MvM analysis: sandman slowdown vs giants
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"Against non-giant players and bots, the Sandman reduces move speed by 50% for short hits and 100% for moonshots (balls which travel for at least 1 second before hitting the victim).

Against giants, defined here as MiniBosses (true giants) and bots with a scale larger than 1.0 ("fake" giants), the Sandman behaves a bit differently. The amount of slowdown inflicted increases linearly with the ball's travel time, from 50% for short shots up to 75% for long shots. But right at the point of moonshots (1 second), the amount of slowdown jumps up from 75% to 100%.

Here's how slowdown is defined in this context: it's the percentage by which the player's movement speed is reduced, relative to the standard movement speed for that class in TF2. Most giants already have a 50% move speed penalty, so 50% slowdown doesn't actually affect them at all. (Slowdowns don't stack.) 75% slowdown effectively means that giants will move at half of their typical speed. And in all cases, 100% slowdown means that the player is unable to move at all.

(The degree of slowdown is separate from the matter of whether stun will prevent a player from using their weapons; true giants are able to use their weapons regardless of whether they are stunned. Also note that bots are able to jump even when stunned, if they think they are "stuck" because they haven't moved recently.)"
6 Comments
Fission Power 17 Nov, 2017 @ 3:13pm 
Didn't Valve just used this sort of slowdown for that new sandman rebalance?
Avast AntiPony 9445 4 Feb, 2016 @ 1:44pm 
lol Volvo in a nutshell
sigsegv  [author] 4 Feb, 2016 @ 1:03pm 
It's pretty funny to watch moonshotted giants standing around trying to figure out why they can't move. Obviously they can still shoot and stuff, but they just kind of jump around in place like idiots.

Obviously Valve intentionally made the sandman work differently on giants than on regular players, so I imagine what they probably meant to do is to make giants only be stunnable up to 75%, i.e. the very most you could slow them down to, even with a moonshot, would be half of their typical movement speed. Based on that hypothesis, they got the diagonal part of the graph right, but then they fucked up the moonshot part by setting it to 100% rather than 75%.
Sparc 4 Feb, 2016 @ 10:31am 
Maybe it's time to give the Sandman another shot in MvM. It'll at least be good practice for my aim.
sigsegv  [author] 3 Feb, 2016 @ 9:34pm 
Good question. The stun duration isn't any different for giants than it is for regular players. Here's how the stun duration is determined in general:

For ball travel times of less than 1 second (non-moonshots), the stun duration is 6 times the travel time (so: 0~6 seconds, based on range). For travel times over 1 second (moonshots), the stun duration is 7 seconds. Crit balls have an additional 2 seconds of stun time in all cases.
Sparc 3 Feb, 2016 @ 9:15pm 
How long is the stun duration? Same max 7 seconds it does it depend on something more than air time?