Stun Baton

Description
The Stun Baton is a melee weapon affected by Intellect and the Electrocutioner perk.

The baton gains "charges" on each hit, 1 for normal attacks and 2 for power attacks. Upon reaching 4 or more charges the next hit will inflict a shock effect on enemies.

While the enemy is being shocked, they will be unable to move or attack and will take 3 damage every second.

Each rank of Electrocutioner increases the duration of the shock effect and the weapon's base damage. It will not increase the damage per tick of the shock effect, but a longer shock will result in it dealing more total damage.

It may be repaired using Repair Kits.

Strategy
The Stun baton is a surprisingly deadly weapon, able to hold its own even at high Gamestage values where other melee weapons begin to struggle. Even zombie bears are no threat as long as you have a charged baton ready for them.

The most effective application of this weapon is to spread out the shocks on as many enemies as possible. This both takes them out of the fight for a substantial amount of time and allows the damage over time effect of the shock to run its full course, while you deal with other threats. Aiming for the most dangerous enemies first, such as feral or radiated zombies, is ideal.

The Tech Junkie Volume 6 book drastically improves the rate you can build charges with a stun baton. It adds a 25% chance (50% on power attacks) to add 4 additional charges which will instantly charge the baton.

With this book and the maximum rank of Electrocutioner you can apply a shock effect to an incredible quantity of enemies by alternating between power attacks to achieve a max charge, and normal attacks to apply it. Care must be taken to not overextend and run out of stamina while doing this however.

The Nerd Tats candy bought from vending machines will, for 5 minutes, cause Stun Batons to also shock all nearby (1.2m radius) enemies, which can be a powerful buff to apply before a fight with many enemies such as horde night or when doing a Tier 5 mission.

The Stun Baton Repulsor Mod, adds an additional ragdoll effect when a shock is applied which causes the enemy to be flung backwards a short distance.

They will be able to stand back up during the shock effect, but will be unable to do anything else until the shock ends.

Apart from repositioning dangerous enemies, other applications can include flinging enemies off high places or into hazards such as Wood Spikes or Blade Traps. Simply ragdolling an enemy may be enough to cause them to fall off angled or rounded surfaces, such as ramps or pipes.

However constantly flinging enemies around, while amusing, can make getting consistent head-shots difficult and may limit your damage output against a single enemy.

The Stun Baton can also, in a pinch, be used as an inefficient Butchering tool to harvest small amounts of Raw Meat and Animal Fat from animal corpses.

Trivia
Alpha 19 fixed a bug where if you hit a zombie that was currently being electrocuted, they would be able to move again. It does not appear to completely freeze Bears, but seems to slow them rather significantly.

In the XMLs, there is one other baton visible, planned to be added in a future update. The Plasma Baton is to be the tier 3 baton weapon. It does not currently have an item icon, and only visible as an unfinished test item in the XML. The former Junk Baton was added in Alpha 20 as the Pipe Baton.