Lester

A white-collar worker with a double-barreled shotgun who is trying to save his own life.

## Base Stats

###  Crit. Chance

* 0%
* 50% (With SA)

## Abilities

###  Special Ability

Has a 50% chance to fire both barrels at once, knocking back enemies.

## Firing Pattern

### Ammo Capacity

* 2 (2x5 pellets, base)
* 1 (1x10 pellets, ability)

### Firing Period

* 1.0s (base)
* 0.5s (ability)

## Unlock Requirements

### Price

Reward for opening Christmas cases

 **Lester** is a surviving white-collar worker armed with a double-barreled shotgun and dressed in an orange-red puffy jacket, white collared shirt, brown sweater, brown gloves, black pants, and a brown plaid wool cap.

He can be acquired during the Christmas Event by opening a Christmas case with an extremely low chance of obtaining him.

## Functionality

### Basics

Lester is a **shotgunner**, meaning he will launch a cone of damage upon firing and excels at dealing with weak hordes and single tanky enemies up close.

Lester is a very basic ranged unit. Though costing a low amount of courage and having a relatively short preparation time compared to most other ranged units, he has both low health and bullet damage. His movement speed is also very slow.

Lester fires a break-action at a fast speed, launching a cone of five pellets per shot. He can fire twice before having to perform a quick reload. If approached suddenly or while out of ammo, Lester does a quick but extremely weak melee attack that can crit.

Lester can shoot from two barrels even without special abilities if you give him an item with a chance of crit (but without a special ability, he will not slow down and repel opponents). If Police 2/2 is in effect, he will only consume two of his four ammo. The higher the chance of a crit, the more likely it is that he will shoot from two barrels. After receiving a special ability, it is recommended to take items with critical damage instead of critical chance. This increases the damage dealt by the ability, and it will still fire two barrels.

Some time after dying, Lester will turn into Tipsy.

### Perks and Abilities

Lester is one of the few units to not possess any perks.

At level 13, unlocking Lester's special grants him an extra 50% chance to do a special critical attack, which is separate from his usual crits. This attack can cause knockback, and will temporarily slow enemies down. It's affected by crit. damage boosts, although provides no increase to it itself.

Being able to fire both shots at once does increase Lester's DPS since it halves his firing period, though this does cause him to reload more frequently. The added knockback effect aids in Lester's survivability while also improving his effectiveness at crowd control. Against high health enemies, the pushback is useful for delaying them and buying time for more powerful or suitable units to come deal with the threat. Even if they possess partial or full knockback resistance, this can potentially work in Lester's favor by landing all ten pellets to deal massive damage the closer they get. Overall, his special ability does greatly increase Lester's usefulness and makes him far more viable as he can now provide significantly better support to other units on the battlefield even if it is partially tied to chance. Additionally, his ability is much more effective compared to Farmer's thanks to his faster firing and reload speeds.

## Gameplay

### Main Campaign

Given Lester's lack of perks or resistances, and his inability to hold his own when forced into close quarters, it's important that melee units such as Private Rodriguez or Mechanic are sent out alongside him to take the main fight while he stays back dealing damage and picking off low-health targets. This becomes even more important with bullet-resistant enemies such as Builder and Bulletproof as they will dramatically decrease Lester's effectiveness in combat.

Lester's moderate preparation time and high damage output for the cost makes him viable in most stages of the game prior to the introduction to the Insectoid enemy. This allows him to work great as a main damager for the team until around midgame where his effectiveness wains. His special ability can also make him a highly competent damage dealer as well as supporting melee units' survivability thanks to his much faster firing and reload speeds, especially in comparison to Farmer. All of these strengths make Lester never a burden for the player and acts as a valuable ranged unit, making him overall a good choice for the entirety of the Main Campaign.

However, as said prior, the introduction of the Insectoid can completely negate the strengths of the Lester, as his melee damage is pitiful and his health stat is one of his poorest attributes. Fast enemies such as the Armored Skeleton, while not as dangerous to him compared to Farmer, can still decrease his effectiveness, which occasionally results in him struggling to do anything before dying, making it essential to pair him with either another ranged unit or a fast preparing melee fighter. This in all makes Lester outclassed by Policeman Diaz, as not only do they have similar damage outputs, but Policeman Diaz also has a higher health pool and the melee resistance perk, granting him a much higher survivability. However, while it is helpful to swap out Lester for Policeman Diaz once he is available to hire, pairing them both can also make for a highly formidable force to be reckoned with as Policeman Diaz's unique perk allows him to protect Lester and the combined damage output allow them to deal with most enemies easily, especially when compared to pairing with Farmer.

Lester, as mentioned above, is a direct upgrade of Farmer. Despite not having any changes in terms of stats, Lester's overall DPS is higher thanks to his quicker firing speed and faster reload time compared to Farmer's. It is very helpful but not necessarily essential to replace Farmer with him, if even possible given the seasonal exclusivity of Lester. In fact, pairing them up together allows for a very formidable force against most enemies with their combined firepower and quick preparation times.

### Skirmish

In League, Lester acts as a slightly better version of Farmer. However, the slight increase to firing and reloading speeds barely makes him any more viable as he still shares the same drawbacks as Farmer, those being his poor health and slow movement speed.

### Item Sets

Like most shotgunners, Lester gets best use out of ranged-damage oriented sets, specifically Hunter and Military, with the latter being more preferable if you want to accentuate his crowd control capabilities. Tactical is also a valid option for mid-game, as it allows Lester to properly deal with such threats as Armored Skeleton, Lubber and Sapper. If you somehow manage to acquire him very early on, then 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 the old man faster, and can compensate for lack of bonus damage through regular upgrades since it's available in rare-tier.

After getting his special ability, it's recommended to give Lester a book that boosts critical damage. This will make his ability useful not only from supportive standpoint, but from offensive too. Before being maxed out, Lester can meaningfully benefit from +% Health and +% Crit. chance books, with the former providing more survivability and the latter accentuating his damage potential. However, it must be said that +% Crit. chance books become useless once Lester's SA is unlocked, as that ability fixes it at 50%.

Although he recharges moderately quickly, Lester still benefits from prep. time decreasing watches. If anything, they accentuate his role as a lowkey spawnable ranged unit. It's recommended to go for flat boosts of both ranged dmg, and health instead of percentages, since his base stats are low. +% Crit. dmg. bonuses become especially useful once you unlock Lester's SA, although they are also relevant if you went for a crit. chance book instead of health.

## Skins and Synergies

Lester is a part of the Northerners team.

 Team

In the team above, Lester is never a bad option. He is an essential member to have to provide support damage for his other melee-wielding team. Both the tier-1 and tier-2 synergies pair extremely well with his special ability as the double shot is treated as a critical hit. Lester being able to continuously fire from both barrels as long as at least one enemy is killed per shot makes him extremely powerful. However, the fact that he needs to be level 13 with his special ability unlocked to achieve this makes him a negligible member of the team up until he is able to gain the benefits, although he is a good option overall if one does not have his special ability unlocked.

## Trivia

* Lester's appearance, name, and description are clearly based on Lester Nygaard from the first season of the TV series Fargo.
* Lester is currently one of five units available as a reward from an exclusive event.
	+ Out of all of those units, Lester is the oldest-standing one after Turbo replaced Berserker as a unit reward with the release of the new Halloween Event.
		- Lester is the first unit that could be earned from a Christmas event, the others being Cashier and Red Hood.
* Before update 2.8.2, Lester used to be the only unit with the "Exclusive" rarity level.
* Before update 2.0.3, Lester had a slightly different sprite. The most prominent change was the style of his haircut, which could be seen when he was killed.
* Before the Christmas Event was reworked in update 3.0.0, Lester was obtainable for free in the old version of said event by collecting a set amount of presents throughout all of the player's attempts.
	+ In 2017, the required amount was 1,000 presents, and in 2018, it was lowered to 500.

## Gallery

Lester's corpse prior to update 2.0.3

 Humans
 TMF Squad