Vitals
Health: 125
Speed: 100%
Type: Defensive
Weapons: Shotgun, Pistol, Wrench, Build/Destruction PDAs
Weapons:
Ammo: 6/32
Damage: 78-90 (180)
Best range: Short
Information:
The shotgun is very much a standard issue weapon. 4 of the 9 classes have one, and the scout’s scattergun is similar (but better). It holds 6 shells, and each shot fires 10 bullets. As you would expect from a shotgun, it does the most damage at point blank, and its effectiveness falls off fast beyond that. At about medium range or beyond it’s probably a good idea to switch to anything else that isn’t melee.
The advantage of the shotgun however is that although it reloads at a pretty ordinary speed, it fires relatively quickly, and so long as there’s at least one shell loaded, it can be fired at will, even while reloading. Its best use is as a backup, using your primary (or other) weapon to close in on your target, and switching to the shotgun when you get to close range or run out of other ammo. Otherwise it’s okay at long rang for annoying or distracting an enemy.
Advantages: Decent damage and short to medium range, effective for pursuing and finishing off ignited and retreating enemies.
Disadvantages: Pretty ineffective beyond medium range, small clip and slow reload.
Ammo: 12/200
Damage: 20-22 (45)
Best range: Medium
Information:
The pistol is a handy little 12-bullet sidearm to which only the engineer and scout have access. Its damage doesn’t drop off a lot as range increases, and it’s fairly accurate. It has the advantage of firing fast (about as fast as you can click) and having a short reload to make up for its low damage, and this makes it a great choice to pull out and squeeze off a few rounds when your primary weapon runs dry. Use it at about medium range, where you can dodge your enemy’s fire while filling them with bullets.
While 20 isn’t a lot of damage, it adds up if you can hit your target repeatedly. Most classes have 175 health or less, so you can take half of that away in about 9 or 10 shots (in other words, 1 clip). So when you think about it, plugging 2 clips into someone (a feat that doesn’t take long given the pistol’s firing and reload speeds) can do a lot of damage, and is the perfect choice when chasing down an enemy with low health, especially one that is retreating and not dodging too much. Good choice for an engineer trying to fend off incoming enemies from medium range.
Advantages: High rate of fire, quite accurate at medium to long range, easy to do at least some damage, fast reload, huge ammo reserve.
Disadvantages: Low damage at all ranges.
Ammo: N/A
Damage: 43-87 (195)
Information:
The engineer’s wrench is more than just a melee weapon. When used as melee weapon however it goes about its business of clobbering enemies similarly to most other melee weapons, and is 4th for most frequent critical hits (according to Valve’s TF2 Stats).
However the real use of the wrench is to interact with the engineer’s buildings. In this regard, it has 3 different functions. Firstly, when you place a new building, hitting it repeatedly with the wrench while it’s constructing will make it build twice as fast, meaning you can get sentry guns up in about 5 seconds and other buildings in about 10. Note that with more than one engineer hitting a building at once, it will build even faster, so teamwork between engineers helps them both (sentries can build in just a few seconds).
The second most common use of the wrench is for upgrading the sentry gun. When a level 1 or 2 sentry gun is hit with the wrench, 25 metal (or whatever the engineer has if it’s less than 25) is deducted from the engineer’s metal supply and added to the sentry gun’s upgrade meter. When the sentry receives 200 metal, it upgrades to the next level, where level 3 is the maximum. Again engineers giving each other metal helps them both get set up and defensible much faster.
The third and final function is to repair buildings. A single swing of the wrench restores about ¾ of the building’s health, or closer to half of a level 3 sentry’s health. With regards to the sentry, wrenching it when it has anything less than full ammo will also replenish that ammo supply. Restoring both health and ammo cost a certain amount of metal, proportional to the amount of repairing (usually something like 20 to repair something seriously injured).
Build/Destruction PDAs
Information:
The engineer’s PDAs allow him to construct new buildings and demolish previously built buildings. The build PDA is accessed by selecting weapon 4, and the destruction PDA by 5. Selecting a building (with 1, 2, 3 or 4) on the build PDA causes the engineer to pull out a big box from which the building is constructed. The PDAs don’t do anything else, and don’t even have a taunt, so there’s really not a lot more to say. Here’s another picture.
