Abbreviation: MED

Medic has been in all but two games in the series. They came in in Etrian Odyssey, where they trivialized the game with Immunize, performed poorly in the sequel with poor action speed in a game where burst healing isn't as necessary and items are incredibly healful, came back in 4 with automatic hands-off healing and Star Drop, which enabled burst damage strats, and made two more returns in the Untold remakes where they worked much the same but without being, respectively, over- and under-powered. Even then, Monk in 3 and Merciful Healer Botanist in 5 were exports of Medic with some changes to fit their different thematics. Medic is the most veteran class in the series, and the one that's varied the most in usefulness.

In Nexus, that variable pendulum thankfully didn't swing very low. Their direct healing is still a bit excessive, but they inherited the Botanist's signature healing skills, giving them a more dynamic role in the party, allowing them to function as defenders through way of healing rather than simply healers. They also, much like EO4, aren't dead weight when no-one needs healing; their staff attack skills are not just pretty strong (Combat Medic, anyone?), they also provide utility and let the Medic increase the party's offense. They can be as straightforward or as complex as you like, allowing them to fit into whatever party you like in whichever role you need.

Oh and Auto-Revive is still super duper nerfed. Just in case you were wondering.


Stats

(Full)

Best in the Game: WIS
Strong Points: TP, INT
Average Points: STR, VIT, LUC
Weak Points: AGI
Very Weak Points: HP

Equippable Weapons: Staff
Equippable Armor: Cloth Armor

Common Passives: Take (Novice), Elem DEF Up (Veteran)


Skills: Force

Boost: Intensive Care
Increases healing power of Medic healing skills and reduces their TP costs by 50%; increases action speed of all actions, and increases TP restoration of all skills and items except Impulse Edge.
Intensive Care (or Steady Hands, as it was called in EO2U) received a massive buff from its last showing. Now its speed buff affects all skills, as well as items, effectively giving you a temporary EOU Efficiency.
Wait, holy shit, this works on item TP restoration?! I have a completely different opinion on this Force Boost now. I mean, it's no Item Echo, but it's pretty damn close.
Intensive Care is really silly in which part of its effect works with what, but for the most part, it's the universal ones that is interesting - Amritas (and Share the Wealth) are much more effective under this Force Boost, while all the offensive staff skills as well as Heal-All appreciate the speed boost greatly. The healing power increase and TP restoration are, for the most part, pretty superfluous, so if you aren't making use of the speed and TP restoration boost, it's best to leave the option of using Healing Touch open.

Break: Healing Touch


Restores all party members' HP. Revives all dead party members at full HP. Removes any ailments, binds, and debuffs.
Still one of the best defensive panic buttons in the game, as it was in EO2U (under the name Medical Miracle). Its efficacy is a little less relevant in EON since enemy damage isn't nearly as overtuned, but I'm not gonna protest having it in my back pocket for emergencies.

Skills: Novice

Healing


Restores one party member's HP.
The literal most basic healing skill. Single-target, cheap, kinda fast. I don't think it needs to be maxed out, but getting it to at least level 5 can't hurt.

Line Heal


Restores one row of party members' HP.
This is probably what you'll be using to heal up party members a lot of the time. It's faster than it was in previous games, but heals noticeably less than Healing. You'll probably want to max this out by endgame.

Patch Up


Restores all party members' HP at the end of battle.
This is far, far better than it was in EO4. The heal is no longer fixed, and instead scales up with level. I wouldn't invest in it as a priority, but a value point early on is helpful. Max it out later if you want.
Love it. Free post-battle healing is always a plus in my book. Patch Up is one of the stronger versions of it.
While it's just HP sustain in exploration, it's really strong HP sustain; with some investment your entire party is basically fully healed after every battle. If you have an otherwise frail party, having this skill can be a godsend.

Antibodies


Increases the user's chance of recovering from disables.

Antibodies's chance increase can cause the user to recover from disables at the end of the turn they were inflicted, something that is normally impossible.
Antibodies at level 6 is fantastic. Not because it seriously cuts down on disable durations, which, while nice, isn't the greatest thing, because Theriacas exist. No, it's good, because it gives your Medic a 50-50 shot of immediately recovering from disables on the turn they're inflicted, potentially putting you in a much better situation to recover from a multi-target infliction than if you didn't have it.

Yeah, it's RNG, so it's not fantastic, but still. There's worse ways to spend 6 skill points.

Lower levels are bad, though.
Your crisis management specialist being able to shrug off a crisis is hilariously good. I need to invest in this, pronto...
You can basically think of it as a variation of Status DEF Up that is twice as effective and builds up accumulative resistance at the same time, at the cost of perhaps one turn (though Medics want to act faster than their enemy, which means it doesn't kick in often for them), so it's fairly effective even at a subclass level. Medics don't tend to be hurt for SP, so this is something you probably want to invest in early.

Scavenge


Increases monster drop drop rates.
Drop rates really aren't that low in EON, so I don't think Scavenge is really worth it. It's only 4 SP, so take it if you really want, I guess.

It's entirely redundant if you have access to the Drop Brooch, though.
This skill always hovers around a 20% increase, and it's infuriating, because when item drops are so low that you want this effect, that number is way too low an increase because it's multiplicative. It'll only have a significant effect on drop rates too high to matter. God dammit, Atlus.
If you have a Drop Brooch, this skill is useless to you. If not... there are a lot of fetch quests late game, and this can save you some pain... very slightly. It's a very low priority skill, but then again, Medics will probably have enough free SP to throw in here later on.


Refresh


Removes ailments.
Get this to level 4 as soon as you can. Having a row-target ailment purge is immensely useful, and one extra skill point is worth cutting the TP cost down by 6.
It's a very good skill. It's very basic but it's so very, very good. The gameplay of EO recontextualizes a lot of skills in interesting ways.
I personally don't care about the 6 TP cut on level 4, but opinions vary. Get it to row-target when you enter the 3rd labyrinth, because that's where the game seriously starts throwing multi-target disables at you.

Revive


Revives one dead party member.
Thank the gods, Atlus still remembered that making Revive have a huge SP cost sucks a lot. A value point in Revive early is invaluable, and will save you both a lot of money on Nectars, and a lot of having to go back to town because someone got unlucky and bit it.

You can leave Revive at level 1 for a while. Get it up to level 4 once you hit, I dunno, the 4th or 5th Labyrinth, and have it maxed out by the 9th or 10th. The extra revive restore does a lot for making sure slower attacks and/or slower enemies don't pick off party members your Medic just got back up.
1SP REVIVE AAAAAAAAAAAAAA ahem, yes. Good.

Head Bash


Deals melee STR-based bash damage to one enemy. Attempts to bind the head of the target.
Thiiiiiis isn't great. While Medics finally have decent LUC, unfortunately, Head Bash uses the (STR * 2) + LUC infliction formula, so Medic's low STR results in a low infliction score for this thing. I guess it's better than nothing for turns where your Medic doesn't need to heal.
It's not great, but it's the best you're getting until Veteran if you run combat Medic. It's also very cheap, something that is DEFINITELY not present later on.
Depending on your team composition, your medic might have a lot of free turns in randoms, and if they don't have better subclass/weapon skills, then this is pretty much the skill of choice in that situation. Its chance to land isn't the best, but at least with a medic on your team, missing the bind is hardly going to be the end of the world.
Skills: Veteran

Delayed Heal


At the start of the next turn, restores all party members' HP.

Cannot be used on the turn where a previous Delayed Heal would activate.

If the user dies, becomes afflicted with panic, sleep, or has their head bound before Delayed Heal goes off, Delayed Heal will fail.
Ah, Delayed Heal, as useful as ever. Drop this before a turn where you're about to get walloped, and bask in having had a good brain and preempted it.

Of course, if that damage is attached to panic, sleep, or head bind inflictions that targets your Medic, Delayed Heal will fail, but hey, can't win them all.
Or combine with Overheal and set it up beforehand to gain a buffer!
The heal rate has been seriously nerfed compared to the past, and now it doesn't even heal as much as heal-all. The fact that it give you an HP buffer on the next turn means that it's still good, but you'll really need to invest heavily in it to make it heal enough now. Because of this indirect nerf, Group Therapy Line Heal and just spamming Heal-All look much better as alternatives.

Unbind


Removes binds.
See my notes on Refresh; they apply here too.
Mine too!
If you have a Protector or sub-Protector on the team you can afford to skip on it, though it never hurts to have a backup option.

Group Therapy


Increases the range of healing skills, but decreases healing power and action speed, for a set amount of turns.

Single-target skills become row-target, and row-target skills become party-target. Has no positive effect on skills that are innately party-target.
Okay. In a vacuum, Group Therapy is really good--it buffs up your row-target healing and lets you heal the entire party with a skill that isn't terrible, and it makes high-level Refresh and Unbind target the entire party.

The problem is that there just aren't many situations in EON that really necessitate it, and even when there are, it's hard to tell when to use Group Therapy, since it's a temporary buff.

I'm honestly torn. Like I said, the actual effects are so good. It's just that the whle "temporary buff" thing makes it iffy.
For the record, this works on motherfucking Revive. Dismiss Revive was already good, but here comes Medic blowing it out of the water! Jesus fuck, Medic, slow down.

Uh, well, it already slowed down since Group Therapy is awkward and unwieldy, but still.
The idea here is that Line Heal and Healing because much better version of Heal-All and Line Heal, respectively, when under this buff. Resurrect also becomes theoretically bonkers crazy, but a party with a Medic in it isn't very prone to have multiple people KO'd in the first place, and the main advantage that it brings is really the much better action speed on Line Heal over Heal-All, and the spammability on Line Heal over Delayed Heal. If your team has access to speed debuffs, or plan to eschew staves altogether in favor of a faster weapon from subclass access, this isn't going to be useful, and it otherwise competes with staff skills (or whatever subclass skill you plan to use) for free turns. For a team that has no speed debuffs and relies on Medic a lot for their defensive support, though, this can very well end up becoming a priority for that Medic. You will need to max this skill out for it to be worth it, though - it's not really even worth casting at below max since it gimps all First Aid skills, including ones that don't benefit from the range increase.

As an aside, Proof of Nobility's "double buff strength" effect will work on this skill - that is, it will double the healing power penalty on this buff. It's more silly than anything since reducing healing power from 95% to 90% is hardly even noticable, but it just gives one more reason to not use this skill if you aren't planning to max it.

Final Gift


When the user dies, they restore all party members' HP.
This is...a really strange utility skill. Your Medic bit the dust? They'll get everyone else's HP up a lot so that your party isn't in as bad shape while you get your Medic back up. I guess that isn't a bad cushion to have for 4 skill points, though do keep in mind that, in an ideal world, your Medic won't die. Ever.
An okay skill. If your Medic gets unlucky and goes down to an AoE, the rest of that AoE is essentially undone, because 350% healing power is A Lot. And at that point, you don't have any health crises beyond any other dead party members, so... I'd pick this up towards the lategame, if you do, when enemies can start sniping your Medic.

Auto-Revive


When a party member dies, the user has a chance to revive them.
That chance is so low, but oh my gods the effect is so good. Sure, that party member will have still died, and therefore lost their buffs and states, but it still means you don't have to spend someone's turn on getting them back up. But that chance is so low and aaaaaagh I find it hard to unconditionally recommend it.
EO4, this ain't. I understand the chance being so low, but did it need to cost ten freaking SP? Low chance or high investment, please pick either or!
Medics have free SP to throw around, but it's still hard to recommend giving the skill much priority due to the low chance. Save it for later on.

Star Drop


Deals melee STR-based bash damage to one enemy. Reduces the target's physical defense.
Hey, a decently strong physical defense debuff. It deals damage too.
DAMAGE. Please check out that 370% damage multiplier. Not impressive by other classes' standards, I suppose, but for being a debuffing skill that enables more damage this is pretty good.
Defense debuff! It's hard to say no to more damage to the rest of the team, if you can generate the opportunities to use it.

Medical Rod


Deals melee STR-based bash damage to one enemy. Reduces the target's elemental defense.
Hey, a decently strong physical elemental defense debuff. It deals damage too.
Because of the climate of EON's classes, Medical Rod doesn't boost a lot of things Star Drop doesn't already. It's pretty much just the Zodiac's attack skills and the Sovereign's elemental bombs, I think. I'd only recommend this if you want to stack it with Star Drop for something like a Link user or an Imperial.
Elemental damage debuff has a far narrower range of application, but Medical Rod's magnitude is 5% stronger than Star Drop's. It's worth using if your party can make use of it, and you have the free turns.

Safe Passage


For a set amount of steps in the Labyrinth, nullifies damage tiles and muddy tiles. Reduces damage taken from certain FOE field attacks.
One point is...alright, I guess, for the 3rd and 4th Labyrinths. It's utterly useless after that, though.
used to be damage tile negation was relevant either in the 2nd, 4th and 6th stratum, or in the 3rd and 6th, so you always had a reason to keep it

um

yeah
Damage floors only exist in a very early labyrinth (when you probably don't have this skill yet), so this is only used for muddy tiles (which also exists only in a single labyrinth and its corresponding maze) and FOE field attacks, only one of which you will actually care about (due to being more nasty than just making you take damage). Guard Soles also exist. Put a point in it if you want, but you probably won't end up using it very much, and you can certainly get by without it.

Skills: Master

Heal-All


Restores all party members' HP.
Hey, look, it's the most useless skill! It's way too slow to be of any worth! Outside Intensive Care, that is. If you have Intensive Care up, it's alright.
Well, if you're using stuff like Sluggish Miasma, Speed Break, SRV Force Boost or leg binds, it can definitely go first. You can also give the Medic a subclass that boosts their speed, like Harbinger, which synergizes with Star Drop. It's okay in those conditions, but the heal isn't great.
The action speed is the main problem with this skill. If you can fix that, it's golden. If not, you're best off sticking with Line Heal and Delayed Heal instead.

Chase Heal


For one turn, when any party member is attacked, the user will automatically heal them after the enemy action that caused the damage ends. Each party member has a limit on how many times Chase Heal can activate on them per turn. Each time Chase Heal activates, its chance of activating again on that turn is decreased.
Chase Heal is good shit, as it was in EO5. It's basically the best way to do proactive healing, if you don't mind using your Medic's turn for it--if you do, then you can fall back on Delayed Heal.
Reflex Herb in EO5 was great. This does not bring me joy. Mostly because the heal is so dang LOW! And it's so expensive! I don't like it. I agree Reflex Herb needed a nerf, but in my opinion this is excessive. Only really worth it in my book if you're also using mitigation.
Despite its low magnitude, it's strong enough to offset most damage from random encounters. Using it in boss battles is pretty futile, though.

Overheal


Medic skills can increase party members' maximum HP for one turn, up to a certain percentage.
Inject it straight into my VEINS. I have always been a big proponent of Overheal, even in EO2U, where it was honestly kind of bad, and EON is no exception. It combines especially well with Delayed Heal, since you can use that to preemptively buff up your party's HP before any attacks on the turn it activates go off. And it doesn't even cost that much SP!

Love Overheal.
INSERT POWERTHIRST COMMERCIAL HERE
Overheal is Medic's biggest selling point, allowing them to combine great healing and a form of mitigation in one package. It's good enough to basically let you forego some defensive support on the rest of your team. Needless to say, you should max it as soon as possible. Sadly, it doesn't work with Healing Touch or Final Gift because those aren't First Aid skills.

Deja Vu


At the end of each turn, for a set amount of turns, each party member will have the most recent Medic skill from the user applied to them during the duration of Deja Vu applied again. If it heals HP, the amount is reduced.
I kind of snubbed Deja Vu in EO5 and, honestly, I regret it. It's a bit weak for actual healing, sure, but it can mimic Unbind and Refresh. It can also function as passive healing, if you want, which isn't bad at all, even if it's weak. It means more of your Medic's healing can go towards Overheal on the next turn.
The duration is so good. It has so many uses, too. With Refresh or Unbind, you can use it to set up effectively perpetual ailment or bind immunity! (Though it is worth noting that healing skills will overwrite that. I would do that only if you have a secondary healer around to help with that while your Medic combats. A Harbinger subclass gives you Atonement, which can be used to heal without overwriting the thing.)

As some trivia, Revive will actually be reproduced. However, because buffs are purged when you die, it will never produce any real effect. C'est la vie.
Deja Vu Refresh/Unbind can be really useful in specific situations, but locking your Medic out of healing really sucks unless you're prepared to heal in a different way (a subjob or spamming items), and then you won't be able to receive the benefit of Overheal. As a sustain, it's basically a vastly better version of Protect Order (assuming your healing skills are maxed), which is somewhat superfluous when you already have a main Medic running around, but can help give them more free turns. It's potentially a very handy skill, but you will need to build your Medic around it to be able to heal without using First Aid skills, and make good use of the free turns it can generate. Your entire party will also need to have an open buff slot for this.

Still, even if you don't want to bother with it, you should pick up at least one point, as it's one of the few things that can negate debuffs which reduce healing power, which comes in handy against some prominent boss battles in the game.

Heavy Strike


Deals melee STR-based bash damage to one enemy.
Hahahaha what the fuck. Sure, Medics have low STR, but there's endgame staves with really high ATK, which can offset that, and 700% damage holy shit.

That TP cost is, uh, exorbitant, yeah, but in ideal fights, what else is your Medic gonna use their abundance of TP on?
Not just endgame staves. When ATK staves pop up, they tend to outpace most other weapons throughout the whole game, and though their distribution is sparce and at times confusing they tend to stay relevant for a while. Also, the Medic's Force Boost will reduce its TP cost!

I think.
It does decent damage for a support class, sure, but holy shit that TP cost. Refreshing Group Therapy or Star Drop/Medical Rod are likely much better use of your free turns.

Staff Mastery


Increases the user's physical attack and maximum TP when a staff is equipped.
Buffs up Heavy Strike and cushions the TP cost a bit. I'll take it.
It's basically Phys ATK Up and a half strength TP Up built in one skill. You can take it later on.

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