History AwesomeButImpractical / DeadAheadZombieWarfare

* [[StuffBlowingUp Queen]] acts as a side-grade to Grenadier, carrying a grenade launcher that allows her to fire explosives with a shorter delay. The problem is that her inferior stats are ''that'' much of a downside since there's still a big chance that some zombie will manage to come close to her. And when it comes to Skirmish and the Marauders, two things Grenadier excels in/against, her lack of bullet resistance really cripples her. It doesn't help that outright spamming her launcher will lead to friendly casualties, and isn't that much of an efficient strategy to start with.

* Welder repairs the bus by a small amount, repairs all the Turrets and Generators on the battlefield, and then dodges and weaves through all the enemies to directly target the barrier. He might seem like a great utility and support unit, his upsides barely mean much. Mechanic 2/2 is frankly easier to get, and repairs the bus better than Welder can. Turrets and Generators are good rage items on their own and don’t need the support, and while he can end missions early with his barrier targeting, he both has the lowest base health in the game among your units and can’t attack enemies or defend himself in any other way, meaning he’s very easy to catch out and will always die in one hit. All of this for waiting through his 45-90 seconds of prepare time, and costing 50 whole Rage Points.

* The Agents are two units for the price of one, created for preparing and clearing out the battlefield in the beginning. They start each mission instantly ready to deploy, and have suppressed pistols to not draw the attention of idle zombies. On paper, they can clear out any problematic zombie waiting on the battlefield without opposition. The problem is that, since this is their entire purpose, the Agents lose most of their special abilities after the first 20 seconds or so of a mission, as they become irrelevant. But to add salt to the wound, the later missions start out with enemies like Slobs, Putrids, and Cranks, who are too tanky for Agents to reliably take out. The only point in their favor is their special ability which saves slots for police synergies.

* Jailer 3/3 lets all the Jailers have a 25% chance to stun on melee crit. It's an alright ability in practice, but the selection of units chosen for it is one of the worst imaginable. The most obvious sign is that Jailers have only two melee units (Guard/Jailer), and Jailer already has access to stunning crits. Ranged units can do melee bashes too, but Sniper and Gunslinger are as good as dead if it comes to this, and Willy's shield won't last long, combined with the fact that his taser was literally made to stun on every hit, from a distance. In the end, this ability is nothing more than a slight bonus to Guard, which isn't even worth keeping 3 Jailers alive for, since he has slow attack speed.

* The Toxic Lab Military Forces’ (TMF) 5/5 has every unit have a 50% chance to decrease in cost by 5 whenever a TMF member comes out of the bus. This was obviously too slow to make a difference in any main-game mission, but surprisingly powerful during the events of Corn Farm and The Mall, specifically the former. Their long timers allowed for constant 0-cost TMF spam to farm items. And since the decreased cost affects non-TMF units as well, it was common to see the 6th team slot get filled by units like Juggernaut or Medic for Corn Farm (highest health and high damage AOE or infinite healing for the current TMF's on the field), or Glenn for The Mall (Fastest preparation time cooldown lets no enemy through; stronger than other spam Fighters). But ever since the events got time limits, the TMF 5/5 team power became nearly useless again. The main reason behind that status is having to run 4 average or even below-average units, most of which are too expensive for what they do and are all outclassed by better options.

* Scientist's 5/5 gives a 10% damage boost for every repeated kill of the same zombie. While it is a great power that boosts the team's damage a ton, the actual team members, while good, don't get the most use out of it. Miller's low-damage pistol doesn't do much to help anyone, and while Kane is a really good support unit, he isn't good as the only shooter on his team that can do good damage. While Liquidator, Sanchez and Norman can make good use of the power if played correctly, it's not the power's full potential, requiring someone else who isn't a scientist to come into the 6th team slot if you want the team at its possible best.

* [[HockeyMaskAndChainsaw Saw]] is a quick, deadly Psycho whose chainsaw can deal large amounts of burst damage against enemies, then destroy the barrier just as quickly. But being damage support like this is generally all he’s good for, as he struggles when he tries to lead the charge. Most of his problems stem from his critical hit. his high crit rate combined with his ability to deal 5 crits in a row is extremely powerful… as long as he’s fighting someone who is slow, as Saw has to take a second to wind up his chainsaw first before executing the crits. Since he only starts to rev it up once he tries to start attacking, he essentially runs up to an enemy’s face and immediately makes himself vulnerable and open to attack. And any knockback cancels the long critical attack, sometimes leading him into a loop of constantly running in, doing no damage, and repeating it. He simply has no chance against any knockback enemies, runners, or any other fast foe. And then his death has him roll backwards and immediately turn into Monk, who both has knockback and is a runner zombie, proving to be a big distraction and nuisance for your other units. Said roll he performs on death also acts like a dodge, allowing the freshly turned Monk to roll past your teammates and make a mad dash straight for the bus.

* [[HockeyMaskAndChainsaw Saw]] is a quick, deadly Psycho whose chainsaw can deal large amounts of burst damage against enemies, then destroy the barrier just as quickly. But being damage support like this is generally all he’s good for, as he struggles when he tries to lead the charge. Most of his problems stem from his critical hit. his high crit rate combined with his ability to deal 5 crits in a row is extremely powerful… as long as he’s fighting someone who is slow, as Saw has to take a second to wind up his chainsaw first before executing the crits. Since he only starts to rev it up once he tries to start attacking, he essentially 'runs up to an enemy’s face and immediately makes himself vulnerable and open to attack.' And any knockback cancels the long critical attack, sometimes leading him into a loop of constantly running in, doing no damage, and repeating it. He simply has no chance against any knockback enemies, runners, or any other fast foe. And then his death has him roll backwards and immediately turn into Monk, who both has knockback and is a runner zombie, proving to be a big distraction and nuisance for your other units. Said roll he performs on death also acts like a dodge, allowing the freshly turned Monk to roll past your teammates and make a mad dash straight for the bus.

* [[HockeyMaskAndChainsaw Saw]] is a quick, deadly Psycho whose chainsaw can deal large amounts of burst damage against tanky enemies, then destroy the barrier just as quickly. But being damage support like this is generally all he’s good for, as he struggles when trying to be a more generalist melee unit. Most of his problems stem from his critical hit. his high crit rate combined with his ability to deal 5 crits in a row is extremely powerful… as long as he’s fighting someone who is slow, as Saw has to take a second to wind up his chainsaw first before executing the crits. Since he only starts to rev it up once he tries to start attacking, he essentially runs up to an enemy’s face and immediately makes himself vulnerable and open to attack. Whats worse is that any knockback cancels the long critical attack, sometimes leading him into a loop of constantly running in, doing no damage, and repeating it. He simply has no chance against any knockback enemies, runners, or other fast zombies. And then his death has him roll backwards and immediately turn into Monk, who both has knockback and is a runner zombie. Prooving to be a big distraction and nuisance for your other units.

* The Agents are two units for the price of one, created for preparing and clearing out the battlefield in the beginning. They start each mission instantly ready to deploy, and have suppressed pistols to not draw the attention of idle zombies. On paper, they can clear out any problematic zombie waiting on the battlefield without opposition. The problem is that, since this is their entire purpose, the Agents lose most of their special abilities after the first 20 seconds or so of a mission, as they become irrelevant. But to add salt to the wound, the later missions start out with enemies like Slobs, Putrids, and Cranks, who are too tanky for Agents to reliably take out.

** The power could be very strong, but the units can't make good use of it[[note]]Jailers, College, Scientists[[/note]];
** The team you are forced to run is plain awful[[note]]College, Jailers, Psychos, IF, TMF, Builders[[/note]];

** The team is only usable because of crutching on a faction's previous tiers[[note]]Rednecks, Mechanics, Northerners[[/note]];
** The units do not synergize well with each other[[note]]Emergency, Military[[/note]];

* Jailer 3/3 lets all the Jailers have a 25% chance to stun on melee crit. It's an alright ability in practice, but the selection of units chosen for it is one of the worst imaginable. The most obvious sign is that Jailers have only two melee units, and one of them already has access to stunning crits. Ranged units can do melee bashes too, but Sniper and Gunslinger are as good as dead if it comes to this, and Willy's shield won't last long, combined with the fact that his taser was literally made to stun on every hit, from a distance. In the end, this ability is nothing more than a slight bonus to Guard, which isn't even worth keeping 3 Jailers alive for, since he has slow attack speed.
* Continuing with Jailers, their 5/5 makes it so the entire deck receives a permanent 30% reduction to preparation time. This is an undeniably powerful ability, but the problem is that Jailers are really mediocre units, with little synergy between each other. Lack of shotgunners and actual useful shooters hurts the team the most, but then there are such problems as Guard having mediocre attack speed, Willy having an extreme courage cost and low damage output, and Gunslinger being slow and incapable of properly defending himself. Polina and Jailer are the only universally useful units in the team, and even then they still have their own issues that get accentuated because of their teammates.
* College's 5/5 allows each unique instance of a College member to spawn a free unit from the team once they land 5 kills. The reason this theoretically powerful ability fails to shine is because every member of College is just too fragile to stay up on field for long enough. This could be circumvented if they had some close quarters defence abilities, but that isn't the case ''even for melees of the team'', with both Waterboy and 1998 having mediocre attack speed, and the latter also having low chance for crits, which prevents him from using knockback often.

* Builders as a whole. 2/2 has a 10% chance to summon a free Builder whenever you summon one yourself. Sounds great, but that's a very low chance when the cheapest members of the team (Pepper and Builder himself) cost 25 Courage, and the fastest prepairing unit takes 13 seconds at base. 3/3 does the same thing, but just when 3 members are alive at once, and it only activates once. 5/5 lets everyone deal 2x damage to the enemy barricade, which can be great for supply runs (since ranged units can attack the barrier there), but not anywhere else, since only Builder, Handyman, and Builder Abby can make use of it. And then, Builder literally gets this bonus as his special ability and gets more use out of it due to not having to be stuck on this team. And Builder Abby becomes one of the weakest melee units after losing her minigun.
* Emergency 3/3 sounds like a good deal, a 1.5x damage boost to a unit whenever they're in the radius of a Medkit. But it's too slow and gimmicky to try and commit to using its full potential. And Medic's awful AI prioritizing shooting over healing makes it wasted potential for what could've been really powerful. It's usually relegated to letting the team's melee untis do extra damage to the barricade.
* The Toxic Lab Military Forces’ (TMF) 5/5 has every unit have a 50% chance to decrease in cost by 5 whenever a TMF member comes out of the bus. This was obviously too slow to make a difference in any main-game mission, but surprisingly powerful during the events of Corn Farm and The Mall, specifically the former. Their infinite timer allowed for constant 0-cost TMF spam to farm items. And since the decreased cost affects non-TMF units as well, it was common to see the 6th team slot get filled by units like Juggernaut or Medic for Corn Farm (highest health and high damage AOE or infinite healing for the current TMF's on the field), or Glenn for The Mall (Fastest preparation time cooldown lets no enemy through; stronger than other spam Fighters). But ever since the events got time limits, the TMF 5/5 team power became nearly useless again. The main reason behind that status is having to run 4 average or even below-average units, most of which are too expensive for what they do and are all outclassed by better options.

* Jailer 3/3 lets all the Jailers have a 25% chance to stun on melee crit. It's an alright ability in practice, but the selection of units chosen for it is one of the worst imaginable. The most obvious sign is that Jailers have only two melee units, and one of them already has access to stunning crits. Ranged units can do melee bashes too, but Sniper and Gunslinger are as good as dead if it comes to this, and Willy's shield won't last long, combined with the fact that his taser was literally made to stun on every hit. In the end, this ability is nothing more than a slight bonus to Guard, which isn't even worth keeping 3 Jailers alive for, since he has slow attack speed.

* Dr. Miller places down a claymore landmine upon being sent out, and you can choose where you have him place it. It works exactly how you would expect a landmine to work, blowing up and causing damage to whoever steps on it. In theory, he’s able to set up a reliable last defense for any zombie who manages to slip by. Especially with his special ability that triples its explosion radius. However, despite all of that, he still feels like Miller barely accomplishes anything. he only has one claymore, his weapon of choice is a weak pistol which, while can be serviceable, is not nearly as good as other options, and the mine has low damage. Even maxed out, it can’t do more than 201 damage with his special ability, which is very weak by late game standards.

* Dr. Miller places down a claymore landmine upon being sent out, and you can choose where you have him place it. it works exactly how you would expect a landmine to work, blowing up and causing damage to whoever steps on it. in theory, he’s able to set up a reliable last defense for any zombie who manages to slip by. especially with his special ability that triples its explosion radius. however, despite all of that, he still feels underpowered. When compared to his co-scientists, Kane and Norman, while they can fill reliable and valuable support roles, it feels like Miller barely accomplishes anything. he only has one claymore, his weapon of choice is a weak pistol which, while can be serviceable, is not nearly as good as other options, and the mine has low damage, and can’t do more than 201 damage with his special ability, which is very weak by late game standards.

** Willy holds a title for having his taser, the only weapon in the game that both stuns on every hit without need for lucky critical hits, and can do it from a short range away, outside melee range. And he can fire it pretty quickly, mostly after loosing his shield. At a glance, he might seem like the ultimate stalling and stunlocking unit, but his downsides are so incredibly harsh that this is far from the truth. First, despite Willy being labeled as a Heavyweight, he has low health. Without his shield, he has less base health than Builder and Firefighter, the first two Damagers you unlock in the game, who both have mediocre stats. Even with Willy’s shield, he only barely edges them out. And second, he’s tied for having the highest Courage cost in the entire game, with Builder Abby. Not to mention his performance in practice. His stun is much more situational than it seems, not being much better than just using melee units on the enemy. And he tends to start bashing his shield too early and gets it destroyed due to not stunning with his taser.

* [[ChainsawAndHockeyMask Saw]] is a quick, deadly Psycho whose chainsaw can deal large amounts of burst damage against tanky enemies, then destroy the barrier just as quickly. But being damage support like this is generally all he’s good for, as he struggles when trying to be a more generalist melee unit. Most of his problems stem from his critical hit. his high crit rate combined with his ability to deal 5 crits in a row is extremely powerful… as long as he’s fighting someone who is slow, as Saw has to take a second to wind up his chainsaw first before executing the crits. Since he only starts to rev it up once he tries to start attacking, he essentially runs up to an enemy’s face and immediately makes himself vulnerable and open to attack. Whats worse is that any knockback cancels the long critical attack, sometimes leading him into a loop of constantly running in, doing no damage, and repeating it. He simply has no chance against any knockback enemies, runners, or other fast zombies. And then his death has him roll backwards and immediately turn into Monk, who both has knockback and is a runner zombie. Prooving to be a big distraction and nuisance for your other units.

* The Toxic Lab Military Forces’ (TMF) 5/5 has every unit have a 50% chance to decrease in cost by 5 whenever a TMF member comes out of the bus. This was obviously way too slow to make a difference in any main-game mission. But this was amazing for the events of Corn Farm and The Mall, specifically Corn Farm, as their infinite timer allowed for constant 0-cost TMF spam to farm items. And since the decreased cost affects non-TMF units as well, it was common to see the 6th team slot get filled by units like Juggernaut or Medic for Corn Farm (highest health and high damage AOE or infinite healing for the current TMF's on the field), or Glenn for The Mall (Fastest preparation time cooldown lets no enemy through; stronger than other spam Fighters). But ever since the events got time limits, the TMF 5/5 team power was back to being nearly useless. And adding on to that status is having to run 4 average or even below-average units, most of which are too expensive for what they do and are all outclassed by better options.
* Scientist 3/3 is more often a liability than a bonus. When three or more unique scientists are present on the field, and one of the Scientists gets killed, a drone appears and attacks whoever killed them. While free drones might sound enticing, it doesn't when you consider that units are often clumped together, especially ranged units, which the 3 original scientists are. This makes it very easy for an Insectoid to pounce on them, and then have them all get caught in the explosion. Making situations where if one of the scientists die, then all of them die, or at least get hurt. Even though the 3 original scientists have 50% explosion resist, it's outweighed by Scientist's 2/2, which doubles the Drone's damage. It also tends to wake up eggs at the wrong time, forcing you to deal with an onslaught of energy spheres when you’re unprepared.

* Builder Abby [[{{Begin With A Finisher}} starts her fight with a minigun]] to shred any opponents in the way. The machine gun does amazing burst damage, able to stop entire hordes by herself. However, the key word there is "starts", as she runs out of ammo after 5 seconds and drops it in favor of using a hammer. Sadly, Abby with her hammer is one of the slowest, weakest melee units in the game. Making her completely irrelevant and useless after just 5 seconds of her shooting. What's worse is that she has her own unique undead form after death, and it's one of the most dangerous turns in the game. Undead Abby is basically an insectoid with slightly weaker stats. But that's not enough to stop her from being a real threat, considering that the standard Insectoids are already one of the most dangerous enemies in the game.

* [=SpecOps=] drops out of the sky on a parachute and uses an automatic rifle to burst down enemies with. Although his ability to parachute onto the battlefield allows you to put him in any specific position or location you want to have him help out in a specific situation, the animation is quite long. This essentially extends his preparation time and prevents him from being used as a quick way to save a teammate or situation in danger. Leading to situations where he reaches the ground too late to assist in a fight, whether it's been taken care of or his teammates have died, or unintentionally lands right next to a dangerous zombie who reached his landing site. It doesn't help that he has some of the worst accuracy of all the shooters in the game, even with his great melee combo that knocks back on every hit, he can't rely on it too often or he'll still be overwhelmed.

* Jailer is a good example of a [[DiscOneNuke starter pack unit]]. He has very low courage cost, moderately high health for a Fighter, free auto-upgrading, and the ability to stun on crit. Should you buy him as early as stage one, he'll make the entire early game a breeze... only to get overshadowed by Rogue, his direct upgrade. Rogue has the same weapon and crit stun mechanic as Jailer, but has a faster crit animation and higher stats, combined with the literal highest base attack in the game. Also, despite being Jailer's direct upgrade, Rogue doesn't even cost real money compared to Jailer costing 5$, which ends up being the final nail in the coffin for the latter.

* Jailer is a good example of a [[DiscOneNuke starter pack unit]]. He has very low courage cost, moderately high health for a Fighter, free auto-upgrading, and the ability to stun on crit. Should you buy him as early as stage one, he'll make the entire early game a breeze... only to get overshadowed by Rogue, his direct upgrade. Rogue has the same weapon and crit stun mechanic as Jailer, but has a faster crit animation and the highest base attack in the game. Also, despite being Jailer's direct upgrade, Rogue doesn't even cost real money compared to Jailer costing 5$, which ends up being the final nail in the coffin for the latter.

* College's 5/5 allows each unique instance of a College memeber to spawn a free unit from the team once they land 5 kills. The reason this theoretically powerful ability fails to shine is because every member of College is just too fragile to stay up on field for long enough. This could be circumvented if they had some close quarters defence abilities, but that isn't the case ''even for melees of the team'', with both Waterboy and 1998 having mediocre attack speed, and the latter also having low chance for crits, which prevents him from using knockback often.

* [=SpecOps=] drops out of the sky on a parachute and uses an automatic rifle to burst down enemies with. Although his ability to parachute onto the battlefield allows you to put him in any specific position or location you want to have him help out in a specific situation, the animation is quite long. This essentially extend his preparation time and prevents him from being used as a quick way to save a teammate in danger. Leading to situations where he reaches the ground too late to assist in a situation, or unintentionally lands right next to a dangerous zombie who reached his landing site. It doesn't help that he has some of the worst accuracy of all the shooters in the game, even with his great melee combo that knocks back on every hit, he can't rely on it too often.

* Scientist 3/3 is more often a liability than a bonus. When three or more unique scientists are present on the field, and one of the Scientists gets killed, a drone appears and attacks whoever killed them. While free drones might sound enticing, it doesn't when you consider that units are often clumped together, especially ranged units, which the 3 original scientists are. This makes it very easy for them to get caught in the explosion, making situations where if one of the scientists die, then all of them die, or at least get severely hurt. It just takes one runner who reaches the group, one tanky zombie who got a little too close, and worst of all; one Insectoid to pounce on them, and they're all dead. Even though the 3 original scientists have 50% explosion resist, it's outweighed by Scientist's 2/2, which doubles the Drone's damage. This team power just puts all of its members at risk of death if even one of them gets killed by the group, which is easy if Dr. Sanchez and Liquidator are being sent out frequently and the horde is nearby.

* Builder Abby starts her fight with a minigun to shred any opponents in the way. The machine gun does amazing burst damage, able to stop entire hordes by herself. However, the key word there is "starts", as she runs out of ammo after 5 seconds and drops it in favor of using a hammer. Sadly, Abby with her hammer is one of the slowest, weakest melee units in the game. Making her completely irrelevant and useless after just 5 seconds of her shooting. What's worse is that she has her own unique undead form after death, and it's one of the most dangerous turns in the game. Undead Abby is basically an insectoid with slightly weaker stats. But that's not enough to stop her from being a real threat, considering that the standard Insectoids are already one of the most dangerous enemies in the game.

* Scientist 3/3 is more often a liability than a bonus. When three or more unique scientists are present on the field, and one of the Scientists gets killed, a drone appears and attacks whoever killed them. While free drones might sound enticing, it doesn't when you consider that units are often clumped together, especially ranged units, which the 3 original scientists are. This makes it very easy for them to get caught in the explosion, making situations where if one of the scientists die, then all of them die, or at least get severely hurt. It just takes one Runner who reaches the group, one tanky zombie who got a little too close, and worst of all; one Insectoid to pounce on them, and they're all dead. Even though the 3 original scientists have 50% explosion resist, it's outweighed by Scientist's 2/2, which doubles the Drone's damage. This team power just puts all of its members at risk of death if even one of them gets killed by the group, which is easy if Dr. Sanchez and Liquidator are being sent out frequently.

* Scientist 3/3 is more often a liability than a bonus. When three or more unique scientists are present on the field, and one of the Scientists gets killed, a drone appears and attacks whoever killed them. While free drones might sound enticing, it doesn't when you consider that units are often clumped together, especially ranged units, which the 3 original scientists are. This makes it very easy for them to get caught in the explosion, making situations where if one of the scientists die, then all of them die, or at least get severely hurt. Even though the 3 original scientists have 50% explosion resist, it's outweighed by Scientist's 2/2, which doubles the Drone's damage. This team power just puts all of its members at risk of death if even one of them gets killed, which is easy if Dr. Sanchez and Liquidator are being sent out frequently, and happen to die near the group of ranged scientists.