Mechanic

Mechanic
Regular Christmas Builder
Rushes into battle with overwhelming strength and speed!
Main Stats
Type	Fighter
Rarity	Common
Health 27 Melee Damage 9 Extra Attack 3 Extra Attack (crit.)
Crit. Chance	1%
Crit. Damage	10%
Speed	16 (base) 18 (charge)
Prepare Time	20
Courage Cost	15
Behavior Stats
Agility	60
Aggression	85
Detection Range	100
Agility Penalty	10%
Aggression Penalty	10%
Morale Stats
Charisma	150
Valor	200
Charisma Radius	120
Abilities
Perks
Knockback Strength	15
Special Ability	Able to use his sledgehammer attack again if he kills an enemy with it.
Unlock Requirements
Price	20
Player Level	3

Mechanic is an old man who still has enough strength to fight against zombies. He is armed with a large rusted sledgehammer and a red wrench, and dressed in blue mechanic overalls, a gray T-shirt, dark brown gloves with red cuffs, and a black automobile repair shop cap.

Christmas Mechanic is Mechanic's first exclusive skin. He is armed with a large, rusted sledgehammer and a red wrench and dressed in an ugly, short-sleeve red and gray Christmas tree sweater, black pants, dark brown gloves with red highlights, a gray and dark gray trapper hat, and a brown headband with a pair of reindeer antlers.

Operator is Mechanic's second exclusive skin. He is armed with a large, rusted sledgehammer and a bloodstained hammer, and dressed in a yellow sleeveless safety vest with white reflective strips, a black sleeveless shirt, black pants, gray gloves, a brown fanny pack, black ear defenders, and a blue and white cap with a red brim and a yellow logo. He sports a tattoo on his upper arm.

He can be unlocked for 20 coins after reaching player level 3.

Overview

Mechanic is a Fighter unit. He has typical stats for his class, with the exception of unusually high preparation time. Mechanic's attack speed is moderately quick, and his crits are landed as fast as his regular swings.

Mechanic spawns wielding a sledgehammer by default and seeks out the closest target at a slightly higher movement speed, ignoring hazards in his way. This attack is a guaranteed critical hit that has a slightly larger AoE than his regular attacks and deals 3x of Mechanic's melee damage. He is only able to use the sledgehammer once, after which he pauses briefly to switch to a socket wrench, and loses the speed buff. If Mechanic was slain and revived by Paramedic Nancy, he will be able to use this attack once more.

Mechanic causes knockback on his critical hits.

Some time after dying, Mechanic will turn into Tipsy.

Special Ability

Mechanic's special ability causes his sledgehammer attack to reset if he successfully kills an enemy with it. There's no limit on the number of resets.

This SA makes Mechanic almost unstoppable in missions focused on enemies with low-to-medium health. While it has no effect on tankier threats, this SA lacks any real downsides, and is generally safe to invest into.

It should be noted that this perk is buggy due to sledgehammer's 0.5 second attack animation. On some occasions, Mechanic will register invalid targets, causing him to waste his attack, but at other times it gets reset even if he fails to get a hit on them. See bugs section for more detailed examples.

Gameplay

Main Campaign

Mechanic is a very strong melee unit primarily due to his sledgehammer attack, which has triple base damage and is a guaranteed critical hit. This is excellent for him simply due to Mechanic being able to deliver a quick burst of high damage that can be used to swiftly eliminate specific enemies or heavily damage a high health enemy, essentially spearheading attacks along with other melee units. This combined with his low prep time makes it spammable as well, especially great for stages with large swarms constantly pressuring the Bus. This is not mentioning his SA, which makes him a top tier unit to bring late game despite his very cheap cost.

Mechanic's sledgehammer has slight crowd control, being able to damage any number of foes in a very small area in front of where he slams it. He deals knockback whenever he lands a critical hit and this applies to his additional damage attack too. The sledgehammer attack has slightly longer range, allowing Mechanic to kill zombies who explode on death with less risk. However, he has no self-preservation while charging and will run through fire pools to reach his target. If Mechanic is killed and revived by Paramedic Nancy, he will regain his Sledgehammer even after it has been used.

Although it is rarely realistic, under the right conditions, Mechanic can successfully eliminate Foreman, Energy Sphere, and even Charged Zombie with his sledgehammer before they manage to attack him. The attack usually relies on pure luck, requiring extremely precise timing and positioning of an aforementioned enemy, so it's unadvised to actively rely on it.

Skirmish

In League, Mechanic is a versatile enough unit thanks to his powerful attack, ease of use, and low courage cost, almost never being a bad choice in any composition. His perk can eliminate almost any unit without a shield in a single blow if his damage is high enough. In some situations, his willingness to run through fire pools can be an upside as he will not hesitate to go for an otherwise unlikely kill. Depending on his position, he can be used to eliminate specific enemies as he always targets the closest enemy unit, making positioning key to his effectiveness. His special ability can extend that strategy's effectiveness even further, potentially allowing him to kill more opponents. However, he is still very vulnerable to ranged units due to his lack of bullet resistance. He is especially susceptible to being killed by another enemy Mechanic, bringing encounters between them down to luck as to who delivers the first strike.

Item Sets

Since Mechanic is mainly used for his sledgehammer attack, Gentleman proves to be the best set for him, since it gives the highest increase to damage for the slam, while also allowing Mechanic to continue providing burst damage through his regular criticals. Before this set becomes available, Ranger acts as a tolerable substitute.

Due to his long preparation time(20s), Mechanic benefits most from respective decrease watches, with agility best pursued through extra buffs. +% Crit. damage books and substats are also the best for him, especially when combined with proper flat boosts to melee damage, as his low stats don't allow him to benefit from other percentage-based boosts. It's also possible to get a solid use out of +% crit. chance books, should you need as much knockback as possible. However, this limits the damage output Mechanic can provide, and effectively forces to pursue crit. damage through extra buffs to keep the sledgehammer useful.

Skins and Synergies

Mechanic has 2 team synergies, Mechanics and Builders.

Name	Mechanic	Christmas Mechanic	Operator
Skin
Unlock Req.	–	Obtain via gacha during Christmas Event	300 money
Team	Mechanic	–	Builders

Mechanic is never a bad option in his namesake team. While he can't abuse its 2/2 power like Hillbilly does due to his long preparation time and doesn't interact well with either the 3/3 or 5/5, his disposability and powerful sledgehammer attack can still meaningfully contribute to the team and cover up its usual weaknesses.
For Builders team, the joining of Mechanic's skin "Operator" brings certain improvements to the whole synergy's usefulness, because he is the only builder unit that just costs 15 courage, which makes the activation of 2/2 and 3/3 builders synergies much easier, especially in scenes like Skirmish builders main deck and Metro speedruns. However, due to the extremely low chance of the builders 2/2 synergy and its randomness of deployable units, builder Mechanic actually seldom brings obvious and stable changes to common gameplay content such as campaign missions, he can only be very useful in places where players can retry time and time again without cost like Metro and Skirmish.

Bugs

• Due to issues with hit registration, the sledgehammer attack has a number of bugs and gimmicks attached to it, all of which require perfect timing or inexplicable conditions:
  • Mechanic might deal only the regular amount of additional damage to an enemy. It happens when they stand very close to the barricade, and so when Mechanic strikes his blow it registers on barricade first, causing it to deal only x3 damage to all enemies in the AoE either.
  • Chain hits from Mechanic's special ability might end despite him killing an enemy.
  • Mechanic might land a blow with graphic blood splatter appearing per a usual critical hit, but either deal no damage or strike nothing in the first place. In some cases, the latter can lead to him regaining the hammer, as if he actually killed someone with his special unlocked.

Trivia

• Judging by the cutscene in Mission 1, it's possible that the man Bill calls out to as "Joe" is Mechanic, as the area of the mission takes place outside of a vehicle repair shop.
• There is a visual inconsistency with the Christmas Mechanic skin as there is a single frame during Mechanic's additional damage attack where his sleeves will suddenly revert to its regular appearance before immediately returning to the skin's appearance. A single blue pixel is also visible.
• The Christmas Mechanic skin in-game ended up looking different from its appearance in the update banner where it was first shown.
• If he still has his sledgehammer, Mechanic will lose it as soon as he steps into the Bus on level conclusion, as his sprite automatically resets when it happens.

Gallery

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  Mechanic running with his sledgehammer.

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  Mechanic slamming his sledgehammer.

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  Christmas Mechanic running with his sledgehammer.

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  Christmas Mechanic slamming his sledgehammer.

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  Christmas Mechanic as seen in the 3.0.0 update banner.

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  2024 New Year artwork with Christmas Mechanic, Christmas Welder and Christmas Cashier.