How can I distinguish which gun a medic is using?

When being healed by a medic, the name of the gun the medic is using appears below the players name. This was previously useful for knowing what charge would be deployed by the medic.

However, since name tags have become more prevalent, the custom name of the weapon appears below the players name. This has lead to some awkward situations where I was expecting an ubercharge, only to be destroyed by a sentry as I wielded an inefficient kritz.

It's fairly cumbersome to have to ask each medic what charge they have, and, while it does work, isn't particularly ideal.

Are there any auditory or visual clues I can use to determine which medic gun I am being healed by if it has a custom name applied?

Solution 1:

Turn to look at your Medic and pay attention to the healing beam. If you see yellow streaks on the beam, and you see glowing yellow lights on the gun itself (without custom skins), it's a Kritzkrieg. If the Medic's backpack appears different than usual, and you see yellow and blue/green streaks on the beam, it's a Quick-Fix.

You can also watch the Medic's charge rate. If it's going up pretty quickly, chances are it's a Kritzkrieg or Quick-Fix. After a while of observing and comparing charge rates for all the mediguns, you'll be able to tell the difference at a glance.

Solution 2:

To know what items any teammate has (including medics), you can bind a key to the inspect command. This displays small dialog that displays information about the items your teammates are carrying - you generally see this while you are dead and/or spectating players. If you bind it to a key, however, it will display information about teammates you are looking at while alive.

Looking at the wiki, it seems that this may by default be bound to the F key, but I have not used the default config for a while so I cannot confirm that to be the case.