The idea behind the combat medic is to have a character which is reliable, easy-to-use, and adaptable to the majority of PvE maps. This means a character with a good balance of offence, defence, and support skills.

For human characters, we're given a budget of 10,000 points, which we can spend on improving both Stats and Inventory.

Let's start off with equipment - I usually try to keep this down to the basics. Too many fancy weapons and armour, and we won't have enough points left for the rest of the build!



Army Medkits (x4)

First thing's first - if we want to build a medic, then he/she will need to have some medical supplies. The basic Army Medkit is your best choice for now - they only cost 100 points each and, unlike bandages and nano-packs, are capable of healing broken limbs. At higher levels, Paramedic Bags and Advanced Surgery Field Kits will provide faster healing than the basic medkits, but they aren't necessary to make an effective medic build.

As a rule of thumb, I like to have at least 400-500 points invested in medkits. Less, and you risk running out. More, and you might be wasting points which could make the rest of your character stronger. It's also helpful to note that robots can't be healed by medkits, but they can be healed by nano-packs, so save these for reviving your robot buddies if possible.

KA-75 Assault Rifle

This is a really solid rifle. Good range, good magazine size, good damage, common ammo, multiple fire modes and at 1000 points is fairly affordable. Its low cost allows us to put more points into character skills, which I prefer to use to specialise in critical hits. By putting this into single-fire mode and aiming for head-shots, this thing's damage output will be on-par with even the high-tier weapons! The burst fire option is also good for clearing out multiple enemies in close range, but ideally you should be spending >90% of your time in single-fire mode to conserve ammo.

7.62mm Rounds (x80)

80 rounds is enough for 2 full KA-75 magazines, and only costs 400 points. Ideally, this should give you a good amount of time to scavenge more ammo in the field, but if not, you can always rely on your...

Shiv

At 100 points, this is the cheapest and lightest melee option available. Don't be fooled however, this is a great little weapon. Fighting some sewer mutants and don't want to waste precious ammo? Shiv time. Gun needs reloading and an axe raider is charging you? Shiv time. Barricade blocking your path and it needs taken down without wasting all your explosives? Shiv time. Due to its high attack speed, this also pairs up really well with a critical hit build. I recommend aiming for the groin. Personal preference.

Steel Armour

This is probably the most well balanced armour in the game. It provides good defence against all damage types, is fairly cost-effective at 1500 points, and it's available right from level 1. It is pretty heavy though, so you'll probably need an extra point in carry weight to compensate. The cheaper armours are lighter, but only really provide good defence against kinetic damage. The higher-level armours such as the Exo-Suit and Carbometallic are worth upgrading to if you find them during a mission, but their expense (2500 points!) is usually better spent elsewhere at character creation.

Now that we've sorted weapons and equipment, the next step is to pump up the skills to use them properly.



Melee

As mentioned before, this is more of an early-game backup skill for this build, so no need to invest too heavily here. 100 points to bump accuracy up to 75% should suffice. This also has the rather nice side-effect of increasing the hit-chance of the Sparta kick. Sweet!

Light Weapons

These are the main offensive skills for this build. Accuracy has been upped to 105% to make sure we can hit our targets the majority of the time. In-game, accuracy is capped at 95%, but this gives us an extra 10% to compensate for accuracy modifiers such as the enemy's evasion, crouching, or sprinting. Another important reason, is that the majority of this build's damage will come from critical hits, which require us to use aimed shots.



Aimed shots will increase critical hit chance by 25%, at the cost of reducing accuracy. (-15% for legs/arms, -25% for head). They will also reduce the accuracy cap when used. Normally this is 95%, but this will go down to 80% when aiming for the arms/legs, or 70% when aiming for the head. Headshots will do the most damage, but sometimes with tougher enemies it can be better to weaken them first by aiming for legs or arms. Crippling a melee enemy's leg will make it much harder for them to reach you, and if an enemy has a big two-handed weapon like a minigun or rocket launcher, then crippling an arm will prevent them from shooting.

In order to make the best use of this feature, we will need to use the Virtue 'Aim and Maim' for a 10% boost to accuracy when using aimed shots. This also improves the accuracy cap to 90% for arms/legs and 80% for the head. We can also use the Virtue 'Devastating Critical Hits' to increase damage and the chance of crippling limbs.

Attack speed has also been increased to +32%. This will provide a big boost to our rifle dps, while also improving effectiveness against multiple targets. I chose not to spend the 500 points to boost this to +40%, as the extra 8% won't provide as much extra damage as straight up adding points to the Bonus Damage stat.

Bonus Damage

This provides, funnily enough, bonus damage. Not just for rifles though, this affects our melee and grenades too. I like to put between 15-20% here for humans, after that point it's probably more cost-effective to boost accuracy, or round out the rest of the build. For now, let's leave it at 15%.

Now that we're able to headshot raiders like a pro, it's time to prevent the same thing from happening to us.



Max HP

Odds are we're going to have to charge into the open to revive a teammate at some point, so we want plenty of points here to make sure we don't die in the process. As a rule of thumb for most characters, we'll want between 110-160 hit points to make sure they can survive face-to-face combat, though the exact amount will depend upon the race, armour, and build. Melee characters will need more than ranged characters, and support classes will want a bit less to boost their other skills. There are some extreme tank builds for the Valkyrie race with over 200 hit points, but for this character I'm gonna leave it at 130. This, when combined with our steel armour and healing skills, will allow the medic to survive most of the fights in the game. One nice bonus is that this will be enough to live through 2 grenades from soldier raiders, which is one of the more common methods of death in official maps. The Virtue 'Grounded', which halves the chance of getting knocked down, will also greatly boost survivability. Getting knocked down by explosives or melee enemies mid-fight can often be a death sentence, and will also interrupt revives.

HP Regen

Since this is a medic class, we can heal ourselves easily enough, so this stat isn't really needed.

Evasion Bonus

I like to max this on pretty much any character. While you won't be able to dodge every attack, every time your character gets hit has a small chance to be a critical, which can cripple limbs, blind you, or even knock you unconscious. The only real way to avoid this is by not getting hit in the first place. Evasion stacks very well with the Virtues 'Up and Down', which greatly increases crouching speed, and 'Thickheaded', which halves your chance of being knocked out. Just keep in mind that evasion doesn't work against explosives.

Kinetic Resistance

Kinetic damage is probably the most common damage type in the game; bullets, blades and even teeth/claws - all fall under kinetic. However, while this might be the most common damage type, the most threatening are often in the other three categories, which humans can only boost with armour. Health and Evasion help to mitigate against all damage types, so I tend to focus on those before investing here. 100 points for an extra 5% won't hurt us too much though.

This section covers our utility and support skills.



Carry Weight

All our weapons, armour and equipment add up to just over 20kg, so to avoid being encumbered, we'll need at least one point here. Personally, I like to boost this to 60kg, as over the course of a mission you're going to pick up a lot of extra ammo and medkits, and hopefully a weapon/armour upgrade or two. Higher level armour especially can be very heavy, so having just 40kg won't really cut it.

Medicine

This is where the 'Medic' part of the build comes into play. In my experience, 80% seems to be a nice sweet spot for this skill. Any less, and you'll struggle to keep your team healthy without running out of medkits. Any higher, and you start to eat into the 'Combat' part of the build. That said, if you're willing to play a little more cautiously, it's entirely viable to drop HP down to 110 and increase Medicine to 100%, with a few points left over for more medkits. Just make sure that you stay behind the front lines if you decide to go this route.

Running Speed / Stealth / Enemy Detection / Traps / Mechanics

While these are all nice skills to have, they each generally require at least 600 points invested before you start to notice the benefits from them and we simply don't have that many points to spare here. Feel free to experiment with these in future builds however.

Last up is to add the Virtues and Vices to our build. Virtues function similarly to Perks in the Fallout games, as they add 'quirky' bonuses which are usually more interesting than simple stat boosts. There are a lot of good options for making builds such as assassins, demolitions experts and even vehicle specialists, but for this build I'm just going to focus on improving survivability and critical hits.

Vices are basically the opposite of a Virtue: it will cause your character to become flawed in some way, in exchange for giving you more points to spend elsewhere. I usually take at least one of these on my characters, but some people prefer not to use them, so I designed this build with Vices being entirely optional. This build is very effective as-is, but the extra points can be helpful for boosting skills, or adding more equipment like extra medkits, grenades and better guns/armour.





Devastating Critical Hits

Taking this Virtue means that every time you score a critical hit, it will be upgraded to a higher tier. In practice this means more damage, more crippled limbs and generally more awesomeness.

Grounded

This Virtue halves the chance that your character will be knocked down from certain attacks, such as kicks, targeted shots to the legs, explosives, and heavy melee weapons such as axes and hammers. Getting knocked down means that your character won't be able to shoot or move until they stand up, which leaves them very vulnerable to attack. Some enemies can even chain knockdowns together, such as those with axes or grenades, which can quickly lead to your character's death. This is one virtue that I would recommend for pretty much any character in the game, it really is *that* important.

Thickheaded

This Virtue will make you half as likely to be knocked out. Being knocked out is kinda like being knocked down, only worse. Much worse. Thankfully, this is much more uncommon than knockdowns, but it will still usually result in death unless you have a friend nearby to come save you. Having the squad medic taken out of action like this will usually result in a squad wipe, so this is very useful for our build.

Up and Down

This Virtue will greatly increase the speed at which your character will change stance between standing and crouching. Crouching is one of the most useful actions for a ranged character. It simultaneously increases your accuracy against enemies, while also reducing your chance to be hit in return. With this Virtue, you can immediately crouch as soon as the bullets start flying, giving you a major combat advantage. For 100 points, this is a steal.

Be warned however, that the reduced movement from crouching will also make you more vulnerable to AoE attacks like grenades. Luckily, if you have this Virtue you can still stand up and move away in time before it explodes, provided you react quickly enough.

Aim and Maim

This Virtue was mentioned earlier in the guide, but regardless it increases the accuracy of aimed shots by 10%. Given that this build makes heavy use of targeted shots for the improved critical chance, this is a great Virtue to have.

Massive Chest (Optional)

Massive Chest means your character will become Rambo not be able to equip any armour, either during character creation or during a mission. Armour is incredibly useful for durability, so this is usually only recommended for stealth builds. Regardless, I'd recommend putting some extra points into health and medicine if you opt to use this.

Paranoid (Optional)

Paranoid will cause your character to sometimes start shooting in a random direction. I usually end up taking this Vice if the character's weapon isn't too damaging and the ammo isn't too expensive.

You usually won't hit anything when paranoid triggers, but there is still the potential for friendly fire, so be ready to heal your teammates if this happens. Not recommended for maps with multiple characters in a squad, and DEFINITELY not for characters with rocket launchers!

Stinky (Optional)

Stinky will cause your character to... well... smell worse. Why is this a bad thing? The stealth mechanics in Dustwind are determined as a combination of sight, sound and smell. Combat Medics usually don't focus too much on stealth, but the 'Stinky' debuff is severe enough that enemies can literally smell you coming from the next room over, which can sometimes lead to your squad being greatly outnumbered. This Vice will also cause your character to be followed around by a swarm of flies, which can give away your position in PvP.

Clumsy (Optional)

Clumsy will cause your character to, as the game puts it: 'Randomly trip over your own ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ legs.' This is usually good for a laugh, so this is my most commonly picked Vice. Normally, this Vice won't actually affect combat that much, as Combat Medics should be spending most of a fight laying down ranged fire from behind cover. However, I have had times where my character has charged in to clear a room, only to fall flat on his face at the doorway and get roasted by a flamethrower. But hey, that's Dustwind!. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Plunger Medic

Plungers cost 1 point in character creation. They are a completely useless weapon, even worse than simply using your fists. Normally, any sane build would ignore these completely. However there is one little known fact about plungers that changes everything:

They can be used as ammo for the Compound Bow.

And considering that we've just created a character that specialises in critical hits? Yeah, you can see where I'm going with this.

First thing is to remove the assault rifle and ammo, and replace it with the Bow. The bow costs the same as the assault rifle, and without the ammo we have an extra 400 points to spare. Awesome! Well, almost. Obviously, we need to reload the Bow after every shot, which takes quite a long time and leaves us vulnerable.

To mitigate this, we need to take the 'Fast Reload' Virtue, which costs a whopping 600 points. Well worth it for this build, but to afford it we'll need to take an extra Vice. This gives us enough points left over for 50 plungers.

The play-style for this build is fairly similar to the standard build, but I'd recommend working on your evil laugh for the first time you take a raider's head off with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ plunger :P

Heavy Weapons Medic

This build is fairly similar to the original build, only with a *lot* more Dakka. Swap over all the points from light into heavy, and replace your assault rifle with the Streyfert rifle. That's it. Simple right? Well, not exactly. Heavy weapons will dish out a lot more damage than their lighter cousins, but usually come with some downsides to compensate:

Sniper Rifles like the Streyfert and .50 Cal are fairly light, cheap and have the longest range in the game. However, they also have reduced accuracy at close range and can't be fired within melee distance.

Flamethrowers can dish out huge damage up to multiple targets up close, but also have heavy ammo and can only be used at close range.

Pulse Cannons deal huge single-target energy damage, but have a slow fire rate and can't be fired within melee distance. Unlike the sniper rifles however, they retain full accuracy at all other ranges. Their ammo is also very rare and expensive.

Miniguns and Light Machineguns can dish out a lot of damage to multiple targets at all ranges, but also burn through ammo like nobody's business.

Rocket Launchers will deal massive AoE damage to any target in the game. Unfortunately, it can also blow up yourself and team-mates if you aren't careful. It also has very long firing/reload animations.

This means that you'll need to rely a lot more on positioning and melee skill than with light-weapon builds. Your main focus should be on taking out enemies at long range and keeping an eye out for even bigger guns.

This build requires a more cautious play-style to start with than light weapons, but you'll quickly become the heaviest-hitter in the team as your arsenal grows. You will also be the best candidate for using the vehicle-mounted weapons, which are usually more powerful than their hand-held counterparts.