Team Malpractice! (Making the most of variant Dr. Medico)

Games Sentinels of the Multiverse
1

After some playtesting with the new Void Guard, I've found that Dr. Medico's Malpractice variant is much worse than his basic form/power...

UNLESS you play the right team. With the right team, Malpractice Dr. Medico will absolutely cream the entire villain/environment team, every turn. The trick is to maximize the number of hero targets, and the number of 'heal all hero targets' effects.

Here's the team I've had the most success with:

Legacy (original) 

Captain Cosmic (Requittal)

Dr. Medico (Malpractice)

Tempest (Any, but in this team I like his Freedom Six/Sacrifice variant)

Sentinels (Either, but in this team I prefer Adamant)

...

The trick is to get cards into play that heal all targets. Some examples are Legacy's Motivational Charge, Dr Medico's Healing Pulse, Tempest's Cleansing Downpour, and Sentinel's Hippocratic Oath. There are also many Dr. Medico and Sentinels one shots that heal all hero targets as well.

With Captain Cosmic (Requittal) you should be able to get a large number of hero targets into play in just a few turns. Just be sure to put all 'energy bracers' drawn on him, so his own constructs don't hurt him too badly. The Sentinels on their own add 3 more hero targets, and I find that more reliable than using Unity, who usually only has 1-2 machines in play at a time.

Combined, a single use of a 'heal all players' effect can easily cause Dr. Medico's malpractice to go off 8-12 times. Combined with damage/healing boosting effects from Legacy and Dr. Medico himself, each hit and potentially do 3-5 damage. For added fun, have Captain Cosmic drop Autonomous Blade on Dr. Medico, so each hero turn where 'healing' is done, Dr. Medico gets a bonus 2-5 damage attack.

The only catch with this plan is if a target is at full health, then they don't heal, and Dr. Medico's power doesn't go off for them. If at all possible, try to have every target below maximum health, to maximize the number of hits Dr. Medico inflicts each turn.

Side note: it may seem like I'm only including Tempest for cleansing downpour, but it's also because he can reliably deal with enemy ongoing and environment cards, which is otherwise missing from this team. There are other hero choices, obviously (Tachyon, for starters), but I feel Tempest is the best mix of healing, damage, utility, drawing, and anti-ongoing/environment effects.

Have fun!

2

Even without other healing Malpractice Medico is fine as he provides enough healing on his own.   I’m fairly confident once we have a decent amout of stats from the video game he’ll be around his base version in effectiveness.  A team like you’re suggesting certainly adds more but is not necessary to make him feel impactful.

3

Malpractice Medico is just OK on his own. With a supporting team he's a juggernaut. Like, beating Challenge Akash'Bhuta in 2 rounds, reliably.

I'm not sure about CC on this team. I tend to treat that slot as a situational floater. CC is OK, but only if you're confident the constructs will be damaged but not destroyed (although they do protect Idealist from lowest-HP damage, which she sorely needs). PW Fanatic is pretty darn good here, though unreliable. PW AA is a slower, safer bet.

4

Naturalist may be a good substitute as well. He can both tank and provide plenty of damage for Medico, especially with the 4 healing that can happen from his 'Vigor' card.

5

I heartily disagree with the premise here.  I think time and experience will show that Malpractice is significantly better than base Medico.  

Think about it: other than a total of 2HP healed a round, Malpractice can do anything regular Medico can do.  He also can do so much more on offense.  And most of the time the most effective way to deal with a threat isn't to let it hit you and heal back up, it's to kill it before it can kill you.

I've found Malpractice one of the most effective ways in the game to deal with damage reduction due to his card that gives him +1 to all of his healing actions and makes his damage irreducible.  I'm loving him in advanced Vengeance games for that reason.  As far as I'm concerned, he makes one of my former favorites, Parse, so much less needed in such match ups.  About the only highly competitive figure I don't like better with Malpractice than regular Medico is Scholar, as Scholar is already weaponizing his healing, and when Medico circumvents that it's bad for everyone.

The key with Malpractice is just to know when to switch between healer and killer, but if you can time it right and give him any reasonable allies, he's head and shoulders above base Medico, IMO.

Malpractice has bumped Scholar in my current most competitive fivesome: Greatest Legacy, Team Leader Tachyon, Prime Warden Tempest, Requiem Captain Cosmic, and Malpractice Medico.

I prefer Greatest Legacy as he can get you that extra card draw from Tachyon early when you're building your options and help you time Medico right (or get another blast from Cleansing Downpour) later in the game.  Either Legacy's Heroic Interception is a boon for Requiem Captain Cosmic and Prime Warden Tempest to let them get a lot of cards out with no damage.  Having the ability to take damage sometimes with either isn't a bad thing, though, as it gives Medico a margin to work with on offense.

Scholar was a great tank with that group and could usually provide some good offensive nuking by the end, but I find Malpractice a quicker set up and better at countering damage reduction.  He can also group heal more effectively and Immunization is a quicker/more effective tanking option in Vengeance than anything Scholar does.

6

He’s right.  He just isn’t as good as the Brilliant Inventor.

7

Yeah I don’t really follow the logic that Malpractice is significantly worse than regular Medico. I rarely use Medico’s base power once he’s set up anyway, so the only real difference between them is that normal Medico has to stay in his lane as a healing / support model, and Malpractice can choose fro round to round whether to do that or be a serious damage dealer instead. That flexibility seems hugely powerful. I think I’d argue the other way around - Malpractice is significantly stronger, and only gets better with the right set up...

8

I use Medico's base power more often than not, especially since I don't always seem to pull 'Universal Donor' as much as I pull 'Healing Pulse' and 'Experimental Medicine'. 'Universal' is really nice for focused healing without drawback for Medico, but if I've reached a healing equalibrium with everyone at or close to their max HP then I'll rely on 'Consult' to keep the heroes being targeted most at a good level of health.

9

I have to disagree with the above posts. In a normal game with a normal team, Malpractice Dr Medico is a large step down from his basic form. The problem is he (or an ally) needs to get very specific cards in order for his power to do anything.

Let's say he used his Malpractice power the turn before, and is now playing a one-shot that (among other things) heals a target 2 hp. Instead, it will do 2 damage to a target of your choice. If that's the only healing done from turn to turn, you effectively used your 1 power per turn to do 2 damage to both a hero target and an enemy target, and even then, only if that hero target wasn't already at full health.

That is not a good power. Dr. Medico's malpractice only really pays off if experimental medicine is in play, or if the healing affect heals ALL hero targets (only about 1/6 of his deck).

What makes his non-variant base power effective (although admittedly not as effective as either of his 'sentinels team' powers) is it stays until it's used. As long as you don't heal needlessly, it will eventually pay off. You just have to be patient.

All that said, I never intended to insinuate that Malpractice Dr. Medico was bad. He is not bad, because Dr. Medico's deck is so inherently strong, and honestly any base power that can do more than 1 damage is an okay power, in my book. I just don't think it's nearly as effective as his standard base power.

10

Galvanize isn't a very good power if you only do one instance of 2 damage (+1) with it too.  It's not at all hard to set up Doctor Medico to do significantly more than that on a regular basis, though (just like it's not hard to make Galvanize boost a ton of instances of damage every round).  An "eventual" +2 to healing that you're not afraid of wasting (though you still can if it'd over heal, which is quite easy to end up doing) doesn't move me as clearly better than doing any amount of damage.  

What does a "normal game with a normal team" even mean?  Normal by whose standards?  I've played Medico in normal and Vengeance against all sorts of enemies and found his Malpractice form very effective in all of them.  

I guess your playstyle and mileage may vary, though.  I'll be very surprised if longterm stats don't bear out Malpractice >> base Medico, though.  I think it's similar to Team Leader Tachyon vs. regular Tachyon.  Regular Tachyon has a very strong deck and plays very well.  The Team Leader power takes her to another level of competitiveness.

11

Most heroes only have a few one shots that heal, and many of them only heal one target/themselves. All in all, I count only 10 heroes that can consistently do a significant amount of healing throughout the game (besides Dr. Medico himself): 

Naturalist, Haka, Setback, Benchmark (especially Supply & Demand), Argent Adept, Nightmist, The Sentinels, Scholar, Legacy, and Tempest

(I’m not counting Absolute Zero or Akash, as they need to heal in order for their strategies to work well)

So unless at least half of your team consists of these characters, Malpractice Dr Medico won’t have much besides his own cards to combine with his Malpractice ability.

Also, once again, you’re giving up healing in order to do that damage. In most cases, that’s a net gain of zero. It still can be worth it, to eliminate dangerous low hp targets, or you’re spamming ‘heal all hero target’ effects, or you have ‘+1 damage’ effects in play, or you were close to full HP and the healing would’ve been wasted anyway. But in the latter’s case, it’s only good if you’re already doing well. If you’re in a tight spot, the extra healing from his standard power will be a lot more welcome.

 

12

Those 10 heroes are, what, 25-30% of the heroes in the game?  And there are others, like Captain Cosmic, Mainstay, and Bunker, for instance, that can do small amounts of healing as well.  There are also some promo versions of some cards that do this well, like Redeemer Fanatic

A good way to avoid being in those tight spots you mention is to kill things before they hurt you too much - which Malpractice does much better than base Medico.

Malpractice Medico can also do just fine without any help, as his own cards can generate more than enough healing for a significant offense, but, sure, throwing another healer or two in with him makes him stronger.  I'd compare his damage output to base Fanatic.  I think one of his best solo healing/damaging cards is Regeneration, which is sort of like Fanatic's Divine Focus without having to discard cards.

And what you're not mentioning is that you always have the option with Malpractice to NOT use his base power and still do 90-95% of the healing and damage that base Medico does.

I could see an argument that if you have a slow/build, low power army in a normal game where you really have to tank and build up before you can unleash your powerful effects, base Medico might be slightly better, since you may never want to not heal.  In Vengeance or in Advanced or Challenge or Ultimate modes there's no question that Medico's ability to speed up the offense is much superior to base Medico, IMO.  I'd say the same even in normal games with a lot of low life enemies to get rid of, though, or a lot of damage reduction (as Malpractice Medico with Experimental Medicine out is on par with Parse for getting around damage reduction, IMO).

But yeah, if you have like Expatriette and Chrono Ranger and Medico against normal mode Iron Legacy or something, base Medico might be a slightly better option.

13

To me, this discussion mainly says that Malpractice is a great promo.

I almost always play fully randomized games, but if I were pressed to win, I would pick the base version against an unknown randomized setup because it is more consistently good. I've played a number of games where the Malpractice power just wasn't useful. That said, sometimes Malpractice will win games you would have lost as the base version. I'd wager that the base version will win more games, but the promo will dominate more games. There aren't nearly enough data points to say anything so far, but the base version is "up" by 5% in the stats. 

The new hero I think everyone is sleeping on is Lifeline. That guy is insane (currently #3 best overall win rate in the stats), including with Medico, and he could fit in some of the above teams. 

14

For me assuming a perfect draw, I don’t play any one shots with Medico until I’ve got his set up done. If I’m missing pieces I prioritise the one shots that let you draw more cards, so it’s more likely for me to be using Healing Pulse / Universal Doner as quickly as possible. Ideally you also want Experimental Mediciene and the ongoing that lets you swap healing for powers. Once you’ve got all that in play, I’d 100% rather have Malpractice - the only thing you miss out on is the base power - you have access to all the rest of Medico’s vast healing abilities, but with the option to spend a round dealing damage instead. It just feels like you get a lot more out of it to me... Medico also has plenty of his own cards that can play off this a well - regeneration is a great one, but he has several that would attempt to heal everyone.

The skill with him is knowing when the right time to switch is.

15

Yeah, the more I'm thinking about different combos with him, the more I'm thinking Malpractice is probably lower floor/higher ceiling.  He has the ability to be a much stronger figure than base Medico, but he's easier to mess up and not use well as well, probably.

16

I really didn't mean this thread to be an argument over whether Malpractice Dr. Medico was worthwhile. The fact is, even if he literally had NO base power, Dr. Medico would still be a very strong character, because he has a very effective deck that supports his team in wonderful ways.

I've played several games with both his original and variant powers, and I find that if I can choose the team, Malpractice is by far more effective, due to the combo potential. But in a random team, his malpractice power only pays out if very specific cards come out together. In a random game, his original power has consistently been more effective for me. 

However, once again, if you play a team with 8+ hero targets, and multiple heroes that have several one-shots/powers that heal all hero targets, then Malpractice Dr. Medico becomes one of the most powerful characters in the game.

17

I agree with most of what you're saying, with the caveat that I don't believe you need to try that hard to create a team where Malpractice is more effective, and you certainly don't need to get 8+ hero targets to do it.  Does he love that?  Sure, of course, but it's frosting on the energy damage cake.

18

This, like lots of other threads, seem to point to differences in the way that people play the game.  I think it's clear that Malpractice Medico could be the focal point of a team build, but if you're playing with randomly selected teams that aspect of his skillset won't come into play, so different playstyles will evaluate their worth differently. 

Also, late to the party for the OP, but: you said " Sentinels (Either, but in this team I prefer Adamant)" and I just wanted to mention in case you did not know that you can mix and match SW Sentinels if you like - if you double tap on them in the hero screen and then press the card stack to the left of the T you can switch individual variants in and out as desired.  

Now that she's an option, I would probably dump Captain Cosmic for Spirit of the Void Akash'Thriya - great damage in her own right (and in tiny packets so you can also keep your own characters optimally damaged) as well as Akash'Flora who is always hungry for heals.  I'd also toss in Dark Conductor Argent Adept in place of Tempest and dump him at the end of the team, so you get Vernal Sonata -> Dark Dynamics to recycle and reuse important cards like Take Down, As the Earth Turns, or Lifeforce of Will.  I'd also take America's Greatest Legacy (Galvanize is hard on Akash'Flora), and then you get "every character is capable of giving a power activation to Argent Adept every turn, who can play Lyra and Harp and then pass it to Dr Medico for a Healing pulse, which either does damage or gives power activations or both."