Builder Abby

* Ranged
* Melee
* Ranged (Mechanic)
* Melee (Mechanic)

"She always loved wild shooting."

###  Special Ability

Does not drop her gun after taking damage and will fire it for the full duration.

## Unlock Requirements

### Player Level

13

* Builder Abby
* Abby

 **Builder Abby** is a heavy weapons user armed with a belt-fed minigun and a carpenter hammer, and dressed in a gray tank top, black pants, a brown belt, dark gray gloves, yellow ear defenders, and safety glasses. She carries a green ammo backpack. She sports an undercut and has some of her hair wrapped in a bun on the back of her head.

 **Abby** is Builder Abby's first exclusive skin. She is armed with a belt-fed minigun and a carpenter hammer and dressed in a light grey shirt underneath a pair of blue mechanic coveralls, a utility belt with pouches, dark-tinted aviator sunglasses, and a black headband. She has tattoos on both of her arms. Her hair now reaches neck height and is orange in color.

She can be unlocked for 28,000 coins after reaching player level 12.

## Functionality

### Basics

She is a damager, meaning she will attack enemies and the barricade at close range. She is also a shooter, meaning she shoots a weapon with a high rate of fire that excels at crowd control and dealing a lot of damage in quick bursts.

As a damager, she her stats are unusually low, with her health being the lowest among all melee units as well as her melee damage (The latter is tied to the unit Redneck). Her ranged damage is surprisingly high. She moves at an average pace. She delivers her melee attack slowly. She has an incredibly expensive courage cost, but has a moderate preparation time.

Some time after dying, Abby will turn into her namesake zombie.

### Perks and Abilities

Builder Abby has a high-rate-of-fire perk when she has her minigun. When encountering an enemy, she will open fire after a small start up animation, dealing damage at a very fast rate for up to five seconds. Once finished and she runs out of ammo, Abby will drop the minigun and act like a regular melee unit. If she does not encounter an enemy while carrying the minigun, she will stop some distance away from the barricade until an enemy is in range. However, she will drop the minigun prematurely if she gets damaged regardless the amount, cancelling the attack entirely.

Abby's minigun has a special interaction with Military set's bonus. If it triggers, then it won't release two bullets in a single shot. Instead, it will make Abby fire an extra bullet after the shot that triggered the effect. This has a side effect of extending the total time she spends firing.

She has a special AI script where if there is a Fat Zombie near her and she isn't currently fighting anything, she will target it and ignore other zombies.

Upon reaching level 13, Abby's special ability can be unlocked, preventing her from dropping her minigun when taking damage. It is more prominent in skirmish than the main campaign due to the prevalence of enemy ranged units. However, the benefit of unlocking it can still be seen in the main game due to existence of Insectoids.

## Gameplay

### Main Campaign

Abby's uses are versatile: offensive, defensive, and supportive uses allow her to easily mow down hordes of defenseless enemies, be sent out ahead of time to serve as a defensive unit to cover other units, and eliminate any particularly dangerous and/or high health enemies. Thanks to her insane fire rate and her high base values, Abby is still able to deal a significant amount of damage against most bullet-resistant enemies.

However, in practice, many of Abby's flaws are apparent. While the ranged attack itself is very powerful, Abby turns into one of the weakest melee units in the game afterwards, with low health and pitifully low melee damage, making her unable to deal with anything and essentially a dead weight past Stage 3, even with the highest stats possible. It is also worth mentioning that without her special ability unlocked, Abby's ranged attack can be canceled if she is damaged, meaning that a stray bullet or hit from a Runner (or any other fast zombie) can negate the attack entirely. Due to this, it is recommended that Abby has unit to be shielded by before she is deployed. It also doesn't help that her namesake zombie is just as dangerous as Insectoid, a huge downside in general.

All of the aforementioned flaws simply show Abby's lacking playability, as in actuality, she can be the most powerful ranged unit in the game in certain situations and/or with decks that can mitigate her weaknesses. Although she has a rather short firing duration of 5 seconds, upgrading Abby's ranged damage and equipping her with a certain item sets will allow her to deal with the vast majority of the end-game threats easily, capable of shredding hordes of high health, bullet-resistant zombies alarmingly quickly, even more so than the versatile stationary unit, Turret.

Abby and Turret have very similar roles in a team, with nearly identical ranged attack pattern. The differences between these two stems from two main differences, Abby has a much higher base damage and is a human unit, meaning she has significantly higher damage output potential, while Turret has a much longer firing duration. While Abby has the more damaging of the two attacks, Abby can only use her ranged attack once as opposed to Turret being able to fire for a few times. For missions that tend to take much longer to complete, Turret can prove to be a preferable choice, while Abby excels in dealing massive burst DPS. However, it should be noted though that Turret does not get canceled in its attack when damaged unlike Abby, therefore making it a more consistent and reliable option.

### Skirmish

In League, Abby can prove to be an amazing unit thanks to her highly devastating ranged attack, being the sole ranged unit capable of potentially swiftly taking out bullet resistant units with ease and possibly killing any non-resistant units behind the formation. And when using the Tactical item set, she can wipe entire teams in the blink of an eye. Since Skirmish matches are very fast-paced and rarely ever last more than 10-20 seconds anyway, her main weakness of only firing for 5 seconds doesn't matter. She doesn't need more ammo since she can easily end matches before it becomes a problem. Her remaining glaring flaws do carry over, though. Being miserable health, extreme courage cost and delayed response against enemies. Stray bullets or shotgun pellets from enemy ranged units may occasionally hit her, likely resulting in her death, cutting off her ranged attack short. Which is why she needs a big tank like Soldier or Juggernaut to protect her long enough for her to fire. Grenadier's grenade attack can easily kill her if her health is not above 160, and Queen's grenade attack can even finish her if she's above 160 health, with her special ability's incendiary grenades. While Abby finds success in teams specifically built around her, cheaper ranged units are more effective outside of that.

### Item Sets

Like most ranged units, Abby's choice of an item set comes down to Military and Hunter. The latter is the safest option as usual, allowing Abby to deal 350-450 single shot damage on average when she's maxed out, and even reaching numbers above 600 for the farthest targets. Military serves as an extended crowd control alternative, due to the way it affects Abby's firing period, effectively extending it. It won't allow her to deal the same level of damage as Hunter, instead shifting her role into a supportive direction, keeping the battlefield in her control for 1-1.5 seconds longer.

If you are planning on using Abby exclusively in skirmish then there's no point in upgrading her melee damage at all. However, if you *are* interested in trying her in PvE then a melee knife is a better choice, since it allows her to do at least some damage once the minigun runs out of ammo. Although, aiming for extra buffs to melee damage is still a bad decision. Instead, the best extra buffs for her are +% ranged damage, and flat health. The latter is important to her because of a need to tank grenades in skirmish, and handle Insectoids in main game. +% Ranged dmg. book is a must, as it increases Abby's minigun's damage massively.

As usual, prep. time watches are the best choice due to Abby's moderately long cooldown. But if you are only ever planning to use her in Skirmish then it's acceptable to give her an agility watch instead. Cost reduction can prove to be a helpful bonus for her, but it comes with a trade off of missing out on extra buffs to her damage, while still keeping Abby pretty expensive, so going overboard with it is a risky tactic.

## Skins and Synergies

Builder Abby, along with her respective skins, is a part of several teams: Builders and Mechanics.

 Team

In all of the above teams, Abby is a sub-par option. In Builders team, she does not benefit much from any synergies due to her generally short lifespan, her lackluster performance as a melee unit as well as her incredibly high courage cost. On the other hand, in Mechanics team, she is an acceptable option, with the 3/3 synergy combined with Redneck and Mechanic in the deck, she can make for a powerful damage support in tandem with Turret should it spawn through the synergy.

## Trivia

* Builder Abby, from her general design to her name, is a reference to Abby Anderson from *The Last of Us Part II*, whose reference individual is a bodybuilder.
* Due to being classified as a damager, Builder Abby is considered a melee unit. This means she can be used to fulfill the task "Complete a mission with no ranged units".
* Abby, Austin, and Dr. Kane are the only three non-Shooters to possess the High-Rate-of-Fire perk.
* In update 3.8.1, there was a bug with Abby where she would fire infinitely if she activates the Gambling item set bonus. This was fixed in the following 3.8.2 update.
* The "Abby" skin is a reference to the character Beefcake Kitty from a movie Grown Ups 2.

## Gallery

Builder Abby seen in Update 3.3.0 trailer along with other added units.

 Humans
 TMF Squad