Is the 2 seconds you have to be resistant to whatever damage type any useful for anything except possibly a medic trying to escape but being chased? I can see the full uber being useful, though.

Seems like this shit was designed for MVM.

I think you can spread multiple ubers around without it slowing down since you can use them one at a time, that seems pretty useful.

After pubbing, I don't think anyone understands how this new medigun works. They spend their time using only 1 buff throughout the entire time so I can't claim that it is the best right now until I can see more gameplay. Theoretically, this weapon sounds pretty good if used correctly.
The Rescue Ranger seems like a situational weapon. I'm not sure if it would work with the Eureka Effect or not but if it can, then it would be rather useful. If you're battle engying with the gunslinger, I would find it pretty shitty. But if you're willing to try out the old fashioned battle engy with a level 2 sentry, I think it would be cool to hold down one area with the sentry while going to a flank and then bring the sentry with you so you get a sentry behind enemies.
I think the loose cannon would be pretty good if you could actually hit people with pipes. Pushing players further back would seem like a new strat in HL with this weapon.

Unless vaccinator works on self damage explosives, it's going to be bad for most maps @ mid.

i dont think you do the new medigun justice with that short of a description. but anyway, its super fun, promotes a lot of fast play, and has almost no downside to just randomly popping ubers when you have all 4. for example, if you (the medic) are hurt before a push, you can pop an explosive resist (can we call them B-resist, E-resist, and F-resist?) and have your target sit in spam to heal you up real quick

can you flash the medigun

yes, the uber is so short you can only get 3 peeps

I tested it, and it does work for self damage explosives.

The med gun is interesting, one ubersaw = one uber

Not to mention you build uber 50% faster than other guns.

This medigun might be able to trivialize kritz demos, since you'd reduce the damage to something like 50

The new medigun should be banned without question. It makes the game far too confusing and unintuitive and changes too many familiar concepts. It also might be straight up op.

Loose cannon is a lot of fun. It has reverse fall-off so the further away the person is the more impact damage they take. At about 1.25 seconds out I was able to direct a soldier for 97 and then have it explode on him doing another 40. Definitely takes some getting used to but could be really good.

Or we could try it first.

Of course, that's never going to happen. No one likes trying new things.

Trivialize is a pretty strong word.

Things that have to happen for this to be the case:

1) You know they are running kritz. Obviously, its not impossible to guess, but it certainly is pretty clutch if you can figure it out.

2) You have to spawn in time to build up an uber with the new medigun. Again, not always the easiest thing to do, especially considering 1 above is also a consideration.

Another way of looking at it, if you spawn way before the enemy medic who you somehow know is going to run kritz, you could just run uber, pretty much negating the kritz push by building extremely quickly (that kritz window is not nearly as large as you might imagine), and since the new medigun doesn't give buffs at an adequate rate, your whole team will be much better off in general. If you spawn after the enemy medic, then yeah, I guess you could run the new medigun, but your still going to have to build quickly, not give out buffs, and hope to god you can antipcate the push correctly (though, the ability to use ubers even with 20 or 40% charge is something to consider i guess).

3) The new medigun has two significant drawbacks that really weaken its use in general scenarios, but which also weaken it during kritz pushes. Okay, so you do somehow manage to get the new mediguns uber up, and the enemy team pushes into you with kritz. Great, you've neutralized the demos explosive damage, but because you can't give out a buff, there is nothing stopping enemy scouts from destroying pocket/medic easily. I mean, what makes soldiers so survivable versus scouts in those sorts of pushes tends to be that massive 100 health sitting on top of the already sizeable 200, which is going to be much harder to get with the new gun. You could conceivably switch the resistance type when the scout gets close, but you have to switch by pressing middle mouse twice to get through flame to bullet, and then your still vulnerable to krit stickies that are lying around.

So, in summation, its a cool weapon, and it does have some interesting implications, but if you think it will completely stop a coordinated kritz push (i.e. "trivialize") I would have to disagree.

I've played against it in pubs and can already list a thousand reasons why it should be banned.

Alright more loose cannon experimentation: Damage ramp up with damage spread off seems to max impact damage at direct pill damage i.e. 99-102. If you're good with the timing you can make it explode right after contact and make it do like 140~. However, there's a slight delay between impact and the damage actually scaling so you have like .05 second window (we're talking batch damage coming into play here) where the explosion will do full damage as well totaling it up to like 180~ damage. Scratch that I'm retarded, player contact just doesn't cause it to scale so if you're really good about timing it you can essentially do 180 with a perfect pill from distance.

Minimum impact damage is 50, explosion damage is treated like standard pill damage down to a T but since it's near impossible to get someone in max damage range without dealing impact damage it seems to be topped off at 90. You can fully charge it to make the explosion centered on you and you take like 100~; so the damage from the explosion is not reduced whatsoever on you. Rollers also do like 80~ self damage.

Edit: I'm retarded, it's simply that player contact doesn't cause the explosive damage to scale and that the larger the delay between the impact and the explosion the further away they are from the center of the blast. Derp derp derp

So far my conclusion is that it is definitely competitively viable. Potentially bannable because of the ability to snipe from distance for huge damage but that can only occur at distances where the projectile is easily react-able. Also potentially able to one-shot scouts at closer distances if you're willing to spend like 1.75s~ charging.

I do think the new Medigun does improve survivability in cases of a ambush roamer or scout, just dial up the needed resistance and quickly pop for 2 seconds to buy yourself a couple extra seconds to either get into cover or have your teammate retaliate.

But mainly I see the Vaccinator as the one Medigun that every Medic keeps around for the explicit purpose of busting a stalemate without a pick, simply put it builds in half the time, it can still overheal for buffs (albeit slower), and you can get health from the protection selected.

I like it because it's different and adds something to the metagame, and I think without a doubt the Great bp v. dT Stalemate of Season 13 wouldn't of lasted long if either medic pulled it out.

Even though the cannon has spherical grenades they still reflect at random angles, which is a great shame for anyone wanting to play explody pool.

I realized this as well, consider my dick injured

This should be the ONLY medigun allowed in 6v6. Would improve the game no end.

Thoughts

Vacc Med:
- Faster uber build rate allows far more aggressive pushes, would probably be very centered around the pocket and only pushing when the opponent doesn't have uber
- "Med dm" evolves as medics learn to balance the three (two, really in 6s) damage types to maximize damage advantage, both on uber and off. Any ideas on how hard this would be, and how realistically difficult is it to kill a Vaccinated soldier with 75% damage reduction?
- Questionable whether the 10% damage reduction off uber can offset the loss of overheal rate
- High risk if you bungle the push, but can help off-uber survivability if used properly
- Anyone else think that this could stuff roamer plays pretty hard? The med could just mini-uber one bar and let the team focus the roamer for a free pick. 6v5.

Could become a much riskier, high dm team focused on playing heal/dmg advantage, no clue if it would ever beat uber in a real game.

Just in case anybody hasn't seen yet:

i dunno about you guys, but the new engie shotgun is amazing. so fun and hilarious to use

It'd actually be incredibly good against gunboats roamers because of the lack of damage variation. You'd be invincible to bombs as long as you had decent reactions.

Does anyone know if +attack3 is supposed to cycle through resistances? I have it bound to mouse3 and it does nothing. Taunting cycles through them though, and I'll be very disappointed if that's the only way.

kony2012

Here is my list of problems with the vaccinator

1. The icons are hard to tell apart at close range. They are almost impossible to tell apart when you are flying through the air above a medic.

All the icons are square (valve has apparently forgotten the importance of silhouettes) with identical color schemes and patterns that don't stand out well. I'm still not sure if I've even seen the fire one or if its just so similar to the explosive that I couldn't tell the difference (I was airborne when I though I saw the fire one).

The difficulty in telling apart the icons makes it much harder to make good decisions. Since you are required to attack the uber with the right kind of damage, the result is often either getting too close before realizing your mistake or hesitating too long and losing the window for aggression.

The icons are also ugly and when a medic splits uber the screen is just full of the icons and it looks like a mess.

2. The effect that surround players when they are ubered is harsh on the eyes and obscures the player models a bit. At longer ranges this effect can make it difficult to even tell which class is ubered since it breaks up the silhouettes (Valve used to care so much about this) and is fairly opaque. It also seems to make hitting more precise hitscan shots a little bit more difficult.

3. The icons above the player models could easily be obscured by unusual effects.

4. There isn't any way to tell how many ubers a medic has so if as a scout you plan to rush the medic when his uber fades he could have another one and then you're fucked.

5. A lot of opportunities for aggression would be denied. It would no longer be feasible for a single scout or soldier to sac themselves for a med pick or uber force.

The window to attack the med before he gets uber is ridiculously small. Forcing the uber is worthless also, because even if you force one uber you'll most likely die before you can force a second and even if he only had one uber he can most likely charge another one before your team can push. Trading a single player for an uber pop would be a horrible trade. Even on mids you wouldn't really be able to get aggressive on the med or demo without them popping on you, which to me is utterly ridiculous.

6. The passive bullet resistance would make it impossible to one shot kill heavies with the sniper rifle.

7. There doesn't appear to be any cooldown between uber uses, so it is possible to shoot medium range rockets at a medic who is bullet ubered only for him to pop an explosive uber.

8. A lot of people wrongly assume that the faster charge rate will speed up the game when in fact it will do the opposite. I think it would make this game into an absolute stalematey grind-fest. How difficult would it be to push if the enemy team always has uber and do bring down the combo you will have to hit them with two different types of damage one of which will do no practically no damage? Does that sound fun?

9. It lowers the skill ceiling for medic even further. The weapon is popular in pubs right now because most of the medics in those servers don't have the patience or the survival skills to build and use uber well. With the vaccination there is less pressure to milk ubers since they are kind of hard to waste and so there is less chance of dropping. The only real skill the vaccinator promotes is choosing the correct resistances, something the pubbers I encountered had no problem with. When they were attack by soldiers they chose explosive, when fighting heavies the chose bullet. It really isn't that difficult.

10. This last one is my opinion completely, but I don't feel resistances make a good core gameplay mechanic for an fps.

If you want to decide for yourself and test out this weapon even more go ahead, but I have a feeling I haven't even scratched the surface yet. There are probably many more reasons why this unlock is terrible and they will be discovered.