From Team Fortress Wiki

Not to be confused with the Quadwrangler, a cosmetic item for the Medic.

“ — Blog post highlighting the Wrangler Everyone loves remote control toys. But the problem with most of them is, unless you manage to remote control one directly down someone's throat, they're pretty useless as weapons. But what if we were to tell you that we fixed that obvious design flaw? ”

The Wrangler is an unlockable secondary weapon for the Engineer. It appears to be the remains of a wooden pistol grip implemented under an early-80's single-button style team-colored joystick, with a small, rectangular radar satellite dish protruding from the front. A team-colored wire which is taped and attached to the joystick runs from the back of it and into the radar dish.

When in use, the Wrangler allows the Engineer to manually take control of his Sentry Gun. Upon doing so, the Sentry Gun loses its default autoaim and automatic firing abilities. Instead, the Engineer can direct the Building to fire in any direction with the primary fire button being used to fire the gun(s). If the player utilizes manual control over a Level 3 Sentry Gun, the alternate fire button is used to fire rockets.

When firing either the guns or rockets, the Sentry Gun has no maximum range; however, the rockets and bullets suffer from damage falloff based on the Sentry Gun distance to the target.

The Wrangler produces a translucent shield around the Sentry Gun that absorbs 66% of all incoming damage. This shield lasts as long as the player keeps the Wrangler as their active weapon. However, repairs made to the Sentry Gun while shielded only restore 33% as much health and ammo. In addition, the firing rate of a manually-controlled, "Wrangled" Sentry Gun is doubled, and its missile launch rate is increased. A laser sight is emitted from the Sentry Gun, which follows the Engineer's crosshair. The laser sight has minor auto-aim ability; upon aiming at an uncloaked and undisguised enemy, it will focus towards their center, provided the Engineer keeps his crosshair on them. Other players can see this laser, and use it to quickly find the location of the Sentry Gun. It is possible to shoot yourself with the Wrangler by standing in front of the (Wrangled) Sentry Gun.

While using the Jag, the 20% slower repair rate stacks with the 66% slower repair rate while the shield is active on the Wrangler. This makes it harder to keep the Sentry Gun up while it is receiving damage.

When the Engineer switches to another weapon or dies, the Sentry Gun is rendered inoperative for three seconds within its shield. Once the inoperative duration has passed, the shield disappears and the Sentry Gun resumes normal operation. If the Sentry Gun is sapped while it is in operation, all cooldown effects caused by the Wrangler are removed.

Being stunned by any means leaves the Engineer unable to fire, but keeps the Sentry Gun in the Wrangled state, effectively disabling it.

The Wrangler allows an Engineer to get to high places through the use of a Sentry Gun jump, similar to a Rocket Jump.

The Wrangler is automatically given to any player who obtains 17 Engineer achievements.

Demonstration

Crafting

Blueprint

Strange variant





Related achievements

Breaking Morant

Kill 10 Snipers with a sentry gun under the control of your Wrangler.

Building Block

Have a sentry shielded by the Wrangler absorb 500 damage without being destroyed.

Patent Protection

Destroy an enemy Engineer's sentry gun with a sentry under control of your Wrangler. Pownd on the Range

Kill 10 enemies outside the normal sentry gun range using the Wrangler.

Rio Grind

Perform 50 repairs and/or reloads on a Sentry gun being Wrangled by another Engineer.

Search Engine

Kill 3 cloaked Spies with a sentry gun under control of your Wrangler.

Bugs

Shield and laser effect issues: The laser emitted from the Sentry Gun while using the Wrangler may travel through some walls and occasionally move back and forth very quickly. Picking up a Wrangled Sentry will leave the Wrangler shield visual effect in place for a short time. Also, upon deploying the sentry and Wrangling it, the laser will emit from strange points, such as enemy Sentry Guns. This can be fixed by switching to another weapon then back to the Wrangler. Using a Wrangled Sentry while the Sentry is built on a moving platform will result in the shield being left behind when the platform and the Sentry move. There is currently a glitch which causes the targeting laser of the Sentry to be emitted from the eyes of allies when the player aims at them. This can make it somewhat harder to aim at enemies. The glitch is only present on the user's screen; no other players will see the effect. The Sentry Gun can retain the shield and laser effects even when the Wrangler is not the currently held weapon. It may still operate normally, without taking reduced damage, but may also retain the Wrangled behavior, including a functional shield, if the player builds the Sentry Gun and then changes his loadout to equip the Wrangler. The glitch persists upon the death of the Sentry Gun's owner, and can be fixed by switching to the Wrangler then switching away to another weapon.

Using the Wrangler to kill enemies with Sentry Gun rockets will produce the level 3 Sentry Gun kill icon instead of that of the Wrangler.

Once a Level 3 Sentry Gun is directed to fire rockets, it will not play the normal rocket reloading animation.

If pointing the Sentry Gun at a far distance, the laser will appear to move rapidly away from the player's crosshair, but the Sentry Gun will still fire at the player's crosshair.

If the Engineer builds a Sentry Gun, hits it once or twice, builds a level 1 Dispenser, fires the wrangled sentry for a moment, selects their Shotgun, waits for the sentry to return to normal, demolishes it, picks up the Dispenser and places it in water, the Dispenser will act as a wrangled Sentry Gun. It will not heal or give metal.

The Engineer Achievement Pownd on the Range can be earned if the Engineer kills himself with his wrangled Sentry Gun outside of the normal range.

can be earned if the Engineer kills himself with his wrangled Sentry Gun outside of the normal range. When attaching the Buildings Destroyed strange part to a Strange Wrangler, it will not track buildings destroyed.

The damage of the Sentry Gun's rockets is calculated based on the distance between the enemy and the Engineer, for some strange reason. The closer you are, the more damage the rockets will do.

Trivia

Radigan Conagher holding the Wrangler.

The Wrangler appears to have been designed by the Engineer's grandfather, Radigan Conagher. The Wrangler shares this origin with the Frontier Justice, the Gunslinger and the Southern Hospitality; this is shown by a hidden link on the Engineer Update page.

To wrangle is to professionally handle animals, often directing them to perform certain actions.

When firing the Sentry Gun for a long time, an animation will play in which the Engineer will twitch his hand and a quiet sigh can be heard, as if removing a cramp.

The Wrangler's joystick looks very similar to an Atari 2600's controller, though it lacks a button in the upper left corner.

Gallery