Dr. Kane

Dr. Kane
Research Group leader. Knows everything about enemy weaknesses.
Main Stats
Type	Support
Rarity	Exclusive
Health 27 Ranged Damage 3 Melee Damage 5
Crit. Chance	1%
Crit. Damage	1%
Speed	10
Prepare Time	35
Courage Cost	30
Special	Targets marked: 1/3 (default) Ability marked: 3/6 (ability); 7 (ability with max agility) Marking cooldown: 20s Damage increase: 50%
Behavior Stats
Agility	80
Aggression	100
Detection Range	200
Agility Penalty	30%
Aggression Penalty	50%
Morale Stats
Charisma	300
Valor	600
Charisma Radius	80
Abilities
Perks
Special Ability	Marks 1 more enemy for every 25 points of Agility
Ranged Data
Ammo Capacity	21 (7x3 bursts)
Firing Period	2s
Reloading Period	2.8s
Range	140
Bullet Spread	20°
Resistances
Fire	100%
Bullet	90%
Poison	100%
Explosion	50%
Knockback	20%
Unlock Requirements
Price	925 (Scientists Pack)
Player Level	Any

Dr. Kane is a knowledgeable field researcher with questionable firearm experience. He is armed with a stockless submachine gun with a sling and dressed in a yellow hazmat suit with blue gloves, a black load bearing vest & belt with pouches, and a fishbowl helmet with the visor up. When searching for enemy weaknesses, he wields a yellow notebook.

He can be purchased from the Scientists Pack for 925 money, alongside Dr. Miller and Dr. Norman.

Functionality

Basics

Dr. Kane is a support, meaning that he provides assistance to his teammates with special abilities and/or by dealing extra damage. He also acts like a shooter, meaning he shoots a weapon with a high rate of fire that excels at crowd control and dealing a lot of damage in quick bursts.

Both Dr. Kane's health and damage are low. He moves at an average pace. He has both average courage cost and preparation time for a ranged unit.

Dr. Kane holsters his weapon if it is not in use (or when he uses his marking ability) and has to pull it out if he attacks, which takes a fair amount of time.

He fires his gun in seven-round bursts at a modest rate up to three times before performing a reload just as slow as Carlos' reload speed. While firing, each burst causes him to backstep.

Unusually for a ranged unit, Dr. Kane will not attack at all if an enemy gets too close to him or clips inside his hitbox.

Some time after dying, Dr. Kane will turn into Epidemiologist.

Perks and Abilities

Dr. Kane has the high-rate-of-fire perk, which is unusual for his class.

Dr. Kane can pull out a notebook to mark 1-3 enemies at random on the field that are within his mark range(which is slightly longer than his attack range), causing them to take 50% extra damage from all sources indefinitely. Marked enemies are indicated by a small, flashing yellow reticle above their heads. This ability has a cooldown of 20 seconds.

Dr. Kane has 50% resistance to explosive damage, 90% resistance to bullet damage, as well as immunity to fire and poison.

Since Dr. Kane possesses full fire resistance, his corpse cannot be burned, forcing the players to deal with him once he turns.

At level 13, Dr. Kane will gain his special ability that allows him to mark one more enemy for every 25 points of agility. With his base stat of 80 agility, he will always mark three more enemies, and possibly four if he reaches 100 agility, giving up to seven targets every 20 seconds or so. This more than doubles his supportive effectiveness, greatly improving the support he offers, as he is much more likely to also tag dangerous threats alongside weaker ones, making it an excellent addition to any strategy.

Gameplay

Campaign

Dr. Kane’s ability can prove to be extremely valuable. especially in late game progress where most enemies have high health. Thanks to the ability’s frequency, he can mark any enemy, one at a time, and the longer he is alive the more you make out of his ability. Since he is also a ranged unit, he gets plenty of opportunities to benefit from his own ability.

Despite his amazing ability and solid damage output, Dr. Kane himself is a subpar ranged attacker at best. He has a slow reload, doesn't have the best raw DPS and has to redraw his weapon every time if he marks enemies. More often than not, enemy units will destroy him easily, so he should be exclusively used in a supportive capacity, and never without backup from other, more consistent ranged units, which provide the bulk of your DPS while being able to hold their own before he comes in.

Skirmish

In Skirmish, Dr. Kane’s ability is not as universally useful due to the nature of the mode; fast paced. While his ability may help the team dispatch the enemy units faster, against bullet-resistant ones, they will take only just slightly more damage, practically negating his ability. Dr. Kane though can benefit well from setups utilizing meat shields like Juggernaut or Soldier, or high range decks as this will allow him the time to mark enemies safely. In addition, his bullet resistance allows him to survive better in the ranged focused gamemode, though he is still susceptible to Sniper Polina and the Tactical set, as he himself isn't a very high damager. In addition, he is not very well suited against melee rushdown decks, as they will close the distance easily while he is busy marking units. Overall though, he has decent usage in certain decks and can be a niche but useful unit.

Item Sets

Much like the vast majority of ranged units, Dr. Kane finds the most success with Hunter/Military sets, greatly increasing his already solid damage output.

As for the stats, Dr. Kane benefits the most with flat Ranged Damage stats due to his low base ranged damage, and his high-rate-of-fire perk allows him to theoretically achieve a very high DPS. It's always good to consider a Crit build, with Crit Chance books and some Crit Damage substats being important, but purely boosting his damage isn't a bad idea either. This also applies to his health, should one want to increase his survivability. Since his base agility is already very high, it's recommended to seek for agility substats on items which should have just the right amount for him to reach max agility.

What's more, %range stats will significantly increase his mark range, which is important in Skirmish, with higher %range stats he can mark enemies in the last row which means he can mark all enemies at once when enemy units are less than 7.

Skins and Synergies

Dr. Kane is a part of the Scientists team.

Name	Dr. Kane
Skin
Unlock Req.	-
Team	Scientists

In the team above, Dr. Kane is a mandatory unit to use any of the power effectively thanks to his damage boost ability. This is especially noticeable in the 2/2 power, since it now make up for the Drone's somewhat low damage. In addition, he can stack with the 5/5 synergy, meaning that marked enemies will eventually become relatively easy dispatches while marked as each one is killed repeatedly.

Level Stats

Base Stat Upgrades

Level	Health	Ranged Damage	Melee Damage
0	27	3	5
1	30	3	6
2	33	4	6
3	36	4	7
4	40	4	7
5	43	5	8
6	48	5	9
7	53	6	10
8	58	6	11
9	64	7	12
10	70	8	13
11	77	9	14
12	85	9	16
13	93	10	17

Bugs

• If Dr. Kane runs out of ammo and and an enemy manages to get inside of his hitbox, he will stand still and do absolutely nothing, occasionally saying lines relating to low agility.

Trivia

• Dr. Kane is one of the three members of the Epidemiologists, the others being Dr. Miller and Dr. Norman.
• Dr. Kane and Cap are the only units who have unique speech bubble dialog in-game. Dr. Kane reads out loud the weaknesses he has written down in his notebook when he goes to mark an enemy.
• Dr. Kane and Carlos are tied for both having the slowest reload speed in the game, at around 2.7 seconds.
• Both him and Dr. Miller are the only playable units to die during a cutscene, as he gets killed by the scientist who accidentally turned into Psy during Location 6, Mission 44. While it does happen off-screen without an explanation to what exactly happens, when the gameplay starts, the mission starts with two Epidemiologists alongside Psy, implying both of them were killed right after.
• Dr. Kane is the only ranged unit in the game who does not act differently when in close quarters combat. Almost all other ranged units have melee attacks, Sheriff Charlotte fires from the hip, and Policeman Diaz switches to doing his speed reload.
  • Despite the above statement, the universal melee logic that's inherent to all units is not disabled on Kane. This is the reason behind the bug that causes him to stand still, should an enemy get inside of his hitbox.
• Dr. Kane, Austin, and Builder Abby are the only three non-Shooters to possess the High-Rate-of-Fire perk.
• Dr. Kane has the highest amount of perks in the game, for a total of six. This is tied with SpecOps.