Caltrop is the heaviest-hitting rammer in the game. It has no gun, one job, and the body damage to do it.
| Tier | 4 |
| Unlock level | 45 |
| Upgrades from | Bastion |
| Barrels | none |
| Body damage | 64 at 0 points (×3.2), +28.8 per Body Damage point, 352 at 10 points |
| Ram | against players, a full body-damage hit every 0.5 s of contact |
| Stats | smasher rules: only Health Regen, Max Health, Body Damage and Movement Speed, capped at 10 |
| Max Health | ×1.104, +24 per point before the multiplier |
| Movement | ×1.35; each point adds a flat 0.28 to base speed 4.3, so 10 points is about 1.65× |
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.
Caltrop has no barrels. You damage things by touching them. Every server tick you overlap an enemy, both of you take a slice of the other's body damage, and against another player a smasher also lands a full-strength ram, your whole body damage at once, every half second of contact. With 64 body damage at 0 points and 352 at ten Body Damage points, those rams end fights fast.
Smashers use their own stat rules. You can only buy four stats, Health Regen, Max Health, Body Damage and Movement Speed, and each caps at 10 instead of 7. You still only get 33 points, so you'll max three of them and put the rest in the fourth. Body Damage points are worth 9 each before Caltrop's 3.2 multiplier, and Max Health points 24 each before its 1.104.
Caltrop is a little slower than Bastion (×1.35 against ×1.4) and has less health (×1.104 against ×1.3). It trades both for a 28% bigger body damage multiplier.
Caltrop wrecks drone classes. A drone that hits you loses penetration equal to your body damage divided by 12, over 5 per hit at 0 points and nearly 30 at max, so drones die on contact. Hivelord, Steward, Dreadnought and Revenant are all in trouble. It beats slow gun classes it can reach, like Cataclysm after a missed shot, and anything that gets cornered.
It loses to anything that keeps its distance: snipers, missile classes and fast gun tanks that back off while firing, like Trebler and Cascade. Trappers are the hard counter, because traps are solid and stop you dead. Recoil-heavy classes like Birdshot and Pentad push away from you with every volley.
With 33 points across four stats capped at 10, the standard build is Body Damage 10, Movement Speed 10, Max Health 10, Health Regen 3.
Bastion leads to Caltrop, Ambush and Aegis.
Caltrop is the most damage. Ambush hits a bit less (×3 against ×3.2), moves faster (×1.5 against ×1.35) and can turn invisible by standing still, which makes it the ambusher. Aegis keeps all eight stats with the normal cap and adds a turret, but its body damage scales far less, so it's a much weaker rammer.
Take Caltrop if you want to win head-on collisions and shred drone classes. Take Ambush if you'd rather catch people by surprise.