How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Quickfix

"please use normal uber"

Perhaps the most controversial item that we got from the Uber Update (yeah, old news) is the Quick Fix. There’s a vocal bunch of people that actively dislikes it and ask medics to switch to one of the two classic medic guns, and well, it is undeniable that the quickfix does have a few major downsides in respect to the regular medi gun.

Namely, the #1 reason why people oppose the use of the quickfix is its uber does not grant you invulnerability. Well, invulnerability definitely is every bit as cool as it sounds. Yes, if you use the quickfix too late you’re going to die shortly after using it, and your patient is going to follow you and more people are going to say, “told ya, stop using the quickfix.” And perhaps they have a point.

A less heard of, but just as critical downside of the quickfix is, it can’t overheal. This is huge when facing pocket medics from other mediguns: a heavy healed by a quickfix gun isn’t going to win in a 1v1 vs a heavy overhealed and healed by a normal medigun, unless the quickfix medic pops the uber and the other medic doesn’t. You’ll have to bring more gun.

Aside: if the patient is already overhealed, however, the quickfix will let you hold that overheal; it won’t replenish it when it absorbs damage, however. Dispensers also do that, so next time do stop by and overheal your engie by his nest.

So, you can’t overheal and you can’t give your team invulnerability, and you can’t give your team guaranteed critical shots. Let’s see what you can do though.

First off, you heal people. You know, it’s your whole job class description. And you heal people fast.  A whopping 40% faster, actually.

Heal rate in hit points per second. The heal rate increases if the patient has taken no damage recently. The soft blue bar refers to a patient that has taken no damage in the last 15 seconds.

Okay, so when you put it in these terms, 10 more hitpoints per second doesn’t sound like a big difference on the paper, but this is just the beginning. When you do uber, you do heal the full 100.8 hit points per second — and that’s before the out of combat bonus applies, bringing the theoretical heal rate to over 300 hitpoints per second. Oh, and you’re not just healing your patient, but you’re also healing yourself. (Unlike the regular medigun, you must be actually ubering somebody, however, for that to happen.)

You’re not completely invulnerable, but in most situations this is enough healing for all parties involved. Also, it’s great to just use the uber to heal yourself up, and take the opportunity to quickly heal everybody else in the progress.

(The relevant part of the video pretty much ends at 2:13, but the entire video is about the quickfix. Feel free to sit through all eight minutes, though. I’ll wait for you.)

During an entire regular uber, for comparison, you heal your patient 160 points while denying all damage, while you heal yourself for 24-48 (8-32 with the blutsauger, 32-56 with the medieval item set). And with the Kritzkrieg you’re not invulnerable at all, either.

Also, a regular uber doesn’t really do you much good if you spend all of your eight seconds of glory pinned against a wall due to sentry knockback or pyro airblasts. A regular uber doesn’t protect you from the stun effect of the Gunslinger’s or the Huntsman’s tauntkill either. A quickfix has none of these problems: you can’t be pushed around, you can’t suffer knockback and tauntkills won’t stun you.

(Tauntkills will kill you, however.)

Oh, by the way, you’re also charing ubercharge at nominal Kritzkrieg speeds, except faster! See, you build uber half as fast if your target is overhealed at 142.5% health or more (the maximum possible overheal being 150%), but the quickfix cannot overheal in the first place! This means that you’re going to reach uber much faster than even the Kritzkrieg. (There would be a lot of footnotes to put in this paragraph, so see here for some more information.)

Every time I play a regular ubersaw medic and get to 60% uber, I can’t help but think, “damn, if I had the vitasaw and the quickfix I could uber right this second.” Instead, I have much more healing to do before those eight seconds of glory can begin.

Time to reach full uber. The actual time to uber for the Kritzkrieg and the regular medigun is somewhere in between that blue area. The longer you actually heal people, the better. Beware: ubercharge build rate halves further if you heal somebody who is already being healed by another medic, dispenser or payload cart.

And we haven’t covered the most important thing about this uber: you can capture points with it. The Kritzkrieg also lets you do that, but without the ultra high healing speed of this medigun. That’ll easily let you get most final points: just uber, walk on the point and wait that couple seconds. (Be careful about those stickies however.)

But wait! There’s more! Is there a long queue at the teleport entrance? Are you in a tight spot and need to run for your life? Just heal a scout and run faster than any equalizer soldier can ever go. (As a bonus you also heal the scout. :P) Unfortunately the “Move at the speed of any faster heal target” effect isn’t activated by speed bonuses to you, such as the Gas Jockey’s Gear item set, so you will still lose contact with that charging/sticky-jumping demoknight, or that rocket jumping jerk soldier.

So, let’s wrap this up. The Quickfix is an awesome medigun, and you shouldn’t let anybody else tell you otherwise. You have to get into the right mindset however. There’s no point in having a heal buddy, since you can’t overheal, so spread the love! Do use that uber — even if it’s to save your skin from that pyro behind you. And if that pyro was a backburner pyro with his 525 DPS (?), just consider you likely wouldn’t have had a regular uber ready to save your ass with anyway. Shit happens, and you’re going to have another uber ready in no time anyway!

Oh, and if your quickfix uber patients keep going down, perhaps you should try the regular medigun instead. Sometimes, you just need invulnerability. Do try and realize that before there’s less than a minute on the clock. ;)

I know I probably haven’t changed your mind, but I hope this helps you understand why I for one choose the quick fix over the medigun. It’s just more fun.