Planetside 2 by Daybreak Games
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:
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.
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.
- 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.
- 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!
- Don't bother reviving people that are too far out of safety. Remember: you are worth more alive than dead.
- You are nobody's personal physician - You don't have to keep track of every wounded deer with a microphone.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Non-medics are expendable - YOU can get them back up when they die,the inverse is not the case. Use this knoweledge where appropriate.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.




Thanks for taking the time to write all this down. Really helpful stuff. Also which assault rifle (TR) would you recommend other than the default cycler ?
It really depends on what you want out of your rifle, as all the TR assault rifles are pretty sturdy, so you can't really go wrong with any of them, including the default T1 Cycler.
For close quarters I've had great success with the Cycler TRV (essentially the assault rifle equivalent of the Lynx carbine (Higer rate of fire, lower hipfire accuracy)), while many medics I know swear by the TAR (roughly the equivalent to the Jaguar Carbine (lower rate of fire, higher hipfire accuracy, 0.75x ADS speed multiplyer) for that role. With a an advanced laser sight and SPA, both of these guns are close combat power houses, and with a forward grip they can be quite effective at medium range as well.
If you want more of an allrounder, a lot of medics swear by the TORQ-9. It's rate of fire is only surpassed by the T4 AMP pistol, but unlike the T4 it is actually useful at medium ranges as well. To really get the most out of it at medium range you'll need to get into the habbit of really short bursts however, as you'll burn through your magazine after a single kill if you don't. - How short a burst? Think along the lines of holding the trigger for only 0.2 or so seconds. Also this is one of the guns I had in mind when I mentioned trying out different firing modes: it has a 2 round burst option that lets the gun retain its accuracy in mid-long range firefights a bit better. It won't be a SABR-13, but it's still pretty accurate.
If you're looking for controlability over killing power, both the NS-11A and the T1S variant of the default Cycler, give you more stability and attachment variety, at the cost of killing potential. The NS-11A is a bit lacklustre on paper compared to your avarage TR carbine, losing 5 bullets over your standard 40 round magazine (Yes, NC and VS players, you read that right) and sacrificing a lot of firing rate. But in return you get a gun that has virtually no recoil.
The T1S Cycler also sacrifices some firerate to make it more controlable, however it has the added benefit of coming with underbarrel attachment options. So if you want an underbarrel shotgun, grenade launcher or smoke launcher on your medic, this is the gun for you. If you go for smoke launchers however, please don't spam it everywhere, if used in the wrong situation it hinders your enemies as much as it hinders any allies. That said, it can be quite a boon if you run with a squad that is willing to equip IRNV scopes and use the smoke as an asset.
If you want assault rifles that can "reach out and touch someone", while still holding their own up close, you can't go wrong with the burstfire ARs, the SABR-13 and the T1B. The T1B is essentially your default cycler with a better first shot multiplier, better ADS accuracy, 2 additional bullets and a 3 shot burst. It also has access to HVA to extend your mid-long range viability a bit. In exchange it suffers from a worse hipfire accuracy, really shifting the focus to mid/long range fights with it as opposed to the mid/short range of your default cycler.
The SABR-13 similarly is a highly accurate rifle, which, with it's high damage profile (for a TR assault rifle) and low theoretical+ rate of fire and magazine size (600 RPM and 30 rounds respectively), feels more like a very accurate and controllable NC rifle than most TR weapons. I've gotten this weapon to Auraxium yesterday, and I noticed that if you can consistently aim for the head while using ADS you can easily take out most targets, even in shorter range 1v1 firefights. - Using this rifle I noticed myself becoming more methodical in how I approach firefights, getting better angles, using ADS where possible, and aiming for the head. With proper trigger disciple this gun can feel fully automatic at short range, and the semi-auto mode can make it effective well beyond the 50m mark. - I've gotten quite a few killstreak and marksman ribbons using it. As a rule of thumb for this gun, if you use the circle 2x reflex sight: when the target fits between the dot and the circle, use your semi-auto mode. If the target is bigger, burstfire is your friend.
Hope that helps a bit. If you want to know what gun is the best for you, just give them a spin in the VR room and trial them on the battlefield. It'll give you a better idea of how each gun handles. - Funnily enough I actually found the VR room's stationary targets quite useful for helping me determine the correct firemodes and bursting lengths for the TR's assault rifles, as once you know what gets you consitent results against stationary targets, you can start applying the techniques you use to compensate for movement as well.
+Being a burstfire weapon, you will have a hard time actually getting this 600 RPM rate of fire consistently. With proper trigger discipline, you will hardly notice the difference however.
TL;DR: All of them are good. For CQC: TRV or TAR, for Allround: TORQ-9, for control: T1S or NS-11A, for Mid/Long range: T1B or SABR-13.
The feeling when you rezz someone, but there are no sign of experience gotten (that is the most frustrating part of playing medic.
Happens if the kill was a team kill. It happens, but the exp of ressing usually makes up for it.
If I team kill someone the player I am ressing was team killed?
Whenever someone gets team killed, whether by you or another team member, they won't yield you any exp when you rez them. (So the second type you mentioned)
A bit annoying, as even if they took 99% damage from an enemy and then accidentally cought a friendly pistol shot to the leg, they will still not give you any exp. - Though I suppose it was done to avoid any form of cert padding by just rezzing and teamkilling again.