Medic is well, a medic. He heals, revives, protects, and ubers the team. He's a fairly decent damage dealer himself, although he is clearly the weakest in firepower of all the classes. He's pretty decent at collecting money too, although not as strong like Scout or Spy. Well, you're not here to be a Heavy's butt plug. Let's begin the examination!

Here's a list of basics to know about Medic:

• Medic is your best healer in the team. He is your only source of overheal. There are exceptions like Kunai, Half-Zatoichi, or money overheal but those options are limited.
  
• Medic can increase the heal rate, overheal, and ubercharge duaration.
  
• Medic can revive any fallen teammates from their death location. When they die, they'll drop a reanimator and a red silhouette will appear out of it.
  
• Using any Medi Gun UberCharge during a revival will speed up the revival process.
  
• Medic has an upgrade called Projectile Shield which can block any bullet or explosive damage. Fire can travel through the shield unhindered.
  
• Medic can share canteens with teammates.

Medic is different from other classes because he is unchallenged as the best healer. He heals, overheals, ubers, and shields directly. He is the only class able to revive fallen teammates. Medic is the more mobile of the classes on foot, beaten by Scout, Spy, Demoknight, and arguably Pyro. He can evade and collect money decently. The Medic is by far the worst damage dealer of the team, so his support his main weight.

The Syringe Guns and Crusader's Crossbow are primarily used as utility. Their damage is poor.

Stock
The Stock Syringe Gun doesn't really do anything spectacular, but it is a usable choice. The other choices are better though.

Blutsauger
The Blutsauger is a downgrade from stock. You lose your precious auto-healing in favor of rapid healing when shooting this syringe gun at robots. Maybe it can help you recover HP faster, but I've never found a use for it.

Overdose
The Overdose is a great choice. For every 10% Uber gained, 2% move speed will be added to the existing moving speed with a cap of 20% at full Uber when holding this weapon. It is great at catching up to teammates, retreating, or evading. You get a 15% damage penalty, but it's negligible.

Crusader's Crossbow
The Crusader's Crossbow is a great choice. It can help you heal teammates faster and from afar. You can also use it to eliminate Snipers with its long range capabilities.

The Medi Guns are your primary weapons. It is the only weapon that can deploy projectile shields, so you'll wanna be keeping it out. Note that reviving teammates while using any Uber will decrease the revival duration.

Stock
The Stock Medi Gun is the worst choice in most instances. You grant invunerability to your selected patient when using its Uber. The problem is that there are many other ways to reduce or nullify damage that it's outclassed. There is only once instance where I can find this Medi Gun superior to all others, but it is for only one wave. Check the Synergy with Spy section to find out why.

Kritzkrieg
The Kritzkrieg is pretty much the best Medi Gun to use for MvM in general. It grants you the ability to give guaranteed criticals to your selected patient. This is pretty great for killing anything faster and does make up for the lower damage the Medic will output.

Quick-Fix
The Quick-Fix is a good Medi Gun and my personal favorite. It deploys an Uber that rapidly heals and overheals the Medic and his patient. It is great for shield building with its fast healing and healing on the Medic during its uber. It grants invunerability to knockback effects like rockets for example, which is insanely useful on spammy waves and a certain strategy with Spy. Check the Synergy with Spy section to find out why.

Vaccinator
The Vaccinator is a situational Medi Gun. It grants 10% damage resistance of the selected damage type to the Medic and patient when healing. It's healing rate and charge rate is severely reduced when attempting to overheal, but does grant a 4 small Ubercharges which can be used to reduce all incoming damage of the selected type by 75% and crit immunity on the Medic and patient. An Ubercharge deployed on a deceased teammate will instantly revive them. The Vaccinator is great for early waves where your teammates can really use the resistances because of money shortage, but later on it becomes redundant.

The best melee weapon for Medic is the Ubersaw, no question. It grants 25% Uber on any successful hits except tanks. You can easily fill the Uber with stray robots or Sentry Busters. The other melee weapons have upsides that will be negligible. Maybe the Amputator's taunt healing can save multiple teammates, but I've never felt the need to use it.

There's not much to upgrade on Medic besides the Medi Gun and body upgrades.

Syringe Gun upgrade

Mad Milk Syringes is the only upgrade I can see some use for on the Syringe Guns. Basically one syringe hitting any robot will cause them to be marked with milk similar to Scout's Mad Milk secondary weapon for 5 seconds. It's pretty nice to shoot giant bosses for example with one syringe and help teammates like Heavies have a fast health source.

Medi Gun upgrades

There are 6 different upgrades on the Medi Gun. Pretty important to upgrade.

+25% UberCharge Rate isn't that helpful I find. It is a bit expensive at $300 a tick and the Ubersaw can pretty much do the same but faster and for free.

Projectile Shield is a great upgrade (crutch basically). It is a shield that surrounds the Medic and protects him and any teammates within it from damage. It can damage and stun robots and is basically the only usable weapon at the Medic's disposal to damage robots. The Projectile will only build up when healing teammates NOT at max oveheal. It will require 400 points of healing to be able to be used. Note that flames cannot be blocked with the shield.

+2s Uber Duration is a decent upgrade. It grants 2 seconds extra to an UberCharge and is pretty great with extended Kritz or Quick-Fix healing. Note that the Vaccinator UberCharge duration is not increased with this upgrade.

Overheal Expert is an upgrade with upsides and downsides. It increases the overheal cap in points of 25% and 50% increase to overheal decay duration. This is great for simply keeping teammates alive. It is bad too because due to the overheal decaying slower, you cannot build up the Projectile Shield as fast. Note that the Quick-Fix Uber will affect the Medic too with this upgrade.

Healing Mastery is a great upgrade. It increases the heal rate, revival rate, and self heal rate by 25%. Faster healing means it can keep teammates alive and also means the Projectile Shield is built up faster.

Canteens and Canteen Specialist will get a whole section of their own.

Body upgrades

Movement Speed is a pretty great upgrade for Medic. Here's a list of things it helps with:

• Collect money faster
  
• Escape and evade fire easier
  
• Reach teammates to heal, uber, revive, or shield faster
  
• Pick up HP faster
  
• Hit Sentry Busters with the Ubersaw easier

Resistances are useful. You could probably play Medic without them, but they will allow you to be more ballsy and offensive with the Projectile Shield. Crit resistance is a must though.

HP regen actually is nullified a bit by Healing Mastery by the fact that at max, you'll be healing 6 points no matter what. But when stacked with it, Medic can regen up to 14 HP at once (and 17 with the Amputator).

Jump Height can help you reach some heights faster. Buying this or not really depends on which map you are playing on.

Canteens on Medic work a bit differently to other classes. Instead of just using them on himself, he can share them with his patient to give them the effects of the canteen. If Medic could not share canteens though, I'd see no reasonable points to buy any canteens. To share canteens Medic must buy at least one point of Canteen Specialist, be currently healing someone, and press the key that has sharing binded.

Upgrading Canteen Specialist will reduce the cost of any canteen by $10 and the duration of Uber and Crit Canteens by 1 second for each point. Canteens have a minimum price of $5.


Crit Canteens grant a set time of guaranteed crits. These are pretty nice when wanting to crit boost classes with high firepower.

Uber Canteens grant a set time of invunerability. It can be helpful when dealing with bosses to protect your teammates or to safely gain an ubercharge for your Kritzkrieg with an ubersaw. A bit situational, but a good canteen.

Ammo Refill Canteens grant max ammo upon use. It can be nice if your team doesn't have many ammo sources and it is dirt cheap at $5 with 2 upgrades in Canteen Specialist. I wouldn't buy it though personally because the team with probably have an Engineer, which grants ammo to multiple teammates in constant streams.

Teleport to Spawn Canteens grant the Medic the ability to spawn at any time during the wave. This canteen will not teleport teammates if you attempt to share it with them though. I wish it could to troll teammates. This canteen is pretty nice if your whole team happens to fall or you're stuck in a bad situation. Not a very useful canteen for Medic.

Aggro is important to notice to use Medic to his max effectiveness. It can be quite helpful knowing how to work around aggro that could help you and your team. Knowing which teammates are receiving heavy damage or will be the recipient of heavy damage could actually win or lose the round (experienced players can usually avoid losing the round even if things go badly). Knowing when to heal, uber, or shield a target can bring them from being in a losing situation to a winning situation.

For example, let's say your teammate is a Soldier and you're a Medic. Both of you are isolated from the rest of your team. 20 Robot Soldiers arrive. Your teammate will probably die to this horde alone, especially if in an early wave. To prevent this from happening, you can Ubercharge, Kritz, shield, or some combination of those 3 and assist the Soldier. Uber will make him invunerable, Kritz will give him the highly effective splash damage to kill groups of Soldiers, and shielding will stop enemy rockets in their tracks and thus, keep your teammate safe.

You should also be looking out for your own safety. Jumping into a group of 15 enemies is something you shouldn't be doing unless you know you'll live. Knowing when to act and how to act as a Medic can be very crucial, so be aware of your environment.

The Projectile Shield is a powerful tool. It blocks projectiles and bullets, damages and stuns robots. A lot of players realize that for the shield to charge, they must heal. But what they don't catch is that the shield won't charge if healing an fully overhealed player. To be effectve in charging the shield, you must manage to do several different tasks.

Heal multiple teammates - Healing different teammates will increase the charge because they all can't be at max overheal at once and thus all the extra healing will build up the gauge. It's better than healing a Heavy for 90% of the game which would at max overheal all the time.

Not buying Overheal Expert - Overheal Expert if you read earlier will increase the the amount of time it takes for overheal to decay. If you have this upgrade maxed out, it will be hard to heal and build the shield at the same time. So not buying or buying less of Overheal Expert will help in building shields faster.

Do not heal when deploying a shield - The biggest and most common mistake I see is people healing healthy teammates while a shield is active. The shield cannot build up because it is already deployed. During the time the shield is active, stop all healing on healthy teammates because they will not benefit from the overheal if most incoming damage would be blocked anyways. Once the shield may be charged again, heal or overheal any teammates to regain it. If you had been healing with the shield active, you wouldn't be able to charge it after because your teammates would have been overhealed to max already.

Revive fallen teammates - Reviving teammates builds up the charge, so any moment you see a teammate die, revive them if safe to do so. You can have a teammate suicide between breaks to gain fast shields easily.

Use the Quick-Fix - Using the Quick-Fix is great for building shields because of the faster heal rate and its ubercharge. The ubercharge will heal you too, which will add up to building the shield's charge rate.

Like I've said, the Projectile Shield is a powerful tool. A lot of people have trouble charging it so how about using it?

Use it to block damage - The most obvious use of the shield. When your team is about to receive a lot of incoming damage, use it to block the damage. It does not block flames so be careful with Pyros.

Attack robots with shield - The shield blocks damage and can attack robots, so why not do both? Attacking large groups of bots of Heavies will drain their HP rapidly, especially if the shield is mini-crit boosted. Since you'll be right up in their face, you never really have to stand by teammates to actually protect them.

Gain aggro - You're protected, so if you have teammates that surround the robots from many different angles, you can't exactly shield them all, so it is quite helpful for Medic to run up to bots have them focus on him.

Don't get too close to robots - Getting too close to robots will allow them to actually have their weapon past the shield and shoot you. Taking a crit rocket or two isn't a pleasant feeling.

Be careful on stairs/ramps - The shield is shaped like a fan in front of the Medic. The height of the shield isn't very long, so be sure to look down anytime on a staircase or ramp to slightly turn it up or down.

There isn't much tips to reviving teammates, but it is important to remember that reviving any fallen teammates can be deterimental.

Reviving a Heavy while there is a lose Giant Scout on the loose to the bomb can lose you the round if there's no teammates to stop the bomb.

Reviving any teammate in the middle of 20 Soldiers will surely get them instantly killed once they are revived. You'll probably die too if you ran in there. Resetting the timer on a teammate will only make it worse.

Reviving a Scout when you under stress from other threats is usually not a great idea. Scouts have a fast respawn time and can get back to the front quickly.

Scout is a great giant and tank killer, whereas Medic is not. Besides this, the Medic can't really assist Scout because of fast respawns and the overheal money grants to Scout will make him completely independent of a Medic. Scout can throw Mad Milk on groups of robots and Medic can heal of the milked robots with the Projectile Shield.

Okay Synergy.

Soldier is a flexible class. Good tank killer, great at crowd control, and is a great user of a Kritzkrieg ubercharge. Medic is decent at crowd control with his shield, so this couple of classes is pretty great.

Great Synergy!

Mostly the same as Soldier. Pyro is great at tank killing and crowd control. Pyro is squishy so he will appreciate the healing. Both are great at close range crowd control. Not any problems with this combo.

Great Synergy!

Demoman is also like Soldier. Great crowd control and tank busting. He is a great receiver of the Kritzkrieg ubercharge. There should be no problems with this combo.

Great Synergy!

Demoknight is strong at melee combat as well as fairly durable with a Medic protecting him from fire with the Projectile Shield. These two can take out hordes fairly easily. Using a Quick-Fix ubercharge can help Demoknight by not allowing robots knock him around. Great tank buster too.

Great Synergy!

Medic grants Heavy a great amount of survivabilty. Heavy is great with a Kritzkrieg ubercharge when going against giant robots. Both classes aren't that great at tank busting though.

Great Synergy!

Every class is better with an Engineer. Dispensers keep the Medic alive and teleports\ers will bring him to the front if needed. Medic can shield a sentry from fire and revive the Engineer. A dead Engineer can lose his buildings fast. Sentry Busters are also brought into existance because of Engineer, so he essentially gives Medic easy and fast ubercharges.

Great Synergy!

2 Medics are more of a hinderance on most waves. Remember what I said in the Charging the Projectile Shield effectively section? Well 2 Medics will make shield charging harder. Having 2 Medics will reduce the amount of firepower you have. The only big positive I can see with 2 Medics is the fact that they can revive each other, but I don't find it worth it.

Bad Synergy.

I don't really know what to think. I guess Medic can shield Sniper from fire and revive him, although a Sniper can easily avoid this. Sniper excels at the horde, which Medic can't really do without his shield. Both classes are weak against tanks.

Low Synergy..?

Spy doesn't really benefit from Medic unless Medic is his primary source of healing (not using health on kill or Kunai). Medic does benefit from Spy quite a lot though. Spy draws fire away from Medic and the team. Very helpful when Medic needs to shield, but doesn't have it ready yet. Both also aren't great at tanks.

There is one thing that does make this combo quite strong though, very situational though.
When facing boss giants or groups of giants, Medic can ubercharge the Spy and allow him to endlessly backstab with invincibility until uber depletes. The giants must focus on Medic first usually before attempting to backstab. Typically Spy can only backstab a giant 3 or 4 times, but with this combo, you can destroy boss giants faster than a Heavy with crits. Captain Punch takes double damage against backstabs (1,875 damage per stab). Using the Stock ubercharge on Captain Punch is recommended because his punches will hit too hard and fast for healing. Uber Canteens act like regular uber too. Quick-Fix is usually the best medi gun for this trick if you don't want any knockback pushing the Medic or Spy away.

Okay to situationally great Synergy.

Valve didn't make MvM to only be played by 6 classes. It should be played and explored with all 9 of them. Besides, MvM isn't some major league super competitve gamemode. You destroy bots, you buy upgrades etc. It's not very hard. When you play with an open mind, everyone can enjoy the game. Don't think of MvM in a mindset where you think you need said classes, think of it like this:

We need a way of collecting money (not necessarily a Scout)
We need a way of killing tanks (not necessarily a Pyro)
We need a way of destroying robots (many class combinations work)
We need a way to destroy Uber Medics (not necessarily a Demoman)
We need a way of destroying giants (not necessarily a Heavy)
We NEED an Engineer

With that mindset, you'll achieve the same goal, just with different methods. You can screw up a lot in MvM and still be fine.

I hope you enjoyed reading this guide and got anything out of it. I appreciate any criticism with guide regarding to grammar, missing any tips or strategies, or changing my wording.

To add on, I personally think Medic is the weakest of the classes in MvM.

Author of this guide's thumbnail: biggreenpepper[biggreenpepper.deviantart.com]