Builder Abby

Builder Abby

Machine Gun

Hammer

Machine Gun (Mechanics)

Hammer (Mechanics)

Machine Gun (Jailers)

Hammer (Jailers)

She always loved wild shooting.

Main Stats

Type

Damager

Rarity

Common

Health

300

Ranged Damage

400

Melee Damage

180

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

28,000

Player Level

16

Builder AbbyAbbyInspector Abby

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.

Inspector Abby is Abby's third exclusive skin, she is armed with a belt-fed minigun and a carpenter hammer. She sports a low fade haircut, wears sunglasses, a khaki long-sleeve shirt with the collar up, a black tie, a belt with a yellow belt-buckle, with a single pouch attached, and black pants.

She can be unlocked for 28,000 coins after reaching player level 16.

Overview

Builder Abby is a melee Damager that features elements of a Shooter in her design. She has very low stats for the former class, while possessing incredibly high ranged damage. Her melee swings are slow, and she has no unique animation for critical attacks. She has an incredibly expensive courage cost, but her preparation time is moderate.

When Abby is spawned, she comes out of the bus wielding a minigun. Once she detects an enemy, she will stop for 2 seconds, and play an animation of loading the feed strip into the gun. Afterwards, she will fire her gun for five seconds, similar to shooters' ranged attacks. Once she's out of ammo, Abby drops the gun and equips a hammer, now acting as a melee unit.

If Abby takes any damage while firing her gun, she will immediately interrupt the shooting and switch to melee. 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 Abby's ranged attacks trigger Military set's bonus, it will be fired sequentially instead of simultaneously, extending her firing time.

Some time after dying, she turns into an Abby (Zombie).

Special Ability

Builder Abby's special ability prevents her from dropping her minigun when taking damage.

This effect 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 regular missions 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 part of three teams: Builders, Mechanics, and Jailers.

Name	Builder Abby	Abby	Inspector Abby
Skin
Unlock Req.	Player Lvl. 16 28,000	300 / 5000	300 / 5000
Team	Builders	Mechanics	Jailers

In all of the above teams, Abby is a sub-par option. In the 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.

When it comes to Mechanics and Jailers, Abby is generally outclassed by more versatile units, which is especially prominent for the former with its wide selection of top-tier options. In case of Jailers, Abby proves to be a great option specifically in 5/5 formations, as she is an actual usable slot filler in contrast to Willy. At the same time, her bursts genuinely help the rest of the team to advance, and even faster preparation time opens potential for her to be spammable, given that Generator is also used in the deck.

Trivia

• Builder Abby, from her general design to her name, is a reference to Abby Anderson from "The Last of Us Part II".
• Prior to removal of this feature, Abby could extend her gun's firing period by scoring critical hits and receiving extra bullets from them.
• Inspector Abby skin was inspired by u/ZionSoulspeaker's contest entry.
• Abby has the highest courage cost in the game out of any unit.
• The daily task to complete a mission without ranged units can still be accomplished using Abby despite her possessing a ranged attack.
• Abby, along with Austin, are the only two non-Shooters to possess the high-rate-of-fire perk.
• The "Abby" skin is a reference to the character Beefcake Kitty from the movie Grown Ups 2.
• In the past, Abby was able to fire her minigun right away after selecting a target.

Gallery

• 

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

  Abby preparing to fire.
• 

  Artwork of Abby and Cap teaming up against an horde of zombies.
• 

  Artwork of Abby attacking Twins.
• 

  Spritework of Abby and Jailer trying to get Buff Drinks in Wall Mart.
• 

  u/ZionSoulspeaker's fanmade design used as inspiration for Inspector Abby's design.