How to play the Engineer

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"How to play the Engineer" video by Daedalus

v • d • e The Engineer Weapons Primary: Shotgun / Frontier Justice • Secondary: Pistol / Wrangler / Lugermorph • Melee: Wrench / Gunslinger / Golden Wrench / Southern Hospitality • PDA: Build/Destroy Tool • Taunt: Kabong! / Organ Grinder Abilities Buildings (Sentry gun • Combat Mini-Sentry * Dispenser • Teleporter Entrance/Exit) • Metal • Bleeding Hats Mining light • Texas ten gallon • Engineer's cap • Hotrod • Texas Slim's Dome Shine • Safe'n'Sound • Headgear and misc. items wearable by all classes Strategy Engineer strategy • Engineer match-ups • Engineer User Guides Character Meet the Engineer • Engineer Update Teaser video • Taunts • Voice commands • Responses Achievements Engineer achievements • (How to) Other References • Repair node • Scripts

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Teleporter loops by Auto

(note to site admin: I did not know where else to post this (it would not allow me to post on the engineers strategy page. It probably needs to be edited as well (like to delete this note)

One strategy that, while it has been found to be difficult to achieve in most situations, can become a game winning play. Since teleporters only allow the player to teleport from the entrance to exit, this makes the purpose of the teleporter to transport players as close to any significant points of action (eg. teleporter set from base to front lines). However, If a second engineer sets up teleporter entrances and exits in the same place as the previous engineer, only going in the opposite direction, then a teleporter loop can be achieved (eg. one teleporter set from base to front lines, while second teleporter set from front lines to base). To further protect both sides of the teleporter loop, a sentry and dispenser should be set up on both sides of the loop by the respective engineers. This ensures a safe gateway that team members can use to travel from point a to point b on a given map with ease.

While this technique may not seem very helpful to your team, if this technique was used in a CTF map to set up a teleporter loop from one teams intelligence room to the enemy teams intelligence room, it would allow the team to both protect their own intelligence, and capture the enemies intelligence at faster speeds than what could be achieved by running across the entire map.

In theory it can give the team an almost instant victory, however this strategy is by far much harder in practice. step by step it requires:

• One engineer to set up a teleporter exit with a protecting sentry and dispenser in their own intel room.
• Second engineer to set up a teleporter entrance in their own intel room.
• second engineer to then navigate the map to get to the enemy's intel room (the more challenging part of the strategy). NOTE: do not capture intelligence, it will alert the enemy team that you are in their base (if you haven't already alerted them of your presence)
• second engineer to set up sentry, dispenser, and teleporter exit in the enemy's intel room.
• First engineer to travel through the newly set up teleporter from their own intel room to enemy's intel room.
• first engineer to build a teleporter entrance in enemy's intel room.
• first engineer (or any teammate) to capture intel and teleport back friendly intel room.
• secure intel, and teleport back to enemy intel.
• repeat last two steps until victory is achieved.

As you can see, while this seems like a great way to achieve victory, it is also incredibly hard to achieve and maintain a working teleporter loop between two places on the map that are highly guarded.

For this strategy to work it would require the enemy team to let you somehow slip into the intelligence room unnoticed, give you enough time to set up a full working sentry nest (sentry with dispenser and teleport), and then allow you to maintain that sentry when they find out the repercussions of having an enemy sentry loop set up from your intel to their intel. Therefore, this strategy would most likely never work during professional tournaments, or with a team that guards their intel mercilessly.

The best way to gain access to the enemy's intel room is generally to go during a charge. If your team decides to perform a rush into the enemy's base, destroying all enemy sentry defenses, and other players on defense, that would be the best way to sneak in unnoticed. If the rush succeeds, then your team captures the intelligence and runs back towards your base, leaving you (and if possible, someone to help defend you) to set up the second half of the teleporter loop.

Sentry-Swapping by Couch Radish

Sentry-swapping is only useful if used for defense, but offense is usually possible if done right.

Sentry-swapping is basically switching buildings with another Engineer. This means you take care of a friendly Engineer while he does the same to your buildings. It's important that both of you have voice chat, to alert each other of spies.

Benefits of this is that:

1. Sentry fire does not hurt you
2. You can walk through the sentry (to get a Spy or bail out from an Uber)
3. With the release of the Engineer Update, it is a quicker way to get the "Circle the Wagons" and "Fistful of Sappers" achievement.
4. Can be done with more than 2 Engineers, but can get slightly confusing

Down-sides are:

1. Must remain at Sentry to be effective
2. You are not alerted if friendly buildings are being sapped.
3. If friendly buildings are destroyed, Engineer who built them must run back from what he was doing to keep defense up.
4. You do not have the HUD for the buildings you are guarding, must look at buildings to tell if they need repairs.