New Medic Weapon Strategies

[Adabiviak]

So... with the release of the new medic weapons, how best to use them?

Blutsauger: I don't see any drawback to using this? It saved my life at least twice going toe to toe with a soldier. It also lets you know if you're making hits when lobbing syringes over long distances.

Ubersaw: I don't see any drawbacks to using this either. It's a little more intimidating anyway.

Kritzkrieg: Maybe not - the medic is too easily killed to make this useful without a standard uber when going into a fortified area. Used in conjunction with the standard uber, this can be devastating. So far, I just, eh, "Kritzed" some demomen when they were laying defensive stickies so they would all be crits. Maybe if a soldier is taking pot shots at a fortified area? How best to use this weapon? If I'm healing a Heavy who's laying down suppressive fire, but not taking it? Maybe on Dustbowl, Kritz a pyro if we know that the other team has already expended their ubers so we can run through them quicker?

 

[Chris]

I agree with you on all points really.

I use the Blutsauger, and will probably use the Ubersaw when I get it, but just can't see enough situations when I'd actually rather use a Kritzkreig insted of an ubercharge. The only time I really would is, like you said, on a demoman to get some critical stickies and then possibly some critical pipe bombs from a safe distance. The medic is just not strong enough to survive when the Kritzkrieg is activated, and as nice as a critical pyro is, you would both be far too fragile.

I'm worried about the ubersaw tho - as demonstrated here http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kPESj8MffRk (not that I really want to draw attention to this) two medics with ubersaws can really ruin a game. Surely valve could see that this would happed? 25% per hit is just silly. I wouldn't be suprised to see this reduced to 10% or even 5%.

 

[Headcrab Pie]

From The TF2F forums.

[Thoughts on the Krietzkrieg:]
Ah... what can I say? This gun is rather fun to use. It is identical to the regular medigun, except for the new look and of course the crits-charge. The Crit-uber can allow for massive DPSing, especially with a soldier/demo.

However, the Krietz-Medic is much more vulnerable than the Uber-Medic, since they can never attain invincibility. The regular old Uber-charge is an all-around better choice since you will still get crits while Ubered, but both the medic and the recipient is invincible. For this reason, I think that krietzkrieg is much more of a situational weapon. It takes much more care in its use, since it won't save you in a desperate situation as well as a regular uber would.

[For the medic & the recipient of the Kritz-uber:]
You should NOT treat the krietz-uber like the game-breaker that regular ubers sometimes are, although there are times it can be such. Don't rush in head-first and recklessly, unless it is a planned and coordinated attack. Otherwise, you should try to gain higher-ground so that you can make the most of your crits and also increase survivability.

[Kritz-uber vs. Regular-uber]
Regular uber will win 100% of the time since DPS means nothing to the ubered.

[Kritz-uber & Soldier]
The krietzkrieg uber is also not to be used for a suicide-like rush forward, and thus the regular uber is better to take out sentries, or push a heated front. However, krietzkrieg is deadly when under the right circumstances. Small, confined and linear spaces are soldier-food... also, a krietzkrieg'd soldier can use 1 rocket to jump, giving him 3-guarenteed crit rockets in a row (which is a lot!), and then probably 1 or 2 more before the uber is off (I actually did this as a soldier a couple times in goldrush and found it extremely effective).

[Kritz-uber & Demo]
Krietzkrieg demos are likewise deadly, more with their stickies than with their pipes (sounds like a weed reference o_o) and also you get the chance to throw out 8 glowing crit-stickies out there without blowing'em (if you so desire).

[Kritz-uber & Heavy]
Heavies are not a bad class to crit-uber either, due to their endurance, they are able to survive more than your demos and soldiers. Also a critting heavy will take out anything that is stupid enough to be within medium range of them with no cover, and possibly long range (but they'll likely find cover more than half the time). Remember that over long range, although individual crit-bullets have no distance damage fall-off, there still exists a large spread. Krietzed Heavy is less effective over long-range as well

[Kritz-uber & Pyro]
Effective, but difficult. Pyro's are weak, especially if you're facing good heavies and soldiers on the other team. But critical flame-thrower is no joke... most likely, the best way to kritz-pyro is to flank from the side, but sentries will also take down both pyro and medic so caution is recommended.

[Kritz-uber & Scout]
Uhhh maybe. But probably not. 2 bats per second, 10 seconds of uber, 100 damage per crit bat = 2000 damage over 10 seconds. Horrible!!! wtf mate. Don't do it. Crit-scattergun will scatter (GASP REALLY? SCATTER????) so although it's pretty lethal at point-blank, pretty useless at long range, crit pistol damage is still very low. Plus, scouts are fragile.

[Kritz-uber & Sniper]
This is the only one I personally haven't tried, not sure how the primary-gun works w the kritz uber, I don't reckon it's 1-hit kill though, but I'd appreciate someone confirming the effects on this (otherwise I'll try it on a good sniper on a server tomorrow). Assuming that it has no effect on the primary, again, useless. ALTHOUGH! I love the Kukri and I would do it on a sniper just to see lightening bolts on the kukri (uhhhh effect stolen from WoW anyone?).

[Kritz-uber & Engineer]
The lightening effect on the wrench looks freakin' sweet. But mostly useless, in last-ditch situations the shotgun may be able to do some damage with the kritz-krieg since it does decent damage, has some spread, and can fire 6-rounds relatively rapidly. 2 to take down a soldier I believe. Pistol... kind of a waste, you can probably get 1 & a half-clips before uber runs out, that's still not much damage.

[Kritz-uber & Medic]
BONESAW

[Kritz-uber & Spy]
No free backstabs for you! Revolver does good damage with crits, but it's not worth it.

[Kritz-uber & Regular-ubers:]
Ah, here we have a couple options. How to mix and match krietz-uber and regular-ubers? Here's a couple options.

1) krietz the combat class, uber the krietz-medic... as long as the krietz-gun is working, the combat class recieving puts out ungodly amounts of damage. The enemies can't kill the combat class if they're dead!

2) dual ubers... stack crit-charge and uber-charge on 1 person. Effective, deadly, but not too dependable since the krietzing medic is vulnerable. Besides, everyone would run away from the uber-charge anyway. There are times it's extremely effective though.

3) uber-charged pair followed by a krietz-charged pair. 1 to tank, 1 to deal damage. Even better if you can flank with the krietz-charged pair.

[Thoughts on the Blautsauger:]
Mmm the most subtle and under-stated change of the three new medic items. Regular old needle-gun, hard to aim and harder to hit (but you'll learn how to hit things with it in time!). Damage is pretty low, with a decent firing rate, but it's slow-travelling so you can pretend that you have 'wind-up' time just like the heavies (a few seconds before the steady-stream of needles begin.

The real kicker is the +3 to health with every needle that hits a target. It's a very small small difference since it's hard to aim and even if you have the aim down it's hard to make every needle hit. The Medic has 150 health total, and 40 needles... 40x3 = 120, if every needle hit in a clip, you'd ge back 120 health and usually you won't hit more than half at best-case scenario (let's assume they're not running in a straight line towards you).

But it gives you that extra edge in certain situations. For example, when a pyro is chasing after you, you'll have a greater survival chance with a steady stream of health (combined with your natural healing). Likewise, a little dodging-combined with needle-spamming can help you escape a sticky situation (like when your healie dies and you're being chased).

Scouts will still kill you. Good scouts, anyway.

Not much to say here, no crits so don't expect a lucky kill with it like you do with the regular needle-gun. I like this gun a lot actually, but very understated.

[Thoughts on the Uber-Saw:]
My favorite addition! I'd almost go as far as to say it is overpowered, although I just love it that much. Any frequent medic player knows, there will be plenty of chances to use the bonesaw, whether tactical or out of desperation. Well you know those times you were playing medic and you just got a couple good bone-saw swings in and you were feeing really smug and happy?

Well now, you will feel really, REALLY good. Every hit gets you 25% of your uber-bar instantly filled up. This no doubt will bring about a lot of suicide runs on the medics, but that's counter-intuitive. Medics are still easy to kill. I killed a bunch of suiciding medics. Those of us that have learned when and where to melee, will be richly, richly rewarded for your tactical mastery.

Surrounded with uber almost complete? Connect one swing, then activate your uber to high-tail it out of there. The Blautsauger + Ubergun + Ubersaw = the ultimate in medic survivability. Just remember that it takes a second for you to switch weapons and uber.

The Ubersaw is 20% slower. Let's put that in perspective, 1 swing per second (regular bonesaw), vs. 1 swing per 1.2 seconds (bonesaw). At 5 seconds of holding down the 'fire' button, bonesaw gets 5 swings, Ubersaw gets 4. In a good melee fight you are NOT holding your fire button indescriminately but timing it with your approaches in-range of the melee, thusly, it makes very little difference, unless you're dueling with a bonesaw medic who has a slight bit of advantage against you if you have the slower uber saw (although maybe you'll just uber and run away after a couple hits!)

[Final Thoughts:]
I really love Valve for putting out such great updates. Goldrush is amazing, the new items are amazing, the interface is great and promises so much more to TF2. The new Medic weapons are all about balancing survivability and lethality. While the Krietzkrieg medigun reduces survivability (and by a lot! Not having a freebie life every 60 seconds or less is a huge detriment to staying alive) but it rewards careful deployment with some massive overkills (and oooh boy does it ever feel good to be a krietzkreiged soldier on a rampage).

The blautsauger needle-gun is a subtle addition of survivability (vs. the old 5% chance to maybe kill someone).

The ubersaw is... well, just freakin' get it for yourself and see! I love it to death. I wouldn't even be that surprised if they nerfed it a little bit, like it only filling up 20% or it being slower by 25% or so.

Anyway, that is all! I'm super excited about these updates, and I can't wait to play around with it and the new map, waiting for new guns and trying out and observing new tactics around these changes. Feedback is welcome and wanted, throw around some ideas!

 

[Adabiviak]

Thanks. The ubersaw is nice, but I don't think it's nice enough to encourage me to play the medic offensively. He's still a support class, and is better off healing an offensive class than running into the front. Until the other achievements come out, I think we're going to see a lot of medics trying to play offense. It can certainly be done, but if you're working with your team to win the map, you're still a better asset healing someone else. Unless I luck out with a critical hit, duels with the bonesaw usually mean death. I've hit a heavy as many as five times without him dying, soldiers four... this just makes it a very nice reward if you manage to walk away from that encounter.

 

[Druckles]

I think the Kritzkreig can be a lot more effective than you think. It's not really useful when used in conjunction with a scout for instance, or someone else with low health, but then neither is the invulnerability. Even under fire, a heavy can still last a while, partially because you're healing him at the same time. With infinite crits, he's going to kill other people an awful lot quicker. So you gain the loss in protection back with a raise in speed.

Watching that video disappoints me, although you'd need two medics with ubersaws (which wouldn't have happened had Valve disabled the console commands), and they'd also have to be quite good. Plus the other team just sucked. I don't know what they were doing with about 5 medics, but I don't know why they just kept coming back. It's just moronic.

I certainly think that 25% of an ubercharge is quite a lot. But if you're not ubered, as was mentioned in the above quote, you're not going to last particularly long.

 

[Citrus]

Blutsauger: Same as everyone else said, but its also a great spy checker. Spray it into a group of "friendlies" and then check to see if you get any "+3"s.

 

[Druckles]

Blutsauger: Same as everyone else said, but its also a great spy checker. Spray it into a group of "friendlies" and then check to see if you get any "+3"s.

That's a point. Certainly more handy than shooting someone and waiting for blood that probably won't appear.

Oh, and I came across a +3 bug recently. The "+3"s kept appearing, even though I was a Pyro or something at the time. Was very strange

 

[Citrus]

I've experienced a bug that happens after you die.

When the screen zooms in on your killer, and when you spectate for a few seconds after that, the medic gun stays on the screen, as if im still playing and looking/following that person.

:|

 

[CLIKKY]

About the Blutsauger although its great its not as satisfying as nailing down an enemy with critical hits just thought i would put that out there

 

[Adabiviak]

I've been using the Kritz more, and it has been rather handy at times. Say the opposing engineer starts setting up in the middle of the bridge in 2Fort and now they're seriously hassling your battlements. Four critical rockets took care of that at once. Point B on Gravel Pit filled with sentries and whatnot? Crits thrown in from a safe distance will clear that shack out quick.

Apparently there's no obvious way to tell that you've been given the 'kreig? I let a demo have it and he must not have heard me, and exclaimed that he had four crits in a row. After explaining that I just ubered him, he said that there was no visible way to tell. I've never been on the receiving end of that - can you tell?

 

[Zuckerhutbomber]

I think every kritzed weapon is supposed to give off sparks, at least that's what I've seen ingame...

 

[Eejit]

Meh, I'm just not a big fan of the Kritz because Pyro is my favourite damage class. It's hard to get full use of it compared to say, a soldier or demoman.

 

[Adabiviak]

The patient will see his fire come out as critical, but will he know that it's because the medic has 'kritzed him or because of the normal way that the game dishes them out? With the 'standard' uber, it's fairly obvious when you're invincible due your model's skin color. Is there any indication like this for the Kritzkreig?

 

[Shields]

Yes your gun gets all sexy and sparkly.... very much so..

 

[Adabiviak]

ok... so maybe that Demo had never seen it before or didn't notice. Thanks!

 

[Iron_cube]

As a regular kritskreig-er, I can safely say that the best opportunity to use your charge is on someone who's already uber-invincible.

Surviving is tricky though since you're obviously very vulnerable.

 

[Adabiviak]

I dunno... when a medic and patient are ubered, they'll usually charge right into the line of fire of a sentry or cluster of opponents, who (despite the fact that they are invincible) fire back at them. They usually aren't focusing on making it easy for me to hide behind them and death usually follows quickly. I've not been able to survive those forays for more than a few seconds. If another medic and myself are going to let a heavy (for example) step into the line of fire without us (say, on that last capture point on Dustbowl that's a sentry-fest, where he can creep around the corner into the line of fire), then that can work quite well.