The Stack

In my pursuit of giving at least one real try to every class in Team Fortress 2, I have spent some time on the Medic. The Medic is the one class whose main skill is helping people rather than harming them, so I suppose it’s unsurprising that no one wanted to play one in the original Team Fortress. And yet, I found the experience of the TF2 version enjoyable enough that it’s now, according to the Steam stats, my most-played class. What happened?

Much has been made of the TF2 version’s “Übercharge” ability, which lets you turn a teammate and yourself temporarily invulnerable. (According to the developers, this was added as a way to get Medics more involved on the front lines.) And there is a draw to it — specifically, the draw of the unattainable. Only rarely do I live long enough to charge up fully. Even if I play it safe and stay behind cover, spies seem to home in on me. They see the beam tethering me to my patient and know that they’ve got an easy kill, someone whose reaction time will be slowed by the need to switch to an actual weapon before firing back.

The really appealing thing, though, for rubbish players like me, is that you don’t have to aim. I though the Pyro had it good in this regard, but the medigun really has the flamethrower beat. First of all, when you’re shooting at people to heal them, they don’t even try to dodge. Secondly, there’s that tether I mentioned. Once you’ve got someone on your heal beam, you don’t need to point at them at all; you can turn around and watch for people sneaking up from behind if you want, and the beam just curves around. (Not that this does much good. Blasted spies.)