Ambush is a rammer that disappears. Stand still long enough and nobody can see you; then you move, you're visible again, and you have a moment to hit before they react.
| Tier | 4 |
| Unlock level | 45 |
| Upgrades from | Bastion |
| Barrels | none |
| Body damage | 60 at 0 points (×3), +27 per Body Damage point, 330 at 10 points |
| Ram | against players, a full body-damage hit every 0.5 s of contact |
| Stealth | fades after 2 s without movement input, fully invisible at 10 s; any movement input reveals you |
| Stats | smasher rules: only Health Regen, Max Health, Body Damage and Movement Speed, capped at 10 |
| Max Health | ×1.012, +24 per point before the multiplier |
| Movement | ×1.5, the fastest smasher; each point adds a flat 0.28 to base speed 4.3 |
Every number here is at 0 stat points, before the per-level health bonus and the per-level speed penalty that every tank gets. The automatic balancer can nudge a class's damage and health over time, so treat these as the roster's base values.
Ambush's stealth works on one rule: stop pressing movement keys and a timer starts. After 2 seconds you start to fade, and at 10 seconds you're fully invisible. Bots, auto turrets and auto-hunting drones stop targeting you, and other players see nothing. The moment you press a movement key, the timer resets and you're fully visible again. You have no gun, so there's no firing flicker to worry about.
That means the stealth is for positioning, not for fighting. You pick a spot where people will pass: next to a shape cluster people farm, a gap between walls, a base entrance in team modes. You sit still until you vanish. When someone comes close enough, you move, you reappear, and you have however long it takes them to notice to close the gap. At 1.5× speed, the fastest of the smashers, that isn't long.
The damage side is standard smasher. Contact deals damage every tick you overlap, and against another player you also land a full ram, your whole body damage, every half second of contact. 60 at 0 points, 330 at ten Body Damage points.
Ambush beats anything that farms in one place and doesn't watch its surroundings, and it's brutal on slow classes: snipers settled into position, Cataclysm, trappers who wander away from their field, and drone classes whose swarm is away hunting. Drones that hit you lose penetration equal to your body damage divided by 12, so a swarm that does reach you dies on contact.
It loses once it's seen. Any movement reveals you, so you can't stalk invisibly; you can only wait invisibly. Players who keep moving, keep firing and keep distance (Trebler, Cascade, Afterburner) are hard to catch. Trap fields stop you dead. Wide spread guns can hit you by accident while you're hiding.
With 33 points across four stats capped at 10: Body Damage 10, Movement Speed 10, Max Health 10, Health Regen 3.
Bastion leads to Ambush, Caltrop and Aegis.
Caltrop hits a little harder (×3.2 against ×3), has more health (×1.104 against ×1.012) and is slower (×1.35 against ×1.5). It's the head-on rammer. Ambush gives up some damage and toughness for speed and stealth. Aegis is a much weaker rammer with a turret and a normal stat panel.
Take Ambush if you're patient and like setting traps with your own body. Take Caltrop if you'd rather chase people down in the open.