The Engineer is one of the most important classes in the game. Whether you’re attacking and need to secure positions, or defending against the enemy team on a point, the Engineer is an indispensable part of any team. With his powerful sentries capable of taking out almost every enemy with a single shot, or his dispensers providing health and ammo, a TF2 Engineer is a great asset to any team composition within the game.
A good engineer can easily turn the tides of any match in the game. If you want to improve your gameplay, you’ve come to the right place! Here at SkinsMonkey, we present our TF2 Engineer guide!
Also, before you read on, make sure you check out our general TF2 guide!
Engineer TF2 Items
The Engineer is a defensive class, weak in combat, but capable of building powerful sentry guns, that can dish out insane amounts of damage, as well as various utility structures, that will greatly empower your team and provide them with some much-needed mobility. Thanks to such a wide range of different abilities, the Engineer is useful at virtually every map and game mode available. Because of this, it’s even more crucial to understand how this class works, if you want to give your team a serious edge in the game.
As we already said, the class isn’t very effective in up-close combat encounters. With a measly 125 HP pool, the Engineer gets killed practically instantly by any stronger enemy attack. Even with a Medic overheal, this number only goes up to 185, so when you’re playing as an Engineer, it’s absolutely crucial to position yourself behind tankier classes, like Heavies and Soldiers.
The Engineer wears 3 standard weapons, as well as a set of tools. The Vanilla Engineer loadout includes three main pieces: a shotgun as the main slot weapon, a pistol for long-range fighting, as well as his signature wrench. The wrench doubles as a utility item that lets you fix Engineer structures, as well as an impressively powerful melee weapon, which can take out an enemy with one or two hits.
Shotgun
When it comes to shotgun weapons, the vanilla shotgun, although it offers an alright firepower, is still the weakest choice. This is because, for all it’s worth, you won’t likely be using the shotgun too much, as even when defending against Spies you’ll probably be using the wrench. This is why for a shotgun choice, it’s best to choose something that provides more utility. The good news is, that all of the Engineer’s weapons can be bought for low prices from players who trade TF2 items (aside from the Golden Wrench, which is one of the most expensive TF2 items). Frontier Justice is a good choice for virtually any scenario, since it gains bonuses for every sentry kill you score, while the Rescue Ranger will let you fix your buildings at a distance.
Pistol
When it comes to pistol choices, things get a little more complicated. This is because, aside from various weapons that only provide a visual change, different pistol items will completely change how your sentries work, essentially changing up the class playstyle completely. The Wrangler and its alternative, The Giger Counter, allow you to manually control your sentry gun, while also providing it with some extra shield. Although this sounds fun, it can significantly weaken your play style, as most of the Engineer’s strength comes from his automatic sentry gun. The Short Circuit is also an interesting choice. While it can boost your offensive capabilities, the handgun actually uses the Engineer’s metal supply instead of regular ammo, meaning that it can slow down your building, making it a very risky choice.
Wrench
The signature Engineer item, his Wrench is both a tool and a powerful weapon. Most importantly, the wrench can be used to upgrade and repair any friendly structures, yours or those that belong to another friendly engineer. It’s also a noticeably powerful weapon, with the vanilla wrench and all of its variants having 65 base damage, with a whopping 195 damage crits. While other wrenches modify various aspects of the building process, one notable item that deserves mention is the Gunslinger. It gives your standard sentry gun a complete overhaul, replacing it with a mini sentry gun. While the mini sentry has a higher rate of fire and can be deployed quickly, it lacks the incredible firepower of the original sentry, which makes up the most important part of an Engineer gameplay.
TF2 Engineer Building
The number one most important feature of the class is the Engineer’s ingenious devices, which not only add a lot of firepower but also provide some utility to your team. To place a building, he needs to access his PDA tool, select the blueprint, find an available spot, and most importantly, have enough metal for the selected structure. The Engineer has access to a separate energy pool, known as metal. He can score metal from ammo crates, as well as scrap some parts from dead enemies and destroyed buildings. The dispenser also provides a steady stream of metal as well.
At the moment, the Engineer has access to three different structures:
Sentry Gun
The number one most important feature of the class, and the main reason why players continue to pick the Engineer. His sentry gun is a deadly weapon, even at the first level, and when upgraded to level 3, it’s capable of taking out enemy Hevies in the blink of an eye. There are three levels for the sentry gun, and the Engineer can upgrade his sentry by hitting it with a wrench. Keep in mind, that if the sentry gun i wounded, it will first use any of the scrap metal for healing itself, and only after it gets to full health again the upgrade bar will continue to charge. When the sentry is sapped by a Spy, it stops firing until the sapper is removed.
Dispenser
A dispenser is a highly useful utility structure, providing any surrounding allies with health and ammo. The Engineer can upgrade his dispenser, just like the sentry, and with each level the dispenser’s healing ability improves. The dispenser can not only provide support via healing and ammo, but it will also give any engineer metal as well. A common strategy is to build a dispenser next to your sentry so that you can continuously upgrade and fix it.
Teleporter
The teleporter is actually made up of two parts: entrance and exit. Keep in mind you can only have one teleporter (one entrance and one exit) active at any given time. A teleporter is more or less what its name suggests. Any friendly player can enter the teleporter entrance and be immediately transported to the exit. An Engineer can further upgrade his teleporters, lowering the cooldown between each use. It’s important to keep in mind that spies can’t use teleporters, so it’s an easy way to tell if you have an impostor on your team. Teleporters have no effective range either, meaning that you can place and use them anywhere on the map.
TF2 Engineer Tips
That’s about all the theoretical information you need to start playing as an effective engineer in TF2. Here are some other tips, that will help you out at the front lines:
Use Corners To Your Advantage
While your sentry is one of the most powerful weapons in the game, it’s very susceptible to AoE damage from Soldier and Demoman explosives. If you want to make sure that you’ll stay safe, while also preventing any enemy from accessing a part of the map, it’s crucial to use the corners for strategic sentry placing. You can set up your sentry gun in a safe spot, and make it annoyingly difficult for the enemy team to deal with.
Don’t Stick Too Close To Other Engineers
One of the classic Engineer strategies is called nesting, where players construct a camping spot out of sentries and dispensers. While this can make you difficult to deal with in the short run, eventually the enemy team will come in with an Uber active, and most likely shred your nest to pieces. If you build too close to other players, a single Ubercharge can take out all of you, so make sure you’re not occupying the same spot.
Keep A Watchful Eye For Spies
The Spy is the Engineer’s worst enemy in the game. His sapping device can instantly disable any Engineer building, while continuously dealing damage to it. An engineer can remove sappers with his wrench, but it leaves him open for a backstab, and if he doesn’t take down the sappers in time, his buildings will explode. Don’t stay too far away from your sentry, since it’s generally the main target of any Spy attack. Also, make sure to routinely spy check around your buildings.
Learn The Maps
This is a very general piece of advice, but it’s especially important if you’re playing as an Engineer. Your class is focused on map control, and knowing how to exploit the map’s construction is what you need to be a successful Engineer. When placing your sentries and dispensers, you need to know exactly where your enemies might come in, and how to effectively defend against them.
In Conclusion
This just about wraps up our guide for the Engineer. If you enjoyed this article, make sure to check out the rest of our blog, where we regularly post more Team Fortress 2 content! Make sure you have a look at our top list of the best TF2 hats!
