Spy countering

So after playing in the last couple late night PUGs, I found out that I am constantly being raped by spies. I'm doing 180's/360's like every other second and still seem to get freaking backstabbed all the time. It's pretty frustrated, especially when I have uber and get BS'd to hell from outta nowhere.

Does anyone have any good tips on how to not get BS'd so much as a medic (other than keep looking/have a pyro protect you)?

Constantely strafe back and forth.
 
Work as a team to find Spies, point them out, and know where they are.

As a medic, you have the freedom of being useful while facing the wrong way. You don't need to be constantly watching the battle because your beam buddy will be taking care of it. The beam stays connected even when facing opposite directions so you this to your advantage especially when not in combat. If you see a spy call it out to your buddy and if he's busy you should dodge around or maybe even go after the spy if he goes for your buddy.

Sometimes you do have to realize that the Medic just isn't designed/allowed to defend himself and you got to play another class.  The Medic's weapons are the weakest and the most prohibited from getting crits.  He just doesn't have damage output, as the official TF2 stats show (Medic has the least number of kills, and the next closest class, Spy, has 400% more kills than him, and Spy's not really an "assault" class.

But if you want to stick with Medic, don't rely on a player protecting you.  Though protection would be nice, you simply can't rely on a patient doing it for you.  Even with comms, it's relatively hard to get your patient's attention in time once you've been attacked to have them do anything more than avenge you when you die.  Countering Spies requires you to have a complete understanding of how to sweep for them, and a hypervigilent sense of the battlefield.  You also need to keep an eye out for mannerisms, looking for classes or behavior that doesn't sync.  Part of my normal demeanor when playing Medic is to look back over my shoulder every couple seconds.  It's just the nature of the class.  You're not fast enough to really lose a Spy.  Though you're faster than he is, when chasing, the chaser can often take shorter paths to close the distance to you, and the Medic isn't THAT faster than the Spy - not like the massive speed distance between the Scout and other classes.

Medic can be a very frustrating class.  You don't get kills, only assists (and assists are just a number in this game - they don't dictate anything other than a stat), and you require the help of others to keep you safe.  Also, you can lose hard-earned ubers to do a random crit, and your chances of crit are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than other players.  This is why I'll go Demo every once in a while, since he has MASSIVE crit potential, and I can decimate Medics with him, since the Medic has absolutely no weapon outside of putting himself in suicidal range, to interact with your stickies.  In fact, he's the only class who can't!

Aegis, Rius is talking about PUGs, which are high quality pick-up games with strong players and organised teams. A medic will have a soldier on him almost all the time, and that soldier will be dedicated to the medic's protection.

Also, crits are likely to be turned off most of the time.

Yeah, but he didn't ask for advice specifically for PUGs.  He just said he was on them.  And if he was in a PUG and people WERE protecting him, he shouldn't be having as hard a time with being protected from Spies.  My points still stand - don't count on others (though I admit that the Medic's abilities are at their best when paired with a player) just don't become dependent on believing that you'll have protection.  The basics of the advice still hold.

It's not like being protected makes any difference in this case, anyway, since it's death to backstab.

Rius, the best advice I can give you is to play spy for a while. I assume you're already at the stage where you can tell a spy by looking at him - by playing spy a bit, you'll get a feel for places where a spy can uncloak.

Since I mained spy for a few weeks, one of the biggest problems I faced as Heavy (my tendancy to get frequently backstabbed) has really cleared up, I expect it'd do the same for your medic...

Thanks for the tip Cas. I guess playing spy and watching demos from spies will help give me a good idea of vulnerable points on the map and when/where spies like to attack.

I only have like an hour as a spy so I really don't know the finer points of  being a spy. As a medic, I will usually just keep looking around and try moving/dodging as much as possible. Knowing where/when spies attack will help keep me more aware.

Yeha it probably helps because I hardly ever get backstabbed and I've got around 120 hours as spy. Just remember, Spies will be trying to get you when you are distracted and they will prefer to come from above. Look up and around.

So play spy some more, and remember to look up.

As a Spy who glees with joy every time a Medic screams bloody murder after every backstab, here is the easiest way to avoid it: Move around unpredictably, and like crazy. Check your back often, but you don't need to be paranoid. You are much faster than a Spy, meaning that he has to basically get you while you are stationary or when he is ahead/above you. Just check your back whenever you feel that a Spy might try something at that moment, and always move like a man with super ADD.