Team Fortress 2 - Engineer Guide Giddy-up.

[Forte 0]

I figured my Sniper guide went well enough to write a second guide for my second most played class, the Engineer. The Engineer's weapons, thanks to lack of an update, are basic and don't even really need to be covered, but playing a good Engineer isn't always something people seem to be able to do.First things first, let's go over basic Engineering guidelines. Your Buildings:Your buildings are your main source of kills, help, and defense for your team. For some reason, many Engineer players I see will build their buildings by letting them autobuild. Perhaps it's just not generally known, but hitting your buildings or the buildilngs of other Engineers with your wrench will build them twice as fast. The effect stacks, too, so if you're helping a buddy build his building, it'll build twice as fast. As a note, build times are as follows (without wrench):Sentry: 10 SecondsDispenser: 20 SecondsTeleporter Entrance and Exit: 20 Seconds.This means that a Sentry with two Engineers at it will build in 3 seconds. Even by yourself, your sentry will build in 5. That's a huge difference. Now on to discussing the buildings in general. I would discuss the sentry, but it's pretty self explanatory. All of the buildings are self explanatory, really, so instead discussing the buildings themselves, I'll talk about the order in which you should build them. The real big question is: How secure is your location? If you're confident in the location and don't see much of a threat coming your direction, then it's reasonable to build your Dispenser first, as that'll provide you with plenty of metal for your future buildings. If it's looking dangerous, it's almost a necessity to build your Sentry first, in order to protect not only yourself, but your newly built Sentry. Normally, the best course of action is to build your Sentry and collect enough metal to build a Dispenser, then begin to level up your buildings from there, but it's all, once again, a matter of where you're at and how well protected it is. Helping your fellow Engineers is a big part of being an Engineer, too. If you go to a location where you see one of your fellow Engineers building his Sentry, as long as it's not in a ridiculous or useless place, help them build up the Sentry and level it up if you have the resources instead of building up your own. Two level 1 sentries are nothing compared to one level 2, and especially not a level 3. Before you even leave your base, it's always a good idea to build a teleporter entrance. If you're playing on a map that allows teleporters to be built inside the base, take advantage of that, as it means no enemy spies popping out of your teleporter. On the same note, if you're able to build teleporters inside of your base, don't build teleporters that lead INTO your base, as that's just asking for spawn killing spies (The only maps I know of that allow buildings to be built in the base are Orange_X, Orange_X3, and Orange_Cross, but I've not played on every map ever made). So where is it that you should build your buildings? Wherever the objective is at the time - Need to protect the intel? Build a sentry in the intelligence room. Your team capped the point? Build at the point before the other team can cap it back. This leads on to the next thing - Dispensers.Your dispenser is a strange item. It's extremely helpful to you, and at the same time, it's extremely helpful to your team. So the question comes up - do you build my Dispenser for your team, or do you build my Dispenser for you? The answer isn't always easy, and it isn't really easy to find a middle ground. For the most part, it's a matter of teamwork. Are you the only Engineer? If so, your Dispenser has to be used for everyone, so building it in a place that's easy to get to and from is important. If you're not the only Engineer, it's easier to leave your Dispenser somewhere while you move everything else. It's important to remember that when you move your Dispenser, you should alert your team to its new whereabouts, since in some larger maps, it's easy for people to lose you. As an Engineer, your worst enemies are Spies and Demomen, and the occasional Medic-Heavy/Soldier team. Unfortunately, aside from Spies, there's not much you can do to pick off your enemies, so you'll have to rely on your team to help you out. Whenever a Spy comes around to sap your buildings, remember to get the sapper off of your Sentry first, since that way, if the Spy succeeds in killing you, at least he dies as well. It's worth a shot to attempt to kill the spy, either with your wrench or shotgun, but don't neglect your buildings. If you can, get backup from teammates to help remove the spy. A good strategy is to ask your teammates to show that they're real by firing their weapon before coming over to your Dispenser. As long as your team does as you asked, you'll be able to pick out Spies extremely easily. Helpful Hints:Since the Spy update, your Teleporters are sapped from both ends at once, so if you're at the other end of a fellow Engineer or your own teleporter, you can unsap both of them.Look for places you can build your Sentry without there being any openings that it could be shot at without it returning fire. The most excellent places for this are in corners behind a door or behind walls near Control Points. Your Wrench has a high crit rate on Spies. Use that.When you're not building things or repairing them, scout the area and spycheck. You can easily get on top of your Sentries and Dispensers by jumping and crouching at the same time. From here, it's harder to be backstabbed.

[user681 0]

fail you deserve to be banned..

[Forte 0]

I guess that since the Engineer's Update has come out, it's worth updating this to cover his new weapons and skills.Firstly, let's start with the new Shotgun, the "Frontier Justice". The normal shotgun was just that, a normal, six shot shotgun with decent range and a pretty darn good damage output for close range combat, capable of taking out all 125 HP classes in two or three hits. The frontier justice forfeits three of its clip size and random critical hits in exchange for 100% criticals after the destruction of a particularly useful sentry gun. The criticals are awarded in a 2:1 ratio for every kill your sentry got, and a 1:1 for every kill your sentry assisted in. The maximum amount of crits you can recieve is 32, which is the total clip size of the shotgun, and it's more than enough to take revenge on anyone who dared destroy your trusted sentry gun. It is, like most weapons, a reasonable side-grade, and depending on exactly what kind of engineer you are, you may or may not find this new weapon useful. As a quick side note, this is the first Engineer weapon to grant the engineer a taunt kill.The new secondary, replacing the very useful pistol is an aptly named control device, cleverly called "The Wrangler". Whenever it is your active weapon, you assume complete control of your Sentry gun, being given the ability to aim it in any direction at anyone you choose, and begin to unload a constant stream of bullets and rockets on any unsuspecting disguised spy, enemy snipers across the map, practically anything you want. As an added benefit, assuming control of your sentry will stop it from shooting at anything you don't want it to shoot, an important strategy to keep it from being distracted by Scouts under the effect of Bonk! Atomic Punch, or an ubercharge that is within range, but not necessarily coming for you. Part two of this weapon's usefulness comes in the form of a shield that goes up around the Sentry Gun, so that while you're controlling it, the Sentry takes 66% less damage from all incoming enemy fire. On the downside, the sentry becomes very noticeable, and uses an obvious laser site, so it's not all too useful for being covert about your sentry's position. Also, when you switch from The Wrangler, the sentry becomes useless for a few seconds, before picking itself back up and becoming the automated killing machine it always was.As a matter of personal taste, I almost consider this weapon a pure upgrade, rendering the pistol completely obsolete, but it does leave you a bit more vulnerable to spies, since to be honest, unloading a sentry on a person of your choosing can be a big distraction.The third weapon is, of course, a melee weapon. "The Gunslinger" is a robot arm that replaces the wrench (and the engineer's right hand!) and also replaces the normal sentry with a quick building mini Sentry. The Arm itself functions as your wrench, so it's still able to repair and upgrade your buildings, as well as those of your fellow engineers. The downside to having this robot arm instead of your wrench is that it gets no random critical hits, and instead only crits on the third successive punch to anyone in your way. The other, obvious downside is the mini sentry that can never upgrade beyond level 1 and cannot be repaired. This mini sentry has twice the rate of fire of a typical level 1 sentry, but only does half the damage per shot. (For the record, since the Wrangler ups the rate of fire of the sentry gun to twice its normal speed, a mini sentry will fire at 4x the speed of a normal sentry gun. This means that the mini sentry is actually no better than the normal sentry gun in terms of damage output and is in fact trumped by the damage output of higher level sentries, especially when Wrangled.) Another interesting perk of the sentry is how quickly it builds, almost instantly when you sit there and punch it to help it build faster. Unlike the normal sentry or any other buildings, the mini sentry starts building with full HP. This isn't necessarily a wonderful trait, as its low HP makes it instantly destructable by a Huntsman arrow, a fully charged Sniper Rifle, or a Pyro's Homewrecker. It makes up for its many flaws by being a very silent killer, because of its low damage output per hit and next to no sound, your enemy normally won't notice it's shooting them until they're almost dead, at which point finding a hiding place is difficult. Fun Fact: When this weapon first came out, there was a glitch that allowed players to upgrade the mini sentry into a mini sentry - Level 3 by building a mini sentry with the gunslinger and switching back to the normal wrench through resupply cabinet. This of course produced a level 3 sentry that had all of the perks of the level 1 mini sentry stacked with the perks of the level 3 sentry. This glitch was taken out quite quickly.The engineer received one more weapon in his update, a replacement for the wrench that stays true to being a wrench - the "Southern Hospitality". This wrench forfeits random critical hits for five seconds of bleeding inflicted on any enemy it hits, making it a great way to pursue spies and become a hit and run engineer. It has no real perks over being a Spy finder, and no real downsides besides taking your random critical hits from you.-Tips and Strategies-Remember The Wrangler? Of course you do! It has another super special ability that a discerning Engineer will most certainly take advantage of. Recall that the Sentry gun is capable of injuring its owner, and put two and two together: Rocket Jumping. Of course, this wouldn't be possible if not for the fact that the Wrangler actually lessens the damage output of the rockets, since any good Engineer will know that the rockets the level three sentry fires are a one hit kill on almost any class. In order to pull off a Sentry rocket jump, simply Wrangle your sentry, point it at your feet, fire, and go through the motions that any rocket jumping Soldier or Demoman would. This is very useful for getting up to high, otherwise overlooked places to build a Sentry great for heckling your opponents. It works very well in conjunction with another added Engineer Ability...- Moving your buildings -Remember the days when you had to destroy your hard work just to join your team near the front lines? Forget about them, because now you can just pick up and move any currently build building that you own. Of particular interest is that after picking up a building, you can carry it with you through a teleporter. Couple this with your Sentry's ability to launch you to high places... and you can get an entire base built out of reach of any Spy! Destroy your teleporter entrance to provide added security and you have a near impenetrable fortress as long as you play everything out cautiously.