An Engineer's Guide to: Badwater Basin

Badwater Basin is a single-stage payload map with four points. At each point you will be shown common Engineer bases on both offense and defense with a short explanation of their strengths and weaknesses. They will be listed in order from most effective to least effective, with my own personal choices bolded.

Please note that these are common locations, not all the base locations nor necessarily even the best base locations. Also note that any Engineer base, no matter the location, will fall unless the team is there to fight off the enemy. The team should never hang around the Engineer's base waiting for the enemy to attack, but instead be always actively pushing the enemy back.

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**Badwater Basin Heatmaps: **

• Popular Build Locations
• Popular Kill Locations
• Popular Locations With At Least One Kill

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POINT A: The Open

BLU

1. In Spawn

Strengths: Hidden
Weaknesses: Provides no extra defense against sappers or bullets

RED

1. On the Garage

Strengths: Has sight of over the main hill and the path out of the tunnel
Weaknesses: Spies sapping your sentry can be hard to kill, can be fired from out of range from over the hill or from the side cliff

2. Above the Tunnel

Strengths: Has sight of the path out of the tunnel and over the hill, really strong with the Wrangler
Weaknesses: Can easily be taken out by enemies out of its range, needs the Wrangler to be effective

3. Between the Rocks

Strengths: Hidden
Weaknesses: Easily destroyed by grenades, stickies, or rockets fired over the rocks or from the side cliff where they will be out of its range

4. In the Garage

Strengths: Hidden
Weaknesses: Gives up most of the map to the enemy, does not stop the enemy from using the cart as a shield to cap the point

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POINT B: The Roof

BLU

1. On the Garage

Strengths: Safe, gives your team a choice of paths, protects against RED pushes fairly well
Weaknesses: No extraordinary weaknesses

RED

1. On the Roof

Strengths: Covers the point, hard to edge, stops most flanks, easily protected by one Pyro
Weaknesses: Can easily be spammed from behind on the floor by Demomen or from the back ledge by Snipers

2. Across the Roof

Strengths: Hidden
Weaknesses: Easily taken out by edging or firing from out of range, can be considered an exploit, needs to be accessed by sentry-jumping

3. On the Floor

Strengths: Covers the point, hard to edge, easily protected by one Pyro
Weaknesses: Extremely vulnerable without the roof held

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POINT C: The Bridge

BLU

1. On the Floor

Strengths: Safe, gives your team a choice of paths
Weaknesses: Edged easily

2. On the Roof

Strengths: Hidden
Weaknesses: Hard to hold alone, not protected well against enemy Snipers, not much safer than on the floor

RED

1. Around the First Corner

Strengths: Hard to edge if the Engineer has a good team
Weaknesses: Hard to fight Spies off, easy to edge if Engineer has no backup

2. Around the First Corner, 2

Strengths: Covers more area
Weaknesses: Easier to edge or fire from out of range

3. At the Point

Strengths: Hard to edge without being in the open
Weaknesses: Gives up a lot of map to the enemy, can still cap by hiding behind the cart, easily edged if the Engineer's team is bad

4. Around the Second Corner

Strengths: Hidden, prevents hiding behind the cart for a quick cap
Weaknesses: Covers next to no area, edged easily

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THE FINAL POINT: The Pit

BLU

1. In the Loft

Strengths: Safe, generally tough to take out, can be carried away during an enemy's Ubercharge
Weaknesses: Can be edged from underneath by a Pyro, isolated from the rest of your team in the case of Spies

2. At the Corner

Strengths: Always around your team
Weaknesses: Easily taken out during an Uber, can be edged if the Engineer gets no support

3. Before the Corner

Strengths: Better than nothing
Weaknesses: Easily edged, does not help the team much

RED

1. On the Ramp

Strengths: Does not give up much map, can keep constant pressure on the enemy
Weaknesses: Easily edged from many places

2. Below the Map Room

Strengths: Hidden
Weaknesses: Easily taken out from out of range

3. Below the Balcony

Strengths: Hidden
Weaknesses: Gives up a lot of the map to the enemy, can be taken out from the map room, cart can be used as a shield while being pushed

4. In the Pre-Map Room

Strengths: Hard to take out, enemies waste time trying to take this out
Weaknesses: Not essential to stopping the cart, hard to get set up in

5. In the Map Room

Strengths: Hard to take out, enemies waste time trying to take this out
Weaknesses: Not essential to stopping the cart

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If you find this helpful then leave a comment letting me know how I can improve both the content and formatting. The next guide will be for Dustbowl and I would like that one even better than this one.