A Support's Guide to the Heal/Hurt Gun

The support has a marvelous ability to both heal anything that can be damaged and hurt anything that can be hurt using his signature Heal/Hurt Gun. The problem is, a lot of people die because supports use it ignorantly.

Your job as a support is to keep your team alive. You are not rambo. You have a short range, but powerful weapon as backup. Intelligent players will keep their distance. The hurt function is more utility than anything. You must do as your name implies - SUPPORT! You are rewarded for doing this! Victory, pocket change, and juice are among those rewards. Oh, and the eternal gratitude of your teammates.


So, how do we go about using this remarkable tool to do our job?


FIRST - We get gold rate of fire endorsement.

Why gold rate of fire? Because your healing and hurting as a support is directly tied to your rate of fire. A gold rate of fire endorsment will mean you can finish supporting one teammate and move on to the other four that much quicker. To your teammates, it is the difference between life and death. To your turrets, it is their lifeblood while under fire from the enemy. To your bots, it is one of many boons you can grant them. To the enemy, it is terror! Why? Because it's horrifying to damage someone so badly chase them down for the kill, and find that around the corner they are once again at full strength because of your help! It also helps with using the shotgun if you're into that sort of thing.

Now that we're ready to use our weapon, what do we do with it?




SECOND - We vow to keep all teammates overhealed as much as possible.

Our teammates will have much better weaponry for taking out foes in the open than us. Keeping them alive can consequently keep us alive. An angry gunner is a larger threat than a scampering support. Keeping them in a state of not-dead means the enemy receives less money, which means less turrets, upgraded weaponry, bots, ejectors, annihilators, juice, and so on and so forth coming your way. Your healing does more hurt than you can imagine!

HOWEVER, we must not forget the bots. Much like how we must remove enemy bots from play to stay alive, we must keep our own bots in play to win the game. Bots are teammates, too, and they deserve healing. A single healed blackjack might take on an entire wave of enemy bots and survive until a wave of your own bots arrives! They can cause enemy bots to clog up en masse making for a prime airstrike target! They can soak up large amounts of damage with your bot aura to waste the ammo and time of the enemy! They deal crippling blows when you might otherwise be unable to!

Make sure they're healthy. Mourn the loss of the fallen. Reap vengeance in their name.

How to reap such vengeance? It is simple. While it is true that healing and overhealing gives supports juice faster than anything else, and juice is fantastic for vengeance, the other half of the gun can do us small favors until that point, and will also bring forth a flow of juice, so...



THIRD - We will realize when we should use the hurt function of our weapon, and when it is better to use alternative weapons instead.

The hurt part of the heal/hurt gun serves two literal purposes. It removes health from the enemy, and it gives health to you. However, even with gold rate of fire this damage can be INSIGNIFICANT. That is when you must realize that the hurt gun is not just a hurt gun, it is a heal gun for yourself.

Basically, you should use the hurt gun in only four situations, ever.


1. To remove health from enemy turrets or bots to sustain yourself and recover strength

2. To finish off opponents that are gravely injured, but too risky or difficult to reach with the shotgun

3. To REAP VENGEANCE while in the juiced state against unprepared opponents.

4. To crush slims and blackjacks while in their line or other people's line of fire, or other situations where grappling is risky and you do not have airstrikes available or a firebase set up to deal with them

It is important to note that pros will give you a minuscule amount of health (almost none at all) compared to bots. In a risky situation, it is best to steal health from bots and let backup assist, if possible. It is unknown whether this is a bug or feature, but since bots are typically in good supply it is not a common issue. In emergencies a turret may suffice.



The hurt gun is a selfish weapon. Always be sure to give more than you receive. Buckshot makes a pleasant gift, so you should always use the shotgun instead of the hurt gun when facing healthy pros in close quarters. Taking too much from others will often lead to karma reaching up and slapping you in the face.

Oh, and about that vengeance thing...


FOURTH - We will learn to prioritize targets for our heals and hurts

Our weapon, our tool - it is complete useless even if we use it correctly if we do not DIRECT is correctly, therefore, when heals are needed of us, we will help our comrades in a manner similar to the below:


1. Teammates in immediate crisis receive immediate attention
Why? Because if you can prevent their death, you can keep them on the offensive and you have another sack of meat between the enemy and you if you're successful.


2. Teammates with the slowest regeneration receive attention as soon as possible
Why? Gunners are a big part of this, they have the biggest weapons but can take as long as a respawn to get back into the fight - as long as 15 seconds. Getting these people back into battle is imperative. If you find a teammate is regenerating quickly due to endorsement or upgrades, then move on to weaker teammates


3. Mission-critical or expensive items will receive attention as often as necessary in order to keep them in peak condition
Why? Level 3 turrets, especially rock-its and shaveice turrets, have a large amount of health which means you can build a lot of juice from them. When hacked, they're also one of the most dangerous things on a battlefield and the enemy will seek to remove them as soon as possible. They waste enemy time and/or money and/or juice duration destroying them, can give you a major boon on the battlefield, and their survival can mean yours.


4. Teammates, including bots, will receive extra attention such as constant healing or overhealing when it is deemed that such an act will be helpful to the team's cause without neglecting any other needs.
Why? Common sense. Such pushes can cause GREAT FEAR, TERRIBLE TRAUMA, and MUCH PAIN, especially if your patient continues to stay in good health despite attempts to attack him/her. While classes with more health will naturally overheal better than others, overhealed players will resist instant kill methods, skills, grapples, etc when they are in good health and receiving constant attention to mitigate other damage sources more often.

Never underestimate the power of an overhealed bouncer. They're the bot equivalent to assassins in lethality, only with the subtlety of a gunner.


5. Other items including and limited to the jackbot should be healed only as last priority.
Why? Despite giving loads of juice if you heal them while they're taking damage, they heal incredibly slow. They're a huge distraction giving you time to heal up teammates and damaged turrets before the next wave comes around. If there's nothing else to do, then it can help you juice up, but it's typically not worth it, especially when it starts treading on enemy ground.




When we feel the desire to hurt, we will use the HURT GUN only when it is most beneficial, but particularly against BOTS and TURRETS because our shotgun is ineffective against turrets and about equal when it comes to bots, only it doesn't heal us.

Against PROS, we will typically resort to the much more powerful SHOTGUN since we will not receive as much health using the hurt gun and the range for both weapons are about the same.

We will also keep in mind that a bouncer following us around can be considered a personal health pack as long as we do not let it catch us




Finally, - We will learn how to use our juice in the most effective manner.

The heal/hurt gun more than triples in effectiveness while juiced, but there's a time to heal, a time to hurt, and a time for other measures. We will go by the following guidelines, but we will bend or break them as we feel the need. Juice is our time to shine, and we should spend it how we feel we should

1. While juiced, any normal foes in the vicinity should be immediately vanquished with judicious use of the hurt gun, especially if they have the potential to ruin your juiced day.

2. While juiced, any badly wounded teammates should be given some attention with the heal gun. One second is all it takes and it can be done while in transit to the next target.

3. While juiced, any turrets deemed a threat or deemed to possibly become a future threat will be eliminated with the hurt gun. Laser Blazers are iffy based on your preference, but long shots are extremely fragile and should be eradicated immediately. Assaults on hacked level 3 rockits should be performed cautiously after acquiring a level 3 passive skill. Assaults on level 2 or higher shaveice or rockit turrets should be done with the knowledge that they may use the entirety of the juice, and should be assisted with healthy doses of airstrikes.

4. While juiced, any bots should be ignored unless they are an immediate threat or blocking you from heavier targets. However, passively hurting a few to death with the hurt gun to keep health up and assist friendly bots is quite alright and encouraged.

5. While juiced, any foes that are also juiced will be dealt with in the most swift of manners via the shotgun, which will typically instantly kill absolutely anyone at point blank. Any other nearby foes will also be dealt with in the same manner for their insolence and to not waste time switching weapons, unless they are out of range.

6. While juiced, we will make the most of what we are given with the knowledge that if we play our cards right, we will be in the same position in just a few more minutes.

7. While juiced, we will WREAK VENGEANCE IN THE NAME OF OUR FALLEN COMRADES, BROKEN BOTS, SHATTERED TURRETS, COLD BACON, CHURROS GONE STALE, AND COIN PICKUPS LOST FOREVER TO THEIR MYSTERIOUS VANISHING DISEASE. WE WILL CRUSH OUR ENEMIES, SEE THEM DRIVEN BEFORE US, AND HEAR THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR WOMEN. WE WILL TAKE AS MUCH AS WE HAVE GIVEN AND THEN SOME, WAVE IT IN FRONT OF THE ENEMY TEAM IN A SMUG FASHION AND THUMB OUR NOSES AT THEM FROM BEHIND A CURTAIN OF AIRSTRIKES AND GAPSHOT SHELLS.


But most importantly, we'll have fun.

Now go support your team, they're probably sticking their fingers inside the laser blazer cannons again.



I don't think I missed anything too important but if I did feel free to point it out.


UPDATE: MAY 18TH, 2011

The juice tweak modifies a few aspects to the support. First of all healing isn't so much effective, and your shotgun is not so much an ungodly killing machine.

I haven't playtested myself yet, be I can assume a few things.

While juiced against other juiced players, reduced fire rate and basically a third lopped off the end of your damage stick means your shotgun is overall, less effective. It's still damn powerful, no doubt, but don't expect to go against another juiced player and expect to one-shot them. Tanks may take three shots and in that time combined with outside fire you may lose the battle.

However, since juiced players INCLUDING YOURSELF take 60% less damage now instead of 67%, the difference may be less drastic than I think.

The big part, however, is that the damage increase makes it potentially easier to take juiced players by surprise and neutralize them with a couple blasts of shootin' gun.


A few advisories against things I didn't cover, however, hacking turrets while juiced is now more hazardous. The hurt gun won't make you nigh invulnerable against that level 2 or 3 hacked rockit due to the fact that since your damage and attack speed was reduced your health income is also heavily reduced. Judicious use of airstrikes can make up the difference, though.

Nothing too big, just WREAK VENGEANCE in a more careful, considered fashion to avoid making a fool of yourself.

You receive my stamp of approval.


...what?

In all seriousness though, this was great! I'll use the hurt gun to recover health more.

its canadian, it means nothing and that's coming from and aussie

its funny how many people don't realize that you get healed by using the hurt option of the HH gun

Wait, seriously? People don't know that?

I use the hurt gun then fall behind bots to do the damage for me. The heal takes over what my meatshields don't and I get away without a scratch in most tussles. The bots I stay behind survive more and hit harder. I find I live through WAY more combats than going autoshotty on people.

trust me a lot of people don't know about the hurt gun actually healing them self.

It is definitely more friendly than my guide, while converying the same point: Priorities and Stacking Your Many Abilities To Work At The Same Time.

He does a great job in telling you all you should do.

Also, throw in gapshots as well? In case you aren't familiar with them, they are a great way to burn money in a stalemate, so that makes them at/below assisting your own bots and pushing specific parts of the map. Since people will love this guide, adding this will get it to them.

I like how you mention overhealing bouncers, they are walking infinite damage sponges when healed properly, and gremlins survive their share when overhealed too, and scramblers are situational but definitely shred teams with many assassins and/or mostly using the low ground.

It was good except that your hhgun actually does 10x more healing to jackbots, they just take a lot of damage and have a lot of health so it doesn't look like you are doing anything.

I'm canadian, you silly. And yeah, that was always something I knew about but it never really registered how I could use it to my advantage.

I see a lot of this being the usual of what I've adopted in my HHGun usage over the past weeks.

While Gold RoF is the best for that slot, you have to consider your other endorsements. SXD24s Support Guide (I think it may be in the XBox section) lists Speed and Armour as the other optimal endorsements if you aim to slay with the Hurt capabilities. On the topic of the ProTags with the Hurt Gun Slaying, bunnyhopping is what your Speed is great for, but if you want to finish the enemies quicker, try think "Would a faceful of pellets be helpful?" I got some kills on higher-healthed classes by weakening with the Shotgun then tormenting them with the Hurt's Range. Alternatively, if you start a fight using only the Hurt Gun, the enemy Pro may hang in too long such that it'll be fatal for them. The range of the HHGun is surprising, use that to your advantage. With the extra speed, it'll mean you can get to Juice Drops before most other classes, and sometimes it may be worth the risk.

I tend to prioritize sapping the enemy's Slims after healing my own waves, just to make sure their "target low-health pros" isn't triggered. If I've Juiced into the enemy base and finished the run, I'll try sap any Slims I see, just so I won't become a target for their PewPew action. I would suggest not to target a 3.3 RockIt at all, let a juiced ShuriSin or a Gunner take care of it. You may be able to get through an unhacked RockIt 3, but barely.

In the situation where you'll be the first Juicer of the match, it can help to upgrade to Passive 3 for the extra health, to make it even harder for the enemies to take you down. Alternatively, if the enemy has set up a few Turrets that may not be worth running to, a higher level Airstrike may work better.

For a Juice vs Juice matchup, I concur that the Shotgun is your best chance. It'll essentially be such that you'll both be on equal standing. On AmmoMule, I had shut down a Juiced Gunner, I don't think they'd see a Juiced Italian pumping their face full of Buckshot.

As for the JackBot healing, that should be your very last priority if your team is competent. It can be useful for that last 10% juice, but be careful when the Jacks clash.

Gap shots are one of my favorite parts about supports, but I wanted to make a guide revolving almost entirely around the heal/hurt gun. I might make another topic on the effective use of airstrikes, how to use hacks intelligently, firebase deployment, gapshot spam, generic tips, etc, but the heal/hurt gun is something every support needs to know about. Other things can be learned about through proper experimentation and occur on a match-to-match basis. Your firebase gets blown up somewhere? Stick it somewhere else. Teammates destroy bots too quickly for airstrikes? Use 'em in some other way.

I should probably stick a note in somewhere about where you belong, though. Too many supports camp in base healing turrets doing nothing useful in particular while their teammates run into battle and die because two of the teammates are effectively "afk"s.

I have no clue where you got that from, but juice buildup is directly proportionate to your healing rate. If it were 10x, you'd be building full juice in seconds.

The main reason it is futile is because if the other team does not ignore the jackbot, they will always outdamage faster than you can heal and there are better things for you to heal. A support should not be healing a jackbot when there are teammates in need, but if there's nothing else, it's acceptable.

Updated with a little footnote regarding the day's update.