AegisKleais' guide to being a better TF2 Medic

I've written an in-depth article about my experiences as a Medic with over 300hrs experience. Hopefully you'll find this informative and beneficial to your time on the battlefield. In time, you may see other guides written by other members of our clan for the different classes in TF2.

YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD MEDIC
The Medic is the 2nd fastest class (behind the Scout, and a smidge faster than the Pyro) He is armed with a 40pack Syringe Gun (with 150 in reserve for a total of 190 Needles) that fire in an arc and scatter slightly with distance. He is also equipped with unlimited Medi-Gun capability and has a bone saw for a melee weapon.

MEDI-GUN 101
The Medi-Gun(MG) has a decent reach on it, and though it does bend around corners, you'll need to keep Line of Sight (LoS) with your patient or the beam will break. Few Medics realize that you don't have to be looking at your patient for the beam to stay connected, you just have to be in a position where if you WERE looking at your patient, you'd have a clear path to him. To this effect, you can actually look to your patient's 6 and the beam will stay on. Do not get in the habit of facing always where your patient is, because danger can come from any direction.

Be weary too of being too far from your patient - they can round a corner and your beam can break before you establish it. Also, due to the beam's glow, it often attracts attention, and competent teams will call out that a medic and _____ are nearby and will get addressed by hostile forces.

SYRINGE GUN 101
Due to the firing method of the Syringe Gun (SG), you are actually able to hit objects that aren't in your LoS. I have used this tactic many times to take out sentries from a long distance. The more you practice with the arcing, the quicker you'll find the sweet spot. Then just let it rip, and the gun will be no more. This doesn't work well when there is an Engineer actively fixing the gun because the amount of damage done by all 190 needles is less than a 200-metal Engineer can repair. So only do this on solo sentries.

Due to the game design, when you get a CRITICAL shot with the SG, keep the button down to start a flurry of shots. If you can make them connect in a relatively short time, each one will be a critical, doing more and more progressive damage. Where a Heavy can take 40 needles to die, 15 or so critical needles will do him in as well.

The SG is also used quite efficiently to "de-cloak" spies. If you see a spy kill someone and start to cloak, shower the area with needs. If a stray one hits, the Spy will become more visible. As you hunt down the Spy, you'll be able to affix the crosshair to his actual position as he comes into view and do more damage while he is passively making an attempt to escape.

MORE PATIENTS, THE BETTER
Though it's score-wise smart to stick with good players, you should never be affixed to one and only one. Don't get into the mindset that "I'll heal someone else, they just have to come to where me and my patient are" If someone barks for a Medic, they need your help. The game is TEAM fortress 2, so your responsibility to your team is to keep them ALL alive, and not just a select couple.

When you gain experience, you'll better be able to quickly heal someone who's doing immediate damage in order to "leech" some assists. If you're healing a demo man who has no charges laid and an ally pyro runs by you and sets 3 people afire, start healing the pyro (unless the demo needs it) to get the assists and points. It's symbiotic. You're not TAKING kills from the pyro, he still gets them, but you get points too, AND you're making the Pyro more resistant to damage.

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LOL I got ants in my butt and I need to Strut.
nice guide. will help a lot of peopele.

I tried for creative titles.   Thanks, I really hope it helps players out.  Every member of a team is vital to the overall success, and hopefully this'll give up and coming novice Medic's a good primer.

This was very comprehensive. Thanks for the great guide. but I want to also know your opinion on the unlocks.

Good guide.

This is a great tutorial and has a lot of good insight and tips.   It would be great if all players had to read this before playing Medic.

Thanks guys, I'm glad to hear it's a worthy asset to the community.  It's always great to have some good Medics on the team!  I will do a write-up on the Medic unlocks and then add them to the bottom of the post.  I think when I originally wrote this (~150 hours exp.) the unlocks weren't available.

...The soldier's rockets are better at taking out sentries than the demo's nades? Since when?

Nice guide, we need a medic one since Medkit's got devoured.

I wrote this when I had 120hours of exp (updated it to say 300, but didn't check content)

CRIT rockets are better than grenades, but considering non-crit weapons, my opinion has been that the Grenade is the best thing.  A note should be made too though that the rocket can be deflected with a nearby Pyro, but every class except Medic has a weapon they can use to shoot stickies off a Sentry, so if you see someone doing that, you need to keep detonating as they land by the Sentry.