With my schedule lately I haven't been able to make many posts, so I decided to do something quick on Medic after experimenting with her. She's a breath of fresh air and overall I think a nice addition to the role. Definitely needs some tweaking, but what new champ doesn't?
Things to know playing with/against a Medic
* She is squishy. However with the correct talents at 1, 4, and 13, and 20 that becomes extremely deceptive (and I mean that throughout the game, it's not that you have to wait to 20 to be tanky). She can then work with a Sonya/Illidan/Butcher keeping up with them pretty well, and keep herself alive under moderate fire, which means its not going ont other targets.
* Stim Drone has a channel time and short range, making it easy to disrupt, even accidentally from CC just thrown into the middle of the team. If your medic is trying to stim you and you keep going forward you'll just kite her to death.
* Medivac has super long channels on both arriving, and being able to take off after arriving. Would not get this for SoloQ.
Medic play
* as to whether medic is mana hungry or not, I'd say she maybe struggles a little early but its not really that bad. Other supports struggle more; using mana efficiently is part of good supporting.
* passive Good for laning, decent for teamfighting, just remember you have to take damage, then get out of danger to get anything from it. Taking damage then healing yourself for free with the passive is one way to save on mana, as well as gain value for your team in a fight by soaking damage they would've.
* Q is a nice way to heal, the range once you've targeted someone is much more than the hitbox actually shows. It's a nice balance between sustain team healing and keeping a single target alive from burst, because of the way you can pair it with W.
* W pretty straightforward- you just have to anticipate where burst damage is heading, and throw it on pre-emptively; melee targets prioritized by how much damage they deal, and squishies out of position/with a meelee on them/trading are where you throw this.
* E Grenade is why I like medic. The playmaking potential of it is fantastic because of it's range, but the ballistics of it definitely take practice to do so effectively. Of course, it's also a good peel tool.
* R The channel on this is pretty obnoxious, make sure you go super aggressive to get it on a mellee in some QMs so you die several times. That way you'll get a better feel for its range/channel time and not kite yourself when it matters. Obviously, you want to use this on auto-attackers in a teamfight, the cooldown is long so using it other times will probably leave you very exposed.
Talents I like
(1) Prolonged Safeguard/Trauma trigger. If you have melee you want to go deep with get trauma, else prolonged.
(4) Advanced Block/Bioshield. Usually advanced block, but if there's nothing it would be good against and you're not going to be going deep bioshield is fine.
(7) Clear! This talent makes grenade super good. Once you get a feel for the range, and some practice in, you can use it to push people into you,throw a team apart, peel, all sort of crazy cool stuff. Definitely the most fun part of Medic since the range on grenade is so good.
(10) **Stim drone.** Because this ultimate is generally better, but the ability itself is somewhat niche due to the meta/characters in the game, make sure you have a good auto attacker to pick medic.
(13) Couples Therapy. Everyone knows medic is squishy, so she gets targeted a lot. So, I tend to think the self heal is most reliable. If you haven't been getting focused, the other healing options can be really good, and this is probably the best talent to trade off self-survival for helping others.
(16) Second Opinion. Grenade is good, and with this your options with it get even better. You can blow a target off your squishy twice, create more mayhem in the middle of the enemy team, etc. The utility of grenade once you spend time mastering it really can't be over-praised.
(20) Caduceus 2.0 This lets you spam all day and not care, and also takes care of any survivability issues you're having. It's better than you'd think from reading the description, since it basically means you can get infinite HP and mana from not taking damage, and you go into fights with a massive shield on, with 2 grenades and a lot of safeguarding so you can't really get killed by getting bursted either.
I'll keep researching medic, and try to have a guide done for her in about a weekish. All my currently relevant articles, guides, & whatnot are below. Thanks for reading!
Stim drone is generally terrible i think. Just compare it to bloodlust, 75% for one hero or 40% for the entire team! Even if one hero would be responsible for half the team AA damage (which none comes close to) bloodlust would still be much better. Bloodlust doesn't even have the casting time issue. Medivac is almost always the way to go really, that ult is insane. It isn't hard to use either, you just have to make sure you get the team to understand it a bit, say in advance you'll use it to move the team around. It creates so much pressure then as it's basically up after every engagement.
Talents i agree mostly with you. I like feedback loop at 1 fairly much though, without that talent W is an abosolutely awful spell, terribly mana inefficient and long cooldown with pitiful effect. With it it becomes decent. I'm not sure yet you want the talent for mana on it or you just want to refrain from using except when abosolutely needed. Without the talent it's never efficient in terms of healing per mana simply. At 7 finally i think you'll often need cleanse, especially against roots where self cleansing is crucial. If you took cleanse i also like another talent at 7, the second free W mostly. Bioshield I'm a bit torn on still, my gut feeling is it's terrible but maybe i haven't seen proper use of it yet. I think if you go full grenade build anyway and don't like block i'd go with one of the grenade talents, probably the damage one.
The cursed hollow cheese post linked in this thread is no longer there. Also, a guide on when to draft which support would be nice, even if it might need to be constantly updated with every new hero in the game.
A few differences to Tempo Storm Dreadnought's initial impressions prior to testing in organized pro level matches.
The main differences being: 7: cleanse first pick with every option being viable in the right situation. 10: medivac as default ult + Show Spoiler +
"Target a location for a Medivac transport. For up to 10.5 seconds before takeoff, allies can right-click to enter Medivac. - This ultimate is so diverse in options and is so much fun. I don't really know how to begin to describe things about this heroic in order to help all of you improve on it just because there are so many choices to consider every time you press the R button. One thing to note, Medivac does give you a second health pool, whenever you are getting really focused down and you are about to die you may use this to try to survive. After every teamfight, look to be using Medivac Dropship to be going to the most valuable objective as soon as possible constantly capitalizing on your opponents misfortune in battle. Snowballing the game in your favor because you literally cannot be out-rotated with this heroic."
Snapple Facts for Medivac:
Odin can enter Medivac Misha does not take up a slot inside the Medivac Each of The Lost Vikings take up their own slot in the Medivac Medivac's range actually changes depending on the map that you are on, it covers a percentile of the battleground and changes with each game."
16: Shield Sequencer vs Second Opinion: "Most of the time you will get more survivability for your team by taking Inoculation or Shield Sequencer at this tier than you will by throwing out two grenades. But, against melee heavy compositions, Second Opinion paired with Clear! at level 7 can be a great pick up."
Other notes: You can heal mercs and minions to help push a lane if needed. Couples therapy on full life heroes or mobs will heal you for no mana cost. Bioshield and irradiate on minions can be an interesting push mechanic, but generally is too costly in losing survival talents.
Ok, here is where i think medic will fit in my meta prediction (kinda, i saw some games).
Double support "carry" compositions and split push compositions, each with the respective ultimate.
Why double support? 1 - Medic needs a healer to heal herself properly 2 - Has mana issues when tasked to heal the entire team (specially tanky teams) 3 - The lack of a healing ult (or divine shield) or any aoe heal means medic won't pull those huge healing numbers after all. Its still good, but not what you expect from a medic hero
Stim drone combined with the fact she is easier to fit into double healer may start a trend with teams centered around Illidan, Butcher or Sonya with a backliner like Azmodan, Jaina or Kaelthas (huge aoe dps) and a tank. The new Tassadar and Tyrande might fit in really well.
Wish i had friends, lol.
edit: it might be just bad, but anybody tried to stack stim drone with bloodlust?
They may have to make medivac so that it shows where it is going to the other team to prevent stuff like this:
Or maybe not. What are the reasonable defensive options without giving up total map control staying in position to stop it? Especially since the medic's team didn't even wait to try the 3rd drop, when they could have taken some mercs or worked on the immortal until they knew the other team was out of position before going. Or not tried to go keep and core in one drop with the whole enemy team alive.
No, comparing individual abilities to each other in this way is misleading. Comparing Medivac to Ancestral healing would be just as Amiss. I'll be playing more with medivac to make sure I don't like it, but I don't really hope for much.
The W is good, and very usable, and the fact you don't like it but like the mana returns talent tells me you're using the ability too much. Q is for sustain, W is for when there's serious danger- not for spam.
@MotherFox
Thanks for letting me know! Fixed it, now links to a Team Liquid post
@Karazax
I embrace a very different playstyle from most other support mains, particularly Dread. No surprises that we have 2 different ways to play medic with what looks like little overlap between them. I'll probably do a full writeup on what exactly I mean by "different playstyles" in the near future.
@Superbanana
imo double healer is bad for her because you'll lose too much damage. Her mana issues can be dealt with with good play. Just need someone good to stim and shes a solid pick.
I was left alone on a lane. Basically the same thing happened as if you let Sylv alone. Giant wave of minions pummeled the fort to pieces. Shield + Heal, burns Ammo like crazy. Sadly also your Energy.
Also ... every second game I have to warn others to not waste my Energy.
Medic doesn't really need someone to keep her alive. Even against Dive comps, you simple take tanky talents. Stuns mess up her healing power really hard though. In a double support lineup she really limits the options of other supports, as they need to put out some damage as well. Abathur works godly, Lily and Tyrande too. Abathur just clones her and you tank everything the enemy can put out. Afterwards Abathur hat does damage again.
Had a funny QM with her... Both sides Nova, both sides Medic, and 3 tanks. Enemy Medic died once. (all the tanks took tanky talents wtf and Novas Gathering Power). Never had a game like this on Temples ... We basically won because Chen, ETC and me pushed the enemy off the capture points.
Or maybe not. What are the reasonable defensive options without giving up total map control staying in position to stop it? Especially since the medic's team didn't even wait to try the 3rd drop, when they could have taken some mercs or worked on the immortal until they knew the other team was out of position before going. Or not tried to go keep and core in one drop with the whole enemy team alive.
lmao that was so dirty. They didn't even play that out flawlessly and it was easy.
Played some more medic tonight with major success. I had been neglected the grenade talents, but this post gave me some inspiration.
Lvl 4-
I like the extended range on the grenade if there is a channeling objective. It makes it super easy to disrupt curses/coin turn in. It also lets me clinch kills on chase at much larger extremes.
Lvl 16- Related to the last point on lvl 4, the slowing grenade is super nice for securing kills. Two grenades is hard to pass up, but you can essentially doom someone with a grenade with the slow.
So now I'm hooked. Trauma trigger/ (adv Block or upgraded ballistics) / Clear! / Stim / Couples therapy / system shock / caduceus reactor 2.0. Been winning most of my games all night in QM, aside from the awkward game on haunted mines with no auto attack teammates.
Or maybe not. What are the reasonable defensive options without giving up total map control staying in position to stop it? Especially since the medic's team didn't even wait to try the 3rd drop, when they could have taken some mercs or worked on the immortal until they knew the other team was out of position before going. Or not tried to go keep and core in one drop with the whole enemy team alive.
Or maybe not. What are the reasonable defensive options without giving up total map control staying in position to stop it? Especially since the medic's team didn't even wait to try the 3rd drop, when they could have taken some mercs or worked on the immortal until they knew the other team was out of position before going. Or not tried to go keep and core in one drop with the whole enemy team alive.
Quite map dependent probably, but on Battlefield of Eternity it's just a stupid heroic ability, imo. Whenever you see the Medivac being called as an opponent, you either give up the immortal and port back (-> they might be pushing the core) or you give up the defence (-> they might fly to the immortal). In both cases you can just hope to hit the right spot. I don't think there's a way to keep map control without running the risk to just straight up lose important buildings/the core. And the CD is just so low that the opponent team has to guess what's happening every 50 secs.
On October 10 2015 02:53 Superbanana wrote: Ok, here is where i think medic will fit in my meta prediction (kinda, i saw some games).
Double support "carry" compositions and split push compositions, each with the respective ultimate.
Why double support? 1 - Medic needs a healer to heal herself properly 2 - Has mana issues when tasked to heal the entire team (specially tanky teams) 3 - The lack of a healing ult (or divine shield) or any aoe heal means medic won't pull those huge healing numbers after all. Its still good, but not what you expect from a medic hero
Stim drone combined with the fact she is easier to fit into double healer may start a trend with teams centered around Illidan, Butcher or Sonya with a backliner like Azmodan, Jaina or Kaelthas (huge aoe dps) and a tank. The new Tassadar and Tyrande might fit in really well.
Wish i had friends, lol.
edit: it might be just bad, but anybody tried to stack stim drone with bloodlust?
Did this yesterday:
Our Team: Rehgar and Medic as supps, Kael, Zera, and Me as Raynor! No Tank Enemy was standard Hl comp with Johanna, Sonya, Valla, Naz and Lili i belive
Map: Infernal Shrines
Long story short: Absolutely awesome game in a #7:1GER-BRA kinda way We ***** them so hard, it wasn't even funny My herodamage with Raynor was insane! With Stim and Bloodlust one me, 30 dmg for Seasoned Marksman, Giantkiller i could melt Johanna!! before she could even engage Had more herodamage than enemy team COMBINED!
I think Medic is good but isn't a catch-all support like a Malf or Uther. In that she is a more specific support based upon her team. But for a bruiser heavy comp (like Sonya, Arthas, Jaina, Flex) I think she can really work well. The issue is in Hero League it seems *most* teams still do 1 warrior, 3 ranged DPS, 1 support. And I think she is terrible in those comps.
EPT
