(Put in voice lines, images and clips as we go to accentuate the vid)

How Good is the Shah- Shahan- Oh boy. . .

[Text play, zoom in on Shananshah]

[Shahanshah Transition]

This Sniper Melee weapon is pretty much completely forgotten by the community. It has a crippling downside, a mediocre upside, and no interesting or unique stats to make it any memorable in any way. Since we're on the topic, let's take a look at the stats on this weapon.

[Shanshah Transition]

~[Stats]~

+ 25% increased damage when health is < 50% of max

Ok, so we've got a situation damage buff. The buff is actually quite significant at 25% which is nice. This stat might seem familiar to you, especially on a melee weapon. Where have we seen this before?

[Scotsmann's Skullcutter]

[Backscratcher]

Yeah, the Skullcutter and the Backscatcher also boast this stat. The Skullcutter also has larger melee range [demo cuts off a medic's head], but pays for it with reduced movement speed while active[demo negative line]. The Backscatcher reduces healing from medics[angry medic noise], in exchange for more health from health packs[health pack noise + happy pyro].

Like our other two examples, this damage buff comes at a price. Let's check out what negative effect the Shanshah has to balance this upside, since in tf2, there are no direct upgrade weapons. Except. . . [Clip of the third degree telling the fire axe it is worthless]

Anyway. . . When the Sniper is >50% of max health, he gets a 25% decrease in damage. It's quite clear what concept the weapon designers were going for. Like the Equaliser, it does more damage when you are low health, and less when you are high. ([Funnily enough, if you are exactly half health, you will still have the damage penalty, wouldn't want to make it Overpowered Right???.]) This penalty is pretty severe, to put it into perspective, if you're high health your melee weapon has the killing potential of something like the [Homewrecker] or the [Gloves of Running urgently]

Aaaand that's it! As you can see, the Shanshah shares the gist of its main gimmick with the equaliser, and share identical damage bonuses and penalties with other weapons. I think you can see what I meant when I said this weapon "wasn't" memorable. However, I still see a glimmer of hope in this sad, sad stats. Other +stat -stat guns  have been saved by the simple addition of another interesting upside to mix things up. Take the [Winger] for example, originally it was pretty much a straight downgrade to the pistol [Scout holding the winger blocking his nose] but now with its jump bonus, it become a serious contender for scout's secondary scout, and an incredibly fun weapon to equip and play with. I hope something similar will happen to the Shahanshah in the near future.

~[Damage Thresholds]~

[Lineup of 9 classes on the bottom of the screen with their health, damage is
tested one by one against the classes and the number of hits to kill is recorded.]

We've got the stats firmly out of the way, but what do these damage bonuses and penalties mean? Let's visualise it by testing them out against the various classes.

For starters, let's use the Stock melee to have a benchmark to compare the Shahanshah with:

[Regular, Mini-Crit, Regular Crit]
65	88	195

Light	Medium	Soldier	Heavy	Medic
2	3	3	5	3
2	3	3	4	2
1	~1	1	2	1

Clearly, a crit swing will instantly kill any class not named heavy, but this isn't true for the Shahanshah, which is its biggest weakness, let's take a look at the Shahanshah at its worst, when the sniper is above half health.

[Full Health]
49	66	146

Light	Medium	Soldier	Heavy	Medic
3	4	5	7	4
2	3	4	5	3
1	2	2	3	2

As you can see, this is just terrible. So the penalty is massive, requiring you to take extra swings to kill enemies. This is especially terrible when you consider how bad Sniper's close range defence already is! Let's see what happens when sniper is low health, and the damage bonus kicks in and the Shahanshah "shines."

[Low Health]
81	126	244

Light	Medium	Soldier	Heavy	Medic
2	3	3	4	2
1	2	2	3	2
1	1	1	2	1

As you can see, the number of hits to kill a target isn't really changed too much from stock, the key advantage of the extra damage seems to be on mini-crits, where you can one shot light classes. I had to break it to your Shahanshah, but there's another weapon vying for your spot of melee weapon of choice. . .

[This is a knife Bushwacka comparison]

Right, so the bushwacka crits on every mini-crit which is easy enough to accomplish with something like the jarate or cleaners carbine. In fact, if we look at the Bushwacka with the same method, it's obvious to see which weapon is superior:

[Bushwacka]
65	195	195

Light	Medium	Soldier	Heavy	Medic
2	3	4	5	3
1	1	~1	2	1
1	1	~1	1	1

As it's clearly demonstrated, the bushwacka's crit transofmration ability makes it the superior minicrit weapon of choice. Now, some would argue that the Wacka has a much more severe downside, damage vulnerability is a big weakness I'd admit, but consider that the Shahanshah sniper is constantly hindered in terms of damage unless he is low, and if a sniper is low, he's probably going to die to any source of damage anyway, making the downside of the vulnerability negilgible.

[Final Thoughts]

As I have stated multiple times, the Shanshah is a weapon that provides a situational damage buff to your melee weapon. Unfortunately, this bonus is too small for it to make any significant impact on taking out enemies, and the situation you have to be in for it to work puts sniper at such low health that he's going to die to almost any damage source coming his way. Not only that, if you aren't low health, the damage penalty is so severe that you're going to miss out on a lot of kills thanks to the reduced damage of the crit swing, and we all know, snipers rely on those close range crit pans. It's a weapon that's crippling at its worst. and underwhelming at its best, totally outclassed by the Bushwacka in the only damage range it offers some form of advantage, mini-crits.

It desperately needs a unique stat, winger-style to be a weapon that anyone wants to equip. In conclusion:

How good is the Shah- Shahana-

Basically, the Shahanshah is more like the Shahansh- [Youtube logo peeks into the corner] . . . bad.

[Outro]