Cascade is a machine gun with a sniper's reach: five stacked barrels firing small, fast bullets out to 728 px. It's reachable from two parents, and it trades hitting power for a constant stream.
| Tier | 4 |
| Unlock level | 45 |
| Upgrades from | Sighthound or Volley |
| Barrels | 5 stacked on one line, fired one at a time, longest first |
| Reload (0 points) | 0.5 s per barrel; a shot every 0.1 s staggered (10 shots/s) |
| Burst mode (Q) | all five fire together every 0.5 s (also 10 shots/s at 0 Reload) |
| Bullet speed | 809 px/s (×2.2) |
| Bullet range | about 728 px |
| Bullet damage | 2.8 per shot (×0.35) |
| Penetration | 3 (base 2 plus 1) |
| Bullet size | radius 8.5, spread ±2° |
| Recoil | 3× a Recruit's kick split across the five barrels, so 0.6 per shot |
| Health / movement | ×1 / ×1 |
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.
Cascade stacks five barrels and fires them in order, one shot every 0.1 seconds: ten bullets a second at 728 px. Each bullet only does 2.8 damage at 0 points, so the stream is about 28 damage per second. That is modest, and the class is about how it arrives rather than how much: a steady line of fast bullets that chips anything in front of you, forgives small aiming errors because there's always another shot coming, and fills the air between you and the enemy.
Burst mode (Q) makes all five barrels fire together each time their 0.5 second reload is up. At 0 Reload that's the same ten shots a second, just in clumps of five. With Reload built, it gets better than that. The server fires on a 30 Hz tick, and at seven Reload points the staggered rotation is limited to 15 shots a second while burst reaches 18.75, because each barrel fires the moment its own reload ends. So on a built Cascade, burst is genuinely more fire. The cost is that five bullets travelling together miss together.
Recoil is split across the barrels, so each shot gives 0.6 of a Recruit's kick. At ten or more shots a second that's a steady backward drift while you hold fire, which suits a class that wants to keep its distance anyway.
Cascade out-reaches every short-range gun class, so the fans, shotguns and Octant can't touch it. The stream is a useful screen: every bullet you fire can knock an enemy shot out of the air, since colliding bullets each lose penetration equal to the other's damage. It keeps rammers under constant fire as they approach.
The weakness is how little each bullet does. 2.8 damage is a scratch on a high-health tank, and it takes five bullets to kill a standard drone even with the double damage bullets deal to drones, so swarms are harder for you than for most guns. Horizon out-ranges you by 200 px and the missile classes by far more. Once something fast reaches you, you have no burst damage to stop it.
A 33-point build: Bullet Damage 7, Reload 7, Bullet Penetration 5, Bullet Speed 4, Movement Speed 5, Max Health 5.
From Sighthound, the alternative is Apex. Apex fires three heavy 14.4 damage shots per cycle; Cascade fires a stream of 2.8 damage bullets. At 0 points you're slightly ahead on damage per second (28 against 22), but Apex lands far more per hit, kills drones in one shot and does real damage to high-health targets. Take Cascade for steady pressure and a screen of bullets, Apex if you want each shot to count.
From Volley, the alternatives are Autovolley (four fast barrels plus an auto turret) and Volleysnare (two guns plus a rear trap launcher). Both are short-range at 331 px. Cascade is the only Volley ending that fights at long range, so take it if you're tired of getting outranged.