• When someone gets downed/killed, everyone else heals.
  
• The downed person spawns a pipe bomb distract riddens, allowing you to rescue them smoothly.
  
• You use defibs to keep everyone alive, 1 defib = 2 lifes(defib gives 2 life when reviving dead teammate with 0 lifes).
  Begin with a minimum of 4 defibs which allows your teammate to down 8 extra times

No.1 - 11 are must have cards. You need every last one of them to function properly.



No.10 BELT CLIP can be switched into TOOL BELT if your team has another healer

Regarding No.11 HEADBAND MAGNIFIER:
I had my reservation about this card as the blinding effect sometimes screws you up. However after extended period of testing I conclude that the benefit overwhelmingly outweighs the harm. The blinding effect trigger chance is pretty low.

A flexibility of 4 cards to choose based on your personal playstyle. The screenshot above are the cards I'm using, here're some more that also work:

• RUN LIKE HELL and MAD DASH(recommended)
  These 2 are the best mobility cards in the game and do wonders in keeping yourself alive, and the survivability of yourself is at utmost importance. It also helps you reach downed teammate faster and revive them in time
  
  
• AVENGE THE FALLEN
  Can be very helpful as the damage buff stacks. If your team run into multiple mutants or a breaker and died multiple times in short amount of times, the damage buff will stack up fast and make quick work of those enemies.
  
  
• COMBAT MEDIC
  Mainly for additional use speed. You can never have enough use speed for this build, even 0.1s makes the difference between life and death.
  
  
• BELT CLIP(or TOOL BELTS)
  If you don't have a preference.
  
  
• Extra Life(not recommended)
  More lives for this build is generally useless but if you are REALLY struggling with keeping yourself alive, then give yourself more lives and heal back full with med kit at the safe room. SECOND CHANCE increase bleed out time can be helpful if you run into a situation where you are downed and teammates are unable to reach you fast enough.
  However know that unless your teammate is willing to drop you more copper, it's likely you wont be able to afford any additional med kit.
  
  
  These cards works great when there's a 2nd healer in your team and you dont have to worry about yourself dying:
• PINATA
  You may even charge into enemy lines as deep as you can and draw all the enemies within the area to you and kill them with death bomb. You'll be like Santa, dropping presents everywhere you go.
  
  
• Bullet Damage cards
  dps variant of this build

Nope you don't need this card as long as someone in your team uses 1 GROUP HUG


As long as everyone has 1 life, this build will function at full capacity. However additional copies of GROUP HUG is welcomed as it saves you copper and defibs.
Your team inherit the number of life you have LOST, not the number of life you have left, so as long as they died 1 time, having NEEDS OF THE MANY would only give them one EMPTY life, and reduce your max HP for no good reason.

However if you do not have enough GROUP HUG cards to burn, then you need to temporarily add NEEDS OF THE MANY to your build. If no one in your team used GROUP HUG and someone ended up with no live, this build would be dead useless because your defib would only give 1 life instead of 2(Note section below explains why)

• Only use defib on dead teammates
  i.e. teammate you cannot press E to pull up.
  It's the only way you can heal 2 life with 1 defib(when you die your life doesnt become -1 it stays at 0. Defib itself gives you 1 life by bring u back, and MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL card makes u have 1 life when revived, thus 2 lifes in total)
  
  
• Only need buy quick tool inventory upgrade(just inventory, dont need quality).
  Other upgrades does not benefit your team survivability when using this build(Offensive Upgrade does NOT upgrade the pipe bomb spawned by incap).
  
  
• Don't use med cabinet.
  You heal 1 life for 125 copper with defib, and cabinet is 3 time more expensive. Recommend your teammate to not use them neither. Only under dire circumstances you should consider using it to ensure team survival
  
  
• Only thing you need to buy is defib.
  You dont need med. This build has no healing efficiency and does not benefit from it neither.
  You can buy 1 med kit for yourself and use it when you have 0 life left.
  
  
• If someone started the level with low hp and no life, kill them and revive with defib.
  Heals them for 1 life and possibly spawn something good
  
  
• Buy cards that:
  - increase Use Speed
  - increase Revive Speed
  - gives benefit to reviving teammates
  Ranked by importance.
  Note that Use Speed affect both revive speed and defib speed, but Revive Speed does not affect defib speed.
  
  
• Ask EVERYONE to buy these cards:
  - OUT WITH A BANG. It increases the pipe bomb quality(duration & dmg)
  - INSPIRING SACRIFICES. The amount of heal stacks.
  - WELL RESTED. Higher Overheal gives you more shield when health is capped.
  Ranked by importance. When any of these cards are held by 4 players, your run will go MUCH smoother.
  
  
• Rescue your teammate either immediately or after pipe explodes
  Always try to rescue asap during the golden window while the bomb's ticking your healing buff are active for tanking dmg like acid.
  However the bomb deals considerable damage to whoever spawned it(but much less to other players), they risk getting killed by the bomb right after being rescued. Either rescue them right away to give them enough time to run away, or make sure they are revived after the bomb explodes. Timing is critical.
  With enough experience you'll be able to tell exactly when the pipe explodes, and you can begin the rescue action while the bomb is still ticking and time the action bar to complete right after the bomb explodes
  
  
• Gold defibs
  - If you have 0 life, take the gold defib, get yourself killed. It'll revive you with 1 life.
  - if you have more than 0 life, treat the gold defib as a regular defib. If someone has 0 life, execute them and revive with gold defib(or execute someone with 1 life twice). If not, then you can either leave it, or carry it on you and come back for your regular defib after you have used the gold one.
  
  
• Do NOT revive others with life transfusion
  Revive ability granted by finding the LIFE TRANSFUSION black card does NOT trigger Dan's passive. Always use defib and only use your life to revive if you run out of defibs.

• Keep yourself alive at all cost.
  Prioritize your own survival. You can revive everyone else but no one can revive you.
  Save med kits for yourself, only use it when you have 0 life, and avoid getting downed at all cost. You are the only one in the team that cannot afford to die.

• God Mode
  (Only possible with 10k or more copper)
  At the beginning, use all copper to buy defib, open the saferoom door, choose a sacrificial lamb, repeatedly killing and reviving them until you have 20 copies of 5% damage resistance buff(check by looking at your cards) then your team is effectively immortal.
  
  Application:
  Perform at the last level of each run, especially like the the last level of Act 1, one of the hardest level in the game
  
  
  
  
• Revive Loop
  When your team found the LIFE TRANSFUSION black card, having two 0 life players reviving each other can spawn infinite bombs and team heal.
  
  Application:
  1. Perform at survival fights such as the diner(Act 1), last mission of Act 1 and Act 2, astronomy museum(Act 6) etc.
  
  2. (Must have Mom in your team)Have 2 players perform this revive ritual in the back and have other player push forward, this way you'll be constantly generating temporary health for the front line players and make them almost immortal. Just make sure the front line members have high max hp so they won't get one shot easily.

Yep.

• In case of emergency such as a horde coming while your team is in the open, or your team are on the run with zombies right up ur ass: consider purposely shoot down a low hp teammate(preferably not a dps) and immediately pull them up. It spawns the bomb and triggers the heal to cover the rest.
  
  
• If all your team's health is low then just execute a low hp 0 life teammate then revive to heal.
  
  
• If you found an extra defib nobody is picking up, don't waste it, down teammates to use it for some buffs. However, you should only do it if someone has 1 or 0 life, and if the person with 1 life have low max hp, high trauma.
  
  
• Sometimes execute low hp teammates to save your own ass either to heal or distract riddens. Your life is much more important than everyone else's.
  
  
• Prioritize executing bots if present as they take no incap trauma and revive with full max hp.
  
  
• Use shotguns as main weapon, especially TAC or AA12 as their dmg is high and provide a swift painless execution. But do not waste shotgun ammo on enemies if your team has a shotgun dps. Use sidearms for protecting yourself against riddens and stay away from mutants

You might ask what's the difference between your teammate getting killed by you or the zombies. Difference being preemptively downing a teammate is safer than relying on unpredictable zombie attacks and teammates' performance. This proactive approach minimize risks like simultaneous downs, separation, and delayed rescue(missing the pipe bomb window makes reviving much more dangerous). Your team will be able to maintain formation and firepower. Sacrificing one life is the safest way to ensure team survival.

And of course you need to take the number of defibs you have left into consideration. Make sure there're enough defibs for the rest of the level.

Core: Dan, Mom
Support: Karlee
(Between Mom and Dan, Dan increase the offensive aspect of your team and more fun to use, Mom increase the defensive aspect of your team.)

• Dan's passive randomly buffs the team, spawns copper, spawns grenade to cover you after rescuing, and even granting your team an extra life.
  
  
• Mom's passive heals team for 25 temp hp which doubles the healing of this build, she also speed up revive
  
  
• Karlee allows you to carry one more defib and gives 50% use speed which speed up both defib and revive.

They are only needed for their team passive and not individual abilities, as long as they are in the team, whom you personally choosing to play does not matter.
Having both Dan and Mom in your team will substantially increase the efficiency of this build, and you should only consider using Karlee when the team already have Dan and Mom

Pros: Better functionality, more copper efficient and much less reliant on teammate performance

• Doesnt rely on healing efficiency or trauma heal, frees up cards for other benefits like death bombs, damage buffs, fast revives etc.
  
  
• Not affected by corruption card that -50% healing efficiency.
  
  
• Works great when playing with inexperienced or unskilled players. They would burn up the resource of a regular medic who would want to keep everyone hp and trauma high, but with this build they can just go ahead and get themselves killed, your team benefits from dying.
  
  
• Doesn't depend on meds thus saving you the headache when you teammate just use meds themselves instead of giving someone with regular medic build to use.
  
  
• Doesn't depend on meds thus cost much less copper. You heal one life for 125 copper, at the same time fill up everyone else's hp bar by half. Your own copper is enough to keep the team going, doesn't matter if your teammates are willing to drop copper for healer to heal them.
  
  
• Doesn't require team item upgrades. Max performance right off the bat.
  
  
• Dan freaking loves it.
  
  
• Decent ridden control, especially good when your team doesnt have a melee.
  
  
• Having abundant copper could granting you the luxury of buying dmg card when you found one and make you somewhat of a dps later in the run.

Cons: Hard to keep yourself alive.

• Unlike regular medic you cant just use a bandage on yourself and suddenly you hp is full, so it takes skills to avoid taking dmg and avoid being downed.
  
  
• Luck-dependent in terms of finding the life transfusion card. That card compensate some disadvantage of your own survivability.
  
  
• Potential misunderstandings. Not many people know about this build and may think you are a noob or trolling, even kick you out when they see you shooting down teammates(triggering friendly fire kick prompt is very common for this build). Be sure to communicate with your team.
  
  
• This build doesn't work if nobody gets killed, so it performs worse than regular medic if your team is full of experienced/skilled players who rarely gets hurt.
  But that's not to say you cant use this build when playing with pros, if someone with PINATA(like a Hoffman build) is being cooperative with you then you guys will be in a world of fun