Upgrades Discussion: Engineer Upgrades!

This is the upgrade discussion post for Engineer!

Unique Upgrades

Seismic (2 upgrade points): While using your Jackhammer, which is your sprint, you knock enemies away from you that you make contact with. This does not deal damage, but you can knock your enemies around and away from each other while you are sprinting at your leisure. This upgrade requires you to be sprinting on your Jackhammer, but you may be able to push enemies away from their team or even into a pit or hazard where they will get instantly vanquished. You do not normally have knockback at all, but if you use this upgrade and you see an opportunity where it will be useful, charge at them on your Jackhammer and knock them away. This knockback can cancel some enemy abilities, so use this knowledge to your advantage as well.

Hydraulics (2 upgrade points): Your jump height while on your Jackhammer, which is used by sprinting, is increased by 50%, which you can use to evade attacks more often or get up to higher vantage points that you would normally not be able to achieve. You do not normally have an improved jump height, but if you use this upgrade, you can reach heights that you have not reached before, allowing you to get up to attack your enemies from a higher vantage point. While you do require the Jackhammer to provide the improved height, use it when you want to take advantage of this effect, which you can do on demand. You may be able to evade attacks and escape a battle if you need to, keep jumping away as you go and try to move around constantly to escape.

Rubber (2 upgrade points): Your Concrete Launcher shots will bounce more times before they will explode, unless they hit an enemy, in which case it will explode anyway. Your Concrete Launcher will now bounce up to 8 times before exploding on their own, so use this effect to your advantage by staying out of sight of your enemies and shoot into areas where enemies are coming from or where they will be. Because of all of the bouncing of your attacks, it is more likely that you will hit enemies with your shots at any point. Your shots may bounce more unpredictably due to the consistent bouncing, so try and use this to your advantage against your enemies. This is even more useful if you take advantage of this in chokepoints or tight spaces.

Breakthrough (3 upgrade points): The projectile speed of your Concrete Launcher will be improved, which effectively improves your range as your shots will travel further before the gravity will bring them to the ground. You can take advantage of this effect by attacking from further ranges or shooting your shots at a high angle to hit your enemies unpredictably. You can use the bouncing feature of your Concrete Launcher attacks along with this upgrade to bounce them around the place, especially in a small corridor where it will basically be impossible for your enemies to avoid. If you attack your enemies from a closer range, they will be relatively unlikely to escape your barrage of projectiles if you plan out your attack well.

Unique Ability Upgrades

Bullhorn Swarm

Reinforced (2 upgrade points): Your bullhorns have greatly improved health, with a new maximum health of 25 each (instead of the usual 10 health that they have), and when you deploy the bullhorns, if they stun an enemy immediately, your Heavy Helper will heal for 25 health for each bullhorn that manages to do this. If your bullhorns have a significant health increase, your enemies will be less likely to destroy all of them before they get stunned, and trying to take out the bullhorns will become more tedious for your enemies to do, so there may not even be much point for your enemies to do this. If your enemies are being chased by the bullhorns, they will probably try to escape them, rather than trying to destroy them, making the whole process harder.

Dispersion (3 upgrade points): Your Bullhorn Swarm now covers over a larger area compared to normal, expanding the range that your bullhorns will affect and will be able to stun and home in on enemies. You can place your bullhorns in areas to deter enemies from entering certain areas or when there are multiple enemies around that are not too grouped up, as you will gain additional overall coverage. You could use the bullhorns in corridors and your enemies will need to retreat or get stunned, making it much easier for you and allies to vanquish those enemies. The improved range of coverage will be useful, especially when trying to deny your enemies from wider angles, or if your enemies can attack in multiple directions, this is good for coverage.

Heavy Helper

Signal Amp (3 upgrade points): The range that you and your allies will recieve the Heavy Helper buffs is increased by 25%, allowing you to remain spread out and to move around without losing the buffs, and it will not limit your movement as much in order to receive and retain these buffs. You may be able to make use of the improved buffs by hiding your Heavy Helper around corners, so it will be protected from enemy fire and your team will be able to attack in a place where you can spot and shoot your enemies. If you place it in a fairly open, but somewhat covered location, you will be able to keep moving around constantly with your allies without losing these benefits. This is really useful if there are multiple allies around, as you do not have to be bunched up.

Progress Report (3 upgrade points): Your Heavy Helper will reveal the location of enemies to you and your allies when it deals damage to those enemies, which will last 6 seconds and will allow you to see your enemies through any walls, as well as their health bar. This effect will be easy to achieve as your Heavy Helper will constantly shoot enemies that it can see and it is unlikely to miss due to how accurate it is, it is an Al turret. Use the revealing features that this upgrade provides to track where your enemies are going and whether you should try and vanquish them based on their health. The revealing effect from this upgrade will work for allies, so it will help your allies identify where the enemies are, so they can play accordingly.

Double Time

Rally the Troops (2 upgrade points): The cooldown of all of your abilities will be reduced by 6 seconds each time an ally uses Double Time. This will not trigger if you step on your own Double Time. If you want your allies to step on this more often, try and place it in an area where your allies will often use your Double Time, such as near your spawn location in an area that is easily noticed and in the path of your allies, or near objectives that you and your allies will generally hang out in a match. There is a 2 second cooldown before you can benefit from this effect again, so if multiple allies use it in rapid succession, the effect will not trigger again until after this cooldown. You can place Double Time in different locations often if your allies keep using it.

Turbo Charge (2 upgrade points): The movement speed boost that you and your allies recieve by using Double Time will be increased to 3.5 seconds for each use (instead of the normal 2.5 seconds). Using the Double Time will additionally provide a knockback aura buff to you and allies for a short time, improving knockback that enemies will take from you and your affected allies. The improved duration of speed boost will make it much easier for you and your allies to get back into a fight or out of a battle if at low health, and your team can use the additional knockback to push your enemies out of an area or objective if being suppressed. If you want to get your Double Time to be used often, place it in a convenient location or in an obvious spot for your allies.

Those are the upgrades for Engineer! The upgrades are great for improving your primary weapon, allowing you to boost your abilities, give your abilities added effects, or to allow you to use your abilities more often. The upgrades can be used well for supporting you and your allies, and assisting you and your team during tough fights. There are multiple upgrades to suit many different playstyles, so use the upgrades that suit you and use them well for best results.