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Psychos logo Saw is a psychopath armed with a chainsaw and dressed in a brown short-sleeve jumpsuit and a white hockey mask.

Scientists logo Dr. Sanchez is Saw's first exclusive skin. He is armed with a cement saw and dressed in a blue shirt, a white lab coat, brown pants, blue gloves, and a welding mask. His hair is now gray.

He can be purchased from the Circus Pack alongside Berserker and Queen for 925 money.

Functionality[]

Basics[]

He is a Psycho, meaning he behaves similarly to other units and possess fear immunity.

Although Saw is a human unit, his price is valued in rage points instead of courage.

Saw is a relatively sturdy melee unit, with his base stats fit in closely with units in the damager class, but with surprisingly low base damage and faster movement speed. He attacks slowly, thrusting his chainsaw forward, but his critical attack speed is extremely fast, albeit needs to briefly wind-up. His rage cost and preparation time are both average.

On death, Saw almost immediately transforms into Monk. Rolling backwards quickly, and once he gets back up on his feet, he will already have become Monk. The freshly turned Monk cannot be harmed during the first half of the roll animation, effectively making it a dodge.

Perks and Abilities[]

Saw has negative charisma and massive valor, making him effectively immune to Fear under most circumstances barring the Halloween Event.

Unlike other melee units, Saw possesses a unique attack crit pattern that alters regular critical hits. He reels back, briefly winds up his chainsaw for roughly a second, then thrusts it forward, dealing up to five critical hits in a rapid succession. He stops this attack if he or his target is slain, or if one of them gets knocked away from his combo.

Upon reaching level 13, Saw's special ability can be unlocked, granting him double damage when attacking the barricade. This damage bonus makes Saw a very handy unit when it comes to finishing missions as fast as possible after clearing the battlefield of enemies. Additionally, Saw's special ability can be further strengthened by using Fury buff, granting him insane quadruple damage, and making quick work of the barricade than most other melee units are capable of. Due to his multi-hitting critical hit pattern, Saw proves to be the most effective barricade-destroying units in the game, more so than Builder who shares the same ability. Saw also proves to contest against Welder's own perk. While he may not be able to move past enemies and head straight to the barricade, Saw does possess DPS just as high with the benefit of lower preparation time and rage cost, and having far higher health, making Saw far easier to utilize than Welder while having the versatility of a general purpose unit.

Gameplay[]

Main Campaign[]

Saw can be a very strong unit thanks to his unique critical attack, granting him an exceptional burst damage output which makes up for his low base damage. Combined with his psycho perk, Saw is great at brute forcing through a horde, shredding high health enemies as well as destroying the barricade quickly.

Saw's glaring flaw, however, lies within his critical attack, as he needs to wind-up his chainsaw to perform the attack. Since he performs such attack very frequently due to his very high base critical chance, this makes him very ineffective against enemies with knockback or stun, which are relatively common throughout the mid-game and end-game progress. A particular example is Small Insectoid and his own undead version, the Monk.

It is also advised against using Saw on missions that require having a large number of units on the battlefield at once since fear can actually hinder other units' total DPS. It's important to understand that Saw can't be the first unit to sent out on a mission since rage starts practically empty and can only be replenished by killing enemies. This is problematic since ranged units always take a long time to prepare. Despite this, he can still be used as a support fighter while other melee units focus on the main objective. Additionally, given that enough rage points have been accumulated to allow it, he can work well alongside his fellow Psychos Berserker and Queen as they can't scare each other, although this combination will prove to be less useful in the late-game progress as rage abilities such as Turret will prove to be extremely useful. The Psychos synergy, however, drastically improves the utility of this combination.

Skirmish[]

In League, despite his high health, good movement speed, very powerful critical attack and a very low cost, Saw is a mediocre unit to use in most teams due to his lack of bullet resistance, slow regular attack speed, as well as the need to wind-up his chainsaw before executing the attack. He will die to any enemy ranged units easily and his cumbersome attack patterns severely lower the chance for his success in melee combat. Not to mention that his transformation into Monk may prove to a huge detriment, essentially becoming a distraction that must be dealt with. Like his fellow Psycho berserker however, he is one of the cheapest units in this mode and can benefit immensely the team by equipping minus cost items and Boss item set, if there are small leftover resources.

Item Sets[]

Like Berserker, Saw, with identical prep time and cost in rage, can be utilized as a Boss item activation tool, both in skirmish and campaign. While enjoying the same benefits, this set doesn’t improve Saw as unit, wasting most of his potential into being a underwhelming spam unit.

On the other hand, Gentleman is the optimal set for Saw, since he has the highest crit chance among units, tied with Cashier only. This means that a +crit chance book is enough to abuse his high crit chances and team synergy tied with it. While the stats to make Saw spammable shouldn’t be ignored, Saw benefits most from flat melee damage boosts, +crit damage items and minor crit chance improvements to guarantee 100% crit rate. Items that give -Cost are also valuable, reducing his rage requirement potentially allowing greater synergy with deployable units like Generator or Turret.

Skins and Synergies[]

Saw, along with his respective skins, is a part of the following teams: Psychos and Scientists.

Name Saw Dr. Sanchez
Skin Saw Sprite Dr. Sanchez
Unlock Req. - 300 money
Team Psychos logo Psychos Scientists logo Scientists

In the both teams above, Saw never a bad option. In Psychos team, Saw makes for an excellent option especially for 2/2 and 3/3 powers as rage drops will compensate for purchasing Saw who already has a very high crit rate, and Fury will raise his DPS even higher on said crits. The fact that he is rather disposable easily compensates for any other potential downsides. Meanwhile, in the Scientists team, Saw doesn't get much out of their powers, but remains a serviceable unit as a disposable melee attacker.

Trivia[]

  • Saw is one of three members of the Circus Squad, the others being Berserker and Queen.
  • The hockey mask Saw wears and the chainsaw he uses as his weapon of choice are likely references to two classic American slasher film icons that make up his character, Jason Vorhees from the Friday the 13th franchise and Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.
    • His movement speed, preparation time, and rage cost all being valued at 13 further solidifies the reference to Friday the 13th.
  • Saw revealed his voice in a trailer for update 2.1.0. [1]
  • Saw is tied with Cashier for having the highest base crit chance in the game among all units.
  • Saw's "Dr. Sanchez" skin is a reference to Rick Sanchez from the show Rick and Morty.

Gallery[]

Units
Base game
Humans Redneck Farmer Builder Mechanic Pepper Chopper Firefighter Sheriff Charlotte Glenn Policeman Diaz Grenadier Gunslinger Private Rodriguez Sniper Polina Welder Carlos Guard Medic Sonya Ranger Willy Light Soldier Carol Paramedic Nancy Builder Abby Rogue Lionheart Juggernaut
Inanimate Empty Barrel Medkit Red Barrel Molotov Generator Nitrogen Turret Drone
Plot Sheriff Bill Minor Characters
Premium
TMF Squad Flamethrower Soldier Cap Swat Rogue*
Circus Saw Berserker Queen Austin
Scientists Dr. Kane Dr. Norman Dr. Miller Drone
Other Jailer Specops Agents
Event
Halloween Andrea
Christmas Lester Cashier Red Hood
Escorts Princess
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