Carol

Carol
Regular Northerners Patriots Prisoner
Well trained fighter with a spear and great dexterity. Inspired by Shantae250 & Pix Mario.
Main Stats
Type	Fighter
Rarity	Common
Health 27 Melee Damage 9
Crit. Chance	0%
Crit. Damage	10%
Speed	10
Prepare Time	10
Courage Cost	20
Behavior Stats
Agility	60
Aggression	90
Detection Range	150
Agility Penalty	50%
Aggression Penalty	50%
Morale Stats
Charisma	150
Valor	400
Charisma Radius	80
Abilities
Perks
Special Ability	Has a chance to dodge after not killing her target with her dash attack once
Unlock Requirements
Price	7,500
Player Level	10

Carol is a survivalist armed with a makeshift spear and dressed in black body armor, a green camo shirt with short light gray sleeves, light gray gloves, green camo pants, and green and gray ear defenders over a black cap. An eye is covered with a bloodied bandage. Some of her hair is kept in a short ponytail.

Carol Flannel is Carol's first exclusive skin. She is armed with a pitchfork and dressed in a partially tucked-in green plaid T-shirt, black pants, black boots, and a brown lumberjack hat. Her hair is now much longer and orange-brown in color.

Carol Williams is Carol's second exclusive skin. She is armed with a makeshift spear with a partially-torn American flag tied near the spearhead and dressed in a black T-shirt with an American flag on it, a gray sleeveless hoodie, gray and blue pants, red and white shoes, and a gray hat. She carries a red backpack with a dangling charm.

Carolina Ortiz is Carol's third exclusive skin.

She can be unlocked for 7,500 coins after reaching player level 10.

Overview

Carol is a Fighter unit. She has typically low stats for her class. Her attack speed is moderate, and her crits are landed slowly, in part due to their unique mechanics.

Upon detecting a new target, Carol can perform a dash attack that teleports her to the chosen enemy. Once she chose a target, she is guaranteed to teleport into it even if it manages to run past her. This attack is a guaranteed crit. In addition, its animation is used for Carol's regular criticals, making it look like she tries to dash into her current target again. The dash's activation range is tied to Carol's detection range.

Some time after dying, Carol turns into a Girl.

Special Ability

Carol's special ability grants her a chance to dodge if she doesn't kill the target she just dashed into. Her chance of dodging is equal to her agility, and each instance of Carol can only dodge once in their lifespan. The "dodge" makes her teleport back by 50 pixels, after 0.1 seconds, where she will then be able to dash into her target again.

This ability proves useful for increasing Carol's offensive potential, as it allows her to deal greater burst damage to a single enemy. Its protective abilities aren't as great, however, as all the dodge does is make Carol last ~1.5 seconds longer in battle. It doesn't help that this perk can't be truly consistent because of natural agility variation. Despite that, it still improves Carol's performance significantly enough to be worth buying, granted that you use Carol very frequently.

Gameplay

Main Campaign

Carol's perk can make her useful for missions where large groups of zombies appears as she'll be able to pick off weaker enemies in the way and clear a small path thanks to her guaranteed crits. However, at the same time, Carol's perk can also cause her trouble, as her charge brings her much closer to an enemy than if she just simply walked towards them. Charging in is also dangerous because Carol lacks any resistances, making fights against too many enemies or certain kinds of enemies more unfavorable against her. A particularly depressing example is Rebel – since they are so common throughout stage 6, Carol's potential gets majorly gutted in this location. Additionally, her both Charisma and Valor stats are severely lacking, making her very susceptible to fear debuff, which results in her performing poorly in the very environment she was designed for. Her low damage doesn't help her case, making her too weak against any enemy after stage 6, as most enemies in the later stages have high health. Due to this, Carol becomes practically unviable in the later stages of the Main Campaign. One should be better off using other using cheap, and fast or strong melee units for a much easier progression. It certainly doesn't help that Mechanic's single use sledgehammer attack could potentially do much more.

Skirmish

In League, unlike in Main Campaign, Carol is an amazing unit for almost any fight. Apart from a brief pause at the start of a match, she has no range limitation with her lightning-fast attack as she does in the main game, essentially teleporting to the closest enemy to her no matter how far away they may be. She will even target enemy units who manage to get behind her. A well upgraded Carol has a great chance of picking off many units or even clear the board before they can take her down. However, she is still vulnerable to all sorts of attacks after charging, as she could be killed by stray bullets, a well-timed grenade, very close enemy melee units, or die alongside most enemy units capable of exploding on death. She doesn't always charge either as there're a few instances where she must walk a bit before resuming her charge which puts her in a vulnerable position. Many widely used tanky units such as Guard, Light Soldier and Juggernaut, are likely to survive her first attack due to their very high health pool, and Policeman Diaz will almost always be able to stop her due to his melee resistance, while team with Police 3/3 power will guarantee to stop her first attack thanks to their Shield Points, all of which put her in an unfavorable position that will spell a swift death. Even with the special ability unlocked, Carol won't really be benefiting much from it, as useful as it is against Guard, Light Soldier, Soldier, and any heavyweights, regarding in melee, Policeman Diaz and Willy are likely to kill her before she could with them as these two are ranged units.

Item Sets

Carol is one of the few units for whom it's better to pursue item sets that boost her effectiveness in Skirmish, rather than main campaign. Equipping her with Scout set is the best option as it grants her the ability to absorb one hit once she gets a kill. Since PvP is the only place where ping-ponging from enemy to enemy is truly viable, it ends up providing Carol with a steady supply of shields that allow her to tank shots that would otherwise one-hit kill her, giving multiple opportunities to strike more blows. While it requires extreme min-maxing of her damage, the results prove to be worth it. In context of mid-game, Builder acts as an unreliable and weaker, but still serviceable alternative to Scout.

Gentleman is the only set that can prove to be viable for Carol in both Skirmish and main game. It's an overall solid choice, thanks to massively boosting her criticals' damage. However, it will accentuate her design as a glass cannon in context of PvP, so it's not exactly a safe option.

Agility watches prove to be the best choice for Carol, as 10 s. is not a majorly restrictive cooldown. They also synergize with Carol's SA, ensuring that it will activate almost every time. Among books, +% crit. damage is the best choice, since Carol's dash is her main gimmick. It's also important to boost her melee damage, with flat numbers providing the best bonuses due to her low stats. Buffing her critical chance is usually not necessary, especially since it lowers her dash's burst damage potential. While not a priority, it's acceptable to increase Carol's health as it can help with tanking some damage. Cost reduction proves to be an important buff for Carol, as it exponentially increases her playability. Pursuing -5 to -8 reduction is highly advised in case you frequently use Carol in either of her teams, especially in Skirmish.

Skins and Synergies

Carol, along with her respective skins, is a part of several teams: Military, Northerners,Patriots, andPrisoners.

Name	Carol	Flannel Carol	Carol Williams	Carolina Ortiz
Skin
Unlock Req.	–	300 money	300 money	300 money
Team	Military	Northerners	Patriots	Prisoners

In her current state, Carol's viability tends to fluctuate from team to team. She can only be considered surely useful for Military, who have no other fighters in their roster, and benefit from having a semi-spammable option in regular missions. Additionally, Carol is yet another unit who is naturally strong in skirmish, making her an essential team member for the respective game mode.

As for Patriots, Carol's viability is questionable. Most of her roles can be easily fulfilled by Rodriguez, but at the same time, using them both together can prove powerful in some riskier strategies. In general, she is an acceptable option for the team, but only really sees viable use when she is fully maxed out, preferably with max courage reduction.

While she might seem like a good fit for Northerners, Carol actually proves to be a poor choice for that team. Since her criticals are technically guaranteed as is, none of the key powers manage to meaningfully aid her, meanwhile she is unable to trigger 5/5 at all. As a unit on her own, she is also outclassed, with Worthy fulfilling the niche of a meat shielder, and Lester being a more reliable burst damager.

Bugs

• In Skirmish, Carol may sometimes attack enemies from the back. This usually occurs if Carol turns around to attack a very close enemy unit who's right behind her. She will not go back to facing forward unless she attacks another close enemy that appears right in front of her afterwards. If this doesn't happen, Carol will immediately begin charging again while facing the other direction and attack enemies in a backstabbing fashion. This seldom happens due to the specific situation for it to occur but when it does happen, it oftentimes wins Carol the fight as attacking units from the back generally makes her less vulnerable.

Trivia

• Carol's original concept was made by KTPlay user Shantae250, with the sprite being created by fellow user Pix Mario. In the unit's original concept, she was a unit named Survivalist and didn't have lightning-fast attacks as a perk, which was given to her when she was added into the game.
  • As a unit, she possessed a longer melee range and medium attack speed. Her attack was capable of hitting though enemies behind the one she was currently fighting, likely as a form of pseudo-crowd control. She also would've had the knockback and bullet resistance perks. The bullet resistance perk is the likely reason why she is dressed in what appears to be black body armor yet doesn't have any resistance in-game.
  • She was originally supposed to cost 25 courage, have 25 health, 20 damage, 37 fortune, and 13 speed. All these stats were lowered in the final game, save for her health which was slightly raised. Her cost was originally 6,500 coins, which was raised as well.
  • Her makeshift spear, a blade stuck to a long stick with blue tape, was originally supposed to appear "less makeshift" as stated by the original sprite's creator. In one of the prototypes of the unit, the weapon did appear to be a regular spear with no blue tape, with her gloves originally being a blue color instead.
• Before update 2.7.0, Carol used to charge into enemies immediately when a Skirmish match began. Since then, she now has a short delay before doing her first attack.
• Carol's skin "Carol Flannel" skin is a reference to the character Wendy Corduroy from the show Gravity Falls.
• Before update 4.0.0, Carol used to have infinite dash range in Skirmish. This feature was removed, but her detection range was significantly buffed to compensate for it. This resulted in the issue virtually staying unresolved, as Carol is still able to dash into units 4 columns away from her.

Gallery

• 

  Carol's original design.

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  Carol's lightning-fast attack.

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  Carol Flannel's lightning-fast attack.

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  Carol Flannel art made in the leadup to Thanksgiving 2023.