Builder Abby

Builder Abby
Ranged Melee Ranged (Mechanic) Melee (Mechanic)
She always loved wild shooting.
Main Stats
Type	Damager
Rarity	Common
Health 30 Ranged Damage 40 Melee Damage 18
Crit. Chance	1%
Crit. Damage	5%
Speed	6
Prepare Time	35
Courage Cost	40
Special	Wind-up time: 2s
Behavior Stats
Agility	70
Aggression	90
Detection Range	150
Agility Penalty	10%
Aggression Penalty	10%
Morale Stats
Charisma	550
Valor	600
Charisma Radius	120
Abilities
Perks
Special Ability	Does not drop her gun after taking damage and will fire it for the full duration.
Ranged Data
Ammo Capacity	48
Firing Period	5s
Range	120
Bullet Spread	30°
Unlock Requirements
Price	28000
Player Level	12

Builder Abby is a heavy weapons user armed with a belt-fed minigun and a carpenter hammer, and dressed in a gray tank top, black pants, a brown belt, dark gray gloves, yellow ear defenders, and safety glasses. She carries a green ammo backpack. She sports an undercut and has some of her hair wrapped in a bun on the back of her head.

Abby is Builder Abby's first exclusive skin. She is armed with a belt-fed minigun and a carpenter hammer and dressed in a light grey shirt underneath a pair of blue mechanic coveralls, a utility belt with pouches, dark-tinted aviator sunglasses, and a black headband. She has tattoos on both of her arms. Her hair now reaches neck height and is orange in color.

She can be unlocked for 28,000 coins after reaching player level 12.

Functionality

Basics

She is a Damager. She also functions as a Shooter. Her stats are below average for someone of her class, possessing low health, melee damage, and speed. Her melee attacks are a bit slow. In contrast, her ranged damage is incredibly high. She has an incredibly expensive courage cost, but has a moderate preparation time.

Some time after dying, Abby will turn into her namesake zombie.

Perks and Abilities

Builder Abby has a high-rate-of-fire perk when she has her minigun. When encountering an enemy, she will take 1.8 seconds to load her minigun and another 0.5 seconds to spool up before firing, dealing damage at a very fast rate for up to five seconds. When she is done firing, Abby will drop the minigun and act like a regular melee unit. If she does not encounter an enemy while carrying the minigun, she will stop some distance away from the barricade until an enemy is in range. If she gets damaged but survives, her ranged attack is cancelled.

If Abby's ranged attacks trigger Military Set's extra shot bonus, it will be fired sequentially instead of simultaneously, thereby extending her firing time.

She has a special AI script where if there is a Fat Zombie near her and she isn't currently fighting anything, she will target it and ignore other zombies.

Upon reaching level 13, Builder Abby's special ability can be unlocked, preventing her from dropping her minigun when taking damage. It is more prominent in Skirmish than in the main campaign due to the prevalence of enemy ranged units. However, the benefit of unlocking it can still be seen in the main game due to existence of Insectoids. Ultimately, its usefulness varies, and will be worthwhile only if players wish to fully invest in her.

Gameplay

Main Campaign

Abby's uses are versatile: offensive, defensive, and supportive uses allow her to easily mow down hordes of defenseless enemies, be sent out ahead of time to serve as a defensive unit to cover other units, and eliminate any particularly dangerous and/or high health enemies. Thanks to her insane fire rate and high ranged damage, Abby is still able to deal a significant amount of damage against most bullet-resistant enemies.

However, in practice, many of Abby's flaws become apparent. While the ranged attack itself is very powerful, Abby turns into one of the weakest melee units in the game afterwards, with low health and melee damage, making her unable to deal with anything and essentially dead weight past Stage 3, even with the highest stats possible. It is also worth mentioning that without her special ability unlocked, Abby's ranged attack can be canceled if she is damaged, meaning that a stray bullet or hit from a Runner (or any other fast zombie) can negate it entirely. Due to this, it is recommended that Abby has unit to be shielded by before she is deployed. It also doesn't help that her namesake zombie is just as dangerous as Insectoid, a huge downside when unprepared.

All of the aforementioned flaws shine on Abby's lacking playability. In the right circumstances and/or with decks that can mitigate her weaknesses, she can prove to be the most powerful ranged unit in the game. Although she has a rather short firing duration of 5 seconds, upgrading Abby's ranged damage and equipping her with a certain item sets will allow her to deal with the vast majority of the end-game threats easily, capable of shredding hordes of high health, bullet-resistant zombies alarmingly quickly, even more so than the versatile stationary unit, Turret.

Abby and Turret have very similar roles in a team, with nearly identical ranged attack pattern. The differences between these two stems from two main differences, Abby has a much higher base damage and is a human unit, meaning she has significantly higher damage output potential, while Turret has a much longer firing duration. While Abby has the more damaging of the two attacks, Abby can only use her ranged attack once as opposed to Turret being able to fire for a few times. For missions that tend to take much longer to complete, Turret can prove to be a preferable choice, while Abby excels in dealing massive burst DPS. However, it should be noted though that Turret does not get canceled in its attack when damaged unlike Abby, therefore making it a more consistent and reliable option.

Skirmish

In League, Abby can prove to be an amazing unit thanks to her extreme rate of fire and very high ranged damage, being the sole ranged unit capable of swiftly taking out multiple bullet-resistant units with ease and easily killing any non-resistant units behind the formation. Paired with the Tactical item set, she can wipe entire teams in the blink of an eye. Since Skirmish matches are very fast-paced and rarely ever drawing out for too long, her main weakness of only firing for 5 seconds hardly matters as a downside. Her range when firing makes her very capable at hitting faraway, backline targets.

While she has plenty of powerful advantages in a fight, her remaining glaring flaws still have as much of an impact as it does in the main game. Her very high cost can narrow the player's options. Her startup time requires targeting an enemy first, which can cause her to take longer to prepare her minigun if she doesn't have one right at the start of the match. All the time she takes not getting her minigun ready is more time for enemy units to reach and kill her before she can use her ability. Some enemy units such as Grenadier and Queen can bypass any units in the front protecting her and outright kill her with the right positioning. Even with enough health upgrades, Queen can unlock her special ability to create a fire pool with her grenades to guarantee Abby's death. If the player has not invested in Abby's special ability yet, there's almost no point in bringing her to begin with as even a single stray bullet can turn her into dead weight on the team.

Abby can be viewed as the trump card on a team to end a match; once she starts firing, it's unlikely for the opposition to be able to properly fight back. However, she cannot strive without a proper team backing her up and proper item investments. Do not rely on her unless the team specifically built around her can provide the necessary support. Without that, other cheaper ranged units may prove more effective.

Item Sets

Like most ranged units, Abby's choice of an item set comes down to Military and Hunter. The latter is the safest option as usual, allowing Abby to deal 350-450 single shot damage on average when she's maxed out, and even reaching numbers above 600 for the farthest targets. Military serves as an extended crowd control alternative, due to the way it affects Abby's firing period, effectively extending it. It won't allow her to deal the same level of damage as Hunter, instead shifting her role into a supportive direction, keeping the battlefield in her control for 1-1.5 seconds longer.

If you are planning on using Abby exclusively in skirmish then there's no point in upgrading her melee damage at all. However, if you are interested in trying her in PvE then a melee knife is a better choice, since it allows her to do at least some damage once the minigun runs out of ammo. Although, aiming for extra buffs to melee damage is still a bad decision. Instead, the best extra buffs for her are +% ranged damage, and flat health. The latter is important to her because of a need to tank grenades in skirmish, and handle Insectoids in main game. +% Ranged dmg. book is a must, as it increases Abby's minigun's damage massively.

As usual, prep. time watches are the best choice due to Abby's moderately long cooldown. But if you are only ever planning to use her in Skirmish then it's acceptable to give her an agility watch instead. Cost reduction can prove to be a helpful bonus for her, but it comes with a trade off of missing out on extra buffs to her damage, while still keeping Abby pretty expensive, so going overboard with it is a risky tactic.

Skins and Synergies

Builder Abby, along with her respective skins, is a part of several teams: Builders and Mechanics.

Name	Builder Abby	Abby
Skin
Unlock Req.	–	300 money
Team	Builders	Mechanic

In all of the above teams, Abby is a sub-par option. In Builders team, she does not benefit much from any synergies due to her generally short lifespan, her lackluster performance as a melee unit as well as her incredibly high courage cost. While having a free Abby summoned can feel empowering, the chances of it happening are far from favorable. On the other hand, in Mechanics team, she is an acceptable option, with the 3/3 synergy combined with Redneck and Mechanic in the deck, she can make for a powerful damage support in tandem with Turret should it spawn through the synergy.

Level Stats

Base Stat Upgrades

Level	Health	Ranged Damage	Melee Damage
0	30	40	9
1	33	44	10
2	36	48	11
3	40	53	12
4	44	59	13
5	48	64	14
6	53	71	16
7	58	78	18
8	64	86	19
9	71	94	21
10	78	104	23
11	86	114	26
12	94	126	28
13	104	138	31

Trivia

• Builder Abby, from her general design to her name, is a reference to Abby Anderson from The Last of Us Part II.
• Abby has the highest courage cost in the game out of any unit.
• The Daily Task "Complete a mission with no ranged units" can be accomplished using Abby despite her possessing a ranged attack.
• Abby, Austin, and Dr. Kane are the only three non-Shooters to possess the High-Rate-of-Fire perk.
• In update 3.8.1, there was a bug with Abby where she would fire infinitely if she activates the Gambling item set bonus. This was fixed in the following 3.8.2 update.
• The "Abby" skin is a reference to the character Beefcake Kitty from a movie Grown Ups 2.
• In the past, Abby was able to fire her minigun right away after selecting a target.

Gallery

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  Builder Abby seen in Update 3.3.0 trailer along with other added units.
  

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  Abby preparing to fire.