Thoughts on the new engineer weapons

[martijntje]

What do you think of the new weapons/abilities of the engineer, are they too powerful/weak/boring or just right? Also what is your most common/default loadout with the engineer now ?

Moving buildings
While it may seem overpowered at first, it actually isnt that much of an advantage as moving buildings is very dangerous. I personally only use it when I am low on metal or the pull my sentry out of gunfire to repair it somehwere else. Most importantly it fixes the problem of sometimes placing the building on a wrong position (like say trapping yourself).

Frontier Justice
3 shots was less of a drawback than I thought. (I usually fire 4 shots then start reloading.) It is reasonably usable in normal combat, but noticebly weaker than the normal shotgun. The best tactic I found was to periodicly destroy your sentry resulting in more chances, more dynamic gameplay and more fun.

Wrangler
Transforms your sentry in a long range weapon but makes it more vunerable. the shield isnt that overpowered, as you cant be hammering it at the same time and cant fire another gun at the same time (tip: non-wrangler sentry support is done with the shotgun, not the wrench) The 2x fire rate makes up for your bad aim (bad as in compared to the sentry ai) but depletes your sentries ammo fast, meaning you cant constantly spam. I personaly find this the best engineer unlock adnd one of the best unlocks in the game.

Gunslinger
3-punch crit: not that special, normal wrench crits very often so it wont make much of a difference.
+25 health: useful as the sentry cannot protect you and allows you to play more aggresivly
The mini-sentry is rather weak and it hardly kills anyone, you should mostly use it to distract an enemy or assist a teammate. I personnaly dont find this weapon this great (although I find the metal hand pretty awesome) as I can find the time to build a normal sentry wich is much more effective.

southern hospitality
Dont have it yet, so cant say much about it. But I think it wont be that great.

Golden wrench
Never seen it ingame, therefore it doesnt exist Q.E.D.

my engineer loadout
normal shotgun: more often than not I am dead or die right after the sentry is destroyed and dont destroy it myself that often.
Wrangler: I can live without the pistol and generally use it to pick of certain enemies (snipers, spies)
normal wrench: I tend to switch to the gunslinger sometimes, when I am mostly working on teleporters and dispensers, but usually the wrench

 

[grazr]

Engineers should only be able to move their teleporters. At least that specifically solves some of the issues with 5 CP maps being unfriendly to the engi.

Moving upgraded sentries is particularly problematic for A/D maps. If a team assaults a position with an engi carrying a level 3 sentry in from behind, unless a spy or sniper takes him out he can place a level 3 sentry in the middle of a fight, finishing off a team of people that normally would have been able to defend a location.

Engineers throwing up level 3 sentries at random locations is pissing me off, especially when they constantly do it on the 2fort battlements and use a wrangler on it.

 

[Psy]

Is it me or do sentries redeploying need to take a LOT of damage to be taken down? I think it's kinda unfair when that's supposed to be when they're at their most vunerable.

 

[grazr]

I think it's that because they've been fully built else where, that they deploy with full health immediately.

At least that's what i came to believe... And yes, it's kinda OP.

 

[Micnax]

Wrangler is badass

On the second night of the update Doublecross was filled with LASER RAVES

 

[J4CK8]

I haven't got the wrangler yet but it looks a bit OP. One of my first deaths by it was from an engy deploying a minisentry, cowering away behing a wall and just spamming in the general direction of our team. Sentry blows up, he still has full health (near a health pack) and just walks out and places another mini sentry.

The gunslinger is pretty useless as a melee weapon. You can barely get the crit as usualy the other player will have died after the second punch but the minisentry is OK. Not great, but OK. I use FJ and normal wrench but I can see myself using the wrangler for a bit.

 

[EArkham]

I freaking love the gunslinger. I rarely use it to melee, but the extra health has saved me several times now. The mini-sentry is great. You just have to stick it in surprise spots. I've gotten a surprising number of kills with it... it's mostly useless against a heavy or soldier though.

Hate/love relationship with the Frontier Justice. My aim with it is piss poor, but it ties to the gunslinger very well since the little sentry dies often. I may go back to the regular shotgun since I find myself reloading with the FJ too often.

No wrangler yet. Much love for the wrangler as a pyro however -- without the sentry to watch their backs, wrangling engineers are way more vulnerable to surprise attacks.

Southern Hospital is great in theory, but my usual latency/isp issues make melee unreliable at best and the fire vulnerability is bad news. In a melee only sudden death, I'd definitely use this.

Moving teleporters is less useful than you'd expect on 5-cp maps. Takes so long to run back, grab the entrance, then run back to the new spawn that most of the time the team has already captured another point. It'd be faster to rebuild.

Moving dispensers and sentries is excellent, especially to get them in a slightly better spot or to untrap yourself. And great for moving the defensive line up.

Moving dispensers and sentries through teleporters however is pure, unadulterated WIN.

Kep

 

[Freyja]

Wrangler effectivly makes a crouched spun up heavy with twice the fire rate and heath, and two sollies standing behind him that also can't be blasted away or killed unless you kill the 600 health heavy first.

Tell me thats balanced.

No.

 

[martijntje]

Wrangler effectivly makes a crouched spun up heavy with twice the fire rate and heath, and two sollies standing behind him that also can't be blasted away or killed unless you kill the 600 health heavy first.

Tell me thats balanced.

No.

Heavy can move (you have to crounch)
Heavy can be constantly healed/overhealed/ubercharged/kritzkriegd
Heavy probably does more damage per second on close/medium range
Heavy can fire/spam his gun longer before reloading
Heavy doesnt need to be build

P.S I personnaly think the heavy is the most underpowered class in the game

EDIT: Thats balanced.

 

[sniprpenguin]

FJ- Needs more ammo capacity, imo. 3 shots is annoying when you have 15+ crits and want to use them. Heck, 3 shots is annoying at any time. :\

Gunslinger- Love it. I love exploring the new possibilities with the mini-sentry, like throwing it down to support an uber or as an improvisational defense until the level 3's go up.

Wrangler- Love it on my side, hate it on theirs.

 

[Randdalf]

A lot of people tend to call some things overpowered because they've yet to develop an efficient strategy to overcome those things. Give it time, and you'll adapt.

 

[J4CK8]

One thing I HATE about the FJ which I forgot to add, when you die, then your sentry dies while you are waiting to spawn, you don't get the crits next life. Really frustrating when you have had several kills with your sentry, you have 1 second until respawn and then it blows up.

 

[Hawk]

I love this update. It has probably been my favorite one.

I've only unlocked the Frontier Justice, but I've certainly experienced the other unlocks from the barrel-end. And I can say that they don't feel unfair. They've caused me to rethink my strategies, and that's what keeps TF2 fresh and fun. I could play a round of Dustbowl now and it would feel pretty different from it would have only a month ago.

Moving buildings
Awesome. This is one of those things they should have done a long time ago. It's good if only for the fact that I can reconfigure the position of my sentry when it's not quite pointing the right way, or is in my way.

But I haven't felt like being able to move your buildings gives Engineers too much of an advantage. A packing Engie is an easy target for Spies. Plus, when they're back behind the lines building their stuff, a Spy can easily stab them and sap their stuff because their teammates aren't usually around to back them up.

Frontier Justice
I've actually not benefited much from this. I find that usually I die along with my sentry. But also, if I do live, I see my glowing shotgun and suddenly get drunk with power. That's when I go running into a crowd and wind up getting killed anyway. I really need to work on that.

Wrangler
I don't have it, but I look forward to it. I don't feel like it's overpowered though. Its laser is actually more obvious than a sniper laser and it requires a lot of attention, but the things it lets you do are pretty neat.

One thing I've noticed is that an Engineer using a Wrangler with no friends close by is a sitting duck for Spies. If you can get to him without him Spy-checking you (come up from behind!), it's just a quick easy stab with plenty of time to sap! And if he's busy with the wrangler, you can help yourself to his other buildings, because he loses control of the sentry for a while if he deactivates the Wrangler to stop you.

I you can't tell, I've been having a LOT of fun as the Spy

Gunslinger
I don't have this one either, but I think it's the best part of the update. I've been surprised by them many times, and that makes things more fun. And they're weak enough that I still have a chance if I do stumble into their view. It looks like they're making things more fun and active for the Engineers, and that's exactly what the class needed.

 

[Terr]

I've been abusing the heck out of the level-3-moving plus wrangler lately. It's fun, effective... and pretty OP.

• With the Frontier Justice, you should get all or at least half of the crits from your sentry if the sentry is destroyed while you are respawning. (But otherwise do not preserve any crits across lives.)
• If you're about to take down any sentry, the engineer can instantly grab it and save it from death even if it would've died to one more pistol shot! Packing things up needs to take at least one second. This will also fix the "sentry-jump and take it with you" exploit.
• Changing between wrench and wrangler destroys all buildings. It should only destroy sentries.
• Wrangler shield should not stay up for the 3 seconds as the sentry reboots. Far too easy for a one-man wrangler show to hold multiple enemies at bay.
• Placing a level-3 should require a bit more breathing room. As-is it's disproportionately difficult to actually destroy it as it is unpacking.
• Sentry-jumping screws up a ton of maps! It's cool, but too disruptive. Wrangled sentries should do zero knockback against the Engineer who owns them.
• A wrangled sentry has 3x the normal health? Fine, then it should take 2x the metal to repair/restock while wrangled, otherwise two engineers and a dispenser make something that can pour out a ridiculous amount of knockback and suppressive fire. This emphasizes "burst" wrangling over continual wrangling.

 

[lana]

The Frontier Justice is a bit of a strategic weapon. If you know how to use it, you'll be unstoppable. Every time your sentry is destroyed by you or anything else it adds to your current revenge total, which means that it's lethal when combined with the Gunslinger. By destroying and rebuilding your sentry gun, instead of moving it, you lose less than a second but earn quite a bit. It's a good weapon because it provokes surprise strategies and less careful engineering, but from a balance standpoint the crits can stack pretty quickly.

The Wrangler is pretty devastating for custom maps. Where wide open areas used to be a terrible place for sentries they are now a killing ground. As a soldier or demoman, hitting the engineer is usually your only chance to take out the sentry gun, but is very difficult because he can keep moving. There's no major downside to it. You lose your secondary weapon, but when you have a shotgun with you you have enough ammo to keep defensive. An engineer is also able to repair and restock immediately. When switching away from the wrangler, your sentry gun should temporarily lock up and prevent any repairs for the three seconds, forcing you to work as a team or play conservatively.

The Gunslinger is awesome. It has a few bugs to work out, but I can see great things out of it. When paired with the Wrangler, it becomes a quick jump weapon. When paired with the Frontier Justice, it's a method of earning free criticals. When combined with both, it makes for a very powerful offensive engineer.

But of them all, moving buildings is what truly makes the switch from turtle power to combat engies. Before you would need to find enough metal to rebuild a level three gun after you move it and set up the rest of the base. Now, if you can find a distraction or a lull in the combat, you can easily set up your base somewhere else.

 

[MrAlBobo]

Frontier Justice
I find the regular shotgun edges out the frontier justice just slightly...for the simple reason that you so frequently need just 1 more shot to finish off whatever your attacking. The crits are nice, and show up very frequently with mini-sentries, but its just not enough to make me switch my favorite weapon <_<
Its also mildly amusing to see all the turtle engies run out with crits after their gun is destroyed thinking their going to get revenge. They so rarely succeed.

Wrangler
Its quite annoying on maps that are very sniper friendly, but other then that the engie goes down from a headshot quite nicely.

Gunslinger
The part I am really not pleased with is where you can only have mini sentries if you give up random crits on your melee. Mini sentries are awesome, and the bonus 25 health helps, but I love the high crit percentage on melee weapons <_<

 

[Firest0rm]

Frontier Jusice
I never use it, not because I think that it's underpowered (i think it's perfectly balanced), but because my aim with shotguns is so terrible that the crits do effectively nothing for me. Also, since I always use the gunslinger, it lacks the extra punch I need to take out enemies with my mini-sentry

Wrangler
Again, I never use it because my aim is bad, and because it doesn't work well with the gunslinger. I don't really understand why people think it's OP though. it's really easy to sneak up on a wrangling engie if there are side routes, and it's easy to kill both the engie and his sentry once you're close

Gunslinger
I love this weapon. The mini-sentries are so useful when you place them in random areas and then shoot people with the shotgun while the mini-sentry shoots them too. Pretty much every class but soldier, demo, and heavy dies to this unless they're smart or good enough to fight back. I wouldn't say it's OP though, because it's fairly easy to fight back, and over time people will be used to them. I think the 3-hit combo need a buff though. I think they have that to make it so that you can't just randomly crit-punch people then have your mini-sentry decimate them no matter what class. However, I think that you need to hold down the attack key and hit them 3 times in a row to get it, which essentially never happens in melee battles. If it was something like 1-2 seconds between each attack to get the crit that would be better

 

[Hawk]

... list of points ....

You know, as much as I love this update so far, everyone of your suggestions sounds like a great idea. There do need to be some tweaks.

 

[lana]

Just managed to rack up a 10 kill spree with mini-sentries outside RED's spawn on Hightower. Even if they go down, you can build up another one immediately in two seconds to cover your team.

 

[Passerby]

Is it me or do sentries redeploying need to take a LOT of damage to be taken down? I think it's kinda unfair when that's supposed to be when they're at their most vunerable.

happens to me a lot if im running around as a ligther class i will see a sg building and think it olny has low health since i cant tell what level it is, so i will try to shotgun it as it is building than it end up being a l3 with full health