Medic

Medic is a Tier 1 hero introducing the Support class. It is both a powerful healer, helper and a an unsuspected damage dealer

## Overview

Medic is a very powerful hero for a tier 1. Not only is she very autonomous when her upgrades are completed, but she also possess a great set of abilities and one of the strongest passive among the tier 1. Her damage dealing potential is great enough to exceed the dps of some heroes against big targets

### Abilities

#### Heal

This ability channels a healing beam on a friendly unit or Medic herself to restore 20 health points per second. It consumes energy based on the heal amount with a 110% ratio, 1 health point healed for 1.1 energy point consumed.

The channeling lasts until Medic as no energy left, interrupt it, dies, or if the target moves out of range or gets its health full.

**Heal** is able to affect any target that is not a special entity (Smoke Clouds, Flares, Sustainement Wards...), under Stasis or garrisoned. It may also target buildings.

#### Speed Boost

Cooldown: 15 seconds - Cost: 50 Energy

This ability surrounds Medic with a buff bubble lasting 15 seconds that increases movement speed and attack speed by 10%, as long as it lasts, for any friendlies inside of it, including Medic. It can be set to auto-cast when it dissipates if enough energy is left in her energy pool.

**Speed Boost** does not affect buildings or turrets, and does not affect friendlies under Stasis. It does however affect garrisoned allies

#### Fan of Knives

Cooldown: 9 seconds - Cost: 50 Energy

Medic's offensive ability. It deals an immediate short range area of damage to any enemies nearby, dealing 60 damage. Hitting enemies tagged as Light additionally slows them by 20% for 4 seconds

#### Parasitic Infection *(Passive)*

Unlocked with Hero Buff 2, this passive makes Medic's weapon fires larvae instead of gray spikes. It deals the same impact damage but infect the target and its surrounding with a permanent poison.

Every 3.75 seconds the poison will spread new spores to nearby enemies and deal 7% of the host current health as damage. This process lasts until the target either dies or becomes Invulnerable by some means. Dying prevents the spread from occurring until Hero Buff 2 is acquired again.

## Heroic Buffs

Hero Buff 1:

* Increases Medic's energy regeneration by 2
* Increases both bonuses from **Speed Boost** by 25%
* Increases **Heal** amount by 20

Hero Buff 2:

* Increases Medic's movement speed by 0.35
* Increases Medic's energy regeneration by 1
* Unlock **Parasitic Infection**

## Playing Medic

Medic is a very strong support with a very versatile ability set. Able to heal, give bonuses and also damage lightly or very hard the enemy if the Parasitic Infection is unlocked, the only thing she lacks is killing power.

**Heal** is a very good tool to ensure an ally's or your survival against many enemies, and it gets even stronger if used on entities with a lot of armor. It's main weakness is that two Medics cannot heal the same target at once and while you are channeling it you cannot do anything else so placement is important. The consumption ratio gets as low as 0.1 energy point for 1 health point when all upgrades are done.

However without upgrades early in the game **Heal** has better to be toggled off so you can keep that precious energy for **Fan of Knives** shots. In its base state the consumption ratio is 110% which is 22 energy points for 20 health points, that is a lot of waste. You may upgrade the consumption to at least its 6th level before attempting any combat healing.

**Speed Boost** is an overall very good ability because it grants the most important buff of Zombie World, a movement speed buff. Furthermore it is a great one since upgraded you go on a 60% movement speed increase while you are in the bubble. Its main weakness is the size of the bubble, which is pretty small, but it is still more than enough for a whole team to fit in, or otherwise its most important components.

The fact it can smart auto-cast is a good relief in the player stress as you can freely put your attention on other things instead of being attentive on when the bubble dissipates. You can still toggle off the auto-cast if you want to give yourself more regeneration. Using smart auto-cast, as Medic consumes 50 energy points per cast, if you spread that value on the duration it's a constant 3.33 energy points per second consumed which is an important note to take when toggling on that option.

Finally **Fan of Knives** is quite the low value of the set. It is a non-upgradable ability that only gets slight bonus from Damage Bonus gas upgrade. Using it you go on a 90 damage per shot, which makes it the lowest damaging ability of the game. That being said, Medic's set for a T1 is very great so the fact the ability lacks power isn't that dramatic. It is also strong enough to clear your back from Speedlings and, if you have some levels and gas spent, Roachlings, which are the two melee enemies that will cause the most threat to you.

Played at the proper difficulties, **Fan of Knives** is a perfect splash tool for Medic to get easy farm kills as early in game Zombies do not have 60 health points yet unless playing on Nightmare and superior. It will not last long, but should buy you enough time to get some levels in energy regeneration and range upgrades, which are your first to do upgrades followed by the **Speed Boost** speed bonus upgrade. The higher your Damage talent is, the more time you will have to do more upgrades.

However **Fan of Knives** shall not be used offensively past that point until you get enough upgrades and gas upgrades to be able to safely kite with it while not depleting your energy in the process.

It is to be noted that a **Fan of Knives** shot can instantly kill a Creep Tumor. Due to your high speed, it is advised you take the role of a creep hunter because out of all Tier 1, only Reaper is more efficient at it than you, but often Reaper players do not go for a hunt since they are immune and don't care.

### Support Line

As you lack crowd killing power, your best bet is to help a hero that have that power by priority targeting dangerous foes such as Queens or Creep Walkers. You should always prioritize giving the helping hand to allies rather than going on your own as said allies will produce the damage output required to clear the difficulty much faster than you will. At most you may go for a walk and infect corner bosses with your passive, but that shall be pretty much the only time you go alone unless you have a very good reason to do that again.

### Killing with Fan of Knives

There is a 3 steps "safe" move for that which only works on the condition of having all your upgrades done, smart autocast of **Speed Boost** enabled, and at least Ability Cooldown, Hero Buff 1 or Hero buff 2 bought so that you don't heavily drain your energy performing it.

The 3 steps are merely:

* Move in near the side of the pack. All packs tend to become elongated the more they are walking so going for the side maximize the targets hit.
* Cast **Fan of Knives** at the most adequate spot in that position.
* Leave in the safest direction, preferably a perpendicular vector.

This should not be used against Roaches unless having a good practice. The reason to that is because Roach is the introduction to fodder monsters having ranged abilities, with his being the Acid Spit. It is risky as Medic is quite a low life hero and going near them might result into death. Additionally, without gas upgrades, your ability deals very low damage while the armor of Roaches and their health is quite high in comparison.

Following the Roach Pack you shall avoid doing this offensive move as the next fodder pack is the Starving Pack, which contain Elite Marine Zombies to all of its waves. Elite Marine Zombies weapon and ability strike farther than the radius of **Fan of Knives**, rendering it merely useless at this point of the game. You still have a use thanks to the rest of your abilities but Fan of Knives from there would pretty much be used only to clear creep tumors.

### Spread the parasite

The properties of **Parasitic Infection** basically allows to infect the whole map with your passive. It is directly designed to spread easily and its permanent nature makes it very powerful. For that reason, Hero Buff 2 is a gas upgrade you want to have as a second buy or in 3rd place.

Dealing current health damage, it will weaken any enemy infected at the same rate, no matter the actual damage dealt. It makes it as efficient to weaken a Queen than it is to weaken an Ultralisk. As a secondary effect, you effectively gain experience every time your infection damage its hosts. For that reason, it is used by many to infect both corner bosses and gain a good burst of experience until both their lives get too low to do significant damage anymore.

Combined with the range of your weapon, it is actually easy to start the pandemic and it is advised to do that as much as possible

The **Parasitic Infection** has 2 weaknesses however:

First, it cannot kill. As it deals current health damage, you will at most get monsters to have 1 or 2 health points left but you will never kill them using it. You have to finish them off yourself or have an ally do it.

Second, its power meets its limits the more you progress in waves. In later waves, all monsters start to have life regeneration and they end up regenerating more than the infection deals damage because of the current health damage property. So instead of having a few health points left, Roaches for example tend to have more than 25% of their health remaining.

### Conclusion

Medic is a very good starter for the Support role as you can help on many aspects. Be it by healing allies, giving them precious attack speed and movement speed boosts, clearing creep for them, dealing %health damage to high health enemies. The range of tasks a Medic can perform is very wide and they are simple enough there is no need to specialize.

Being quite weak on your own, always try to be with someone and, doing so, share your bonuses as much as possible. If you wish to be alone, remember that your killing power is very low and use your **Fan of Knives** wisely.

It should be noted that it is not quite the first hero you want to play in the starter heroes set as you need to have some basics to use her properly. That being said, a few games with Marine, Vulture or Stalker to get your hands on these basics will be more than enough to appreciate the strength of Medic if you wish to experience the Support branch.

## Upgrades

Medic has 8 upgrades and 1 special upgrade

### Pattern

Medic should always start by upgrading her Energy Regeneration, putting 4 levels in it, then upgrading weapon and heal range once, and continuing energy regeneration until maxed. From that point it's pretty much open for everyone's style.

### Special Upgrade

Caduceus Reactor is a wonderful upgrade as it brings much more healing and much more survivability to you. With these additional 45 health points you can easily accept to take more risks for your allies as you can endure more hits. It can be done whenever the player wants

Medic costs 15400 Minerals to max + 2500 Minerals and 350 Vespene for her special upgrade

## Evolution

Medic requires the Team Game challenge to start her evolution course.

Her Final Stage is referred as General Nikara.

## Trivia

* Fan of Knives used to be Warcraft 3 Warden's ability. It was revamped entirely as it was too inefficient to use for the style of Zombie World.

* Fan of Knives has a 1% chance of playing a fart sound when cast.