The Art of Medic
NB:
As of writing this note (13 Dec 2023) I will try to update this guide to my current knowledge (not prem yet rip), edit the text for improved legibility and try to work on my feedback. My pc is dead rn, and my notes are on a hard drive - so just send any feedback to my discord: rahmed
Introduction
This guide is intended for all; from casual to comp; medics and non-medics alike. P.s. No MvM stuff sorry :p (use shield lol)
You can read this whole guide through or choose specific sections to focus on, it's your choice.
It's always updating, so if you have anything you want to add/remove/change, or you need help to understand about some topics, send me a dm over on discord: Rahmed#1191
Remember to hover your cursor over images for tooltips and click on them too, along with all the other hyperlinks! :D
Fundamentals
A medic's job is to heal. The way to heal is to survive. If they heal and survive long enough, they're rewarded with über.
🏛️ 5 pillars of medic 🏛️
In any situation, medics should know:
1. What to do 2. Where to look 3. Where to stand 4. What to think 5. What to say
Definitions
- NB: - An abbreviation for the Latin phrase "Nota Bene", meaning “note well”; it's used to emphasize an important point
- Arrow - Heals given by the Crusader's Crossbow
- Beam - Heals given by a medigun
- Buffs - Over-heals given by a medigun
- Crit-heal - Heal with 48-72 hp/s with a medigun
- Drop - Die with full übercharge
- Milk - Postpone übercharge
- Pop - Activate übercharge
- Force - Activate übercharge involuntarily
- Pussy-pop - Activate übercharge unnecessarily. Usually out of fear of dropping
- Bait - Play extremely passive
- Over-extend - Play extremely aggressive
- Pocket - Sticking close to a player, usually in context with a medic
- Combo - The teammates around the medic
- Flank - The teammates not around the medic
- Picks - Kills on enemies
- Ad/Dis-ad - Advantage / Disadvantage of resources. Usually accounted for über, players, health, ammo and space
- Mid - The middle/3rd capture point of a 5cp map
- 2nd - The 2nd/4th capture point of a 5cp map, usually in context on whoever holds mid
- Last - The 1st/5th capture point of a 5cp map, usually in context on whoever holds 2nd
- Off-class - Play a non-standard class e.g. a scout off-classing on engineer to defend last
- 6's - 6v6 game-mode: 2 scouts; 2 soldiers; 1 demo; 1 medic - the scouts and soldiers usually off-class
- HL - Highlander; 9v9 game-mode, where there can be only one of each class
Check the 📑 Glossary of player terms for a full list of commonly-used terms.
Contents
Healing
When healing, a medic should look at the enemy and be aware of their teammates. They should only look at teammates if they need to arrow, or if they need to start the beam on them - beaming does not require the user to look at their patient!
Also, always remember to 🧍↔️🧍 social distance! Stay around 3/4 medigun beam length from any given player, teammate or enemy - hopefully a lot further away from enemies!
Standing very close or inside teammates means that you'll share the same projectile spam damage and are more prone to bombers, because teammates see them at the same time you do, giving you less time to react.
Standing too far away can mean the medigun beam range disconnecting frequently, which slows down building über, and can confuse your beam patient on your intentions.
🥠 "Imagine teammates are contagious patients that need to be treated, but you don't ever want to touch, otherwise you will die!"
Heal priority
Heal the right person at the right time
Medic's should try to constantly heal whenever possible, as this keeps as many teammates alive as possible and builds über; the strongest mechanic in the game. On medigun...
Generally, the heal priority is:
- Heal the frontlines
- Heal the people leaving
- Heal the weak
- Crit-heal
- Map-specific priority
There are always exceptions to these criteria. E.g. Sometimes, you will leave the front-lines for better positioning, or you will have to heal someone else that is lower priority than usual; explained in #Desicion-making
Healing the front lines
The front-line is the average line that divides your team against the enemy. If
Healing the leavers
Healing the weak
Examples
Credit to MR SLIN
Priority: Soldier
The soldier takes heal priority, since he is the frontline of defence i.e. closest to the enemy, which makes him the easiest target for the enemy scout to shoot at. If the enemy scout starts shooting at another teammate, then that teammate becomes the heal priority, as he becomes the new frontline of defence.
Credit to MR SLIN
Priority: Soldier
Again, the soldier takes heal priority, since he is still the front line of defence, even thought the scout is below his base hp. As long as the scout doesn't get shot by the enemy scout, he can be practically any health and still not take priority.
Credit to MR SLIN
Priority: Soldier
Finally, the soldier takes the heal priority for the third time, since he will now leave the medic's beam. He can get buffed-up and rocket-jump; to create clear space for his team and to gain information ahead. The medic can then beam his scout and catch up to the rest of the team.
Crit-heals
Credit to Edgar
Give out crit-heals whenever you can - give flank priority so they can leave easier, if they delay they don't watch flank - they should come to you, but some maps like gran mid u can rotate to them
think about who you're next gonna buff in HL, use the match hud to see players health, and think who can you be buffing - think about who hasn't been buffed in a while or not taken damage, they most likely will have crit heals and you can call them.
Arrows heal faster, even point blank, except when your heal patient has crit-heals so make sure.
In HL, try to stick to heal priority even with crit-heals, like crit-heal sniper, demo and scout.
Rollouts
A rollout is the time-period at the start of a round, where the medic gives as much health to teammates as they roll-out toward the map objective.
Whether that's mid on 5cp, point on KOTH, or cart on payload - it's one of the most important aspects of healing, as the team having as much health in the mid-fight as early as possible will have more confidence to fight and be aggressive.
Entire matches can be won based on one mid-fight.
Statistically, it's more likely that a medic will live on mids if he walks forward i.e. his team is aggressive enough that his correct positioning is forwards with his team.
6's rollout
- Look at the demo, beam him to 260 hp (jump if other players are in the way) and then look at your roamer with the beam on your demo
- Keep beaming the demo until he's 260 again, then beam your roamer to 300. At this time, you will start walking to leave spawn, and you may be looking in a direction you won't move in (i.e. you might not be be holding w to leave in spawn, because your roamer is further away from the spawn shutter than you), so keep your fingers ready on the A, S and D keys
- Once the roamer is 300, beam and follow both your scouts to mid, alternating the beam between them. Make sure the furthest scout away from you is the most buffed out of the two
- If you have time: jump up with the beam on a scout, re-beam your roamer and land with the beam on your scout. Horizontal momentum is conserved from floor to floor, i.e. you can move as fast as you were on the ground, in the air.
- Once your pocket soldier has un-equipped his escape plan, arrow him and beam him for crit-heals.
- If your demo is weak on mid, prepare to arrow him before you turn the corner into mid. Also listen out for the calls that a roamer may be going fast, e.g. he will be bombing you or your demo in/around choke, so be prepared to bait
On specific maps, or if your players fail to rollout consistently, you can alter your heal allocation. Using the heal priority: a medic should prioritise his demo, since he will most often be the first class on mid, hence being the front-line and also the first leaver from spawn. Roamers (e.g. soldiers or flank snipers in HL) come next, as they will leave soon, and then the rest of the team follow from there.
- If your roamer wants to do a fast rollout, beam your demo to 260 once, and then beam your roamer to 300. Afterwards, give as much heals as you can to your demo until he leaves the beam range, and then continue beaming your scouts towards mid
HL rollout
For HL:
- Look at the demo, beam him to 260 hp (jump if other players are in the way) and then look at your scout with the beam on your demo.
- Keep beaming the demo until he's 260 again, then beam your scout to move at scout-speed. This is so you walk out of spawn ahead of your teammates.
- Look back at any teammates that will leave you first (e.g. your sniper or soldier) and beam them until they do. Some maps may split apart your players earlier or later in the rollout.
- Buff as many people on your team as you can; look at your next heal patient as you are healing your current one. On certain maps like ashville, you have time to pre-fire/arrow your demo
- Arriving at mid make sure: your soldier is 300 hp ready to bomb immediately; your heavy, pyro and sniper are over-healed; your demo is ready to get arrowed/beamed
Heal allocation
"Imagine your team is a computer; you are the O.S.; heals / buffs is memory, and your teammates are the computer's hardware e.g. the cpu, gpu, motherboard, etc."
"If a computer equally allocated memory to every single component, then the computer simply won't function because some parts need more memory than others, some need little."
"Similarly, if a computer allocated as much memory to a single component, then the computer still won't function since other parts do need memory."
"Also, there will be times where a component needs memory in the moment, even though it's not high on the priority list" ― Rahmed
This idea can be used for medic healing priority and allocation. Imagine the team's health as an overall potential health pool and actual health pool. If you lose a heavy, that's like losing 450 health to the team's potential health pool. In general, the healing priorities are: demo and sniper first and foremost, then
against enemies, treat them as if they have full 150% hp - if not, treat them as 100% health unless u have visual cues to say otherwise (e.g. you see him taking a pipe from a teammate or something)
Crusader's Crossbow
In 6's ....
In HL, the crossbow will be used more often than in 6's - simply because there 8 classes instead of 5 that need to be healed. With arrows healing anyone in combat, even point-blank, is more faster than the medigun's stock 24 hp/s. Crit heals can be used for effect, but some players need an instant burst of health immediately than waiting for crit-heals or getting within the medic's beam range - and sometimes it's rare to find players with crit-heals as any amount of damage, from even across the map, can reset the timer.
Due to the chaotic gameplay of HL, small über differences (e.g. 20% über ad) aren't as important as they are in 6's, so arrowing players resulting in a slower über build is less punishing
Self Healing
Credit to Edgar
Über
When übering, a med should look at his teammates and be aware of the enemy; the direct opposite of healing. During an über, you and your patient are invulnerable/resistive to damage, or have the potential to do huge amounts of damage. In any case, the medic will need to be prepared to flash any other teammates, or sometimes none at all, to have a good über.
Purpose
When in über, a medic and his team are trying to do atleast one of the following:
- Kill the enemy medic
- Get picks for player ad
- Deny huge damage
- Über trade
Good übers vs Bad übers
Make use of über scarcely, try not to pussy-pop but also don't drop. It's very situational, depending on how much trust you have on your teammates but also on the assessment of the situation...
Call out the uber situation - is it good xor bad? tell people if they can come in or stay out, say where u are backing out
You should position yourself around the safest area
Whoever you want buffed pre-über needs buffs before the push; you don't want weak players to assist the über with you, pushing into last for example.
In HL, on defense you don't choose to go trade first, only if they trade into you first. Generally, you should trade to get a force out the enemt medic and reset übers, or if you don't want to give up territory.
On attack, and you're pressure by time, you need to trade only after getting picks (e.g. sniper picks or combo classes) or atleast 3 picks, sometimes you can push out from a sniper + demo pick or other sort of picks, anything allows you to walk in more confidently, so u can use more later and you want the med to use as soon as you uber. As soon as u trade, you want it to be a solo uber so nobody else stays in, but you can choose to flash people you want to save alive or not flash and drop them and have the longer uber.
As long as u have the advantage after the uber, it's your decision on how to pop the better uber: a longer uber on a solo player, or shorter uber on multiple players. Every flash on a player you lose 0.5s of uber
If their med dies, and you're pressure with uber, sometimes you have to use to save yourself (hard pressure from soldiers or stickies, not a scout chip-shotting you 20's across the map, unless you're super weak and about to die)
Usually don't push with less than 15 ad unless you know for sure that you will kill the enemy med, otherwise the med can stay far back and easily re-push with their better uber. On 10 ad, you have to kill the med
Building übers
Class | Base hp | ⌊ 142.5% x Base hp ⌋ |
---|---|---|
Scout | 125 | 178 |
Soldier | 200 | 285 |
Pyro | 175 | 249 |
Demo | 175 | 249 |
Heavy | 300 | 427 |
Engi | 125 | 178 |
Medic | 150 | 213 |
Sniper | 125 | 178 |
Spy | 125 | 178 |
Counting übers
🥠 "Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose." ― Sun Tzu
Keeping close track of übers is mandatory as it enables you and your team to position accordingly; everybody should always know the über situation. The easiest and most efficient way is using the server map time left (30 minutes at the start of the game on all non-K.O.T.H. maps by default). When the other medic spawns / uses über you look at the timer and subtract:
- between 40-50 seconds, if they use the Medigun
- between 30-40 seconds, if they use the Kritzkrieg
E.g. If an enemy medic dies and respawns on the Medigun, with server time 19:10 left, you would subtract 50 seconds and come up with a time of 18:20 . This is the average time to build über, but if you are aware that the other medic builds slower or faster, adjust this time accordingly.
Last 2 figures on map time | Current server | Calculation | Expected über time |
---|---|---|---|
≥ 50s: | E.g. 19:50 or 22:53 | - 50s | E.g. 19:00 or 22:03 |
< 50s: | E.g. 19:33 or 12:12 | + 10s and - 1m | E.g. 18:43 or 11:22 |
This means you can call advantages a lot more precisely.
It also forces you to look up and off your crosshair more often, further increasing your awareness.
Counting ubers based on your own percentage is another alternative, but with any counting method you must consider the times when you build über inefficiently e.g. buffing players with ≥ 142.5% hp or arrowing non-crit heal players close to you or the small times when you're not healing anyone at all. These mistakes build up in the long run, which can mean an ever-increasing über disadvantage for your team.
With either method, counting in sets of 4s can help assist conveying the severity on the uber situation with the rest of the team...
Medigun über
Kritzkrieg über
You could go kritz when you know you will get advantage. A kritz perfectly builds in 32s and uber perfectly builds in 40s - it's a high risk, high reward, but over-using kritz can make you become too predictable and teams can play well in advance. Most teams bring out kritz when both medics die at the same time, which would mean most times, they would respawn at the same time.
Bad situations to use kritzkrieg are on defence
Quick-Fix über
Quick-fix is good when you won't have time to build uber efficiently or when you need as many heals as you can. It's risky, because you're stuck on quick-fix if you win the fight and enemy med is alive - but it's used in the last few seconds on the round to secure the ground on the point. The longer a quickfix is out in play in a game, the less effective it becomes. As the name suggests, it is a "quick fix" - great for short term, not as good for long term because it's heals per min can be out damaged pretty easily against well-coordinated teams as time passes. It's a game-finisher.
Once you have killed their med, change back to the medigun as soon as you and your team safely can
Vaccinator über
Vaccinator is very, very situational and can be the easiest counter if you know their med is on kritz
Vacc goes through Hitscan, then explosion, then fire damage
always focus what's infront, best use of kritz is to bait as the demo and then you flash on one or two players - as it forces the med to use two or three resistances (e.g. "laser beam heavy"). If a kritz is used on heavy first, due to bullet damage it starts firing kritz bullets instantly, so using vacc, it;s ideal to be on hitscan resistance first - once they kritz, use on hitscan, and then use explosion as soon as u can (if their demo or soldier is close to his medic ofc, otherwise no need for explosion resistance). It requires more mechanical precision to start on bullet resistance than on explosion, as in the heat of the moment medics can often feel the pressure and mess up on the resistance
In the end, vacc and quickfix is a matter of preference: vacc has less heals per minute but more resistance, quickfix has more heals per minute but no resistance
Arrow-crit-übers
Credit to Edgar
Pre-über
... Just use lol
In-über
Whilst you über, make sure you control your flashes
Post-über
Last, but certainly not least, post-über fights can win or lose entire points if you and your teammates play accordingly, from the resulting über...
Awareness
🥠 “If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.” – Sun Tzu
Visual awareness
- what
- why
- when/where
- how
To be visually aware, a med needs good crosshair placement i.e. placing his crosshair in the most optimal spot, where he can spot the most danger or at least the most immediate danger. A medic has to use both his peripheral vision and fov to his advantage. Generally, it will be looking slightly up; unless there is a low ceiling relative to the med, soldiers, demos, pyro can be in the air above the med's pov.
The 90 FOV mentioned before is mandatory , since that's the highest fov in tf2 and a medic can use his entire screen to check for danger, such as jumping soldiers or spies or anything really. Some spots like process last when the med is in nest/upper/secret, the med can place his crosshair where he can see all the doors - players cannot ghost through walls, but can only come from the doors (otherwise they are noclipping and that's cheating!)
By enabling the medic radar and having good crosshair placement, you can pre-fire arrows at teammates (e.g. teammates out of sight like behind a wall/rock) which can save time.
Moments in HL where you need to look forward, e.g. saving a demo if he is taking a lot of spam, you need to assess the threat in front of you.
You can be a passive spychecker urself with ur own eyes, dont rely on your own teammates too much to totally protect you or other members of your team.
Audible awareness
- what
- why
- when/where
- how
Mental awareness
- what
- why
- when/where
- how
Spy time
It's always good to know when the spy will pounce on you, even if your pyro is calling it or dead.
........
Object permanence
When you're in danger, in 6's you need your players
In uber disad, if you're not agro enough they will take space for free - so unless they are blinding popping in, you need to be exposed to a certain degree - u wont be able to force unless ur flank is crazy, but obviously not so close that you get caught if they uber in to you
in last, you need to be completely safe though
listen to comms, if u know one soldier is dead and the other is called leaving, then u know u wont be bombed by soldiers
if the sniper is called dead or shown on the match hud, then cross any sightline
prioritise flank when ur combo is not in danger and they come to you
Medics should use minimised, clean huds so they aren't distracted e.g. boxes behind health, or crazy animations and massive crosshairs
Also if playing with non-teammates, try enabling overlays so you know who is calling for arrows
In a situation where there is a stalemate and the other team has not sac'd or tried any plays in over a minute then you can ask your team to try and peek and count the other team's classes - this means that if your team can count 2 soldiers and 2 scouts then the other team does not have a spy or a sniper however if they cannot count two soldiers and two scouts then it is very likely the other team might have a sniper or a spy and you should position yourself outside of sniper sightlines as best you can and periodically (every 5 seconds or so but this is a rough estimate) do a 180 and check your back
🥠 “If quick, I survive. If not quick, I am lost. This is "death.” ― Sun Tzu
Solemn Vow
The solemn vow is a DIRECT upgrade to the ubersaw in 99% of situations - the only time that it can arguably be better to use the übersaw is if you die on mid and the other medic has a full advantage, in these situations it can be a good idea to temporarily equip the übersaw in order to make a clutch play on last and get yourself uber
It is important to actively try to use the solemn vow - you should be regularly looking at the other team and trying to call out which of their players is weak so that you can tell your team to focus that person
The solemn vow is incredibly overpowered because it gives you the ability to see the other medics übercharge % - this means that if you are pushing and you think they have an advantage you are able to actually check by looking at their medic - also vice versa, if the other team is pushing and you believe they have an advantage or they already have their charge you can look at their medic and he might be for example 70% and you can tell your team to fight a bit longer to delay
It's recommended to use a hud where both the health of the enemy and also the other medic's über % are much easier to read
Credit to nubbi, you can download seeds' hud
Positioning
🥠 “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.” ― Sun Tzu
Awareness and positioning go hand in hand; you can't really have one without the other.
A med's positioning is a function with multiple inputs based on:
- Where your teammates are
- Where the enemy players are
- What the über situation is
🥠 “Convince your enemy that he will gain very little by attacking you; this will diminish his enthusiasm.” ― Sun Tzu
You should position yourself according to what the best possible outcome of the über situation is:
🥠 “if you fight with all your might, there is a chance of life; where as death is certain if you cling to your corner” ― Sun Tzu
When playing aggressive*, make it:
- Easy for teammates to pressure/attack enemies
- Hard for enemies to pressure/attack teammates
When playing passive*, make it:
- Easy for teammates to defend you
- Hard for enemies to attack you
❗ *NB: This is generally the idea, unless the enemy team has more advantages than you, explained in #Counting advantages
How to stand | Über ad | Über dis-ad |
---|---|---|
Teammates | Assist them to pressure enemies | Assist them to defend you |
Enemies | Hinder them to pressure teammates | Hinder them to attack you |
In 6's, ....
In HL, medics are always going to be behind the combo and perhaps a part of the map, so the enemy sniper can't easily headshot the medic in the open.
There are rare situations where a medic needs to go infront of his team (e.g. flashing über to scout going knee-deep in the enemy).
🥠 “One mark of a great soldier is that he fight on his own terms or fights not at all.” ― Sun Tzu
5CP positioning based on advantages
E.g. Imagine your on team RED and the enemy is team BLU
Rollout
Defending Mid
Attacking Mid
Defending your 2nd
Attacking your 2nd
Defending your Last
Attacking their 2nd
Defending their 2nd
Attacking their Last
Movement
Moving from position to position is just as important. You won't find many situations where you can simply stand still in HL as you can in 6's.
Surfing damage
Written by Wi11am!
🥠 “Those skilled in warfare move the enemy, and are not moved by the enemy.” ― Sun Tzu
Surfing is a crucial, mechanical skill that all players should know how to execute. Any class can rocket-jump, a.k.a surf, by timing their jump with an enemy projectile explosion. The health trade-off is the same as sticky jumping, or rocket jumping without gunboats, around 50-100 hp depending on proximity to the explosion.
Medics should be able to surf enemy soldier's rockets. demoman's pipes and stickies, and enemy hitscan e.g. Heavy's minigun or scout's scattergun damage. These damage types allow medics to create distance from the enemy by surfing away.
Surfing can be broken down into: the jump, the strafe and the landing.
The jump: Several factors come into play for timing the rocket-jump. Ping affects where projectiles appear client-side, compared to the server. Since projectiles are server side, you have to account for this delay by jumping early. Rockets are always closer then they seem, especially with high ping, meaning you have to know timings for your specific ping situation. Where the rocket lands, relative to you, can also have a huge impact on where you surf to. Not all is lost though, as we have control over……
The Flight: In all source games, strafing can be done while mid air, allowing for movement not possible in our current reality. This can be done by pressing A (left strafe key) and D (right strafe key) while slowly moving your mouse in the same direction (for strafing while facing forwards) or in the opposite direction (for strafing while facing backwards). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mozIx2v4s7s This video gives a good visual demonstration of the concept, I highly recommend checking it out for a better understanding of the concept.
As you turn your mouse, strafing in the air, you build up speed. Most of the time, this speed can be safely ignored, but when launched vertically, or with little speed, any bit of movement can matter. A technique used by rocket jumpers and strafers alike is “wiggle strafing”, where one strafes back and forth rapidly, hoping to abuse the speed gained from said strafes to go just abit further.
The final big component of strafing with medic is airshots, your biggest fear while in the air. Surfing while facing away from the fight gives you the most control of your movement. As well of being able to see the map, you can see nearby players to surf to in hopes they save you. Being too predictable, and always strafing facing away will lead to you being on the receiving end of many airshots, which is why most experienced medics strafe facing combat. Intense map knowledge, plus good comms and a spacial understanding of where you are allows you to see the rockets come your way, and greatly reduces the chances of you being caught in the air. Know when to use each, and you’ll find yourself a step above the rest.
Decision making
🥠 "Imagine TF2 like a game of chess, where your team are the chess pieces. You want each piece ready to be used, to the best of their ability." ― Jorge
"A game of chess is like a sword fight; you must think first before you move" ― Master Liu
"If you're going to war, do you want people in wheelchairs or in jetpacks?" ― Jorge
Good decision making is what truly sets apart the great medics from the rest.
in HL think sniper spy sniper spy, when one dies then stop thinking about it until they come back to the frontlines.
you have the leisure to be aware of all info and be aware of your team's position based on their health,
It's all about decision making
Counting advantages
🥠 “Who wishes to fight must first count the cost” ― Sun Tzu
Learn to count more than just übers. In 6's, the advantages are:
- über advantage
- Player advantage
- Health advantage
- Position advantage
- Class advantage
- Ammo advantage
Foresight
expect things, eventually there will be nothing new. you know soldiers will jump, snipers will peek etc.
Think 3 or 4 moves ahead
Think
Timing
Mental bandwidth
Adapting
🥠 “Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.” ― Sun Tzu
Attitude
🥠 “If the mind is willing, the flesh could go on and on without many things.” ― Sun Tzu
As with any team-oriented actions in life, attitude heavily affects how you and your team play in-game.
You should be kind, humble, considerate and focused on committing to your job; however stressful situations can get; however high emotions can be.
When humans become stressed, their critical thinking and judgement will suffer as a result; be aware of this and train to focus in tense situations.
🥠 “who does not know the evils of war cannot appreciate its benefits” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Never tilt.
As a player, let alone a medic, you should never tilt.
The medic has a more implicit and generic role in the team: a medic is a team advantage.
Heals are given to boost the confidence of players, über even more so.
TF2 is a video game and video games are meant to be fun; if you're not having fun, then what are you doing?
The last thing anybody wants to hear is some stranger on the internet scream down their mic, as this is not fun for anyone and gives your team a disadvantage, going against the implicit role of a medic.
Toxicity
Even if other people are being toxic, saying things like:
"you're bad", "wtf JUST USE", "what are you DOING", "WHY are you there", "just HEAL ME", responding in a toxic manner is just as bad.
You can make light-hearted jokes about it, but don't go down the path of being toxic yourself.
Being toxic is useless and inefficient
...in achieving what you really want from yourself and teammates.
This also includes self-deprecation like:
"oh I suck so bad" or "I'm terrible at this game".
It brings the team morale down as well as your own, which brings down the team's overall performance, resulting in immediate and future losses for your team. Simply being more positive can help a lot in the long run, for your own sanity too. Like with decision making, put your foot down and don't let your emotions get the better of you.
There is a difference in a team leader talking in a stern manner to coordinate his team, and a player just yelling at everyone else so notice the difference.
🥠 “Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.” ― Sun Tzu
Choose your teammates wisely; you don't want to be around toxic players in general. It can affect your long-term mental state and question whether you actually want to play TF2 or not, as well as having a knock-on effect and making yourself toxic to others - unwillingly or not.
🥠 “You have to believe in yourself.” ― Sun Tzu
Communicating
Every player needs to communicate information that other players can work off of, through clear and concise calls. A medic should often call out the uber situation (i.e. who has more or less uber, or who has uber and who doesn't) and occasionally his own position. Don't overload information; you aren't casting your game but calling the right information at the right time.
The tone of your voice should indicate the severity of the situation. Calling in a rushed or tense manner all the time will lose meaning to your team if every call was made in that manner, even the smallest of calls - as well as you and your team losing energy very fast. Similarly, calling in a low, quiet voice can do the opposite but equally damaging effect.
"they're 70", "we're 40", "heals choke", "I'm leaving", "we're weak", "with you scout", "our demo's weak", "we have (ad/über)", "they have (ad/über)", "soldier on me/med" are all good calls. In HL, you will most
Comms vs Calls
Similar to parameters vs arguments, essentially they mean the same thing
Main calling
🥠 “If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, then the general is to blame. But, if orders are clear and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers.”
"Sun Tzu said that, and I'd say he knows a little more about fighting than you do pal, because he invented it! And then he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honor." ― Soldier
just dont maincall as med lol, jk
Settings
🥠 "A poor craftsman blames his tools" ― 17th Century Proverb
"but you can't really blame him if his tools are made of paper and he's working with metal." ― Rahmed
When prioritising skill performance instead of visual quality, consider running the game at its minimal graphical settings for more frames per second.
High graphical settings are very distracting, and no matter how good your PC is, TF2 is a poorly-optimized game, and can result in occasional FPS drops.
Check out the Windows and Linux 🧰 O.S. optimisations and 🔧 Gaming Tweaks for Windows.
Launch options
Steam library > Team Fortress 2 >>(right click)>> Properties > General > Launch Options
Remove any previous options and paste the following:
-dxlevel 81 -full -w [your native resolution width] -h [your native resolution height] -novid -nojoy -nosteamcontroller -nohltv -particles 1 -precachefontchars -console
E.g. I have two 1920 x 1080, 144hz monitors so my initial launch options would be:
-dxlevel 81 -full -w 1920 -h 1080 -freq 144 -novid -nojoy -nosteamcontroller -nohltv -particles 1 -precachefontchars -console -hushsteam
And then post-first launch of TF2, it would look like:
-freq 144 -novid -nojoy -nosteamcontroller -nohltv -particles 1 -precachefontchars -console -hushsteam
Check out the 🛠️ Launch options and 📑 misconceptions for the explanation why. There is an argument to use -dxlevel 100
, as this may give more fps to modern PC's. However, -dxlevel 81
makes enemy projectiles, sniper lasers and lighting more visible - increasing your awareness - as well as making the game feel a lot smoother, as it [renders less.]
It's also recommended to disable Steam Overlay + Discord Overlay, as having them enabled can result in performance drops (e.g. stuttering)
Disabling Steam Overlay:
Steam >> Settings >> In-Game >> [ ] Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game
Disabling Discord Overlay:
Discord >> ⚙️(User Settings) >> Game Overlay >> Enable in-game Overlay. (ⓧ )
❗ NB: Make sure to remove the '-dxlevel 81, -full, -w and -h' launch options after the first start-up of TF2, or you computer will be haunted by ghosts!
Mastercomfig
The best, updated fps config to run is the 📜 Mastercomfig low vpk, giving maximum performance without caring much about visibility or possible visual glitches. Check out the 📑 documentation and information on 🧹 clean-up, 💿 installation and ❓ F.A.Qs.
Developer console
By going through Options > Keyboard > Advanced... from the main menu, you can enable the ⚙️ Developer Console, with the ~ (tilde) as the default toggle bind. Just about any configuration task can be completed from the console, and in fact many have to be.
Config files
Console VARiables (a.k.a cvars) that appear like this
can be pasted either in the console, with a semi-colon to separate each command - or saved as a config file through the use of 📝 Scripting, using a text editor like 📝 Notepad++. To save as a config file, make sure to select the "All Files" option in the "Save as type" dropdown, and post-fix .cfg
to the file's name in the following windows 📂path:
📂C:
└📁Program Files (x86)
└📁Steam
└📁steamapps
└📁common
└📁Team Fortress 2
└📁tf
└📁cfg
Check out the 📑 List of useful console commands. and type key_listboundkeys
in console, for a list of your current bound keys; to create and personalise your own binds or aliases. If you want to understand what a certain cvar does, type help <command name>
in console for a brief description, or check out 📑 all of TF2's console commands
If you use a 📜 mastercomfig preset vpk file, follow the instructions on using 📑 custom configs:
📂tf
└📁cfg
| └📁overrides
| └📝autoexec.cfg
| └📝demoman.cfg
| └📝engineer.cfg
| └📝game_overrides.cfg
| └📝heavyweapons.cfg
| └📝medic.cfg
| └📝pre_comfig.cfg
| └📝pyro.cfg
| └📝scout.cfg
| └📝sniper.cfg
| └📝soldier.cfg
| └📝spy.cfg
└📁custom
└📜mastercomfig-low-preset.vpk
Quality of Life CVARS
The following variables are essential to play TF2 more refined and modernised in 2021. Some commands are recommended, as playing with viewmodels on or with a bad medigun fov will be distracting, worsening your awareness.
Explore the TF2 option menus or the 📑 Multiplayer options for a full list of variables to change according to preference.
⚙️ Variable | ℹ️ Description |
---|---|
🖱️ Mouse options | |
m_filter "0" |
Disabled smoothing out mouse movement over two frames |
m_rawinput "1" |
Reads mouse input directly from the device, bypassing any control panel settings. |
⚔️ Combat options | |
hud_fastswitch "1" |
Changes weapons without the weapon selection menu |
tf_dingalingaling "1" |
Plays a hit sound when you injure an enemy |
tf_dingalingaling_lasthit "1" |
Plays a kill sound when one of your attacks kills an enemy |
hud_combattext "1" |
Displays damage done as text over your target |
hud_combattext_batching "1" |
Accumulates consecutive damage done to the same target |
hud_combattext_batching_window "2" |
The maximum delay between accumulating damage |
tf_remember_activeweapon "1" |
Remember the active weapon between lives |
🗡️ Class-specific options | |
tf_simple_disguise_menu "1" |
Enables spy's concise disguise menu |
tf_medigun_autoheal "1" |
Medigun continues healing without holding down the fire button |
hud_medichealtargetmarker "1" |
Displays a marker over the player you are healing |
hud_medicautocallers "1" |
Injured teammates automatically call out |
hud_medicautocallersthreshold "76" |
Auto-call health percentage |
🖥️ HUD options | |
tf_colorblindassist "1" |
Turns on colour-blind mode (Affects Jarate and Mad Milk, displaying a jar icon or white rain drops above hit players respectively) |
cl_use_tournament_specgui "1" |
Uses advanced spectator HUD in tournament mode. Very helpful in watching STV demos. |
tf_scoreboard_ping_as_text "1" |
Displays ping values as text on the scoreboard |
🛠️ Performance options | |
tf_particles_disable_weather "1" |
Disables weather effects |
mp_decals "1.000000" |
Multiplayer decal limit (visual effects e.g. bullet impacts) |
🕹️ Miscellaeneous options | |
tf_use_minviewmodels "1" |
Uses minimised viewmodels |
fov_desired "90" |
Sets the player camera's Field Of View to the max setting of 106° (on 16:9 resolution) |
tf_use_match_hud "1" |
Uses the Match Hud element to see teammate's health and enemies alive or dead |
tf_hud_show_servertimelimit "1" |
Displays time left before the current map ends |
tf_hud_target_id_disable_floating_health "1" |
Disables floating health bar |
Sensitivity
Choose a comfortable sens. that doesn't limit you, and stick with it across all classes for consistency.
Using sensitivities slower than 17cm/360 can leave your movement and air control to suffer, making you less aware. Choose something that allows you to turn 180° easily (e.g. to check your back for spies often) and to control yourself in the air well for surfs or rocket-jumps.
I personally use 10.391cm/360° (1600 DPI mouse, sensitivity "2.5"
ingame)
Resupply bind
📂tf
└📁cfg
└📁user
└📝game_overrides.cfg
A.k.a. the "b4nny bind", these are essential binds recommended for all classes. You instantly change the current loadout to any other loadouts, including the same loadout you're already on! When a loadout preset is loaded, with slight delay, the class respawns on that preset, with full health, ammo and crit heals. What's even more useful is if a medic loadout binds to a preset sharing the same type medigun as they currently have, they retain their über percentage.
E.g. If Loadout A has the Medigun, Loadout C has the Medigun and the medic loadout binds A => C
with 85% über: the med will respawn with 85% über.
However, if Loadout B has the Kritzkrieg and the med loadouts binds A => B
- uh oh, my über is gone!
You can use these just before entering the shutters doors of spawn, as it's faster and more efficient than walking to the supply cabinet, unless the map has a resupply cabinet right next to a spawn's shutter door e.g. the spawns on koth_product_rcx
Viewmodel toggle script
📂tf
└📁cfg
└📁user
└📝game_overrides.cfg
r_drawviewmodel "0"
doesn't draw the viewmodel and viewmodel_fov "25"
reduces the viewmodel closer to the player's camera, hiding it entirely if low enough; it's very helpful to hide the big, glitzy, ball-of-über that distracts you.
Also use the number keys for switching weapons and not the scroll wheel. The scroll wheel is too inconsistent, even if you are comfortable with it. Number wheels are better to use as you are certain which weapon you are using, regardless of viewmodels drawn on or off.
Alternatively, if you don't want to toggle viewmodels:
📂tf
└📁cfg
└📁user
└📝game_overrides.cfg
📂tf
└📁cfg
└📁user
└📝medic.cfg
Masking and faking über
🥠 “If you are strong, appear weak. But if you are weak, appear strong.” ― Sun Tzu
📂tf
└📁cfg
└📁user
└📝medic.cfg
Masking and faking über are used to make the enemy think that you have über or not, especially if the other team can't count übers well or they get confused easily.
To mask über: press your bound KEY when your über reaches the 98% or 99% mark, dependant if you're beaming a player with <142.5% or ≥142.5% hp respectively,
To fake über, press the key at a reasonable time, to make the enemy think you have über. E.g. If both meds spawn at the same time, but you know you have been building slowly, then faking über from counting can help make the enemy believe you have when you don't
🥠 “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.” ― Sun Tzu
It's necessary to mask and fake über here at random as this is where playing mind-games comes to play. If a medic becomes predictable, e.g. always masking über when he gets über, or always faking at a certain time when he doesn't, then the enemy can easily pick up on that and see through the deciet - so sometimes faking übers randomely even when you have can help, or masking randomly too.
Check out Scrambled's 📂cfg, which includes a randomised medic mask über bind
Null-movement script
📂tf
└📁cfg
└📁user
└📝game_overrides.cfg
Alternatively, download mastercoms' 📜 Null-Movement Cancellation vpk to:
📂tf
└📁custom
Jump-Crouch script
📂tf
└📁cfg
└📁user
└📝game_overrides.cfg
By binding the spacebar to jump and crouch at the same time, the jump-crouch script will improve surfs and survivability many times over. It makes jumping second-nature much easier. Since you only press spacebar instead of spacebar+shift / spacebar+ctrl;
1 finger => less effort => more time to think about other things.
2 fingers => more effort => less time to think about other things.
E.g. If a soldier manages to surprise you with a bomb, by instinct you can just hit the spacebar and surf further away with the script than without
❗ NB: If you are a jumper main and need to separate jump and crouch (e.g. for bounces), try having separate binds in a soldier.cfg
file saved and executed with the aforementioned mastercomms' custom config method
Medic Radar script
📂tf
└📁cfg
└📁user
└📝medic.cfg
Occasionally, a red cross appears in a red or white box on the monitor. This means that someone nearby is in poor health. The medic will therefore use his weapon arsenal and take care of the patient. With a little squid, we can adjust this property so that, if we want, the position of all our friends is revealed to us, but not always
After pressing 'e', all teammates are revealed for a short time. However, this is an optional bind, as the higher skilled players you play with, communicating positioning becomes second nature, and the medic radar redundant.
HUD
the less cluttered your screen, the more you see
Use a clean, minimal hud. HUD elements such: as big, opaque boxes for HP, ammo, übers meters and the scoreboard; animated crosshairs; centred über meters - or even HUD's that utilise multiple colours are huge, cluttered distractions, which may look nice, but ultimately hinder performance.
🖥️ m0re HUD is objectively the best, but any HUD that doesn't distract, nor clutter your vision is still good. Find one of your liking at huds.tf - popular huds include 🖥️ budhud and 🖥️ sunset hud. As a rule-of-thumb, for HUD elements like HP, ammo and über meters; make them not so far away from your crosshair that they are at the edges of your screen, but not too close that they clutter your crosshair.
HealthDamageWarning
When installing a new HUD, locate:
📂tf
└📁custom
└📁hud
└📁resource
└📁ui
└📝HudPlayerHealth.res
NB: May be different per HUD. E.g. for Sunset HUD:
📂tf
└📁custom
└📁hud
└📁resource
└📁ui
└📁alternatives
└📝health_normal.res
and change the HealthDeathWarning
variable (a.k.a. the "red hp" percentage) to 0.76
.
When playing medic, instead of your health indicator going red at 49% health (73 hp), it will instead go red at 76% (113HP).
This gives more leeway to survive most damage intakes (e.g. scout's meatshots, demo's pipes or a soldier's rockets)
This is the amount of HP where you literary can get one shot from the close range by a scout, demo or soldier. Or let me put it this way, when holding uber with 113, 1 big fart from heavy class will result to you dropping the uber.
But how does that really help us not to drop übers better?
Explanation: When playing, you often hold your concentration on the middle part of your screen. Obviously, that is because everything happens exactly there. In the middle of our screen.
As a result, we almost never focus our concentration on HP and ammo numbers, which are far down in the bottom of our screen. (Remember your heavies often running out of ammo in the middle of the battle. That often happened in the teams I played in: OH SHIT, I RAN OUT OF AMMO, GOIN’ BACK). In rare occasions, we throw our eyes at the HP or ammo bar, but most of the time these 2 numbers are seen by the side vision
📑 Far peripheral vision reacts on the changes. We can’t see the exact changes, but we can see that these changes became ‘’RED’’ in the bottom left of our screen. With this option, you don’t have to focus on your health that much. It became red and started to flash? A rocket is flying in to your face? UBER!
With this option, you are making yourself very comfortable during the übers. In the ubering everything happens in milliseconds. We can’t sacrifice our time for watching our HP, because that can result in to a über drop.
Wider resolutions
❗ NB: This is not necessary, but it certainly won't hurt to try
TF2 limits the max. Field Of View to 90° @ 4:3 screen resolution; 106° @ 16:9. The higher the aspect ratio, the higher the FOV.
With 💿 Custom Resolution Utility we can create custom resolutions.
It's recommend to create a 1920 × 900 (if your native resolution is 1920 × 1080) - but you can set it narrower, stopping around 1920 × 800.
at 1920 x 900 resolution, we get a max. FOV to 📑 116°
To create a custom resolution, run “CRU.exe” follow the picture below:
- Select the monitor you play on
- Click on “Add…” under “Detailed resolutions”
- Select “Automatic - LCD standard”
- Choose your resolution
- Choose your refresh rate
- Confirm
- Confirm
- Restart your computer, or use one of the included drivers to restart the drivers.
If the resolution does not work as it should, you most likely have a black screen and a large “Out of range” label. Return to step 5 and make sure the refresh rate is supported by your monitor and signal transmission method. E.g. older versions of HDMI do not support high frequencies.
If you have set it correctly, go to step 3 and try another automatic timing - or if you know what you are doing, then try manual.
❗ NB: Very few medics change their resolution; 🥇 Mirelin to name someone.
Rahmedigun tf 📂
📂tf
└📁cfg
| └📁user
| └📝autoexec.cfg
| └📝game_overrides.cfg
| └📝medic.cfg
| └📝pyro.cfg
| └📝engineer.cfg
└📁custom
└📁sunsetdark
└📜explosions_2colours.vpk
└📜mastercomfig-low-preset.vpk
└📜mastercomfig-no-tutorial-addon.vpk
Practicing
“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” ― Sun Tzu
Getting good at playing the piano requires theory as well as playing the piano itself!
The same applies with getting good at playing medic.
To become a good medic takes time, discipline and fun.
To become a great medic takes perfecting all the fundamentals first and then being consistent with your skill, so that it all accumulates into amazing results.
"What works against low level players will not work against better ones. I can't even count the number of times I said to my newbie drive team "Ok that worked, but that should not have worked and won't work against good players". If you're looking to improve, practice what you should do, not just anything that works." – DubThink
Mechanics
Good mechanics is one of the most fundamental skills; you can be taught strategies and game sense, but you can't be taught mechanics.
Master your mechanics where it becomes second nature, and you don't think about it in game.
Game sense
If you want to be a good med, know how to play soldier, spy and sniper for HL - and for 6's play soldier, scout, and demo - get into the head of your enemy
If there's anything specific you notice yourself doing that's bad or not doing that you should be doing then one of the best ways to get yourself to start doing it is to write it on a post-it note and put it on your monitor so you are reminded of it while you play
Practice priority
🥠 “Never venture, never win!” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
It's recommended to do all of the following to begin with, and then whittle down to what you need improving the most:
- Playoffs
- Officials
- Scrims
- Pugs & Mixes
- Ultiduo
- MGE & DM
- Jump maps
- Playing other classes
- Casual
- Surf maps
- Bhop maps
- Training maps
Playoffs
Nothing beats Playoffs. These games matter the most; if you lose, you're out the league, so tension and pressure is high amongst teams. They provide great insight on a player's true colours on how they perform under pressure, as well as providing great practice for future officials.
Getting to playoffs requires the feat of winning officials well, so good luck getting here!
Officials & PCW's
🥠 “Sweat more during peace: bleed less during war.” ― Sun Tzu
Like doing practice papers for exams, Practice Clan Wars a.k.a. scrims, offer practice matches with a team, in a more relaxed, learning environment. These are done to win officials
Pugs & mixes
Ultiduo
by Olgha
Ultiduo is essentially the King Of The Hill game-mode with teams consisting of 1 medic and 1 soldier. Medics can practice hitting arrows, surfing rockets and milking ubers - whereas soldiers can practice hitting directs, bombing medics and playing with a medic. You win by reaching your teams' timer0:00 seconds and no captime on the point by the enemy team.
So we can differentiate two situations : You do or do not have the point.
When you have the point : your goal is to keep as much time as possible, so you should always prioritize on two things :
-Keep your soldier alive 1.1
-Stay alive 1.2
1.1 : The aim is to keep your soldier alive, but how do you do that ?
1.1.1 - prefight :
Always try to get your soldier fully buffed, and don't go for an early arrow on the enemy combo before he has 300 hp. Also make sure that you don't steal ammo-pack. If your soldier is too low after a fight, give him 1 or 2 arrows so you can heal him efficiently
1.1.2 - fight :
during a fight you should always keep track of your soldier dominance. That means if he's winning the fight, you should try to either keep him max buffed, so you increase the health gap OR you can try to support your soldier by damaging the ennemies (Go for arrows if the ennemy soldiers still has ammos, go for a saw if he's close AND without ammos or low ammo, that would give you an even more advantage because you'll get uber percentage).
On a quick note :
During a fight, i recommend to go for safe arrows and not godly arrows, so if your soldier is in the air, but has still a lot of health, try to arrow him when he falls on the ground, and not when he's in the air. That way you'll get a much more reliable heal rate during fight, and often win fights way more.
But of course, if you see that your soldier is in the air without a lot of hp, go for the air arrow.
There's also a technique of anticipation that you can apply in ultiduo : Basically, when your soldier has like 200hp but is going to get a rocket on him, you can try to shoot an arrow that would hit your buddy at the same moment he catches the rocket, it would baiscally mean that, just by anticipating, you have negated a full face rocket during a fight.
You should also learn the timing that you have to master to burst healing. That mean by the time you're passively reloading your crusader's crossbow, you get can give to your soldier a 30 to 50 heal with your medigun, and then go back to your arrows.
1.1.3 - After fight :
Depending on whether you won or lost.
If you won the fight then do that in the following order :
-Retake positions
-Ammo up
-Buff soldier (Optional, if you're soldier is completely full when the enemies go out of spawn, you can go for early damage)
If you lost the fight, That means your soldier has died and you cannot revenge him. If you can look to either juke on the point and keep as much cap time as possible (if you don't die for a long time, and you've juked a lot of ammos, then your soldier can join you to defend the point and he would have an ammo advantage, which is huge in ultiduo) OR try to stay alive, and give up the point. You choose these two things on a few parameters :
How much uber do you have, and maybe keep ?
How low you are and what are your chances to stay alive ?
But more importantly, how do you stay alive in general, when you have the point ?
1.2.1 Keep track of the enemies
That means you should always focus on what are the ideas that the ennemy team has, are they going for you ? your soldier ? Is the medic passive and healing his soldier or agressive on his target ?
Once you figured out , you know how to react properly.
-If the enemy soldier is targetting your soldier, and their medic is passively healing his soldier then you just have to focus on healing your soldier, and getting ready to assist him with damage if needed.
-If the ennemy soldier is targetting your soldier and the medic is targetting you, what you should is to keep as much heal possible on your soldier, and staying away and dodging the ennemy medic,
-If the enemies are targetting you together, well try to dodge and surf as far away as possible, but that far away from you soldier, because he's the only one that can defend you.
1.2.2 What ammos do their soldier have :
In Ultiduo, soldiers have two types of ammo in their clip, 4 rockets and 6 pallets of shotgun.
Experience will help, but you have to count, or either feel how much ammo the ennemy soldier has in its hand, as ultiduo is a mod where the ammo advantage defines whether or not you'll win the fight most of the time because winning more fight won usually means more time on the clock.
-If the soldier has still 4 rockets in his clip, you should always look to be as far away as possible, surfing is a great tool for that.
-If he has none, you have to be also careful because shotgun is a short range weapon, and a good ultiduo won't miss often with it
-If he has litteraly no ammo, then you know you can get to him close, with your ubersaw. (Just be careful if you're low hp, because he still a wip that he can use, with more range than you, to do 40 damage per slap.
MGE & DM
My Gaming Edge is a 1v1 game-mode where players fight in an arena, usually a sectioned part of a map; the first player to reach 20 total kills wins the match.
Most servers have chat plugins, where typing !add
will show an in-game menu of arenas to choose from using the number keys.
Soldier vs Soldier MGE will massively improve your aim and air control.
DeathMatch servers are a 4v4, time-limitless, round-limitless game-mode where players simply fight the other team - creating combinations of partitions of 4v4. E.g. 1 scout + 1 soldier vs 2 scouts, 2 soldiers vs 1 demo, 2 scouts + 1 demo vs 2 soldiers, etc.
Jump maps
Soldiers and Demomen train on Jump maps to improve their air control and be more in touch with their projectile launchers, as well as medics to understand how those same weapons are utilised against them.
Playing other classes
🥠 “Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.” ― Sun Tzu
“To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.” ― Sun Tzu
Casual
Do whatever you want to your heart's content.
Get a killstreak with a blutsauger and a kritzkrieg med beaming you, uberchain with friends or w+m1 on weak players with the solemn vow or whatever - it's casual; who cares right?
Nobody cares who wins or loses; peek as many sightlines you want, uber snipers, do whatever for you to realise where and when you can get punished.
Due to the randomness of casual, you can't utilise all the gamesense from 6's or HL, but the mechanics and fundamentals will carry you a long way.
Surf maps
Surf maps can help teach the basics of air-control, and can be a nice get-away
Training maps
📑 tr_medic maps can be helpful to test the waters of playing competitive medic, if you aren't comfortable to go straight into a game
Play both 6's and HL to be a good medic overall, and get creative with your training if you find yourself getting bored, or want a variety in challenge.
E.g. On some MGE servers, all-class is enabled, so you can try medic vs soldier in an arena where you try to live as long as possible.
Mentors
Having a mentor is a great way to break into the comp. community, get contacts with others, make friends and simply improving faster.
To find someone, check out the TFTV forums and make a thread over there - or go join the ETF2L and RGL discords, and post a request in the mentorship channels.
Usually, you can find a mentor relatively fast but make sure to be respectful and kind to the person; they are giving up their time to help you out. You normally want to tell them a set time in advance to map talk or demo review some of your games. During these sessions, ask as many questions as you can and just relax and listen to their advice.
To join a team, you need some comp experiences for a better chance of getting picked up for a trial, so play in tf2center lobbies or discord mixes to start off with.
be aware getting into comp is a massive barrier
Demo reviews
🥠 “It's said that a wise person learns from his mistakes. A wiser one learns from others' mistakes. But the wisest person of all learns from others' successes.” ― John C. Maxwell
"Give a man a demo review and he stops feeding for a day... teach a man to demo review and he stops feeding for a lifetime..." ― Eskimo
Demo reviews are very helpful in reflection and improvement for you and your team.
Record your own Point Of View (a.k.a. POV) with comms if your pc is good enough and watch them back with a critical mindset. Try see what you can change or where you went wrong.
Most community servers have the Sourcemod plugin enabled, which upload the STV demos to demos.tf. Watching STV's is better than POV demos, because you can see the actual über % of both medics and you can roam around in spectator mode, i.e. watching fights in third-person.
If you want to see how better medics play, watch their streams on the TFTV sidebar, find their SourceTV demos of previous recorded games. To find games you have played, use demos.tf - or download from previous reservations on the EU, NA or Asia serveme sites. The ETF2L site also stores both STV and POV demos of teams too.
When watching other medic's demos, try to watch their more 'serious' games like official matches or scrims over pugs or mixes, as they might be playing less seriously and more chaotically in the pugs (e.g. playing more for frags than the objective or going super deep on big disad.)
For POV demos of other players, make sure you ABSOLUTELY ARE CERTAIN that your configs in:
📂tf
└📁cfg
are set to read only and the POV demo files are set to read only too. Watching someone else's POV's can edit your configs which can be a big annoyance.
autoexec.cfg >>(right click)>> Properties > General > Attributes > [x] Read-only
medpov.dem >>(right click)>> Properties > General > Attributes > [x] Read-only
❗ NB: Legacy == Before the Meet Your Match update i.e. before medics could beam scouts and move scout-speed on any medigun.
In this time, pocket soldier was the meta instead of pocket scout
🎲 Gamemode | 🥇 Medic |
---|---|
6's | Seeds 🇪🇺, Skeez 🇺🇸, Mulaa 🇪🇺, Vani 🇪🇺, Jorge 🇪🇺 |
Legacy 6's | Mirelin 🇪🇺, Shade 🇺🇸, Raymon 🇪🇺, Pyyyour 🇪🇺, KnOxXx 🇪🇺, Harbleu 🇺🇸, Bonobo 🇦🇺, Byte 🇪🇺, F2 🇪🇺, Whiteglow 🇪🇺 |
HL | Gedu (degu) 🇪🇺, Blake 🇺🇸 Jorge 🇪🇺, Dqz 🇪🇺, Arcades 🇪🇺, Matt J 🇪🇺 |
Legacy HL | Ceejaey 🇪🇺, Spreijer 🇪🇺 |
For anyone else that plays in lower divisions, I guess you can look at Rahmed 🇪🇺 ;^)
To view demos in-game, make sure any demos saved are saved as a .dem
file-type and are located within 📂tf - demos stored elsewhere (e.g. 📂Documents or 📂Downloads) won't be able to be viewed.
Hit "⇧SHIFT" + "F2"
or type demoui
in console to open the demo ui - or even type playdemo
in console - and navigate to find the demos.
When watching demos, check your rollouts first - does anybody mess up their rollouts consistently, and do you rollout optimally?
Criticise your fundamentals: What are you doing? Where are you looking? Where are you standing? What are you thinking? What are you saying?
❗ NB: Some demos may look 'choppier' than others, simply because the tick rate set on the server, the demo was recorded in, was too low - nothing you can do about that sorry!
Specifically in 6's, for each mid, figure out why the winning team is winning, and why the losing team is losing.
Think of every death you have as your mistake and think about how you could have prevented it, even if it wasn't your fault. Most of these scenarios can be that you just didn't leave fast enough, or you were too far away from your teammates, or you lost track of über and was caught in by the enemy.
YouTube videos
Watching YouTube videos of old, legacy medic POV's, such as 🥇 Shade, can help give an understanding on how the game used to be played before the Meet your Match update in 2016
🥠 “Correct your mistake as soon as you have found it.” ― Sun Tzu
Discords
🌐 Region | Type | Skill level | Discord guild |
---|---|---|---|
🌍 Multi-regional | 6's, HL, Ultiduo, bball | Any div - any region | RAHMIX |
Casual, 6's + HL coaching | Casual - Intermediate | TF2 Coaching Central | |
6's pugs | ~Low/Main+ | TestCo.TF | |
Community + Broadcasting | All | EssentialsTF | |
Community + Broadcasting | All | TeamFortress.TV | |
🌍 Europe | Community League | Open, Low, Mid, Div 2, Div 1, Prem | ETF2L |
Servers: 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇳🇱 | 6's | Open - Mid | Classical Mix^ |
6's | Open - Mid | Jumper Main mixes - Ask Warped#2991 for an invite | |
6's | Low - Mid | Odd Mixes | |
6's | Low - Mid | Boss Mixes | |
6's | Mid - Div 1 | DESK SLAMMERS | |
6's | Mid - Prem | Polish tf2pickup | |
6's | Mid - Prem | Spanish tf2pickup | |
6's | Mid - Prem | French tf2pickup | |
6's | Mid - Prem | Czech/Slovak tf2pickup | |
6's | Mid - Prem | German tf2pickup | |
6's | Mid - Prem | ex-Yugoslavian tf2pickup | |
6's | Mid - Prem | Finnish tf2pickup | |
6's | Mid - Prem | Dutch tf2pickup | |
6's | Mid - Prem | PugChamp EU Open | |
HL | Mid - Prem | Monkey Mode HL Mixes | |
6's | Mid - Prem | RAT MIX | |
6's | Mid - Prem | MAT MIX | |
6's | Mid - Prem | Garda Mix - Ask buud#3712 for an invite | |
🌎 North America | Community League | Newcomer, Amateur, Intermediate, Main, Advanced, Invite | RGL |
Servers: 🇺🇸 (East, Central, West) | 6's | Newcomer+ | NA TF2 Newbie Mixes |
6's | Newcomer+ | Ross Pugs | |
6's | Newcomer - Amateur+ | Resonance Pugs - DM Hexereii#1143 your RGL profile and ask for an invite | |
6's | Newcomer - Intermediate | F2P Pugs | |
6's | Newcomer - Main | Hathouse Pugs | |
6's | Newcomer - Main | Wealthy Pugs | |
6's | Newcomer - Main | MixChamp | |
6's | Newcomer - Main+ | Platypugs | |
HL | Newcomer - Invite | Senate Pugs | |
6's | Main - Advanced | Outchea - Ask je'mond#0007 for an invite | |
6's | Main - Invite | PugChamp NA Open | |
6's | Adv - Invite | Styles pugs - Ask styles#4075 for an invite | |
HL | Advanced - Invite | Fluwalrus | |
🌎 South America | Community League | Open, Accesso, Central, Elite | Federação Brasileira de Team Fortress 2 |
Servers: 🇧🇷 | 6's | Open - Central | Banheiro Masculino |
6's + HL | Open - Elite | Brotherhood Gaming Association | |
🌏 Asia | Community League | Div 4, Div 3, Div 2, Div 1 | AsiaFortress |
Servers: 🇸🇬 🇭🇰 | 6's | Div 4 - Div 2 | PURE |
6's | Div 4 - Div 2 | IslandTF | |
6's | Div 4 - Div 2 | Bobby Pugs | |
6's | Div 4 - Div 2 | Weed's Pug | |
HL | Div 4 - Div 2 | ATF2L | |
6's | Div 4 - Div 1 | Potato PUGs | |
6's + Mentorship | Div 4 - Div 1 | Tricycle Pugs | |
6's | Div 3 - Div 1 | Free saint quartz | |
6's | Div 2 - Div 1 | Homebrew - Ask Hopps#7149 for an invite | |
6's | Div 2 - Div 1 | Biker Pugs - Ask space#4141 for an invite | |
🌏 Australia | Community League | Open, Main, Intermediate, High, Prem | Ozfortress |
Servers: 🇦🇺 🇳🇿 | 6's | Open - Main | OCE Icebreaker |
6's | Open - Main | FastFewds | |
6's | Open - Main | Raelen Pugs | |
6's | Open - Main | Noob Pugs - Ask DONNA#1000 for an invite | |
🌍 South Africa 🇿🇦 | Community | Err0r 404 | TF2SA Pugs |
✨ Shoutouts ✨
Scrambled
The programming legend that helped me setup this guide! Also mentored Baby Gaeta in HLO#3
Big Papa Matt J
The leader of Gaeta Esports and my HL medic mentor
Gedu
The best HL med in the best HL team in the world
Jorge
Plays both Prem 6's and HL
Olgha
Wholesome Prem french medic
Edgar
Student of Big Papa Matt J
Hopps
Medic from Asia Fortress
Gothiccxo
Fellow streamer medic main
Wi11iam
Coach in the TF2 Coaching Central discord
Resources
It's recommended to view these resources, as they influenced the creation of this guide Yes, even the Art of War. It genuinely can be interpreted for TF2.
Resource | Type | URL |
---|---|---|
The Art of War - Sun Tzu | 📚 TF2 strategy | https://suntzusaid.com/ |
General Medic Tips - Seeds | 📕 6's | https://pastebin.com/raw/9Xxx6mtN |
Highlander Medic GUIDE - Catman | 📺 HL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRV8niG89dU |
Ultimátní návod jak na medica: #1 nastavení - Gedu | 📘 TF2 settings | http://tf2mid.cz/2018/04/02/ultimatni-navod-jak-na-medica-1-nastaveni/ |
Ultimátní návod jak na medica: #2 ubery a healování - Gedu | 📘 6's + HL | http://tf2mid.cz/2018/05/18/ultimatni-navod-jak-na-medica-2-ubery-a-healovani/ |
Mastercomfig docs - Mastercoms | 📒 TF2 settings | https://docs.mastercomfig.com/en/latest/ |
Mirelin, Over the Rainbow - Mirelin | 📕 6's (Legacy) | https://etf2l.org/forum/tactics/topic-31495/ |
Mirelin's medic mentor session - Huhytf2 | 📺 6's (Legacy) | https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50491057 |
TF2 MR SLIN Medic guides - MR SLIN | 📺 6's (Legacy) | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVUZIev7CNZ5lBcn_ZmkT1ybAGkQ7PpbW |
General Tf2 + Precepts Videos - Marxist | 📺 6's (Legacy) | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL757vsS-wvM4kwvSGBJ00yEOo5A2G7_Al |
UGC Platinum Highlander s20 - Ceejaey | 📺 HL POV's (Legacy) | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsLHZvRLrp2h7-oQlyvPMNci-0-s5tnCO |
ETF2L Premiership s10 - Ceejaey | 📺 HL reviews (Legacy) | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsLHZvRLrp2h7YSijKBsHCFSVrD9m4Pjd |
Medic: Advanced to Expert Tips and High-Level Competitive Strategy - Edgar | 📗 HL + Casual | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2223187954 |
More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Air Strafing - Kered13 | 📗 Strafing | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=184184420 |
FOV settings in TF2 and other Source/Quake based games v1.0 - Kerch | 📗 FOV | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IO03oeEWPixq9YvplILx_REm2MoT-gGA/view |
Medic for Absolute Beginners - ArraySeven | 📺 Casual | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHntb0kp2K0 |