Combat Medic Mantras - A Field Manual

Here's a simple list bullet points intended to help those budding combat medics do their job better. Most of these points come from personal experience. Some of them are related to personal pitfalls even. All of them will hopefully be of use to the aspiring combat medic out there.

For the medics:

  1. Triage is as follows (from high priority to low priority)

    • Triage is based on the following factors: Urgency, time available, time it takes to perform, and expendability of the patient. - Note that this list assumes the potential targets are all pretty much in range.)

    a. Reviving blinking Medics

    b. Reviving Blinking other infantry

    c. Reviving Blinking MAXES

    d. Reviving MAXES

    e. Reviving Medics

    f. Reviving Infantry

    g. Healing wounded allies.

  2. Don't sacrifice your own life to revive others, unless the other person can likely get you back up in turn - you are much more valuable alive to provide heals and revives than they are getting one or two more kills.

  3. Death has a reason! When moving to revive somebody, be aware of the area and avoid getting killed by the same thing that killed them.
  4. If you can easily take out the opponent that killed the corpse you are about to Rez, do so before starting reviving (or make sure nearby friendly heavies are doing their job). If not, use cover!
  5. Don't bother reviving people that are too far out of safety. Remember: you are worth more alive than dead.
  6. You are nobody's personal physician - You don't have to keep track of every wounded deer with a microphone.
  7. The higher ranking shield bubble takes priority. The better radius and regeneration rate is worth more than a few more certs for you. - Find another position of your own to place your bubble.
  8. The Area of Effect heal makes you and any nearby targets big glowing targets, even through smoke - keep this in mind. It should also be noted that the shield bubble is itself a big glowing target. Be aware of this when placing one down.
  9. If you are (about to be) surrounded by a bunch of corpses, some of which are MAX units, throw a revive grenade and focus on getting the MAXes up.
  10. The main use of the revive grenade is that it lets you be in two or more places at once for revives. - NOT racking up certs by only throwing them at piles of friendly corpses in the middle of the enemy's firing lines.
  11. Non-medics are expendable - YOU can get them back up when they die,the inverse is not the case. Use this knoweledge where appropriate.
  12. When grinding for your Medic directive, or when learning the class, experiment with the shield bubble early - it gives you a broader idea of what the class can do and gets you a lot of certs in the right situations.
  13. When in a firefight remember: your bullets will make more of a difference than your heals! So if you have a clear shot, go for it. Save the applicator for when the fight is over, or for when you can't get a good angle. - Don't worry about your ally dying, you can pick them up when the enemy is dead.
  14. If you are carrying C-4, treat it as a weapon of opportunity. Don't risk your life by taking on an enemy MAX or Tank in a 1v1 fight. Heavies are much more suitable for that job.
  15. The above points are no excuse to be a dick! - Be helpful to your team, especially when it is safe to do so. - If you're doing it for the kills, go and play a heavy instead.
  16. Practice your trigger discipline and the various fire modes of your weapon of choice. Learning to time your burst and getting a fiel for what fire modes work in what situations can make you a lot more effective with your chosen weapon.

For our patients:

  1. It is not our job to track where you went. If we can't find you we won't be able to rez you. If you want to whisper us or use your mic, tell us where we can find you.
  2. We are not your pocket medic. That's engineers you're thinking of and they only do it when you're in a MAX suit. - We couldn't outheal the damage you get even if we wanted to.
  3. We are more valuable alive than you are in most situations - don't expect us to risk our lives for a slight chance to get you up.
  4. If you get a revive while still in the firelines, get into cover ASAP! We are not going to give your half an extra second of Rambo at our expense.
  5. If you want a heal don't sprint away. We are a lot less effective healing people that keep running out of range of our medical applicator.
  6. If you want a revive don't respawn - you are wasting our time by having you run all the way to your corpse just to see you dissapear before we can start reviving.
  7. On a corollary note: if you see a medic heading towards your corpse on the minimap, wait for the revive - we're risking our asses to get to where you got killed, so don't waste the time we could have spent running to somebody else.
  8. Ever heard the proverb "Never Bite the hand that feeds you."? Remember it. Too much abuse and we won't care for the extra cert getting you up gives us.
  9. Want us to rez the pile of friendlies around you? Use the V2 (Medic!) command, repeat if necessary. It's not just for getting yourself healed up. We get certs from both rezzing and healing, so we have a vested interest in going to calls for our aid if we can make it.
  10. We are only human. We get tunnel visioned, we miss corpses and markers and plenty of us are new to the game. - Even with the best of intentions we can't be everywhere at once.