Welder

* Regular
* Christmas

A garage welding kit comes in handy even in the apocalypse.

* Welder
* Christmas Welder

 **Welder** is a handyman armed with a cutting torch attached to a red acetylene tank by a black hose, and dressed in a black t-shirt, brown welding gloves, a blue welding apron, black pants, and a welder's mask. When making repairs, he wields a silver nut wrench in his free hand.

**Christmas Welder** is Welder's first exclusive skin. He is armed with a cutting torch attached to a red acetylene tank by a candy cane-patterned hose, and dressed in a green and white Christmas elf tunic with white buttons, a black belt with a yellow buckle, yellow pants, brown welding gloves, pointed shoes, and a pointed green hat with a single yellow stripe and a small red feather. When making repairs, he wields a silver nut wrench in his free hand.

He has a unique attacking animation.

He can be unlocked for 3,200 coins after reaching player level 9.

## Functionality

### Basics

Welder is a support, meaning he provides assistance to his teammates with special abilities and/or by dealing extra damage.

Welder is a fragile unit due to his extremely low health, though makes up for it with his very high movement speed. Welder also possesses high base damage and somewhat fast attack speed. However, these can't be considered significant upsides, since he can't defend himself.

Even though he is a non-psycho class human unit, Welder's price is valued in rage points instead of courage. He boasts an extreme preparation time and cost, both of which are the highest in the game.

### Perks

Welder is immune to fire damage.

Welder is unable to attack enemies. Instead, he will weave through them and go straight for the barricade in order to attack it. While he does his best to avoid all zombies in his path, this is usually negated if he runs into a large crowd or when facing enemies with a fast attack speed or knockback. When Welder is affected by fear, he may pause before beginning to attack the barricade. The inspiration buff has no effect on his attack speed, but it does makes it easier for him to dodge enemies.

When sent out of the bus, Welder will heal it and some rage items on field, should they be damaged. He will repair the bus for up to 5% of its maximum health, and Turrets and Generators for 30% of theirs. He will *not* target Empty Barrels, Red Barrels, or Nitrogen. He repairs objects by running towards them and applying multiple healing pulses during a special animation. Once Welder has tagged all objects he could find, he will then proceed to the barricade.

When killed, Welder does not turn into a zombie. Instead, he explodes immediately, producing an explosion and a fire pool.

At level 13, Welder's special ability can be unlocked, giving all Turrets and Generators repaired by him shield points equal to 30% of his health. Since Welder's own health is rather poor to begin with, this only serves as a one-off protection for damaged Turrets so they can absorb an extra hit from a Demon, Charged Zombie, Insectoid, or miscallaneous threats. Despite the extra layer of protection maybe proving to be useful, this Special simply doesn't improve Welder enough to be a good investment.

## Gameplay

### Main Campaign

While Welder's unique abilities may sound promising, he has some significant problems that make him an almost unusable unit. His 90 second preparation time means usually no more than one Welder can be deployed per mission, and when you do, his high cost of 50 rage makes it difficult to send him. Should you struggle with securing a 3-star completion, 2/2 Mechanic synergy is a much easier option to use, as it heals the bus by 5% every time a mechanic is spawned and usually runs the spammable Redneck. It doesn't help that Turrets and Generators, the very objects Welder tries to support, are also expensive, meaning he competes for the rage pool with them, and you have better means of supporting them anyways.

However, should you decide to fully commit to him, it is possible to get something out of Welder's abilities. He can be efficiently utilized in some missions by making sure that ranged units cover him, and that he is protected with barrels in front of him to stall approaching enemies. He can also be very useful in supply runs that generate enough rage to field him as he can tear down the supply stack before the wave is even killed. In the case where you have no other units to deal damage, the fact he sprints ahead of everyone else means only other sprinting threats from the left can attack him if they spawn in the right place, giving him more than enough time to finish the job. It’s recommended to use 4 items with -2 cost to ensure you can use him reliably. Also his guaranteed turret if you bring two other mechanics can really help as well. Precise positioning is required, else Welder will get killed or enemies will ignore it. Unsurprisingly, both Turret and Generator are even better options for cover, but they are also the most expensive, which means that Welder should be sent out when the rage meter is practically full. Using Fury is a good idea, as it can make his output higher.

Despite this, Welder's usability is bound to taper off, as his overall poor disposability makes him nigh impossible to use. Even cheaper, more disposable units could do much greater damage. The likes of Energy Spheres completely invalidate his effectiveness.

### Skirmish

Considering that he can't attack anyone directly, when put into a League fight Welder will just run straight into the enemy team. This effectively makes him a suicide bomber with an unreliable success rate. While this strategy can be used for gimmicky setups, it's hard to ignore Welder's very high cost crippling formations, even if his gimmicky quirks could potentially distract Shooters, Shotgunners or Snipers because of his high movement speed he would certainly pose as a good distraction, the fact alone that it is unreliable makes Welder mostly bad in PvP.

### Item Sets

Because of him only attacking the barricade, majority of item sets have no effect on Welder's gameplay. Surprisingly, the best option for him is Hunter as it provides a massive ~40% boost to damage against barricade due to shenanigans with its hitbox. SwissMade is a serviceable alternative but not nearly as good. For mid-game, Builder is one of the better options, even though it's tied to RNG. Chef works too, though it requires Welder to fix some items on his way to have any meaningful impact.

Even though upgrading Welder's stats might sound hopeless, they still shouldn't be neglected if the player is planning to continuously use him, at least as a member of Mechanics. Flat boosts to health are the most valuable of all bonuses, and +% Melee dmg. becomes very useful at Welder's higher levels too. Among books, +% Melee dmg. is the best option. +% Health might be useful if one is desperate for any form of extra protection for him, but in most cases it doesn't help much. Prep. time watches are the best option for an obvious reason.

Gentleman set is unusable on Welder due to the fact that he only targets the barricade, which itself can't take critical damage and therefore will not register one for the set bonus.

## Skins and Synergies

Welder is a part of Mechanic team.

Since Mechanics' 3/3 power is directly tied to Welder (100% chance to produce a Turret on spawn), he is recommended to be used for this synergy alongside Mechanic Diaz/Sniper and Hillbilly. However, if you only have one of these proper ranged units you will be forced to send either of them, Hillbilly and then immediately deploy Welder which can be outright unsustainable. It can be a better idea to run Mechanic/Sniper instead of him, if possible, and only occasionally bring Welder, as otherwise his suicidal behavior does more harm than good and can outweigh the benefits of his Turret spawn if Hillbilly does it better.

## Trivia

* Welder is tied with Turbo for having the fastest movement speed in the game among all units.
* Welder has the lowest base health among all units in the game.
* Before obtaining the ability to repair things, Welder had a different sprite.
* In Dead Ahead: Quarantine, Welder used to be available earlier on at rank 7.
* The Christmas Welder skin in-game ended up looking different from its appearance in the update banner where it was first shown.

## Gallery

Welder's sprite prior to update 2.8.1Welder's as seen in the 3.0.0 update banner.

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