User:DrNightKOT/Offensive engineer

The defensive engineers are the most seen types of enginners. Even on this wiki, offensive engineers have only tiny notice on community strategy tips. This guide is for Offensive engineers.

Keep in mind, the guide is unfinished but you can contribute towards it's expansion!

Quick tips

• The best sentry for offense is the mini-sentry
• Offensive engineer must be always moving, stopping only to upgrade defensive buildings.
• Even though Dispencers or Teleporters seem to be useless for effective offense, you should never forget to build them for at least first level.
• Help another engineers. Due to mini-sentries cost not much, you can invest some metal to help your teammates.
• Rebuilding is faster than moving or adding ammo.
• Create your sentry at different spots, immediatelly after one being destroyed.
• Keep your look on metal. It's even more vital for you. Learn the ammo spawn positions of the map and try to get to them sometimes.
  • You also should collect the fallen weapons as they add 100 metal for you and easy to obtain.

General

Building

• Your mini-sentries have perfect aim and dodging their fire is very hard at big distances but they can't aim well at extremelly short distances.
• Mini-sentries can be used in different ways:
  • You can use them for defence, for example when the enemies are rushing at control point or you are healing behind the dispencer on Arena.
    • On every game-mode excluding Arena, mini-sentries are often ignored by players at chokepoints when placed in some locations.
  • You can use mini-sentries as an ambush weapon, placing it right behind disatracted enemy would cause him/her to panic.
  • You can use mini-sentries to pincer your opponents, causing them to choose between you and your sentry.
    • In most ocassions, your foes choose sentry as main target, so you can also use it to quickly retreat. Placing them behind you to stop the chase often causes them to stop and shoot the sentry instead of following you.
    • Use unexpected spots for you and your sentry. Sudden sentry behind a corner and even more sudden engineer on top of roof could cause heavy damage to every class.
• Don't forget about your other buildings, like dispencers and teleporters. They need to be built to help your teammates.
  • Build dispencers in hidden spots to provide yourself stable amount of metal and health.
    • If dispencer is hidden well enough or is protected by something, you can invest some metal into levelling it up.
    • Placing dispencer on Arena can save your life, especially on maps without healkits. Your teammates would also love you for that.
  • Build teleporters in vital spots and upgrade them, so your team can get to battlefield faster.
    • You may want to build teleporters before going offensive.
• Standart sentries can be used in offense, but this is quite situational.

Advanced

• Using the wrangler on any type of sentry grants a 66% damage reduction and increases the firing rate by 100%. These stats are to keep in mind while going on offense as to destroy a wrangled mini sentry will require 5 stickies or 4 rockets instead of the usual 2.
• The efficient use of a wrangled mini sentry can rapidly kill targets of greater importance (target a medic from far away or harass a sniper) while remaining a major bullet sponge to enemy fire.
• The rotation speed of the sentry is greatly increased while using the wrangler. This allows you to spin your sentry and destroy a spy that is cloaked by spamming the level 3 rockets on the ground.
• More advanced engineers using the wrangler will place their sentries in open areas and rely on their skill to take out enemies from afar. The increased firing speed is devastating if used correctly. An overhealed heavy can be taken out from close to medium range with a mini sentry even if he is firing his minigun directly at the sentry. Keep in mind that auto aim is very strong too but the range is greatly decreased if the wrangler is not used.
• The redeploy speed of the mini sentry is significantly higher than its initial construction rate.
• The pocket pistol is also very strong when paired with the mini sentry. Placing your sentry in an area then hiding with your pistol in an other can be the ideal ambush for weak, retreating enemies.

Spies

• Even though spies are considered as a hard counter for engineer, they shouldn't give you much trouble if you are an offensive enginner.
• Keep in mind that though their firepower is low, they can destroy your lone buildings while you are attacking with ease.
• Spies can come past your sentries unaffected, so help your sentry by causing spy to drop disguse.
• Keep a distance from spy, his backstabs are deadliest feature of his.
• If your mini-sentry is sapped by spy, don't try to repair it if you are near. Shoot the spy instead, and rebuild the sentry after you are done.
  • The other buildings should be repeared though, as they are slow to deploy and costy to build.

Weapon specific

Primary weapons

Shotgun

Weapon	Kill Icon	Ammo		Damage
		Loaded	Carried	Point Blank	Medium Range	Long Range	Critical
Stock Shotgun		6	32	86-90	24-67	3-26	120

One of the basic weapons, the Shotgun can help you heavily when fighting enemies.

• Finish off the damaged foes at close distances. An unexpected, close shotgun blast would cause more pellets to hit the enemy, inflicting more damage.
• Even though it seems weak in comparison with Rocket Launcher or Minigun, the shotgun can take out any weak class in 3 close range blasts. Use it in small room where enemies would be easy to shoot.

Frontier Justice

Weapon	Kill Icon	Ammo		Damage
		Loaded	Carried	Point Blank	Medium Range	Long Range	Critical
Unlock Frontier Justice		3	32	86-90	24-67	3-26	120

	Kill Icon	Damage	Duration	Details
Guitar Smash		500	4 seconds	The Engineer pulls out his trusty guitar, plays a chord, and then bashes it over the head of any enemy slow, unaware, or unfortunate enough to be in his way.

The Frontier Justice can be used well in some situations, as it's main purpose to have your sentry to kill enemies.

• Try to leave all the victims for your mini-sentry and finish them off only when they are out of range.
  • You should deal damage to them before your sentry so it would finish them off easily and won't be destroyed.
• Remember, crits may be the turning point in a round. Rushing into a full-on fire-fight and dying will lose you the revenge crits, and is to be avoided if possible.
• Critical glow can betray you. Try not to walk with it if you have revenge crits.
• Use the revenge crits when you are fighting classes with high health. Even on big distances, a single shot from this weapon could damage them heavliy.
  • You may want to use those crits on light classes on Arena to finish them off fast on big distances.
• This weapon works great when paired with Wrangler, as it causes sentry gun to collect kills with your help.
• The taunt kill for this weapon should be avoided.

Widowmaker

Weapon	Kill Icon	Ammo		Damage
		Loaded	Carried	Point Blank	Medium Range	Long Range	Critical
Promotional/Craft Widowmaker		1 per 30 Metal	N/A	86-90	24-67	3-26	120

Widowmaker would cause you to change your playstyle heavily. Choose it wise.

• Don't shoot at enemies when you are unsure if you would hit them. The loss of 30 metal seems not very big, but after 4 misses you won't be able to build a sentry.
• Metal is vital with this weapon. Don't forget to repleinsh it always.
• Try not to destroy your sentries with this weapon equipped. Building two in a row would leave you defenceless.

Secondary weapons

Pistol/Lugermorph

Weapon	Kill Icon	Ammo		Damage
		Loaded	Carried	Point Blank	Medium Range	Long Range	Critical
Stock Pistol		12	200	22	10-15	8-9	45
Promotional Lugermorph

The Pistol has three main strengths over the Shotgun, its greater accuracy and damage at longer distances, its large ammunition reserve and faster reload time. These give the Pistol several key functions:

• It can be used to ward off Snipers by instigating recoil and dealing notable damage.
• It can be used to pick off retreating units who are usually doing so due to low health.
• It is the most reliable weapon to use in conjunction with the Gunslinger's Combat Mini-Sentry Guns, as they also are most effective at a similar range, enabling opponents to be worn down quickly while staying at a reasonably safe distance.
• Its large ammunition reserve allows it to be a great Spy checker, especially down narrow corridors.
• It can be switched to when in direct combat with an enemy and the Shotgun has run out of ammunition to ensure that there is more damage per second throughout the fight done to the opponent.

Wrangler

Weapon	Kill Icon	Ammo		Damage
		Loaded	Carried	Point Blank	Medium Range	Long Range	Critical
Unlock Wrangler		N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

The wrangler can be used great in offense, but you will have to trade off your pistol for it.

Short Circuit

Weapon	Kill Icon	Ammo		Damage
		Loaded	Carried	Point Blank	Critical
Promotional/Craft Short Circuit		1 per 35 Metal	N/A	5	18

Melee weapons

Wrench/Golden Wrench/Saxxy

Weapon	Kill Icon	Attack Interval	Damage
			Point Blank	Critical
Stock Wrench		0.8 seconds	65	195
Promotional Golden Wrench
Promotional Saxxy

Avoid this for offense

Gunslinger

Weapon	Kill Icon	Attack Interval	Damage
			Point Blank	Critical
Unlock Gunslinger		0.8 seconds	65	195
		0.8 seconds	N/A	195

Use it for offence

Organ Grinder

	Kill Icon	Weapon	Damage	Duration	Details
Arm Blender		Gunslinger	500	4 seconds	The Engineer pulls a rip-cord from his mechanical prosthetic, revving the hand of his Gunslinger up to vicious speeds, after which he thrusts it forward, gibbing any enemy player within reach.

• With correct timing you might be able to kill a distracted enemy, so keep in mind that it takes some time for the Engineer to spin his hand up.
• You can use the stunning effect of Organ Grinder to stun ÜberCharged enemies and waste their über time.
• Organ Grinder is also effective during humiliation.

Southern Hospitality

Weapon	Kill Icon	Attack Interval	Damage
			Point Blank	Critical
Craft Southern Hospitality		0.8 seconds	65	195
Bleeding		40 damage over 5 seconds	N/A	N/A

Avoid this on offence

Jag

Weapon	Kill Icon	Attack Interval	Damage
			Point Blank	Critical
Craft Jag		0.8 seconds	49	146

Avoid it for offence

Weapon combinations

Weapon Combinations
Combo			Usage
Shotgun	Short Circuit	Southern Hospitality	For a purely defensive Engineer. This combination allows the Engineer to hold positions against attack, albeit with high cost in Metal and upgrade time. The Short Circuit provides defense against explosives (the greatest bane of a Sentry Gun), although it increases the Engineer's reliance on having a functioning, upgraded, and well-placed Dispenser. The weak damage of Short Circuit can leave you open to other attacks, such as Spies and flank attacks. Nonetheless, as the sentry it free to fire on its own and won't be disabled by the Wrangler, this combination allows the defensive Engineer to be a bit more independent. This weapon set will allow you to preserve your Sentry Gun as long as possible and use the Shotgun to weaken foes or kill any Spy in range. The Southern Hospitality provides excellent defense against Spies and prevents them from escaping via invisibility, however your weakness to fire can make any sort of offensive pushing much more risky.
Frontier Justice	Pistol	Jag	For an advanced supportive Engineer. This set allows you to deploy your buildings quickly with the 30% faster construction rate granted by the Jag. This may give you more time to walk around and help maintain the buildings of other Engineers. The Revenge crits will become useful if your sentry happens to be destroyed. The Pistol provides an alternative firearm and is great for conserving your Revenge Crits. You can freely use the Wrangler instead for long-range offense with your sentry to keep your opponents at bay, though this will distract you from your and other Engineers' buildings.
Shotgun	Wrangler	Jag	This combination is similar to the advanced supportive Engineer set but there are small changes. You can use your Wrangler to dispatch Snipers quickly and weaken enemies at the long distance. But having no bonus health means you are more likely to die. This can also be a good loadout for an Engineer who likes to try and build behind the enemy lines. The Jag helps build up the base more quickly and the Wrangler can help the Engineer build in some unusual locations and immediately attack foes with the enhanced firepower.
Shotgun	or Pistol or Wrangler	Gunslinger	The Gunslinger is geared toward an assault-oriented Engineer, and thus, to maximize his firepower, is best to combine with a Shotgun. Typically, the Pistol maximizes the Engineer's personal firepower at close to mid-range and allows you to pincer opponents with Combat Mini-Sentry Guns, wich gives opponents two targets to worry about. The Shotgun is for close range ambushing and for finishing off injured enemies. As the Mini Sentry is weaker and has less health than the standard level 1 Sentry Gun, the Engineer mustn't rely much on his Sentry Gun and should use it as a weapon alongside his other guns, or a distraction while he flees or finishes off foes. However, using the Wrangler allows a much longer range attack due to the high accuracy of a wrangled Sentry Gun, but will require the Engineer to have good aim in order to maximize the Shotgun's potential at longer ranges. This is especially helpful in fast-paced CP servers, where depending on the situation, the Engineer may set up the Sentry defensively to prevent a capture or offensively to prevent the enemy from interfering with a capture. When compared to Wrenches, the lower Metal cost and setup time of the mini-sentry allow a base to be readily setup, which can be important in arena/KoTH games.
Frontier Justice	Wrangler	Jag	For the Engineer that likes to control his Sentry Gun. The Jag allows you to quickly deploy your Sentry Gun and the Wrangler grants you manual control over your Sentry Gun. If the Sentry Gun is destroyed while you are off getting Metal, you will be granted Revenge Crits. An important aspect of this set is that you should deploy your Sentry Gun in a hidden and safe spot, then slowly move it to the front lines while (hopefully) being accompanied by a Medic or a strong class (such as a Heavy) that is more likely to attract enemy fire. The Frontier Justice' reduced magazine size is not that much of a problem, since you will be spending more time defending yourself with the Sentry Gun than with a Shotgun.
Widowmaker	Short Circuit	or Wrench or Gunslinger	The Deus-Ex Set This set will eat up your metal like Wildfire. Enough misplaced shots from the Widowmaker will render you useless, and force you to replenish your metal. These weapons are best used after you've already constructed your Sentry and Dispenser. This way, you still have other means of survival, and the Dispenser can replenish any metal you lose with missed or poor shots. You can also use the Short Circuit to prevent enemy Soldiers or Demomen from destroying your buildings. This setup does leave you with no reliable medium/long range weaponry, so stay close to your Sentry Gun in order to not be taken by surprise. Alternitavely, when using the Gunslinger, you can make use of the reduced cost of the Mini-Sentry to fire a few shots and then still have enough metal to place a Mini-Sentry. Also, you can use the metal output to recharge your supply to continuously throw down Mini-Sentry Guns, keeping a constant force of pressure on the enemy. However, this leaves you mostly defenseless, as a Mini-Sentry is not something to hide behind when you're out of metal. Stay within running range of an upgraded Dispenser to always have a source of ammo.

See also

• Team strategy