How do you avoid a sentry buster as engineer?

[Quantum]

I was thinking maybe a pyro airblasting it away

[MaDKaTZe™]

Grab the sentry right before buster is going to explode or as soon as he starts arming itself. Also this doesn't work for mini-sentries.

[jetjet]

Grab your sentry and when is going to explode (crouching), run.
Even not seeing it when the tick sounds becomes faster, you know it's going to explode.

[-|BeeR|-CritcH]

yes and no to the previous responses. You need to be more active rather than waiting for the SB to be right on top of you.

Set up your engineering spot. Dont worry about having your dispenser close. When the SB appears, pick up your sentry and run away from your dispenser AND other players. In general I run in the spawn room direction - but not far - just far enough that the SB blast will not destroy all my kit.

When clear of my other kit I then wait for the SB to catch me and simply run back through it (this will cause it to stop moving and explode at this spot) and run straight back to where my SG was before and set it up again.

The whole thing takes about 5 seconds.

[Muerkier]

If you wait until the SB activates its countdown sequence you are too late ... you will die in the explosion radius. There are two ways of approaching this and it Depends on where your sentry is located on the map. If you are near the entry point of where the robots drop onto the map, once the sentry is announced you immediately pick up your sentry and run backwards away from allies and enemies alike. Wait for the SB to clear the front line then run towards it and touch it with your sentry in hand .... keep running past it too safety do not stop but ensure you make contact with the SB as you are running by it. Once you touch it, the SB will stop moving, stand in place and the detonation timer will start.

If you are at the rear of the map far from the drop point (where the robots enter the map) then wait until you see the SB coming before you pick it up to give your sentry as much firing time as possible especially if the bomb is close to the deploy hole. Simply do the same technique as above except this time you pick it up and run straight at the SB instead of running off and waiting because at the back end of the map you need to shave the amount of time that your sentry is offline down to a minimum and every second counts so less running around with it is a good thing.

[Quantum]

Thanks guys

[(: Gringo :)]

Originally posted by -|DeD|-CritcH:

yes and no to the previous responses. You need to be more active rather than waiting for the SB to be right on top of you.

Set up your engineering spot. Dont worry about having your dispenser close. When the SB appears, pick up your sentry and run away from your dispenser AND other players. In general I run in the spawn room direction - but not far - just far enough that the SB blast will not destroy all my kit.

When clear of my other kit I then wait for the SB to catch me and simply run back through it (this will cause it to stop moving and explode at this spot) and run straight back to where my SG was before and set it up again.

The whole thing takes about 5 seconds.

This is totally correct, engi should never rely on other players, and should never kill team mates,always run backwards if theres any robots about.

[Quantum]

Originally posted by (: **♥♥♥♥♥♥** :):

Originally posted by -|DeD|-CritcH:

yes and no to the previous responses. You need to be more active rather than waiting for the SB to be right on top of you.

Set up your engineering spot. Dont worry about having your dispenser close. When the SB appears, pick up your sentry and run away from your dispenser AND other players. In general I run in the spawn room direction - but not far - just far enough that the SB blast will not destroy all my kit.

When clear of my other kit I then wait for the SB to catch me and simply run back through it (this will cause it to stop moving and explode at this spot) and run straight back to where my SG was before and set it up again.

The whole thing takes about 5 seconds.

This is totally correct, engi should never rely on other players, and should never kill team mates,always run backwards if theres any robots about.

Thanks mate

[Spammy V]

The other option if you're Sentry gun is in a position where you don't have players around you is to buy an Uber canteen. The shield over your SG will keep it alive at about half health, one or two wrench swings to fix.

Advantages: Your SG stays in place, immediately gets back to locking down the area its in. Plus you get to spit in the face of a robot bomb.
Disadvantages: Each Uber is 75 bucks. Which has never really been a problem when I play Engineer, as I only really care about Metal and Attack Speed upgrades.

[Wowie]

Increased move speed. Run at it, then run away when it starts arming. Increased move speed also allows you to keep you and your sentry (relatively) mobile, almost as though you were playing a BBeast heavy.

[Sentient_Toaster]

And a big reason why you shouldn't rely on teammates to kill it for you: If they do (consuming a lot of time on their part, and likely ceding ground to the 'bots), you'll still face another Sentry Buster with the next group of robots. Once your sentry has done enough damage in a given wave, you will see SBs with every group of robots until your sentry is destroyed or that particular wave ends. If your sentry is destroyed, the damage counter resets and you won't see an SB come for it until it again reaches whatever threshold is set.

[Bat-Country]

When I play engineer, I'm somewhat delighted when I hear the announcer saying the sentry buster is incoming...

I always place my sentry far enough away from dispensers (they are for my team to resupply) and it racks up kills pretty fast. It makes not much sense to let a sentry do more than 18 kills (or 35 assists / or a mix of both). I just let the Sentrybuster destroy my sentry and tell the team to ignore it. (except it is a very critical situation where we need to rely on a level 3 sentry)

Then I just build a new one (always have some upgrade canteens in reserve if it gets critical) and use up all my 35 revenge crits to kill critical bots or tanks.

I just hate all these turtle-engineers who do nothing else than whack their sentry all the time, then wonder when they loose or dont even recognize that the bomb/tank has already passed their spot.

Another positive aspect of letting the sentrybuster do what it wants: The annoyance will not continue for a while! If a sentry buster doesnt get what it wants, Gray will immediately send another one... and another one... and another one... (the sentry-busters seem to be triggered by the kill-count of a sentry, i assume) so the team and engi would be busy all the time defeating the buster and the bomb carriers, giants or tanks will not get the attention they would need.

[Bill Brasky]

Originally posted by Bat-Country:

Another positive aspect of letting the sentrybuster do what it wants: The annoyance will not continue for a while! If a sentry buster doesnt get what it wants, Gray will immediately send another one... and another one... and another one... (the sentry-busters seem to be triggered by the kill-count of a sentry, i assume) so the team and engi would be busy all the time defeating the buster and the bomb carriers, giants or tanks will not get the attention they would need.

I was thinking about this too yesterday when playing. If you keep eluding the sentry buster they keep coming, and coming, and coming... If you let it get your sentry and then just pop up another you'll have a short window without a sentry, but probably do better overall since you're not packing up every 30 seconds to move it around.

[Avandas]

Originally posted by Spammy:

The other option if you're Sentry gun is in a position where you don't have players around you is to buy an Uber canteen. The shield over your SG will keep it alive at about half health, one or two wrench swings to fix.

Advantages: Your SG stays in place, immediately gets back to locking down the area its in. Plus you get to spit in the face of a robot bomb.
Disadvantages: Each Uber is 75 bucks. Which has never really been a problem when I play Engineer, as I only really care about Metal and Attack Speed upgrades.

then you are doing it all wrong my friend , if you don't get health upgrade on buildings and fire rate.

[JGHydra]

These methods work for me as well, it just has to be timed right. During one game, I thought I had exploded the sentry buster, so I slapped my turret back down and the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ was out of my vision and still alive and blew up my base haha. MAKE SURE they explode before setting your stuff back up.

[Wowie]

Originally posted by •Ħydr₳:

MAKE SURE they explode before setting your stuff back up.

If you're good at picking out specific sounds from the chaos around you you can tell where a sentry buster is and if it's arming without even looking at it. Granted, the crouching animation happens a fraction of a second before the arming sound, but if you have good reflexes, it's possible to keep your eyes focused downrange the entire time, without even looking at the buster. This is especially useful if you are actively using the wrangler, since every second spent looking for a buster is a potentially a second that you're not sending any boolets downrange.