickscope headshot can weaken him enough to be picked off easily by other classes. When he is at the maximum health possible (260), he can be more aggressive and challenge the enemies, even if he is in a sniper sightline.

Usually you want to give your demoman as much attention as possible. The longer he stays alive the more damage he can do. Most of the times you would also want to give your übercharge to the demoman too, but I will cover that in a later task.

SECOND, HEAL THE SCOUT/SOLDIER. Now that your demoman is buffed, it's time to buff the more versatile classes. Both the scout and the soldier have great mobility and versatility in the game, because they can either infiltrate the enemy flank or to protect you if you are being threatened. Buffing these two classes are important because it allows them to absorb more damage from the enemy team, giving them a chance of surviving the encounters when they try to flank or when they are protecting you.

THIRD, HEAL THE HEAVY/PYRO. These two classes are the relatively weak ones because they have slow mobility and their effective range is very limited. However, this makes them great buddies at protecting you. Heavy can deny bombing enemies, flanking scouts, and spies. Pyro can deny explosive spams and spies. Therefore, keeping them buffed is crucial for you to remain in the front line longer.

EVERY OTHER CLASSES COMES AFTER. HOWEVER, THERE ARE SOME EXCEPTIONS:

• If your sniper wants to go into a sniper sightline to challenge the enemy sniper, he immediately has the top priority because that 185 HP allows him to survive a quickscope headshot, giving him more chance to kill the enemy sniper and freeing you from that fear of getting headshotted.
  
  NOTE: If your sniper is running the razorback, he's basically saying that "I don't need your buff to outsnipe the enemy sniper." In this case, you can ignore him, and only attend to him when he's really hurt.
  
  
• If your engineer and his sentry gun are being focus-fired, shift the heals to him. This allows the engineer have more chance of getting out of that situation and build another sentry gun to aid you.
  
  NOTE: This scenario is more common when you are on defense. On offense, the engineer doesn't matter as much, prioritize on the more combative classes such as the demoman and the soldier instead.

Remember that this heal order is only a "general" one. You need to also analyze that who can still remain in the fight and who should back up first and then ask for heals. Most of the time you want to prioritize healing those that can still be actively in combat than those who can't. Use this judgement and build a new heal order from there.

Let's use an example. Consider the scenario here.[streamable.com]

As you walk up to the frontline on defense, there are three players in sight: a heavy, a soldier, and a demoman, and all three of them are really hurt. What should we do here?

Mindset:

There are three heal targets in front of me. Both the soldier and the demoman have emptied out their clips at the enemies, where as the heavy can get to cover and rev up his minigun immediately. Therefore, the best solution here is to first buff up my heavy, allowing the soldier and the demoman to retreat to the backline and reload. After that, I will focus my healing on the soldier, since the demoman will take a significantly longer time to be fully loaded. After healing up both my heavy and my soldier, I can start healing my demoman with crit heals, bringing him back to the fight in an instant.

Here is the execution of the scenario above.[streamable.com]

Another way of executing it is to let both the soldier and the demoman to fall to the backline, fully buff the heavy to 450 HP, and then crit heal the soldier then the demoman. This allows the heavy to tank more damage in the fight but more subject to focus fire because he's the only one on the front line.

Second priority: teammates that are further away

With your teammates that are closed by taken care of, you should start looking around for teammates that are further away from you. Usually they will be doing their own things, but occasionally they will call for a crossbow bolt. The general signals for a crossbow are:

• They are in a place when they can be seen by you but not easily seen by the enemies.
  
• They call for a medic and are standing still.

When you see this, your teammate is crying for help and in need of a burst healing. The crusader's crossbow is perfect since it gives a burst healing from 75 HP up to 150 HP depending on how long the projectile travels. Switch to the crossbow and politely shoot a crossbow bolt at them. This will allow them to be in the fight for longer despite not being close to you.

Although crossbow bolts at a close range can save your three seconds of healing with the medigun at the base rate, it doesn't build über as fast as healing them with the beam. Therefore, you should use medi gun at close range for maximum possible über rate. Use the crossbow at close range only when they are in immediate danger of being finished off.

NOTE: Keep in mind that when you switch from your medi gun to your crossbow and shoot it at a teammate, there's a short period of time where you are forced to focus on the said teammate. This means that in this short period, a good spy can use that window and backstab you.

Task 3: Engaging with über

This task comes up when you have your über ready. However, the execution may vary depending on what side you are playing. We will be exploring how the übercharge should be played out on both offense and defense.

When you are on offense...

The offense here means that your team wants to conduct a push into the enemy team. In other words, you want to break through the enemy team's defense and win the objective. In this case, this is how the übercharge should be played:

• THE PRIMARY TARGET SHOULD BE THE DEMOMAN. Needless to say that an übered demo can wreak havoc on the enemy team, especially if their sentry guns.
  
  
• FLASH YOUR SCOUT OR YOUR SOLDIER AFTER. When the gun goes down, your team will be able to move in freely. In this case, flash the classes with the most offensive capabilities such as the scout and the soldier to apply immediate pressure to the enemy team.

To showcase the points I've mentioned above, I will use an example. Consider the scenario here.[streamable.com]

We are pushing to Upward last with über, and we know that they have a sentry gun but no snipers. What should we do?

Mindeset:

Here I have a demoman and a soldier with me for the push. Based on the über order, I will über the demoman first in hopes of taking down the sentry. After the sentry goes down, I will flash my über on my soldier so that he can go in and get picks.

Here is how the über push is executed[streamable.com]

When you are on defense...

The defense here means you are trying to maintain a hold and deny the enemy team from pushing in. This means that your über should be used to deny the enemy team's advancements, especially if they also have über ready. This is commonly refered to as "über exchange", where the enemy medic pops their übercharge and you use yours in response. In this case, here is how the übercharge should be played:

• THE PRIMARY TARGET SHOULD BE YOUR PYRO. Pyro is not a strong class, but he has a mechanic called "airblast", which can reflect projectiles and blast the enemies backwards. Pairing up with the über, a pyro can completely shut down a push with ease. Therefore, Pyro has the top über priority when you are defending.
  
  
• FLASH YOUR DEMOMAN AND HEAVY TO KEEP THEM ALIVE. Unlike offense, you don't have to focus as much on the scout and the soldier, since they both have the tools to get out of sticky situations due to their mobility. On defense, you want to protect the classes that can deny the enemies the most, which is the heavy and the demoman. Demoman should be alive because he can deal the most damage. Heavy should also be protected because he can't leave the encounters because of his slow speed, and that he can be extremely helpful in post-über fights.

To showcase the points I've mentioned above, I will use an example. Consider the scenario here.[streamable.com]

We are holding Dustbowl last on defense, and we have an engineer and a pyro. We are anticipating that an über demoman push can happen at any time. What do we do?

Mindset:

Our engineer have the wrangler, which should deny most of the demoman's explosives. Since I only have a pyro beside me, the best choice of action is to give my über to the pyro and stop the enemy combo from destroying the engineer's buildings.

Here is how the über exchange is executed[streamable.com]

Aftertalk

Well, this is it. If you have made it this far, thank you for reading through the guide.

I have spent more time on this guide than my previous one, hope that it helped with improving your medic gameplay.

Special thanks to my amazing friends for helping me to record the videos and ApertureBlack for letting me using his server for recording purposes. Be sure to check out his twitch channel as he's the fastest heavy in the world.

Here are some bloopers while I was recording:

The "accidental" airshot[streamable.com]
The spoon[streamable.com]

[cinecitestemuieprimeste]

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[@₾₮-₮0Ʀ©3-₼∆Ĵ3uƦ3]

i play a very aggressive medic that makes house/grave calls; the advantage combining this with awarenes is enemies can be lured with retreats through killboxes/ambushes/away from objectives/more... i also combine wicked dance moves with positioning and healing; helps to have adequate tunes playing, as well.... be very aware of enemy locations and how their positions wave out from their spawns; helps you anticipate their group movements and conceptualize your team's counters--when you communicate ingame you relay your running conclusions--you can sort your team based on where you know and/or predict the enemy will be; medic needs to think with eagle-eye perspective in their mind's eye, on the back burner at all times... overlay this mental map with your tactical fov and shred away..... ahem

[Cade Cunningham]

Amazing guide, amazing-er medic

[AhmedA]

👍

[Joungus]

Cool guide useful if you play medic

[henroo_d]

wow look gary there i am

[Gumbles Goose]

Cheese

[who want smoke with me]

punish gaming

[sam]

YOOO FIRST LETS GOOOO