State of the Field Medic (Or, why Medic gas should be looked at again)

[OnionBubs]

So as of the last few Summer patches, there were some readjustments to Berserker, and separate-yet-not-completely-separate from that was a note that the Hemoclobber will probably be looked at in the near future as well. Among the patch changes were some changes for Field Medic, namely a nerf to Symbiotic Health and a slight max armor nerf.

I have issues with Medic, but I don't believe the Symbiotic Health changes really did anything substantial to mitigate that. While it technically is a nerf, it's only really a nerf to Medics that use HM-dart weapons rather than anything else, and it's so minor in the grand scheme of things it might as well not matter.

Field Medic, as it currently stands, has a couple of overarching issues. One is that the sum of its parts is greater than you would think from the individual abilities it gets. The other is that between the tremendously impactful passives and some of the new weapons in the past couple of years, it's had an insane kit boost that only keeps getting stronger as the game goes on. Now, I'll grant that some of the weapons are absolutely garbage, but on the flip side of things, it has a couple of game-breakers, which I'll get to in a bit.

To start with, Medic's survivability is through the roof right now, basically going neck-and-neck with the (pre-nerf) Berserker. If a player is Last Man Standing in a match and it's not a Berserker, it's probably a Medic. Right now, a Lv. 25 Medic running LLLLL gets the following:

• The syringe. To be more specific, a boosted syringe which lets you heal yourself for more than a standard syringe every 4-5 seconds or a teammate every 2-3 seconds. This also applies buffs to teammates. See below.
• Symbiotic Health, which gives you extra room for error due to the increased max HP as well as healing yourself when healing others (and applying buffs to yourself, accordingly). I don't really have issue with this skill because it does promote keeping teammates alive and thus promotes teamwork, but it IS nonetheless a factor.
• Coagulant Booster allows you to use the scratch damage from other players to keep your already high resistances boosted by healing other players' scratches.
• Medic's run speed is already really high at max level, which allows them to slip past Zeds or through crowds that other players would be snared by. The biggest thing, though, is that it allows them to do the infinite kite by just infinitely running away to make use of that syringe.
• Comboing with above is Adrenaline Injector, which makes you even faster. As an added bonus to the above, the increased speed can keep you (and yes, technically others) alive by causing Zed attacks to outright whiff when running directly away from them, because you're just going too fast for them to hit.

I'm not counting the right-side skills because the only really notable one is Resilience. To be honest, the right-side tree is a whole other thread on its own; it's only for solo and the one thing I would completely remove/change regardless is Acidic Rounds because it's worse than useless, especially in pub games.

Now, on top of all the above, Medics have these ways to heal themselves:

• The Hemoclobber. One of the worst things to be put in this game for how ridiculous it is. Allows you to block and parry attacks for further damage mitigation, sweep trash off you with single strikes, lets you heal yourself in active combat, and as an added bonus, it kills anything below a Gorefast crowding you for free with the alt-fire (that also heals you).
• The throwable gas grenades, because of Medic gas, which I'll get to in a bit. This was originally one of two ways to take advantage of Medic gas in EA (granted, Airborne Agent was completely changed during the Medic rework, but I wouldn't argue its original version was that great...)
• The HMTech-501, which basically allows you an extra 10 throwable grenades in exchange for not having darts. So that can be up to 15 charges of God Mode for both yourself and your team.
• The syringe, as noted. Not quite as reliable in full enemy groups, but it's the main tool for players doing endless kites because it recharges faster than Fleshpounds can rage., something no other perks have the luxury of, and Medic's speed allows you to buy yourself time by infinitely running from the Zeds so you can heal yourself even more. In a 1v1, you literally cannot die. Or should not.

So it's no secret by now that Medics have a lot more options than they used to have for keeping themselves alive; healing other players can be totally optional (or incidental) even with all these. It used to be that you had the syringe and Symbiotic Health; beyond that, it was up to you to not take damage (or on your teammates to shoot things off you). I'm not really convinced that Medic needs this many self-healing options; it practically encourages selfish crutch loadouts focusing on self-preservation above all other things.

Now, if you noticed, there's a recurring theme here: Medic gas. Which brings me to my next point:

Medic gas really, really needs to be looked at.

Medic gas ticks extremely frequently, heals fast especially with the Medic's inherent heal boosts, applies one stack of all Medic buffs with each tick, and has the added bonus of dissolving trash even in 6P Hell on earth. This was less of a problem a few years ago because Medic only had one way to apply this on command: the grenades. (Airborne Agent exists, yes, but that's a Zed-Time thing only and was mostly limited to keeping Crawlers/Stalkers off your immediate person.)

But now we have the following weapons that can apply gas on demand: the throwables, the 501, the Hemoclobber, and the Healthrower. You can literally make entire loadouts dependent on healing gas and still be able to dart people. In effect, why bother using darts (the things that already aim themselves) when you can get by spraying gas and literally topping up your entire team on a moment's notice?! The 401 was already really, really good, and now it's effectively been obsoleted by the Medic's new weapons within the last couple of years.

At what point did we decide that the autoaim darts were an obsolete mechanic? Back at launch date, you had the 401/301/Katana and you needed to at least learn how to deal with trash using it. But now you don't even need that skillset with all the spam weapons Medic has; just throw grenades every 20-30 seconds and you'll still have leftovers to heal players with.

I don't think this is a great idea for the game. Medic already isn't a demanding class in terms of mechanical skill to begin with, and with each weapon like this that gets added, it only further dumbs the perk down/lowers the skill floor and encourages not learning the game. Say what you will about the Incision, but at least it requires you to aim the thing to get the most out of it.

Which brings me to my next point...

The Healthrower is dumb.

The Healthrower, in particular, is another problematic weapon that could stand to be reworked. This thing effectively lets Medics play like extra-tanky Firebugs and still win. You sure don't need to aim it, and it kills trash basically as effectively as the 401 in the hands of an expert. Unless you're playing on Containment Station or some custom map like Corridor, there's no reason not to use it.

I'd almost call it a crutch weapon but that feels wrong; it's not that it makes you worse at the game, it's just absurdly good period for how braindead it is. You hose down teammates and Zeds alike. The good guys stay alive and the bad guys all die. And you still get to apply near-instant buff stacks on top of that. And it can still shoot darts, so you don't have to worry about running out of ammo with poor management.

The best thing to do would be to remove its ability to damage Zeds but still heal/buff players, because as it stands, it's got too much going for it and too little skill required to make use of it.


I have more thoughts on the perk regarding some of the weapons that just don't really fit, but these would be my priorities right now. I know this perk, like Berserker, is extremely popular because of how impactful it can be (and how easy it is to stay alive with it) without requiring the mechanical skill of the other perks, but right now it's got the same power creep issues as Zerk and it could use some looking at. I don't know how much TWI wants to bring it into control, but it could stand to be looked at.

The next thing I would point out is how bad some of the weapons are. Hemogoblin, Mine Reconstructor, HRG Vampire...it's got no shortage of bad ones, but right now we need to focus on the stuff that's too good.

 

[CitronVert]

I totally agree with this analysis and I think TWI should go for a strong nerf to medic, like the one they did with berserker.

What Medic needs is a drawback. It has just too many things currently: excellent DPS weapons (Incision, hemoglobin), excellent survivability (syringe+speed+selfbuffs+resilience), excellent solo'ing potential, that's ON TOP of being already the only mandatory class in the game due to the brokenness of his health passives.

I agree with OP that a good start would be to nerf the healthrower, it is the easiest weapon in the game to carry with, a 100% guaranteed way to heal your team (not blockable by zeds) and applies all the buffs almost instantly which kinda cheats the purpose of having a stacking system (which should be to reward accuracy). The weapon should be changed to have a clear drawback when healing teammates, for example, not apply the buffs at all with the healing "flow" or only at a rate of 1 buff / second. (Darts can still apply buffs)

Another nerf should be to decrease all the buffs strength, especially the one that gives resistance, being under its effect combined with the medic healing makes you virtually immortal, this is especially apparent on Zerk.

And then please nerf resilience for god's sake. I can't count how many times I've seen one medic last man standing during the boss wave, and everyone leaves the server because they know it's going to take him 15 min to die.

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

Agreed. The simplest solution is to just remove the content that breaks the game balance, such as medic bat, healthrower, but TWI never do that, that's why we still have EDARs and so on.

 

[pie1055]

Another potential nerf to healthrower could be to remove its dart functionality altogether. This would make the weapon unable to heal teammates from a distance, limiting its healing range. Problem is that's probably not strong enough of a nerf by itself for everything else the weapon can do. I also think it was a mistake to buff the healthrower's damage. It felt better when the weapon could heal multiple teammates at once at the cost of not being able to do much to zeds. But then for some reason every perk and every weapon has to be good at everything so that went out the window.

It seems like changing the perk skill trees isn't going to happen anymore for one reason or another but you could fix a lot of field medic by mixing its tree up so that you don't have L == pure medic and R == pure combat. I think it'd be absolutely key to put damage resistance and speed buffs on the same tier so that the medic can speed up allies to avoid taking damage or increase their defenses so that their healing takes precedence over their teammates suicide attempts. Furthermore you'd know any medic above a certain level would be guaranteed to have at least one of them, so you wouldn't get as much medic hate for them using combat skills. Lastly it'd technically count as a nerf as medics wouldn't be able to run both.

Also heal gas has an ironic side effect that it can turn a LLLLL medic into a better selfish combat medic than a RRRRR medic depending on how it's used. It can be placed in front of the user to be used like a speed boost in a racing game. Can other teammates reach the gas? Maybe, but they'd have better chances if the medic threw the gas at them instead of for their own purposes. Maybe self-buffing as a mechanic needs to be removed completely so that medics can turn their teammates into gods but have less protection for themselves.

 

[OnionBubs]

Good to see some positive reception so far. Now for part 2 in my TL;DR series on "Medic has issues": Weapons.

Originally, I was planning to just list out the problematic ones, but maybe all of them would be a good idea to see where the good parts of Medic's arsenal stand. Some will just have shorter entries than others. List comes in roughly the same order as the Trader menu; I don't own the DLC weapons personally so it might be a bit out of order, but I have played around with them.

---

HMTech-101 (Medic Pistol)
The quintessential starter weapon. It's one of the better starter weapons. It does just enough damage to decap Clots and Crawlers with one headshot, which rewards accuracy; it's light, so virtually anyone can use it as a sidearm; it allows for a dedicated medic to put out just enough healing in the starter waves to keep players alive. Good stuff. Wouldn't change anything.

HMTech-201 (Medic SMG)
It stinks, and I always skip it in my games. Bad damage, bad recoil, bad spread for a tier 2. Even after the various buffs, it is effectively a 101 pistol with full-auto fire and only helps with killing Clots because they're weak against SMG damage. Does absolutely laughably against Gorefasts and anything above that. The problem with buying this for extra healing early-game is that it sets you back at least 1 round for better weapons.

(SWAT handles this thing better than Medic does--which I appreciate for SWAT. The added bonus of having infinite darts with Rapid Assault is icing on the cake.)

HMTech-301 (Medic Shotgun)
It's fine. Lots of knockback/stagger values, does fine for self-defense, does OK on Medic with dart charge speeds.

Support has the post-buff M4 as an alternative, which is arguably better for killing HVTs but you suffer the tradeoff of tube-fed reloads (which counts more than you might think). It's basically a baby AA12 with healing darts on Support, which isn't bad at all for the price.

Hemogoblin
I've never liked this weapon, even post-buffs. It always held an awkward niche in the Medic's arsenal and it never seemed to fit in well with the game's mechanics.

So the "offensive debuff" idea was cool in principle but the way in which this gun went about it was always awkward. Multiple stat changes over the game's lifetime have made it better but I still believe it suffers from other weapons being plain better in 6P HoE, both in the intended debuff role and as healing weapons.

Right now, it's a hitscan weapon (despite appearances) that inflicts a special debuff which slows Zeds and reduces their attack power, as well as inflicting a DoT while the debuff is occurring (which is brief). As of the time of writing, a single dart will inflict the debuff on both a Scrake and Fleshpound in 6P HoE. The problem is, you also have a threshold of 2 darts before either large Zed rages. In fact, almost any pre-damage before firing the Goblin projectile will cause the large Zed you are trying to debuff to hit a rage point because of the Goblin's damage values. Which is honestly kind of counterintuitive to how the game's mechanics work: this thing basically seems desgined to rage large Zeds even if it DOES inflict a debuff with one dart. (Unless that Zed is a Fleshpound who just raged and therefore gained near-immunity to debuffs and CCs...)

The other problem is that the debuff only seems to be practical if you have teammates actively fighting a raged enemy that isn't dying immediately, which in higher difficulties is a situation you should actively avoid in the first place by learning takedown. As it stands, you have a short amount of time to take advantage of the debuff before a full-strength raged Zed comes out swinging. Most of the time, it's not useful for Scrakes since most perks are capable of dropping them quickly, and there are better options for Fleshpounds that don't involve actively raging the things. The other problem with Fleshpounds is that since you need multiple spikes to debuff a raged FP, which encourages spamming at raged FPs--a bad habit to begin with, but on top of that, the DoT can re-rage a Fleshpound in the middle of hitting someone, giving it a second raged swing that might result in a teammate dying or being seriously injured for a follow-up from either the Fleshpound or other Zeds.

It does kill trash Zeds, but with the not-great ammo reserves, why would you waste this gun's ammo on trash? It's totally unnecessary for anything other than the odd Husk debuff so they get reduced attack power from fireballs.

It does have excellent burst healing potential, but that's about it. The long deploy/holster times hurt it on this front but the recharge time + dart consumption helps balance that out.

The main thing I can think of to save this weapon is giving it much lower attack power and either remove the DoT or neuter it to basically nothing, so the utility of the debuff isn't counteracted by the gun raging HVTs. As it stands, the Incision is a largely superior option (I'll get to that later.)

Healthrower
It's too good and has too much going for it for too little effort, as mentioned in my above post (and thanks to CitronVert for covering the "penetrating" aspect of the gas). Attracts newbies like you wouldn't believe.

I would say the best way to balance this in its current state is to not allow it to damage Zeds. It already has a different damage type from the other Medic gas weapons; it could just be set to zero.

HMTech-401 (Medic Assault Rifle (Dart))
Oldie, but a goodie. Lets you decap trash with a well-placed tap, which encourages good aim. Nasty recoil and spread if you hold the trigger down, which encourages learning fire control and recoil management.

Enables great dart spam, especially with Medic's built-in recharge rate, which was the original encouragement for learning to aim darts since it let you rapidly stack buffs if you could aim well enough for it.

Used to be meta-level good but has since been supplanted by other weapons that give you its level of power without having to work for it nearly as much. I'd like to get the other Medic weapons down a notch to be closer to this.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how good this thing is on Commando. It's good. It's really good. It's currently one of the meta options on Commando when paired with the FAL. Premier trash-killing option even after nerfs, one-taps lighter Zeds and kills Stalkers on a bodyshot with Hollow Point Rounds, stumble power is high and makes Scrake takedowns an easy (if not always terribly efficient) option.

HRG Incision
This weapon seems weird at first glance--and it is--but upon closer inspection it's ridiculous. It's not even that this gun is good at everything, per se; it's not ideal as a primary because of its drawbacks, but as a Medic secondary, it's got one of the most bloated kits in the game.

Let's start with the healing darts, because they work so differently compared to other Medic weapons I could make a separate thread just on these alone.

The healing darts are highly damaging compared to other Medic weapons, to the point where they can instantly decapitate trash Zeds even in 6P HoE, a feature no other Medic weapon can lay claim to. The darts will basically kill Crawlers instantly. For some reason, the knockdown on the darts is also utterly bonkers, to the point where if you don't kill something, you'll actively knock it down and stun it at the same time. This applies to any zeds up to Scrakes. See a Husk about to shoot? Donk it with a dart and put it out of commission for another 5+ seconds. You can disrupt the usual spawn rushes of having slow tanks and fast frontliners by just darting the biggest threats and delaying their rush.

The darts can penetrate players and Zeds alike, allowing you to heal teammates through other teammates or through Zeds. Spamming the thing off cooldown at a cloud of teammates and Zeds alike is a viable strategy.

The darts don't lock on normally, but they CAN lock on if you ADS. The darts are also hitscan, which means someone who can snap-aim doesn't have to wait for the lockon to kick in before healing someone.

The darts also heal for well-above-average compared to other Medic darts. While it's not as good for rapid-fire buffs, you can basically bring a teammate back from the brink with 1-2 darts from this (and heal other teammates while you're at it).

The primary fire is a fairly damaging hitscan railgun blast that will instantly decapitate anything below a Scrake, meaning Medic now has an answer to those pesky Husks and can freely remove them from the playing field. But that's not even the best part. The best part is that anything that it hits (which can be multiple Zeds, for the record, since the railgun "projectile" penetrates) will suffer from an EMP debuff. This can effectively de-rage Scrakes on command and buy your team time to set up HVT kills for free, since EMP will delay a Fleshpound's raging until the effect wears off. While it's not as good as, say, the Freezethrower, it's really darn good on its own considering everything else the gun has. If you absolutely have to, you can hit a HVT with multiple consecutive shots to decap it, although I only really recommend this with Scrakes since FPs take too many hits for this to work.

I don't know if this gun needs to be changed. Maybe remove some of the ridiculous dart functionality? Or remove the EMP effect from the primary fire? It's fun in the "haha I can't believe this got into the game" sense moreso than it being a fair weapon, but it DOES require you to have at least decent aim to take full advantage of its kit; I'm just not convinced that Medic really needs a Swiss Army tool like this.

Maybe raise the weight on it so you can't pair it with the 401 or the Healthrower? Like I said, its healing dart spam weaknesses offset it as a good primary; it's just ridiculous when paired with a better healing weapon as a secondary.

HRG Vampire
Absolutely runs counter to everything the Medic is supposed to do. Good meme, bad gun. It's basically designed as a weapon purely for Solo medic games, maybe a full Chaos perk kiting game if I'm being generous.

For starters, it's a Medic weapon that can't heal. It's purely offensive. Strike #1 and #2. 8 weight slots and 1500 sodding Dosh to equip this in the first place. It only gets worse from there.

The long story short is that in order to make use of it, you have to position yourself like a Firebug and time your attacks like a Demolitionist. But you're not a Firebug or a Demolitionist, you're a Medic--you have no business being on the front lines like that; your job is bringing up the rear and occasionally killing trash that spawns behind your team or slips through.

To its credit, it kills trash, and the suction mechanic does inflict bleed. The alt-fire spike will kill Gorefasts instantly and, surprisingly, is capable of one-shotting a Rioter through its helmet! It's still useless against HVTs--rages them nicely and nothing else--and the requirement to be in front of everyone else just to charge your blood pool for spikes is a no-no. The blood ball does hurt trash when charged, but so does the Healthrower in its current state, and the Healthrower also heals players braindead-easy. Anything that doesn't die from the blood ball does the poison dance, which is bad.

The best thing I'll say about it is that the Zed ragdolls when dying from the suction attack are hilarious. That's the only reason I'd ever use this thing.

Mine Reconstructor
Bad on so many levels that I don't know where to start.

To its limp-wristed credit, this thing can technically heal players. That's the one positive. Now, in order for it to heal for anything worthwhile, you need half a clip of ammo, but it CAN heal players.

It is basically the Bio-Rifle from the Unreal Tournament games but sometimes it can heal players. It just doesn't belong in this game. The damage on explosions is already wonky, but this thing can randomly fail to one-shot Clots in my testing. The weak damage and healing values necessitate charged shots, but that occupies your time and ammo. The fact that you can only put out two full-charged shots before reloading means you'll spend tons of time reloading the thing.

In a game this fast-paced and where you have weapons with infinite dart ammo that can lock on to players, why anyone would choose to use this thing (which can only heal players if they're caught in the explosion) is beyond me. Limited ammo heals, the guns with darts and gas do it better, and a failure to kill anything above a Gorefast with a well-placed shot all contribute to this thing being beyond help.

HMTech-501 (Medic Assault Rifle (Grenade))
I'm torn on this. One the one hand, the gun part is bad. It's not even good on Commando compared to the 401, let alone the Medic. Mediocre damage, bad clip size, bad for takedowns...

On the other hand, the gas grenades are waaaaaaaay too good. I already outlined the issue with Medic gas in my above post, but I should also note that a Commando using this can top off a team by themselves, which is striking for a non-Medic class.

Hemoclobber
This horse has been beaten to death, but I'm here to flog it one last time anyway: This thing is utterly ridiculous on Berserker and somewhat less ridiculous on Medic.

It's bad at killing things on Medic outside of gassing a crowd of trash Zeds with the alt-fire and it's bad at healing teammates due to the melee range requirement, but the added increase it gives to self-sustainability is insane. Between the block and parry boosts letting you ride Fleshpound hits for basically no damage, self-heal on command that combos with the syringe, and the aforementioned gas letting you scatter a crowd surrounding you, it's still a silly weapon.

 

[Humam2104]

Say what you will about the Incision, but at least it requires you to aim the thing to get the most out of it.

it's only for solo and the one thing I would completely remove/change regardless is Acidic Rounds because it's worse than useless, especially in pub games.

Well, the Incision is pretty much useless without the Acidic Rounds skill. because that skill allows it to do 3 x damage. Without it, the medic won't be able to kill large zeds. Yes, the medic is OP and it's stupid to see medics run around the map and heal themselves. But come on, every perk can kill large zeds now, why can't the medic be one then?

 

[OnionBubs]

Well, the Incision is pretty much useless without the Acidic Rounds skill.

lol

lmao, even

As I detailed above, the Incision is one of the better Medic weapons floating around right now. It may not be quite as ridiculous at pure healing as the Healthrower, but that's because the Healthrower makes an already easy perk even more braindead and easy.

because that skill allows it to do 3 x damage.

Not enough damage in 6P HoE to justify taking Acidic Rounds. Not only does poison not do headshot damage (so you as a Medic are fighting against a HVT's body health pool), you're inflicting the poison dance on large Zeds shortly before they fly into a rage, which is bad.

Without it, the medic won't be able to kill large zeds.

#deity forbid one of the tankiest and fastest classes in the game has a weakness in not having quite as much damage as the others. It's almost as though Tripwire designed the class around having lesser damage than the others as a balancing factor to the rest of its kit.

Yes, the medic is OP and it's stupid to see medics run around the map and heal themselves.

Indeed.

But come on, every perk can kill large zeds now, why can't the medic be one then?

I mean, Medics still can do that in Last Man Standing due to player scaling, although you shouldn't be doing it to begin with because LMS is a sign that something went catastrophically wrong.

And just because other perks got absurd weapons that let them do it doesn't mean that it was a good idea to begin with, nor does it mean that Medic should follow suit in that thought process. Part of the last remaining gasps of this game should be nerfing the OP anti-HVT stuff down to earth. The Medic can only contribute, but if your team is doing well enough that you don't need to worry about healing players nonstop, your team is well on its way to winning.

I mean, the Incision comes *close* for my liking on that front, but it does take very consistent and fast reload-cancelling to do that to a Scrake solo. Something like 4-5 headshots for a decap? The real deal is being able to inflict EMP on HVTs so that your other teammates can focus them down. Like a Freezethrower that headshots. It's already really good.

 

[Humam2104]

Not enough damage in 6P HoE to justify taking Acidic Rounds.

If you use Acidic rounds you can kill Scrakes on a Suicidal/HOE match with around 3 to 4 shots. That's enough for me!

#deity forbid one of the tankiest and fastest classes in the game has a weakness in not having quite as much damage as the others. It's almost as though Tripwire designed the class around having lesser damage than the others as a balancing factor to the rest of its kit.

I understand your point here.

 

[Maxotaurious]

In

Good to see some positive reception so far. Now for part 2 in my TL;DR series on "Medic has issues": Weapons.

Originally, I was planning to just list out the problematic ones, but maybe all of them would be a good idea to see where the good parts of Medic's arsenal stand. Some will just have shorter entries than others. List comes in roughly the same order as the Trader menu; I don't own the DLC weapons personally so it might be a bit out of order, but I have played around with them.

---

HMTech-101 (Medic Pistol)
The quintessential starter weapon. It's one of the better starter weapons. It does just enough damage to decap Clots and Crawlers with one headshot, which rewards accuracy; it's light, so virtually anyone can use it as a sidearm; it allows for a dedicated medic to put out just enough healing in the starter waves to keep players alive. Good stuff. Wouldn't change anything.

HMTech-201 (Medic SMG)
It stinks, and I always skip it in my games. Bad damage, bad recoil, bad spread for a tier 2. Even after the various buffs, it is effectively a 101 pistol with full-auto fire and only helps with killing Clots because they're weak against SMG damage. Does absolutely laughably against Gorefasts and anything above that. The problem with buying this for extra healing early-game is that it sets you back at least 1 round for better weapons.

(SWAT handles this thing better than Medic does--which I appreciate for SWAT. The added bonus of having infinite darts with Rapid Assault is icing on the cake.)

HMTech-301 (Medic Shotgun)
It's fine. Lots of knockback/stagger values, does fine for self-defense, does OK on Medic with dart charge speeds.

Support has the post-buff M4 as an alternative, which is arguably better for killing HVTs but you suffer the tradeoff of tube-fed reloads (which counts more than you might think). It's basically a baby AA12 with healing darts on Support, which isn't bad at all for the price.

Hemogoblin
I've never liked this weapon, even post-buffs. It always held an awkward niche in the Medic's arsenal and it never seemed to fit in well with the game's mechanics.

So the "offensive debuff" idea was cool in principle but the way in which this gun went about it was always awkward. Multiple stat changes over the game's lifetime have made it better but I still believe it suffers from other weapons being plain better in 6P HoE, both in the intended debuff role and as healing weapons.

Right now, it's a hitscan weapon (despite appearances) that inflicts a special debuff which slows Zeds and reduces their attack power, as well as inflicting a DoT while the debuff is occurring (which is brief). As of the time of writing, a single dart will inflict the debuff on both a Scrake and Fleshpound in 6P HoE. The problem is, you also have a threshold of 2 darts before either large Zed rages. In fact, almost any pre-damage before firing the Goblin projectile will cause the large Zed you are trying to debuff to hit a rage point because of the Goblin's damage values. Which is honestly kind of counterintuitive to how the game's mechanics work: this thing basically seems desgined to rage large Zeds even if it DOES inflict a debuff with one dart. (Unless that Zed is a Fleshpound who just raged and therefore gained near-immunity to debuffs and CCs...)

The other problem is that the debuff only seems to be practical if you have teammates actively fighting a raged enemy that isn't dying immediately, which in higher difficulties is a situation you should actively avoid in the first place by learning takedown. As it stands, you have a short amount of time to take advantage of the debuff before a full-strength raged Zed comes out swinging. Most of the time, it's not useful for Scrakes since most perks are capable of dropping them quickly, and there are better options for Fleshpounds that don't involve actively raging the things. The other problem with Fleshpounds is that since you need multiple spikes to debuff a raged FP, which encourages spamming at raged FPs--a bad habit to begin with, but on top of that, the DoT can re-rage a Fleshpound in the middle of hitting someone, giving it a second raged swing that might result in a teammate dying or being seriously injured for a follow-up from either the Fleshpound or other Zeds.

It does kill trash Zeds, but with the not-great ammo reserves, why would you waste this gun's ammo on trash? It's totally unnecessary for anything other than the odd Husk debuff so they get reduced attack power from fireballs.

It does have excellent burst healing potential, but that's about it. The long deploy/holster times hurt it on this front but the recharge time + dart consumption helps balance that out.

The main thing I can think of to save this weapon is giving it much lower attack power and either remove the DoT or neuter it to basically nothing, so the utility of the debuff isn't counteracted by the gun raging HVTs. As it stands, the Incision is a largely superior option (I'll get to that later.)

Healthrower
It's too good and has too much going for it for too little effort, as mentioned in my above post (and thanks to CitronVert for covering the "penetrating" aspect of the gas). Attracts newbies like you wouldn't believe.

I would say the best way to balance this in its current state is to not allow it to damage Zeds. It already has a different damage type from the other Medic gas weapons; it could just be set to zero.

HMTech-401 (Medic Assault Rifle (Dart))
Oldie, but a goodie. Lets you decap trash with a well-placed tap, which encourages good aim. Nasty recoil and spread if you hold the trigger down, which encourages learning fire control and recoil management.

Enables great dart spam, especially with Medic's built-in recharge rate, which was the original encouragement for learning to aim darts since it let you rapidly stack buffs if you could aim well enough for it.

Used to be meta-level good but has since been supplanted by other weapons that give you its level of power without having to work for it nearly as much. I'd like to get the other Medic weapons down a notch to be closer to this.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how good this thing is on Commando. It's good. It's really good. It's currently one of the meta options on Commando when paired with the FAL. Premier trash-killing option even after nerfs, one-taps lighter Zeds and kills Stalkers on a bodyshot with Hollow Point Rounds, stumble power is high and makes Scrake takedowns an easy (if not always terribly efficient) option.

HRG Incision
This weapon seems weird at first glance--and it is--but upon closer inspection it's ridiculous. It's not even that this gun is good at everything, per se; it's not ideal as a primary because of its drawbacks, but as a Medic secondary, it's got one of the most bloated kits in the game.

Let's start with the healing darts, because they work so differently compared to other Medic weapons I could make a separate thread just on these alone.

The healing darts are highly damaging compared to other Medic weapons, to the point where they can instantly decapitate trash Zeds even in 6P HoE, a feature no other Medic weapon can lay claim to. The darts will basically kill Crawlers instantly. For some reason, the knockdown on the darts is also utterly bonkers, to the point where if you don't kill something, you'll actively knock it down and stun it at the same time. This applies to any zeds up to Scrakes. See a Husk about to shoot? Donk it with a dart and put it out of commission for another 5+ seconds. You can disrupt the usual spawn rushes of having slow tanks and fast frontliners by just darting the biggest threats and delaying their rush.

The darts can penetrate players and Zeds alike, allowing you to heal teammates through other teammates or through Zeds. Spamming the thing off cooldown at a cloud of teammates and Zeds alike is a viable strategy.

The darts don't lock on normally, but they CAN lock on if you ADS. The darts are also hitscan, which means someone who can snap-aim doesn't have to wait for the lockon to kick in before healing someone.

The darts also heal for well-above-average compared to other Medic darts. While it's not as good for rapid-fire buffs, you can basically bring a teammate back from the brink with 1-2 darts from this (and heal other teammates while you're at it).

The primary fire is a fairly damaging hitscan railgun blast that will instantly decapitate anything below a Scrake, meaning Medic now has an answer to those pesky Husks and can freely remove them from the playing field. But that's not even the best part. The best part is that anything that it hits (which can be multiple Zeds, for the record, since the railgun "projectile" penetrates) will suffer from an EMP debuff. This can effectively de-rage Scrakes on command and buy your team time to set up HVT kills for free, since EMP will delay a Fleshpound's raging until the effect wears off. While it's not as good as, say, the Freezethrower, it's really darn good on its own considering everything else the gun has. If you absolutely have to, you can hit a HVT with multiple consecutive shots to decap it, although I only really recommend this with Scrakes since FPs take too many hits for this to work.

I don't know if this gun needs to be changed. Maybe remove some of the ridiculous dart functionality? Or remove the EMP effect from the primary fire? It's fun in the "haha I can't believe this got into the game" sense moreso than it being a fair weapon, but it DOES require you to have at least decent aim to take full advantage of its kit; I'm just not convinced that Medic really needs a Swiss Army tool like this.

Maybe raise the weight on it so you can't pair it with the 401 or the Healthrower? Like I said, its healing dart spam weaknesses offset it as a good primary; it's just ridiculous when paired with a better healing weapon as a secondary.

HRG Vampire
Absolutely runs counter to everything the Medic is supposed to do. Good meme, bad gun. It's basically designed as a weapon purely for Solo medic games, maybe a full Chaos perk kiting game if I'm being generous.

For starters, it's a Medic weapon that can't heal. It's purely offensive. Strike #1 and #2. 8 weight slots and 1500 sodding Dosh to equip this in the first place. It only gets worse from there.

The long story short is that in order to make use of it, you have to position yourself like a Firebug and time your attacks like a Demolitionist. But you're not a Firebug or a Demolitionist, you're a Medic--you have no business being on the front lines like that; your job is bringing up the rear and occasionally killing trash that spawns behind your team or slips through.

To its credit, it kills trash, and the suction mechanic does inflict bleed. The alt-fire spike will kill Gorefasts instantly and, surprisingly, is capable of one-shotting a Rioter through its helmet! It's still useless against HVTs--rages them nicely and nothing else--and the requirement to be in front of everyone else just to charge your blood pool for spikes is a no-no. The blood ball does hurt trash when charged, but so does the Healthrower in its current state, and the Healthrower also heals players braindead-easy. Anything that doesn't die from the blood ball does the poison dance, which is bad.

The best thing I'll say about it is that the Zed ragdolls when dying from the suction attack are hilarious. That's the only reason I'd ever use this thing.

Mine Reconstructor
Bad on so many levels that I don't know where to start.

To its limp-wristed credit, this thing can technically heal players. That's the one positive. Now, in order for it to heal for anything worthwhile, you need half a clip of ammo, but it CAN heal players.

It is basically the Bio-Rifle from the Unreal Tournament games but sometimes it can heal players. It just doesn't belong in this game. The damage on explosions is already wonky, but this thing can randomly fail to one-shot Clots in my testing. The weak damage and healing values necessitate charged shots, but that occupies your time and ammo. The fact that you can only put out two full-charged shots before reloading means you'll spend tons of time reloading the thing.

In a game this fast-paced and where you have weapons with infinite dart ammo that can lock on to players, why anyone would choose to use this thing (which can only heal players if they're caught in the explosion) is beyond me. Limited ammo heals, the guns with darts and gas do it better, and a failure to kill anything above a Gorefast with a well-placed shot all contribute to this thing being beyond help.

HMTech-501 (Medic Assault Rifle (Grenade))
I'm torn on this. One the one hand, the gun part is bad. It's not even good on Commando compared to the 401, let alone the Medic. Mediocre damage, bad clip size, bad for takedowns...

On the other hand, the gas grenades are waaaaaaaay too good. I already outlined the issue with Medic gas in my above post, but I should also note that a Commando using this can top off a team by themselves, which is striking for a non-Medic class.

Hemoclobber
This horse has been beaten to death, but I'm here to flog it one last time anyway: This thing is utterly ridiculous on Berserker and somewhat less ridiculous on Medic.

It's bad at killing things on Medic outside of gassing a crowd of trash Zeds with the alt-fire and it's bad at healing teammates due to the melee range requirement, but the added increase it gives to self-sustainability is insane. Between the block and parry boosts letting you ride Fleshpound hits for basically no damage, self-heal on command that combos with the syringe, and the aforementioned gas letting you scatter a crowd surrounding you, it's still a silly weapon.

my opinion you're kind of right about the swat making great use of the smg. Its actually GOOD on the swat. It holds lanes well because of its rate of fire, stumble and speed reduction perks it has vs zeds and you can heal teammates, potentially panic medium or big zeds with the healing darts AND not to mention the bull**** firespeed at level 25. On medic though I think it pairs well with the shotgun. Battle surgeon is kind of a must have for this but basically you become a great trash killer while being able to swap darts out quickly for fast heals

 

[OnionBubs]

On medic though I think it pairs well with the shotgun.

Thing is, the 401 is better than the 201 in literally every metric that matters. Including being paired with the shotgun. And you don't need Battle Surgeon to make it work, either; it does more damage per bullet as well as having a better damage type (assault rifle vs. smg).

I like the 201 on SWAT but it's just flat-out bad on Medic. It's not the worst weapon on the list (which would be the Mine Reconstructor) but it's darn close.