A Doctor Bag (or Medic Bag) is a deployable unlocked when you spend at least one point in the Mastermind skill tree. When deployed, your teammates can replenish their HP to full by interacting with it for a few seconds. Now unlike the Medic's Medigun from Team Fortress 2 or a medkit from Battlefield, this Doctor Bag has a limited amount of uses, two to be exact. You can get a second Doctor Bag by unlocking the Combat Doctor skill as well as increase the amount of uses by acing said skill.

It rarely matters who I play with, when I play or what mission I play, I always see the Doctor Bag used very inefficiently. Here are a few notable examples of how I've seen it misused:

• When I deploy it, everyone rushes to use it.
  
• Refilling their own HP when their teammate could've used it more.
  
• Simply using the Doctor Bag when they definitely do NOT need it (I've seen people refill their HP with only a quarter of their life missing).

It's sad because the Doctor Bag is a very useful asset when it's used correctly. Unfortunately, I can't seem to come across a game where I don't see one of the above mentioned things happening. I feel the need to tell players that there actually exists a way to get more out of the Doctor Bag than just health. Without further ado, let's get to work.

Like mentioned earlier, the Doctor Bag is limited to just two heals without any additional skills. Therefore it's recommended to bring at least two bags along if you plan to get in prolonged firefights. (Combat Doctor anyone?)

Now, what are some efficient ways to use the Doctor Bag?

Obviously, right? But we're not talking about being down to half HP. When you only have a quarter of HP left THEN you can start to consider using the the Doctor Bag. It refills your HP to full anyway, so why waste half of the Doctor Bag refilling a fraction of your HP? This is not as efficient as it could be though, but it's good for situations where you have to make a quick escape and are likely to come under a lot of police gunfire.

YOU ARE NOT HELPING ANYONE BY USING A DOCTOR BAG WHEN YOU HAVE MORE THAN OR EXACTLY HALF OF YOUR HEALTH LEFT AND HAVEN'T GONE DOWN YET. USING A DOCTOR BAG IN THESE CONDITIONS IS WASTING A DOCTOR BAGS CHARGES AND, IN A WORST CASE SCENARIO, COULD ULTIMATELY DOOM YOUR HEIST BEFORE IT EVEN STARTED.

UPDATE: With the addition of First aid kits, it is definitely more efficient to use those to recover HP when you have not gone down yet. Prioritize in using First aid kits before you have gone down.

Not necessarily meaning you should immediately use it once you get revived. When you're revived you will get around 40% of your HP back, though you only get around 20% - 10% on Deathwish difficulty. You can get even more health back if the person reviving you has aced the Combat Medic skill in the Mastermind skill tree (not to be confused with Combat Doctor), so you might not need to replenish your health right away. However, it's good to use when you get your HP knocked down a bit. Doing this when you've been down and revived at least once grants you more times you can get downed, making this more efficient but not the MOST efficient way to use the Doctor Bag.

I hope I'm not the only one who considers this, but when you get downed 4 times (thank you Rinker Jass) you will go straight into custody, no questions asked. If you've lost count of how many times you've been down don't worry, you do get a sign. Whenever you get downed and the screen goes black and white the game is telling you not to get downed again or you WILL go into custody next time. And even if you missed that, your screen will gradually turn more and more colourless the more damage you take. Now when you get revived there are two things you could do.

One is to go straight to the Doctor Bag and patch yourself up. You will be fully healed AND you will be given more chances to get downed before you go into custody.

The second is to wait until you take a few hits (meaning don't stand there like an idiot who's just waiting for his health to go down) before using the Doctor Bag, adding to the amount of hits you can take as well as the amount of times you can get downed. However, it is a lot more risky so I'd say if your HP is below a third of your life, you should use the Doctor Bag. You don't want to take too many hits, so try to take it whenever you feel you can't risk taking anymore damage.

I do realise there are people who do not know how to use the Doctor Bags efficiently and will never read this guide (or maybe they just won't listen to reason of others for whatever reason), so don't expect the Doctor Bag to stay till you or your teammate is about to go into custody. That's why it's up to you, the guy who plants the Doctor Bag, to determine when it's a good time to deploy it. If you have friends that you can communicate with easily, you shouldn't have problems deciding when and where you should drop it. But be prepared to come across these people when playing with randoms. It's not just their responsibility to use it rationally, it's also your responsibility to deploy the Doctor Bag at the right time.

So, when IS a good time to deploy a Doctor Bag? It's hard to tell usually, so try to keep track of your teammates' (as well as your own) health as well how many times people have gone down. If one or two teammates (or you and someone else) are dangerously low on health, consider deploying it. If any of them or you have been down at least once, waiting until someone's health drops would be a good time to deploy it. If you know one of your teammates are going into custody the next time you get downed, deploy a Doctor Bag immediately and inform the person who's going to go into custody the next time they get downed. He or she should be the first one to use it. If there's no one else that needs healing, they should stay away from the Doctor Bag and only heal when necessary.

Keep in mind that you can't simply ask people if they need a Doctor Bag. When they've lost at least a quarter of their life, of course they're going to tell you to deploy it if you ask them. Unless it's a team you can trust or a group of friends you can easily communicate with, it's really up to you to deploy it responsibly. If you deploy a Doctor Bag before it's actually needed, people will use it up when they really don't need it and then they will complain that "not enough people brought Doctor Bags with them" because they used it all up in the first 2 minutes of the heist.

A little update following the First aid kits. Keep in mind this section is still under research. These are my first impressions of the item.

On October 27th 2014, First aid kits were introduced along with the Fugitive skill tree. When deplyoed, it will leave a small bag that can be interacted with. If you interact with it, your health will be refilled. When it has been used once, it will disappear. It's also worth noting that this does NOT give you more chances to go down. If you have gone down three times, use a First aid kit and go down again, you WILL go into custody (assuming you don't have Nine Lives basic).

With that last statement alone, a lot of people would probably be put off by this. But let's look at this a little closer. A single player can bring Doctor bags with a total of 2, 4 or 8 charges, depending on the skills the player has. This means that players can heal themselves up to 8 times. This includes adding more times the player can go down.

First aid kits are pretty different. I am going to refrain from repeating myself, so I'll get to the skills immediately. Initially you get 4 First aid kits, which means you can quickly recover 4 times. You can increase the amount of kits by 10, making the total possible amount of kits 14. There's also a skill that halves deployment time and adds a 20% damage reduction for 10 seconds when used.

Now why would you ever need First aid kits? Don't the Doctor bags already work well enough? Well, yes, they do. But I find this to be a very significant alternative. Instead of bringing 16 charges of Doctor bags, why not bring 8 and then use the 14 other First aid kits to recover your health when you feel the need to heal a bit BEFORE you get downed. For instance, making a quick sprint across a firefight where you would get downed if you didn't heal up. If you also had Quick Fix aced (take 20% less damage for 10 seconds after use), that could help out immensly.

Even better, you can use it and you don't have to return to it to use another one like you have to do with the Doctor bag. Instead, if you get in a sticky situation you can just hide, deploy a kit, use it and get back in the fight. For solo, I'd say this works WAY better than the Doctor bag. With a team, I'd say this could work pretty well too. It won't replace the Doctor bag, but I feel like it'll significantly reduce the amount of people who waste the bags charges prematurely. I hate the people who waste Doctor bag charges because they lost half they health and I hope this item will fix that problem.

I'm going to give a small strategy as to how to use the First aid kits. Keep in mind I'm still researching this and these are not my absolute final thoughts.

• Do not let the Doctor bag be replaced by the kits. Doctor bags are still very important to keep the players from going into custody.
  
• Use when low on health, but you haven't been downed yet.
  
• Max out all the skills for these. I feel they are all worth it (aside from maybe Quick Fix basic, but ace is still good).
  
• Don't deploy all the kits at once. You might need to use one in a rather sticky situation and it may end up saving your life. If you plan to deploy a bunch of them at a time, try to keep at least a few with you.

In short, First aid kits do not, and should not, replace Doctor bags. Ever. It is an alternative healing method, but it's not a complete life saver if you've been downed a few times. It's for those people who waste the Doctor bags prematurely (before even going down), and, in my own honest opinion, I feel it's pretty good.

I sincerely hope that I have taught people a better way of using the Doctor Bag, as well as how to make the most out of it. The Doctor Bag is an essential tool that should not be mistaken to have a similar depleting effect as the Ammo Bag. The Ammo Bag depletes based on how much ammo you take from it, while the Doctor Bag depletes one full charge every time you use it. On top of that, the enemies drop ammo but they don't drop health. This is why you see Ammo Bags last longer than Doctor Bags, and you should really savor the Doctor Bag as much as you can before you absolutely need it.

I mean what are you going to do when you've deployed your teams last Doctor Bag, the health went to guys who had 3/4th of their health before they used it, you're down to 1/20th of your health and you can't afford to get downed anymore?