Firefighter

Firefighter

Regular

Rednecks

He fought fire - now he fights zombies.

Main Stats

Type

Damager

Rarity

Common

Health

600

Melee Damage

270

Fire Damage

5 (fire pool)

Explosive Damage

750 (on-death explosion)

Crit. Chance

20%

Crit. Damage

10%

Speed

10

Prepare Time

20s

Courage Cost

25

Behavior Stats

Agility

60

Aggression

95

Detection Range

80

Morale Stats

Charisma

350

Valor

400

Abilities

Perks

Non-documented:

• (50%)

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

FirefighterDusty

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 included with a SCBA air cylinder.

Dusty is Firefighter's first exclusive skin, he is armed with an axe with a rubber handle and a metalic head. He wears a white and brown baseball cap with a yellow and white logo on it and a yellow brim, a black gas mask, a blue button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black pants, and an oxygen tank in a leather pouch on his back.

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

Overview

Firefighter is a Damager. His stats are average for his class, with the exception of slightly high preparation time. Both of his swings are equally 9 frames, both hits landing exactly within the 5th frame.

Firefighter is immune to poison and fire, has full explosion resistance, and has a 50% resistance to knockback. Aside from universal targets, Firefighter will also prioritize Fat Zombies above other enemies on the battlefield.

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. The item will spawn only if Firefighter doesn't explode upon getting killed. 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. As for Firefighter’s SA, it may prove useful in a 2/2 and 3/3 synergy of the Patriots team, offering great fire damage to enemies without the reliability of the Molotov Cocktail to be within the deck.

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, unless there is a Flamethrower with an SA, making Flamethrower rather difficult to deal with even more unless overwhelmed. 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. Surgery can work in case you prefer to accentuate Firefighter's moderate potential for meat shielding. However, it's generally a bad option if you are using him in any Emergency builds that are focused around Medkits, as they will often prevent Firefighter from taking advantage of the item set.

Depending on how powerful Firefighter's usual targets are, sets like Lucky Guy and Scout can prove useful, as they increase his overall survivability, making him less likely to damage friendly units with his on-death explosion. Fast Food, as well as Scout's epic version, serve the same purpose during mid-game.

Firefighter can take advantage of both preparation time and agility watches, since he isn't required to be constantly present on the 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. In a typical fashion, crit. chance books are a must if you decide to go for a respective build.

Skins and Synergies

Firefighter, along with his respective skin, is part of two teams: Emergency and Rednecks.

Name	Firefighter	Dusty
Skin
Unlock Req.	Player Lvl. 5 480	300 / 5000
Team	Emergency	Rednecks

In all of his teams, Firefighter is an average option. His main appeal lies in his moderate tankiness, which can be taken advantage of by certain synergies in both rosters. He benefits from the Emergency’s 2/2, but as one of the few cheap melees on the team, he still sees use for the 3/3 and 5/5 powers, as they focus on their units' raw stats. His slight tankiness also shines with Rednecks' 2/2, as he has higher chance to trigger the synergy this way. That being said, he mostly sees use in that team as a complimentary member of 5/5 builds.

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 30 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.
  • However, some firefighters use these types of tanks, called either the SCBA 2216 PSI Stealth L-30, or the MSA SCBA Breathing Air Cylinder Tank 3000psi 5-447-1. Overall, it seems SCBA air tanks only explode upon heat exposure, as to why Firefighter and his zombie form explode.
  • There is no true explanation as to why there are flames upon Firefighter dying with fire, but it could maybe be from a molotov (mainly said via his SA).
• Firefighter used to have alternating melee animations on his unit page (critical and non-critical strikes), similar to Builder and Guard. It is unknown as to why he only does his critical melee instead of including his basic melee before an update.