Picking up on an observation made by Iridar (I think) to one of my earlier posts I have just started playing medic as a commando, with maxed nano self heal ability and C4. Some time ago I accidentally (no, really) bought a GR22 so I equipped it and I find it pretty awesome in CQC. I have to say that thinking about the class in this way has given me a totally different outlook..............to the point where I understand even less why more people don't play Medic. Ofc I do still heal pretty regularly, not least because I am up where people are getting killed a lot. I just don't run around looking for people to heal to the exclusion of getting stuck in to the battle. Allowing for the fact that I may be feeling a bit of novelty factor atm I think the fact that fewer people play medic is their loss. I'd still like to be able to drop dressing packs the way engineers drop ammo packs as I run with frag grenades (commando, right?). So that's it from me on this string of posts - when in Rome do as the Romans do.
Everyone is too busy playing Heavy... Though more seriously, having played Medic a lot recently, you're not really incentivized to play as a healer. You get an awesome weapon set, the directive weapon for which requires you to make 5000+ kills to get, and your class directive set, requires you to either kill medics, or make savior kills to complete. I completed the healing part without even realizing it, but the kill section is taking some time. You can carry C4 and be somewhat effective against all ground targets, and you can heal yourself. Given how small most bases are, and how close a sunderer or spawn room can usually be; it can often take more time for you to move to a downed player, rez them and for them to wait for their shields to get back up to full, than it can for them to simply respawn, at full health and shields (and with new consumables) then run back to where they just died. Most of the time it's in their best interest to just respawn, and they lose little to nothing by doing so - whereas you are denied the XP for the rez (and shield regen if you're using that). Sure, there are those times when you're cut off from a spawn point and holding a small area, and in those moments the Medic truly shines (not that many will thank you for being there) - but those times aren't that common at all really. Also, the GR-22 is a mighty fine close quarters weapon.
yep its a lethal class. Certainly for TR with our excellent selection of AR's (and correspondingly poor LMG's) i would always choose medic to take to a gun fight. and Its a veritable cert farm on the side. I also think its gives confidance to the team to know there are medics picking up the fallen. Having to keep going back to the spawn point is tedious and of course many will get bored of constantly dying and re-deploy. Throw a good medic on board and people wont care about dying coz they are back up at full health and ready to continue the push. I assume most medics know the effect they have on moral, i never thank them (and rarely get thanked) but its something that goes without saying.
Whoop! Commando medics unite! Welcome to the dark side! Seriously though, yeah I don't know why more people don't play medic. I recently switched my bro to the ways of the TR healer (a convert from VS, muhahaha) and he's loving it. Maybe it's a question of ego, or in some cases delusion. Heavy is seen as the badass killer class, running into a room mowing down a whole squad, blah de blah. When in actuality maybe 2% of the people that main heavy can actually do that, and even then only in select circumstances. Nobody wants to be the lame guy running around healing the badass killers. This is all speculation, of course.
You're delusional, tons of ppl play medics. Actually, all the classes I see on the battlefield get fair amount of play, with an exception of maybe engineer, cause they're in their wagons mostly. Also, I don't see a reason to start a new thread every time you post, apart from attention whoring, this one for example doesn't even offer any form of discourse, just some random babbling.
If you want to go looking for it, there's a table of class playtimes provided by one of the devs which shows that medic is the least played class on every single server. And this subforum isn't exactly clogged with new threads, so I don't see any reason to complain about one or two more of them.
Actually it gets people talking about the medic class. Which gets more people playing medic. We all need more medics. Regardless of what faction you play. _itg has it right, Medic is the least played class. So Eternaloptimist is well within his/her rights to create a new thread often. If it convinces more people to play Medic (and as a bi-product gets more people wrecking face with the awesome AR's) then great! Stop moaning. Last night in the DIG-zerg platoon I was in, there was not a single medic for the whole platoon. THE WHOLE PLATOON. And this is DIG we're talking about. Sure, they might zerg but they know how to win. Zero medics is not how you win. Even on my TR main, it's rare to see medics in platoons. Despite the veritable cert-farm they are. That's incentive to play them, yet people still seem to default to EZmode HA then complain when there's no one around to pick them up. It's laughable really.
I play my TR, and we have medics around. Not a lot, but we always have them. I then swap to my NC. I don't even bother waiting for a medic, there isn't going to be one. But on Briggs its all the younger players playing NC just wanting to be a 1v1 powerhouse, and then they win one fight, and then no medics pick the dead people up, and then they get cleaned out. I think. I may be wrong, but that's my assumption. On TR, we have a wider range of players, and also really strong ARs, but weaker LMGs, so it makes sense that we would have more Medics. It's because Heavies with their 4 med kits can be their own medic. That's why there a few medics out there.
I've found it. With an exception of HAs and some engi vehicle only-mainers, all the pop of remaining three infantry classes is roughly the same, differentiating by 1-4 percent. That is the data of Miller, where I play and by which I judge. Indeed, this stat indicates that medics are a little less played, but I don't think that's the case. This stat shows that you have an approximate of 1 medic for 2 heavies or 1 LA, or 1 infil. I find this a more than reasonable ratio, given the fact that you don't actually need a crap ton of them for an adequate support purpose. As a matter of fact, you're more likely to see a medic at the brunt of attack, holding a chokepoint with the heavies or making a move with allies, rather than the other classes. That being said - at the more zergy fights you literally always have multiple field bubbles at the important locations and you can watch how all your allied doctors are swarming like locusts around any fresh bodies. So no, I wouldn't agree that there are not enough medics. As for this subforum being less active - well, this class isn't all that complicated to figure out; you don't have much more to talk about apart from choosing a rifle. You can also see that infiltrator subforum has the most threads, with MAX one being third on this, but that doesn't reflect an actual in-game state of affairs, does it? I don't know how things really are inside DIG, but I can make a trivial joke that you don't need a lot of medics when you ghost cap empty base or pull hundred of magriders . Anyway, in my empirical experience there are enough random medics at almost every fight. It is, though I myself am here for the guns and directives, not certs. I guess many of high BRs are too.
If you're playing a medic for the gunplay, you're playing the wrong class. People go HA because the HA is the more kill-driven variant of the medic, while the medic is the more support driven variant. Both, tactically, essentially play by the same rules - move in -> shoot things. They don't have turrets or mines to deploy. They don't get invisibility. They don't get jetpacks or infinite ammo. HA gets rockets but... eh... only decent against MAXes honestly. Can't count the last time my tank got blown by shoulder rockets except when completely overwhelmed or flanked. ADS, rifles and LMGs aren't really all that different, especially at the ranges where most killing happens (within 60m.) The only place really mentioning advantages for the AR is with the hip fire capability, and that's only on some of the more CQC oriented guns which have tight hip CoF and maybe .75x (unless it's the TRV, which is bass-ackwards for a CQC gun,) however in most cases they have horrific recoil to compensate (except the TRV.) Also, I've recently suspected many of my "hit detection" issues are actually related to people equipped with nanoweave armor. I've only has it maxed out on my medic for a few hours play time, but I've been having a far easier time surviving since unlocking and equipping it. I think it's protecting shielding as well as health - which is a bug I do not mind if that's the case. Nanoweave ain't worth the 1500+ certs otherwise. There are also real bugs to work out - this one is more of a balancing point for the other classes to compete against the HA.
I kinda look down on medics who are running around like zombies or bots, reviving everything in sight, with no regard to their own life, or to lives of those who they revive. Why revive a player 3m from spawn? Why revive a player stuck in a doorway shot through by 3 MAXes and a small horse? And my personal favorite are medics who run to revive a player that just was killed by an enemy within their line of sight. A commando, is, in my opinion, how medic should be played. Remove threats first, revive when it's sane to do so. I guess, there's just as many bad medics as there are bad players of any class. One of the youtubers, Wrel I think, brought up a good idea - don't reward medics with revive XP, but reward them when somebody they revived gets XP of their own. So you're only getting rewarded if somebody revived by you actually lived to do something useful. To answer Eternaloptimist's question - why few people play like a commando - the answer is simple and Kcalehc gave it in first response. Everyone who actually wants to kill people plays HA. Medics are useful and yadda yadda, but for pure selfish gain, they are worse in that role than HA, yet still just as grounded.
Or you can just play the game without an overshield crutch, do directives and have fun, rather than look for reasons not to. And if you're so obsessed with abusing class abilities, consider yours as such. Have a fast heal without regen implant and with c4 at the same time. Reinforce a convinient position with shield device, so you won't need to wait 10 secs every time your shields are depleted and can make more kills in shorter time. Or replenish your shields in cover quickly when you've been shot at on the move, so you'll be full when an edgy enemy comes chasing you. Throw a rez grenade in the room with your fallen friends before going in, giving your enemy some targets to shoot at, so you acquire his position and kill him while hes preoccupied. As well as generally get used to use your allies as bait at all times. In short - use your head above those basic monkey instincts of pressing one button to do your thing. And of course enjoy your good all around weapons.
I pretty much play nothing but medic. If you're a subpar shooter (like me) it's a class that will still get you certs and still be really useful to your team if you're smart. And if you're a good shooter (someday, I hope), you get all that PLUS an assault rifle. What's not to like?
I love playing my medic, It's not the lack of thanks that stops me playing it...It's the getting shot by those I rez that stops me playing it...They don't rez me so I have to run back into the fight instead which just annoys me so much.
I am an Infiltrator and the Medic is the NUMBER ONE PRIORITY to kill for us. Not only Infiltrators focuses on Medic, all other classes do that as well. That means you as medic are the focus of everyone and that means a lot of death for you. I think there would be many Medics if the K/D ratio would not show up... Because they fear to lose it. It is psycology though. Vanu Medics are pretty popular with Darkstar-> Infinite Ammo and selfheal ability!
OP is a few months old, but happens to fall around the same time I switched from Medicing ~99% of the time and picked up Engineering. It was near the same time I stopped joining smaller squads and migrated into platoons for larger fights (new computer). I had found that there were TOO MANY Medics on the field in these larger fights. Most of our pushes consisted of wimpy front-lines and a great wall of Medics behind them. In most cases, the Medics were just being used as cannon fodder and reviving one another over and over.. i.e., the fights weren't progressing because most of our support was the equivalent of 2-3 squad-fulls of Medics reviving one another in a circle jerk (presumably for EXP/certs). I kept on reviving, cringing every time I had the opportunity to revive an ally Medic who was playing this way, and did my best to navigate around to find a less annoying mini-battle to join. I still see it happening far too often today and do what I can to avoid those situations. I'd much rather find myself behind a good squad of players actively playing the game over getting caught up in the EXP circle jerk. I find that I receive the same, if not more, EXP from not participating in the circle jerk. I love the Medic class (and have always loved healing classes in any game); however, I pull it drastically less now a-days.
Yup, revive circle-jerk is essentially how i've always thought of it. Pointless battle / non-progressive feeling-battle, that has little to no weight to it.
IDK, it seems to me there is always enough medics to revive our dead, but I never kill any. My directive 'enemy medic kill' is empty. It is not my job to crush enemy platoon, or snipe a support guy from safe distance in large fights. And when I go solo late at night, everybody is HA or Infil, only occasionally a C4 fairy, or poor MAX without own engi. I could also whine about flyboys who are happy that there are almost no threads for their planes when the population is low, but the point is - no medics. Which is really weird, since assault rifles are awesome.
When I play medic (about a third of my play time) I prioritize killing over healing, usually. Medics can be tough and have access to great weapons. Since I don't like playing HA, medic is my go-to for when I need to be mean and shooty and fairly direct. Mainly I toss rez grenades at piles of dead people or take care of healing/rezzing once all the baddies are gone. Besides, I'd miss my SABR-13 too much if I didn't play medic.
