1. Ubers are all about gaining ground and keeping ground. There are way too many situations in which you should pop to save your pocket/demo and when you shouldn't to explain in a short post. It all comes down to quickly analyzing how much ground you think the enemy team is going to get if you a) Drop players or b)Use your uber in a non-ideal situation.

For example, if you have the enemy pushed back to last and you notice your pocket got a little too extended and is now going to die, you should NOT chase him down and save him, because it will just lead to the enemy team having a full uber advantage on you. You have better chances of holding the point if you let your pocket die, and just sit back and force the enemy team to uber early before coming into your team.

There are too many situations for me to explain when you should just drop a player, and the only thing you can do is play more to learn the consequences of your actions.

2. It is good to milk ubers when you know that the enemy team's uber is not going to kill you or your pocket/demo/multiple flanking classes. If the enemy team ubers far away, milk your uber for long enough so that your team does not get damaged a lot. If the other team is good, you probably won't get many kills, but you will at least swap ubers and stay in the same position as you were before.

One thing you should not do when milking ubers is allowing your entire team to get heavily damaged. Even if you milk a few seconds, the amount of flashing you would have to do to save your wounded team might turn the uber advantage against you. One thing you have to remember is that ubers =/= no one dying. If you have to flash a lot your uber is going to be useless and milking it actually hurt you in the end.

3. It is a good time to switch to kritz when both the medics respawn at the same time, and you want a ~10 second advantage on the other team. It is a high risk but high reward play, because you have to immediately take advantage of your kritz advantage when you get it otherwise the other team will just have uber to completely nullify your kritz.

4. Yes

5. If you flash too many people, your uber is shorter and the brunt of your uber (the pocket) gets too damaged and then immediately dies after the uber is finished. Before pushing in, you need to have an idea of what your team is going to do. You can't just flash in all 5 players at once because then your uber is going to be incredibly short and everyone will be hurt for the clean up. Often, you will choose to do a demo scout uber, where you uber the scout in and then the demo follows up from behind. Your pocket was probably calling for a pocket only uber and you flashed too many people.

Ideally, you shouldn't ever have to "save people" with the uber. When you have uber and they don't, you should be using it to get aggressive into them. If they have uber and push into you, you should definitely be using it to exchange and either get frags or get out, depending on how the exchange goes. When we get caught off guard with uber and I have to save someone, I call it a "reactive" uber, rather than a "proactive" uber, because you're just reacting to what the other team is doing rather than controlling the fight yourself. If you do get caught in that situation though, you should definitely pop to save your team.

Whenever the ubers are even, and you are going to exchange ubers, you should try to pop as late as you can, without dropping anyone on your team. Ideally, if ubers are even, you shouldn't have to save anyone except for your pocket--if people are dying during an even uber exchange, you should yell at them, because they shouldn't be in that fight. Except for your pocket. If you have advantage, you can pop earlier and flash to keep everyone's health high.

When you have even ubers, you can go kritz, call your percentage every ~15%, and make sure nobody dies at 85%. You have to know where their combo is before you kritz in, and then be moving in at 90%.

A kritz push for me looks like:
10% - 50% flank calling where their combo is.
70% - 80% buffing everyone before the fight
80% - Making sure our demo is loaded up and buffed
90% - Moving whereever we need to go to kritz
0% - Demo doing 500dpm

Usually teams will only run sniper if they have disadvantage and need that pick. If you have advantage, you can pop early. If its even, just push into their flank since they're down a scout. If you don't think the sniper can hit his shots, do whatever you want.

For every person you flash, you lose like 1.5 seconds of uber time. You also lose uber time if you aren't healing anything during the uber. Try to keep flashing to a minimum as much as possible. This is also on your teammates--if you're pushing in and your teammates are too close to the exchange and have to get flashed, yell at them for getting too close.

hope that helps.

thank you so much! that really helped me rethink medic

that also did help clear up some things thank you!

Disclaimer : I am not an exceptional medic but some of these questions i can answer
First off, most of these questions are situational, you have to survey your surroundings and decide what your best option is.

1.Yes, usually, sometimes no, but usually yes. in a push, try to not let your demo and pocket die, because if you let someone die its 5v6, and that's a bad situation. after uber it is important to heal your scouts for cleaning up, sometimes giving heals to your pocket or demo or roamer.

2.If you milk successfully, your team has a really good advantage that could change the favor of the round. the timing is the trickiest part, first off you don't want to let anyone die, or get too damaged. If you die it's useless, always be wary of your health and what could two shot you. Secondly you don't want the other team to be able to retreat and not pick them, so if you uber when they are at 20%, and there med is already heading back, if you don't pick their med its sort of useless, other than the frags you could get and take maybe one point. but if you get their med, you could take 2 or 3 points, even steamroll straight into last. most importantly, just make sure no one dies and you can get picks, without them collapsing in afterwards and you dying.

3. generally, uber is the standard medi-gun, but depending on your teams play style, what their percentage is, and how much map time is left, sometimes kritz is a better option. there is no definite answer when to run kritz or not, but usually it should surprise your enemies, and not be a whole game thing. A good time to run kritz is when you can have maybe a 30% advantage on them when you get it. that way they are starting to think about getting buffs and pushing, so are more cluttered together. always prioritize their med, because he could just uber back into you afterwards.

4. 93.5% of the time pop early, its not really worth the risk. if you are pushing 6v6, you might not want to pop it the instant you open the door, but it is best not to take chances, especially if their sniper is killer. if you get a pick, they are essentially down two players, so popping early won't hurt you too much.

5. You almost always want to keep your pocket alive, and if your demo comes in the middle of your uber it is ok to flash him, but it hurts your push. try to either uber your demo and have yur pocket come in a little later, or most teams have their demo try to stay out of the uber and stand behind the combo. a single uber healing one person lasts for 8 seconds i believe, every person you flash imagine it take another second off, so 2 people its seven seconds, and so on. maybe not that drastic, but those eight seconds are so limited, sometimes its crucial to have that extra half a second.

For 5, see this post: http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/3374-details-on-uber-splitting#post-3

To summarize:

Base uber time is 8 seconds. You lose 0.5 seconds every time you flash. Disconnecting counts as a (wasted) flash, so try to avoid getting disconnected. You get a free flash at the very end so you might as well use it by flashing people when you drain to around 5-10%.

I havent read the other responses yet so forgive me if some of this is repeated.

1. Chances are that if you're ubering someone to save them and they are your demo or pocket its because they are out of positionplay against to byou'regin with and usually means you don't pop assuming only the one player dies. Then you can salvage the situation by making the enemy team uber first if they push on the "important pick". However there are situations where you do pop based on ceryain advantadges. You have to analyze the situation quickly and make sure you're on the same page as the person you're ubering.
Is the enemy team close enough to make the uber effective?
Do you have scouts to flash to close a gap?
Does the other team have uber?
If yes. Can we make the other team pop and still get out to even advantadges?
Is your team in position as if it was a planned push?
Typically you have to answer all of these questions within a couple seconds and gets easier to do with experience but hopefully this gives you a basis to understand the situation better.

2. Milking uber is always priority if you can keep your team alive and relies on your flank keeping buffs for fights and positioning on their part. Typically if 2 or more people have died on your team and its a 4v6 chances are the two people who died did so making the other medic uber. Anything more than 2 people means you've milked too long or your flank was out of position. If you can milk effectively you gain a massive advantadge but you can't lose players while you do it otherwise the uber becomes innefective.

3. Switching to kritz is usually effective if you spawn within 5 seconds of the other medic. I forget the numbers exactly but if you spawn at the exact same time and charge at the same right you should get kritz when their uber is at about 60%. This is also useful to know so that you can get I'm a safe position if you suspect a kritz. If you spawn more than five seconds apart from a medic kritz is a typically a bad idea or not as useful as an uber. Its also really important to hide your kritz and make it as much of a suprise as possible so don't constantly switch to i whn the opportunity comes.

4. if you drop uber to a sniper during a push it should be because the sniper came as a suprise and you had no idea there was a sniper there. I pretty much always pop early because of the skill of the snipers i play against. If youre pushing against a sniper you most likely have an advantadge already so losing one or two seconds of uber to not chance the drop shouldnt be a big deal.

5. The more people you uber the shorter the uber. Use each class to their advantadges while keeping the uber to a maximum of 3 people (unless someone needs a flash).
Pocket - used in most of your ubers for damage and gap control and good in even uber exchanges.
Scouts - uber one or both if you need to close a gap quickly or uber to catch/kill the other medic before he gets uber.
Demo - amazing gap closers if the skybox allows it. Brought into ubers against sentries or last push situations when you need to sticky a spawn door or point.
Roamer - only brought into ubers as the second soldier unless your pocket is dead and you're in a desperate situation. Can be paired with pocket for a double soldier uber if you need height advantadge quickly or if you need a distraction to make room for the rest of your team to push.

Hope this helped. Medic relies on a lot of quick situational thinking which is why you can only rwally get better with experience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3ZAhfdfhWU&feature=channel_video_title

this video answers question 1 and 2 and 5

rip cp_well, cp_gravelpit, cp_fastlane

ya right rick

well rick is truly an exceptional player :P