An extensive guide on the sandman tf2.
What is the Sandman?
The Sandman is an unlockable melee weapon for the Scout. It is a wooden bat with a smooth black grip, complete with a logo reading “The Sandman” engraved on the side, and a black band tied around the end holding a cracked section of wood together
Taunting with the Sandman equipped results in the Grand Slam to kill taunt. The Sandman is automatically given to any player who obtains 16 Scout achievements
The Sandman is generally considered to be a bad weapon and if not Scout’s worst weapon.
Sandman’s stats
The sandman’s stats are extremely simple:
Pros: On alt fire (mouse 2) launches a ball that slows opponents
Cons: -15 max health on wearer
Ball stats: When the ball hits an enemy it does 15 damage and applies a slowing effect of 225.88 hammer units (almost as slow as walking heavily) and the effect lasts from 1 to 7 seconds, the slowing effect’s duration is determined by how long the ball has been in the air if the ball were to hit a ball for the maximum duration the enemy suffers a moonshot that is identified by an audience cheering, the baseball is a one use projectile that has a recharge rate of 10 seconds but can also be recharged by picking it off the ground regardless of who the owner of the baseball is or by touching the resupply locker
Why is it Scouts worst weapon?
The Sandman has added in 2009 on February 24th the scout update and up until 2017 October 20th the Jungle inferno update it was an extremely strong Scout melee commonly paired with the Flying Guillotine for a devastating combo, but why has it gone from Scouts best melee to Scouts worst melee? that is because before Jungle Inferno the Sandman had the overpowered ability to stun and slow enemies a mechanic when bit by the ball enemies was completely immobilized as well as rendering them unable to use their weapons, minor changes did happen over the years such as being able to move but in a state of the current slowed movement but the main problem of being completely unable to fight back simply due to being hit by a ball was unfair so to balance this Valve deiced to remove its defining feature of the stun and only left it with the slowing mechanic and left with its secondary effect of slowing enemies
An easily countered weapon with low impact and high cost
A weapon is usually considered strong or weak by how much impact and cost is, a weapon with high impact and low cost is considered strong but a weapon with low impact and high impact is considered weak and the Sandman falls into the low impact category, as the -15 max health a high-cost downside due to Scouts biggest downside being his low health this downside just hurts it by making him weaker
But the idea of slowing enemies to a Heavy walking speed seems like a high-impact outcome, right? Yes that is true on paper but in practice, this upside isn’t as impact full due to it being easily counted and that is by simply strafing
Whether the opponent knows the slow effect can be countered by simply pressing A or D on their keyboard or not the counter is so easy and simple its whole identity as the Sandman is lost (which was already lost with the removal of the stun)
because when the Sandman is used to slow a opponent enemies like Heavy and Soldier will not be affected due to the fact that their movement is already slow, enemies like Spy, Scout, Demoman, and Medic are constantly strafing and thus negating the slow effect and it doesn’t stop there because enemies like Sniper and Engineer don’t need movement as the usually stay in one place and to top everything off Demoman, Pyro and Soldier have movement tools (rocket jumping, sticky jumping, air blast and detonator jumping) that negate the slowing effect
The only times to will come to play:
The only time the Sandman can come into play will be when playing Man vs machine as it has an upgrade that allows enemy robots to be marked for death for the cost of 500 credits, and in casual games, its uses usually come in when going against a w+m1 Pyro and a Demoknight or a player running away.
Thankful to SandMann for his wonderful guide. All credits belong to his effort If you find this guide useful, kindly rate it on the Steam Community.
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