Assault skill and gear builds.

Putting this up to provide some basic info for new assaults. I hope it's helpful. I'm not a pro assault exactly, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Assault Class Standard Builds (as best I understand it)

Assaults have the most reliable defensive potential of any class in the game, and can also be effective at inflicting burst damage with AOE wepons. Most of the time, fighting against an assault is like having a "female" tank drop out of the sky next to you and open fire.

Proven Modes:

Note: I have not looked around on the internet for other guides and base my guide on the advice of other players. it is possible or even probable that the advice I was given by them came from one or more such guides. I do not intend to mimmic or copy anyone else's guide; if it shows up here and is yours it's because someone else passed it on to me as advice in-game and not because of any effort to copy anyone else's guide(s).

"point tank:" Use shields and defensive skills to maximize your defensive ability. Reccomended to use a minigun. This build relies on an allied medic to keep you alive dispite taking massive damage, relying on your constant presence to whittle enemies down rather than focusing on Dps.
It is ideal to have one point tank on your side when capturing a point in PVP (hence, the point tank) and helpful in PVE missions provided you have a supporting medic on your team.
Keep an eye on your medic(s) and put pressure on anyone attacking them.


6/7/0 protections, shields and health.
Gear: iMinigun/Healot minigun, brawler's beat stick, smg, aoe shield, range shield, EMP gernade, Smash Boost.

"gamma Hamma:" Melae/aoe build, can be defensive or offensive as long as it incorperates at least the basic three melae skills. I have not had the official version explained to me. May be useful on point in PVP as a way to deal high damage for no power cost, making enemies leave point to recover health. Not reccomended for PVE and not ideal when the enemy is not obligated to stand on point constantly (i.e. when you are on the defender side of most PVP matches.)

Focus on melae, protections and health.
Gear: Gama launcher (reduces protections), Hammer of Impact, 2nd slot gun of choice, ranged shield, bezerk, Overcharge, and Super Smash Boost.


"Roaming assault:" offensive role. The idea is to maximize gun dps and power, allowing you to move around and initiate engagements away from point. This kind of assault is very hard to deal with for most classes, but can't survive long on point and still relies on medic support to be effective.

1/5/7 put a point in flight power cost reduction for mobility, pick up a few defensive skills from tank branch and get to the end of the gun skill branch of choice.

Hammer of impact, 2nd slot gun of choice, Specialty gun of choice, power stim, ranged shield, gernade of choice, Boost of choice


AOE assault: This is more a troll build than a practical one. The focus is doing as much damage as quickly as possible in a large aoe. This build is very valnurable to attack: players seeing you using a gernade launcher will often turn and focus you because they expect you to be squishy and you have no practical way to return fire if they rush you.


get more or less the same items as roamer assault, but pick up the lefthand power and AOE damage bonuses. If you're feeling particulaurly suicidal you can equip all gernades. You can play around a little with adding defensive bonuses, but because of the high power requirements you need the balanced power and destroyer Spare power and between the two you have very little flexability.

Gear, items and skills breakdown:

Wepon types:
Assaults fight with two different gun slots, but slot 2 is rarely used. The standard gun slot (slot 2) is overshadowed by the assault's more potent specialty slot (slot 3) wepons. Players may call you dumb if you use your second slot gun (though this generaly reflects more on their own inteligence than yours imao. There's a time and a place to use second slot guns.) Melae (slot 1) is also available but is only situationaly effective imao.

Specialty guns:

Launchers (rocket/gernade) are good in some PVP situations as a way to put a lot of pressure on the enemy team quickly, but using an AOE gun generaly leaves the assault valnurable to direct atttack owing to its high power cost, self damage if used at point blank and, with the single exception of headhunter launcher, inability to reliably hit flying enemies in PVP.

Be careful of using AOE in PVE to avoid hitting scanners. it's an easy mistake to make and can cause a lot of issues for your team.


Miniguns are the mainstay of the assault class, dealing massive damage often at next to no power cost. Although inaccurate, it puts a lot of bullets into the air meaning accuracy mostly involves trying to keep the enemy in the middle of a targeting circle rather than trying to keep a small, more precise aiming recticle in the right spot. Very effective in PVE and, if you can aim it properly, very effective in PVP as well. The downside is that using this gun usually hampers your mobility while firing and miniguns have a slight charge-up time before they can fire.

Miniguns are most effective when used on PVE bosses who are too large to be easily missed. Be careful when using miniguns on a distant cluster of bots in PVE; you might trigger a scanner by accident.


Standard guns:


Stormer (shotgun): As can be expected, Stormers are impractical at long range but good in close quarters. good as a backup wepon for AOE assaults since you would otherwise have some difficulty fighting effectively at close or mid range. Also helpful on gama-hamma build to put quick dmage on someone who is using melae shield.

Heatwrack M.A.S.E.R: Basicaly your standard starting SMG. this is mostly used as a backup for the minigun as the M.A.S.E.R. is more effective at long range than the minigun is due to the minigun's poor accuracy.

Legion SMG: same as SMG, essentialy. deals damage in higher ammounts but lower rate of fire.

Rhino SMG OC: Slightly improved SMG. Slight improvements across the board. Boasts high accuracy.

as an assault, you should not be relying on any slot 2 wepon as your primary wepon.

Melae:


Impact hammer is the best DPS for melae, but brawler's beatstick's right click mode can be fun for knocking enemies away from point in PVP matches. You should generaly avoid using melae, but it can be useful to switch to melae on point in PVP as it is easier to hit with at close range than any other wepon. Be mindful that players can block your melae attacks, reflecting some damage to you. When this happens, switch to your 2nd or 3rd slot wepon or pop an AOE shield and lob them one of your offhand gernades.

offhands:

Gernades deal strong AOE damage and can create instant pressure on point. If thrown skillfully can finish off a wounded target easily.

Shields greatly improve your survivability in battle. They block only one damage type and have limited health, but will generaly be enough to keep you alive under stress if used well. It is generally not reccomended to use Perfect Target, as it takes your gun out of the fight for too long.

Power Stim: A must-have for roaming or AOE assaults: Instantly recovers your power and adds a buff to power regeneration rate, helping to make up for the high power cost of AOE guns.

Bezerk (Stim): Adds to melae damage for a short time. Useful in a PVP melae-related build.

Overcharge: Instantly pushes enemies away from you. This is mostly used to push people off point briefly or to seperate an enemy assault from their loyal medic.

Morale Boosts: Your morale boosts are mostly used to add protections to self, although the more expensive Super Smash Boost is also good for pushing enemies away from a PVP objective. The Protection Boost also protects nearby teammates, which is helpful in most PVP and PVE settings.

Skill paths:


Righthand "Balanced" branch: Available to all classes, use this branch to improve power efficency or add minor bunuses to flesh out a build that began in one of the other paths. The power-related skills are the most universaly useful skills in the game.

Go into the balanced branch with a spesific goal in mind. If you want power, get power. If you want protections, pick up the 2 protections, (powerpool return or morale boost) and health. If you want damage, get power, boost and then pick up one damage type. bonus. For assault, the only reason you should be picking up the skill super agent at the end is if you want that small boost to melae damage in a melae-focused build imao.

Middle "Tank" Branch: This branch focuses on shields and defensive bonuses. It is good to have a few points in this branch as an assault even if it is not your prumary focus. Medics in PVE often rely on the assault to have defensive skills and having at least one defensive tank in PVP is all but essential to holding point.

The righthand cluster provides general protections. Pick these 4 and and Agies Armament and you should be reasonably tanky in any build.

middle-right: Point Tank makes your morale boost more effective. I don't usually invest since boosts are a relitively rare event. heavy armor and super tank are the strongest defensive skills you get as assault, but require you to commit skill-wise to being a defensive tank.

middle-left: This trio affects your offhand shields. The only critical one of the three is Ageis Armament, which gives a strong bonus to general protection. This can allow a shield to soak up a lot of off-type damage without breaking, since only the damage type it grants immunity to reduces the shield's health. The other two skills will greatly improve the availability and durrability of shields.

The lefthand trio add melae damage and protections. Don't bother with them unless you plan to build your skills around melae exclusively.

Righthand "Destroyer" Branch: This branch focuses on guns and damaging offhands. This branch is a must for AOE and roamer assaults, but putting too many points into this tree will leave you valnurable to attack since you won't have the bonuses from the tank tree.

Righthand cluster: Increases the damage and efficency of miniguns and slot 2 guns. Mostly used to improve minigun damage.

Middle-right cluster: Improves on the efficency and effect of offhand gernades. Often picked up as a filler to get enough points to reach Spare Power and Super Destroyer.

Middle-left: the first three improve the effectiveness of AOE guns. Spare power and super destroyer are both useful for any 2nd or 3rd slot gun.

Lefthand: odds and ends. Heavy impact makes the knockback of all your gear much stronger. Overdrive durration is mostley used to extend bezerk as I understand it. Heavy impact is generaly used if you have a healot minigun as an alternate filler to reach spare power and super destroyer.

foils and counters.

This is just general advice.

Whenever you begin to run low on life, use a ranged shield. This will generaly be enough to keep you alive since most of the damage in the game tends to be delt as ranged damage.

If an enemy assault puts up a ranged shield to make up for low health, throw an offhand gernade at them. You can sometimes pick up an easy kill this way since the assault may expect his shield to protect him from harm and therefore may not try hard to evade your attacks.

Melae also works against range shield if you have no better option.

If a recon begins to drop bombs or mines a lot, use an aoe shield to stay on point. Use an aoe shield before entering a known mined area to clear the mines out for your allies while not taking significant damage yourself.

It an enemy starts to melae you a lot and you are not on point, flying up briefly or using a knockback offhand on them will usualy be sufficent. Don't forget as well that you can use most melae wepons to reflect their melae damage back onto them.

Vandal: Enemy Robotic's Vandal Boosts are modest threats on point. Burn them down as quickly as you can. Like any melae, you can fly away if you take too much damage from one and unlike most melae Vandals may be unable to persue you if you move to a higher platform. Boost vandals cannot be healed or repaired.

AVA vandal: Like normal vandal, use a higher platform and burn it down. If you are point tank, stay on point as long as practical and try to damage it as much as possible. try to kill any supporting robos and medics if possible.

AVA or team tactic: if the enemy groups up or is about to all enter from one entrence have someone call gernades. Throw your gernade(s) when called and you may be able to team-wipe when the full damage of 4 or so gernades hits the enemy team in unison.

Focus on paingunned targets, especialy in AVA. they're easier to hit, take more damage and everyone targeting one enemy will all but ensure that they die quickly.

One of your roles as an assault, in lou of a good anti-bot recon, is to kill turrets. Not checking for turrets before trying to stand on point will just make everything harder for yourself and your medic. Try to land behind a turret and chase the robotic away/kill (if practical) first. Don't try to tank a flame turret at point blank; it tends to go poorly, even with good medic support. Stand on a nearby box or platform and burn it down from outside the flame turret's range. Bear in mind that a robo can burn your mana if they hit you in melae from behind, making it harder to finish off the turret.

Another role is to protect allied turrets from enemy assaults.

Another role is to protect your medic.

Priority goes something like:

Kill enemy robo (if near an enemy trurret)>kill enemy turret>Protect allied turret>protect allied medic>kill enemy medic>kill enemy assault>kill enemy robo (if not near an enemy turret)>Kill enemy recon

if I have the right of it.

Caution: enemy force walls block allied healing. Don't walk through them lightly.

always dance around as much as practical unless boss-tanking in PVE.