by Lewis Burnell on Jul 08, 2014
The Medic is close quarter, medium armor wearing healer or damage dealer. Wielding Shock Paddles, they're not only capable of dealing massive damage but they are exceptional at looking after their allies. What makes Medics the so different to the likes of the Esper or the Spellslinger is the fact that they're a melee brawler. You need to be up close and personal to deal damage and to heal your allies which makes this class particularly tricky to master.
Medium armor does offset some of the damage you'll receive but you'll need to be quick on your toes to avoid the abundance of telegraphs you'll encounter. Fortunately the Medic has a variety of skills that allow it to lock down opponents, create space or generally survive for long periods of time. The fact they can teleport, put other players in subdued states or excel at area of effect damage makes them highly desirable. Surprisingly, they aren't a particularly popular class with only the Esper being less popular. In think this is partially because of the skill ceiling but also its pump and dump mechanic (we'll talk about that below).
The Medics mechanic requires much more micro management than the likes of the Spellslinger and is a little harder to explain. Across the bottom of your screen you'll see 4 cubes with 3 visible sides. The cubes are known as Actuators. When you utilize some of the damage or heal orientated skills of the Medic you'll consume one or more of these Actuator's (these are known as dump skills). Once the Actuators are depleted, you'll be unable to use any more of the dump skills until you've built up your Actuators again. You can do this in several ways:
Using a pump skill (Discharge for damage or Emission for healing) Getting out of combat AMP's Some skill Tiers.The primary method however is to utilise your pump skill repeatedly during combat, with each pump skill generating 3 "stacks" before being converted into 1 Actuator (thus 3 sides to the Actuators on the User Interface). Alongside this the Medic has an innate ability called Energize. This buff on a 30 second cooldown will restore all your Actuators and dependent on whether you're above or below 30% health will provide further buffs:
Above 30% Health: Restore all Actuators and increase Assault and Support Power by 17% Below 30% Health: Restore all Actuators, restore X Shield and increase Shield mitigation to 100%As you can imagine, utilizing this mechanic to its maximum potential is quite tricky. Not only do you have to monitor your use and the need to continually pump and dump but to also use Energize at the opportune moment. Many poor Medics I encounter make the mistake of fail with this class by pumping too little (thus starving themselves of Actuators), using their dump too little (thus crippling their damage output) or using their Energize too early (thus significantly reducing their damage spike potential). In order to be effective here you have to manage your Actuators precisely and pump and dump as often as humanly possible.
In comparison to the Spellslinger and Esper (though both those classes can last a long time in the right hands) the Medic is particularly hardy. With Medium armor and if you're damage focused it can survive a reasonably long time by itself without healing intervention and if healing focused, it's super difficult to die unless you screw up your pump and dump rotation. That isn't to say they are indestructible because if they're pressured heavily they'll struggle to build Actuators quickly enough to use their dump skills. One of the biggest difficulties facing a Medic, once you've gotten to grips with their mechanic, is to stay in amongst the fights without taking too much damage. There are a couple of options here:
Equip a skill such as Urgency which can be used aggressively to teleport you into combat or to teleport you out of it. Use Restrictor to escape danger or and with some practice, use it backwards so you teleport into a fight (I love doing this). Dispel skills are incredibly useful on a Medic as it will keep you debuff free from slows, roots and snares. Utilize skills such as ML or PS to keep your foes in place.Other than that, you'll need to ensure you've practiced plenty at recognizing which telegraphs you can withstand and which you should avoid. I'd always say try to stay out of them but for the majority of the time it isn't always possible. If you're to maximize your damage output you need to resist retreating from fights and instead get stuck in. Just be aware, as mentioned before, that as a Medic your damage output is entirely reliant on your pump and dump mechanic. To talk about this element of the Medic a little bit more, there are two pump skills and 4 dump skills (two healing and two damage dealing)
As you'll see from the list above, the damage and healing options are limited for pumping, making your reliance on these two skills crucial but also relatively repetitive. Filling 4 Actuators will take 4 casts of Discharge or Emission while two uses of Gamma Rays, Quantum Cascade, Crisis Wave or Shield Surge will deplete your Actuators entirely. Although we'll talk about builds in a separate guide, most people don't equip 2 dump skills though it is viable to take both Crisis Wave and Shield Surge.