Part 3: The Assault Class

The Assault Class

This time around we're going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the Assault Class. Of all the classes the Assault remains the most unchanged from Battlefield 3. They make use of assault rifles, are the only medical equipment carrying class and have a variety of underslung weapons at their disposal. They have one new gadget; the Medikit, but everything else stays the same. Underslung weapons can be wielded on their own or on the underside of the assault rifle you are using. Doing this requires you to forgo any sort of grip on the weapon and instead take the Underslung Rail attachment, which comes standard to all assault rifles. The benefits of keeping things under the barrel instead of as a stand alone are basically fractions of a second when switching between the main weapon and the underslung, so use at your own discretion.



This is the first row of gadgets for the Assault class. These are all underslung grenade launchers. Each one is sort of self explanatory, but let's run down this anyways. The HE is a high explosive launcher, the grenade detonates on impact. SMK is the smoke launcher I use in the video, it creates a cloud of concealing smoke that will break 3D spotting if deployed between two enemies. M320 Dart is a 40mm round filled with little spikes that will do some pretty serious damage to opponents, more or less the dart rounds from a shotgun. FB is the flashbang round, it won't do any damage when it explodes (though hitting people with it directly will kill them), but it issues a blinding flash of light that disorients opponents; usefulness towards that end is debatable at this time. The LVG is a timed version of the HE grenade, allowing you to bank it off walls and through windows and the like.



The MASS, Dart, Slug and Frag are really just different ammo types for the M26 underslung shotgun, often called a Masterkey. MASS is your standard buckshot, Darts are flechettes that do penetrating damage, Slugs are a single ball of lead that can turn shotguns into decent distance weapons and Frag rounds are explosive rounds that do less damage than normal slugs but mostly share their flight pattern. The First Aid Pack is what I called the Medikit all round, it restores a set amount of health and then disappears. When you throw it the kit tracks to the nearest injured person and is genuinely useful, unlike the support class' ammo pouch. The Medic Bag increases the rate you regenerate health and doesn't track to friendlies, but falls down on the ground where you toss it. It is still more useful than the First Aid Pack as it never just runs out of healing. The Defibrillator can bring a man back from the dead by shocking him back to life (it can also kill enemies this way). you get three charges/chances to revive people and just tapping the revive button won't bring them back all the way, only about a quarter of the target's health is restored in that case. What you really want to do is hold down the left mouse button and charge the paddles before shocking, this will bring them back with way more health.

Assaults are unique in that they have no anti-armor weapons or gadgets, so they are helpless against tanks, LAVs, Planes and Fast Attack Craft. A single grenade from a grenade launcher can knock an enemy scout chopper out of the air, though it will usually take two, so keep that in mind.



Here's the Assault's field upgrade tree. Depending on how you play your class you may want to lean away from Defensive, but for someone like me who charges enemies all the time, Defense is great as I always have a bit more body armor (Level 1 upgrades are always unlocked).