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Yes, E is for Medic. Okay, fair enough, it’s also for Engineer and everything else beginning with E, but I’m not talking about what words start with. I’m talking about the default key that the Medic! call is bound to. Some people bind the Medic! call to other buttons, but most people I have spoken to leave it as E. It’s close, it’s handy, it’s easy to spam.
It’s also the bane of all Medics.
*And other healing-centric loadouts
The Two Cities update has vastly improved the medic’s abilities in MvM. Gone is the “kritz machine” of old, now you can do exactly what the medic should be doing in the first place, and be an integral part of the team. And it’s just as fun as anything else.
For reference, there are two major abilities the medic received in this update that attribute to this: revives and the shield.
As the devs of a seven year-old game, the Team Fortress 2 team has had a long time to come up with ideas for our beloved shooter. Obviously not all of them can make the final cut, but a good amount of them have been added in unfinished and relatively inaccessible states. Luckily the community has its ways of discovering this unused content, and here are some I feel a slight pang when I think of because they probably will never see the light of day.
1. “That Dispenser is a Spy!”
Valve is routinely adding new addconds to TF2. For those who don’t know, addcond, or “add condition” is a console command that changes the status of the player. For example, when a Medigun Ubercharges a teammate, the game initiates “addcond 5” which adds Ubercharge textures, negates all damage, and plays the appropriate noses and voice lines. “addcond 11” bestows the player’s weapons with guaranteed crits and the critglow effect, “addcond 32” is how the Disciplinary Action bestows a speed boost and the motion lines in the air, etc. You can get the full list here.
Well, many addconds aren’t tied to any weapons or in-game events, so you can’t use them. But we can see what they do, and there are some gems. To quote the Team Fortress Wiki:
addcond 49: Crouching causes the player to appear to be a Dispenser of the enemy team to enemy players. As a side effect, forces the player’s speed to 450 Hammer Units/second (diagonal movement is at 520 HU/s). Swapping weapons while in this state will cause the player to temporarily stop moving, then return to 450 HU/s.
You heard that last one right. At one point, Valve was toying with a weapon that disguised a spy as an enemy dispenser if he crouched. That has got to be one of the most hilarious, horrifying, and puzzling ideas. Imagine players routinely spychecking your dispenser. Imagine having no engineers on your team, but dispensers are everywhere. The situations are endless, and every one is hilarious. It’s probably for the better Valve didn’t follow up with this one, but I can dream.
In general, you can take what you’ve learned from playing Team Fortress 2 and translate it to Team Fortress Classic. They are the same 9 classes after all, and they have mostly the same loadouts, just with more shotguns. Some things will throw you for curveballs (I wrote a pretty extensive guide here) but in general you can guess what each class is about.
Except one.
TF2 will not prepare you in any way to start playing the TFC Combat Medic. Especially if you’ve played the TF2 Medic. Playing the combat medic like this will instantly label you as a TF2 immigrant who has never touched the game before. I was one of those once, but I persevered and now I consider myself a proficient TFC medic. Note that anyone who played TFC in its heyday could educate you better then me, but here’s what I’ve learned:
Halloween’s over now, and its passing takes with it the 102 cosmetic items, the Halloween paints and spells, transmogrifiers, spooky crates and event keys. But there’s one item in particular that we’re all going to miss. Okay, maybe not everyone, but most people. Fine, not most people, but most Medics. Alright! Some Medics. Some Medics will miss this item.
I’m talking about the Second Opinion.
Yes, he is…
Oh no.
I’m going to rant. Ranting is something that Medics do often. It’s understandable really. In a low-skill environment, Medics have to work far harder than anyone else to get anything done. Moving up the skill ladder eases these issues, but they’re still there. The problem not only lies with the Medic himself, but with his team and who he’s healing.
Today’s rant is about how people look after their health. Or don’t.
I’m sure some of you have read the Binding of Medic, or maybe played The Binding of Isaac (a very good game, you know) or maybe both. I’m also sure that you’d agree that the Binding of Medic is a fun, amusing way to pass your time on SPUF. In today’s article, we’ll be discussing how I thought up the crazy idea, ways to do your own silly game, a few fun facts and some other bits and pieces.
After a mere 48 hours of giving us the perfect Crusader’s Crossbow, Valve followed up by nerfing it’s damage by 33%. As someone who has spent hundreds of hours perfecting my skill with this weapon, and considers it my favorite weapon in TF2, let me say that the weapon is now useless.
Let me rehash the same reasons I enjoyed the previous crossbow and show how none of them apply any more.
“What? Surviving Scream Fortress? As a Medic? Surely that should be a piece of cake? It’s just like any other map!” You’re serious? It’s nothing like any other map. It’s an event based on one of the most deathmatch-y maps around, with more spam and confusion than you can shake a stick at. Throw in your normal Hightower threats like Mini-Sentries, and a whole new extra pit for Pyros, Scouts and explosive classes to launch you into, it’s nigh impossible to get around as a Medic.
Well, not impossible, but it’s far harder than most Halloween events. Today, we’ll be looking at a few tips you can use to last at least a bit longer out there…
Readers, you love allcrit servers too, right? Shortstop scouts, Pomson engineers, Liberty Launcher soldiers…the actual loadouts people rock seem surprisingly limited, but in a weird way this can become refreshing. I know I love allcrit servers, but there are very specific ways I usually play them. In general, I try to be the most annoying mother♥♥♥♥er that these servers have ever seen. How? With these loadouts: