Backstab
| “ | So, your deadly skill is jogging? Mine is murdering people.
Click to listen
— The Spy to the Scout
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A Backstab is a context-sensitive attack with the Spy's Knife or Your Eternal Reward that results in a one-hit kill. A Spy may backstab an enemy as long as the enemy is close enough to be hit with a melee attack, and as long as the Spy is within a 180° range of the enemy's back. Backstabs deal damage equal to 600% of the target's current health. To indicate that a Spy is within the required range to perform a backstab, his Knife will become primed, with its tip facing downwards. The Knife will remain in this position until the target is no longer in reach, or the Spy attempts a backstab by attacking.
A backstab can be performed while you are disguised, although your disguise will be removed upon attacking, regardless of whether the attack connects with the enemy or not. A backstab cannot kill targets who have the Dead Ringer activated, Scouts using the Bonk! Atomic Punch or players who are being ÜberCharged. The Sniper's unlockable Secondary weapon, the Razorback, prevents one backstab per life and stuns the offending Spy momentarily. This weapon makes Snipers less susceptible to backstabs, and forces Spies to use other methods of attack.
Backstabbing with Your Eternal Reward does not cause the enemy to scream, and the body will be hidden. You will then disguise as that enemy almost instantly.
Killing a player with a backstab will sometimes cause a special death animation for that class. This animation has a 25% chance of occurring.
Contents
Backstabbing Techniques
- Stab-and-Sap: Stab a (turtling) Engineer, before switching to your Electro Sapper and sapping the Engineer’s Sentry Gun; this must be done fast enough that the Sentry Gun doesn't have time to turn around and kill you. An experienced Spy may track the Sentry Gun's turning direction and move against it after he stabs (as it will follow him, this will buy him more time); using Your Eternal Reward can be useful in this approach, as you instantly disguse upon stabbing, preventing the Sentry Gun from retaliating.
- Sap-and-Stab: Sap an Engineer's unattended building as bait, hide, then stab him when he returns to remove the Electro Sapper.
- Stairstab: Stand at the top of a set of stairs, facing down at an enemy approaching you. Run forward and jump, turning in mid-air to stab them in the back. This technique can be difficult to master, but it is also difficult to protect against, as the enemy has to turn almost completely around to avoid it.
- Spinstab: While an enemy is running towards you, let them run past you before spinning and stabbing their retreating back. This is one of the only reliable methods of backstabbing Scouts.
- The Matador Stab: This is an advanced Spy technique. The technique involves luring an enemy to a corner, then you immediately back out and stab the enemy as he turns in the way you did. Note that this will only work once or twice on an enemy, will not work against Heavies and is best used on pursuits with Pyros.
- The Headstab: Sometimes Engineers will place their Sentry Gun and Dispenser in a fashion that allows the Engineer to have his back to a corner, making him seemingly protected from backstabs. It is possible to jump on this Engineer's head and move your aim around his back until you get the "ready to backstab" animation from your knife, allowing you to score a backstab while standing on his head.
- The Ninja-stab (or leaping stab): this is a similar to a stairstab, but instead it focuses on striking enemies from the least awaited angle (usually from ground above the opponent - bridges and similar above main paths on several maps are ideal for this purpose) and is best used with either Cloak and Dagger or Dead Ringer. Cloak on a bridge/high place (or hide if you're using Dead Ringer) and as the enemy passes beneath the spot jump after them and stab them in the back. Doing the stab itself is easier with the Cloak and Dagger, but getting away is easier with the Dead Ringer (especially against multiple opponents). Attempting to ninja-stab the same opponent at the exact same spot twice is always a bad idea (doing it again elsewhere is more secure, though he might be paranoid) - this tactic may also be used as a distraction, just do a ninja-stab somewhere, go somewhere else and change tactics. The result is quite often that your opponent will extensively Spy-check the area he got backstabbed in.
Issues
Due to an in-game glitch, a stab that has appeared to have occurred from the front can sometimes be rendered as a backstab. Known more commonly as a facestab, these kills are now mostly the result of lag compensation by the game engine itself. Prior to many game patches, facestabs were more common due to bugs in the way the game detects a backstab.
Another community-coined term, is the failstab, which refers to a backstab which should have succeeded but instead did only normal Knife damage, despite the backstab animation playing fully and the Knife connecting. These stabs are almost always linked to the latency conditions between the server and the player.
Servers with the command tf_weapon_criticals 0 enabled have reported issues with the backstab animation that normally plays when the player is in a prime position for a backstab, not playing at all.
Related Achievements
Soldier
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Sniper
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Spy
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Trivia
- Originally the Spy's backstab animation was just over a second long and manifested as the current animation but slowed down. This was changed to the current, sped up version used today in the interests of balance.
- The 180° range is notoriously unreliable. This is likely due to occasional mismatches between the model and the hitboxes. These glitched attacks are known as Facestabs.
- If you're playing on a No-Crit Server, the Backstab Animation will not show on a successful backstab - instead, it will just be a normal attack, but has an effect of a backstab.
