Demoman blocking the Sandman's Ball?

I was playing on a server a few moments ago in sudden death melee and it made me the scout so I was using my sandman, I was backing up and had my ball recharged and a demoman was coming right at me so I unloaded the sandman's ball on him and then...

nothing.

It just bounced off him without stunning him and I wasn't expecting that so he killed me and we lost.

I wish I had demoed it but I didn't, I gotta get into the habit of demoing all my games.

Has anyone else come across this?

Yeah, it's not just for demo though. I was testing a custom ball model I made on a bunch of bots just to make sure the physics model was correct and such and  found out a few things. It seems that the ball only  stuns a certain percentage of the time. If the ball rebounds off the un-stunned enemy and hits another nearby enemy without hitting the ground, that nearby enemy is always stunned no matter what.

It's possible Valve secretly patched the Sandman after all the complaining they received about how OP it was/is.

Ah, I just googled this.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/2346/
- Increased the minimum distance to stun a player with the Sandman

Maybe I was too close, I didn't know there was a minimum distance.

That probably explains it, he wasn't far away. That's stupid tho IMHO.

Not really, it stops players from just standing beside people infinitely stunning.

The worst game of TF2 I ever played was pre nerf Sandman. I got hit pretty much simultaniously with 3 sandmans, and was out of the game for about 3 minutes. It taught me not to go out into a fight with the scout as a heavy without some sort of support, though.

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Alrighty, scratch the stun percentage then. I guess my bots were too close. Still, the rebounding stun ball opens up new possibilities if used correctly. For instance, if a heavy medic were shooting at a level 3 sentry (probably in a closed space) and unable to move but the engineer can't make it in time, a scout could aim the ball, rebound it off the medic and into the ehavy if there is not enough room for a normal stun. 'Course pros would probably only be able to use it to there advantage, and even then it's purely situational.

Sandman was a crime against humanity pre-nerf when you could stun heavies from 2 God damn inches away.

It was nerfed to a longer range, along with the 50% damage reduction.

It's still an atrocity mind.

I have always considered the sandman only useful for scouts who find it hard to hit moving targets.

I will agree I hate that the Sandman works against ubers, that's idiotic and whoever thought of that at Valve should get shot out of a cannon into an active volcano.

Agree with Rage but its just another way of slowing down an uber.  I find a good airblasting Pyro to be far more annoying against an uber than being hit with the sandman.  I've not seen the Sandman bounce before but wouldn't surprise me if they'd nerfed it and not told anyone.