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Overview:

The Engineer is a powerful defensive class in Team Fortress 2, a relatively stationary cornerstone to any team’s defense. He is capable of building sentry guns, dispensers, and teleporters and wields three weapons: the shotgun, the pistol, and the wrench.

Weapons:

Shotgun – The Engineer’s primary weapon is the shotgun, a weapon shared by many other classes in Team Fortress Two. This shotgun is useful for close range combat (do to it’s ‘shot ammo’) and can crit for a large amount of damage (180). When fighting alongside a turret, the Engineer’s shotgun is extremely powerful but can only be fired 6 times before reloading.

Pistol – The Engineer’s secondary weapon is the pistol, a weapon of the rapid-firing variety. It has 12 rounds to be used prior to reloading and 200 rounds total. This is similar to the Scout’s pistol except that it has many more total rounds than the Scout’s.

Wrench – The Engineer’s melee weapon is a wrench and is, without a doubt, the most dynamic melee weapon in the game. On top of its Spy-crushing capabilities, it speeds the building of all of the Engineer’s contraptions and also allows the Engineer to repair these contraptions. Many Engineers do not use the other two weapons and instead prefer to simply ‘wack’ their machines.

Buildings:

Sentry Gun - The primary building that an Engineer can create is the Sentry Gun. This “SG” is created using 120 metal which can be collected from ammo packs, discarded guns, and other broken machines. Once erected (rotate the SG with the right click), the SG can be upgraded two times to two better SGs. Each of these upgrades costs 200 metal but has greater firepower than the previous one. The first upgrade adds two machine guns to the front of the SG. These machine guns increase the damage and rate of damage for the SG. The next upgrade adds rocket launchers to the top of the gun. The rockets fired from these launchers deal a sizable amount of damage and also knock the enemy backwards. This upgradable gun can be repaired and its ammo replenished with a ‘wack’ of the wrench.

Dispenser - The Engineer’s Sentry Gun is buttressed by a Dispenser, a contraption that creates and stores metal for the Engineer to use. It costs 100 metal to create and dispenses metal in 40 metal chunks. It can also be repaired by the wrench.

Teleporter - The last building that the Engineer can create is the Teleporter. He can build an entrance for 125 metal and then build an exit where he would like his teammates to teleport to. This contraption aids in the movement of troops; the more teammates faster to the scene, the more progress the team can make against the enemy.

Strategies:

1. The key to the Engineer class is Sentry Gun placement. Practice placing your gun in positions that cover vital control points and have relatively safe cover. Also work on placing your gun in such a way that the nearby placement of a Dispenser would be protected. Typically the Engineer needs a constant stream of metal to maintain his SG under heavy fire.

2. After building placement, an Engineer needs to worry about maintaining his metal at a reasonable level. This involves running and picking up metal (discarded guns, ammo packs, metal scraps) and maintaining his Dispenser.

3. Since an Engineer’s buildings can be sapped by Spies, it is essential that the Engineer pay close attention to his surroundings. This includes paying close attention to suspicious teammates and watching his back. Along those same lines, the Engineer needs to be aware of the possibility of a mounting pile of Sticky Bombs underneath his buildings. These bombs can be knocked back with the shotgun or the pistol.

4. Lastly, during a lull in the battle, the Engineer needs to set up his Teleporter system. A well-placed Teleporter can greatly aid a team in getting to the battle.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Strategy, Team Fortress 2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.