Meto's Medic Manifesto

[Meto]

My responsibilities to you, the patient:

You may think my sole responsibility is to heal you or to put out your flames. You may think I enjoy coddling your worthless sack of bones and protecting you from the sandwich munching fat men. You are wrong. My job is not to make sure you don't die, or tell you bedtime stories, or lie to you by saying you can use whatever loadout you'd like to, or pretend your mother didn't run off to have sleezy nights with cigarette smoking french men in ski masks. You will die, and your mother is a whore.

My responsibility is not to you or any other singular person. My responsibility is to the team. I prioritize my healing beam of joyful jubiliesence on those who give the the team the best chance to succeed.

General Practice

• If you are another medic, I will make sure to keep you at buffed health at all times. I expect the same courtesy from you. Unless you are using the quick-fix, because fuck you.
• If you are using a worthless loadout that is detrimental to the team I will not prioritize your healing. In fact, I will laugh at you as flames consume your body sending you to an ashen death in no-mans land.
• I will not chase you into the field of battle. I will, instead, attempt to stay out of the line of fire, away from headshotting snipers, demo traps, and all other sorts of nasties. If you need healing, you come to me.
• If you are a scout, you run fast. You can use this ability to run to health packs that nobody else can reach quickly. While I may be able to spare a quick touch to top you off, do not expect more than this. You run like a teenage Speedy Gonzalez and jump like a meth'ed up convict escaping the authorities, use these abilities and stop bugging me.
• Soldiers and demos, I get it. You can rocket/sticky jump all over the place. Your mobility is to be praised. But if you do that and leave me unprotected do not expect me to be pleased with you. I am not a patient man and am quick to anger.
• Heavy, if you're not using the Gloves of Running Urgently you are doing it wrong. If you are using the Brass Beast, you are doing it wrong. Be mobile, be nimble, and be quick. Also, give me your sandvich when I am low on health. Practice throwing it to players. Be a better gamer.
• If you are on fire, I see you. It's obvious. I will do my best to put you out but realize that I am a busy man, and sometimes I have other shit to do. We have snipers with jarate and pyros with airblast; go bug them.
• If you are a class that can self damage, ie. soldiers and demos, when it is safe to do so: hurt yourself. Don't kill yourself, but hurt yourself. Building ubers goes 2X as fast when I am healing a damaged player. If I ask you to help me build, I am asking you to hurt yourself. I am a doctor, it's okay for me to ask this.
• Spies are my enemy. My hatred for them burns deep within my tortured soul. If you see a spy, call him out (their current class and position on the field). Spycheck everyone. Bump into people, shoot rockets in corners, shotgun check every friendly face. If you think it's only a pyro's responsibility to spycheck you're wrong. Soldiers may be the best spycheckers in the game. With their short/medium/long range splash damage it's very easy to uncover the hidey bastards and bring the pain.

Offensive Procedures

• I will save my uber until it is needed to take out a fortified point on the map or I am about to die. I will not use it just because you want to be a hero and charge into battle like a Grecian God of War.
• My uber is realistically the only chance we have to break through sentry nests or a spammed choke. I will likely uber a demo, soldier or heavy depending on the situation. Don't feel bad if you don't get ubered. Use the ubered people in front of you to do your own thing. Think of the ubered people as mobile cover. Duck behind them, abuse line of sight, kill everyone you meet.
• Do not squander the uber. If you are a heavy and get ubered behind a corner, put on your GRUs and run the fuck forward to get into position. Do not spin up your mini gun and take the entire uber (8 seconds) to maneuver your fat ass around the bend where you can actually shoot something.

Defensive Stands

• When I am using the Kritzkrieg I will kritz often, usually as soon as it comes up. If I choose you, this is your chance to kill everyone who made fun of you in middle school. Watch out for snipers and try not to drag me too far out in the open before everyone is dead.
• If am using the Medigun I will save the uber to counter an offensive uber or to break an engineer nest or if I am about to die.
• I like hanging around dispensers. Engineers, if possible, please place them in a position I can reach.

Hot Pocketing

• When I pocket someone, typically a soldier, demo, or heavy, I make their life a priority over yours. In most situations I will still be able to heal you but only when my pocket's life is not in jeopardy.
• If you are being pocketed, your number one job is to keep your medic safe. (The number two job is to kill everyone who had the audacity to wake up and put on clothes that are differently colored than your own.) Do not jump away and leave him alone to be picked off by cheeky scouts. When you are not in visibly imminent danger build uber by damaging yourself and spycheck corners. Make sure the medic knows when you need to reload. Make sure the medic knows that they should uber/kritz you. Medics can't see around corners, you must be their eyes.

Why I Hate You/Why You're Not Getting Heals

I realize this is a game. And games are fun. I have the most fun when my team wins. You may have the most fun when you're rocket jumper'ing around using the market gardener. However, a rocket jumper and market gardener soldier does not help the team win. Therefore, I see you as someone trying to deny me my fun. If you can't protect me, or are not actively helping the team, than don't expect me to go out of my way to heal you.

Demoknights are also a touchy subject for me. Your loadout is significantly different than a stock demoman. The sticky launcher is the most powerful weapon in the game and when you strap on the chargin' targe you are effectively saying, "I want to be less useful than a normal demoman." This is not to say that a demoknight can't be a good player as I have seen some very effective demoknights. However, an average sticky launcher demoman is almost always better than all but the best demoknights. And an average demoknight is garbage. That being said, I will still heal a demoknight, whereas I completely refuse to heal a rocket jumping soldier. Just know that you towards the bottom of my priority list.

In the end, it is your choice to use whatever loadout you like. If you're just playing TF2 just for fun, that's your choice and it's perfectly fine. Just know that I'm playing for fun too and my fun involves healing the people whom are most likely going to help our team win the game.

The End

Edit: I also posted this on Reddit and the post got some good discussion going. Check it out here.

[Saber]

Wow, I'm gonna read the entire thing in a moment, but this is literally the single most pretentious thing I've ever glimpsed about video games.
REALLY
REALLY
"OH HE'S USING A BAD LOADOUT SO HE NO GED DEM HEELZ"
Come on at HEAL PEOPLE
that is your JOB
even if they're being useless AT LEAST puff their asses up during crit heals or whatever. Holy hell I'e noticed that you pocket way too much
Do you play pick-up games? Well you should. If not that, try out some lobbies.
I SERIOUSLY recommend you try out some comp. People you find on there are (generally) better than people you find on pubs. And you are going to have to spread the heals if you're gonna be an effective medic in Highlander or 6v6 situations, although I will admit that you usually stick with a pocket unless you're making a push into enemy territory. In those cases a lot depends on your team's ability to get picks of important targets and you avoiding spam damage or FUCKING SPIES and FUCKING BODYSHOTS.
Uh, yeah. Do some lobbies.

Ok, actually read the entire thing. I'm kind of wrong, and that is generally a pretty good mentality to adopt. I just don't believe in the "I DON'T heal everybody that comes near me and then stick to the pocket" mentality. I mean, if somebody is useless,
And hey, there are some VERY effective trolldiers. (LIKE MASHEDPOTATOES FUCK YOU MASHEDPOTATOES)

[Meto]

First of all, I never said bad loadouts don't get heals. I said it lowers their priority. I'm not sure why you're surprised by this as I feel most medics will have some sort of prioritization system they use.

Given two equally low health players:
Player A) A high skilled player using a standard loadout, or even a high skilled player using a suboptimal loadout extremely well, Vier Von Kruz comes to mind
Player B) A player using a suboptimal loadout or a lower skilled player

My goal for both players is to heal them to 150% health. I cannot heal both at the same time. I have to make a choice, and that choice is based on which person being alive gives the team the best chance to win. I will do my best to heal both of them, but I'm going to make sure Player A isn't going to get insta-gibbed before I start worrying about player B.

My job is not to heal. An offensive class' job is not to kill. Our job is the same: to win the game. Winning is a lot more fun to me than losing.

[Rologton]

I'm with you for most of these, but when it comes to just healing I don't really prioritize any class or loadout. There are certainly people that I will prioritize to keep topped off, and that requires them using a loadout that is reasonable (for example, you will not be consistantly overhealed to 300 HP if you are using the Liberty Launcher. Switch to stock and learn to lead shots like an adult), and how effective they are to the other team. I do absolutely ensure that my pocket stays alive as long as possible, but I also let them know that I am perfectly willing to leave their ass to dry if they lead me into too much danger.

Except for my Ubers. Unless I'm not playing seriously, which sometimes has fantastic results, I am stingy as fuck with those things. Unless I'm dying or desperate, you will only get it if I think you can be the most effective with it.

[stanley]

of course you need to prioritize healing. medic cant consistently keep everyone buffed, you need to pick who gets heals first, and who needs to find health for themselves. thats why in comp there is a roamer and a pocket. its not really because a roamer needs to risk his life a lot, its because the medic cant always keep both soldiers and the demo fully buffed. take a situation for instance where the other team is pushing you with uber. if the roamer, the pocket, and the demo are all calling for medic to stay alive, and the med doesnt prioritize healing, none will get the heals they need. in that case, the roamer should find health for himself elsewhere so the pocket and demo can get the heals they need to stay alive

[Saber]

of course you need to prioritize healing. medic cant consistently keep everyone buffed, you need to pick who gets heals first, and who needs to find health for themselves. thats why in comp there is a roamer and a pocket. its not really because a roamer needs to risk his life a lot, its because the medic cant always keep both soldiers and the demo fully buffed. take a situation for instance where the other team is pushing you with uber. if the roamer, the pocket, and the demo are all calling for medic to stay alive, and the med doesnt prioritize healing, none will get the heals they need. in that case, the roamer should find health for himself elsewhere so the pocket and demo can get the heals they need to stay alive

This explains a lot. I really need to keep better track of who to heal.
(this is why i advocate hats)