Firefighter

Firefighter
He fought fire - now he fights zombies.
Main Stats
Type	Damager
Rarity	Common
Health 60 Melee Damage 27
Fire Damage	5 (fire pool)
Explosive Damage	75 (on-death explosion)
Crit. Chance	20%
Crit. Damage	10%
Speed	10
Courage Cost	25
Behavior Stats
Agility	60
Aggression	95
Detection Range	80
Morale Stats
Charisma	350
Valor	400
Abilities
Perks	Non-documented: (50%) Knockback resist
Special Ability	May throw a Molotov Cocktail in front of himself on death.
Resistances
Fire	100%
Poison	100%
Explosion	100%
Knockback	50%
Unlock Requirements
Price	480 coins
Player Level	5

Firefighter is a fireman whose grudge now lies with zombies. He is armed with a fire ax and dressed in a yellow firefighter suit with white reflective strips, a red firefighter's helmet, and a firefighter's open-circuit SCBA full-face mask and air cylinder.

He can be unlocked for 480 coins after reaching player level 5.

Overview

Basics

Firefighter is a Damager. His stats are average for his class, with the exception of slightly high preparation time. He does slow swings, with his critical hits being even slower.

Firefighter is immune to poison and fire, has full explosion resistance, and has a 50% resistance to knockback. He has a special AI script: if there's a Fat Zombie near him and he isn't currently fighting anything, he will target it and ignore other zombies.

When killed, Firefighter has a 50% chance to explode immediately and leave behind a fire pool. If he doesn't explode, he will later turn into a Firefighter zombie.

Special Ability

Firefighter's special ability grants him the ability to throw a Molotov Cocktail in an area ahead of him shortly after his death. It's always thrown in the direction towards the barricade.

The usefulness of this ability ultimately depends on RNG, also heavily relying on the mission Firefighter is used in. Similarly to his usual on-death explosion, Firefighter's special ability can be just as disadvantageous to his teammates, especially if they happen to be either slightly ahead or behind of him. Its only practical use is in Skirmish where a well-thrown Molotov can hit and kill an enemy Sniper, and even then it gets outclassed by Grenadier's special ability due to its short range.

Gameplay

Main Campaign

In general, Firefighter is best treated as a purely specialist melee unit. Due to the combination of all his resistances, he excels in fighting specific enemies (such as Paramedic/Fat Zombie/Slob/Rebel/Epidemiologist/his namesake zombie), but rather average against others. Because his attacks are slow and he only performs at his best in specific situations, other damagers will outclass him when his abilities aren't needed. As such, spending much of the player's resources to upgrade Firefighter will simply prove to be unwise. His only saving grace is that he does the job just as well as his more expensive equivalents.

However, if the player takes the time to invest in Firefighters stats and levels them accordingly, Firefighter can be a very decent unit up to Location 7, where he then falls off due to his combined resistances being useless in the face of punishing zombies such as Big Blue or Energy Sphere. With the large presence of Rebels in Location 6, he can prove to be essential in situations where weaker spam units such as Redneck or Private Rodriguez would be ineffective, provided his Agility is high enough to make up for the knockback heavy enemies in that Location.

Skirmish

In League, Firefighter fares well enough in early low-level skirmishing as his high base health can allow him to take several hits from low-level ranged enemy units. He is also capable of countering Flamethrower, Grenadier and Queen's explosives as well as walking through fire pools. However, in later levels of Skirmish his weaknesses become all too prominent. His lack of bullet resistance and slow attack speed make him unviable, combined with his special ability and explosive death being unreliable at times, and capable of causing great harm towards friendly units. In higher ranks of Skirmish, Firefighter sees little use, unless the enemy is heavily reliant on units countered easily by him.

Item Sets

Because of his narrow usage, combined with poor attack speed, Firefighter is unable to get a good use out of any specialized sets. He is one of the few units for whom SwissMade may be the best option, since avoiding his criticals can lead to higher DPS. In case you want to give him a crit. build anyway, Gentleman is the usual go-to option.

Depending on how many explosive enemies there are in a mission, sets like Lucky Guy and Scout can prove useful, as they increase Firefighter's overall survivability, making him less likely to damage friendly units, while also compensating for his non-full resistance for said damage type.

Firefighter can take advantage of both preparation time and agility watches, since he isn't required to be constantly present on field. However, if you want to use him as a generalist damager then it's necessary to go for the usual approach of acquiring agility through extra buffs and equipping him with a prep. time watch. +% Melee books are more preferable, as they synergize with recommended focus on regular attacks. In case survivability matters more, +% health is a valid substitute.

Skins and Synergies

Firefighter is a part of Emergency team.

Name	Firefighter
Skin
Unlock Req.	–
Team	Emergency

In Emergency, Firefighter is an average option. His immunity to fire means he doesn't benefit from the 2/2, but as one of the only attackers on the team, he still sees use for the 3/3 and 5/5 powers, as they do focus on their units' raw stats.

Trivia

• Before update 2.8.2, Firefighter is the only playable human unit in the entire game with full 100% explosion immunity. He lost it during update 3.9.4 when it was reduced to 50%, and would regain it in 4.0.3 due to fan backlash.
  • Before update 3.9.4, which reduced his explosion resistance to 50%, Firefighter used to be the only human unit in the entire game with complete explosion immunity.
  • The TMF 2/2 team power appears to reuse this effect from the Firefighter, granting a 50% chance to avoid damage from an explosion.
• Although Firefighter has explosion resistance, his infected form does not.
• Firefighter's death explosion makes him the only fire-immune unit who can be reduced to ashes. This does not account for anything that ignores fire resistance, such as Flamethrower's level 13 ability and Cephalopods' lasers/lightning bolts.
• Since his infected form is described to carry an oxygen tank, it can be assumed he also has one. Seeing oxygen's combustive properties, it does make his death explosion more accurate, despite deviating from normal compressed air tanks used by real firefighters.