The Chainsaw is a sustain weapon wearing a damage weapon’s clothes
The Chainsaw has two tiers, no tier 1, no tier 2, and no character in the roster starts with one. At tier 3 it is 10 damage on a 0.53s cooldown for 17.4 DPS at 112 gold. At tier 4 it is 20 damage on a 0.56s cooldown for 34.2 DPS at 242 gold, with 30% lifesteal. Those numbers do not compete with the top of the melee table — Fist delivers 108.5 DPS for 91 gold — so anyone buying a Chainsaw for damage is buying the wrong weapon. You buy it for the lifesteal and the two tags.
“Chainsaw is the only non-Legendary melee weapon outside the Medical class with 30% lifesteal at tier 4 — the T4-only Legendary Scythe reaches 100% — parsed from brotato.wiki.gg and cached in src/data/brotato-weapons.json.”
Full stat line, both tiers
| Tier | Damage | Cooldown | Base DPS | Range | Knockback | Lifesteal | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T3 | 10 | 0.53s | 17.4 | 175 | 0 | 15% | 112 |
| T4 | 20 | 0.56s | 34.2 | 200 | 0 | 30% | 242 |
Two details in that table matter more than the DPS column.
The cooldown goes up at T4. 0.53s becomes 0.56s — roughly 5% slower — while damage doubles. The result is a 96.6% DPS increase for 130 gold, which is a better upgrade ratio than most weapons manage, but it means the T4 Chainsaw feels slightly heavier in the hand.
Range goes up too. 175 to 200 is a 14% reach increase, and 200 is the same reach as Sword, Captain’s Sword and Excalibur. That matters because the Chainsaw has zero knockback: it cannot push anything away, so the only way to stay safe is to kill at the edge of its arc rather than the centre.
Put it next to the weapons it competes with at tier 4 and the trade becomes obvious:
| Weapon | T4 DPS | Price | Lifesteal | Knockback | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chainsaw | 34.2 | 242 | 30% | 0 | Blade/Tool |
| Fist | 108.5 | 91 | 0% | 15 | Unarmed |
| Captain’s Sword | 84.2 | 210 | 0% | 5 | Blade/Naval |
| War Hammer | 102.6 | 255 | 0% | 25 | Blunt/Tool |
| Circular Saw | 40.3 | 173 | 60% | 0 | Blade/Medical |
| Scissors | 23.3 | 122 | 60% | 2 | Medical/Precise |
The 30% lifesteal, in real terms
Lifesteal is the reason this weapon exists in the table. At 30% on tier 4, every 20-damage swing returns 6 HP when it connects. At a 0.56s cooldown that is up to 10.7 HP per second of sustained contact — provided you are actually hitting something.
Compare the alternatives in the cached data:
- Chainsaw T4 — 30% lifesteal, 34.2 DPS
- Scissors T4 — 60% lifesteal, Medical/Precise, melee
- Circular Saw T4 — 60% lifesteal, Blade/Medical
- Medical Gun T4 — 65% lifesteal at range
- Scythe T4 — 100% lifesteal, Legendary, 208.3 DPS
The Medical weapons and Scythe all beat it on the lifesteal line. What the Chainsaw has that they do not is accessibility plus tags: Scissors, Circular Saw and Medical Gun are Medical-class weapons that appear at all four tiers but scale off their own stats, while Scythe is a T4-only Legendary. The Chainsaw is a Blade/Tool weapon, which puts it inside two of the strongest character perk families in the game.
The honest read: 30% lifesteal is not the best sustain in Brotato, but it is the best sustain you can get on a Blade/Tool weapon without committing to a Medical build.
Which characters actually want it
No character starts with a Chainsaw, so every Chainsaw build is a shop-driven pivot. Four characters make that pivot worthwhile.
Artificer — “+100% Damage with Tool weapons” is the single largest Tool multiplier in the character table. It also carries “+175% Explosion Damage”, “+4% Explosion Size for every 1 Elemental Damage you have”, “-100% Damage” and “Armor modifications are reduced by 50%”. The Chainsaw’s Tool tag means it is one of the few weapons that can carry an Artificer’s damage line, and its 30% lifesteal offsets the missing Armor scaling.
Knight — “+2 Melee Damage for every 1 Armor you have”, “+3 Armor”, “You can’t equip ranged weapons”, “You can only equip tier II weapons or above”, “Attack Speed modifications are reduced by 50%”, “Harvesting modifications are reduced by 80%”. Knight’s restrictions cost nothing here: the Chainsaw is T3/T4 only, which satisfies the tier rule, and it is melee, which satisfies the ranged ban. The 50% attack-speed penalty hurts a 0.56s cooldown less than it hurts a fast weapon, because you have fewer swings to lose.
Engineer — “+10 Engineering”, “Engineering modifications are increased by 25%”, “You start with 1 Wrench”, “Structures spawn close to each other”, “Damage modifications are reduced by 50%”. Engineer’s 50% damage penalty is severe, and the Chainsaw’s 34.2 base DPS does not survive it well. Take the Chainsaw on Engineer only as a Tool-tag holder for structure triggers, not as a damage source.
Wildling — “You can’t equip weapons above tier II” rules the Chainsaw out entirely. So does the tier rule on any character capped below T3.
What the two tags open up
Blade is the premium melee class: 8 weapons, with Excalibur at 303 DPS, Captain’s Sword at 84.2, Sword at 66.3, Vorpal Sword at 57.9 and the Chainsaw at 34.2. A Blade build that already runs a Sword can add the Chainsaw as a sustain slot without breaking tag synergy — one Melee Damage line feeds both.
Tool is the small class: 4 weapons, being Chainsaw, Screwdriver, War Hammer and Wrench. Its damage ceiling is War Hammer’s 102.6 DPS, and two of its four members (Screwdriver at 22.7, Wrench at 16.1) are support-tier damage. A Tool build is always a perk build, never a raw-DPS build.
The overlap is the point. A weapon that counts as Blade for your Melee Damage stat and Tool for your Engineering perks is doing two jobs in one slot, which is how you justify a 242-gold purchase that returns only 34.2 DPS.
Wave-by-wave plan
Waves 1–8. You cannot buy a Chainsaw here — there is no T1 or T2 version. Run whatever Blade or Tool weapon you started with. If you are on Artificer, that is a Wrench (12 damage, 1.7s, 7.1 DPS, 20 gold) or a Screwdriver (8 damage, 1.06s, 7.5 DPS, 10 gold). Accept low damage; the plan is to survive to the T3 roll.
Waves 9–14. This is the T3 window: 112 gold for 17.4 DPS and 15% lifesteal. If your run is already stable, skip it. If you are losing HP every wave, 15% lifesteal on a 175-range arc is a real fix and cheaper than most sustain items.
Waves 15–20. The T4 at 242 gold is the expensive decision. Before buying, check what else 242 gold could be: a T4 Captain’s Sword is 210 for 84.2 DPS, a T4 Fist is 91 for 108.5. The Chainsaw only wins if you need the lifesteal line or the Tool tag, and only if you have already solved damage elsewhere.
Boss waves. At 0.56s per swing and 20 damage, the Chainsaw lands roughly 1.8 hits per second. That is enough to keep lifesteal ticking during a boss fight, which is its best use case: a sustain stick that also happens to deal 34.2 DPS while you circle.
Failure modes
Buying it for damage. 0.14 DPS per gold is the worst ratio in the Blade class. If your build lacks damage, the Chainsaw is not the answer — it is a 242-gold delay.
Buying it without a Tool or Blade stat line. Without a matching multiplier, 34.2 DPS stays 34.2 DPS. That is less than a 91-gold Fist at tier 4, at nearly three times the price.
Buying it on a fast-attack build. “Attack Speed modifications are reduced by 50%” on Knight and the general scarcity of attack-speed scaling both hurt a weapon whose value is partly its lifesteal uptime. On a character stacking attack speed, a faster weapon with lower lifesteal will out-sustain it.
Expecting it to create space. Knockback is 0 at both tiers. The Chainsaw cannot push a wave off you, so it needs either a knockback partner weapon or enough movement speed to orbit.
Where to go next
See where the Chainsaw sits among all 79 entries in best weapons tier list, and how thin the Tool class really is in weapons by class. The close-range sustain comparison is in Fist build, and the structure-side alternative is in Wrench turret build. For the character perks quoted above, open the character database.