TF2: The Kritzkrieg Casino

risk is integral to tf2's balanced philosophy i mean take a look at an item like the kunai for spy your maximum health drops from 125 to a squeamish 70 making one of the most vulnerable classes in the game even more vulnerable one direct rocket one pipe for one meat shot and you're gone it seems silly right but when you factor in the ability to steal your opponent's health to give you a massive amount of overheal it opens up an entirely new and more aggressive way to play spy where you can change stab after stab after step a classic example of risk burst reward or what about the direct hit you forfeit 70 of your rockets explosion radius meaning you have to be extremely precise with every shot you fire off you can no longer rely on splash damage which makes dueling enemies a lot more challenging i mean that seems pretty silly too right but then you factor in the increased damage the increased speed and the ability to mini-crit airborne targets and you've just discovered one of the most powerful psi grades in the game if you have the skill to back it up again another great example of risk first reward but in my eyes there is one weapon which rises above the rest when it comes to risk but you probably wouldn't expect me to mention it in this discussion because nothing about it really seems like that much of a gamble but when you start to take a deeper look succeeding with the kritzkrieg really can be a roll of the dice [Music] my [Music] the kritzkrieg is one of medic's unlockable alternatives to the medigun and in many respects they actually function in quite a similar way as they both heal and apply overheal at the same rate which cannot be said for some of the other medigan alternatives where the two begin to diverge though is with their uber charge the regular medi-gun provides you with that cushy safety net of guaranteed invulnerability for eight seconds whereas the chris krieg says no thanks in favor of guaranteed critical hits to whoever you are healing now if you are lucky enough to be on the receiving end of a crits creek charge you notice that your active weapon will go all glowy and flashy and make this crackling sound like there is an 8 000 watt generator howling behind you for the next 8 seconds all of your damage output is now triple which allows you to absolutely shred through enemy gamers doesn't matter if you're using rockets stickies bullets fire or pipes because crits do not discriminate they simply kill now of course some classes are better than others to receive a crits charge but my point is more that tripling anyone's damage is going to be very powerful no matter what angle you're looking at it from now the part of crits which make them truly menacing is the fact that they ignore damage fall off entirely you know if you fire a rocket from one side of two forts battlements to the other you'd probably expect it to do something like 30 or maybe even 40 damage to an enemy right that seems pretty reasonable but if the rocket happens to be crit boosted the only modifier that critical hits pay attention to are splash damage ones which only affects soldier and demoman who also happen to be the two best classes to give crits but more on that later this modifier basically means that if you happen to hit an enemy with a crit rocket at the very edge of its explosion radius it's going to do less damage compared to a direct hit the kritzkrieg also charges 25 faster relative to the medigun which makes sense because if they both built their charge in the same amount of time the stock metagum would always reign supreme because tripling your damage with guaranteed crits doesn't really matter against someone who is literally invincible oh oh no that all sounds good and well max so but what part of that is so risky well i'm glad you asked because when you're on medic you kind of already have to play the game like you're walking on eggshells off no you have to make sure you're not peeking any sight lines in case of snipers you have to constantly check your back for spies you need to be aware of basically everything that's going on in a game and you have to stay a safe distance from the front line now occasionally things can go a little pear-shaped a soldier might die of you or a flanking scout might manage to get behind and if you're running the normal medi-gun that's not necessarily an issue because yes they may force you to use your uber charge but at the end of the day you're still getting away with your life and can retreat to a safer position however when using the kritzkrieg you're unfortunately not that lucky and that brings us to this weapon's first major gamble as with no form of defensive utility like any of the other mediguns the cards are stacked against you in scenarios like this there is no get out of jail free card with the crits creek like there is with stock the quick fix or vaccinator which means you have to be even more careful than you usually would about your positioning on the map your movement and your game sense i can't even begin to count the amount of times where i was excited to finally push in to make this game-winning play and earned the respect and adoration of all my teammates when all of a sudden that's the kritzkrieg provides zero defensive upsides and you have to keep this in mind at all times when you're using it especially when making a push the only difference between yourself a second before you use crits and a second after is that your pocket does triple damage now that's it you can still be backstabbed meat shot mowed down exploded or engulfed in flames just as you usually would when pushing in without crits there is no increased healing rate no resistances and definitely no invulnerability so you are entirely reliant on your pocket putting out enough damage to kill any threats before they become a problem for you that's the reason i try not to be too attached to my pocket during a push because if things even somewhat look like they're about to go poorly you can count me out i'm not going on a suicide mission just for some random demoman to get a small spike in dopamine from killing two or three enemies and on the topic of pockets actually that brings me to gamble number two with the kritzkrieg and that is taking a chance with the competency of the people you are healing now yes the kritzkrieg is capable of dishing out insane levels of damage but that is reliant on two factors number one you building up to 100 charge in the first place and number two your teammate not being [ __ ] horrible at the game you know how the classic saying goes right you can lead a horse to water but can't force them to drink well that's applicable with the crits creek 2 because you can set the perfect scenario for your teammate to absolutely obliterate the enemy team but unless they actually hit their shots it can amount to nothing edgy you are at the mercy of the casual matchmaking system to pair you with at least one competent gamer who is capable of both maneuvering in a 3d environment and shooting enemy gamers at the same time which unfortunately isn't a guarantee and look it just hurts for me to say but to maximize the value my crits charge gets i am actually a bigot i discriminate against teammates on the basis of their position on the scoreboard and by the amount of unusuals they own to choose who will be blessed enough to receive a crits charge i can see the headlines now el maxo cancelled for discriminating against low-level gamers but if you have ever played as crits medic and your choices between igor the free-to-play pyro or some platinum level soldier with 20 000 hours and an inventory worth more than my own [ __ ] kidney i think the choice is usually pretty clear on who to crit with that being said though i would like to go on a slight tangent for one moment because i did actually find myself experimenting a lot more with who i was giving crits and the outcomes were always really interesting go free to play heavy no go no no you've got crits the dude at the top just got eight kills in this chris that's just gonna end badly like dude dude no you're heavy no heavy no no no heavy not heavy please no no heavy i'll keep you up ready go heavy go hey sniper you ready to shine it's about to be your moment mate get him tiger yes you ready you don't need double dunks after i'm about to give you exactly anyway it back to the whole pocket thing you can reduce a lot of the risk associated with this process by playing with a friend and being in a discord called a properly coordinate but that option isn't always available and sometimes you're stuck with pablo gonzalez 2006 that doesn't even own a microphone to talk in voice chat without a direct line of communication with the gamer you are healing you are going to experience a world of hell as medic because those [ __ ] have no idea how to turn around when you are getting absolutely swamped by enemy gamers help on pineapple boy please please please please please please please please seriously unless you scream at the top of your lungs through voice chat your hopes of getting your pockets attention so they can uh you know protect you are close to zero it's for that reason that i try to use my crits pretty much on cooldown whenever i reach 100 charge because you have absolutely no idea how far away from death you are at any given moment so even if you pop crits at a kind of weird time and only manage to secure one or two kills the 25 increased charge rate means you'll have another crits up soon enough and ensures you are maximizing the value you can offer to your team there is no worse feeling than holding on to 100 charge waiting for that perfect opportunity to demolish the entire team only for minutes to go by without anything actually happening so i'd always recommend you use your crits liberally what the [ __ ] oh maxo you should use it conservatively pricks don't care about your feelings and hey hey the gambling doesn't stop there either with your teammates as we have to talk about the third and kind of more nuanced gamble that there is with the kritzkrieg and that's the sort of weird selfish playstyle it encourages there have been countless times where some poor bugger is burning to death right next to me while i'm using my crits and i can save him by swapping my beam to him but that would deny my other teammate who i was feeling first the opportunity to go and kill say three enemies which leads to this kind of convoluted version of the trolley dilemma when you use the critscrip you have to weigh up in your head with the information available whether keeping one or two dying teammates alive is worth forfeiting an entire crits push for and sadly it's usually more beneficial to let some of your teammates die in favor of having your pocket wipe a large group of enemies the only problem here is that it isn't guaranteed your pocket will perform well when they receive crits like what if they choke all their rockets and you end up getting no kills and on top of that one of your teammates dies who you could have saved easily so ultimately it comes down to whether you have faith in your pocket and their potential to get some kills or if you value the life of a dying teammate which is a shitty scenario to be in no matter what way you go about it now look i could go on about some of the smaller gambles there are with the chris craig like the fact you don't know what the enemy medic is going to run if it happens to be the vaccinator you're not going to have a great time though i could talk about the fact it's risky to take on offense into sentry guns where your crits charge is essentially useless i think it's actually time we take a look at the upsides because what if you do want to take the gamble what's the potential payoff well when everything aligns with the kritzkrieg you can hit the jackpot [Music] all right if you get two kills here i promote you to owner of the server we have a new owner this guy just murdered four people i didn't see a single kill okay crush you critch critic medic curse you this is del maxo from duskball news and we're here with one of the gamers who just got absolutely stomped so zenith how did it feel i just got back from a 12 hour shift at work and wanted to unwind but no yeah that wasn't meant to be it apparently so you're you're feeling uh bad yeah i'm um i'm feeling bad that's all from dustbo news we'll bring more updates soon now look even if you've never played tf2 before and have stumbled across this video somehow you probably knew what the benefit of gambling with a weapon like the chris creek would be because if you can give someone on your team triple damage for eight whole seconds the outcome is pretty obvious the kritzkrieg has the potential to shut down entire servers like nothing else in the game well besides maybe a flog pyro with stock uber but you forfeit like 1 8 of your humanity if you choose to use that combo and i've heard zealot himself kicks a puppy right in the rib cage for every kill you get with the flog so you really gotta balance out your options here the crits creek is an especially powerful tool on defense not only because there tends to be less centuries but the enemy team is constantly pushing towards you which makes it really easy to start snowballing out of control you can start this disgusting cycle where you use your crits charge wipe the entire enemy team wait for them to respawn and regroup just for them to start their next push once again only to be met by yet another crits charge it's really hard for the enemy team to escape this vicious cycle as the only way out is by charging up a stock uber having a soldier use the battalion's backup which negates critical damage or having something like a sniper or spy go for a risky play to pick off the medic no matter what route you decide to take though it's going to be a challenge because a staying alive long enough to build an uber or battalion's backup charge is a challenge and b it usually requires a lot of team coordination to pull off which is never guaranteed in a match of casual which is why the crits creed can be so damn unforgiving against an unorganized enemy team the snowball also becomes even more dangerous on choke heavy maps where the enemy team is clumped together as it allows for aoe damage classes like demoman and soldiers to wreak even more chaos upon the enemy team and there is one map in particular which has just sprung to mind a map which is notorious for its tight hallways excessive choke points and extremely long games ladies and gentlemen i introduce to you cp dust bowl no discussion of the kritzkrieg is complete without talking about this map because it is heaven on earth for medic players the sheer amount of damage you can cause on defense is insane especially on that third map where you can spend upwards of 20 minutes basically spawn camping the enemy team with your crits and if you don't believe me how about you take a look at the goat himself bani get an 82 kill streak on this portion of the map as demoman with the chris medic glued to his ass that shouldn't be allowed oh it's bad you just have to make sure your pocket is fully reloaded and ideally should give them some form of warning through voice chat that their damage is about to get tripled because when you do you get to see fireworks i also made a promise to myself to include this super niche mechanic which did end up saving me a couple of times but if you didn't know when you're taught with the kritzkrieg it actually heals you for 11 health over 4 seconds which can come in omega clutch especially when you are burning to death that slight extra healing is often just enough to keep you from dying when there aren't any health packs or pirates to air blast you but it also sometimes isn't enough now of course it's not actually you getting kills with the kritzkrieg so your rush of dopamine comes from seeing the assist pile up in the kill feed which yeah i guess is pretty cool but what's it like on the receiving end you know how does it feel to receive eight seconds of guaranteed crits [Music] it's good i uh i think the footage speaks for itself to be honest it's good hello maxo i hear you asking who is the best class to crits well i'm happy to announce that today i will be for the first and probably only time ever descending into the single lowest form of content available the tearlest yeah that's right [ __ ] you wheezy [ __ ] you great blue and [ __ ] you space you're all you're a lazy and derivative creators with bad tearless videos although i quite literally hate you all i will stoop to a lowly level at just this once scout can be surprisingly effective though is highly reliant on the scout's skill level you can dominate the flank on game modes like 5cp and king of the hill and because you move at the same speed as the scout you can get to safely more reliably as medic soldier and absolute menace with the crits the splash damage on your rockets means you can wipe large groups of enemies super quickly without having to be all that precise the only thing to look out for is pyros as airblasts can completely shut down your push easy a tier pirate in theory this should be really powerful because you can deal massive area of effect damage with your flamethrower however because you have to be at a close range and given the kritz creek doesn't provide any defensive buffs you often die before you are able to do any work there is potential here but more often than not it doesn't work high c tier demo man now there are probably no surprises here but he is the undisputed king of crits as you basically take what makes soldier so strong and ramp it up to 100 you have a surplus of ammo meaning you don't need to reload during a push you can charge up stickies to deal with enemies at longer distances and pyros have a way harder time reflecting your projectiles relative to rockers this one is an easy esteem heavy definitely one of the stronger picks available having no falloff allows you to laser enemies from longer ranges and if you're using the tommy slab you can basically out snipe snipers the only major drawback to heavy is slow movement speed whilst revved up and the lack of splash damage which can limit your ability to annihilate bigger groups of enemies i am tempted to put him in a tier but i think a high b is more suitable engineer this is one of the weaker combos relative to the others but by no means is infeasible if you're in a pinch with no one else to give crits tripling the damage on an engineer's shotgun can definitely do some work but without scout's movement speed or the larger health pool of a power class it can be shut down pretty quickly overall d-tier medic yeah uh no unsurprisingly the dude who heals isn't all that great at putting out damage you can get some pretty funny snipes with the crossbow but aside from that it's easily the worst choice by far f-tier sniper 150 damage no scopes can be very menacing and who doesn't love a crits chopper but these are both highly reliant on a sniper being able to use their mouse which never seemed to happen for me when i would give them crits there is maybe potential for this to be a low c tier if you're a godly sniper but i think i'm going to have to leave it in dtr for now and there we go that's that's everyone done uh you may have some slight disagreements but overall i think this list is pretty accurate wait what's that sound why is why is the teal is shaking what god tear john the sleeper god tier pick here is of course gun spy unrivaled damage unrivaled swag unrivaled well everything six bullets is truly all you need to murder 12 enemies and please don't think too hard about the maths on that one the stock revolver is of course the best choice here but really anything can clean up low-level gamers if your aim is good enough no way easy god tier i won't take any criticism on that choice as i've already blocked the word gun spy in the comments so i don't want to hear any criticism shut up i don't care i don't care 1984 i don't care i do need to clarify that creating anyone will of course be powerful and can lead to some massive killstreaks i think there is room for discussion about some of these placements so feel free to leave your thoughts down below now before i tie this video together with what weapons you should run with the crits creek there was a short section i wanted to bring up but couldn't find a good spot in the video to have it so excuse me for this horrendous segue but we need to talk about random crits if you've played tf2 for more than 10 minutes you'll know all about random crits and how fun they are to die to you know there's just nothing more fulfilling than spending your time building up this crits charge by divvying up heels between your teammates while getting ready to push in and then oh a beautiful random crocket that some gibber soldier fired off from across the map has come to ruin your day oh my god here's my hot take which i have not fleshed out at all whatsoever but if you ask me the mere existence of random crits in casual is actually an indirect nerf to the critscrip because having anywhere between a two and twelve percent chance to randomly crit someone at any point in the game diminishes the value of a crits charge in some capacity it might not be a massive indirect nerf but i think it is one nonetheless it just got me thinking like what if tf2 had an inbuilt mechanic where people would randomly go invulnerable like an uber charge for a short period of time you would probably agree that that would diminish the value of a stock uber right but god look i need to give this idea some more thought and i may revisit it at some point in the future so in the meantime enjoy this because i'm a chris i am random why the hell am i even here i didn't deserve that all right i just need an excuse to use my radiohead creep random crit parody somewhere which will be appearing on the official l max and mixtape whenever i get around to making it but anyway on to the final section of the video when it comes to your best primary weapon to pair with the crits creek there really isn't much discussion because for as long as the crusaders crossbow stays in its current state there will never be any competition the ability to heal your teammates from a long distance as well as the fact it's burst healing actually outperforms all of the media guns makes it way too valuable not to run the overdose can have its moments as a nice escape tool with the increased movement speed you gain and the other syringe guns uh definitely exist but the crossbow is just too consistently powerful in 99 of scenarios not to run it when it comes to the melee slot though there actually is a fair bit of variety as i think most of your options are actually perfectly viable depending on your own preferences for any other midi gun i would always recommend taking the uber saw because that extra charge you get with each successful swing can be enough to get you to 100 and therefore provides you with a safe escape route with your uber but as we have come to learn with the kritzkrieg it has no defensive utility meaning that extra charge isn't going to be doing much for you when there are three enemies breathing down the back of your neck i definitely wouldn't say it's a weak option to take with the kritzkrieg by any means as if you manage to pick off some random flanking spy or scout that's an additional 25 or even 50 charge towards your crits but more often than not i actually found myself running the solemn valve now look i'll be the first to admit that this is a somewhat silly choice to run but the additional information you get in seeing an enemy's amount of health and the ability to see enemy medics ubercharge at the cost of essentially nothing is pretty damn powerful it also synergises well with the crusaders crossbow as knowing if an enemy is low on hp at longer ranges basically determines whether or not i'm going to take a shot the ability to see enemy medics ubercharge is also useful to me because i can't say the competitive part of my brain is counting ubers in the chaos of a casual game so it also helps to let me know if i should be getting ready to push in or run away like a coward at the sight of a fully charged uber i'm sure that other options like the amputated with its aoe healing or the vitasaur's uber retention on death are useful in their own ways too but i'd be lying if i said i was doing all that much experimenting with them i think it ultimately comes down to personal preference here and what your preferred style of play is and for me that's using the comically large marble head of hippocrates to cave the skulls in of inferior gamers [ __ ] off shop oh hey just tell me you know for being the literal first unlockable weapon ever added to tf2 all the way back in 2008 i truly think valve did a fantastic job designing the kritzkrieg the idea of transforming the medic from this class who could initially only supply defensive utility to their team into this absolute offensive behemoth is genius and adds so much room for nuance and how you can approach playing medic so look i know that it may be a massive gamble to use the kritzkrieg that much is obvious but when you draw a lucky hand and find yourself in a perfect situation where there are no flanking enemies no snipers no spies you have a confident pocket and your teammates are all healthy you can hit the jackpot thanks for watching [Music] suicide suicide suicide suicide ended ended end it all ended all

Channel: elmaxo

Views: 1,710,025

Keywords: TF2, Team Fortress 2, Medic, Kritzkrieg, TF2 Medic, How to play Medic, How to Medic, elmaxo

Id: PWoyJtOGbxg

Length: 23min 35sec (1415 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 13 2022