Sonya

* Marines
* Northerners
* College

A natural fighter with honed combat skills. Has a deadly signature move.

###  Special Ability

Ranged damage is increased by 2 for every 250 points of Charisma all allied units in the battlefield

## Unlock Requirements

### Player Level

11

* Sonya
* Winter Sonya
* Cheerleader

 **Sonya** is a Navy SEAL armed with a TEC-DC9 and dressed in a light gray tank top, blue gloves, urban camo pants, and a black baseball cap. Some of her hair is kept in a braided ponytail.

 **Winter Sonya** is Sonya's first exclusive skin. She is armed with a TEC-DC9 and dressed in a black coat, a dark beige sweater, brown pants, black boots, a red scarf, and a red and white poof ball knit cap. She carries a large brown rucksack with a dangling yellow charm. Her hair is kept in a side braid.

 **Cheerleader** is Sonya's second exclusive skin.

She can be unlocked for 12,500 coins after reaching player level 11.

## Functionality

### Basics

Sonya is a shooter, meaning she uses a weapon with a high rate of fire that excels at crowd control and dealing a lot of damage in quick bursts.

Sonya is a strong ranged unit overall, boasting high health and good movement speed, but has low damage. She has a long preparation time, but has an average courage cost.

In close quarters, she will either deliver fast, multiple combo punches or a jump spin hook kick for a critical hit. These melee attacks do decent damage for a ranged unit's melee attack. It's also notable that, unlike most other ranged units in close quarters, she will prioritize using her melee attacks instead of continuously shooting until their ammo runs out.

Sonya fires her gun in six-round bursts up to two times before performing a fast reload.

### Perks and Abilities

Sonya has a high-rate-of-fire perk, which is merely a label of her design as a unit. She also has a knockback perk, which is delivered in a form of a jump spin hook kick when in melee range, this is counted as her critical melee attack, as well as her “deadly signature move."

At level 13, Sonya's special ability can be unlocked, increasing her main damage by 2 for every 250 points of Charisma of all units on the battlefield. This means multiple ranged units can help benefit Sonya in increasing her own damage or even spamming multiple units such as Private Rodriguez to temporarily increase Sonya's damage. Players can also use Juggernaut along with her thanks to his very high base Charisma and towering health, which combined with his slow movement speed, it ensures that he would stay in the field much longer. Another great pair with Sonya is the "College" team power 3/3, which increases the Charisma by 100%, this can be great when paired with Sonya as it can considerably increase her own damage without too much investment.

Despite the minimal amount of damage increase from her special ability, it does not make the ability any less useful thanks to its ease of use as well as having high versatility, making it a great ability to unlock.

## Gameplay

### Main Campaign

Sonya is a great ranged unit as she has relatively strong base stats and a powerful weapon that fires fast and reloads faster, granting her exceptionally high DPS. Thanks to her unique melee attacks and knockback perk, she is also capable of standing her ground in close quarters despite lacking any resistances. As mentioned above, since her “deadly signature move” causes knockback, it creates the space between her and enemies and giving her enough distance to potentially shoot them down before they recover. This makes Sonya a great choice for missions where Insectoid can be encountered as her knockback can keep it away after pouncing, and quickly retaliate with her firearm.

Sonya’s uses are rather versatile, being able to be used offensively and defensively. Although she may perform as the latter better due to her short firing duration as well as boasting the aforementioned unique melee attacks. Nonetheless, if used offensively, she will perform adequately.

Despite having fast movement and attack speeds, Sonya is far from being a perfect ranged unit as she is still vulnerable to being overwhelmed by her own. It certaily doesn't help she turns into a nasty zombie when slain. She is best paired up with tanky or fast melee units for her to support as they can keep fast and/or dangerous enemies from reaching her too quickly and take the main fight with them. She also shouldn't be the only ranged unit brought during the missions due to her long preparation time. As such, having other ranged units is highly beneficial and recommended, especially towards the later stages of the game.

### Skirmish

In League, Sonya is a decent pick thanks to her modest courage cost, high health, high rate of fire, and good movement speed, making her a versatile ranged unit. As her speed and power demonstrates, she is good for aggressive team compositions and laying the pressure on bullet-resistant enemy units, even more so if she is well protected by her own bullet-resistant allies to protect her while she does so. With enough upgrades to her health, she can and will survive Grenadier's grenade attack. However, since Sonya lacks bullet resistance, she’s vulnerable against enemy ranged units. While her above-average health and fast damage output can usually help her fight off non-resistant enemy ranged units, most bullet-resistant ones can still easily outlive and kill her. Both Sniper Polina and Sheriff Charlotte can easily pick her off from a distance before she can retaliate. All in all, Sonya is a fairly strong choice and works adequately for most teams.

### Item Sets

Like any HRoF unit, Sonya benefits most from Hunter set, as it allows her to deal massive consistent damage. Military is a viable alternative in case you want to give her some crowd control capabilities. Most other sets are usually not recommended, since they don't really compensate Sonya's playstyle, or fail to bring her to the fullest potential.

Sonya benefits most from flat boosts for damage. Percentages are only effective for health, but can prove to be more effective than flats when she is near-maxed out. Being a ranged unit, a prep. time watch is the best option for Sonya. However, it's also important to upgrade her agility to at least 80 through extra buffs, otherwise she will struggle to defend herself at close quarters. This can be avoided by using her as a member of a 3/3 or 5/5 Marine team, but if you want to use her in Northerners then agility can't be ignored.

Among books, +% crit. chance proves to be the best option, as it allows Sonya to do spin kicks more often, effectively increasing her defensive abilities, while also allowing her to deal a little extra damage with ranged shots. +% Health can work too, especially thanks to Sonya's decent health pool, but it'll still leave it necessary for another unit to watch her back. Boosting Sonya's melee damage through extra buffs is acceptable but not necessary, and definitely shouldn't be focused on.

## Skins and Synergies

Sonya, along with her skin, is part of the following teams: Marines and Northerners.

 Team

In the Marines team, Sonya is a perfect match for Private Rodriguez for the sake of activating the 2/2 power, acting as the most reliable teammate for the synergy activation, while also being available without spending green cash. She is also one of the few units who can meaningfully benefit from higher tiers of Marines' powers, because of her low agility, but like for everyone else, the ultimate effect these powers have on her is negligible.

In the Northerners team, Sonya acts as a good filler for activating the team's 3/3 power. She isn't able to properly benefit from Northerners' synergies due to being a ranged unit with the only natural critical tied to a melee attack, all while lacking crit. damage. However, it's still acceptable to use her even for 2/2, if she comes alongside Lester. This duo will still display a formidable performance, and you will have more freedom with choosing a melee unit, without a need to stick to Glenn.

## Trivia

* Sonya is one of two members of the Navy, the other being Private Rodriguez.
* Sonya, from her general design to her name, is a reference to Sonya Blade from the Mortal Kombat fighting game franchise.
* Sonya's weapon of choice is either an Intratec TEC-9, a semi automatic pistol variant of the Swedish Interdynamic MP-9 submachine gun, converted to be full-auto or the MP-9 itself.
	+ This weapon choice for her is exceedingly peculiar as the full-auto TEC-9/MP-9 has never been adopted by any militaries or made in large quantities to be used by any law enforcement agencies. Given the circumstances of the game, it is likely used due to a lack of alternatives.
* When Sonya uses her punch combo, her gun will suddenly be attached to her by a sling which can only be seen very briefly. Oddly enough, for Winter Sonya, both the sling and gun are nowhere to be found.
* Sonya, Pepper, and Specops all have the distinction of being the only three ranged units in the game who prioritize using their melee attack in close quarters combat, as other ranged units will fire at point blank range, only using their melee if approached very suddenly, or if they run out of ammo. This was likely done since all three of them have knockback on their melee attacks, and they wouldn't be getting good use out of the perk if they acted like any other ranged unit.

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