Engineering 101

I am an avid engineer player and currently have 95 hours logged as him, as well as 25-30 from the beta. I have been toying with the idea of writing a guide on him for a while now, but I never had the time. I've been a lurker on these forums since release and play in the TF2F servers whenever they are not full, so some of you may know me. While Cypher's ninja guide and and playstyle outlines are good basic resources, the Engineer forum seems to be lacking a comprehensive guide like some of the other class forums. This along with recent games with terrible engineers has convinced me to finally put my experience and tricks on paper. I am still in the process of taking screenshots so many pictures will come in the next few days.

Engineering 101: A Comprehensive Guide

The Basics

I. Sentries and Shotguns: Your Weapons

II. Location Location Location: Placement

III. Meet the Team: The Other Classes

The Basics

The engineer is listed as one of the three defensive classes by valve, and he is by far the best at it. However, the engineer is also a major support class with his dispensers and teleports. The engineer's primary job is area denial, and the sentry gun is his weapon of choice. The sentry is most often used to protect capture points and restrict enemy movement through choke points. His teleporters are used to greatly speed the re-enforcement of the front lines by quickly moving the slower combat classes to where they need to be. Lastly, the dispenser is used to provide the engineer's team with ammunition and health, as well as slowly generating metal for the engineer to use. Metal is used to both build and upgrade his structures and can be gathered from ammo packs, dropped weapons, and dispensers. All engineer buildings can be ROTATED BY CLICKING THE RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON when about to be built.

I. Sentries and Shotguns: Your Weapons

A. Weapons

The Shotgun: The shotgun is a spread-fire weapon like the scout's scattergun, only it trades damage for a smaller spread and thus slightly higher accuracy and effective range. The shotgun does 74-90 damage and crits for 180 when all the shots hit, and has 6 shells with 32 more in storage. The shotgun reloads very slowly as it is one shell at a time, so when you are out of ammo it is usually better to switch to another weapon rather than attempt to reload. The shotgun is your primary weapon and the one that you live and die by. Two shots is generally enough to kill most classes at close range, making it a very lethal close quarters weapon. Many engineers will say that your wrench is your best friend but they are wrong. The shotgun is nearly always the better choice when dealing with enemies, as it does more damage and can reach out further. While you may not be able to take on the true combat classses head on, by utilizing the terrain around you as cover it is quite possible to whittle them away.
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/8210/shotgunso5.png


The Pistol: The pistol is effective at close to medium range and can be used to harass at longer ranges. It does 20-22 damage and crits for 45. The pistol caries 12 rounds with 200 in storage. While the damage may be low, the pistol fires very quickly and has a fast reload. This is your medium ranged weapon. Your shotgun has a relatively short effective range, but the pistol is accurate enough to land most of its shots from a surprisingly large range. Great for finishing wounded opponents and harassing at long range. You have 200 bullets in storage so you can spam it as much as you want. Even at long range, that many bullets are going to land enough that your target cannot ignore you for long.


The Wrench: The wrench is your melee weapon which is also used to repair, upgrade, and speed the construction of buildings. A standard melee weapon, the wrench hits for 43-87 with a 195 crit at a little over one swing every second. The wrench is the backbone of your strucures. It builds, repairs, and upgrades them, as well as removing sappers. Your wrench will always be either whacking your structures or connecting with a spy's face.

B. Structures

The Sentry Gun: The sentry gun is your true primary weapon. It starts as a single automatic gun which can be upgraded twice to add more guns and firing speed as well as a rocket launcher. It will automatically target and engage any enemy coming into its range and line of sight. Sentries can be edged by most classes, creeping around the edge of corners to chip away at its health, as well as outranged depending on the palcement. Sentries, like all buildings, will be disabled and then destroyed by sappers. All levels of the sentry gun have significant knockback, with enormous knockback on players who don't have their feet on the ground. Sentries are immobile, but have an enormous damage output. Level two and three sentries will shred any class caught in the open, which forces the other team to either use an Ubercharge, send a spy, or edge the sentry to get past.

Level 1: The basic sentry gun, it is built for 130 metal in 10 seconds(5 if whacking it with wrench). Not overly deadly, it works best if you are supporting it with damage from your shotgun. The knockback is light enough that this level is easily circle strafed(running around it faster than it turns), and dies quite easily. A disposable weapon, the level 1 is best used to ambush low-hp classes or just provide a bit more damage for your team.

Level 2: The first upgrade gives the sentry vastly higher killing power than the level one. With two chainguns, this sentry has higher knockback and much higher damage. Excellent all around, a level two will likely kill any single person that wanders into its range.

Level 3: The last upgrade, this sentry ups the rate of fire of the chainguns and adds a rocket launcher. The level 3 sentry's knockback is very strong and will effectively halve your movement speed if trying to run at it. However, if you do not have your feet on the ground, a level 3 sentry will launch you straight across the map away from it. It takes time and alot of metal to upgrade a sentry to level 3, so they are generally only used for static defenses like capture points, choke points, and foreward outposts.

The Dispenser: Need a dispenser here! Need a dispenser here! Need a dispenser here! The Dispenser if the reason your team loves you, especially the heavier combat classes that chew through ammo quickly. Your dispenser provides ammo, health, and metal to you and your team, and is the heart of any forward outpost. A dispenser should be the first building your construct for any static defense, first beacause it provides you with metal, and second because it will attract team mates who would otherwise ignore you, giving you cover while you set up.

Teleporters: Teleporters are the second reason your team likes you, particularly the heavies and soldiers. Teleporters allow the slower classes on your team to quickly get back into the fight. Always build one outside your spawn at the beginning of a round, but be careful not to put them on sloped ground, as they may block your team. Try to get them up as quickly as possible.

Its time to meet the rest of the team. As it is TEAM Fortress, teamwork is a major factor in engineering as well as any other class. Knowledge is power and knowing the strengths and limits of the other classes is one of the most potent weapons you can have. Firstly, lets list the classes in order from most to least dangerous to an engineer and his structures(non-ubered):

1. Demoman
2. Spy
3. Soldier
4. Sniper
5. Pyro
6. Heavy
7. Scout
8. Medic
9. Engineer

And with an Ubercharge:

1. Demoman
2. Pyro
3. Soldier
4. Heavy
5. Spy
6-9. All others

These rankings are obviously only for direct threat, as overall a medic is the greatest danger to you. Any class with an Ubercharge is extremely dangerous to you, especially if the medic is smart and runs in front to draw the knockback from your sentry.

The best way to learn about the other classes is obviously to play them as I have. Playing as the other classes is the absolute best way to learn how to defeat them when playing as another. I myself only recently started playing spy frequently and I have learned more about how to negate them than I had in months of playing engineer, as well as a new understanding of the dificulty of the class and respect for those who excell at it. But for you lazy people, here is a brief overview on the capabilities of classes in reguard to engineers.

Ah the medic. At the same time both the best friend and worst enemy to any class. For the purposes of engineering, however, the medic is predominantly your enemy. The threat in the medic lies in his ability to keep the classes directly dangerous to you from dying. Just plain healing will buy most classes more than enough time to destroy a level one sentry, and a level two for heavier classes. The greatest threat that he poses is his ability to Ubercharge his patient for 10 seconds, making them invulnerable. He can also make them crit 100% instead, but since crits do not affect building it is irrelevent for our purposes. An Ubercharge will literally allow ANY class to take out you and your sentry since they cannot die. The medic is the reason that the engineer relies so heavily on support from his teammates because while the engineer can do nothing but repair and try to weather the attack, other classes have ways of minimizing or negating Ubers. Demomen and pyros in particular are useful because they can either knock the medic and patient apart, or up into the air. Remember the previous section where I talked about knockback on people in the air? Well it works on people who are Ubered. A level 3 sentry will take anyone with their feet off of the ground and either launch them out of its range or pin them helplessly to a wall until the Uber runs out, then tear them to shreds. I suppose it is worth a mention that the projectiles from the medic's needlegun arc just like a demoman's, allowing them to hit things over low barriers or elevation. However these needles are very low damage and horribly inaccurate, and do not pose a serious threat in most situations. Overall your best strategy for dealing with medics is to call them out and get your teammates to kill them.

The demoman is the bane of your existance, the biggest direct threat to you and all of your structures. The demoman's weapons are arcing, relatively inaccurate projectiles, but make up for the lack of accuracy with massive damage. A direct hit from a grenade or sticky bomb is a one-hit kill on you. This is even more annoying because of the demoman's ability to detonate stickies in midair, essentially turning it into a far superior rocket launcher. The demoman is your worst enemy because of the effectiveness of his indirect fire weapons against your buildings. The bouncing grenades allow him to attack your buildings around corners if they are close enough without exposing himself, and both of his weapons can fire over the top of barriers. His stickies are his most powerful weapon against you as 3 will kill you, your sentry, your dispenser if it is close enough(it shouldn't be!), and anything else in the area. You can attempt to shoot the stickies away from you, but the sticky launcher fires faster than they can be removed unless he is forced to charge it up for a variety of reasons. Your best defense agaisnt a demoman is your sentry placement. You want him to have to charge up his sticky launcher to get them close enough to you, giving you time to shoot them away. This is mainly accomplished by having your sentry either in an elevated position, very far away from him, or in low-ceiling hallways which don't allow for the arc of the stickies. If your sentry placement doesn't meet these requirements you have two choices: attack or bail out. If it is only him the best course of action can be to bumrush him with the shotgun in an attempt to distract or outright kill him, just make sure to dodge and weave as his weapons can one-shot you if they hit. If there are other enemies with him just run, he is going to get the sentry. When confronting an Ubered demoman often your only option is to bail out, as he is going to kill your stuff. The only exception to this is if your have a teammate(pyro/demo) who can blast either him or his stickies away. As a teammate the demoman isn't overly useful ouside of blasting ubers apart. He can lay stickies around your sentry but it is really only a spy deterrant, and a bad one at that as by the time he hears "SPAH SAPPIN MAH SENTRY" the offending spy will be long gone from the scene of the crime.

Gentlemen

The spy was originally intended to be the main counter to the engineer, and if played well he still can be. As someone who plays both classes I can tell you that spy is by far the hardest class to both play and master, but in the hands of an expert he is extremely effective. The spy's strength lies in his specialized weapons. His electro-sapper is specifically designed to disable and then destroy engineer buildings, and his butterfly knife is an instant kill from a 180 degree area from the back. I could very easily spend an entire page covering spy vs engineer but for the sake of the reader I will keep this one short, although I may add a section in later dedicated to the spy. Your best weapon against spies is awareness. Keep moving around checking hiding spots near your sentry to try to catch spies decloaking/disguising. And most of all spycheck anyone who comes near your gear, especially if thay are at half life and have their primary weapon out. Disguises by default show 50% life and can only show the primary weapon of the class. You also cannot walk through spies like you can to teammates, and spies cannot walk through your buildings. When your buildings innevitably get sapped, save your dispenser frist as it will die faster than your sentry. If the spy tries to chain sap you go after him with either wrench or shotgun untill he either dies or runs. At some point you will probably get stab'n'sapped, and there is no warning and nothing you can do about it. But to be honest if a spy is good enough to pull that off on a level 3 sentry, he deserves those points. Once again your best defense against spies is your temmates. Most people will spycheck anyone suspicious near engineer structures just out of habit, and pyros just do it on impulse. Pyros are your best defense agianst spies because their flames will expose both cloaked and disguised spies with minimal effort.