Characters / Team Fortress 2: The Engineer

Main Character Index
Offense Classes (The Scout | The Soldier | The Pyro)
Defense Classes (The Demoman | The Heavy | The Engineer)
Support Classes (The Medic | The Sniper | The Spy)
Non-Player Characters

The Engineer

Real name: Dell Conagher

"Hey look, buddy. I'm an engineer, and that means I solve problems. But not problems like "What is beauty?", because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy... I solve practical problems."

Voiced by: Grant Goodeve (in-game), Nolan North (Expiration Date) (English), Jose Antequera (Spanish), Alexander Gruzdev (Russian), Dieter Memel (German)

"I told ya don’t touch that darn thing!"

The Engineer is a soft-spoken and amiable Texan cowboy with 11 Ph.Ds, hailing from Bee Cave, Texas. He appears to be the nicest and most well-educated member of the team, to the point where his domination taunts sound more like good-natured ribbing than anything. It has been noted, however, that going by the stereotypes that the game uses for its characters, those same good-natured southerners are said to be putting on a facade of pleasantries and are ready at any moment to blow a stranger's head off with a shotgun for trespassing or grab their torches and pitchforks in a display of southern hospitality. Never forget that this is the very same good-natured southerner who sawed his own hand off to test the experimental Gunslinger. Never forget he has claimed quite a lot of tech to be his own design when it's actually his grandfather's. And never forget that Mann Co. always hires the lowest bidder. He may seem nice, but the Engineer is a weapons-based Mad Scientist with a penchant for skipping straight to the live testing.

On paper, the Engineer doesn't look like much with 125HP, 100% base speed, and a shotgun as his default weapon. But although the Engineer is ill-suited for direct combat, his strength is his ability to build and position an array of structures to support his team. His sentry guns can mow enemies down with impressive fire in a wide radius, his dispensers will give much-needed health and ammo refills to his teammates, and his often-underestimated teleporters can bring respawning reinforcements quickly to the battlefield, keeping pressure on the enemy; if played with his team to support him, he can make locations of interest nigh-impregnable once he sets up his buildings there. Naturally, Demo with his indirect Grenade Spam, and the Spy with his sapper, are his natural enemies. The Engineer has a pistol and monkey wrench as his backup weapons, and can also use the latter to speed up construction/repair on his buildings by hitting them with it. Meet the Engineer!

The Engineer was the last class to receive new weapons. He is also a promotional Skin for Paladins, complete with a Good Ol' Boy voice pack voiced by Grant Goodeve himself! He can be unlocked by Winning 5 games as Barik (Paladins' Engineer if you will, hence the crossover).

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A-F

• Achilles' Heel: A good Engineer is a very sizeable roadblock, but he can be countered in various ways:
  • The Demoman. Demo's main job, when he isn't using stickies to protect the objective or to slow down a push, is to take out the enemy Engineer's sentry nest. If their buildings are bunched together, even a few stickies can completely decimate the Engineer AND their sentry nests, removing the several minutes and precious resources that were used to build them in the first place. If stickies don't work, a few rollers from the Demo's main Grenade Launchers (with the exception of the Loch-N-Load, which has no rollers and requires you to have line of sight with the Sentry, which can shred any class within seconds if it can see them) can do the job safely from behind cover, and around tricky corners that his Stickies or teammates can't reach. A good Demoman is possibly the most dangerous thing to an Engineer, with a close second being...
  • The Spy. A halfway decent Spy can, with one fell swoop, disable/destroy all of the Engineer's buildings with his Electrosapper while disguised (which makes the Sentry a non-threat and can destroy BOTH ends of their Teleporter), backstab/shoot the Engineer to keep him from rebuilding or removing them (sending them back to spawn for a considerable amount of time, giving the team time to push before he can hope to set back up), and vanish without a trace, retreating safely while the enemy team wonders what happened.
    • It should be noted that both of these weaknesses have birthed a Pyro build that can turn this trope right around onto the two aforementioned counters, affectionately named the Pybro by Engineer players; a Pyro with an airblast-capable flamethrower and the Homewrecker or Neon Annihilator (the only two weapons in the game besides the Wrenches that can remove sappers), who chooses to guard an Engineer's nest exclusively by Spychecking his teammates with his flames, airblast away projectiles that can harm the Sentry, deal with Sappers when the Engineer is too far away to do it himself, and even airblast an Über push long enough for them to waste their chance to kill the nest in a pinch. With a skilled Pybro backing up a decent Engineer, very few things can take a nest down.
  • The Soldier. Soldier is more of a soft counter to the Engineer — only one of his weapons does explosive damage, but with splash damage and a Sentry too close to a corner — or from halfway across the map with the Direct Hit — a good Soldier can easily take out a Sentry nest.
  • The Sniper. Because Engineers and their nests are suited for close quarters combat, they're often at the mercy of even the most amateur of Snipers, who can kill an Engineer, and start picking away at their buildings from afar. While it's possible to counter a Sniper with a wrangler, the severe damage falloff will likely only ward them off for a few minutes at most, and takes away valuable time that could be used to deal with closer threats.
  Sniper: Here's a gadget you should build: one that stops my bullets!
  • The Medic. When all else fails — when the Demo can't get around the corner, when the Spy is being heckled by the Pyros or can't deal with the Engineer himself, and when the Soldier or Sniper can't get a good line of sight, a well-coordinated Über of the stock Medigun invincibility type can be the last desperate attempt to take down a well dug-in Sentry Nest. Few things are more frightening to an Engineer than seeing an Übered Heavy-Medic combo round a corner, followed by a gaggle of the enemy team. Even if the push fails, it can distract the Engineer's team long enough to let the other counters do their jobs.
    • Under the right circumstances, a Pyro-Medic team can completely wipe out a nest, and kill the Engie for good measure. One invincible Übercharge on a Homewrecker-wielding Pyro, and the nest is history. Though, due to Sentry fire having a mild knockback effect, even on invincible targets, this only works if the nest is only a few feet around a corner, or the Über might run out before the Pyro can even reach the Sentry. These require planning and communication between the team, as every second of invincibility is vital.
• Affably Evil: He may be one of the nicer mercenaries but he’s still a ruthless and remorseless killer.
• Angrish: "Dagit nabit, nagit dagit!"
• American Accents: A lazy Texan drawl.
• Americans Are Cowboys: A running theme with the southern-hailing Engineer. Some of his weapon unlocks have Western theme naming like the Frontier Justice and Gunslinger, his cosmetics range from various cowboy, sheriff, and prospector attires, and his version of taunts like the Mannrobics and Square Dance incorporate finger gun gestures in them (and the latter even uses the traditional "revolver ricochet" sound effect).
• Apologetic Attacker: One of his domination lines to the Pyro is an apology. However, since it's "Sorry, ma'am", it's actually a Stealth Insult... probably.
• Arm Cannon: The Short Circuit, an electrical gun mounted where his prosthetic hand usually is, which draws ammo from his metal supply and fires either a short-ranged burst or a slow-moving orb that can destroy most projectiles in its way.
• Artificial Limbs: The Engineer has two weapons that take the form of prosthetics — the Gunslinger and the Short Circuit, both of which replace his right hand. It's a common assumption that the Engineer cut off his own hand in order to install the Gunslinger.
  • It's worth noting that even an Engineer who's not using one of these weapons wears the welding glove on his right hand, implying that this could always be the case and he just doesn't make it obvious all the time.
  • There's also a Halloween cosmetic for the Engineer's left hand, named the Iron Fist.
  • ...and a cosmetic for his left foot, called the Roboot.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Pomson 6000, which can drain Übercharge and Cloak meter from victims, in exchange for lower damage and reduced clip size. Theoretically, it should be a game-changer for Engineer to deprive his two main counters of the resources they need to wreck his buildings, but in practice, the lower damage and slow projectiles of the Pomson make it useless for defending himself, and the short range of the drain effect only really kicks in when you're at a distance when Engineer's normal Shotgun would two-shot kill a victim anyway — ie., drain 100% of a Medic's charge or make Spy unable to sap buildings for longer.
  • Sentry Jumping is one option in the Engineer's arsenal that sounds cool on paper: by using a fully-levelled sentry with rockets and The Wrangler, it's possible to allow Engineer to Rocket Jump onto areas he might not normally reach, allowing him to set up in unconventional spots (either by rebuilding them from scratch or by collecting them with the Rescue Ranger), potentially setting up a nest that's very difficult to break and almost unreachable by Spies. Unfortunately, this requires you set up an entire level 3 sentry, work with a very particular loadout, and take a lot of self-damage that you can't shrug off as easily as the Soldier can, costing you a lot of time and resources and makes it hard to realistically do in most games. On top of that, not all areas that the Engineer can access on foot are places where you can put down sentries, almost always specifically because putting your sentries there would be too unfair for the enemy team.
• Bad Future: A future Engineer does this in the non-canon comic Death of a Salesbot, going back from a time where Gray Mann apparently won his battle with the Mercs by tricking them into buying hats from him. He only barely manages to get the message not to open the crates that contain those hats to the Mercs before being sent back... except one of the Mercs in question is the Soldier, who apparently mishears him and opens the crates anyway.
• Badass Boast: In all fairness, one of the biggest pros of the "Meet Your Match" update is that all of the classes (minus the Medic) have a huge load of these:
  "This button here, builds Teleporters. This button, builds Dispensers. And this little button makes them enemy sum-bitches wish they'd never even been born!"
  "I whipped up a satellite earlier to scan the topography of the area, boys. And guess what? There's plenty of room for us to kick their asses all over it!"
• Badass Bookworm: An Omnidisciplinary Scientist with over 11 PhD's to his name.
  My eleventh PhD is in Applied Ass-Kicking!
• Balance Buff:
  • The Engineer Update gave him the ability to pickup and move his buildings, making his playstyle potentially far less stagnant, and able to move with the objective without needing to destroy his buildings with the Destruction PDA.
  • Before Meet Your Match, Level 1 teleporters cost 125 metal to make. The update made them much cheaper at only 50 metal, with the buffed Eureka Effect further reducing this price to a measly 25 metal^note  and the Eureka Effect brings the metal needed per upgrade down to 100 metal..
• Bald of Evil: He is this if he is on the enemy team, just like the Heavy, but the Engineer's baldness isn't as obvious since Heavy is hatless by default and Engie isn't. Downplayed as he's pretty chill when not killing mercs.
• Balls of Steel: Due to a since-patched-out case of Hitbox Dissonance, Engie spent the first nine years of the game with a bulletproof pelvis.◊
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Don’t let his polite, soft-spoken attitude fool you. Anyone who gets on his bad side or is on the opposite team will usually end up well ventilated from one of his sentries.
  • Has this to say when Blutarch Mann reveals that he illegally exhumed the corpse of the Engineer's grandfather just to get a few blueprints while the geezer electrocutes him:
  "I appreciate that you're my employer, and an old man besides... but if you don't take your goddamn hands off me I will break you in HALF."
• Big Fun: The Texas Tech-Hand set gives him a pretty noticeable beer gut and chin flab (as ever, trope depends on what side he's on). It's entirely cosmetic and doesn't impact his mobility any, of course — but don't be surprised if you see an Engineer with this particular set spending the entire match Rancho Relaxing with a base built on last.
• Blown Across the Room: Sentry bullets deal intense knockback to their targets. Canny placement on certain maps lets you blast careless enemies off cliffs.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Like the Medic, some players refuse to ever play Engineer. Yet an Engineer's buildings have huge amounts of undeniable utility that can multiply a competent team's efficiency by several-fold. Engineers are absolutely essential on Defense where a given team's ability to hold off an onslaught is effectively measured by "how many sentries do we have?" and also devastate on Offense by teleporting in constant reinforcements, dispensing ammo/health on the front line, establishing hidden forward bases in enemy territory, and preventing the enemy team from pushing back onto claimed territory. Not the most fun role on the team, but good players understand and appreciate how important it is nonetheless.
  • Similarly, his default weapon set is the bog-standard shotgun and pistol shared with a number of other classes, including the Soldier, Pyro, and Scout. But the shotgun is a reasonably powerful close-ranged weapon that can gun down Spies and Scouts looking to flank you with surprising frequency. Meanwhile, the Engineer's incredible surplus ammo of 200, combined the the pistol's good accuracy and rate of fire, make it an ideal weapon for peppering approaching or fleeing enemies (it's also pretty much imperative if you plan on using the Widowmaker, as it's your only go-to option for if you run out of metal aside from your wrench). While the Frontier Justice, Widowmaker, and Short Circuit offer new options that can potentially turn fights around, you really can't go wrong with these two weapons.
  • The Rescue Ranger has an even worse offensive output, but also vastly improved practicality than the stock shotgun. The fact it fires a single middling-damage projectile per shot will underwhelm Engies that want a say in a direct fight, but its ability to restore health to buildings from a long distance, as well as rescue them from afar at the cost of 100 metal, can be a total lifesaver in keeping him and his team safe.
  • After several significant reworks, the Panic Attack presently behaves like a mild rebalance of the stock shotgun, trading out some damage and accuracy of successive shots for more bullets per shot, a fixed bullet spread pattern, and quicker deployment speed. The increased bullets per shot cancels out the damage reduction fairly evenly, leading to what is in practice a slightly more reliable version of the stock shotgun, which — as mentioned above — is still a fairly strong option. Often times, Engie players opt for the Panic Attack over the stock not because it's more "exciting", but because it's objectively more consistent as it has none of the stock's random bullet spread (unless you're playing competitive or are in a server with random bullet spread turned off — in which case, most players go with stock for its higher net damage).
  • The Southern Hospitality is a very basic sidegrade compared to the Engineer's other wrenches, where in sacrificing random Critical Hits and some vulnerability to fire, the wrench causes enemies hit by it to take a small bleeding Damage Over Time effect. This effect totals to a pithy 40 bonus damage across five seconds, but the sacrifices are fairly minimal — fire is something an attentive Engineer hanging around his nest should rarely be getting hit with, and the loss of being able to land a potential critical hit on an exclusively close-ranged target with your wrench can be mitigated with the trusty shotgun. The most common way to use the Southern Hospitality is to catch escaping Spies since the bleed effect makes it impossible for them to cloak. It's an incredibly specific niche and often nowhere near as sexy as what other wrenches offer, but it works.
• Bottomless Magazines: The Widowmaker Deus Ex: Human Revolution promotional weapon uses up building metal as ammunition. Each hit on target returns metal according to the damage done to the enemy, so an Engineer that can aim consistently can literally shoot forever without as much as picking ammo crates. Regardless of the method used to recover used-up metal, the Widowmaker has no reload animation nor needs one.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Like the Sniper, in one of his domination lines against a Heavy, the Engineer seems to be aware that he's killing the same person repeatedly:
  Never mind the bullets, how much are all them coffins costin' ya?
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He definitely gives off this image, between his calm attitude, his permanent slouch, and his camping-heavy playstyle. The Rancho Relaxo taunt, which shows him take out a collapsible lawn chair and umbrella and kick back with a beer in hand, seems to invoke this even more.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: His vast intelligence clearly doesn't lie in comedy, as demonstrated in his Competitive Mode voice responses:
  "Don't worry, boys! The Engineer...is Engi-here! [laughs] Yeah... still tinkerin' with that one."
  "These fellas are gonna be ohm-less if they don't put up more of a resistance! [laughs] Ah, that's an engineering joke."
• Cloud Cuckoolanders Minder: Promotional material shows that out of all the mercenaries, the Engineer is the closest work friend to the Pyro. Though irked and disturbed by Pyro's very apparent insanity, the two are shown to be roommates in "True Meaning" and rather close friends, possibly due to how much he relies on the Pyro to help with defending his buildings from Spies, Soldiers, and Demomen. Ironic that the probably most sane mercenary of the team is friends with the most insane.
• Combat Pragmatist: Arguably the biggest example out of the entire team. Whereas his allies rely upon their own weapons to do damage, he decided it was smarter to find a good choke point from which to deploy a veritable death machine, and, as if that wasn't enough, to back it up with a free health source and a means to quickly teleport team-mates to his position to help defend his stuff from attackers.
• Continuity Nod: A photo from his update reveals that his father was the Engineer from Team Fortress Classic. One of his domination lines towards the Spy is a reference to this.
  "That's what my daddy taught me to do to backstabbers."
• Cornered Rattlesnake: Essentially the whole purpose of the Frontier Justice, a shotgun with its clip cut in half but can gain guaranteed crits for every sentry kill after it's been destroyed, making it less of a weapon for direct combat and more like his ultimate Desperation Attack. Ordinarily, an Engineer without their sentry is hopelessly outgunned against better equipped or faster enemies and is easy pickings for any organized attack, but with the Frontier Justice equipped the Engineer can deal some serious damage as revenge and one-to-two shot anyone who comes after him before he can escape, or take out a group of enemies before dying.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • While Engineer's ability to support his team is always useful, some teams instead gain the burden of too many Engineers. While three and up Sentries seems like an unstoppable barrier, the truth is that Engineers take time to set up their nests and are very vulnerable when doing so, especially if they're constantly having to rebuild; excessive Engineers also reduces the number of frontline classes who can actually capture objectives or contribute to a larger-scale counterpush against attackers. New Engineers also make the mistake of putting their Sentries right next to each other, thinking they're doubling their firepower when all they've done is make the Sentries a bigger target for a single Übercharge, Demoman, or crafty Spy. Speaking of Spies, the more Engineers there are, the easier it is for a Spy disguised as one of them to go unnoticed. Two Engineers is typically sufficient for a 12-person team, or less if said team is on the offensive.
  • In Mann Vs Machine, too many Engineers will leave a team with too much static defense and no support roles or any way to chase down bomb carriers that inevitably slip through when the waves of Sentry Busters open up holes in the line.
• Critical Hit Class: Due to the fact that your odds of a crit increase heavily if you've been doing a lot of damage, and the fact that the Engineer's primary way of dealing damage can't crit, and they're likely to be using a wrench (which has an increased crit chance), many an enemy has tried to flank a sentry and been one-shotted by the wrench.
  • Invoked by Engineers who use the Gunslinger/Frontier Justice combo: the Gunslinger replaces the default Sentry gun by a smaller version that is both weaker and cheaper than the regular level 1 Sentry, and the Frontier Justice stores critical hits for every kill/assist the Engineer's sentry gets, with said crits becoming available once the sentry is destroyed. Meaning that a well-hidden mini-sentry is very likely to get a few kills/assists before getting quickly destroyed due to its low health, allowing the Engineer to get one or several kills of his own with his now crit-boosted shotgun.
• Cultured Badass: Has 11 doctorates, a cultured appreciation for the visual arts, and southern hospitality to spare. That said, he is considered one the nine deadliest mercenaries on the planet for a reason.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: The Engineer and the Medic are both explicitly credited with refining and inventing their tech, respectively. Between the two of them, they could turn the world on its ear if they ever started selling their technology, a la Saxton Hale. Instead, they're content to be incredibly well-paid mercenaries.
  • Engie owns the patent on his and his grandfather's Sentry Guns, and apparently sold a license to TF Industries, so he probably has some kind of royalties deal from that invention if nothing else.
• Cyborg: A lot of Engineers' Cosmetics give him Artificial Limbs, but equipping the Gunslinger, the Dead'er Alive, the Iron Fist, and the Roboot can turn you into something resembling RoboCop.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Bad Engineers place all their Level 3 buildings in a chokepoint, then hold primary fire with their wrench out to continuously repair the sentry before a Demoman comes to destroy everything, the Engineer included. Good Engineers are able to manage their metal supplies and buildings during the thick of battle and will shift their Sentry around the battlefield to always catch the enemy off-guard.
  • Two Engineers working together can play like an RTS-style Heavy Weapons Team.^note The kind who are slow and weak, but once they deploy and bring the BFG out, they will be a nightmare. One carries a fully-built Sentry, the other a Dispenser. Plop both in the frontline, one uses The Wrangler to lay down a non-stop suppression fire that ignores damage falloff, the other keeps it restocked with ammunition and keep a watch for Spies.
  • In terms of weapon choices, the Widowmaker is both plainly difficult to wield and plainly awesome. While it fires and hurts like a normal shotgun, it consumes 30 metal per shot, but also returns metal based on the damage it deals, and requires no reloading to keep firing. Those who can't land their shots or get in good-enough range to deal more than 30 damage per shot will quickly run dry and find themselves without a primary weapon and the ability to make buildings, but for those who can, its theoretically infinite magazine allows him to put incredible non-stop damage. Put an effective Widowmaker user into a Battle Engie playstyle, and the increased health and low-cost mini-sentries multiply the potential pressure he can impose on enemy teams.
  • The Short Circuit's alt-fire allows for Engineers to vaporize enemy projectiles — including explosives, one of his biggest weaknesses — but at a hefty 65 metal cost per shot, giving him up to three shots with full metal supply before he runs dry. Unless they have steady access to metal, players will need to be greatly judicious with when and where to actually use it, but the sheer power of destroying any number of incoming rockets and grenades can be more effective in saving your buildings than swinging your wrench, and can provide valuable windows to make an aggressive push or retaliation.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: Subverted and played straight depending on the context. On offense, a team made up of mostly Engineers can only afford to stake claim on half the map (their half) and not have much firepower to actually push forward with, letting the enemy team just wait patiently for the round timer to hit zero. On defense though, the sheer amount of Sentry Guns punting even multiple Uber-charged attackers around like paper in the wind can make it a frustratingly effective strategy during a defender's last stand. Doubly so if the Engineers are communicating and helping maintain each other's Sentry Nests and not just looking out for themselves.
• Dissonant Serenity: What's to worry about when all you need is more gun? Designed by him, built by him... "and you best hope... not pointed at you."
  • In battle, Engineers can be pretty calm and relaxed just a few feet away from where the rest of their team is getting murdered. But then a Spy comes in...
  • In "True Meaning", he stays calm during and in the aftermath of a rocket crash into his living room that barely missed him and the Pyro.
  • With the Rancho-Relaxo taunt, he can erect a mechanical chair, grab a beer, and watch the sparks fly while he sits there without a care in the world.
    • Similarly, he can play the Banjo while gaining frags if you have the Duelling Banjo.
• Drone Deployer:
  • Puts gun-mounted sentries on the field, whether big or small.
  • He may also mention in Competitive Mode that he made a satellite to scan the area.
• Eagleland: Pretty much Flavor #1, almost an opposite of the Soldier, and easily the nicest of the bunch (except during his domination quips, of course). The closest thing to Flavor #2 is the redneck elements of his character.
• The Engineer: Obviously. He provides the page quote.
• Equipment Upgrade: He is based around placing and upgrading various buildings to support the team (most notably the sentry gun; an automated gun which goes from a knee high machine gun to a dual minigun/rocket launcher platform).
• Everything is Big in Texas: The Texas-born Engineer is capable of building the level 3 Sentry Gun, which is the largest weapon in the game. Though ironically, Engineer is the shortest class.
• Evil Laugh: Has a few rather fantastic ones, just pull out his pistol or wrench and taunt.
• Evil Laugh Turned Coughing Fit: Engineer's laugh during the Schadenfreude taunt gets capped off with a coughing fit.
• Eyes Out of Sight: The Engineer is always wearing welding goggles except when the player selects other cosmetics that replace it. There is no in-game option to reveal his eyes — all the cosmetics in that region either change his goggles' lenses or are worn over them.
• The Friendly Texan: Off duty, Dell is shown to be an easy-going cordial Texan. With that said, you wouldn't want to piss him off or stumble upon his Sentry.

G-Z

• Gadgeteer Genius: Sentries, dispensers, and teleporters, oh my!
• Gathering Steam: The Engineer is the weakest class in the game at face value, having low health, normal base speed, and unimpressive weapons in his default loadout. However, if given enough time to build and upgrade his machines, he becomes the biggest threat on the battlefield and a cornerstone for his team, often requiring several enemies working together to bring him down without a hard counter like Spy or Demoman.
• Geniuses Have Multiple PhDs: The Engineer, the team's Southern-Fried Genius who builds deadly sentries, ammo dispensers, and teleporters, is claimed by the official website to have eleven hard-science PhDs.
• Glass Cannon: At 125 HP, the Engineer has the same health as the Scout, without the benefit of being fast. Luckily, there are a couple primary weapon options that turn him into a hard-hitter.
  • The Widowmaker has no need to stop to reload, as it uses Engineer's metal supply. However, it also restocks this ammo upon hitting someone, possibly fully refunding the metal cost. If you can land all your shots at close range, then the Engineer becomes a lead-spewing monstrosity of constant damage.
  • An Engineer with the Frontier Justice can also become one if he's gained many crits, which he earns by sentry kills. His crit-boosted shotgun does a maximum of 180 damage, enough to one-hit kill almost any class. Thus, don't assume an Engineer is helpless once his sentry is destroyed. That glowing shotgun might be the last thing you see.
    Engineer: Start praying, boy.
• Goggles Do Nothing:
  • He wears them like regular sunglasses, rather than for welding, and they do nothing for the player.
  • This is doubled by the Hotrod. The mask is seen to flip down when the Engineer is going to build something, but in real life, the smoked lenses of both the goggles and mask would render the person unable to see. Funnily enough, The Hotrod is currently one of the few hats in the game with a practical application: Spychecking. Actual Engineers would only flip down the mask when building things and thus would be holding a toolbox as well. Spies disguised as the Engineer would have the mask flipped down to use the Sapper, caused by the Sapper using the same PDA slot as the the Engineer's build PDA. Most people won't notice this, even if you're looking for it, so it's not a huge advantage.
• Good Ol' Boy: Guy from Texas who's polite when he's not in battle. And sometimes even when he is.
• Gun Twirling: If the stock pistol is selected during taunting, Engie twirls it and blows an imaginary plume of smoke away.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He seems a nice enough guy, but he's got a short fuse when it comes to his machines.
• Hayseed Name: His real name is Dell Conagher.
• Healing Shiv: The Rescue Ranger is a limited form of this, able to restore the health of a building per shot. It doesn't restore ammo nor upgrade them, but it's great for saving you and your friendly Engies' damaged buildings in a pinch if you don't have the time or safe space to hit it with your wrench instead.
• Hero-Tracking Failure: Zig-zagged. Despite what Meet the Scout tells you, no, Sentries have perfect tracking and can easily stop practically anyone who wanders into its firing range unsupported. That being said, it is possible to dodge a Sentry's firing range if you're close and fast enough to circumvent its rotation.
• Hidden Depths: Again, he's probably the nicest of the mercenaries, but he can and will mess you up if you push him. In the comics, this extends even to his boss — Dell calmly quips to Blutarch that, "If you don't take your goddamn hands off me, I will break you in half", even as the later has taken him by the collar in an Australium-fueled rage.
• Hypocritical Humor: While dominating an enemy Sniper, Engie will poke fun at him for being a "camper" and/or a squatter, due to Sniper having to stay in one spot and wait for the right moment to land a headshot. Yet, defensive Engineers tend to do nothing but stay in one area to babysit his own machines, thus making him just as much as a camper as Sniper is.
• In-Series Nickname: He is known as "Engie" by the Soldier, Medic, and fellow Engineers. Scout calls him "hardhat".
• Instrument of Murder: Engineer has the Frontier Justice's "Dischord" taunt, where he pulls out his guitar, plays a chord, and then smashes the area in front of him. If an enemy player is within range, they will get killed and the corpse of said enemy will have their head pounded into their chest.
• It Runs in the Family: According to a picture in the Engineer Update pages, his father was the Engineer from Team Fortress Classic. Supported with one of Engineer's Spy-domination quotes.
  That's what my daddy taught me to do to back-stabbers.
• Joke Character: In Medieval Mode, where he doesn't get any of his buildings, he's hopelessly underpowered compared to the other classes. Nobody plays as him except if you're goofing around and/or you're trying to complete the Gunslinger contract, which grants a critical hit after three punches on the same person. It is way harder than it sounds to pull off.
• Leitmotif: "More Gun". Interestingly enough, he's the one playing it in "Meet the Engineer".
• Machine Empathy: Engineer is always aware of his deployables' state even without looking at his PDA. And he really, really cares about them.
• Mad Scientist: If the goggles and the laugh don't give him away, the fact that he chopped a hand off For Science! surely does…
  • In the Tough Break Update, with the new Mannrobics taunt, Engineer will quip "I don't even need my good hand for this!" Maybe his hand was injured, and he replaced it with the Gunslinger to keep his job.
• Major Injury Underreaction: His responses from being set on fire aren't quite as understated as the Spy's, but they sound more like he's touching something hot or realizing the ambient temperature is too high rather than being aflame.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: While he can deal a bit of damage, his primary purpose is to build gadgets which can teleport teammates across the map and replenish their ammo (as well as heal and deal damage). The other classes fight in a more direct manner.
• Mighty Glacier: Played with; per the official wiki, the Defense Classes possess the highest firepower, but are slow to deploy. In his case, it takes a while for him to set up a fully-functional Sentry nest (the Glacier part), but once it's up, it can be a nightmare to take down without an Übercharge (the Mighty part) despite his Squishy Wizard status.
• Minored In Ass Kicking: To quote the man himself:
  "My 11th PhD is in Applied Ass-Kicking!"
• Mini-Me: The Mini-Engy is a toy of the Engineer (modeled after a Mini Mario toy) that clings to the Engineer's power cord. The Pyro also has a doll cosmetic of the Engineer called the "Pocket Pardner".
• More Dakka:
  • "How am I gonna stop some big mean Mother Hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind? The answer: Use a gun. And if that don't work? Use more gun."
  • His Pistol replacement, The Wrangler, doubles the firing rate of the Sentry Gun. This includes the time it takes for the rockets to reload on a Level Three.
  • However, he goes back on his own statement with the Combat Mini-Sentry:
    "Sometimes, you just need a little less gun."
  • The Engineer's Pistol may have the same clip size and fire rate as the one carried by the Scout, but while the Scout only has 36 reserve shots (3 clips' worth), the Engineer has 200 (over 16 clips).
• Mr. Fixit: His role is to repair buildings.
• No Experience Points for Medic: Averted. Excluding Sentry Guns (which are more than capable of racking up kills), Engineers can score well from points gained every time a teammate uses a Teleporter, as well as every 600 damage healed by a Dispenser.
• Not the Intended Use: The Eureka Effect was made as a utility tool to allow Engineers to quickly teleport to their spawn room or a teleporter exit in the case of an emergency, without needing to use the teleporter entrance. However, since the exit doesn't have to be active in order for Engies to use the Eureka Effect, it's often used as a stealth tool that players use to secretly appear in places and surprise enemies without the sounds of teleportation giving away their location. Users of this strategy are often nicknamed "Ninjaneers" by the fandom.
• No Sense of Personal Space: In "Expiration Date", he puts his arms around Soldier and Medic when he learns that the team is not afflicted with tumors. Judging by Medic's expression, Medic is uncomfortable.
• Odd Friendship: The down-to-earth genius with 11 doctorates and the child-like, perpetually-disconnected-from-reality pyromaniac are best friends. In-game the Pyro is an Engineer’s biggest ally since he can weed out spies, reflect Soldier and Demoman fire, and is the only class aside from the Engineer himself who can destroy sappers.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Subverted; he's got 11 PhDs, but they're all in various types of mechanical engineering, architecture, and the like. Except the 11th:
  "My 11th PhD is in Applied Ass-Kicking!"
• Other Me Annoys Me: Downplayed compared to the others, but the Engineer clearly has as little respect for his alternate counterpart as he has for the rest of the enemy team.
  A real Texan woulda dodged that.
  You can always tell a Texan, but you can't tell him much.
  You're all hardhat and no cattle.
• Out of Focus:
  • He was the last class to receive a weapon set, well over two years after weapon sets were introduced, and he didn't receive any new weapons in the Über Update. He's tied with the Medic for having the least amount of weapons out of all the classes. Admittedly, Valve have tried to design and implement some weapons for him, but the Engineer more so than any other class runs the risk of breaking the game in two if his weapons change too much.
  • This is also the case in the "Mann Co. No More" comics, where Engie makes absolutely no appearances in the story months after the team is fired. Miss Pauling lampshades this, noting that he's practically fallen off the face of the earth when she tries to contact him. The Naked and the Dead reveals the reason behind his sudden disappearance: The Administrator took him with her when she went into hiding after Gray Mann took over Mann Co., since he's the only person still alive with the technical know-how to build an Australium Life Extender.
• Percussive Maintenance: Even the official Sentry gun manual notes that whacking devices with a wrench makes their deployment faster and repairs and upgrades them.
• Perma-Stubble: On his chin.
• Properly Paranoid: Veteran Engineers are constantly checking for Spies, whether by moving erratically, shooting at corners, or even at any approaching teammates. And for good reason, since they're the biggest target of Spies and one moment of inattentiveness could mean their life and nest.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: His pistol is implicitly designed to work like this, being a secondary weapon that provides less raw personal firepower than his primary shotgun and especially his sentries. Also, where the Scout's pistol has a limited ammo reserve that only allows for three full clips before he needs to restock, the Engineer's pistol has a whopping 200 reserve ammo, which when combined with his frequency for collecting metal all but ensures in practice he'll never run out of it, suggesting it to be even more of a disposable backup option. It's still perfectly reliable in a pinch, pairs surprisingly well with some unlocks (especially the Widowmaker, which uses metal supply as ammo and can leave you without primary ammo after a few missed shots), and it comes with the added benefit of having better mid-range accuracy than a shotgun.
• Resource Reimbursement: The Widowmaker is a shotgun that — rather than firing bullets from the usual ammo/magazine system — instead fires metal that's normally spent to create buildings, with the upside being that it returns metal based on the damage he deals with each shot. It also doesn't require reloading, meaning that an effective Engineer who can consistently land shots can pump out a non-stop stream of damage (the tradeoff being that missing too many shots leaves you without a primary weapon or the ability to build anything).
• Rockers Smash Guitars: The Engineer's Dischord taunt kill has him strumming his acoustic guitar, then smashing it, possibly on an enemy's head.
• Rocket Jump:
  • Equipping the Wrangler and having a Level 3 Sentry at hand allows the Engineer to fire its rockets right at himself, jump at the right time and gain some serious air time. It's devastating to your health pool and you likely won't survive the fall, but on certain maps, you can make a safe landing on rooftops or high ground, sneak your way to spots normally hard or impossible for the Engineer to reach, if while at the brink of death. With the Rescue Ranger in your loadout, you can also haul your buildings along for the ride if you're feeling crafty.
  • The Short Circuit — while not advertising it as a feature and appears to simply be an unintended quirk in the physics engine — is also situationally capable of providing this with its secondary fire. The catch is that your energy orb has to catch an enemy within the blast radius, but doing so will cause it to launch you around very similar to how Soldier and Demoman blast-jump around, and can be a surprisingly useful burst of mobility to either escape or reposition onto enemies.
• Rough Overalls: The Engineer, whose role is in construction and defense, wears a set of overalls as his default outfit.
• Savage Spiked Weapons: The Southern Hospitality, a wrench with a spiked blade and handguard.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Uh, wow.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: Alongside Engie's trusty Construction PDA is a Destruction PDA, which allows him to instantly destroy any of his active buildings. It's a rather important part of the Engineer's kit, as only one of each building can be built at one time, and new ones can't be made until the old ones are destroyed. Whenever the Engineer must reposition, it can be more time-efficient to manually destroy old buildings and replace them elsewhere, rather than hauling the old ones or waiting for an enemy to wreck them first. The only time he can't use the Destruction PDA on a building is if a Spy is sapping the building in question.
• Sentry Gun: Engineer can build these, and they're his primary kill-earner. It starts out as a single gun, upgrades to double chainguns, and then a further upgrade gives it rockets.
• Shock and Awe: The Short Circuit gives him the power to attack with projectile-destroying lightning bolts.
• Shoot the Medic First:
  • He can repair his buildings with ease when alive, so he's a vital target. Especially when they're movin' that gear up, and moreso if the gear they're movin' up is a fully-levelled Sentry.
  • On the other hand, Spies may target an Engineer's Sentry before the Engineer himself to keep them from being killed while backstabbing the latter or just to draw the Engineer to them.
• Shorter Means Smarter: He's the shortest member of the team and has the most book smarts and common sense.
• Signature Headgear: His hard hat (usually worn backwards) and goggles, both of which have a lot of cosmetic variations.
• The Smart Guy: Uses his smarts on the battlefield.
• Smoking Barrel Blowout: When taunting with his pistol or Wrangler.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He is soft-spoken, gentlemanly, and enjoys killing people as part of his mercenary work.
• Southern-Fried Genius: As his official bio puts it, he loves "barbeque, guns, and higher education".
• Southern Gentleman: He is the friendliest and most well-mannered of the mercenaries.
• Squishy Wizard: Of the tech-wizard variety. Alone, an Engineer is almost completely disadvantaged. With his sentry, he becomes a brick wall.
  • With the Frontier Justice, a sentry-less Engineer can be a very nasty Glass Cannon (a crit shotgun can deal up to 180 damage per shot, letting him One-Hit Kill anything weaker than a Soldier, and two hit kill anything weaker than an overhealed Heavy). Even more so with a Gunslinger; the most common plan with that is to drop a mini-sentry, rack up kills, then use the revenge crits with the Frontier Justice to wreck the enemy team.
  • The Pomson 6000 gives him a unique ability: the power to drain ÜberCharges and Spy Cloaks. The former can severely cripple an enemy team, especially if the Engie manages to land multiple shots on the Medic. The latter combos well with the Southern Hospitality, resulting in the ability to efficiently Spycheck. Both effects come straight out of left field for an enemy who thinks the Engineer is only good for building stuff.
  • The Widowmaker uses metal for ammo but returns metal based on damage dealt, easily allowing accurate Engineers to continue firing their weapon indefinitely. Combine with Medic's Über for eight seconds of mowing every enemy down.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: The Eureka Effect gives the Engineer the on-demand ability to teleport to his spawn room or to a teleporter exit if it's been placed down, which can be used to either quickly get himself out of a jam or reach the frontline faster depending on the scenario, with all that it requires being a fairly short taunt animation. Interactions with the teleporter exit can be especially stealthy as you don't even need a teleporter entrance to be online to teleport to it, which prevents it from appearing "on" and spewing forth obnoxious amounts of light for the enemy team to notice, thus allowing enterprising Engies to place it in much stealthier spots. Teleporting through this method also bypasses the usual storm of particle effects and trail that comes from exiting an active teleporter, meaning Engie's sudden appearances out of nowhere are even less conspicuous.
• Stone Wall: Sentries in general tend to be main contributions to long-term stalemates, as can Dispenser-camping Heavies, when placed in the right chokepoints.
• Super Wrist-Gadget: The Pip-Boy replaces the Engineer's normal PDA with the mentioned wrist-mounted computer.
• Support Party Member: While officially listed as "Defense", Engineer is a vital tool to aid his team if played right. All of his buildings benefit his team in different ways- his teleporters allow for a steady supply of troops to leave the spawn room and be brought to the front instantly, his dispenser is a vital health and ammo supplier, and his sentry gun is a dangerous weapon that can hold choke points with ease. On defense he's a backbone for the team's capabilities, while on offense he's useful for creating "forward operating bases" to make sure the defensive team can't push the offensive team back too far. It's worth nothing he's not completely defenseless, as a number of his weapons are designed to reward aggressive play, like the Frontier Justice or the Widowmaker.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors:
  • The Demoman-Scout-Engineer triangle. Engineer's sentries completely deny an area to a Scout with its auto-aimed hitscan weaponry, Scouts hard counter Demoman by dodging his projectile explosives and killing him up close, and Demomen can bombard your Sentry Nest indirectly from a safe distance, either blowing everything up at once with stickies or just killing you first so you can't repair the subsequent damage. It's worth noting a lone Engineer without a deployed sentry is usually screwed if jumped by a Scout, but really good shotgun aim or a melee crit just might save them.
  • Forms a second triangle with the Spy and Pyro. Spies can sneak up on Engineer nests to sap and stab, the Engineer's Sentry Gun turns the close-ranged Pyro into Swiss cheese, while diligent Pyros can easily sniff out Spies and light them up. Interestingly, this dynamic also applies to the Soldier and Demoman in addition to the Spy as Pyros can counter them by airblasting their projectiles, while both Soldiers and Demomen can destroy Sentry nests from outside their range.
• Teleportation:
  • Teleporters are one of the Engineer's buildings, coming in the form of an entrance and exit pad that players stand on for a free one-way trip. Having a recharge time of only 3 seconds when fully upgraded, teleporters are absolutely imperative for making effective team pushes as they drastically cut down the time needed to run from spawn to the frontline.
  • The Eureka Effect is a wrench that gives the Engineer his own on-demand teleport: by using his taunt, he can teleport to either his closest spawn room or any active teleporter exit (note that the exit doesn't need an active entrance for this ability to work; as long as it's plopped down somewhere, it's a valid target). Equipping the wrench also further reduces the already-low metal cost for teleporters (from 50 metal to only 25 to build, from 200 metal to 100 to upgrade per level), so it can come as a very handy tool for Engineers who prefer to jump around the map a lot.
• Temporary Bulk Change: Equipping the Level Three Chin and/or Egghead's Overalls cosmetics turns Engie into a fat guy.
• Token Good Teammate: While he is still a mercenary with no qualms with using his creations to kill people, he is probably the nicest, most well-adjusted, and arguably most sane (he did saw his hand off to test the Gunslinger after all) of his colleagues.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Befitting for a Texan, it's noted in several places (including his official profile) that Dell loves American-style barbecue. He's also very fond of beer; you just have to look at him camping out with a whole crate of the stuff in Meet the Engineer and his Rancho Relaxo taunt to see how much!
  "I love beer, barbecue, and rankin' up!"
• Tranquil Fury: The Frontier Justice taps into this. No screaming rage, just a pithy one-liner as he prepares to take revenge for the destruction of his machines.
  "Y'all're about to have a real bad day..."
• The Turret Master: His level 1 turret is rather unremarkable, but it builds quickly enough and does enough damage to shoo away enemy Scouts (which can't outrun its tracking, no matter what the "Meet The Scout" video shows). Level 2 puts out a whole lot more lead, and level 3 is where the turret really shines when it can shoot rockets on top of the level 2's bullets.
• Un Evil Laugh: He coughs during his Schadenfreude taunt.
• Weak Turret Gun: The Combat Mini-Sentry is a smaller turret that deals much less damage compared to the default turret, and it can't be upgraded. On the other hand, it builds much quicker, shoots faster, allows the Engineer to attack an enemy from 2 angles, and most dangerously, can easily be used to fill up his Frontier Justice revenge crits. It's also a surprisingly effective tool against Soldiers and Demos who rely on rocket/sticky jumping, as the mini-sentry is a difficult weapon to notice or destroy before it chips away much of your health.
• Wicked Cultured: Dell, to Blutarch Mann's personal care attendant, regarding a painting in Blutarch's mansion: "Say, ain't that an original Kicasso?"
• Wrench Whack: The melee weapon of the Engineer. It is used for hastening building, repairing, and upgrading the Engineer's buildings. Other uses include hurting people — and the wrench is good at it, hitting critically often because Sentries do a lot of damage — especially removing Spies and their sappers from the Engineer's guns' vicinity. Variants include the Southern Hospitality, implemented with a sharp piece of metal and a spiked handguard, which cause the hit enemy to bleed; the Jag, which hastens building even more, but doesn't hurt as much; and the Eureka Effect, which can teleport the Engineer back to his base or teleporter exit at the cost of half the upgrade rate.
• You Have Researched Breathing: The "Texas Slim's Dome Shine" is basically Engineer without his hat.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: Like his Team Fortress Classic granddaddy, he requires metal to erect buildings and to use the Rescue Ranger efficiently.

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"Like this heavy caliber, tripod-mounted, little ol' number designed by me... built by me... and you'd best hope... not pointed at you."

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