Using the Crusader's Crossbow can make you heal more than twice as fast as normal and build Uber faster than normal, and you should use it, and use it correctly.

This guide explains how to do this effectively without making an embarassment out of yourself.

If you don't know alot about Healing as Medic yet, read Part 1 and then Part 2 of this guide.

If you are knowledgeable about Medic read the table in part 1, then part 2, then have a look at the begining of part 3.

If you already know how to heal with bolts, or are returning to get more value out of this guide, feel free to read further into parts 3 and 4 (When it's out) and read about more intricate stuff. I hope this TL;DR is short enough.

As a Medic, your primary role is, obviously, to heal. A team with a steady source of healing will generally win a war of attrition against a team that does not. With healing, you can help prevent your teammates from dying - a dead teammate is useless. Overhealing your teammates allows them to tank more damage, which allows them to be more aggressive and take more risks without dying. Finally, healing teammates builds your Ubercharge. You want that.


Hence as Medic, a simple rule is to first heal the hurt, frontline teammates, then the not so hurt frontline players or the hurt teammates that have fallen back, and then finally, the teammates that are out of the battle entirely. One of the exceptions to this rule is for teammates who have not taken damage in the last 10 seconds, as they will have crit heals. This is elaborated further in this guide. There are, however, exceptions to those "Rules".

For stuff other than healing about Medic, this is a good overall guide
http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=142665886

Starting off, let's have a nice and deep look into the Medigun.
You will always have your medigun available.

The Medigun can heal any teammate within a certain range. Furthermore, it can overheal healthy teammates to up to 150% of their base health. Once it is fully charged, the medigun can grant an Übercharge to your team, an aspect we will NOT cover in this guide.


The Medigun's healing range is fairly long, which means that you can lag behind your patient and look around while healing. This allows your target to take some of the damage that you would otherwise take, and allows you to be more aware of your surroundings.

The Medigun heals 24 HP per second on a target that has recently been in combat. This figure is very important. A target that hasn't been in combat in the last 10-15 seconds will be healed from 48 up to 72 HP per second respectively. This mechanic is known as "crit heals".

The Medigun builds 2.5% Uber per second while healing a target. If the target is overhealed beyond 142.5% of their base health, it will only build 1.25% Uber per second. Hence, you will often build uber faster if you spread your heals around.

The Crossbow is the most popular Medic primary in the game, and for good reason.

While it deals fairly low damage at close range, it is able to heal teammates in a large burst. This healing is dependent on range - 75hp at close range and up to 150hp at long range. The only limitation of this is that it cannot overheal.

The reload time of the Crusader's Crossbow is rather long, at 1.6 seconds. However, it reloads passively, meaning that you can switch to the crossbow, shoot a bolt, switch back from it and have a reloaded one soon after.

Furthermore, it builds Uber at a rate of 1% per 16hp healed. Additionally, the Crusader's Crossbow makes a distinct sound whenever it hits enemies, sounds like an arrow hitting wood! This allows you to detect invisible and disguised spies.

So, we have two Healing weapons. Which is better and which should we use? To make things easier on your end, I just dumped the info in a convenient table.


An important note is that in this comparison, the Crossbow is used at its maximum efficiency: You switch to the crossbow, fire and switch away. The whole process takes 1.1 seconds per shot.

In the last segment we saw that while the Medigun and the Crusader's Crossbow are both healing tool, they are very different. The Crossbow heals in Burst, Heals much more and has more potential range, while the Medigun is more Consistent, can Overheal and can heal in between the Crossbow shots. There is no clear "Winner" that comes out.

As it turns out, We can cover the weaknesses of one weapon with the strengths of the other

In other words, synergy. Think of it like how a good demoman uses the Grenade Launcher and the Stickybomb Launcher as if the two are one whole weapon.


The way to synergise the Medigun and the Crusader's Crossbow is to Keep Switching between the two strategically. This uses the backpack reload of the Crusader's Crossbow and ensures that you will do at least a bit of healing between your shots, even if you miss a bit. Your time healing will look like this:


Looks simple enough, right? You heal with your medigun and switch to and from the Crossbow to fire shots. However, getting the maximum out of it takes understanding of the situation and knowing what your limitations are. The following chapters will cover all you need to know to make your healing cycle the most effective.

A very fundamental part of best combining the two weapons is learning the frequency at which you switch between the weapons at different situations. Different situations calls for different switch regimes, and also different mindsets. What mechanically changes in the Healing Cycle is the duration of your Beam Healing. What also changes is your track of thought.

While I present the tempos as distinct categories, they are actually a spectrum; it ranges from not firing crossbow bolts at all to firing crossbow bolts as frequent as the reload allows.

This is the easiest tempo in both Mental and Mechanical terms, and you are probably used to it already. While all of your teammates are Almost at, or above their full HP, and the damage pressure is low, you should be using a Slow Tempo. What leads is your Medigun, since no teammate needs a bolt right now.

Keep your mechanical focus on healing and overhealing the correct teammate, and make sure to be as dodgy and as observant of your surroundings as you can. You have the luxury to do so, so keep your head busy! Keeping track of the enemy strategy and uber, your team's formation, and planning ahead should be done NOW!

Finally, be aware of when a teammate falls enough in HP that he could benefit from a bolt. If overall the situation is still Slow, then you should assess- Am I better off using a bolt, and getting more Uber per second right now, or is the enemy unlikely to keep pushing, and using Medigun to build more Uber per HP more rewarding, since while fully overhealed your Uber build rate would drop.

Using this tempo effectively requires alot of multitasking to fully utilise, but isn't as pressure inducing as a fast tempo. When HP levels of your team start to drop below their max HP, and the battle heats up with damage incoming, you should be at a Medium healing Tempo.

The best way of thinking about a Medium Tempo is that you have 2 heal targets that keep switching around, each with his own needs. Your Medigun heal target is usually a target you want to overheal in this tempo, while the Crossbow target is a teammate that can best overall benefit from your bolt- Low enough on HP and easy enough for you to hit.

Mindset wise, you keep switching your attitude: While Medigun Healing, be as dodgy as you can and assess the situation! That's the time to look behind you, assess team health and make up for the short tunnel vision you get while aiming a crusader crossbow bolt. While Switching To the Crossbow, decide on a target. Often you want to start switching before damage has even been done! That allows your teammate to be on low health for the shortest amount of time possible. Even if you ended up switching for no reason, on the long run you will benefit due to the superior healing and uber build.

Medium tempo is the most variable in terms of weapon-switch frequency: It can go up to the frequency of the fast Tempo- Switching every 0.5 seconds- if you have enough healing targets to keep bolting this often. Just remember that some Bolts will be more effective than others- if a target missing 40 HP, you aren't going to benefit from the entire healing, and you are missing out on the benefits of the Medigun regarding awareness. Match your pace with the pace of battle- if the incoming damage is rather low, the rate of your Crossbow bolts should drop as well.

When teammates are dropping to dangerously low health, even one teammate, switch to Fast Tempo, to maximise your healing. Managing to do this tempo correctly takes high mechanical skill, but decision making wise it's pretty straighforward- Arrow at the very hurt teammate, and heal with the Medigun according to who is available/needs consistent but small healing the most (Say a Scout on 60 HP passing by while you mega-heal a 100 HP heavy with the crossbow). If your aim is sufficiently solid, attempting to fast heal a Scout midbattle isn't out of the question.

Heal for 0.5-0.75 seconds
Switch to crossbow (0.5 seconds)
Fire a crossbow bolt (0.1 seconds)
Switch from (0.5 seconds), and repeat

Your Switch from the crossbow should be focused on assessing who is the best Medigun target and making sure you attach the beam. While beam healing for ~0.5 seconds, assess the incoming enemy fire and make sure to reposition yourself and dodge. The switch to the crossbow time is devoted to re-aiming at your Crossbow target.

While this is straightforward, maintaining good positioning, good aim and good awareness during Fast Tempo takes mental fortitude to it. The more you can deal with in fast tempo, the better.

Not all health values were born equal. Sometimes, a health value makes or breaks a teammate surviving an attack, and you need to be aware of those "Cutoffs".
Below 30 HP, a teammate can die to alot of things even when sitting far in the back. 1-2 Shotgun potshots at a bit longer than midrange, flareguns, long range Rocket splash damage and stickies all can kill a teammate at that health. So any teammate still in line of sight with the enemy at this health is at a higher priority. When facing a Sniper, this mark rises to 50HP, as the Sniper can deal 50HP with one noscope shot.
Below the range of 100HP there are quite a few "Burst" damage sources that can onehsot a teammate. Shotgun meatshot deal 90 damage and Scattergun can get to 105. Granades always deal 100 damage, and point blank direct rockets deal up to 112 damage, and Stickybombs midrange get to that damage as well. Ambi shots deal 102 damage as well.

Any teammate at active combat should ideally be about 100HP, and preferebly even 110, and getting teammates above that threshold is important.
When dealing with a Sniper, remember that he can deal 150 damage quickscopes or a fully charged body shot. Be sure to buff teammates so that they can't die to one hit. This is the most important in current Highlander Meta, where buffing your Sniper above 150 HP ensures that he can safely engage the other Sniper without getting countersniped.

How good do I have to aim for this guide to be relevant to me?
That is a great question! In theory, so long that your healing per second increases, you are getting some benefit out of Crossbow healing. So if you are hitting more than 35% of your shots, your Healing should increase!

However this doesn't tell us the whole story. To get a net gain in Uber build rates, your hit rate should be at least 60% of your shots or so. And unless you are at about 80% hit rate or more you will lose some Consistency: a small increase in hit rate is a big increase in consistency, as you will be far less likely to miss 2 shots in a row.
Another factor is what I like to call "Bad Mojo": sometimes, a teammate is moving in a manner that confuses you, or the heat of battle gets to your aim. This results in missing a few (3-5) shots in a row. To deal with a bad Mojo and minimise it's impact: A) Lower your tempo by a bit as soon as you realise that you are in a bad mojo. Medibeam healing will guarantee that healing will be done even while you miss. B) Keep calm- the last thing you want is a Bad Mojo turning into tilting. C) Keep shooting crossbow bolts at the lower tempo until you exit the mojo. One fat crossbow can negate most of the damage usually.

In conclusion, if your aim is OK, you will get some benefits and some disadvantages from using this guide. But once your aim gets really good and you correctly implement this guide, there are no major flaws at all to crossbow healing, and only fat benefits. If you know how to deal with Bad Mojos and they happen rarely, you will be absolutely golden.

Note that those numbers aren't regarding Long Range shots meant to save your teammate! Even if you are only 10% likely to land that shot, but the teammates near you are already full HP, saving the teammate can turn the tide of the entire battle in your favor. Losing some overall healing and Uber is negligible compared to a saved teammate.

So, how does one get good at hitting those damn bolts, good enough to dominate a pub?

• 1. Practice. Keep aiming those bolts! Even if you aren't good yet, in Casual this doesn't matter. Just keep shooting bolts at your teammates as if nobody is looking!
  
• 2. Aim ahead of your target! Always attempt to take movement into account, even when it's a revved Heavy.
  
• 3. Have confidence in your aim. The better you will get, the more confidence you will have, naturally, but having a positive yet serious attitude towards the game will improve your aim no matter how good you are.

What I likes to do for practicing my Crossbow aim and also to warm up before I go on a Comp round is to go on a Casual server and basically try and carry the team, keeping everyone alive. Casual offers you a nonstop stream of hurting teammates hungry for heals, which is a nonstop stream of heal targets each with a different skill at moving around. So you will practice firing at guys moving in a straight line, ones that are dodging enemies and strafe, all at different speeds and ranges. And any enemy slipping by is another practice dummy!

Communicate with the team and try and apply the guide to your best current ability. With 11 players hungry for Health, but with low pressure for winning or losing, it's nothing short of ideal in my eyes.

Consider your heal targets tactically and mindfully! Generally speaking, High HP, slow, classes are the go-to Bolt target, while low HP, faster targets are the Medibeam targets. Usually, I like buffing up Scouts and Snipers to maximum overheal, since they are generally far back or fast hence losing health slowly, as well as low health so the extra overheal can really save them.

Heavy and to a lesser extent Soldier should be viewed as a Health Reserve of the team: Fully overhealing a Heavy makes him able to withstand alot of punishment, giving you time to focus on other targets, then when at low HP he is the best Crossbow heal target. Using the Health Pool of the high HP classes to your full advantage is very beneficial.

However, those priorities are not set in stone, and are dependent on the current HP of each teammate, their range from you, and how unpredictable and hard to hit they are at a given moment. Choosing your heal targets in an optimal way takes experience, since each situation would be different.

For the more experienced users of the guide that also possess nerves of steel, I would advise this: Don't be afraid of your teammates getting close to death. If you truly are in control of the situation, strategically letting a teammate drop Lower into the red zone to best use your Tempo for the overall team's advantage isn't out of the question. So long as you don't get em killed that is.

A really powerful tool for playing Medic, I found, is having one eye on your teammates, one eye on the enemy team and one eye on the future of the battlefield. By an eye looking at the future I don't actually mean having any superpower. What I mean is having the ability to estimate the likely near future. It's very ordinary, really. Humans have a reaction time of 0.25 seconds. We are all able to "see" at least this far into the future, otherwise tasks like catching a ball would be near impossible. It's not anything perfect, but guessing is enough to get a net gain out of it.

Best way to explain this is by looking at a very noob player walking around. He is just walking in a straight line. Can you tell where he will be in half a second? If you are already experienced the answer is probably yes. What if you see an enemy Soldier jumping in front of him. He will stop and start backpedaling. Now instead of Thinking about those facts, you need to Feel them.

By having the experience of more hours of play watching as people of different skill move, you have the ability to apply your knowledge to your innate "Future seeing" ability, and be able to estimate more than just 0.25 seconds, even without needing to actually think about it. By "Expecting" what's about to come constantly, you can train your gut feeling of what's coming next. Note that this is no magic trick- you must be Actively Observing and Absorbing information properly, otherwise your gut feeling won't be more than a random guess. Sucking in patterns of movement all the time is fine, but trying to apply the patterns you see into your gut feeling can causes heavy tunnel vision! Be aware of that.

What you want to be able to end up with is sort of a "Feel", or "Sight" for where people are going to be in the following moments. My ability doesn't extend for more than about 0.5 seconds, but for landing the Bolt's fast projectile seeing this far is more than enough. For longer times than where your "Third Eye" can see, don't rely on your gut feeling and instead trying to actually "Get in the head" of your opponent and outplay them, which takes more active types of thinking, or have good communication with your teammates so you don't need to guess what they are about to do.

Sometimes, a teammate is long range an needs your help, now. In such a case, I would recommend breaking your normal heal cycle in order to have a better chance at that shot, if you decide that it takes priority over healing closer teammates (For instance- they are overhealed already). This is a "Heavy" application of the mentioned above Future's Eye.

Here is how I usually "Snipe" long range shots onto a teammate busy fighting:

• Observe- While heal beaming your nearby target, observe the movement of the teammate you need to snipe. Take 0.1-0.3 seconds to do so, then switch weapons.
  
• Keep observing the teammate's movements as you switch weapons. You should already be forming a movement pattern at this point
  
• Unlike regular shots, instead of shooting within 0.1 seconds, take a bit longer before you fire. This time is dedicated to taking into account the flight path of your Bolt, using your "Future Eye" as best as you can, all boiling down the previous time to one click

Overall, you are taking 0.2-0.5 more seconds to make this shot. However, due to how complex the shot is, this tiny bit of extra time will greatly increase accuracy, and you are still Beam Healing for most of this "Wasted time".

I don't recommend taking less time for shooting a stationary teammate as posed to one in a fight. Instead of dedicating the extra time for prediction, dedicate this time to properly aim at the correct direction. Increasing your accuracy from 90% to 100% is definitely worth the extra 0.5 second. However with practice you won't need more than 0.2 extra seconds to perfect the shot.

Get used to starting the healing cycle with a bolt, not a beam heal, as your immediate response to a new teammate coming for heals!
This advice is extremely simple, but it will only actually help you when you are already used to Arrow Healing. This should become a habit- Either you already have the crossbow out when out of heal range of any teammate (Assuming you have a reason for that. Getting far from teammates is bad positioning generally speaking), or you press the switch to crossbow button right when a teammate pops up.

This serves 2 purposes- A) It reveals spies. The hit sound for enemies will directly inform you that this is a Spy. Checking for spies should not be your thought regarding the teammate- this will only distract you. If before you realised what you heard you already switched over to the Medigun or even started to Beam Heal the guy, you already revealed the guy. Healing him for 10 HP after already hurting him with a bolt is negligible, hence don't worry about "Lemmi check for spy" as you do the bolt. It should just be your habit
B) Burst healing into a hurt teammate is way more valuable than immediately overhealing a full HP buddy. One might save a teammate while the the other just gives you a few extra heals. Hence making the mistake for starting the cycle with a bolt is way smaller than the mistake of mistakenly starting with a beamheal.

This is not to say you should ALWAYS be starting with a bolt- It's just that your habit should be starting with a bolt even when you didn't have time to think, your "Go-To" move facing a new heal target. When you had time to think anyways, and realise that Medibeaming is the better option, start with a Medibeam. Like "Hey, I am in the switch-to-Medigun period, the Soldier rocket jumped back so he isn't a spy and I can see that he is still near full HP. Bolting is pointless so I will medibeam."

Sometimes, contrary to what you might think, "Ignoring" one teammate on purpose is useful!
Out-Of-Action neglect
When a teammate is totally out of ammo, he isn't going to enter the fight for a bit. If you can determine that he isn't in danger whatsoever, distributing heals to other teammates first might very well be benificial!
Grooming for an arrow
In some fights where the Tempo is Slow, but you still want to do more healing than the enemy Medic to induce extra pressure, you might want to get yourself an arrow that wouldn't otherwise be there. This is done by not healing a specific teammate, especially a Soldier or a Heavy, and letting them drop low enough in HP that an arrow would help them. During that time you are overhealing other teammates more. This results in a health advantage that couldn't exist otherwise.

"Can you feel ze Schadenfreude?"

All of the above strategies can, in fact, be directly converted into an effective fighting style! Essentially, you are replacing the Medigun period of our Healing cycle with a Melee period. Using the Melee essentially costs us nothing, since the swing time of 0.8 seconds will only reduce the rate at which you can fire Bolts by a tiny bit, and switching to the Melee but not using it doesn't reduce Bolt frequency at all.

The constant shift between Melee and Primary can "Zones out" your enemy- by being unpredictable with how long you actually have the Melee out, and by using correct movement (Which I won't cover in this guide) you can both lure the enemy into your Melee swing and deter them into a range where your Crossbow's damage isn't trash compared with a shotgun (albeit still worse). With aim sharpened over healing many teammates, hitting Scouts consistently close up (Especially if they aren't pro-level) can become a thing for you too.

When a teammate needs just a bit of help in order to finish off an enemy, and you aren't in a situation where not healing is wasteful due to the current Uber advantage state or the overall team health, it's not out of the question to fire a bolt at the enemy too! This strategy is the most viable when in a Casual game, and your current buddies aren't the sharpest tool in the shed aim wise. That holds both for close-mid range, where you shoot like normal, and when Sniping out an enemy (Especially Sniping out Snipers- they are nearly stationary, and 75 damage is no joke).

Note that I don't recommend going battle Medic here. Maybe once in a while on a casual server ;)

The Strategies in this sections will become more relevant after you got familiar the previous parts of the guide. Going for a bit of recap here


Healing with the Medigun is like hitting a pot, one note over and over. You hit at different places on the pot, but it's still just hitting the pot.
Add a basic crossbow heal cycles, and it's like playing on two drums, but only with one pretty basic one-two combo.
Once you correctly decide on heal targets strategically, and with your distance and tempo determine whether bolts hit for alot of healing or just a bit, the melody of your healing sounds more complex, like a solid drum set. Even without the this following part, you reach a completely new level of Healing as the Medic. With good positioning, communication, aim and practice, those tools will suffice to make very pleasing heal melodies.

The next part is like further expansions onto your Healing's toolset. You can keep adding more tools, tricks, team-strategies onto your toolset. You will probably come up with new ideas I had no way of realising, and do share those with me! Listing below are the expansions I know. Just remember that the very foundations of your play come first in a match.


In Medium tempo, sometimes it's beneficial to Delay your Shot, in order to maximise it's effectiveness. Examples for situations where a delayed shot would be better than shooting straight away are:

• A teammate(s) is near it's full HP, and is about to lose HP right After your "Regular" Bolt
  
• A teammate is about to be easy to hit in just a moment (A Soldier about to land)
  
• A teammate is not within line of sight to you but will be in a moment

When delaying a shot, you don't wait while you hold your Crossbow. Instead, keep healing with the Medigun for the time needed. Delaying your shot should not be for more than 1 seconds compared to your current Tempo. Longer, and you might as well shoot a bolt early, go back to healing and be ready to bolt again, in other words perform an "Early-Beat Heal". This is essentially going to a lower tempo for a short while.

The Pros of doing a Late-Beat Heal is that you gain more healing by shooting a more effective shot that heals more. The Cons are that if the Delayed shot isn't as beneficial as you expected, you lost some potential healing and Uber.


In Medium tempo, sometimes it's beneficial to shoot a few bolts in rapid succession to top off your team's HP, even if each bolt isn't as effective as it could be. This is effectively going to a higher tempo for a short while. Examples of situations where squeezing in more bolts are beneficial:

• A teammate(s) is near it's full HP, and is about to lose HP right Before your "Regular" Bolt
  
• The battle is expected to "Heat Up" any moment and you need to be ready HP-wise

Early-Beat shots could be performed as a singular thing, to reheal one target, or be almost a straight up Fast Tempo performed in a situation where no one Teammate is in grave danger, but you ensure the entire team is on full HP. When performing such a thing, it is best to Beam OverHeal the full-HP teammates, to maximise the effective of the bolts on the yet-to-be-bolted teammates. Using Early-Beat Healing in a Slow Tempo situation is Power Building an Uber. The opposite of Early-Beat Healing is to


Heal-Build is to Medibeam heal in a situation where a your teammates are hurt. Instead of Bolting like you normally do in the given situation, you assess that you will gain more Uber that way.

For instance, you are with your team behind the choke, and have 75% Uber. You don't know when the enemy is about to go in, and want to Overheal everyone so that the team is in the best condition. However, once fully overhealed your team will produce less Uber, and self-damage will reduce their clip and take away their focus needlessly. So instead of healing with the crossbow, you take the time to build Uber with the Medibeam, which generates more Uber per unit of healing done.

A Gained advantage is better awareness of your surroundings, which protects you Uber meter from being wasted. This is essentially going to a slower Tempo due to the situation.


Power Building is to use the Crossbow's Uber Build to build loads of Uber in a short span of time. By having your teammates hurt themselves in a safe situation, and healing in a Fast Tempo, you will build alot of Uber per unit of time, instead of the worst case where you are Beam Healing a fully overhealed teammate.

How fast can one build like that? Very, Very fast. In the most extreme case, you will be healing Soldiers at long range for 150HP per bolt, or 9.4% uber per bolt. By firing a bolt per 1.1 seconds, and healing with the medigun for the other 0.5 seconds for 2.5% Uber per second, we build at 6.6% per second. That's a full Uber in 15 Second, compared to the regular 40 when healing hurt teammates the whole time!

However, in different situations building at a slower rate would also be acceptable- sometimes you can't, or don't want to, dedicate 3-4 people into building the Uber. Power-Building at a closer range results in 25 seconds per Uber, and requires less self damage, less people dedicated to it and can be realistically done on a moving target(s).


Healing isn't the only thing tying to the Tempo of a battle. Damage reduces Health Bars and healing refills it, Weapon clips unload and reload, and the time it takes for a player to move back and forth in a given area are all cycling evens. Each have a different typical "Frequency". Think of those as internal "Broken clocks" running, each teammate having several!

What does it do for you as a Medic? Generally, you can distinct between three extreme cases- In Sync, random and Anti-Synced. When in Sync, your team goes in combat at the same times and needs to hold back to reload and refill health as one. When Anti-synced, each teammate needs to reload and refill health at a different times. When it's random, everything has highs and lows.

In sync is good when trying to make a Push- At the peak of the cycle the entire team has full health, and is with a reloaded clip. After a push however your team will be all with low resources, and as a Medic there will be alot of work to do. It is also good when the enemy team is readying to push into you. Anti sync is good for keeping pressure and suppressing the enemy team- your team constantly holds ground and is always overall ready for incoming foes. Randomly acting teammates will give your team unpredictability, which can be a blessing and a curse.

Generally speaking, with this guide you as a Medic will have better potential healing than the average enemy Medic. You will also benefit from constantly arrowing incoming teammates and building Uber that way. Hence I think that letting your teammates be out of sync, and by healing them to max overheal one by one, letting low HP teammates "Wait their turn" somewhat, gives you the best chance to apply pressure without major risks, as you can heal the damage the enemy Medic cannot as well, eventually giving you kills and ground.

However, don't neglect the other team tempos! When completely out of battle after pushing or being pushed off an area, getting "In Sync" is the best counter to the enemy being at peak form themselves. One teammate going off on their own or lagging behind might spell disaster. And when a certain fight heats up and prolongs, letting your teammate go wild and random tempo wise (YET AS A TEAM POSITIONING WISE!) while you use your skill to match up for any needed healing can really throw off the enemy team. They are essentially being pushed back by a pack of unrelenting, murderous, undying beasts :)

The main result of implementing this guide, is that Medic can heal way faster than he would otherwise, and without much drawbacks to it with enough skill. Here is a graph of the healing per second and time-for uber with different tempos and shot-values, assuming you hit all the bolts on that value.
In bold are the healing per second, which is normally 24, and in italics is the time taken to build an Uber, normally at 40 seconds.

Reddish designates cases where the tempo is Too High in most situations. In Greenish are the cases where the tempo is Too Low in most situations. In Yellow are the scenarios of Power Building an Uber, which are unrealistic during a fight due to how fast you must hit long range shots on moving targets. Reaching 50 Healing per Second and building Ubers at under 30 seconds, in other words 100% increase in healing an 30% increase in the Uber build speeds, is within grasp.

With those high Healing values, your attitude to enemy Ubers can change. Enemy Ubers like Stock and quickfix can be "Eaten" if you heal all the damage done! The enemy wastes their Uber without getting picks or gaining ground.

So how does this make any sense? While most classes in TF2 can reach above 150 DPS at maximum, realistically classes like Scout Soldier Demo tend to deal under 85DPS in the average case for a high skill player, and that's when their clip is full!

So how much damage does a push of one Soldier do? 85DPS over 4 seconds, then he has to reload or use the Shotgun without the means to get close up, for an editional 50DPS over another 4 seconds. If you can heal 24HP per second you would be screwed by this alone: With your healing deducted, a single focused target would be damaged by 60DPS for 4 seconds, enough to kill before anything can be done to retreat! 240 damage would be done within the time killing anything that isn't a fully buffed Heavy given some extra damage from the other enemy teammates further away.

But what if the healing is 50 HP per second? Then the Soldier is dealing effectively 35 Damage over 4 seconds and then has his damage completely shut down. That can't kill any buffed teammate!

So how does one "Eat an Uber" then? As the Medic you should stay alive and heal at fast tempo with maximal accuracy at medium range.Your team should try and "Distribute" the damage across everybody and not allow the Ubered enemies focus one player down. Once the Uber is faded, your team would have lost HP compared to the enemy overall, but it's possible to survive. If you had 80% plus Uber, then the enemy is litterally on top of you when you pop. Killing or pushing them then should be relatively easy.

Here is a clip showing the power of Fast Tempo Midrange Bolting, eating away the damage of B4nny and then some more from a scout, starting at 4:30
https://youtu.be/jC3doYZDev4?t=4m32s

In conclusion, using the Crusader’s Crossbow to supplement your healing with the Medi-Gun is not only helpful, but gives advantages in certain situations. To best achieve this, you need to know when to switch between different ‘tempos’ of healing. These ‘tempos’ are simply the frequency at which you pull out your Crossbow and use it to heal an ally before using your Medi-Gun. Using these ‘tempos’ you can increase your healing per second and the rate at which you build an Ubercharge. Learning when to use these ‘tempos’ requires a mix of both mechanical skill and situational awareness.