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

720

Melee Damage

350

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

19

Light SoldierHandymanLiquidator

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 19.

Overview

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

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

He is immune to poison, and has resistance to bullet damage and knockback. Some time after dying, Light Soldier turns into a Sergeant. Aside from universal targets, Light Soldier will also prioritize Fat Zombies above other enemies on the battlefield.

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 by itself, this perk can only be treated as a small boost to LS' performance. What's worse is that deliberately pursuing charisma stat upgrades guarantees a strictly lower crit. damage buff compared to pursuing the stat directly. For reference, to get +10% crit. damage from this SA, at least three ticks of charisma buffs are required from an item. Meanwhile, three ticks of crit. damage are equal to 24-54%. There's generally no harm in buying this special ability as a little extra bonus (especially if the best build you have for LS already includes some buffs to charisma), but it definitely shouldn't be capitalized on.

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 missions with these threats can often be dealt with using other units. And even if there’s a need to use an efficient damager in your deck, 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, due to the greater presence of Tactical set ranged units.

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' natural potential for massive damage. 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.

Skins and Synergies

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

Name	Light Soldier	Handyman	Liquidator
Skin
Unlock Req.	Player Lvl. 19 24,000	300 / 5000	300 / 5000
Team	IF	Builders	Scientists

In all of his teams, Light Soldier tends to be an above average unit, but still not a great option. This is mainly because he isn't always able to fulfill any of the niches they might need.

In IF, Light Soldier acts as a sidegrade to Grenadier, trading his grenade for the ability to push enemies back. This can prove to be a game changer throughout end-game stages, since knockback is invaluable there, but everywhere else he isn't necessarily better. The same can be said about Builders, where Handyman acts as a better Builder through stats alone. However, he misses out on an ability to deal quadruple damage to the barricade, which can be a downside in some rare cases. Otherwise, he can prove to be consistently better than Builder himself, should lower crit. chance not be a major issue.

Scientists are the only team where Liquidator helps with alleviating some of its downsides. Specifically, he serves as a viable melee unit that is able to protect ranged scientists, should that become necessary. While he has no direct synergy with any of the team's powers, running him is usually recommended.

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 the 10 he received at his launch. Interestingly, he would be buffed to a 12 speed much later in update 4.0.0.
• An odd thing to not is Light Soldier’s Liquidator skin. Upon looking at the 6th frame of Liquidator’s death animation, the facial area turns into an Epidemiologist’s, being quite similar to Dr. Kane and Dr. Miller’s death animations.

Gallery

• 

  Light Soldier's concept art.
• 

  Promotional Artwork of Liquidator.