Chopper

* Regular
* Psychos
* Rednecks
* Police

Woodcutting skills are still useful to this day. Can heal 50% of his health while eating.

## Base Stats

###  Health

* 120/414
* 538 (With SA)

### Special

* Self-healing: 15/52
* Self-healing pulses: 4
* Food recharge: 60s

## Abilities

### Perks

 Non-documented:

* Knockback resistance
* Fear resistance

## Unlock Requirements

### Player Level

Any

* Chopper
* Clown Chopper
* Rural Chopper
* Mountie

 **Chopper** is a lumberjack who uses his woodcutting skills for survival in the apocalypse. He is armed with a woodcutting ax and dressed in a red and black plaid short-sleeved shirt, blue pants, gray gloves, and a red cap. He sports a blonde beard. When healing, he pulls out a labeled can of food.

 **Clown Chopper** is Chopper's first exclusive skin. He is armed with a double-sided ax and dressed in a gray short-sleeve clown suit with red buttons, a ruffled white collar, and gray gloves. He sports a blonde beard, his face is painted with red and white clown makeup, and his hair sticks out towards the sides with ends resembling horns. When healing, he pulls out a labeled can of tomato soup.

Clown Chopper has a different idle animation.

 **Rural Chopper** is Chopper's second exclusive skin. He is armed with a woodcutting ax and dressed in a white T-shirt, blue overalls, and a yellow wide-brimmed hat. He has a piece of straw in his mouth. He now sports a brown beard. When healing, he pulls out a labeled can of food.

 **Mountie** is Chopper's third exclusive skin. He is dressed in the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with a Mountie Hat on his head.

He is a star reward, obtained for free when players collect 80 stars.

## Functionality

### Basics

Chopper is a **heavyweight**, meaning he is a slow but strong unit with high health and knockback resistance. He is also a damager, meaning he will attack enemies and the barricade at close range while excelling at inflicting large amounts of raw damage to high health targets.

Chopper is a lumbering but strong melee unit, with huge base health and good damage. However, his movement and attack speeds are sluggish. Both his courage cost and preparation time are some of the highest in the whole game. He boasts very high amount of Charisma and Valor.

Some time after dying, Chopper will turn into Ram.

### Perks and Abilities

Chopper has a manual ability that heals him for up to 50% of his max health provided if his current health is below that number. Once used, Chopper stands still as his health recovers in four healing pulses. This ability has a cooldown of 60 seconds.

Full knockback resistance prevents Chopper from being pushed entirely.

Chopper's attacks knock enemies back on critical hits.

Upon reaching level 13, Chopper's special ability can be unlocked, which boosts his health by 30%.

## Gameplay

### Main Campaign

Chopper is a powerful melee unit for low-medium level players once he's unlocked thanks to his huge base health and high damage. He has a slightly longer range of attack and knocks enemies back with every hit, which compensates for his slow attack speeds. Enemy attacks are also unable to push him around. This makes him suitable as a tank against a small horde of enemies or a strong one that can knock the units back, notably Ram and One-armed Soldier.

Despite his strengths, Chopper quickly becomes unviable, mostly due to his lack of any useful damage resistances, a common disadvantage most heavyweights have. While his healing ability is good on paper, it is impractical and largely inefficient as the time it takes for him to heal is enough to get him killed, to the point where support from Medkits would be preferred, not to mention the 60-second cooldown. His slow attack and movement speeds, the fact that he turns into a dangerous zombie on death, and minute-long preparation time end up hindering his overall effectiveness to the point players would rather use disposable fighters or damagers instead.

### Skirmish

In League, he is one of the worst units to use in any level of Skirmish due to a multitude of reasons. His awfully slow movement makes him a slow and easy target for all ranged units. His lack of any useful resistances renders his very high health almost worthless. His manual healing ability activates automatically at half-health, and is mostly useless as it will make him both target practice and a punching bag for enemy units who can easily negate any healing he does, likely leading to his death since he can't retaliate while standing still to heal. All of his attacks are very slow, making it difficult for him to land even a single hit. His high courage cost hinders team composition. Finally, his special ability, if unlocked, is useless as any damage increase will hardly be able to make a difference in any and all cases. At best, he can serve as a unit in only the lowest levels of skirmishing since there, his role as a tank may at least be of use against low-level enemy ranged units and actually being capable of fighting some enemy melee units competently enough.

### Item Sets

The only currently viable set for Chopper is either Surgery or Big Boy, both taking advantage of his higher HP and survivability than any other unit in the game. Big Boy however, is more appealing, as it can boost Chopper's damage by up to 45% at a maximum HP increase with use of substats, which is also beneficial as it encourages the user to take advantage of Choppers one and only strong aspect, his health.

For obvious reasons, preparation time watches are the best choice for Chopper. For any item however, %Health and +Health increases are extremely beneficial, though %Health increases work better with his large HP pool. Otherwise, %Melee Damage increases are ideal, as focusing on crits with Chopper will result in multiple extremely sluggish attacks just making him more vulnerable than anything.

## Skins and Synergies

Chopper, along with his respective skins, is a part of several teams: Northerners, Psychos, and Rednecks.

 Team

Because of his generally bad performance, Chopper can be safely considered a mediocre option in all of the above teams. He doesn't benefits a lot from Northerner's powers, meanwhile in Rednecks his extreme preparation time seriously hinders Chopper's potential to abuse the first two synergies. He is also not too good with Psychos, however the "budget" 2/2 team of him and Red Hood can be surprisingly efficient if used with rage abilities like Turret, Medkit, and Generator. He also fits well for the role of team filler for the 3/3 power, in case the player doesn't wants to use Queen alongside Berserker and Saw.

## Trivia

* Before version 3.6.3, Chopper's special ability increased his damage by 5% each kill. Given the proper conditions, Chopper's damage can skyrocket to the extent where he can one shot barricades and bosses like Marauder Vehicle/Cephalopods.
* In the game files, the frames related to Chopper's healing ability is referred to as "tomato," suggesting he is eating a canned tomato product.
	+ The overall design of Chopper's can, while much simpler in appearance, is fairly similar to an unused tomato can item in the game files.
* The Clown Chopper skin is a reference to It, known more popularly as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, from Stephen King's 1986 horror novel of the same name. Its design, in particular, is inspired by the recent film adaptations of the novel.
* Chopper's Clown skin features and shows his eyes being visible. While Dead Ahead's artstyle has every human character's eyes hidden in some way, mostly through headgear or hair making a shadow over the eyes, Clown Chopper breaks this format, which means he has the only visible eyes in the entire game. (Entire series, if you count the original Dead Ahead, and don't count the close-up portraits, only the in-game sprites)
* Before update 2.7.0, Chopper had to be purchased with coins. The bus had to be level 4, and his price was 350 coins.
* During the 3.7.4 Update, Chopper's ability cooldown was accidentally removed in a bug, allowing him to heal indefinitely under ideal circumstances. This got fixed soon after.
* One of his old Special Abilities, gaining 5% damage for every 150 health points, was recycled for the Big Boy item set.
* Chopper currently has the highest base Health stat in the game combined with his SA.

## Gallery

Chopper's prerelease spriteChopper's sprite prior to update 1.4.3Chopper eating.Clown Chopper eating.Clown Chopper's unique idle animation.Chopper as seen in a Christmas preview image alongside Runner and Fast ZombieSheriff Charlotte and Chopper in the Christmas update teaser image.

 Humans
 TMF Squad