A Guide to The Vaccinator

I love the Vaccinator. It is my favorite weapon out of all of them in TF2, and I use it at every opportunity I get. After the recent changes in the Tough Break Update, I believe the Vaccinator became truly equal to the other Medi Guns in terms of strength. However, due to its complex nature and preconcieved notions, many people do not know how to use it effectively. I consider myself to be well-versed in its use, and so I want to share my knowledge with the TF2 community.

This guide will go over why the Vaccinator is a good Medi Gun, when it is a good choice to equip, and how to use it, as well as how to improve at it. This guide will be most useful to those who play Medic, adding a fourth option to their rerpertoire and improving, but it can be useful to players of all classes as it will help them understand what the Vaccinator is asking of them.

Introduction

The Vaccinator is a seriously underused weapon, for many reasons. For almost four years, its ben regarded as a garbage weapon by most of the TF2 community, and only relatively recently has it been changed. This only created further confusion, as a weapon that was primarily used to counter a cheater no longer did even that, so people regarded it as useless. The Vaccinator is complex, and its use requires a Medic to have good awareness, game sense, and understanding of TF2's mechanics, but after the Tough Break Update, I believe it is now a viable alternative to the other three Medi Guns.

Youtuber and Medic Man ArraySeven recently released a video about the Vaccinator, and I've seen a huge influx of people using it afterwards, and having no clue on how to use it properly. Array's video said a lot about the benefits of the Vaccinator and why he's come to enjoy it, but it said little on how to actually use it and when it's a good option. I'm also a Medic main, and I use the Vaccinator as my primary Medi Gun. I know how to use it, and I want other Medics to know how to use it as well.

My goal with this guide is to improve the understanding of the Vaccinator so that the option is there, even if its unique playstyle is not your thing, and so that non-Medics can better understand what the Vaccinator does for them and how to adjust to a Medic using it.

Stat Breakdown

In this section, I will showcase the attributes of the Vaccinator and discuss why they are there and what they do compared to other Medi Guns. If you feel like you have a good grasp of what the mechanics of the Vaccinator are, feel free to skip ahead.

Press your reload key to cycle through resist types.

This feature is what makes the Vaccinator so complex. Let's call the damage type you are currently selective your "active resistance". You cycle through damage types in the order of Bullet, Explosive, and Fire, then back to Bullet, where the cycle continues. Your active resistance defines the effect of other features of the Vaccinator.

Keep in mind, the Vaccinator resists three different damage types, but there are other damage types that players can deal to each other. In addition to bullet, explosive, and fire damage, there is also melee damage and critical damage. Yes, the extra damage from critical hits has its own damage type. When a Sniper gets an uncharged headshot, he normally deals 50 bullet damage plus 100 critical damage, for a total of 150.

+67% Übercharge rate
-33% Übercharge rate on Overhealed patients

The overheal rate is what defines the Vaccinator. Not only does it build Über at ludicrous speeds, its Übercharge meter is subdivided into four separate sections, each of which is popped separately, and you can start popping them at 25% charge.

To put this in perspective, the Vaccinator fully charges in 24 seconds of healing non-overhealed patients, while the stock Medi Gun fully charges in 40 seconds. Even if you're healing overhealed patients, it will take you 32 seconds to fully charge the Vaccinator. At the maximum charge time, the Vaccinator beats the stock's maximum charge time by 8 seconds. No matter what, you're going to be charging faster than the stock Medi Gun. With your charge meter divided up into four mini-bars, it takes you 6 seconds to be able to provide a real advantage to your team, and even if it isn't that good compared to other Übers, the sheer amount of them is what makes the difference.

While healing, provides you and your target with a constant 10% resistance to the selected damage type.

You passively resist one-tenth of your active resistance's damage type. This may seem small, but TF2 is a numbers game. I'll discuss the effect this 10% resist has later, but it is significant.

Also, there is a hidden stat involved with resisting damage in this way. When your patient (NOT YOU) takes damage of your active resistance type, your Ubercharge rate increases by an unknown but noticeably large amount. This allows you to build Uber even faster, and rewards you for protecting your allies from damage. It's important to note that this feature looks for instances of damage, not damage amount. This means that steady streams of damage like minigun fire and afterburn build your Uber much faster than a rocket or pill.

-66% Overheal build rate

Here it is. The penalty that makes everyone hate the Vaccinator. Overheal is incredibly important, and is the primary reason why Medics are important to a team. Being able to take more damage even without the Medic around makes life much easier for everyone and is vital to strong pushes and defenses. The Vaccinator can overheal, but the fact that it does so slowly and loses a portion of its increased Uber charge rate when doing so means you're probably better off ignoring overheal and healing only those that are hurt. That said, once everybody is topped off, there's no reason why you shouldn't overheal people. It'll take a few more seconds, but you can do it, and you'll still be building Uber quickly. The stock and Kritzkrieg are great at overhealing, and the Quick-Fix uses its increased healing rate to make up for its decreased overheal amount, so what does the Vaccinator do? The Vaccinator uses its ever-ready Ubers to make up for slower overheal.

Übercharge provides a 2.5 second resistance bubble that blocks 75% base damage and 100% crit damage of the selected type to the Medic and Patient.

All of the Vaccinator's stats are focused on getting these beautiful bubbles of destruction. The Vaccinator's Übers are very different from the Übers of other Medi Guns. First of all, you have three different types of Über, one for each of the damage types you can resist, and they stack. You can put them all on one patient or spread them out to several different people at once, but you will have all of them stacked on you. Second, the Über "bubbles" you give people are not dependent on you healing them; if you Über someone and stop healing them, the person you Übered keeps their bubble for the full 2.5 seconds. This is, in my opinion, the most important feature of the Vaccinator's mini-Übers, as you can protect and heal multiple allies and don't have to be close to the people pushing with your Über.

Now, let's look at what the Über bubbles actually do. Instead of "blocking 75% of that damage type", imagine the effect as "divide damage of that type by 4". This makes it much easier to understand how much the damage is actually being reduced by. One pill? 25 damage. Scout meatshot? 26 damage. Not only that, but all critical damage associated with damage of that type is ignored. So an uncharged headshot deals 13 damage to you and anyone you're Übering when your bullet resist Über is active, and a fully charged headshot would deal 38 damage. Thirty. Eight. Damage. Three stickies, detonated right under your feet? With explosive resist Über, that dealt about 90 damage at max. That sucked, but you lived. Now we can see where the Vaccinator shines; it can neutralize burst damage, which is something no other Medi Gun can do. A sticky trap with enough stickies in it can kill even a fully overhealed Heavy, regardless of how many Medics are healing him. But just one Vaccinator Medic and six seconds of their time means those stickies are almost worthless. Not even the Quickfix can outheal instantaneous damage, but the Vaccinator counters it in stride, and can keep you and your teammates alive in situations where nothing short of a full stock Übercharge could have saved them otherwise. And you can do it again and again and again.

Lets change the math again. Instead of dividing damage by 4, imagine the Vaccinator instead multiplies your target's health by 4 against a certain damage type. With the explosive resist Über, it would take a Demoman five pills to kill a Scout. That means he has to reload at least once before the Scout dies, giving the Scout ample time to get close and two-shot him. By popping a bullet and explosive resist bubble on a Heavy, you can give him what is essentially 1200 HP for a short time. Effectively giving your patients a larger pool of health for 2.5 seconds allows you to get around the overheal penalty by making your patients harder to kill. That, on top of how difficult it is to pick you off, means your team simply has more sustain than the enemy team as the heals keep flowing and your team stays alive.

Something of note is the effectiveness of damage resist when combined with healing. I'll use grenades as the example since the math is easier. Normally, a pill deals 100 damage, and so it takes the stock Medi Gun a little over 4 seconds to out-heal. When the Vaccinator cuts that damage into a fourth, it can out-heal that damage in just over 1 second. The Vaccinator's Übers not only increase the value of the patient's health, but also the value of your healing.

As of the Tough Break Update, the Vaccinator is the only Medi Gun capable of protecting the Medic and/or his patient with its Übercharge while still capturing the objective. The Quick-Fix no longer does that, and the Kritzkrieg doesn't protect anyone, so it can be used to keep someone alive on the point or cart as long as possible.

When to Use the Vaccinator

Even though it is my favorite weapon, it isn't always the best choice of Medi Gun. It has its weakness and flaws, and a smart enemy team will learn to counter it, same as any weapon.

The Vaccinator excels against instantaneous damage, but it cannot handle spam effectively. The biggest criticism against the Vaccinator is that combat is messy, and you're going to be dealing with many damage types at the same time. Unless you have all four of your charges ready, you're probably going to get spammed out when assaulting a ground in defense.

The Vaccinator is also a poor choice for destroying sentries. It is able to, but it requires that sentry to either be undefended or for your patient to be using a high-damage weapon such as the Direct Hit, Loch-n-Load, Brass Beast, etc. Sentries put out a ton of damage, usually of two different types, so while the Vaccinator is good for keeping the team alive, it is poor at breaking up the enemy position.

This is due largely to the nature of the weapon. I firmly believe that the Vaccinator is to the Medic as the Gunslinger is to the Engineer; it allows the class to change its role and do something different. Every other Medi Gun provides a huge, explosive advantage to a teammate or two for a moderate amount of time. The Vaccinator instead gives a lesser, but consistent advantage that is difficult to get rid of. The Vaccinator doesn't want the huge plays, it wants the small victories, to grind the enemy to dust with superior numbers and sustain, not destroying the entire defense in one fell swoop, and this playstyle is foreign to most Medics. Indeed, one of the reasons why people play Medic is to be that person that saves the day, that provides the means to victory, that picks a teammate and says "You are a god. Destroy them."

The Vaccinator does this, but in a much subtler way. It gives you the power to reach out and save a teammate's life without having to turn away from the objective. It lets you be in control of whether you live or die, without having to depend on your teammates to protect you. With the Vaccinator, you can heal up a teammate, give them an Über bubble, and back off, and watch them get kills they never could have dreamed of getting because they would have been gunned down. The Vaccinator upsets the class balance, giving Pyros the chance to go toe-to-toe with Heavies, Snipers the protection to beat a more skilled Sniper, Scouts the ability to pick the enemy Medic without being destroyed by their pocket instantly. This is why I like it. It lets me give a team of new players the opportunity to play against people better than them and still win. The extra breathing room I give them means they don't have to hit every shot or be obliterated by the Soldier with an unusual. I like the idea that my team has more fun simply because they stay alive for more of the game.

I tend to use the Vaccinator more often on defense than offense. When you're defending, there usually isn't a sentry nest to destroy or a huge hunkered-down base to assault. Your only goal is to run down the clock, and the Vaccinator is great at that. Keeping as many teammates alive as possible is right up this weapon's alley.

The Vaccinator works best when there are at least two power classes on the objective for you to heal. It is the anti-pocket Medi Gun. You want as many people to heal as possible. That said, the Vaccinator also works well on a team laden with roamers, except Spies. Since you don't have to be there for them to have your Über, you can just give it to them and let them do their thing. I've seen people sit back and only heal one Sniper for the entire game. The Vaccinator used to work like that, but now it doesn't. You're much more effective at letting beefy teammates soak up damage at the front lines while you keep everyone alive.

How to Use the Vaccinator

This section will describe the techniques and strategies I have found to be effective when using the Vaccinator. My way is by no means the best way, but it's what I've been using and I have a lot of success with it. Just to be clear, when I say "click", it means pressing the reload key to switch resistances.

When I first started using the Vaccinator, I found it difficult to keep track of what resistance I was on and how to change quickly to the resistance that was needed. It turns out that you use bullet and explosive resist the most, so get in the habit of clicking once to get to explosive resist, then clicking twice to get back to bullet resist. From fire, one click goes to bullet, and two clicks goes to explosive. You should never have to click "R" more than twice to get to the resistance you need. It will come in time.

When I'm in an open area with long sightlines, I like to stay on bullet resist by default just to protect me from Snipers. I'll be able to see explosives coming, and that resistance is only one click away. In tight, enclosed spaces, I switch to explosive resist by default, helping me and my patient survive spam and putting fire resist one click away in case of random Pyros. I almost never stay on passive fire resist for long, but if my patient is burning and we're not in the middle of fighting, it's good to farm Über off of them.

Pay attention to sounds. Turn off your music, and get some headphones. Being able to hear enemy character's battle cries and weapons firing helps you predict what kind of resistance you'll need before you even see the enemy. The Vaccinator makes a unique sound when you or your target takes damage of the type you're resisting. If you or your patient is taking damage and you're not hearing that sound, you might need to change resistances.

The passive resist and the resistance granted by your Über stack, but they don't add up. If you pop a bullet resist bubble and stay on bullet resist, your target doesn't resist 85% of bullet damage; they resist 78% of bullet damage, since the resistances multiply together. That 3% isn't significant, so its better to pop one type of resistance and immediately switch to another type. They will keep resisting the first type by 75%, but also resist the second type by 10%. This lets you maximize the damage resisted, helps protect you from Snipers even if you're providing explosive or fire resist to a patient, and gets the next most common damage type primed and ready to be popped. It's a good idea to work it into your muscle memory that when you pop explosive resist to click twice and return to bullet resist.

One of the most effective tactics with the Vaccinator is to Über one person while healing others. Even though healing someone who is resisting damage is extremely effective, it's often not necessary. By letting a high-health class absorb damage while you heal other people, you can keep more people alive and build Über much faster. Even better, when your Über wears off, that person will probably be below max health and ready to be healed again.

Encourage your roamers to take the Über and pick the enemy Medic. In fact, don't be afraid to run with a Pyro or Scout along a flank route, give them a bubble when you meet the enemy team, and retreat. Make sure you give them resistance against the damage type the enemy Medic's protectors are dealing. By doing this, you make it very hard for the enemy to get an Übercharge off. In a firefight, you can instead Über a Soldier or Heavy and then pocket your roamer to ensure the enemy Medic doesn't make it out alive. If push comes to shove, you can always pop and retreat. The Vaccinator gives you the option of giving the Über to your teammates and running away, so they get the benefit of your charge while you go find a health pack.

Ask your teammates to use high-damage weapons. Not only will this make it easier to take out sentry guns, but you want your teammates to be able to win skirmishes. The larger the divide between the amount of damage the enemy team can deal to yours and vice versa, the better, as long as it's in your favor. This isn't necessary, and your team should play what they want to, but you want to keep engagements as short as possible.

Don't use the Vita Saw. While having Über almost straight out of the gate seems tempting, the -10 max health penalty means your bullet resist no longer saves your life from Snipers. Plus, you're going to have Über in six seconds anyway, so the bonus Über is redundant. Besides, if you're dead, you probably didn't have any Über to drop anyway, as you would have used it. The Ubersaw is great for getting a free bubble off of an enemy, and the Solemn Vow gives you more information and can help you decide when to back out. The Amputator is pretty good, but you're going to want to heal everyone around you anyway, and your fire resist bubbles do an arguably better job at saving you from afterburn.

As for primaries, it doesn't really matter. If you can land Crusader's Crossbow bolts, awesome. You're going to build Über faster when healing with your Vaccinator, so it's better to use it to heal the people you can't reach like Snipers and Engineers. The Blutsauger is a good option, giving you even more sustain in combat, but your passive healing can save your life when coupled with an Über, so the stock Syringe Gun might be better in those cases. Honestly, it's all personal preference. I prefer to use the Overdose. I rarely use my primary to fight anyway, and I almost always have a lot of Über. It complements my Über-and-run playstyle and helps me get to the people who need me faster or get outta dodge slightly faster. Use what works for you.

The Vaccinator's abilities mean the Medic's usual counters are much less effective. Snipers and roamers have a much harder time at killing you and dropping your Über. If you use a bubble or two to save yourself from a Scout or Pyro, it's no big deal. Your main problems are going to be Spies and Demoknights. Stay alert, check behind you often, and try to keep a Heavy or Pyro close by. Both of them handily deal with both Spies and Demoknights, and they make great targets for Übers during a push.

The main reason why you should be using the Vaccinator is because it's fun. You don't have to just lay over and die when your team forgets about you. You actually have a say in whether or not you have to respawn. And few things are more satisfying as seeing a crit rocket head your way, snapping to explosive resist, popping, and laughing as you take that crit to the face and lose only 23 HP. It was like a breath of fresh air when I realized this weapon let me be a resource to my team without being a liability.

Competitive Viability

I know, pretty much everyone who has ever played competitive TF2 will say that the Vaccinator has no place there, but I think it just might if used correctly. It has been banned in the past from several major competitive leagues. With TF2 competitive matchmaking on the horizon, we'll probably be seeing a lot of new variations on the meta simply because more people are playing.

The Vaccinator wins the race for Übercharge, hands down. It's pretty much guaranteed that the Vaccinator will have Über before any other Medi Gun. If, however, the enemy does get Über off, the Vaccinator matches up quite well with most of them. The Quick-Fix and Vaccinator seem evenly matched in terms of Über. Both can keep multiple teammates alive, both have passive benefits, and both are somewhat poor at overhealing. It would come down to how much charge the Vaccinator Medic had, and how much damage each team could dish out. The Kritzkrieg is absolutely destroyed by the Vaccinator, as its Übercharge is completely negated by the Vaccinator's. The stock beats all, so if the enemy Medic pops a full Übercharge, they've pretty much won the encounter. However, you should be supporting your roamers and trying to ensure that never happens. It is notable that a fully-charged Vaccinator can protect a single target from a single damage type for 10 seconds, which is longer than the stock's Über. It's generally not advisable to try and wait it out, but for a last-minute hold, it may come in handy to keep one person alive and on the objective despite the enemy Über.

In the standard 6v6 team, there is the Medic, a Demoman, two Soldiers, and two Scouts. A Medic using the Vaccinator would be able to bring Über to mid, give explosive resist to the pocket Demoman or Soldier so they can take on the enemy pockets, while at the same time healing the Scouts so they can get in close to the enemy Medic and drop his Über. When things get too dangerous, the Medic can pop bullet resist to save himself from the enemy Scouts and retreat back to his pocket. A good Soldier or Demoman can easily land two pills in the span of 2.5 seconds, so if timed correctly, you can neutralize the enemy's damage at the start of the engagement and simultaneously protect yourself against the roaming Soldier and pockets as you and the Scouts go after the enemy Medic. This would take amazing game sense and a team that knows the strategy, but I believe it could be viable. The downside of this strategy would be that your teammates would be getting to mid with very little overheal. The teammates you don't heal or Über would be very vulnerable, and easy to pick off. They would have to choose loadouts that let them survive for longer on their own, such as the Black Box, Concheror, Chargin' Targe, Mad Milk, Atomizer, etc.

In Highlander, things would be different. With every class being played, you're going to run into Pyros, there will be a sentry, and there will be many different damage types coming at you at once. The Vaccinator might be a good choice on defense in Highlander, but for Capture Point or KoTH maps, other Medi Guns would probably be the better choice, if only for the necessity of a big Über charge to wipe the enemy team.

Only time will tell, but you can bet that you'll see me doing my best to make it work.

The Future

Hopefully, I've given you a better understanding of the Vaccinator. If you have comments or concerns, feel free to leave them below and I'll do my best to address them, and update the guide if necessary. This is my first guide, and any formatting help would be appreciated. Do you also use the Vaccinator, and have some good tips not covered here? Let me know, and I'll add it to the guide and credit you. This weapon is complicated and difficult to use, and its my goal to make my favorite weapon as accessible as possible.

Still, Valve may decide the Vaccinator deserves more of a buff to reduce the skill floor of the Vaccinator. Since Valve employees probably read these, I'll leave my thoughts here. I've seen a lot of people say the Vaccinator should protect against all damage types at once, or that the resistance switching should be automatic, but that would make the Vaccinator a completely different weapon. Other people have said that the Vaccinator should have less of an overheal penalty. This would be great, but that might push it over the top balance-wise, and make it better than other choices, and I don't want that. I like the Vaccinator the way it is, but a change that I think would make it easier to use without compromising its integreity would be to have the Über bubbles slowly heal the person they're given to as long as you're not healing them. This would make the Vaccinator even more team-oriented, and make the tactic of Übering one person while healing others more forgiving. Perhaps the heal rate and overheal rate could be tweaked to ensure the balance of this feature, but I don't think the Vaccinator needs a buff. I think the community needs to understand it better.

[WE ARE BRINGING YOU MCCHICKEN]

this weapon is god-tier in semi-capable hands, i really don't understand why people underestimate its uber. i was on a koth match and i was using vac. the enemy had the point, but they stacked demomen. it should've been the vaccinator's shining moment if my team actually pushed. i asked them why they weren't pushing and they said "you're using vac, we're going to die if we push" despite me having all 4 bubbles and overhealing everyone. we lost.

anyways, great guide. i really like it.

[sergeant balls]

I love this guide! Thank you!

[Caesar]

Love it. The vaccinator AND the guide.

[󠀡󠀡 󠀡󠀡 󠀡󠀡󠀡]

It's like the phlog, can be either overpowered or worse than the default choice considering the elimination of the major utility (airblast and full invisibility).

[Greed S> 286 Bill's Hat]

Detailed and thorough guide <3

[Concoction of Constitution]

This guide is awesome, and really highlights the potential of the vaccinator!

[Captain]

I know it's been a while since this guides creation but I absolutely LOVE this guide. It is so well thought out and is for the most part easy to comprehend from beginning to finish. I love the play style the Vaccinator offers but I am absolutely terrible with is, so this guide will definitely help me in the future. I would like to ask one thing of you to add though. I would bind the "reload" key (aka 'R') to "mouse 3" (pressing the scroll wheel). This makes switching resistances much easier then reaching for what seems like a mile to me to my reload key. It also allows me to keep switching as right now I'm working on learning how to bind it to the scroll wheel itself so I can literally roll through the resistances to keep my change fluid and constant. If you read this comment then thank you for doing so, and the Kritz medic is now gone, so goodbye for now!

[Healer]

I love your tutorial, especially the "The Vaccinator upsets the class balance, giving Pyros the chance to go toe-to-toe with Heavies, Snipers the protection to beat a more skilled Sniper, Scouts the ability to pick the enemy Medic without being destroyed by their pocket instantly" part, it is a very well-organized guide and taught me a lot about the Vaccinator !
Keep up the good work !

[Colonel Mathieu]

Will this be updated for meet ur match?

[MysticD'MeeM]

Heck, the skill floor isn't too high if you read the damn description which tells you enough to get started.

*Looks darkly at the vaccinator medics who don't understand how the reload function works*