Crit Heals and How They Apply to You

Crit heals are an integral part of gameplay that almost no one in the public scene knows how to take advantage of and use. When used properly, they are truly the key to a successful defense. I cannot stress enough how important they are to the gameplay of the entire team. This guide seeks to illuminate you on how crit heals work.

What are crit heals?

"Crit heals" does not refer to random crits, nor does it reference the Kritzkrieg exclusively. "Crit heals" is the term used for a mechanic of the Mediguns: they heal faster depending on how recently the target was damaged. This is to allow the Medic to quickly restore his team's health bars while not being an unstoppable force with an actively battling pocket. If a Heavy restored 72 to 100 health per second even while actively taking damage, it would be far too powerful.

That being said, pacing - especially in competitive - revolves around the critical heal rate of the team's Medic, which can contribute to a successful defense or offense.

Simply put, crit heals can be explained like this (image credit to Rakin! of the amazing "Becoming a Great Medic" guide. Read it here.


This is the graph for the Quick-Fix. Its basic rate, from 0 to 10 seconds after a target has taken any kind of damage, is 33 health points per second. Simply put, a Heavy at this rate would reach full health in 9 seconds if he started at 1, having just taken damage. That's not that great.

Once you reach about 12.5 seconds after damage, the healing rate is faster still, at about 66 health per second. A Heavy at this rate would reach maximum health in just 4.5 seconds. Not bad, but we can do better.

Finally, at 15 seconds, you hit the Quick-Fix's maximum heal rate: 100 points per second. A Heavy can be fully healed in just three seconds with this. It's a very convincing argument for crit heals.

The normal Medigun, Kritzkrieg and Vaccinator are quite similar, but they heal 24 points per second at the minimum rate, 48 at the halfway point, and 72 at maximum.

The Crit Heal Situation

Imagine a battle. For example, a Medic and his team are holding the second point of Barnblitz. Maybe Hoodoo's 2-1 point. They have a long, narrow choke ahead of them, through which the attacking team is consistently attacking. They have dispenser, medic and teleporter support, so they can hold this location for a long time if need be. You are in a fairly constant firefight between the power classes of each team, as well as other combat-ready classes such as the scouts, snipers and engineers.

The situation here is fairly reliant on crit heals. You should send a few people out at a time so that you have two to three fifteen-second cycles, depending on how aggressive the enemies are being. For example, if you have one engineer, one sniper and one medic in a 12v12 pub game, you should send the other nine out in cycles of 3-5.

The theory behind this is that, every 12 to 15 seconds, you can heal up the wounded players (who are probably still capable of fighting, since they've ideally been healed by the dispensers) and they will take their place on the front lines. This is much quicker and more efficient than trying to heal everyone at once. If you do that, you will almost certainly lose many more players than you would otherwise, since all of them are inclined to keep fighting until they die.

Of course, this is much easier to explain in a linear format, since the above is more restricted than it really is.

We start out in a scenario like the one above, with four players - a Heavy, two Soldiers and a Scout - defending. You are actively keeping them healed. The standard threshold where you can go heal another target is about half of their maximum health, for most classes; however, this is flexible depending on who you are healing. When a bulkier class reaches about 100 health, that's typically the time for them to head out of the fight and use a dispenser (which are not affected by crit heals) to heal up before you can give them the boost in another 10 to 15 seconds. When they do this, hopefully another class who has been waiting in the wings can rejoin the fight, at least temporarily. Then, since they have not taken damage recently, you can buff them up and begin the cycle again.

Crit heals in the rollout (Demoman and Soldier)

Remember that any kind of damage - including fall or self-inflicted damage - will reset the crit heal timer. You really don't want this to happen! As such, before you jump out with your bombs, let the medic heal you. You need to be at high health to be able to explosive jump and reach the front lines in one piece, and the medic cannot do that nearly as fast if you are already wounded.

Soldiers, you have another option available to you in the form of the Escape Plan. A common Soldier rollout is to damage yourself heavily and run with the Scout(s) to the front lines, where the crit heals can be taken advantage of by your medic. Be aware, however, that if too many soldiers do this the medic will be overloaded when they reach the front lines.

Crit heals on bulkier classes (Pyro, Demo, Soldier, Heavy)

As one of the core combat classes of the team, you are capable of sustaining a little more damage than your teammates. Use this to your advantage. If you fall too fast, a Medic will be forced out of the cycle of crit heals. Hope to live at least 10 seconds before reaching your minimum "safe" health.

For reference, that point is around 100 health. This is when you should get a small buff to rejoin the fight. It's auspicious because that is the point where grenades can one-shot you, and most other explosives will put you out of commission if not outright kill you.

If you are truly forced to keep fighting under 100 health for whatever reason, you are in trouble; you must put dodging above damage and make sure you're still alive.

Demomen and particularly Pyros have an important job: keeping damage away from your teammates. This is easiest accomplished by keeping projectiles away with the airblast, but can also be done by delaying attacks with well-placed pills and stickies. This isn't as important as not dying, but it's certainly quite useful for when the going gets tough.

As a Heavy, you have access to the Sandvich, a healing device that is not affected by crit heals. You can use that in a pinch to help out your medic, at the cost of momentary decreased DPS.

Soldiers can rely on their banners to give their team some time; the Battalion's Backup is particularly effective in this scenario.

Crit heals on lighter classes (Scout, Engie, Sniper)

The lighter classes take damage much less often than the assault classes, making their crit heals much more frequent.

All the same, they can all benefit from some nice crit heals, particularly overheal: a Scout needs it if he is to dive into a crowded choke, an Engineer could use it to either fight or keep his buildings maintained under spam, and a Sniper can use it to survive a quickshot from the enemy's sniper - a huge thing in the sniper v sniper game.

The Engineer greatly helps the medic's job if he has a teleporter and dispenser up. This way, if the crit heal cycle is broken, the teammates that are not actively in battle can still be prepared to fight with the healing from a dispenser. If the medic is the muscle power of a crit cycle, the engineer is the skeleton.

When the crit heal cycle is broken, and how to break one

Although, if maintained well, a crit heal cycle can be game-winning, one can only be maintained when the enemy is unprepared to deal with one. It is a common occurrence that your crit heal cycle will be broken, and when it does, what do you do?

Well, this is more of a crisis if you're defending than if you're attacking, unless the timer is low on a stopwatch map. If you're attacking, you can just step back and stop pushing for a moment.

However, if you're defending, and the crit heal cycle is broken, you are forced to rely more on your behind-the-front-lines classes: engineers in particular, as well as the classes who are recovering behind your frontline attackers. Whether they can hold this is up to them. You will hopefully be alive to keep healing them, but your defense is now tenuous at best until you can suppress the attackers long enough to re-establish the cycle.

How does one break a crit heal cycle? Well, the easiest way is to deal a ton of damage with Demomen and Soldiers, since you can break a crit cycle quite easily by spamming through the choke and forcing the enemies to retreat faster than they can come out. Another way is to reset the crit heal timer on the recovering enemies by sending spies or other flank classes through to cause scratch damage.

You really have to break the enemy's crit heal cycle to push through very well, without many losses, while also maintaining your own.

Conclusion

As a finisher: I'll say that gameplay in pubs rarely incorporates crit heals in a way that can make a meaningful change to gameplay. Don't expect your team to all go along with it. But you will be able to benefit hugely if you can get even a few teammates to work along with you. This is far larger in competitive.

TL;DR: Have your teammates cycle in and out of the fight to make the most of higher heal rates after about 10 seconds without taking damage.

[prolvlwhaleswipez]

nice guide

[silly billy]

either way, this helped. tnx man.

[Public Enemy #53]

Believe he also did a video on the topic. It centered on the "why Medic won't heal you immediately" effect instead of the cycle, I thought.

[silly billy]

This sounds a lot like arrayseven...

[Maddsie]

This helped quite a bit. I still need to practice, but thanks for this awesome guide. Shame it's not higher up nad f2p nobs can't apreciate it :(