Stun

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“

Oh dat's a skull fracture for sure! Click to listen — The Scout

”

Being stunned is the state of being largely incapacitated. While stunned, players are forced into the third-person humiliation stance and renders them unable to attack (with the exception of taunt kills). Stunned players also suffer from a 25% movement speed penalty, and cannot jump or crouch. Players can also be "fully" stunned, which renders the player completely immobile.

The Sandman

With the Sandman equipped, the Scout gains the ability to stun opponents with his trusty baseball. By taking an initial swing with the Sandman with a baseball in hand, the Scout will bat it forward in an arc. If it connects with an opponent who is more than 256 Hammer units away (approximately 16 feet), they will become stunned. From extremely long range (approximately 112 feet or 1792 Hammer units), they will be knocked back a short distance and the letters 'BONK' will float above their head, accompanied by this sound. This is coupled with a 'seeing stars' effect as they remain completely immobile for 7 seconds. Heavies spinning their mini-guns will continue to spin when stunned (whether the left or right mouse button is pressed).

Getting hit by a ball will always damage you for approximately 15 points or 45 on a Critical hit.

The Scout can perform the stun ability once every fifteen seconds unless he manually retrieves the baseball just used, picks up the baseball of another Scout or visits a resupply cabinet. New baseballs cannot be retrieved from ammo packs or dropped weapons.

The baseballs of enemy Scouts can be struck back at them and upon a successful return will stun them. Doing this results in the Beanball achievement.

Baseball stun times

Distance (Hammer units / feet)	Stun Time (seconds)	Notes
256/16	1	This is the closest distance at which the Sandman will stun.
512/32	2
768/48	3
1024/64	4
1280/80	5
1536/96	6
1792/112	7	Fully stuns opponent at this range. Hit needed at this distance or further for Moonshot achievement.

Note: These tests were done with bots. Stun times may be subject to random variance.

• Critical hits add 2 seconds to the normal stun duration.
• Mini crits do not affect stun duration.

Alternative stun sources

The initial stab of the Sniper's Skewer and the Medic's Spinal Tap taunt attack will stun a player if it connects. These attacks can stun an Übercharged opponent. Übercharged enemies are often distracted or keeping their aim at a sentry gun, long enough to stab them with the taunt. Even without damage, it will waste precious seconds of Übercharge.

The Ghost hazard of Harvest can scare players, which counts towards achievments as a stun.

Trivia

• Originally any stun effects inflicted would result in the current maximum stun pose but their duration would be subject to the range (as it is now, though the minimum ranges have been tweaked also). This was changed through many permutations of The Sandman in the name of balance.
• The Sandman could also stun Übercharged players (one of its original main selling points when its drawback was no double jump), but once again, this was removed due to balance issues, and the associated achievement (The Big Hurt) changed to involve killing stunned players instead.
• While stunned it is possible to taunt, which can be used as a last ditch attack if you have a tauntkilling weapon equipped and your enemy is close enough. As the Heavy you can also keep the Minigun spun up for the entire duration of a stun, so that upon regaining control you can instantly fire.