Medic

Medic is a pure support class who lives and dies on having a reliable DPS or few to help out. Medic himself cannot significantly contribute to his team's damage, but is nonetheless capable of fulfilling a variety of roles that make the game go smoother and often faster. The three primary roles for which Medic is depended upon are as follows:

  • Healing, overhealing, and reviving teammates
  • This is the most obvious duty you're expected to fulfill as a Medic. By keeping your medigun's beam attached to your teammates, you can potentially keep them at 150% health (or more, should you choose to upgrade Overheal Expert) pretty much all the time. Should one of your teammates die, you're able to click on a little box below their hologram, the "Reanimator", and bring them back to life. Rapidly clicking on the Reanimator will make the reviving process go faster.

  • Deploying shields
  • By healing, overhealing, and reviving your teammates, you build up your Shield meter, and when it's full, you can push your "Special Attack" key (by default Mouse3 or the middle mouse button) and activate a shield which will block all hitscan and projectile damage, prevent robot AI from walking through the shield, and damage robots when they touch the shield. Keep in mind that while the shield will block projectile and hitscan damage, it will NOT block splash damage nor Pyro flamethrowers, so keep your distance from Pyro and Soldier robots. Because charging up the shield is so easy, and because the shield can block so much incoming damage, the shield is arguably the most vital part of playing Medic and should not be ignored.

    Note that the Projectile Shield upgrade has two ticks: with one tick, your shield covers an approximate 75° area in front of you, while with two ticks it covers about 150° in front of you. The first tick can be enough on the first wave, especially on more linear and choke-heavy maps such as Decoy, Mannworks and Coaltown.

  • Deploying crit charges.
  • Through the Kritzkrieg's ubercharge or through sharing a crit canteen via Canteen Specialist, Medic's most significant offensive role is providing crit charges to his teammates, giving them triple damage. These are most commonly given to your team's Demoman, Heavy, or Soldier. Though the Kritzkrieg is the most popular medigun in MvM as it allows you to deploy crits without needing to purchase canteens, many will argue that always waiting for the full charge takes too long, and thus will conclude that you should take Canteen Specialist and share crit canteens anyway. Thus, while the Kritzkrieg is highly favored, remember that every medigun is equally capable of sharing crit canteens.

    Common mistakes

  • Not using the shield.
  • There's no excuse for this. The Projectile Shield upgrade is cheap enough that you can use it on Wave 1, and is the most significant boon to your team's defense that you can achieve, especially on early waves. Not only that, but it's incredibly easy to use, it's really not rocket science to hit Mouse3 when the meter is full. By refusing to use Medic's most overpowered upgrade, you are actively gimping your team, and you shouldn't be playing Medic.

  • Mixing Ubercharge rate and Overheal Expert upgrades.
  • These two upgrades directly counteract each other. In order for your ubercharge to fill up as quickly as possible, your patient has to be below 150% HP. By taking Overheal Expert, you raise their maximum health to 175% and more HP. You connect the dots. Either take one, or the other.

    Upgrade priority

    Your upgrade path is dependent on what medigun you are using, but regardless of your pick, your first upgrade should always be at least one tick of Projectile Shield.

    All of the mediguns are capable of using Canteen Specialist, and you should invest into it in the later waves, unless you're willing to sacrifice some of your key upgrades in order to take it earlier.

    If using the Kritzkrieg, you're likely going to want to optimize your ubercharges are much as possible. To this end, you should take one tick of Uber Duration (especially if you have a Demoman on your team) and as many ticks of Ubercharge rate as possible. Despite your focus being on building ubercharge, you should not neglect upgrading Healing Mastery, but remember to not put any upgrades into Overheal Expert.

    If you want to focus on healing and using shields instead, then your best bet is the Quick-Fix. With this one, your path is very simple-- just max out Healing Mastery, then put as many ticks into Overheal Expert as you see fit.

    You may be inclined to use the Vaccinator on early waves due to its multiple charges allowing for resisting damage and for instant reviving. If so, then note that any upgrade other than Projectile Shield and Healing Mastery does nothing. Just put credits into those two upgrades, and leave the rest (save for Canteen Specialist) to rot.

    The stock Medi Gun is the worst medigun for MvM, but it's still usable and viable. For this one, just go with what's written for the Kritzkrieg or the Quick-Fix, depending on whether you think ubercharges or healing is more important.

    Weapons

    Primary

    Weapon Rating Review
    Crusader's Crossbow B The Crossbow allows you to apply quick bursts of healing on an unhealthy target, but the value of healing bolts goes drastically down as you upgrade Healing Mastery. It's mainly good for the first wave or two.
    Syringe Gun / Overdose / Blutsauger B* If you choose to purchase the Mad Milk Syringes upgrade, you can shoot a flurry of needles into a giant and allow your team to leech its health. This can occassionally be useful, especially against giant Heavies, but it's not a replacement for your medigun.

    Secondary

    Weapon Rating Review
    Kritzkrieg S By not having to spend credits on crit charges, you can strategically build uber and deploy crits when they are most useful. You can arguably forgo getting Canteen Specialist altogether if you fully upgrade Ubercharge rate and make use of your Ubersaw, but not everyone would agree with that.
    Quick-Fix S There's simply no beating the Quick-Fix when it comes to keeping your team healthy and building up the shield meter as fast as possible. If survivability is an issue, then the Quick-Fix will solve all your problems.. usually. After all, keeping your team at 225% health almost 24/7 is pretty handy.
    Vaccinator A* The Vaccinator's four mini-charges allow you to instantly revive your teammates and to resist huge amounts of damage. This is a pretty big boon, but it must be noted that its usefulness is limited-- more specifically, on later waves your teammates will be able to afford resistances of their own, and thus the resistances of the Vaccinator, and its insta revives, will be redundant. Use this one for the first wave or two if you wish, then refund your upgrades and choose one of the two aforementioned mediguns.
    Medi Gun C Though making your patient invulnerable for eight or more seconds isn't bad by any means, what really cripples the stock Medi Gun is simply that it doesn't have any additional benefits besides its ubercharge. No bonus to ubercharge building rate, nor to healing rate. Thus, it lags behind the other mediguns in an annoying way and having a short period of invulnerability doesn't really compensate for it. That said, it's still capable of deploying shields and sharing crit canteens, so it's not useless-- just not nearly as good as your other options.

    Melee

    Weapon Rating Review
    Ubersaw S+ By swinging at a robot that won't fight back (most commonly, a Sentry Buster) you can very rapidly build up your ubercharge meter. If you know how to exploit this without getting your stupid ass killed, you can potentially get another ubercharge ready as soon as you're done using one.
    Any other melee Bad None of the other melees bring anything valuable to MvM. The Amputator's self-heal and healing aura is worthless compared to the dispenser and Healing Mastery. The Solemn Vow is redundant since you can see giants' health meters by default. The Bonesaw and Vita-Saw are just as useless in MvM as they are in PvP.