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TF2 Engineer update incoming?

True, but the wrangler is also pretty hard to use since you don't have the right view for shooting, though there is a bit of autoaim to it. I love experimenting with all of these though, gah! I haven't even played any of the new maps yet! These all look like quality maps.
 
jaundicejuice said:
Embrace the insanity of the class update, TF2 will return to business as usual soon enough, servers will die down, the class balance will return but for now, enjoy the insanity, play as a counter-class. Live it up as a spy or demo.
Exactly. Enjoy the chaos while it lasts!
 
Yeah, that shield is interesting. From what I can tell, other players can crouch behind it and attack.

So am I correct in thinking that other players (heavy, demo, soldier, etc.) could hide behind the shield, look through the shield, and fire through the shield. Basically, the shield is a fixed point uber that lasts until it is blown up. (But it can be blown up.)
 
speculawyer said:
Yeah, that shield is interesting. From what I can tell, other players can crouch behind it and attack.

So am I correct in thinking that other players (heavy, demo, soldier, etc.) could hide behind the shield, look through the shield, and fire through the shield. Basically, the shield is a fixed point uber that lasts until it is blown up. (But it can be blown up.)
Yeah, it absorbs 500dmg. I take it it resets when you turn off then on?
 
Noooooo, I meant to smelt my dupe eyelander and scottish resistance... but i forgot that i already smelted that eyelander, so i smelted my only one :((((((

i still have two skullcutters, though. i should have smelted one of those instead >:(
 
L00P said:
The Wrangler is super-fun. Especially if a bunch of engies are just spamming it:lol
I love the wrangler so damned much. Biggest problem I've had with it is how defenseless I am to backstab+sap. It makes the awesome experience a lot less enjoyable.
 
Update

Team Fortress 2
Fixed an exploit that allowed Engineers to build level 2/3 mini sentries.
Fixed a bug that allowed sapped buildings to be picked up by the Engineer
Fixed a bug where Wrangled level 3 sentryguns would still fire rockets when they were out of ammo.
Fixed a bug where players would go into reference poses when switching classes while carrying a building.
Fixed seeing the changeclass label in the spectator HUD when using cl_hud_minmode.
The amount of revenge crits a player can have at one time is now capped at 35.
The Wrangler no longer shows the shotgun's ammo count.
Engineers can no longer pick up buildings while stunned or in loser state.
Fixed Engineer shotgun and piston not using team skins for the Engineer's arms.
Fixed an issue where Wrangled sentrygun effects wouldn't be attached to the sentrygun.
The Gunslinger 3 hit combo now only increments the combo count when hitting enemy players.
Fixed a crash in the control point progress bar.
Fixed a server crash in the player death code, related to building carrying.
Fixing performance spikes that occur at round start, and after each point capture, when TFBots are present in the server.
Achievement fixes:
The "Rio Grind" achievement limit is now correctly set to 50.
Fixed a typo in Six-String Stinger achievement name.
Fixed a bug in the "Death Metal" achievement that caused it to rapidly complete itself.
Fixed getting the Six-String Stinger achievement without playing the guitar.
Fixed sentrygun detection code in "Best Little Slaughterhouse in Texas" and "Deputized".
Missed notes from yesterday's release:
New response rules and sounds added for some classes
 
I've tried flailing around hitting nothing, but didn't gather a combo. Maybe it meant that you can't hit friendlies to do it.
 
According to the artist of the Engineer comic, Valve currently has four different versions of Meet the Medic that they're currently fussing/rewriting over, so at least we have some information on how that's progressing.
 
I thought the gunslinger would work a bit better and alongside a standard sentry. But you can only have one of them by the looks of it unless i'm missing something.

Got 2 out of the 3 milestones done now :D

I don't play engineer but it's a ton of stupid fun right now with everyone else.
 
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3. Set up your Steam Community page and join the GAF TF2 group!
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Make some friends, find some rivalries! You'll even get a notice when people are playing!

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I have to say, they did a great job with this update. So much of it feels so satisfying, even in a group of 8 or 10 other Engineers. The Gunslinger's Mini-Sentry still does a decent job, and it's so nice to be able to throw one down almost immediately if the last one gets trashed, and get some Frontier Justice crits along the way. (I wonder if they're going to change it so you don't get the crits if you destruct your own Sentry.) It's stupid, but I like how the Engineer just punches things now to fix them. But I agree that Right-Click to drop the Mini-Sentry (with the Gunslinger out) would be the final buff it could use, it feels strange to go into the Build menu to drop it when you have a robot hand.

Based on some recommendations, I turned on the hit ding sound too. I thought it would get on my nerves, but it's really helpful, especially when you're Wrangling a Sniper in the distance.

InsaneZero said:
According to the artist of the Engineer comic, Valve currently has four different versions of Meet the Medic that they're currently fussing/rewriting over, so at least we have some information on how that's progressing.

"How can we write this so we don't have to bring back the VA?" :lol
 
My dad made a TF2 joke earlier :(


Me: "So in TF2, everyone's absolutely loves hats. It's so weird. They just want more and more hats. They love hats."

Dad: "So....I guess that makes them....haterosexual?"

Me: "....*stunned silence*"

:| Oh dad
 
Sai-kun said:
My dad made a TF2 joke earlier :(


Me: "So in TF2, everyone's absolutely loves hats. It's so weird. They just want more and more hats. They love hats."

Dad: "So....I guess that makes them....haterosexual?"

Me: "....*stunned silence*"

:| Oh dad
shygaf.png
 
Sai-kun said:
My dad made a TF2 joke earlier :(


Me: "So in TF2, everyone's absolutely loves hats. It's so weird. They just want more and more hats. They love hats."

Dad: "So....I guess that makes them....haterosexual?"

Me: "....*stunned silence*"

:| Oh dad

hats off to your dad.
 
I have to say I love the new payload maps. Thunder Mountain is absolutely fantastic. Stage C in particular is pretty wild.
 
Fixing The Gunslighter should be a relatively easy task for Valve, I imagine. When I read the initial description when they first revealed it, I was fully expecting it to be possible for players to plop down multiple mini-sentries given the cutbacks they've introduced for it as well as the fact they "only" cost 100 metal a piece. Why they've chosen it to be hard-locked at one mini-sentry per Engineer is quite perplexing, because it is without a doubt the main reason why it's a joke for most of the classes unless it's used in conjunction with the Wrangler, at which point it only becomes mildly annoying.

I'd say keep everything the same (I'm fine with Engineers not being able to repair it, it costing 100 metal et cetera), but Valve should up the hard-lock of the mini-sentry to a maximum of 4. Could be interesting on maps where ammo crates aren't a rarity (i.e. anything that isn't Turbine) though admittedly it might turn out to be easy to spam with 'em on servers with no proper class limits. Might also require some further tweaking for the Engineer HUD and the Wrangler mechanic, but if it's going to be buffed at one point or another, I believe it should be in this particular direction rather than improving its overall stats. That and dropping a mini-sentry at the press of the second mouse button.

speculawyer said:
Yeah, that shield is interesting. From what I can tell, other players can crouch behind it and attack.

So am I correct in thinking that other players (heavy, demo, soldier, etc.) could hide behind the shield, look through the shield, and fire through the shield. Basically, the shield is a fixed point uber that lasts until it is blown up. (But it can be blown up.)
Bullets and such can still travel through the shield when someone's hiding behind it, so I'd only recommend doing this behind a level 3 sentry just to be on the safe side. I found this out the hard way when I was making sure a mini-sentry under the control of the Wrangler wouldn't run out of ammo.
 
One thing that still confuses me about this game. Lets take The Southern Hospitality for example. It states "One hit bleed for 5 seconds" So does this just mean melee with the wrench or all weapons? It also says "No random Critical hits" Does that mean just with the wrench or all weapons?
 
chixdiggit said:
One thing that still confuses me about this game. Lets take The Southern Hospitality for example. It states "One hit bleed for 5 seconds" So does this just mean melee with the wrench or all weapons? It also says "No random Critical hits" Does that mean just with the wrench or all weapons?

Most of the stats apply only to the weapon while you have it out, unless it's something very unique like the Spy watches. Although I will agree there are a few confusing exceptions, like I'm not sure if the Scotman's Skullcutter alters your movement speed without it active or not. I think it does, but I'm not entirely sure.
 
Alright, game is great, I suck with the shotgun but otherwise loving it. I've tried everything so far and seem to like the scout but am really bad with things like the spy. Following a soldier or heavy around as a medic is my usual fallback. :lol
 
Boonoo said:
Looking at the sticky launcher (which, I think, we can agree is the king of sentry killers) it generally takes 2 or 3 stickies to take out any given sentry. Many is the time that I've been tending my sentry that I see stickies start to fly in. It used to be that I would whip out my shotgun and try and break them; now all I need to do is right click and back up 10 feet; since the demos are generally far away or blind firing I'm safe for the time being.
Same thing with rockets. As long as my team keeps on fighting and gets rid of the assailant I'm good to go.

Now it's a given that this won't work all the time, but I think it will work enough of the time to raise some red flags. Packing up your gear should primarily be used to "move that gear up" it shouldn't be an oh shit button.

A 2 second deconstruction time would do that fine. Long enough that if you do it in the face of danger you're dead, but short enough so that you can push forward to help your team.

As far as killing a sentry in the build phase; it's hard when the sentry drops down with full health and an engie beating on it. It dropping with half health, I think would be a good thing.



It's not so much that it cuts down on the time it takes an engie to build; it's that the enemy has a minuscule window of opportunity to destroy the sentry when he just plops it down. When you're building up a level 3 from a level 1 there's a wealth of opportunities to destroy it not the least of which is the initial low health building phase (not present in a prebuilt lvl3 ). It's faster, less dangerous, and more powerful. It lets an engie set up a fully powered sentry under light fire.

There need to be some ramifications to this huge boost in potential. It should be more dangerous than it is to pack up and move your sentry around.

I like that it's quicker and cuts down on busy work for the engineer, but it shouldn't make things a complete walk in the park. It's all reward, no risk.

Moving your sentry up should be safe and efficient if you're behind your own lines like in say a payload map as you move your gear from the captured point 1 to the now captured point 2 as your team begins to assault point 3. Moving up to the contested point 3 with your gear, though, should be a dangerous maneuver (as should, say, the defense moving their gear from the taken point 2 to the contested 3).

Anytime you move your gear under fire it needs to be more risky.




I think we mainly do see it as a welcome streamlining of the process. But you need to be more vulnerable when you move your gear. It's just to easy to plop a level 3 down on the front lines.

I'd suggest 3 basic changes.

1) 1-3 second deconstruction time.
2) A placed object starts at half health.
3) Movement slowdown based on lvl of object, so that a level three makes you noticeably slower than the heavy.

This would, as I said about, make things safe and efficient when you're behind your own lines, but a real risk when you're pushing to a contested zone.

As for the wrangler. I haven't seen it in action too terribly much, but I'd say, as my first thoughts that 1) the shield is far too powerful, and 2) it needs severe distance penalties.
I feel you're overrating the ability to move sentries around, especially if you're playing Demoman. Perhaps there'll be a slight delay to pack it up in a future patch now that video's are popping up that show Engineers can rocketjump with it to some extent (not sure what the execution barrier for that is) but other than that, I honestly feel the ability for the most part is fine as is.

I mean really though, the only time the Demoman will have some difficulties taking down sentries and their Engies during an Uber push, is when you attempt to take him down from a wrong angle or if he can see / hear it coming from a mile away. For instance: if there's a sentry on the roof of Badwater and for some odd reason you try to destroy it from below at medium-ish range, then yeah the Engineer will have an easy time relocating it to safety before (hopefully) two stickies reach him on time depending on the map. If you approach him from close range however; where's the problem? If the Engineer either stubbornly sits there, runs away empty handed or attempts to pack it up, an Uber'd Demoman will still win those encounters with time to spare if his aim wasn't off. Unless a defensive Pyro happened to be around to look after the Engineer's stuff.

Of course, it won't be as easy for other classes (same could be said pre-patch), but there's certainly no need for 2-second delays.

Sentry drops at half their health also wouldn't be necessary change. The Engineer's already quite vulnerable when carrying around a building and when trying to put it back up, so unless he caught the opposing team by surprise, most of the classes either have enough time to severely damage it or destroy it outright before it's actually operational. You're exaggerating when you claim it to be 'all reward no risk' and it only seems this way currently due to the warped momentum / flow of most matches, as with the previous class updates (which you're probably already aware of anyways). It also doesn't help that from my experience there's also a brief period in between upgrade animations where the Engineer can't repair, so the enemy shouldn't shy away from spamming (or in the Heavy's, Spy's and Pyro's case: moving closer) if they catch the Engineer with his pants down so to speak.

As for the Wrangler: it's a pain on maps that are already terrible with x amount of Engineers to begin with (Turbine et al), but I could see a slight nerf to the shield happening nonetheless. Don't think they'll implement distance penalties, though.
 
Engineer is my least-played class so it's expected that I'm bad, but yes, I don't feel moving is overpowered, in the sense that if I don't have teammates around to protect me, and especially if I'm one of only one or two engineers on the team (which happened recently surprisingly enough), then it's REALLY easy for me to die while carrying my building, and lose the whole level 3 thing. If I encounter even a pyro it's all over, right? He can kill me and my building even if I try to speed built it. If I try to retreat alone then it's all over and he gets to laugh about it.

I have not had much success killing people with the wrangler yet so I am unsure how powerful the shield is. I do like that it seems to cut off its recharge delay if you switch back to the wrangler, and I am really glad it still auto-aims when you have the shotgun or wrench out instead (right?). So I can roam near my sentry, but pop up to it and make it stronger iff I need to fine-tune how it's working.
 
The mini-sentries don't seem great. Maybe it's that people don't know how to use them correctly yet but I dunno, they seem kinda useless. I think it'd be fairly cool if you could throw them or have them stick to walls. It'd at least make them a bit more unique from the regular ones.
 
snoopeasystreet said:
The mini-sentries don't seem great. Maybe it's that people don't know how to use them correctly yet but I dunno, they seem kinda useless. I think it'd be fairly cool if you could throw them or have them stick to walls. It'd at least make them a bit more unique from the regular ones.

like the laptop gun from Perfect Dark

that would be pretty awesome.
 
snoopeasystreet said:
The mini-sentries don't seem great. Maybe it's that people don't know how to use them correctly yet but I dunno, they seem kinda useless. I think it'd be fairly cool if you could throw them or have them stick to walls. It'd at least make them a bit more unique from the regular ones.

I thought the same thing but played a couple of Payload matches where they made all the difference.
 
Mini-sentries will probably see some changes in the future. Lots of variables on the Gunslinger and I don't think it's there where it should be yet. Of course moveable tier 3 sentries also make them look weaker than they are.
 
So far Engies are using them improperly (seriously, why do you need to Wrangle it? it defeats the purpose). It's meant to be a quick but silent guardian for ninjaneers.
 
I've been playing Soldier over the last few days, and I noticed how many much sentries I've been destroying... compared to before the update.

The wrangler sentries are often times built on exposed sections, for long-range fire. It's ideal for soldiers to take 'em out.
 
Mini-sentry is the best addition in the update. Between that and the health boost it lets you go toe-to-toe much more effectively.

The wrangler still seems pretty useless to me. The range is helpful but unless you've got another engy dedicated to refilling it's ammo and healing it's not worth the trouble. I hate the way you aim it - would've preferred if you could aim in first person and keep yourself hidden as long as you have line-of-sight to the sentry.
 
Reconstructing sentries are definitely a little bit too strong at the moment. A single non-combat class (engy, medic, nearby snipers) has to focus fire very heavily on one to take it out (just found out that a full clip of needles at point blank won't do it and that is about 400 damage over a few seconds). And since an engy doesn't need to wrench the sentry or anything during the process he will most likely elect to shoot you in the face if you try to focus on his sentry.

Maybe Valve should try locking the engineer for a few moments after redeploying a building like they do when the scout drinks bonk.
 
Confidence Man said:
Mini-sentry is the best addition in the update. Between that and the health boost it lets you go toe-to-toe much more effectively.

The wrangler still seems pretty useless to me. The range is helpful but unless you've got another engy dedicated to refilling it's ammo and healing it's not worth the trouble. I hate the way you aim it - would've preferred if you could aim in first person and keep yourself hidden as long as you have line-of-sight to the sentry.
It's best to use the wrangler in non obvious ways, like stick it somewhere high at the back of an area, run somewhere else and more or less rain death, also it's faster fire rate when being used manually along with it's 66% shield make's it rather tough to take out, when you swap to your wrench to repair it still has a shield up for 2-3 seconds, two smacks and you can resume shooting again without the shield dropping.

In a way it's too good when used well :)
 
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