After reading through 3 pages I must say that 90% of the view points are just excuses for poor individual play and poor team coordination. The roamer examples in particular are complete dogshit reasons for dislike of the crossbow.
It's almost like the complaining solders are playing the same style of roamer as you did before the crossbow changed the meta. Adapt or sit the fuck down.
To the posters bitching about the Medic hitting arrows mid-fight. How is that different than a soldier hitting an air-shot or a demo nailing a long range pipe? There is no difference, they made a great shot and should be rewarded for such, get the fuck over it.
Anything that enhances the skill cieling of the game/class is to be encouraged. Using arrows in team fights effectively means you need to draw on several important skills such as: Aiming, Prediction and communication between teammates. Each of them makes Medic more challenging to play effectively and raises the bar for all other medics.
The only single thing about the crossbow that I dislike is "Arrow Building".
If the arrows did not build UBER, I think a lot of the complaining about this item would fall off.
I would even be in favor of buffing the arrows healing power if they removed the UBER building component.
I dislike Arrow Building because it doesn't add any skill to the class and is basically just the competitive community finding a way to exploit the side effect of an item.
Hitting arrows during team fights = skill
Hitting arrows during stalemates = crutch
That said, I can live with arrow building and believe the crossbow is not a broken weapon. What is broken are players still having not learned to play their classes properly and want to blame items for their own shortcomings.
Someone should make a thread about that instead.