Wazupwiop's Guide to Taking Large Steps

Wazupwiop's Assault Guide

Hey everyone,

After getting a few encouraging comments on my last few guides, I thought I would make another guide. I chose the assault class because it is very popular, and there are some very misguided players attempting to play the assault. I am heavily influenced by the kckzi and Xenonox play styles, keep that in mind while reading this guide. So without boring you any further, onto the guide.

1. Endorsements

The endorsement choices for the assault class are relatively simple. You basically need to choose between RoF, Accuracy, Armor, Critical Shot, and Skill Recovery. There are a few standard assault builds that you should know about before deciding on the build that is right for you.

RoF/Accuracy/Crit
Armor/RoF/Accuracy
Armor/Accuracy/RoF
Armor/Accuracy/Skill Recovery

These are the mainline assault builds. I use a different variation on the last build. I use Accuracy/Armor/Skill Recovery. Each build suits a unique playstyle, and you should try them all and build one that suits you. I am a gold accuracy addict, so that is why I use gold accuracy (you might not like gold accuracy, that is fine by me). I also like the assault bomb, which I will discuss later in the guide. I like the bomb so much that I run bronze Skill Recovery so I can use it more often.

It is almost always necessary to use armor in some form on the assault. Armor allows you to survive the fight and to put out more bullets before retreating. It is very useful and should be included in most assault builds. I think silver or gold armor is almost necessary if you want to keep your streaks up. Silver armor gives you enough time to react to most ambushes, and gold armor allows you to survive a lvl 2 assassin back stab. I have very little trouble dealing with assassins, so I don't think gold armor is necessary, but it is nice to have when you are fighting a lot of heavies like gunners and tanks.

When considering your choice in endorsements, look at your play style. I like the bomb, so I chose a build that centered on my bomb-throwing abilities. Maybe you like the assault rifle more than the bomb, if so, make a build centered on the assault rifle.

2. Weapons and Secondary Abilities

Assault Rifle:

The assault rifle is your primary weapon as assault. It has many uses and is great for pro killing. It is turned into an awesome weapon when you use RoF and Accuracy on your build. I don't run RoF because I think it fires fast enough already, but I used to run RoF on my standard build, so I can understand why some say it is a must have.

Grenade Launcher:

The grenade launcher is a very versatile weapon. It should be your go-to weapon for long-range, bot control, and hidden enemy control. It has splash damage, which is great for stopping bots and pros in their tracks. It can be banked around corners to take down enemies without exposing yourself. It is also your main turret destroyer. While it fires relatively slow without RoF, it is still a great secondary weapon.

Bomb:

The bomb is a vital part of any assault. It is the first ability that gets upgraded to lvl 3 for me. I mainly use the bomb for its ring-out abilities; however, players like Xenonox mainly use it for its damage capabilities. The trick to the bomb is placement. I prefer to place them at the top of jump pads to catch people offguard and to ring them out. The bomb can also take down no-armor snipers and assassins in one blast if it is close enough to their person. When the bomb is detonated, it will light all of the players on fire within its blast radius. That alone is a very useful ability because you can get many kills on players just by the fire from the bomb, and the fire also delays their health regen for 5 seconds or so. Bomb lvl 3 is also great for taking down the Jackbot, turrets, and the moneyball.

One tip to using the bomb is that you can bomb jump. Bomb jumping is where you lay down a bomb and explode it while you are in the air over the bomb. The force of the bomb propels you up, and you can fly over walls to gain an offensive advantage.

Charge:

Charge is a vital part of my playstyle. Charge can ring pros out, kill them, or be used as quick transport. I usually upgrade to charge 3. I find that charge 3 is useful versus any enemy class of pro, and it has saved my life many times. You can get behind juiced players and ring them out with charge 3 very easily. Charge two will take out unarmored assassins and snipers in one hit. Charge three will take most pros down to about half health if they are using armor.

I know charge three is highly disputed here on the forums. Upgrading is my preference, and you don't have to do what I do. I just find charge three to be great for certain circumstances.

Fly:

Fly is definitely one of the most useful abilities for the assault. My personal take on the assault is similar to Xenonox's. Xeno is all about attacking people from above, behind, and around. Using the fly to get the advantage in a fight is key. Grenade 3 is my favorite level for the assault because his fly ability works wonders on that level. Fly also works great for getting behind enemy lines and making get-aways where other classes cannot easily follow you. When you are flying, you cannot be grappled by those pesky assassins.

3. Upgrade Order

Upgrades are an important part of playing assault. My upgrade list goes like this:

Passive 2 and Charge 2 at start

Bomb 2

Fly 2

Bomb 3

Charge 3

Optional: Passive 3 then Fly 3

I rarely upgrade to Fly 3 because I just simply don't need the extra flight time. Emptying an AR clip and charging your enemies will get rid of them very quickly. When executed correctly, they won't have any time to react if you have only upgraded to passive 2.

Again, I know that upgrading to charge 3 is highly disputed here on the forums. I know that the animation can be a bad idea under certain circumstances, but I use charge as a last resort to kill a player, mainly relying on my bomb during the mid-game to kill players.

4. Pro vs. Pro

Assault: When fighting an enemy assault, you need to figure out your advantage over him. If you have higher armor and RoF, get in close and charge him. If you have less armor but better accuracy, keep your distance and use your bomb. If you are running an armorless build, use your offensive capabilities to your advantage. Don't zoom in unless the enemy is retreating and you need to peg them with a few shots to finish them off.

Assassin: Assassins are probably your easiest target as assault. When an assassin approaches you, fly. While you are flying, they cannot grapple you. While you are in the air, empty an AR clip into them and charge. They should be dead after that. If you know there is an assassin about to jump into your vicinity, place a bomb in the proper place to ring them out.

Gunner: Gunners can be really tricky. Gunners definitely have the damage advantage over you. The key to fighting gunners is your bomb and their terrible health recovery time. You can try knock them off the map with your bomb. If that doesn't work, you can empty a clip into him and retreat. While you are recovering health, tap the gunner with one bullet to stop his health recovery. Throw another bomb and shoot him some more, he should be dead. The best time to kill a gunner is when they are reloading. Their main weapon is rendered useless, and you will easily beat a mortaring gunner at mid-range.

Tank: Tanks are fun, imo. Don't let them get to close. If they do get close and you have charge three, charge them and run away to regain health. If they are standing still or deployed, head crab them and they should die unless they are running gold armor, using deploy three, and are juiced. Your AR tears them up and there is not much they can do about it. Unless they are good with the rail gun, you should be able to grenade them pretty easily from long range.

Sniper: Snipers are my favorite class to fight. I fly over their traps, and they die really easily. The assault is small but powerful, and you should use this to your advantage. You can kill a sniper very quickly with your AR, and your bomb does excellent damage to their fragile body. Charge should take most snipers to really low health. Don't stand still under any circumstance or you will die versus a halfway decent sniper.

Support: Don't let them get too close and you are fine. Lookout for their firebases and airstrikes. The only supports that will give you trouble are those that run speed or accuracy as an endorsement.

5. General Strategy

I am going to talk you through my general strategy on Spunky Cola. My general ideology is to keep my streaks up and to use the annihilator as much as possible. By keeping my streaks up, I earn money quickly so I can juice to increase my streaks. Your job is to kill pros and juice. If you aren't doing this, you are not playing assault correctly. The outline for Spunky Cola is roughly applicable to other maps as well. Basically get a solid start by having a plan to get some kills, then patrol the map, killing as you go.

Strategy:

Out of the spawn, follow the upgrade chain listed above and get to the main bridge as fast as you can. Once you are at the bridge, use your GL to bounce grenades into the enemy pathway while you cross the bridge. After you have crossed the bridge, you want to keep going to the area where you would land if you used the jump pad on the far right. If you jump out and fly around that corner wall, you can land in the enemy base and use your 50$ to buy the jump pad in the enemy base to get up into their little pathway area. You will end up right behind them and you can ambush them for some easy kills.

After doing this a few times, start patrolling the map. Take down any pros who get in your path, and try to avoid dying if at all possible. Use the ejector to destroy large groups of enemy bots. Get juice and use it when the time is right. When you juice, take down any pros, then turrets, then the moneyball. You can also use juice to save your life if you are taking fire and are low in health.

After the enemy is pushed back into their side of the map, you can use the ambush strategy I mentioned above. Use your bomb 3 to knock enemies back into their base. If your enemies are leaving you alone, use your grenade launcher to juice off of their turrets. When you get juice, go on a killing rampage and take down as many people as you can. Retreat, buy more juice, and repeat. I went 25-16-5 with this strategy while fighting good players, and it worked fairly well. It took 3 pros (a gunner, a support, and an assault) to ambush me to take me down.

When their moneyball is down, juice and use your grenade launcher to take down their moneyball to under half health. Buy more juice and issue the final blow. If you want to be mean, you could kill farm for a minute or so and then kill the moneyball, but I find spawn camping to be really noobish and don't recommend it if you want to make friends.

6. General guidelines for the Assault Class

There are some basic rules of play that you should keep in mind when playing the assault class:

Rule 1: Be aware of your surroundings. If you aren't watching your back, you will die from ambushes quite frequently.

Rule 2: Don't overextend yourself. Overextending yourself will get you killed 95% of the time. Play within your abilities and play it safe when possible.

Rule 3: Avoid death if at all possible. This might seem obvious, but I cannot tell you how many times I have seen people suicide in an attempt to kill me. They are hurting their kill streaks and their K/D ratio. Avoiding death allows you to keep your juice and speed boosts, but it also keeps the enemy from gaining money and juice as quickly. Keeping kill streaks gives you more money and allows you to win the game economically.

Rule 4: Retreat before your juice ends. Juice is a great tool for breaking enemy defenses. You have high damage resistance while juiced, but your God-like abilities only last for so long. You really must learn to retreat with about a second and a half of juice left. As soon as your juice ends, you are vulnerable again. Get out of harm's way while you can, and don't stay in the line of fire for too long because you will die.

Rule 5: Never stop moving. Standing still makes you an easy target. Snipers headshot you, assassins assassinate you, tanks easily charge through you, gunners rip through you like paper, supports stick an airstrike to your forehead, etc. Standing still is just a bad idea, so don't do it.

Rule 6: Change your tactics often. Your enemy will soon figure out your strategies if you do the same ones over and over again. New tactics usually just require a little bit of modification to your playstyle and thinking. Instead of placing a bomb in the same spot for the fiftieth time, place it in a new, surprising location to take your enemy off guard and gain the advantage.

Rule 7: Use the annihilator. The annihilator is a game-changing tool that you should use to your advantage. You are an assault, you should have money from kill streaks. Use the annihilator right after the jackbots spawn to use it most effectively.

Rule 8: Use your grenade launcher. Too many assaults try to third-person hack a corner before turning it. Instead, bounce grenades of of the wall to expose your enemy's health bar. By doing this, you damage them and gain the advantage.

Rule 9: Never stop improving. The assault has so many different playstyles, so try to learn as many as you can. I have used several different playstyles, so I combine them into a hybrid to make my own unique style. Take the good things you see from other people and add it to your list of tactics. When I need to develop a tactic, I go into blitz and practice headcrabbing blackjacks for instance. After an hour or so of practice, you should be much better.

Rule 10: Read all strategy guides from the forums. I have found that just by reading the strategies posted on the forums, my game has improved. When you fight an enemy, realize that they are probably going to use some standard maneuvers on you. Being able to predict their moves can be very important.

7. Punish the Enemy for their Mistakes

The assault is great at punishing the enemy when they make a mistake. I find that the charge is great for killing opponents who overextend themselves. Bomb is good for people who get in your zone of awesomeness. There are certain things that you should take advantage of if given the chance.

Lazer Blazers:

If the enemy builds lazer blazers, I feel it is your job to show them why not to build lazer blazers. Today I let the enemy keep a level 2 lazer blazer just so I could keep juicing off of it. I juiced 10 times that game and got tons of kills because they kept building lazer blazers. You can juice off lazer blazers by taunting in front of them, but make sure the area is safe before taunting or you will die.

Lured Players:

Many players will try to run up to you and get in a close-range fight with you. This is a really dumb idea because you have a bomb. By luring players into a bomb, you can ring them out and get easy kills. Good players will find a way to get around your lure and will fight you another way.

Overextended players:

Many MNC players, especially tanks, have the bad idea and habit of overextending themselves and dying. Overextending is not retreating when you are on low health. Your charge can kill an offensive overextended player, and your bomb can kill a retreating player. Remember this to send your enemy back to the spawn room repeatedly.

8. Closing

As you can see, the assault class is a very basic class to play. There are no advanced tactics you need to learn to master the assault. If you plan to be good with the assault class, you really need to learn to properly place your bombs. Accuracy with the AR is always good, too. To master the assault, you need to learn how to use your mobility to your advantage. The fly ability is highly underestimated by new players, and your bomb has so many different uses.

If you would like to improve with the assault class, I would be happy to help you out. My gamertag is wazupwiop. I am also fairly certain that some of the other members on the forum would be willing to help you out. Send one of us a friend request or a message, and we would be happy to help you improve.

<reserved>

Nice guide, but there's some stuff in there I don't like. Especially this:

Please, this will not work against any halfway-decent player.

Also, a nice little bomb trick is this.

When you confront an enemy (preferably a squishy), throw a bomb over them, landing behind them. Piss them off with your AR so they retreat, straight into the bomb. Works well on snipers hiding at their bot spawn in Steel Peel.This is fun in pubs but will probably not work in privates. Figured I'd put it here anyway.

The trick is to not let them see you throw the bomb. It is very easy to catch even the best players off guard if you execute it properly.

Except good players will always be aware of ice traps and bombs at the top of jump pads. Just saying.

If you throw the bomb at the top of the pad before you come into the enemy's line of sight, you can really catch them off guard. While some will expect that, some will not. It is a 50/50 chance if it works.

needs color.

Bomb has a fast recharge, so you have nothing to lose when you throw your bomb in certain situations to attempt trickery on your opponents.

Be flexible.

Amen.

Thank you for the tip Xeno.

Decent guide, but Xeno deserves credit for a lot of it

Also, since you like to write guides, a little bit of formatting never hurt.

Each class is a little different. With assault, I find that teaching about survival and pro-killing is important. With a class like assassin (possibly my next guide), I find that being able to take down both bots and pros is important, so they deserve equal "talk time". Moving to a format can be a little limiting sometimes, mostly depending on the class. If I were to use the format from this guide for the support, my support guide wouldn't be as effective. I like to change the format and discussion depending on class.

No guide is perfect, but this guide addresses a lot of important details a new assault player should read.

I feel additional information such as bomb jumps and charge/glides (or whatever you guys want to call it) should be documented.

The foundation of the guide is solid, but further details should be added as you progress with your assault career.

You are only as good as you limit yourself, and I play every game with that mindset, as I continue to evolve my career in gaming.

Another small note is that the endorsement suggestions seems really biased. Obviously RoF/Acc/Crit is a copy of my endorsement choice.

Through my gaming, I find Lv 3 Passive doesn't really do anything. I can certainly say that Bronze Crit is absolutely junk, but I'm already accustomed to that so I think alternatives such as skill regen/clip size/health recovery may be suitable choices for anyone else who may pick up this class... in the non-armor department.

I've also ran RoF/Armor/Acc with liking to the setup and I'm sure more many assault also run with this setup.

Lastly, Lv 3 Fly is the last key to unlocking the full mobility of the assault and many assault neglect that, which is a key to my no-armor playstyle. That, and speed pick ups. Again, you are only as good as you limit yourself; break that barrier and take it to the next step.

Amen.

I listed RoF/Accuracy/Crit because I have seen a bunch of people running around with that build. I listed the other builds based on what I have been using, and what I have seen others using.

I just don't find LVL 3 fly necessary. I can do all of those Spunky cola and GIII jumps with Fly 2. I always upgrade to fly 2, but I find fly 3 slightly more than I need.