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Simple question; Which one is better for competitive terms, Crusader’s Crossbow or Syringe Gun?

For me it depends on your skill level and the skill of your opponents.

Playing in the lower divisions scouts chasing you down will miss occasionally, giving time for the needles to get some damage in and to force them away or get a kill, but the further up you go, the less scouts miss and the less time you have to kill them before they get you. This makes needles bad as you get two shotted and maybe do 20 damage or something insignificant.

If you go crossbow then being able to hit stuff with it helps a lot, nice burst heal on your jumping solly or far away demo is mighty useful plus I’ve killed a few low heavies at last in my time with it, but I can’t aim for shit, (hence why I play medic…and I still miss with the healbeam I’m that good), and have had to be forced into changing to crossbow by my all too right teamates now we’re playing div 3 games, as scouts don’t miss anymore and needles were useless.

Just play with whatever you’re happy with, but you’ll find most top medics using crossbow.

If you hit crossbow then use crossbow. If you don’t hit crossbow use needles.

Before the crazy Crossbow buff (40% faster reload speed) I found the weapon overrated and still saw clear advantages for using the Syringe Gun over the Crossbow. With this huge buff though, it has become way more useful than before. I really need to try it for a longer consistent period now to properly have an opinion on it.

What I do see with a lot of medics that get Crossbow trigger happy is that they waste time missing bows on their teammates, fool around trying to hit enemies while they could be healing, and all around don’t build uber as efficiently. Then again, on the other hand, you can’t deny the effectiveness of some crazy long range healsaves. In the end, the syringe gun is a more safe and reliable method of self-defense, not only in solo situations, but also for instance when you’re with your demo and a pesky jumpy scout catches 1 pipe but is still alive. Perfect for low hp finishers.

So yeah, the crossbow is useful for those long range healsaves, but then again, you shouldn’t be disconnected that far from your players all the time, so if you find yourself using it constantly, you’re probably doing something wrong as a team (and as a matter of fact, its the same story for the syringe gun)

Quoted from AnimaL

[…]why do you think running around shooting things for no dmg is better than healing? on some maps (like gran) the dmg output of crossbow is so low bcs of so small distances its like having no med at all + if someone actually goes for yo ass your chances to defend with xbow is like winning a loterry

oh yeah i forgot about that. Even an auto-arrow pro such as myself uses needles on gran. there are no nice or useful angles except on last

Crusader’s Crossbow
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I only play with syringe gun on Granary since that map has these narrow chokes where you can easy make 70+ dmg on a soldier or a scout while running away. As said earlier crossbow is to prefer (imo) on maps like Snakewater or Badlands where it’s more open and you can fire arrows across the map.

In those dire situations where you need to save yourself, I don’t really feel that the crossbow gives you the damage output the needles would. Also what Skeej said – if you can’t hit the arrows (like me :D) you’re just wasting time you could be spending healing folks.