General Medic Tips

These tips are for medics in general, doesn't really matter on the format.+ You can 'surf' a soldier's rocket by jumping right as his rocket(s) hit your feet. This will send you flying away from him, which can save you from almost certain death. Be mindful of where you land, sometimes in midair you can use your strafe keys (a, d) to steer yourself into the face of a rock, where you can avoid taking fall damage. If you have the option to not take fall damage, be careful to land INTO the obstacle, not on top of it. Fall damage only counts for vertical velocity, not horizontal velocity.+ Not only can you surf rockets, you can surf other projectiles as well, which includes the demoman's stickies and grenades. You can even 'surf' hitscan damage, if a scout meatshots you while you're jumping, you'll go flying. Same thing with heavies. If a heavy starts firing at you and you're caught out, jump backwards, turn around, and strafe as fast as you can to get out of his line of sight.+ Try not to peek sightlines. Sightlines are extended areas where enemies can see you. One example of a sightline is near the second point of pl_badwater, where enemies can peek over the hill and attack you if you're standing to the left of the point. The main person you have to watch for on sightlines are snipers. Snipers kill without warning (usually) and are not easily avoided. You want to avoid them by simply not peeking the sightlines. Let someone else peek. Let them die. You are the most important person on your team as a medic. Without a medic, your team does way less damage. By keeping your team alive, you basically are doing damage by keeping them alive. As such, you are extremely important. Don't die to stupid things like snipers.+ Another point is to watch out for the enemy team. You always want to have eyes on the main passage, the flank, and behind you. In competitive, medics are usually guarded, and have lots of comms (information) delivered to them. You always want someone watching the flank, whether it be a roamer in 6s (soldier that roams and tries to get important picks), a scout, a heavy, or a pyro. You also want people guarding your back at all times (usually a demoman, pocket soldier, heavy, pyro, or sniper will hover around you to protect you). Be prepared to surf soldier rockets if your team says that a soldier is going to jump you.+ The most important thing about medic is heal priority. You want to prioritize heals based on where your team is relative to the enemy, how much damage they can do, how well they can protect you, and how close they are to healthpacks / resupply. I'll go more into this in the individual 6s and highlander sections.This next part is more advanced, and is about good ubers / uber masking.+ A 'good uber' is one that keeps your team alive, and helps them push forwards. You don't really want to focus an uber on one person, because that leaves the rest of your team to fend for themselves. Instead, "flash" multiple people who are about to take damage. This way, you can keep them alive and win the push.+ Remember not to flash too many people. The more people you flash, the shorter your uber is. You should flash 2-3 people in an uber, 4 is my maximum personally. To avoid having to flash everyone on your team, just make sure they're overhealed before you push, and let them have healthpack access. You regenerate health, so if you get hurt just play passive, and let your team get the healthpack (unless you're about to die, and the healthpack will save you).+ You don't want to uber AFTER your pocket takes damage. You want to uber right before he takes damage. This way, you don't have to spend time healing him. You can focus your uber on other people and flash them as well, so that they don't take damage either.+ The main thing you want to focus on as medic is maintaining the health of the team. You never want to waste an extra second healing a pocket who just got damage. Rather, just keep them overhealed and uber them right before they take damage. This way, you preserve the health of the team. Don't get absorbed into healing one person to do a lot of damage. Work together with your team, keep them ALL at full health or overhealed. Trust me, it'll be much easier to win objectives. After all, tf2's about the objectives, not the kills.+ This next part's about medic psychology and uber masking / ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ubers. So, let's start this out with a preface. Every time you get an ubercharge, the medic yells out "I AM FULLY CHARGED". THIS LET'S EVERYONE KNOW YOU HAVE AN UBER. Instead of letting them know you have an uber, call out "medic" or "help" right before an uber. This will mask over the call, and the other team will not know you have uber.+ Unfortunately in higher levels people know about this stuff, and will approximate when you have an uber. They do this by assuming you're building uber as quickly as possible. If you build uber as quickly as possible, you'll have a charge in 40 seconds. Same goes with the other medi guns, except it's 32 seconds for the quick fix and kritzkrieg.+ However, you can throw off the other team by yelling out the "I AM FULLY CHARGED" voice command when you actually don't have a charge. This can cause the other team to act more passive, and can buy you time to actually get a charge. The script for this in in a later section, labeled "Scripts, Configs, and HUDs"+ You should track advantages and know when to retreat / push based off of these advantages. For example, if your team has more players, but ubers are equal, you should push into the team. Chances are you'll win. The three advantages you watch out for as medic are 1) uber advantage, 2) player advantage, and 3) Health advantage. Uber advantage is when you have a higher uber percentage than the other medic, or if you have uber before he does. Keep in mind, advantages can be easily nulled if you don't have uber yet. For those 40 seconds of building uber, you can't use the uber, so the advantage can be flattened out pretty quick. Just be careful of bombing soldiers and other hazards while you're building uber. Now let's do some hypothetical situations. If you have equal ubers (no uber advantage), but less players, you automatically have less health. Don't push. If you have equal players, but less players, kite their uber. Etc. Just make good decisions based off of what you know about these advantages.+ Last thing: milking ubers. If the enemy team ubers into you, you want to uber after they do, so that you can be invincible for a few more seconds and push into them. At the same time, you do not want to die before you pop your uber, and 'drop' your uber. Basically, the rule for me is this: Uber once you get to below 113 health. The reason for this is that a class can actually one shot you below this health point, so try to dodge damage until you get to this point. You don't have to worry about dropping to a random crit, because there's no random crits or random spread in competitive. Just watch out for kritz charges, or have someone keep eyes on the combo at all times.