There are three different branches in your base of operations in The Division: Medical, Tech and Security. As you complete missions you earn supplies in each branch that allow you to expand and unlock more aspects of that branch within your base of operations. The different areas you unlock allow you access to specific skills, mods, talents and perks that increase your character’s abilities significantly.
The Medical branch covers support skills, with the Tech branch increasing damage output and Security handling defensive abilities. We’ve covered the best builds for your character, so today we’ll be going into more detail on the Medical branch for players who wish to build the best possible support class character. Depending on your party composition you made need to adjust these skill recommendations to fill any holes in abilities, but assuming you want the best support possible, this should help you unlock the necessary skills.
Medical Skills and Talents Breakdown
First Aid
If you’re building a support character, this is the number one skill to pick up. This allows you to heal yourself and allies in a small radius. You can even shoot at allies with this skill to heal them and any other allies around them, so you don’t even need to be close to use it. There are a variety of mods you can unlock to use the skill to revive downed enemies and give them more health, overheal a target to give them a shield of sorts, or even give them a damage buff.
Support Station
For the support player who wants to get more involved in fire fights, the Support Station is a must-have skill. It allows you to heal and even revive allies without needing to directly target them. Combine this with the First Aid skill and you should be able to keep your party alive for significantly longer than any party without a proper support player.
Recovery Link
The Signature Skill from the Medical branch is important because it doesn’t use a normal skill slot. All Signature Skills (one for each branch) use a slot that’s separate from your limited skill slots. The abilities of the Recovery Link are basically similar to those of the First Aid and Support Station skills combined.
If you wanted to be more versatile and add some Tech or Security branch skills to your support class, as long as you keep Recovery Link as your Signature Skill, you can still provide support (although to a lesser degree). Having all three will make it almost impossible to kill your party members unless the hostile force takes you out first.
Combat Medic
This talent allows you to use a medkit on yourself and heal nearby allies for 40 percent as well. This essentially turns your medkit into the First Aid skill. When you factor in the cooldowns of your skills, having this as a backup or even to use in rotation with First Aid and your other skills will give you a significant healing boost.
Medkits
Not to be confused with the actual medkits that heal you, the Medkits perk increases the number of medkits you can hold by one. Couple this with the Combat Medic talent and you have another significant increase to your healing abilities. You can also opt to get the Talent perk which increases your talent slots by one.
Medical Skills and Talents Short List
These are the skills and talents you should obtain as quickly as possible and the amount of medical supplies you’ll need to gain access to them.
Skill / Talent / Perk | Skill Section | Supplies to Unlock | Skill Mods Section | Supplies to Unlock |
First Aid | Clinic | 500 | Intensive Care | 400 |
Support Station | Virus Lab | 500 | Hazmat Unit | 400 |
Recovery Link | Disaster Aid | 1000 | N/A | N/A |
Combat Medic (Talent) | Pediatric Care | 200 | N/A | N/A |
Medkits (Perk) | Multiple | N/A | N/A | N/A |
As you can see, there are only a few sections of the Medical branch that you really need to focus on early. You’ll need 500 medical supplies each to unlock the Clinic and Virus Lab to gain access to the First Aid and Support Station skills. Once you have those, just get 200 more to unlock the Pediatric Care section and gain access to the Combat Medic talent.
At this point you have everything you need to be a more effective support class, but there’s still more you can unlock. You need to choose between the long grind to get the 1,000 medical supplies needed to unlock the Disaster Aid section and, in turn, the Recovery Link Signature Skill. This is important because it goes into a skill slot separate from your normal skills so you don’t have to worry about swapping this skill in and out all the time.
In addition to Recovery Link, you’ll need 400 medical supplies each to unlock the Intensive Care and Hazmat Unit sections. These unlock the mods for the First Aid and Support Station skills which can drastically improve these abilities based on what your needs are. If you’re not up for a grind, go for the mods first. If you’re okay to grind out as many medical missions as possible to get what you need, start with the Recovery Link. You can unlock the Medkits perk through several of the sections you need to unlock for the other skills, so you will have that by default.
For more information on the class skills in The Division, check out our coverage of the best class skills, as well as the skills available in the Beta.
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Published: Feb 4, 2016 09:41 pm