The Fort 2

Over the last weekend I’ve tried to obtain all the new weapons so I can live up to my journalistic responsibility to you, my dear half dozen readers . This included some idling as well as some good ol’-fashioned achievement whoring, but eventually I’ve got them all together. So now it’s time to offer some first impressions on the new toys Valve has given the Engy with his class update.

Short Recap:

The Frontier Justice
Replaces Shotgun. No regular crits. Mag only holds half the ammo of the regular shotty.
For each kill by the engy’s sentry the FJ stores 2 revenge crits (1 for assists), which are available once the sg is destroyed either by enemy hand or if the engy self-destructs it (the destruction also provides bonus crits).

The Wrangler
Replaces the Pistol. When selected the engineer’s sentry will switch to manual mode (no longer engaging opponents automatically and can be remote controlled by the Wrangler. A target laser shows where the sentry is aimed and if there’s an obstacle in its line of fire (quite useful when the engy is further away from his sentry), but also will clearly announce a wranglered sentry to the enemy team. While controlled by the Wrangler a sentry will fire on a double rate, at level 3 the rocket launch rate is increased.
Additionally a spherical shield is deployed around the sentry, deflecting 66% of the incoming damage.
When switching away from the Wrangler the sentry will become inactive for 3 seconds before switching back to automatic mode. During that time the sentry will tilt down, the laser will be out, but the shield – while no longer holding off damage – will only slowly fade.

The Gunslinger
Replaces the Melee-Weapon. When equipped it adds 25 health. The main feature of the Gunslinger is the ability to deploy mini-sentries. Any other buildings can be upgraded and repaired as usual.
The Gunslinger offers a combo which crits on the third hit.

Mini-Sentry
When wearing the Gunslinger the regular sentry is replaced by the Mini-Sentry. The Mini-Sentry only requires 100 metal to be build, is fully operational in 2.5 seconds, fires 50% faster than a regular sentry, but does only half the damage and can’t neither be repaired nor upgraded. Like a normal sentry it can be moved and when the engy has also equipped the Wrangler it can be remote controlled.

Southern Hospitaility
Replaces the Melee-Weapon. Acts very much like the regular wrench, but causes bleeding, has no random crit and adds 20% fire vulnerability.

And finally the added capability of the engy to move his buildings. During that the Engy cannot switch to weapons to defend himself and is moving slower than a Heavy. Setting up the building on its new place happens within a few seconds and can be sped up by hitting the building with the wrench.

My expectations towards the Engy Update were three-fold:
– Support for the offensive engy
– Better defense against enemy heavy classes, especially from outside the sentry’s range of detection
– Better weapons against spies and/or some support for spy detection

The latter clearly didn’t happen. None of the new weapons or abilities in any way address the spy. I felt (and still feel) the balance between those two arch enemies has shifted with the introduction of the new spy watches which IMHO give the spy more of an edge against engies [1]. And while I agree that the spy has an immensely important role to counter the engy I would have preferred if at least one item would have dealt with spies (and as alternative weapons go Valve could have made this a tough choice by assigning it to the proper slot, e.g. secondary: Wrangler or Enhanced Spy Detection) .

But at least the other two points have been addressed with the new weapons/items.

The Wrangler clearly addresses the attacked-from-outside-its-range-weakness of sentries. It’s balanced by the manual control in various ways: The engy can’t repair or upgrade the sentry (or other buildings) without exposing the sentry to the 3 seconds reset time, he will inevitably miss enemy movements (especially those to his sides and behind him) and he is even more vulnerable to spies (decreased attention, can’t spy-check without putting the sentry into reset-time). Also the target laser is a clear giveaway as well of the existence of a wranglered sentry and its position (on top of that the bubble of the shield is kinda hard to miss).
There’s another aspect which puts a disadvantage to the Wrangler: It’s quite hard to see through the bloody shield! It’s not easy to tell friend from foe and in general visual information is quite compromised [2]. That very much tempts the engy to step out from behind the shield, making him much more vulnerable to enemy attacks (especially snipers).

While this might sound like a crippling assortment of disadvantages the Wrangler is in many ways a very powerful weapon. The Wrangler adds more than just the simple option to counter attackers outside the detection range of the sentry. Right now the Wrangler has the potential to be a fucking MG nest on Omaha beach. The engy can prioritize targets, the shield absorbs a lot of incoming damage, firing rockets at will can be quite powerful to hurt enemies barely out of sight with splash damage. Also the engy can very quickly resupply/repair the sentry and be back in the game, since the engy can switch back to the Wrangler before the 3 second inactive phase is up and regain manual control immediately. [3].

But that’s not even necessary if the engy has a willing friendly engy who feeds and repairs his sentry on occasion. Even before the update two cooperating engies could be quite powerful; now it is even more so. If that engy has set up additionally a regular sentry, providing early warning system and quick response defense while the wranglered sentry deals with the enemies outside regular range, then the enemy has to work quite hard to push through.

Still even that setup is by no means invincible. Before the update even the best engineer was still very vulnerable to the many ways the enemy could get him and his sentry. An engineer always depends to some degree to the cooperation and support of the rest of the team, be it pyros providing spychecks or other classes obstructing enemy uber runs!

That is still very much true, even more now with the Wrangler. An engy using the Wrangler without any support by his teammates is still quite easy to kill, but if those teammates provide that support the Wrangler can really be not only an asset, but a force to be reckoned with (if handled properly). Trust me, I have seen both sides of that medal in the last few days.

One important aspect about the Wrangler is that it requires a very different mindset. Especially placement has to be approached totally different than with a regular sentry. A regular sentry is placed behind corners, in booths, always to some degree hidden and covered. The Wrangler calls for more open spaces, for long corridors or tunnels. Really, when placing a wrangled sentry think „MG Nest“. A wranglered sentry doesn’t work well in the old spots, because reaction time is too short and the engy is too vulnerable to spam of any kind (incl. flames). It’s basically area denial of a very different kind, adding the effect good snipers can have that sticking out your head around a corner could be quite harmful .

As such it can have a huge effect on gameplay. It can change the dynamics of the game in general, but also quite drastically change the way some maps are played. I expect to see the Wrangler to have quite an impact on the whole game. But I’m not sure if that impact will be exclusively good.

As a recommendation: Equip the Wrangler. The loss of the Pistol is not a big deal (as much as I have come to use it increasingly over the last few months) and by far outweighed by the advantages the Wrangler offers. Even if you don’t intend to use it you have at least the option to do so, but on top of that you can use the shield in case of emergencies.

The Frontier Justice is an interesting concept. The basic idea behind it is to give the engy a temporary boost once his main weapon, the sentry, has been destroyed. But so far I have found it not a compelling replacement for the shotty. The smaller magazine is really a problem in firefights (e.g. when battling a spy). So I figure this one is more situational. Probably the better weapon when defending; all the more if the pressure from the enemy team is high. In such scenarios the FJ might really help, but in other scenarios I think I will stick to the regular shotgun.

The Southern Hospitality has its pros and cons (obviously). The higher vulnerability against flames would be an acceptable price for the bleeding damage, but the lack of crit is more difficult to bear. A nice critted wrench hit has saved my life more than once.
In the end I will have to see what might be more effective against spies, but I doubt bleeding will give the engy an edge against them [4]. Unless the bleed effect would also affect their cloak (not sure about that ... tell my, spies).

As far as unlocks go, last, but not least we have the Gunslinger. I think we all agree that the Gunslinger itself is far less interesting than its bonus feature, the Mini-Sentries. The decision to don the Gunslinger is more a byproduct to the decision which kind of sentry the engy wants to use. Still, for completion sake: As a weapon the Gunslinger is slightly superior to the Wrench with the guaranteed crit at the third hit.

The Mini-Sentries are Valve’s solution for the problem engies are facing on highly dynamic maps, especially 5-CP-maps and A/D-maps (though more for attack than defense). It’s a consequent adaption of the idea of throw-away sentries [5].
IMHO it’s a fairly elegant solution and so far – after one week seeing it in action – appears to be quite effective for its purpose. It’s neither too powerful nor too weak. The Mini-sentry can be destroyed easily enough, but still kill an enemy when he’s taken by surprise or distracted otherwise (e.g. in a firefight). The Mini-Sentry is NOT area denial; it is mainly for stalling and distracting. And while a Mini-Sentry can rack up some kills don’t approach it with the expectation it will do much of that in a life.

And while this might sound like the Mini-Sentry was just a cute little toy, more annoying than dangerous it has some hidden teeth. Since the Mini-Sentry as well can be used in conjunction with the Wrangler it can become quite nasty. The shield makes it much harder to destroy it and the manual control can make it very effective even against heavy classes.
All that can make an engy a much more valuable asset on CP-maps than he was before, and could really change some of the usual gameplay. [6].

This introduces two very different styles of gameplay for the engy (different not so much from an outside POV, but as perceived from within the class), very much like the selection of the watch determines the way a spy plays the game.

Another big change – as predicted – comes with the new introduced ability to move buildings. We still see players adapting to this, so at this point I find it hard to predict the size of the impact this will have on gameplay. But impact it will have!

The most obvious is of course the option to build and upgrade a sentry in a safe spot, then move it to its destination and (with a little luck) set a lvl3 sentry on a place where it would have been much harder (if not impossible) to build in a regular way. Especially in regard of sentries this is one of the areas which I suspect could actually prove to be overpowered. I still think Valve should have created a trade-off for moving buildings [7], but at least they should consider to remove the sped up building time by whacking when re-deploying a building.
But besides sentries I find it equally valuable (and quite powerful) for the other buildings. Moving dispenser and teleporters can save a lot of time and – again – quite change the dynamic of gameplay.

Of course no good deed goes unpunished, and a certain breed of engies has already discovered new ways to forget their initial purpose and instead are starting to hunt for glory. These specimens – probably the same who before the update tried to collect kills with sentries only to quickly switch classes once they’ve failed miserably – now try to collect on their newly found power. They will build their sentries and try to get as many kills as possible, potentially from a safe distance by courtesy of the Wrangler. Building teleporters? Giving their teammates dispensers for support? Not really high priority in their book. Those are the players who have either forgotten that the engy is primarily a support-class or never cared in the first place. One piece of advice: Hey idiots, learn sniping and move to Counterstrike.

Players are still adapting to that. I still see engies not entirely realizing the different options and the changes necessary when using the new items. It takes a little time, and of course it’s another phase of try-and-error to learn which items to use best in which situation and how to handle them for maximum effect.

So, BIG changes underway. Wrangler, Mini-Sentries, movable buildings. TF2 will not be the same as before. In some ways this has the potential to change the gameplay of TF2 more drastically than any other update before. As such I expect some nerfing along the way, since some of these changes may in fact throw off the balance a bit too much (especially the Wrangler/Shield and movable buildings).

As an engy I’m delighted with the new options given to me; more tools in the box to address different situations and challenges by different means. But like everybody else I’m still learning and experimenting. The Wrangler, for example, suddenly makes spots useful which were nonsense before the update. Also I think we will discover that some spots or chokepoints previously difficult now can be approached differently. New possibilities and challenges alike for yours truly and all his fellow engineers.