A scout can take a sole heavy if he has the element of surprise even without the sandman. But it's not 1vs1 I was refering too, but stunning the heavy in his one true strenght which is corners (doors).
The heavy has lots of strengths and I think he is much more likely to be killed by a sniper than by a scout with the sandman.
They've also made the min distance longer and gimped the scout's hp. This means that, as I said before, the weapon is no longer a plus but something you have to realy on if you want to kill the enemy.
But with the reduced hp you will probably already be dead from a stray shot before the ball even connects. I agree, the weapon is no longer a plus.
Because it's not just effective mate, it completely destroys the uber. A pyro doing blowbacking can be killed and a heavy or demo don't have big problems in doing so. Buy if the medic is stunned, his target dies from sentry, spam and whatnot making the uber a complete waste. It's just a hard on you hit you've done it, there's no counter because you can't do anything while stunned.
Which was my point. It gives the team time to escape or regroup to defend, and slows the enemy progress as there's a risk that they can't just rush in and kill everything. The stun only lasts a couple of seconds so the ubered enemies can survive and withdraw to try again, and the pyro airblast is a very effective counter.
I have to agree that with 95hp the sandman becomes very hard to be used efficiently. On defence however you could still pull off a lot of useful stuff with it.
But with 95 hp you'll only be effective if the enemy attacks one at a time, and you successfully stun them. If there are more than one, or they uber then you're pretty much dead.