Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

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eumoria
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Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by eumoria » Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:36 pm

Realize it's old hat for 99.9% of The Ville but if you don't know now you know.

I brought this up in a non-ville server and was astonished that nearly no one had heard of it!
I just want to make sure people know about the feature because it trains you to be a good medic and is built into TF2!

TF2 Medic Auto-Call Feature
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I'm assuming almost all of you know about the built in feature but in Advanced Options there is a checkbox for auto-callout. This will place a small medic cross above any player who passes the health threshold you set. It is an indispensable feature for anyone trying to learn medic.

It doesn't beat real situation awareness but it's a great assistant. It also *dings* with a nearby hurt player.

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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by Perfect Villain » Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:44 pm

ding
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Thanks Sparky

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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by eumoria » Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:48 pm

:doh:
Perfect Villain wrote:ding
More like *DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING* as I completely ignore you and only heal the heavy bc that's what medics are supposed to do Image

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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by Plinko » Thu Nov 27, 2014 8:20 pm

I had to turn that off because in a full server it drives me mad.
I switched it back recently because it's nice for 6s and I try to avoid medic at TV unless there are a couple of folks on power classes that I know I can trust with heals, but the point stands.

When you medic, there's a lot of work to do on a team of 12. Keeping one dude on full overheal isn't really it.
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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by Scorch » Thu Nov 27, 2014 11:50 pm

Plinko wrote:When you medic, there's a lot of work to do on a team of 12. Keeping one dude on full overheal isn't really it.
YES, YES, YES, YES, Yes! So annoying when a medics sits on the same player. I do my best to get everyone healed back up when playing medic. Uber who you want, but please, please keep everyone healed :D :D :D

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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by Perfect Villain » Fri Nov 28, 2014 7:02 pm

Heal the one who will keep you alive, that is all!
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Thanks Sparky

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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by c4ridw3n » Fri Nov 28, 2014 10:17 pm

I love to keep those demos and soldiers healed up!
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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by M's » Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:42 pm

I sit peacefully at my dispenser soaking up suds in my chaise lounger. Then that dang sentry goes off, and I'm reminded very quickly that I have hit sounds on. DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING FOOSH DINGDINGDINGDING FOOSH DINGDINGDING.

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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by eumoria » Sun Nov 30, 2014 10:03 am

Yep lol there's a lot to medic but knowing how to balance healing especially when you're alone on a team is crucial. It's all about your rhythm and making sure your comrades feel like when they need the health they'll get it.

Also helps when the players you're healing understand that there's 12+ people on a team not just one. I'm not going to stay attached to you and only you.

Maybe a "Pub Medic Etiquette" write up is in order heh.

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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by trilobite » Tue Dec 09, 2014 7:05 pm

eumoria wrote:
I just want to make sure people know about the feature because it trains you to be a good medic and is built into TF2!
Very good tip, especially for players without a lot of medic experience.
Several key points to add:
  • Medics are not servants. It is not the medic's job to provide healing. It is the medic's CHOICE to provide healing. Treat your medic with respect and give him/her a reason to heal you.
  • Yes, as has been pointed out, it helps the team for the medic to spread the love -- when it is appropriate. Sometimes the medic must concentrate healing on players in the front lines who are taking damage. In such situations, let the medic do his/her work and you go back and find a health pack or a dispenser for yourself. Or maybe help keep the medic alive by checking for spies and stuff.
  • If your team has only one medic and they are not good at it, don't complain and publicly abuse them. Why not switch to medic and model the class while asking the other medic to follow your example? Sometimes bad medics are just trolls; but often they are just inexperienced and willing to take some friendly instruction. Goes for all classes.
  • Please do everything you can to keep your medics alive. Check for spies. Extinguish them when they are on fire. Airblast bad guys away from them. Block demo knights. Block crit bullets. Inform them and the whole team of incoming ubers and crits.
  • And medics, please get a fricken' microphone and use it. I know Soltan may disagree, but seriously, Medics are the de facto field commanders for the team. You need to talk to your team and organize them. Can't really do that with the little crappy text chat thingy -- which scrolls off your message after about two milliseconds. Use you mic, with your voice. That's what the vocal chords are for, you twit! If your medic doesn't have a mic, maybe use your own mic to report your medic's whereabouts and apparent plans and needs.
Thank you
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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by Plinko » Thu Dec 11, 2014 12:17 pm

I disagree pretty heartily with a lot of that.

If you are playing medic and intending to support your team to victory - not only is healing 100% of your job, doing it well is your job.

Every second you're not healing someone usefully, that is a failure for either you or your team. If I ever have to pull out my crossbow* or ubersaw, then someone has failed. Sometimes that's me for getting myself in a bad spot and sometimes it's the teammates failure to pay attention or aim. But in the end, it makes no difference, it's a bad situation.

That said, after actually keeping your heal beam up all the time, the next thing to your work is healing effectively. Healing effectively is hard, you have to pay attention a lot. Healing effectively with 9 or 10 people annoying you for heals can be really challenging to the point of frustration, but it also is a huge force multiplier for your team, so it’s worth doing well.

In order to making healing effectively easier, you can keep a few rules of thumb in mind. Note these rules assume players have some vague idea that they should shoot enemies and prefer to stay alive rather than stupidly suicide constantly. Feel free to never heal anyone who fails to show signs of understanding those two basics (it might be good to suggest such ideas to them, though).

1. You heal 24hp/second** (excepting crit heals and when you’re healing someone at max buff). You heal all classes at the same rate, but they all have different health maximums. Therefore, given a group of teammates with about the same health level - it is clearly more effective to heal lower HP classes first because you can get them to their max much faster, and thus get them out and doing something useful, then go and heal the heavier classes. This is the #1 thing that most people get absolutely wrong in TF2 regarding heals. A scout and a heavy with 100 health means you heal the scout to 185, taking just over 3 seconds to do so and he goes off to be useful, then you can heal the heavy to 450 taking 7-11 seconds (faster than usual because they’ll have crit heals because you were healing the scout). That doesn’t even take into account that a 185 HP scout is much, much better than a 185 HP heavy.
2. Buffs are super important, but keeping a particular player at max constantly is a massive waste of your healing as you’re healing rate degrades to the buff falloff rate. “Pocketing” someone*** is just trolling your team – don’t do that unless you’re playing to troll or there’s literally no one on your team worth healing. Over the course of 5 seconds you could heal/buff teammates for ~100 HP, or prevent ~20 HP buff deterioration on one player.
3. An important sidebar to #2 is that players that stay near you for protection should always be your last heal priority because they’ll still be there to heal after everyone else has gone off to the front line.
4. When you are dead, you heal 0hp/second. Don’t put yourself at high risk unless the rewards are awesome. This is an important side note to 1 and 2.
5. If you choose to heal someone, mostly you should try to get them to their max buff with a few exceptions – most likely when you have a high or slow HP class that needs a lot of heals, it is always a good idea to switch to someone coming up from the back that probably has crit heals to buff and send them on (likely scouts, soldiers or maybe a pyro or demo). But mostly it’s much, much faster and more efficient to heal a player fully before moving onto the next one. It is also true that switching a lot builds your uber less quickly and fewer heals are distributed because there is a short time when switching that no healing happens no matter how quickly you switch.
6. An upshot of #4 and 5 is that you shouldn’t feel obligated to “save” every lit player that is frantically calling for medic if it means taking a big risk of dying yourself or of other players who might be useful shortly don’t get healed. A player with 30HP cannot be saved from dying if they’re going to be in the line of fire (the rocket is still going to kill them when it hits even if you get on them for a full second), focus on healing players that will keep If they make it safely out, they should go get a health pack and you can buff them when they make it back up.
7. Your panic radar should go off whenever you have a big mass of people crowded around you. Spread out a bit so if someone gets the drop on you, the whole team doesn’t go down to a single crit rocket or sticky.
8. When using your ubercharge, if your uber target isn’t really taking much damage, it can be a really great idea to switch to someone who either is about to take damage, or is in position to barrel into the enemy and make room for everyone else. Of course, you should probably warn your target of this plan! Also be sure to remember that your uber duration shortens by 1.5 seconds every time you switch targets during the uber deployment****.


* Exception here would be using your crossbow for an awesome play to heal a player who is far away from you and about to do something awesome, but that doesn’t come up that often, does it?
**It’s not that useful in full public servers to worry much about the heal ramp, but you should know by now that players who have gone ~11 seconds without taking damage start to take heals at a much, much faster rate.
*** Insert blah blah blah about pocket not meaning the medic.
**** Only applies to the regular medi-gun ubercharge.
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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by The Domer » Thu Dec 11, 2014 2:51 pm

Listen to Plinko, he knows what this is all about.

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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by Joel » Thu Dec 11, 2014 10:41 pm

As someone who plays Medic all the time, I've actually developed a habit of clicking on any teammate that I see whenever I have my Medigun out. Sometimes, this gets the better of me when one of those "teammates" turns out to be an enemy Spy. Even if I quickly pull out my Übersaw, I still would've inevitably healed him. In general, I try to keep everyone healthy, but I'm very picky with whom I use my Übercharge on.
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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by trilobite » Thu Dec 11, 2014 11:52 pm

Plinko said:
I disagree pretty heartily with a lot of that.
Plinko, based on your second statement, it is very clear that you disagree with my first statement regarding it not being the medic's "job" to heal. OK, I get that. We disagree. Fine.
But do you also disagree with some of the other four points I made as well; my point about being selective about heal targets; my point about not abusing poor medics; my point about keeping medics alive; and my point about medics using a microphone? Your opening statement sounds like you have many objections, but your comments never get around to establishing what the "lot" is that you disagree with.

Very good tips though.

Thanks.
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Re: Medics: You Already Must Know About This, Right?

Post by Scorch » Fri Dec 12, 2014 12:05 am

I actually thought both Plinko and trilobite hit on similar points or at least complimentary points.

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