This is the place to share the oddball tricks that make you better at the medic class. My primary reason for visiting these forums is to learn new tactics that I couldn't have discovered in one of the standard medic guides. For example, I learned that
the kritzkreig puts out fires here, and that you can
split ubers multiple times towards the end with a minimal loss of overall charge time. Both of these skills have been beneficial, so I'll attempt to reciprocate and get this party started:
1)
The Bonkblocking Counter - Scouts are invincible while they use the bonk energy drink. After you deploy your charge, they'll drink it and bodyblock you to pry the uber apart. For five seconds, they can't hurt you, and you can't hurt them. But you can ubersaw them, and each time you hit, you get the standard +25% charge. You can use this to neutralize their blocking, or just to get free ubers off scouts who thought their energy drink was sufficient to cap a point.
2)
Heavy-Hopping - You're running down a tunnel towards a corner. As you approach the end, a heavy jumps out, his minigun singing the bitter song of respawn-wait-time. But you know about heavy-hopping. As his bullets begin to collide you run backward, and crouch-jump into the air. You take severe damage, but it pushes you back further than you would have gotten through running alone. By chance you can retreat around the next corner and look for a health pack or dispenser.
Basically, if you're retreating from weapons fire while crouch-jumping, it can occasionally push you back far enough to make an escape. This works best against heavy weapons guys, who spit out a constant stream of bullets that don't do much damage at range. It works against scouts less frequently (with better chances against the FaN), but if you crouch-jump back as the first shotgun blast hits, you will sometimes be blown up to twenty feet away, which means they have to switch to the pistol to gun you down as you make the dash for cover. It isn't a great tactic, and it won't always work, but it has kept me alive in situations where I thought the respawn timer was a certainty.
3)
Blutsaugher Practice - The blutsaugher is a fantastic weapon that requires a lot of practice. Unfortunately, we spend almost all our time healing, and rarely get the chance to hone our syringe skills. I've read about other medics who set up bots to practice on, but I don't think that's a good idea, since bots will never move in the natural way that other players will. In my opinion, the map for blutsaugher practice is dm_store. In deathmatch maps your team isn't going to lose no matter what you do, so you can practice combat medicine guilt free. Ideally, I'd love to see a dm map like the one where soldiers duel each other until one does 1200 damage, but until then dm_store is the best alternative.
So what are your strategies?