Light Soldier

Light Soldier
Regular Builders Scientists
Some say he's still got the most powerful punch of them all. Inspired by C4nn0n F0dd3r.
Main Stats
Type	Damager
Rarity	Common
Health 72 Melee Damage 35
Crit. Chance	20%
Crit. Damage	10%
Speed	12
Prepare Time	20
Courage Cost	25
Behavior Stats
Agility	60
Aggression	90
Detection Range	200
Agility Penalty	50%
Aggression Penalty	50%
Morale Stats
Charisma	150
Valor	600
Charisma Radius	80
Abilities
Perks
Special Ability	Crit. Damage is increased by 10% for each 60 points of Charisma.
Resistances
Bullet	90%
Poison	100%
Knockback	70%
Unlock Requirements
Price	24,000
Player Level	13

Light Soldier is an IF member and a powerful melee fighter that still got it. He is armed with a sledgehammer and dressed in an urban camo long sleeve shirt with blue highlights, black armored vest with shoulder pads, urban camo pants, light gray gloves, a clear full-face gas mask, and a blue IF combat helmet.

Handyman is Light Soldier's first exclusive skin. He is armed with a sledgehammer and dressed in a gray tank top, blue pants, dark gray gloves, a clear full-face gas mask, a brown tool belt, and a yellow hard hat.

Liquidator is Light Soldier's second exclusive skin. He is armed with a sledgehammer and dressed in a yellow hazmat suit with a hood and blue gloves, a blue ID tag, and a black clear full-face respirator mask.

He can be unlocked for 24,000 coins after reaching player level 13.

Basics

Light Soldier is a Damager. His stats are above average for his class, and he does moderately fast swings, along with marginally slower slams as crits that cause knockback on hit.

Light Soldier is immune to poison, and has resistance to bullet damage and knockback.

Light Soldier will prioritize attacking Fat Zombies if he currently has no targets.

Some time after dying, Light Soldier turns into a Sergeant.

Special Ability

Light Soldier's special ability grants him +10% extra crit. damage for every 60 points of charisma he has. With his base charisma of 150, it grants him effectively a +20% critical damage bonus.

Considering that Charisma isn't a useful stat in itself, whatever benefits granted by this special ability should be best treated as extra gravy. Instead, it's much better to focus on boosting his somewhat low critical chance and pursue critical damage as substats.

Gameplay

Main Campaign

In terms of stats, Light Soldier can be considered to be one of the best melee units in the game, possessing the highest base health and damage among all damagers. In practice though, he feels rather underwhelming due to how late into the game he becomes available. Considering that he is unlocked at level 13, Light Soldier typically becomes available to players when there are no missions left in the game where damagers prove to be effective. The same can also be said about Light Soldier's bullet and poison resistances, as stages with these threats are relatively uncommon. And even if you feel like you need to use an efficient damager in your deck, the Grenadier is available much earlier with a significantly lower unlock cost.

The only real application Light Soldier has is to be used for gimmicky replays that involve synergies of some of his teams. Such approaches are discussed in the respective section below.

Skirmish

In League, Light Soldier is a semi-decent choice. With bullet resistance and high health, he is one of the better suited units to use against ranged opponents. Upgrading his health and damage decently high will prove to further maximize his effectiveness given his already high base stats. Despite the aforementioned advantages, he is still outclassed by bulletproof heavyweights, even despite his improved speed. Compared to them, he is simply unable to last long enough when put against meta builds, which makes 25 courage too high of a price to rely on him at least as a temporary shield. It's generally advised against using LS in higher tiers anyway, since they are full of meta players relying on Tactical set.

Item Sets

Light Soldier is able to get a good use out of both Gentleman and Surgery. Even though he has low base crit. chance, Gentleman proves to be a good option thanks to LS' relatively swift critical animation. Surgery acts as an option that allows to focus on tanky builds for him.

Like most damagers, Light Soldier gets most use out of prep. time watches, with agility bonuses acquired as secondary buffs. He can receive a significant boost from percentage bonuses to health and damage, but only when he's close to being maxed out. At low-to-mid levels, flat buffs are more preferable. +% Health books are a good all-around choice, and are a necessity for Surgery builds. With Gentleman, +% crit. chance books are superior, proving more critical hits on average and maximizing the set's bonuses.

Skins and Synergies

Light Soldier, along with his respective skins, is a part of the following teams: Internal Forces (IF), Builders, and Scientists.

Name	Light Soldier	Handyman	Liquidator
Skin
Unlock Req.	-	300 money	300 money
Team	IF	Builders	Scientists

In all of his teams, this unit is a mediocre option, courtesy of not being able to fulfill any niches they might need. Although he isn't particularly expensive, he remains difficult to play.

In IF, Light Soldier is pretty much identical to Grenadier. He benefits from the 2/2's extended Medkit Lifetime and free bonus Medkits deployed by the 3/3, but offers little beyond that.

In Builders, Light Soldier can be seen as a better Builder in terms of raw stats, only losing out in his lower critical chance. Nevertheless, he is only so useful if he is spawned as a free unit through the 2/2 and 3/3 powers, both of which are inconsistent, and doesn't provide enough of a punch to actually get to the Barricade, hence also invalidating the 5/5.

In Scientists, Light Soldier can serve as a substitute for Saw if the latter is not available. Despite being the only other proper melee unit, he is rather lackluster and gets little out of the Team Powers.

Trivia

• Light Soldier's scientist skin is a reference to the show Breaking Bad, where characters Walter White and Jessie Pinkman use the exact same uniforms.
• Light Soldier's original concept was made by KTPlay user C4nn0nF0dd3r. He would have been a superior IF equivalent of Mechanic with resistances and higher stats.
  • LS' extra attack perk would work similar to Mechanic's, but with him switching to a trench club instead of a wrench. His sledgehammer would also have only a 2.5x multiplier. His criticals also had a fixed 100% multiplier, just like on all units prior to the stat system overhaul.
  • Before that was settled, Light Soldier would have used a powerful but slow-firing handgun alongside his sledgehammer attack.
  • Light Soldier was also supposed to have a movement speed of 12, instead of 10 he received on official launch. Funnily enough, he got buffed to 12 speed in the update 4.0.0.

Gallery

• 

  Light Soldier's concept art.