What is Your Medic Philosophy?

I've read in medic class guides before an emphasis on the "combat" part of the "combat medic" class. Most of these guides always seem to stress that you should be actively shooting at enemies and healing/reviving people should be a secondary priority (the reasoning being that if you don't take out the people hurting/killing your friends, they'll just get hurt/killed again when you heal/revive them). People go on about how medics should be self-preservant, only reviving people if it won't cause harm to yourself, etc etc. Basically, they make you out to be a rifleman who revives people between reloading his gun or something.

You know what I say to people who tout that line? You obviously care about your KD too much because I call "********" on that way of playing medic. I mean, you CAN do it, and if you're using a weapon like the Reaper DMR then yeah I guess that's the way to do it. Leaving aside the semantics of the fact that the phrase "combat medic" doesn't meant a combat soldier who is also a medic (it means a medic who does his work in the middle of combat), I'm sorry to say I've found the most effective way to, well, 'medic' is to tear around like a madman "ninja" reviving people - by that I mean, doing every crazy maneuver possible to try and revive anyone that goes down: jumping off of base walls to revive people down below, running across chokepoints to revive people on the other side, even reviving people in the same room as an enemy if the enemy is too busy looking the other way (only advisable with a maxed out revive device cuz it revives really fast), etc etc. Now I DO have SOME limits to how far I'm willing to go to revive you, like if you're on top of a cliff I'd have to go on a long-*** hike to get onto, or if you die in the suicide zone right in front of a spawn room where you are guaranteed to die, then yeah, you're on your own. But I'll even run into open fields to revive people provided the enemy is a far enough distance away and/or I have enough allies giving covering fire that I think I can make it to you before I get killed.

I think the point of a medic is not just points, it's not just to keep your MAXs up and running or your squadmates, it's to keep as many people AT the front line as possible, rather than having people constantly running toward it from a spawn point. Even if you have even pops, if one team has medics keeping all its players at the frontline firing while the other team always has to run back from their spawn, the team with the medics wins because their effective strength at the firing line is greater. That's what I see my job as, and that's why it takes forever for me to auraxium ARs - I only fire my weapon if there is no one in my vicinity to revive or heal.

Is this rational, if, really, I should be trying NOT to die? Well, no. I end up trading KD for SPM when I play medic ( of course I end up balancing this out by trading the SPM back for KD playing Infiltrator). But I mainly play it this way because, oddly enough, people actually appreciate it. I'm always surprised at how often, after I revive someone (or someones) that people actually thank me prox chat as if I did something they didn't think I'd do or wasn't obligated to. I always felt I SHOULD be acting this way but it appears having a medic that cares more about your life and healing you (I love healing HAs as they fire down a hallway, getting hit repeatedly but never dying because I keep regening their health; great way to control chokepoints with lots of enemies at the other end) than they do about their own life is uncommon enough that people are grateful when you do it.

Uh...****, I just realized how absurdly long this is. TL;DR: Put your teammates before yourself and you too can be the hero (even if it's posthumously).

I'll sing this as I cartwheel around YOLOswagMLG medic.

I am EGuardian - BR100, member of The SET and the Coalition of Badass, and I approve of the above post!

I always shoot the medics that actually revive people first. ****ers can raise a whole undead army if they feel like it. Most OP class in the game if you ask me.

About the K/D argument. It's simple. If you are dead because you over commit you can't revive ****. Same goes for anything else. If you are dead you are doing nothing. You are not throwing ammo pack, spamming reckon darts or healing friendlies.

I stay back too keep my allies safe from rushes and flanking enemies. Once those rushes and flanking attacks are over I revive. At least so long as I can maintain discipline and keep from rushing the frontlines. I find that to be the most effective way of playing medic.


But I love medics like you on the enemy team. First I get to kill a guy. Then I get to kill the crazy medic getting him up. And after that because he took to long to kill because he was dancing like a crazy person I get to kill the poor guy he just revived... again.
3 for the price of one.

There's something I like to bark in Platoon chat. "Don't get killed in a crossfire and don't leave the building! You won't get revived!"

That's up to the Medic's skill whether it's worth yoloswagging or not. If there's an enfilade, i typically won't bother and instead focus on those who CAN be revived at an acceptable risk.

If I gives me points....Do it.

It depends on where I am.

If I'm in the middle of an enemy base constantly being fired at, self-healing and killing the enemy is the priority. If you're dead, can't help the other guys much.

But if I'm in a relatively safe spot, all I do is revive and heal, and I rarely even try to shoot.

It's all about adaptability and changing to meet new battle conditions.

If you revive someone while an enemy is right in front of you then they get killed right away as they accept the revive and you will not be alive to revive them again. If you step outside a room to revive someone then you get killed and you can't revive the 10 people who were not reckless enough to leave the room when they need it.

The sheer number of revives I get balances it out in my mind. What, you think I'm constantly dying and respawning back at the sundy without accomplishing much? Please, if I die, I've probably rake din several thousand points worth of revives and heals. I keep attack groups going. Every man you deem to risky to rescue and let him respawn deprives your front line group of a man for about 30 seconds if not longer, depending on how far away the spawn point is.

Ideally we need one medic like me and one medic like you. So when I die, you can keep the force from being completely wiped out or pushed back, and then I show up with all the guys you let respawn and we do a fresh push.

That's exactly what it means.

Uh, no, a combat medic is a medic who, rather than patching people up behind the frontline, patches them up right there as they get hit. They fight, yeah, but only if no one is hurt. They're there to do quick field first aid to try and stabilize someone's condition immediately rather than waiting until he gets back to the rear, at which point it might be too late.

Well, I would say first and foremost, that this game is kind of sandboxy in it's approach, so people can play the way they want. Some people play medic because they love AR's, some because they can heal themselves, other because it can be crazy certs. That being said I believe there is an optimal way to play a medic and I'll give you my ideas on how to make the class the most effective and beneficial to your team.

I see the medic as the biggest asset to the team as a support character, sticking with a group and being behind the main assault line, you move in behind the Heavies and Light Assaults to heal up and rez killed players. I provide fire support when heavies are moving up and watch their flanks and their 6. Once on a point I like to see medics stay back a bit and cover entrances/the players most likely to be taking fire or killed first, but here's where the decision making comes in. If a team mate is killed it can actually be a bad idea to just go rez him, same thing in the open, if you see a player go down behind cover across the road from you and you just mindlessly go rez him, it may hurt your team more than help, and here's why. Someone killed that team mate, and if that enemy is near by you're going to be helpless while rezzing your ally, can't fight with that med tool out, so you get killed. Now, let's say you got the rez off on your team mate, he comes up, but he's at a few disadvantages, one, his shield is down, 2 he'siinitially a bit disoriented, and 3 he's got an enemy right on him who is ready for him to come up and ready to kill him. Most times rezzing in this situation just nets the enemy 3 kills instead of 1 and your team is now down 2 players (one being a valuable medic) instead of 1 and the enemy still has a player up. So let's reset here, your team mate goes down in the room with you, or across the road in cover. You know there's an enemy there, he may or may not know you are there, you should have a good idea of where he is and he's down a little ammo, and (hopefully) some health or shield, best scenario at this point is to take advantage of that weakened enemy first, now you can safely rez your team mate and put the two of you back in the fight.

Other times you're more towards the back end of a fight, or just behind cover, and while bullets are flying around enemies aren't right on top of you, and your forces are pushing forward, this is when I would advocate focusing more on rezzing then shooting, get your team mates up to continue the push. In the time it takes to maybe get a couple enemies killed you can often bounce around and get 5 or so allies back into the fight, which is more help to the over all assault then killing a couple enemies who arent an immediate threat to you. Keeping the push going in this case is the bigger help.

Being a medic is often about making the call on whether or not it's safe to rez someone, if you're going to die doing it then chances are that more often than not the team mate you're rezzing will die right after coming back up as well, not always, but often. So the answer is not always the same, sometimes it's better to rez first and shoot later (you are covered and can safely get friendlies back into the fight) sometimes it's better to fight first and rez later (you have enemies in close to you and are shooting friendlies in close proximity to you). Again, the biggest help you can be is knowing when to do what, a dead medic is no use to the team, a medic who wipes out the threat and gets the team moving at full strength again is invaluable to the team.

A combat medic is a full-blown soldier with additional medical training. Yes - once people start getting hurt their priority is to patch them up; otherwise - they do just as much shooting, as anyone else.

My philosophy is that using the medic tools + having situational awareness maximizes cert gain while also helping out your team/faction. Therefore, there's little reason to behave differently.

Situational awareness is important on any class, of course, but it's the kind of things you look out for that can differ. On a medic, that's dead allies, good spots to support while not being too far or too close, and a general understanding of what direction to expect fire from so that you won't be the first target.

There's many different ways to play a medic. It depends on the situation and the people around you. When I'm running my little squad ops, our medics are focused on killing. Their healing potenetial is there to keep everyone up. But we just don't have the numbers to keep them on full healing duty. They got to fight. And with Assault Rifles they fight well.

If I'm with a larger number of people, I'm pretty much on healing duty. You got to feel for what the situation is. Sometimes you just need to keep your healing tool out. Sometimes not. Sometimes you have to be ready to switch. And of course knowing which weapon to switch to in an instant is important. Sometimes going to a rifle just isn't quick enough.

If anyone is telling you that you should play only a certain way. That person is only thinking in one dimension. They're not thinking outside their little box. The medic is probably the most complex class in the game simply because it has so many ways it can be used and loaded out.

When spawns are a decent walk away and medics are few in number, the life of a medic is inherently more important than most other classes. Especially since in many cases, their killing/holding potential is no better than a medic's. There are definitely two sides to this coin.

Because if a player who's playing LA, infil, heavy, or even engineer, in most case has to respawn. That's one guy. But if one in only a handful of medics has to respawn, that's more pressure on the remaining medics and less likelyhood of people getting revived at all.

On the other hand, if there's an abundance of medics. Focusing on a medic-ball circle jerk instead of actually using your assault rifle isn't anymore useful than the infiltrator sitting 200 meters back missing half of his shots. In this case, a lot of the guys around you can heal themselves and SOMEONE has to do the shooting.

In summary, there's something called moderation. While a medic shouldn't ignore his healing/reviving duties, doing so at all costs can be just as harmful as ignoring it. I know I'm not the only one with a lot of medic kills under my belt because of that one medic who HAD to revive everyone, despite knowing there were people right around the corner. Seriously, how useful is a medic if he sits there making a futile effort to revive someone that'll die instantly while they're being rushed by an enemy. How is this guy being at 0:34 being useful?

I revive when it's safe.

I hate it when someone revives me straight into enemy fire. If there is an enemy, deal with them first then revive and if you don't have max rank heal to 100% afterwards

I kind of agree though I would say Engineer is slightly the more complex. They have overall more tools available to them and as a result of which has more load out options.

Both are extremely important depending on the squad composition

I play medic alot. I always choose it according to the situation. In a higher pop environment the medic will have an opportunity to revive and keep the pressure on much more easily than an underpopped envirornment. Number 2: if there are a lot of dead teamates then obviously there is a need for a medic who is careful and does revives BUT keeps himself alive. In that sitauation if you have the certs then revive grenades are king as a room with 12 dead teamates will all get up at the same time and will have a chance of taking on the opposition. My healing tool is maxed out and its well worth it. It revives almost instantaneously and does 100% health on that revive.
Guns: I use the full auto shottie as my main gun as most of the time i am in extremely Close quarters while reviving, AND....its unbeatable at close range. So....I go into an area, first look for enemies, dispatch enemies and THEN - revive. If i dont, i am only getting the teamate shot before he can get up. If we are advancing over terrain at a distance from the next base, i might take the most excellent assault rifles in the game that are dedicated to the Medic class only, but even then not always.
I always hit F and juice up everyones health in a room with lots of teamates while im passing thru as it helps and i cant always notice whos down on their health quickly.
When the situation is we are underpopped then i choose HA as I can control the enemy better and keep them back better as an HA than as a Medic and the only time that is not true is when the total numbers at the base are low and the people are spread out and then doing revives helps alot without the fact that there will be 3 or more guys shooting at you while your trying to revive as happens in a large battle that there is an overpop in. I consider over pop 60-40%, or heavy vehicle advantage with the higher pop group.
I never use revive booster shots so if i need to health up i run medic and self heal. This is also really useful in ghost capping scenarios where is 6v6 or less and once a team mate is down but we killed the opposition I can revive him to continue on.
Healing the rambos that spawn camp is a waste of time. I will heal the front line guys at the spawn room IF...they are somewhat back and i can be behind cover doing it, but i wont run up to 15 feet in front of the doorways to heal up the guy who ran in and got shot, he needs to have more restraint and can suffer respawning at the Sundy. I watch the screen to see skulls that need healing.
Dead medics cant heal anything.

It's simple

A medic who only revives and heals is useful.
A medic who only fights is less so.
A medic who can do both is invaluable.

Stay flexible and adapt to the situation.

Agreed 100%. There's nothing more satisfying than surviving a wall of fire and a barrage of explosives to run into a room and to rez half a dozen dead teammates, completely take the enemy of guard, overrun their position and take the control point back, knowing that without you your team would have been pushed back and the control point lost.