Policeman Diaz

* Regular
* Desperado
* Mechanic

A lone wolf.

* Policeman Diaz
* Desperado
* Mechanic Diaz

A lone wolf.

He can be unlocked for 1,250 coins after reaching player level 6.

## Functionality

### Basics

Policeman Diaz is a **heavyweight**, meaning he is a slow but strong unit with high health and knockback resistance. He also functions as a shotgunner, meaning he launches a cone of damage upon firing and excels at dealing with weak hordes and single tanky enemies up close.

Policeman Diaz is a very strong ranged unit, with high health and good ranged damage, although he moves slowly. His preparation time is moderate and has a slighter higher courage cost at 30 in latest version. Notably, his Charisma and Valor are very high.

Policeman Diaz fires a pump-action shotgun at a decent speed. He launches a cone of four pellets per shot. In close quarters, when his gun is empty, he'll alternatively quick load a single shell and fire it. As he doesn't have a proper melee attack, he'll try to shoot like this over and over until either he or his attacker dies. Should he finish reloading, but his attacker is killed by another unit, Policeman Diaz will simply have a single shell in his gun to fire normally.

After dying, Policeman Diaz will turn into Cop if the body is not deposited by burning.

### Perks and Abilities

Policeman Diaz is immune to knockback, and has 50% resistance to melee damage.

At level 13, Policeman Diaz' special ability can be unlocked, granting him a 30% speed bonus to all his actions. This applies to his movement, firing, and reload speeds. The bonus is fairly good as it improves Policeman's overall performance. In older version, this bonus requires a health below half, but it has been since removed thus making the bonus a great investment.

## Gameplay

### Main Campaign

Policeman Diaz is often considered the single best unit to use throughout the entire campaign. This is mostly thanks to his melee resistance and his nature as a shotgunner. Nearly all enemies in the game rely on melee damage and have to get close, where he then has an advantage. He is one of the few rangers who can easily deny special abilities from Insectoids/Demons, and the only one capable of surviving a Charged Zombie's attack, even without any upgrades. Policeman's tankiness becomes even greater if he is supported by a Medkit due to his already high health.

Aside from his good survivability, Diaz's appeal also lies in his playability. Moderate preparation time and courage cost make him easy to send out, meaning he is able to provide meaningful support relatively often. He is only superseded in such area by Lester and Farmer, which can accumulate DPS better but are fragile, though he can come close to them with his ability. It is often worthwhile to pair him with either Farmer/Lester, given both of their cheap courage costs and high DPS.

Like the majority of shotgunners, Policeman works well in both defensive and offensive roles. However, the latter is done worse than the former, since he has slightly slow reload speed, and his single burst damage is lower than of his colleagues. Nonetheless, it's a marginal downside in practice.

### Skirmish

In League, Policeman's modest courage cost, high health, and fairly useful melee resistance makes him an alright choice for Skirmish. His unique resistance combined with his high HP make him able to survive Carol's charging attack and potentially tank Mechanic's sledgehammer. With Carol, in particular, he can bait her into an unfavorable position with health to spare, allowing him or other ranged units to easily kill her. In general, he acts as a strong meat shield against most enemy melees, but can have trouble against them should they posses bullet resistance. What's worse, he lacks that perk himself, and has slow movement speed, ultimately becoming vulnerable to opposing rangers. Policeman's special rarely comes into play there as it only takes effect after losing half of his total health. Due to this, he's likely to be killed before the bonus can do anything. In this respect, players may want to consider the more expensive Ranger as a shotgunner due to his bullet resistance and higher speed.

### Items

Like most shotgunners, Diaz can meaningfully benefit from every ranged-damage oriented item set, be it Hunter or Military, with the latter being especially useful if you want to accentuate his crowd control capabilities. Tactical is also a valid option for mid-game, as it allows him to properly deal with such threats as Armored Skeleton, Lubber and Sapper. During early game, Adventurer and Startup are both valid options, with the former being more preferable thanks to its damage boost; although the latter might be more appealing if you want to make Diaz faster, and can compensate for lack of bonus damage through regular upgrades since it's one tier higher than Adventurer.

Although +% Health books are preferable for all rangers, Diaz benefits from them more than anyone else, as they accentuate his role as a damage sponge in late game. However, it's still acceptable to use +% Crit. chance / Ranged dmg. instead, as they allow him to deal even more damage. It must be said, though, that the latter works best only when Diaz is close to being maxed out.

Diaz benefits most from flat damage boosts, while his health could benefit from either flats at lower levels, or percentages at higher ones. Preparation time watches are the better option as usual, especially since Policeman has high base agility.

## Skins and Synergies

Policeman, along some of his skins, is a part of several teams: Police, and Mechanics.

 Team

In all of the above teams, Policeman Diaz is usually a good option. Thanks to his very high survivability, he can keep the "three unique units" requirement fulfilled for a long time. This is especially important for Mechanics, since most others are pretty frail and suicidal. However, Diaz is not as great for abusing their 2/2 power as Redneck and Mechanic, and players might prefer to bring Welder for the 3/3 team instead, since Welder works better with the Turrets.

Diaz is more notable in Police team, because together with Charlotte they can enable a very powerful 2/2 synergy that benefits ranged units (including themselves) and Turret without players having to spend any green cash. The 3/3 synergy accenuates his role as a ranged tank by giving him shield points, and the 5/5 synergy boosts him with Fury, dramatically increasing the amount of fire he could deliver.

## Trivia

* Policeman Diaz was initially referred to as just "Policeman" and his name wasn't given until much later on.
* Before obtaining melee resistance, Policeman had a different sprite. His attack rate was much slower, and he had a very weak melee attack that does 2 damage.
* There is a bug where if Diaz runs out ammo and moves to faces an enemy at melee range, he will stand still and do absolutely nothing, occasionally saying lines relating to low agility, similar to Dr. Kane.
	+ This was due to a previous bug where he would repeatedly perform his alternate reload animation without firing due to his melee counting as his quick reload animation. In a hotfix leading up to the release of 3.9.0, this was "patched" but instead resulted in him remaining completely still when enemies are next to him, so in effect this bug was never fixed.
* Desperado skin enables a bug that causes Diaz to reload only one shell, yet be able to fire four shots as normal, effectively decreasing his reload time by 75%.
	+ Oddly, this bug was fixed in a patch after its introduction, but returned in the very next update. It's still debated whether this is an error that developers continue to ignore, or is an intentional feature that was reintroduced because of Desperado skin lacking a faction.
* It is likely that Policeman is using a Mossberg 590 Nightstick, due to the wooden stock and pump of his weapon. While the Remington 870 TAC-14 Hardwood is another possibility, the Mossberg is a more likely choice as it is the only pump-action shotgun to pass the military’s Mil-Spec 3443E test.
* Policeman Diaz, Cap, and Dr. Kane are the only units who have unique speech bubble dialog in-game. Diaz will repeatedly shout "!@!#?" when his Special Ability is active.

## Gallery

Policeman's sprite prior to update 2.4.0Policeman's old melee attack.

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