medic (and the crossbow) is most definitely the most overpowered thing in the game; and that's not a bad thing by any means. a strong medic keeps the flow of the game and lets players stay in combat, making the game more fun for everybody. so what if he's the strongest? he's meant to be for a reason.
would definitely be nice for all the other syringe guns (including stock) to be buffed in some way. as it currently stands, they're all pretty gimmicky and rely on being in very specific situations, while the crossbow excels due to being useful in literally every single situation.
What about them doing a small amount of healing on hit? 2 - 4 healing per projectile on a weapon with bullet spread doesn't seem that OP, so it would only be a niche thing and so wouldn't really be that powerful.
I think that’s just how the class was originally balanced… mesic wasn’t supposed to have good spikes damage at huge ranges, and certainly wasn’t intended to be able to do 150 spike heals from any distance. The crossbow is a cool and skill based weapons that entirely ignores the balance and deign of medic. I think the other primaries are fine as. Buffing this damage or rate of fire would be dumb(because if you can land shots their dps is already scary good), and giving them a gimmick revolving around healing people would again be going against the classes core design of having A healing gun, and a weak pea shooter to use in desperate situations
@@jamesmoniz5263 He didn't intend to do that, but it happened anyway. Just because it wasn't ORGINALLY intended, doesn't mean it isn't part of the game. Did you know originally, Pyro didn't have airblast? Or that Heavy's minigun rev was a lot slower? Engineer couldn't move buildings? That teleporters cost 125 metal back then? And Demo's stickies aren't supposed to be spammed the way they are? Yeah, those were all added or discovered after the game's launch. You can see the intended purpose for stickies in Meet the Demoman. Shoot pipes for offense, and sticky traps for defense. But what do most Demos do? Spam stickies. Pyro was originally a w+m1 class for people with bad internet. Now? Combos that people discovered and airblast to help teammates. Heavy in the original game was considered underpowered, until they helped by increasing rev speed. Engineer can haul buildings now, which allows him to play more aggressively and make Engineer less boring. So much has changed about the game over time, that I don't think saying "This was the OG design" is a good argument against crossbow or anything like that. Do you think Valve intended soldiers to be able to fly across the map and hit people with a spoon? The crossbow DOES help with Medic's core class: ignore damage and go for heals. What does the crossbow do? HEAL. And rewards Medics for being able to aim WITH HEALS. It is an incredibly fun weapon to combo heal with, and heal teammates at range, and up close, requires skill, precision nd game sense to use, it's an incredibly good design. It's only overpowered in the context of Medic's syringe guns. I think Theor-Y studios already made a video on how to buff the Syringe guns without making them offensive, and the Chriscarr guy probably meant when healing, he meant healing teammates by shooting them. Also, NO. Why would giving them healing capabilities go against class design? The only thing I agree with is not giving Medic the ability to stand on his toes without giving up healing. Again, just because the class was originally designed like that doesn't mean it has to STAY that way.
@@mariustan9275 the crossbow lets medic full heal light/medium classes from 1 hp to full with 0 risk (apposed to how the medic has always been balanced with the mediguns to need to be near your pocket to heal you, then can't just stand 2 miles away and out heal the quickfix as well as building your stock uber). The class is balanced around positioning, and the crossbow lets the medic hide in the backlines and get dumb healing numbers and farm uber. Skill requirements (which I'd argue the most critical issues with the weapon aren't related to) don't magically make unbalanced weapons ok. If something is OP but requires skill to use, that doesn't magically make it balanced. A good (but not perfect) example of this is wobbling in melee, it requires semi precise timing and for you to chain that over and over again. If you wanna 0 to death someone it takes skill, but if you fail there is no risk, they just break out of the grab, and if you succeed you 0 to death any character in the game with 0 counter play. Skill isn't an absolute defense when talking about the balance of things in games. why ever use the quickfix when crossbow competes with it in healing and lets you farm a stronger uber? The crossbow is a cool idea on at a glance that is way over tuned and came out long after the hay day of there being a sizable tf2 dev team with tons of thought being put into every mechanic, and it shows in its very bad balancing. (just to touch on why giving the needle guns healing is also bad, because that isn't their role. The medic has a dedicated "medigun" which the class is entirely balanced around. Giving the class with a very well designed [as a result of lots of time and effort going into designing it] healing mechanic another way of doing healing that circumvents its entire design of the class is just silly. The stock weapons aren't bad, its just post hay day valve didn't care enough to consider if certain unlocks actually made sense in the context of the game or not)
crossbow is my all time favorite weapon , not only does it feelsgood but its the first ever weapon i craft also what if you make a medic weapons tier list ? that would be fun (its done now)
@@JrdnKritz ah, personally I would love to see the fundamentals fixed. Start with Needlegun, which will stay the weakest but it's changes will help with the other two. The issue: it has the wrong Design for it's Job. The job: help medic fill in the gaps of his defence in between Beaming without being a strong weapon on it's own. The two parts of this Job are mutually exclusive on a weapon with a clip that takes 4!! seconds to empty. That's longer than it takes Soldier Scout or Demo to empty their primary clip. With that it will either be weak combined with the medibeam or too strong as a standalone. Therefore, you start by lowering medic's clip from 40 needles to 15, with the same firing speed of 0.1 seconds and a passive reload of 1.5 seconds. Now this weapon has a 50% downtime, allowing us to give it faster moving and more visible needles, each dealing 12 base damage and having half falloff, so point blank needles deal 14 damage and at minimum deal 9. This means that a total clip at midrange can deal 180 damage per clip, compared to the current theoretical 400, but you can use them SO much more reliably with the higher DPS and projectile speed. Obviously this is still outclassed by the CC and that is OK, the stock for Medic should be subpar so new players learn that they should heal on this class. From there, you can buff the other two weapons. The Overdose is almost perfectly fine once you carry over the above changes. Just give it Uber proportional in line with the self-healing you do, that way it can fight against CC as a primary that won't sacrifice your Uber building for using it to self defend and help your team finish off targets. The Overdose is a Utility. I think that having it give more speed at the lower precentages (but not on 0) than now would be enough to make it worth using, especially with the base buffs.
I honestly think the only thing that needs to be done to medic's primaries is to just increase the speed of the needles. In my opinion this is perfect because it doesn't really change the needle gun from being weak weapons, it just make them a lot less frustrating to use and it would really definitively put them over crossbow for combat.
I like the fact that needles are shit - it drills into the newbies the medic's role. A new medic player shouldn't be trying to aggressively score damage. The needles do just fine as a defensive option when you're backed into a retreat
One thing the super slow projectile does is it makes the syringes awfull when rushing in but deadly when backtracking. Its probably what the devs did it-to encourage defencive use. I think pushing that even harder and implementing the passive reload on them and maybe even making the up close damage reall good. They will still be horrible for rushing in, but give medics who know how to use it well a winable fight. Its kinda how valve tried to balance the blutsauger with stock: you trade the crossbows extra heals and long range picks when you are successfully hokding the line with the team for incredible survivability when things get messy.
The thing I love about the Crusader's Crossbow is that firing an arrow down a busy chokepoint is a win because you are bound to hit someone, either a friendly or enemy player.
Valve often comes up with pretty mundane weapon stats but sometimes they pull a rabbit out of their ass and gift us weapons like the Crossbow. Not only do the crossbow’s attachments grant you more ways to use it, the inclusion of the “Discharge” round is phenomenal. Even though the build’s time is limited, you’ll have a blast using it, and it’s amazing that a weapon like that is available in the first place.
Another incredibly based medic video. Something about the thunk that plays when you gouge out an enemy’s eye from across the map gives me an instant dopamine infusion. Pair with Quick-Fix for Total Damage Repair mode
The Crossbow is so good I actually have a Medic config that changes RMB to pull out and shoot the crossbow when I hold it down, and then as soon as I let go it switches back. Getting the timing down between clicking the button and the bow firing can be tricky, but it means I don't have to scroll or use number keys at all to switch between my two most important healing tools as a Medic. Also 5:53: I don't think that Pyro expected to be alive after he landed, he looks shook!
I love going back to your older videos and seeing you be slightly worse with the crossbow, compared to the frequent midair shots you pull of now, it really inspires me to practice 🙂
I love to find other medics that are crossbow enthusiasts. I have mained vaccinator for years and I totally agree with you, I probably would not play medic if it were not for the crossbow and or the vacc. They make doc so much more fun to play
"People die all the time because I start missing crossbow shots. Who gives a shit? I take the L and tell myself I'll get 'em next time." easily the most gigachad healer take I've ever heard from any support in any video game
I love that Heavy. I play medic to a Heavy that has a couple thousand hours, but he's an older guy and he lives Heavy's mantra "I like to shoot this gun." He tries but he's not very good at picking which target is more dangerous or who he should focus on, not good at remembering what weapons he has or how he could use them better. Explaining to him how to use the Holiday Punch is like pulling teeth, or "when," he should use it. But as a good medic and as a good friend I stick right beside him. He has fun and even if it kills me inside when we die and when we could have survived hearing him have a good time almost make it all worth it.
Looking into the endless sea of tf2 weapon videos, it's easy to view it as a desolate wasteland where content goes to bore. This video was a very good exception. Bravo, it was very informative and well crafted video
Another banger video - you inspired me to try out the crossbow/vaxx technology and I've been really enjoying playing medic recently for those clutch bubble+arrow moments.
this crossbow is absolutely incredible and dominant and i feel as if valve is very aware. i was thinking about the argument of it making all of his other primaries irrelevant due to it's sheer potential and skill ceiling, and i genuinely can't think of a way to make the other syringe guns comparable to the crossbow in any capacity. its just that incredible and i love it all i can imagine is a new option being added (think the second banana to the sandwich) that would give medic two utility primary options. i have no ideas but its all i can imagine to make medic's primary options slightly more versatile, although i would think this is very hard on valve's part since the crossbow is designed to a near godly level (also ur gameplay inspired me to start using the vacc and its been so fun lol, keep up your amazing content it's super informative and enjoyable to watch)
I will say, in regards to the "missing with the crossbow" point, the issue is that the reward for missing with the sniper is essentially the same as not shooting. And those are the two choices the sniper has. But for the crossbow, the reward for missing the crossbow is drastically less than healing with the medigun beam. But the fact that you can miss is what makes the crossbow fun and interesting. But anyways, good video! I started using the vaccinator/crossbow pairing after watching previous videos of yours on it, and it's been so much fun. In pubs where medic is kind of an easy class, it's a super fun way to make the game a LOT more involved and thinky.
There is a reason one of the first tf2 rivals made the first character basicly just a guy with the crossbow. Yes, i am talking about anna from overwatch.
Here's another tip with getting hit's with the crossbow, just play Rescue Ranger Engi lamo. It projectile's basically the same, and you have 4 shots instead of 1, so more chances to practice and it's faster. Just remember to shoot your friends when going back to Medic and not the enemy, at least, not all the time. There's a reason why I only ever use the RR when I play Engi. Now if only the Syringe Guns have as much utility as the Crossbow. Then there would be more choices as to which primary a Medic should run. Just give them all a alt fire on cooldown that shoots a healing bolt similar to the Crossbow, so you're not completely gimping your team for choosing something other than CC. If you want to be extra fancy with the alt fire's, * Stock heals the target * Blutsauger gives the target health on hit, in other words, lifesteal * Overdose gives the target speedboost on hit Stock isn't anything too fancy, and while has worst healing compared to the Crossbow, it gives you better self defense. Bluts would encourage more aggressive plays from the target OD would allow the target to push or escape better, or just get to the front line faster. Crossbow is Crossbow, it heals REALLY good, and you can snipe with it.
This video forced me to think wouldn't be more cool if we had crossbow like utility weapons? Thinking the possibilities makes me play even more Note: I see you use a lot of street fighter themes so I want to make a request pls use "this is true love makin' " (capcom vs SNK 2 london theme) as a back ground music, older fighting game themes is a hidden gem and its gonna fit well in tutorial type of video
I am often told that I am a good medic in TF2. I don't hit every Crossbow shot and I miss kinda often but I use the Crossbow, Quick Fix, And the amputator. It's my "Healing load out"
First time watching one of your videos and I am incredibly surprised by the quality. I think this video says a lot about what I thought about the crossbow and the gameplay was really nice to watch! I hope to see more videos soon and will definitely subscribe if I see more quality content (not asking for new videos I'm probably just going to go and watch your other ones)
I would only give the crossbow one change, and that’s to make healing arrows for teammates left click and damaging arrows righ-click/alt fire bind. I would do it so you can’t just spam arrows in a cluster of 5 people or a choke point and always get a win out of it; whether it be damaging someone in the crowd or healing someone. Because honestly on a basic level you only need 2 braincells to be decent with this weapon, I think by making it so you choose either damage or healing it would reduce the spam effectiveness in groups.
Idea to buff Medic's other Primary Weapons: Syringe Gun - For each needle hit, you gain 1% Uber. Blutsauger - Syringes have a 20% faster projectile speed. Overdose - (Play on the name:) Healing targets gain 20% more maximum overheal.
been experimenting with medic primaries and i have also an idea (although this is more of a rework than a buff) Syringe Gun - maybe just combine the blut and the overdose to the syringe gun (letting you heal on hit and gain speed boost on hit too) and a faster projectile Overdose - i have 2 of those , either making the overdose can drop disposable health packs (usually small but after healing with your medigun you can alt fire to drop medium health packs) or a utility that lets you cloak and gain 25% speed for 5 seconds without attacking (every 33% uber built) Blutsauger - Kinda the trickiest one but im thinking like shooting a heal bomb every 33% built , or maybe it creates a heal blast (sort of like doom eternal's heat blast) that heals mass amounts but you have to heal a lot with your medigun too im unsure if some of these are balanced but these are my ideas , overall your balance idea is pretty good especially with the overdose
I think that medic primaries rework should be a support type of primary, like a backpack that does AoE healing at a level 1 or 2 dispensers rate or maybe a pills that lets you throw a health pack every some seconds. I really like the tf2classic melee that gives you the ability to hit someone for a full heal every some seconds. I think those kinds of items are more interesting that syringes
Honestly this single ‘weapon’ is the most defining thing for medic and nothing brings a smile to my face more than shooting a bolt and just randomly killing someone. And good lord the dopamine this thing injects is insane. I don’t usually use the crossbow in intense firefights since i’m not at the point where i know if the ally i’m healing will even live for the split second the beam is off them.. though maybe i should just grow a new pair of balls and go for the bolt anyway.
I always thought that if the Crusader's Crossbow gets a nerf, it should just be taking away the ubercharge build on hit. It didn't have that stat at first, and I don't know why Valve added it before giving the freaking Amputator taunt ubercharge build. Taking it away wouldn't kill the weapon, there'd still be the aspect of quicker, long ranged healing via hitting a projectile, it'd just be a steeper tradeoff compared to healing.
I get that the crossbow is really good....but damn if I don't adore my Overdose. Peppering overconfident scouts and demos to death with needles is so satisfying.
The worse bit about crossbows is your teammates don't notice you have a crossbow or any one else that needs health. So many times, I am jumping to shoot over the three soldier mains who scream medic pocket me, when Pyro or heavy is hiding in a corner at 1 hp. I want to get them that boost, but that soldier main blocks all my shots.
tbh i'm naturally good at crossbow shots because i played a lot of pyro and engineer, both using base flare gun(yes i'm not a dum dum using annoying one) and the rescue ranger it sorta translates into understanding the projectile better and so i normally hit more crossbow shots than a miss them, even at long ranges, though i know my teammates feel dumb when they look at me, see the crossbow and dodge it, i don't blame them for being jumpy and eager to get back in the fray though i flat out cannot play medic without the crossbow, its a requirement because medic is basically a glorified sniper's trophy past a certain point, most power classes shred any class you are hooked onto, pocketing becomes the main use and dying from splash damage or rush down classes like scout is way more common being stuck within an arms reach of any teammates who are being attacked, basically the crossbow is powerful because its what medic's primaries SHOULD BE, not some slower more meaningless sniper secondary that deals no real use aside from softening up an enemy who is rushing after you for either a melee kill or a teammate to kill, its pathetic and pales in comparison to the crossbow for its lack of meaning, now i'm not good at the vaccinator, its powerful and i really want to get better at other mediguns but its just really good lol though i am just slow on the changing and ubering lol
The crossbow set was MADE for vaccinator or quick fix tbh. But the shield bubble swap heal resistances + heal swap back combos are too tanky. The ranged health can save teammates whod die from fall damage with like 20 health up tp 70 back down to 10 but survive. The amputator does what no other weapon does and AoE heals. When in a tight area sometimes pulling it out and healing massive amounts of hp to EVERYONE + a dispenser or extra medic = you're set. You may/can maybe die in the process but with both weapons your teammates will have mid health if done right and can defeat the low ammo empty mag weak low health enemies and win the game.
Crossbow is also pretty good at nailing spies or, at the lower end of the skill spectrum, just dumping one or two into the crowd on the cart to defend a capture point.
There's a reason why the crossbow is overpowered, it was released with medieval mode. It was intended to function as the medi gun of medieval mode. It wasn't designed with standard casual or comp in mind.
Medic was designed to be op so people would play healer, back in 2007. Today I think the crossbow is simply too good for other weapons to compete, but instead of nerfing it we should buff the others.
The issue with crossbow vs syringe guns is that syringe guns are meant to suck at putting out damage to teach medics to focus on healing. This means that the crossbow is the only medic primary not purposefully gimped. No wonder everyone agrees it‘s the medics strongest primary.
I remember before i watched your vids, i mained vacc, and i annoyed some people. I have since started using vacc tech, and i annoy alot, ALOT of people now. Its fantastic!
I used to want the crossbow nerfed, but then I realized that's like wanting to nerf the gunboats on soldier because its the meta choice. (Yeah I know unlike Medic's primaries most all of Soldier's secondaries are pretty well designed, but even pockets gunboats in 6s these days.)
I think the issue with gunboats is a lack of viable alternatives for constantly jumping playstyles. If other (non-trash) soldier weapons gave meaningful self-damage reduction then I doubt it'd be as dominant.
@@neutraldalek4222 Well thing is, I don't see the issue with the gunboats being the sole occupier for the niche. The upsides of being able to cross the map need to be negated by not having a secondary. And its not like the other soldier weapons don't fulfill their own niche, which if I am being honest are usually more pragmatic on more corridor-centric maps you'll commonly find in pubs.
Well done video, now here's my take. "The first reason for giving something a nerf is if it is blatantly overpowered" You say the crossbow isn't when you just covered how incredibly good it is XD Like, I love it, but even if I do love it, it's just too good. I don't think a core mechanic ought to be changed though, rather, maybe get rid of medic's self healing when it's equipped for an exchange of how much you heal vs how much you can heal your team. If you're staying back with it anyways, no problem, you take little damage and a good heavy will pass you a sandvich as needed or you occasionally look for a healthpack.
@@Theory-Y I would argue that the Overdose is usable at complimenting his need for good positioning, but it's certainly not as impactful, no doubt there. I think it was Array, but I'm not certain, who said the stock syringe gun was meant to teach players to not go battle medic and instead heal, as the medicine man ought to do, so I don'thave so much of an issue with that. I also don't think the other 2 primaries (medic needs more primaries :| ) ought to be so overshadowed, but buffing them is hard without breaking things. The Blutsauger is already good for defending yourself, and the Overdose is ok, and a buff could cause janky things or make it busted with Ubersaw or Vitasaw. In the end, if it makes Medic as fun to play as he is for me, then the crossbow probably ought to stay as is with so few pub meds about.
I personally would not played medic as one of my main classes if it did not have the crossbow & Vec . i personally think the other syringe guns should be made into a weaker version of the crossbow but keeping their normal primary fire to bring the whole class to next level . let be real . no one use anything else . i tried the overdose but i felt that my team would appreciate it more if they stayed alive more often than me .
The crossbow is broken, and it's for people who have broken through the high skill ceiling needed to land their shots, it's very unfun to play against, it needs a tweak of some kind, being able to clutch and heal shots is FINE.... but it needs some sort of caveat, an easy fix would be to just simply.. remove passive reload when not equipped, it would prevent clutch heals that keeps the entire team alive as long as they're within the line of sight of the medic, since if they're more spread out, then switching from beam to bow would be constant, so being forced to either reload or keep healing with beam becomes problematic, if you reload then you're not healing close range, and if you're healing close range then you can't heal long range.
I was with you up until you said don't go after the sniper with a second arrow. Nothing is more satisfying in TF2 than dropping a good sniper at very long range with the crossbow.
My only gripe with the crossbow is that it just shouldn't heal so much at point blank. Medigun is for that and there's no reason for crossbow to be better at what medigun does at close range because... it's just too easy to hit those shots, that's way too high of a reward for something so banal. As a skill rewarding mechanic with inverse fall off of healing it's marvelous, but having to pull out your crossbow because it basically outheals the medigun with those 75 hp boosts? It's like crossbow has completely lost its original intended purpose of a long range healing tool and the way it's used is comical. It's like situation with the old ambassador all over again (except with distances reversed), but no one really cares as it doesn't (directly) cause your demise. I personally think close range healing should start at as low as 50 hp at the very least so that the medics don't feel so happy go lucky with tanking their pocket while being stuck directly in their ass for the whole match with this thing anymore
The crossbow gets a bit too strong when you use the vaccinator as an effective 204 HP per second is ridiculous. Literally the only thing that can kill someone in this state is half the enemy team, and having what is effectively Übercharge against a few people that lasts longer and can be cut short to save for later is broken good. Granted this is a problem the vacc creates so nerfing that would be good but the crossbow would still be the same. Right now, buffing the syringe guns to the same level as the crossbow would make medic no longer medic. So toning the crossbow down a bit before bringing the stringe guns up to it would be the only way. I have too problems with the crossbow; passive reload and too much ammo. The passive reload is a problem because it's essentially dual wielding your primary and secondary. This is fine with the flare guns as they're secondaries and the pyro isn't always flipping between his primary and secondary. The too much ammo is a problem because it has 40 bolts! You never run out. It's literally 70 seconds (68.25 to be exact) of non-stop shooting to empty it. The gas passer fully recharges before you run out of shots. So either removing the passive reload and changing it to a hard reload or severely cutting down the ammo to say 15 or even 10 would nerf the cross to a sufficient degree. I'd only take one of these and i'd take the ammo nerf as the hard reload would just annoy people who have to change their muscle memory and the passive reload is a part of what makes the crossbow fun to use. The less ammo would mean the medic couldn't spam it to kingdom come and instead would force them to be conservative with their shots so its healing output is on average nerfed.
@@Theory-Y it's not the output of healing it's how long the output can be sustained that should be toned down as I said, a minute of non-stop firing means you'll get more than enough time to get to an ammo box meaning that it has effectively an infinite ammo pool
If either crossbow or vaccinator didn't exist medic'd be fine, but neither didn't he'd be the worst class in the game only possible beaten by spy for that title is
I think that the syringe guns should have available a weaker healing bolt as alt fire If you really really hated the crossbow you could also make syringes reload passively and all healing bolts needing to be manually reloaded
I think the healing is fine, but the damage is a bit high for such a hard to see, fast moving projectile. It's super janky to reflect as well, somehow you can get hit AND reflect it at the same time.
