Dear Battlefield 6 Players, Please Use the Medics

Battlefield 6 has seemingly resurrected the Battlefield franchise, but it has also opened the door to a ton of new players in the process. As a veteran Battlefield player, I am not here to gatekeep or scare away newcomers. This is a phenomenal franchise and one that I want to see prosper, something that is really only possible if Battlefield lures in new fans. If you’ve played the Battlefield 6 beta, you are likely more than aware that this is not Call of Duty. Dying is part of the game; throwing your life at an objective is crucial to win. The gunplay has become twitchier, but this is still a game where teamwork is essential. 

Every class in Battlefield 6 serves a very specific role, but the most clear and important one is the Support class. As the name implies, Support helps the team in many different ways. They can lay down suppressive fire and keep enemies pinned, give their teammates ammo, and revive players quickly. While any class can revive fellow squad members, the Support class can pick up anyone almost immediately using defibrillators and their drag and revive time is also significantly faster. They keep everyone in the action, and without them, this would be a completely different game. However, they are not being used as efficiently as possible.

This post isn’t necessarily about the medics themselves (we’ll get back to that), it’s about the people who are being knocked down. Yes, you, lying there on the ground spamming the button to respawn after being blown up by a tank shell. During my time as Support, I noticed a very disturbing trend. Someone would go down and they wouldn’t wait more than a second or two to be revived. Of course, sometimes you just want to change your class, you want to spawn somewhere that needs more help, etc. There are reasons not to wait, but this issue was incredibly frequent.

I’d see someone go down and rush into the line of fire to pick them up, only for them to give up as soon as I reached them. Not only is this infuriating for those who risk their lives to save another’s, but it is also extremely detrimental to the team. If you are new to Battlefield, deaths have a big impact on the scoring in the franchise’s signature mode, Conquest. The “score” is referred to as “tickets”, and each team starts with 1,000 tickets and tries to run the enemy down to zero. While capturing and holding flags is a big part of winning, you also bleed tickets by dying. The kicker is that you don’t lose tickets if you don’t go to the respawn screen. If you get revived, it doesn’t count as a death.

All of this is to say that if you rush to respawn instead of giving your medics the opportunity to revive you, you will contribute to losing the game instead of winning. Have some patience and use your downtime to spot enemies; there is an advantage to being in a war zone and not being a target. There are some modes where this doesn’t matter as much, such as Breakthrough when you’re a defender. Offense is the only team with limited lives in that mode, but those lives are even more precious than Conquest, so it’s imperative that you don’t rush to respawn. 

Read Next

Why Battlefield 6 Isn’t Bad Company 3, According to DICE

As someone who also loves Call of Duty, I know the habit of spamming the respawn button to skip the kill cam button and get back in the fight. Battlefield is totally different and requires a whole different kind of pacing and thought. By that same token, it’s also extremely important for Supports to do their job. If you see people down, it’s your job to revive them, especially if they are also a Support. Keeping people alive on the frontlines prevents the enemy from pushing forward, it keeps your ticket count stable, and it generally just creates better team morale. It’s aggravating waiting for a respawn that never comes, especially as Supports stomp over your body or stand next to it. 

I hope the second beta weekend for Battlefield 6 will be a bit smoother when it comes to the use of medics. Teamwork is necessary to secure the win, and sometimes, that means not doing anything so that a medic has a chance to get you. As Battlefield gets more popular, it means that the series will also have to adapt to newcomers not knowing the rules of the series. With that said, if you’re one of the Supports throwing your life down for others, you are the real MVP.