Why I hate Engineers

Ok, this might come off as me being an salty Scout main, but I really hate Engineer as class.  And here’s why:

1. So easy to stack

As I watch into the last point of Granary where there are 5 sentries just on the left of me, I start pondering “is this really balanced” and then proceed to back up so I don’t have to encounter this amount of stacking. Now I have no problem with Engineer countering me (in fact I like it when classes can be countered by another class and also itself especially if the countering body has higher skill -This makes me mad at Sniper’s design, because you have to either suicide for the Sniper or be a better Sniper and that does not always guarantee a kill) but I don’t like how easy it is just to stack Engineers and bring the game to a grinding halt. Now there might be people who will argue that they should as they spend so much effort building their sentry nests. But usually this thing happens with people who just when coming out of spawn in 5CP stays in spawn and build to the last point. And also there is no mercy for them because of this next point:

2. Engineer’s unlocks

Engineer has some disgusting unlocks that makes me want to rip my hair out of my head. These unlocks are usually classified under the name of “counter-counters” meaning that with these unlocks, Engineer can counter his counters, making it all rather fruitless. Here are some of his most devious unlocks:

1. Pomson 6000

This Engineer’s shotgun replacement is one of the most annoying weapons in the whole game. Especially for Medics whose übercharge is used to counter Engineers. What this Righteous Bison-clone does is that every time it hits Medics it drains 10% of their übercharge and when it hits Spies (Engineer’s soft counter), it drains 20% of Spy’s cloak.

2. Wrangler

Now, from all the unlocks here I will mention this is probably the most balanced. But the reason it is in this list is because how the shield works in it. The shield while active absorbs 66% of all incoming damage to the sentry, enabling the sentry to be used as a bullet sponge. Especially paired with the Rescue Ranger it can result into some impressive stuff like this:

3. The Short Circuit

Yes, I am beating a dead horse but seriously, what did they think at TF2 team in the Christmas of 2013 when they buffed the Short Circuit into such degree that it disabled completely Engineer’s two biggest counters, the Demoman and the Soldier?  What this basically does is that it shoots little lightning bolts that can destroy projectiles while using metal. Now they buffed its firing speed but there was a problem: it could deny Demomans from destroying his sentry nests for, well, forever, if the Engineer had a dispenser near him. But then shortly after they nerfed it a little bit so now you could not have it up to get metal from dispensers, you’d have to change weapons. But here’s the problem: There is no reason for short circuit to exist. In fact there is no reason for any counter-counter weapons to exist.

And now we get to the most devious unlock of Engineer that I will give its own paragraph because I feel like ranting:

3. The Gunslinger and minisentries

Again, just like the Short Circuit I am beating a dead horse with this one. The design of the Gunslinger just makes me want to ask Valve what was in their mind when designing it. Now I know why they made Gunslinger, it was because they wanted to give engineers a sub-class that was not constrained into the normal sentry-nest. But here is the problem about Gunslinger engineer as a subclass. It does not change Engineer’s counters and people who he counters one bit. For example we have to look at another subclass: Demoknight. Demoknight changes the way Demoman gets played by providing him with close-range options where he trades most of his firepower for the ability to be a pick class, complete with different classes that counter him. Gunslinger does not do that.

For Soldiers and Demos minisentries are still easy to kill (but more tedious because of the point I will bring up later) and Scouts and Pyros are the most disabled by minisentries. And even with soldier or demo the minisentries are not very fun to fight against because they are so spammable, costing only 100 metal,compared to the 130 metal that a normal sentry costs. And because Engineer has 200 metal, he can put down 2 of these sentries. But that is not all, because Engineer gets 100 metal from every weapon he picks up, he can just put down these sentries as long as there are weapons lying down on the floor. And it does not help that Minisentries are extremely spammable because they construct at half the speed of level one does.

4. My final thoughts

All in all I regard Engineer as one of the easiest classes on the whole game only passed by Heavy and Pyro. He has ability to counter almost every class in the game through his imbalanced unlocks and he has the ability to single-handedly bring a game into a stalemate just by pressing 1 button. Overall, he is a very annoying class with a fairly low skill floor and skill ceiling that has many great players like Sigafoo.