Intelligent Weapon Discussion #6: Medic's Primary

Which weapon do you prefer to use in the Medic's Secondary Slot?

  • Blutsager

    Points: 37 53.6%

  • Syringe Gun

    Points: 32 46.4%
  • Total voters
    69
I like the Blutsauger if I'm being a medic for someone I can depend on, otherwise I like being able to heal a bit. For example, if I have a heavy that will drop a sandvich when I'm getting low on health, I'll carry the Blutsauger, otherwise needlegun. Depends.
 
DRaGZ said:
It's the difference between "aw guys, I need to bail 'cause I'm on fire/bleeding" and "It's okay guys, I'm on fire/bleeding, but my passive health-regen counters it pretty much perfectly".
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The difference between, "Hey guys, I survived against that pesky Pyro and have my uber!" And, "Aww guys look I'm dead and we lost the league."
 
Skill/CJaZ said:
The difference between, "Hey guys, I survived against that pesky Pyro and have my uber!" And, "Aww guys look I'm dead and we lost the league."
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You would've survived either way.

Also, Pyros in pro leagues? o_O That rarely happens, period.
 
The health gen is more for when your buddy is still alive (a medic buddy shouldn't die often if you are doing your job right and they are halfway competent). Say you get hit with a pipe bomb and are down to 30 hp and gaining at 1-4hp/s (median of 2.5) you have to wait 17.5 to 70 seconds (median of ~44s) before you're back to decent range (100 hp for this calculation)to risk being injured. Whereas, if you are getting 3-6 hp/s (median of 4.5s) back that same amount you only have to wait 12- 23 seconds (17.5 seconds). Syringe gun is better because you are less dependent on a health pack nor a sandvich. Yes, the blutsauger is better for when your buddy dies, but realistically you should be running away by the time they kill your buddy. I think PepperRabbit nailed it on the head, use the terrain to your advantage and the syringe gun does a great job of killing people too.
 
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I'm a pure syringe gun user, myself. It's excellent at countering flames, as people have already said, and as khaotic calculated out, You heal back to a safe range 150% faster. That's ridiculous.

In any scenario where your buddy dies, you should be running away, not charging into battle. As Pepper said, the terrain is your best bet. The medic is hardly built for direct combat (much to the chagrin of many a battle medic), and while yes, the DPS can be impressive, you're better off over all when you don't need health all the time.

The key to being a good medic is overall longevity. When I medic (and when others medic me) it happens very often that just as you see your buddy taking damage well past what you can heal, you back off to max range, just in case. When he dies, you bail, and you're back home with most of a charge. If you're not actively trying to shoot at people as you run, not only do you run faster (going forwards instead of backpedaling) but you do a better job of hiding.

What's more obvious, a medic dodging in and around scenery trying to get away, or a medic who's actively trying to maintain line of sight so that he can shoot you?


And one last question to those of you who support the blutsager: How often do you actually use it's healing effects? I rarely use the syringe gun anyhow, because, as Quaffer said, your best weapon is the guy you're healing. So, I'd rather have a passive bonus than an seldom-used active one.
 
Dreadmaker said:
And one last question to those of you who support the blutsager: How often do you actually use it's healing effects? I rarely use the syringe gun anyhow, because, as Quaffer said, your best weapon is the guy you're healing. So, I'd rather have a passive bonus than an seldom-used active one.
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i use it any time when my healing objects die and im being swarmed by the enemy team (which happens pretty often on mesa as you know ;P ).
i try to get to a med kit in a safe place without getting shot too often but shooting back and hoping for a lot of kills with my blutsauger to get health back. and as you know as well i make it out alive often :P
 
Well, since I mostly play comp. Imma have to go with the ordinary needle gun due to it's 3 hp/sec health regeneration rate.
 
Dreadmaker said:
I'm a pure syringe gun user, myself. It's excellent at countering flames, as people have already said, and as khaotic calculated out, You heal back to a safe range 150% faster. That's ridiculous.

In any scenario where your buddy dies, you should be running away, not charging into battle. As Pepper said, the terrain is your best bet. The medic is hardly built for direct combat (much to the chagrin of many a battle medic), and while yes, the DPS can be impressive, you're better off over all when you don't need health all the time.

The key to being a good medic is overall longevity. When I medic (and when others medic me) it happens very often that just as you see your buddy taking damage well past what you can heal, you back off to max range, just in case. When he dies, you bail, and you're back home with most of a charge. If you're not actively trying to shoot at people as you run, not only do you run faster (going forwards instead of backpedaling) but you do a better job of hiding.

What's more obvious, a medic dodging in and around scenery trying to get away, or a medic who's actively trying to maintain line of sight so that he can shoot you?


And one last question to those of you who support the blutsager: How often do you actually use it's healing effects? I rarely use the syringe gun anyhow, because, as Quaffer said, your best weapon is the guy you're healing. So, I'd rather have a passive bonus than an seldom-used active one.
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Doesn't matter when you're surrounded on Blackmesa and other choke maps. There is no scenery except for Steve's throat, or the skybox in 2fort, or the turbines in Turbine.
Which weapon you use is situational. I go for Blutsauger 100% because even though dodging excellently is great, you can't run away from a Heavy in your face. With a Blutsauger you can circle him and have a chance of winning the fight. These weapons have their advantages in situations. The Needle Gun does help the Medic do his job better but the Blutsauger helps the Medic survive in a heavy firefight in which most times the guy being healed dies from all the damage.
I personally know that an extra 2 health per second helps so much at times. The Blutsauger let me survive against the attacker and run right back into battle instead of running around for healthpacks. The Needle Gun helps me survive the afterburn and bleed damage, but I'll have to wait longer to get back into battle. These weapons are so situational, we need a professional study on these.
 
Skill/CJaZ said:
Doesn't matter when you're surrounded on Blackmesa and other choke maps. There is no scenery except for Steve's throat, or the skybox in 2fort, or the turbines in Turbine.
Which weapon you use is situational. I go for Blutsauger 100% because even though dodging excellently is great, you can't run away from a Heavy in your face. With a Blutsauger you can circle him and have a chance of winning the fight. These weapons have their advantages in situations. The Needle Gun does help the Medic do his job better but the Blutsauger helps the Medic survive in a heavy firefight in which most times the guy being healed dies from all the damage.
I personally know that an extra 2 health per second helps so much at times. The Blutsauger let me survive against the attacker and run right back into battle instead of running around for healthpacks. The Needle Gun helps me survive the afterburn and bleed damage, but I'll have to wait longer to get back into battle. These weapons are so situational, we need a professional study on these.
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You CAN run away from a Heavy in your face by running away then jumping. I've survived many a Heavy ambush that way.

Anyway, yeah, this is a pretty close one. It may be *gasp* perfectly balanced.
 
Frankly, I think that this one comes down to play style. Generally speaking, when I see a combat class coming at me as a medic, my first thought is to run, not to try to out-combat him. Personally, I've had more success that way than I have had with the blutsager (and yes, I've tried them both extensively; it was only recently (read: a month or so) that I swapped back to the syringe gun).

However, I have certainly gunned down pyros while staying at full health with the blutsager. I've outhealed splash damage. It CAN be done; I just prefer avoiding combat all together.
 
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Depends on how many medics are on the team for me. If I'm the only medic, I'll use the regular syringe. Away from combat, it's just a LOT faster to heal. There's no way I'm going to be running around alone looking for a health pack with <50 hp. If there are other medics on the team, or lots of well-set up engineers, I'll pull out the blutsauger since it increases my chances of reaching one of the many healing teammates I have.

Point is, the blutsauger only reliably heals when I have enemies to shoot at. The only time I ever shoot at enemies is when I'm running the hell away since my buddy died. Once I'm safe I want to get to max as fast as possible with as little risk so I can be credit to team without my buddy worrying about me too much from the very beginning.
 
DRaGZ said:
Now this is a tricky one, because it's almost completely balanced.
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Are you kidding? The medic update was a joke, as both the Blutsauger and Ubersaw are basically straight upgrades over their normal counterparts. Think about it, what medic is sitting there waiting for crits when he's shooting his syringe gun? None. Sure, it might save your life one in a million times when you get a string of crits, and when those crits are also enough to put you over the edge and help you survive. But knowing that crits are already highly unlikely, traiding them for 3HP per hit takes away very little damage and gives you great survivability, gives you a boost vs. pyros, and also gives you a new spychecking tool (Is that a spy? Shoot him a few times with blutsauger, and if you see +3HP pop up in the corner, it's a spah!). In exchange for this, all you lose is a little bit of out of combat HP regen. You're a medic. You should know where the HP kits are, since you're usually a big target, plus your blutsauger is going to mean a lot more in combat than your regen (which is still there, just gimped a bit) means out of combat.

I challenge you to come up with a situation that you'd rather have the syringe gun in vs. the blutsauger, that doesn't involve the qualifier "If I got lucky and got crits." I can guarantee there won't be one, since that's all you get with the piece of junk syringe gun.
 
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I think servo you are living in the past. Both guns give you crits now, and blutsauger takes 2 health from you every second, and the passive healing rate when up a while ago too. People use the syringe gun now because they get healed faster than the blutsauger (not using it basically). I don't need health from a gun when there's other medics, passive healing, and med packs all around the place. Just my opinion though.
 
s3rv0 said:
Are you kidding? The medic update was a joke, as both the Blutsauger and Ubersaw are basically straight upgrades over their normal counterparts. Think about it, what medic is sitting there waiting for crits when he's shooting his syringe gun? None. Sure, it might save your life one in a million times when you get a string of crits, and when those crits are also enough to put you over the edge and help you survive. But knowing that crits are already highly unlikely, traiding them for 3HP per hit takes away very little damage and gives you great survivability, gives you a boost vs. pyros, and also gives you a new spychecking tool (Is that a spy? Shoot him a few times with blutsauger, and if you see +3HP pop up in the corner, it's a spah!). In exchange for this, all you lose is a little bit of out of combat HP regen. You're a medic. You should know where the HP kits are, since you're usually a big target, plus your blutsauger is going to mean a lot more in combat than your regen (which is still there, just gimped a bit) means out of combat.

I challenge you to come up with a situation that you'd rather have the syringe gun in vs. the blutsauger, that doesn't involve the qualifier "If I got lucky and got crits." I can guarantee there won't be one, since that's all you get with the piece of junk syringe gun.
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Uh...you get heal 3 HP PER SECOND with the Regular Syringe Gun. This means you get nicked by a rocket for 30 damage, you're back to full health in under 10 second without having done a thing. If you aren't hit in ten seconds, this ramps up to a whopping 6 health per second. Basically, you're hit by a flare, chopped by a bleed weapon, you'll survive without a sweat and not having done a thing.

Blutsauger only heals 1-4 hp a second, meaning the regeneration isn't very practical at all, and the only proper way to have yourself healed in the midst of battle is to kill others. Medics should be running away if they're in trouble, not engaging in combat.
 
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