Caring if people are in range is given when you move with a group. Moving is just as much an active combat, as me breathing infront of monitor. Its not like anyone else stays rooted. And i CAN just do /follow and still massively augumented the team, in fact, i can still augument it propably more then any other profession can
Other than that, i really see no point discussing this, what can i say, i played 10 i think 220 professions on Battlestation level, Engineers are definitely drastically more passive then everything else. Only ones i didnt play are Trader, MA,Enf and Agent(but i have TL5 Agent ), all 4 are quite complicated and dynamic as far as my knowledge goes.
There simply isnt any other profession that would come even close to Engineer when it comes to passivness of combat. The only part of a game when you have to press more then a few clicks is when you buff or when they kill your pet. The most repeated complaint on Engineer forum is propably "give is some FUN tools". It IS a problem.
So yeah, forgive my lack of boner over planting some mines.