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The Ascent Best Builds: Terminator Tank Build

In this The Ascent Build Guide, I’m going to show you my Terminator Tank Build, which primarily uses Heavy Weapons like Miniguns to deal great damage from any range. I’ll share the Skills and Attributes you should focus on, the Augmentations you’ll pair with these, and the Tactical Gear, Weapons and Armor that work well for this Build. If you’ve been looking for a way to slaughter enemies in a matter of seconds while staying as resilient as ever from their attacks, then this guide is for you.

The Ascent Best Builds: Terminator Tank Build

The Terminator Tank Build is a highly specialized Build that deals massive amounts of continuous damage since it predominantly utilizes Automatic Heavy Weapons. Most of the time, unlike the Critical Commando Rifle Build, you’ll be shooting enemies to your heart’s content out in the open thanks to your Pocket Mech that allows you to equip a highly durable mechanical suit.

The Ascent Best Builds Terminator Tank Build in Combat

With your Spiderbots Ability, you’re able to summon large quantities of explosive spiders that follow targets around until they detonate. Additionally, with Stasis Stomp, you can launch them into the air while inflicting stasis. This effectively disables enemies, allowing you to freely fire at them while triggering enormous and impactful explosions. Doing so also damages any of their nearby accomplices.

Terminator Tank | Character Creation (Skills and Attributes)

Every time you level up, you gain 3 Skill Points, which you can then use to allocate to one or several Skills of your choice. Take note that you can also gain additional Skill Points through exploration. Furthermore, each Skill influences Attributes that determine the effectiveness of your Augmentations or special abilities. For this Build, you’ll want to focus on several Skills, particularly Tactical Sense, Critical Hit Rate, Weapon Handling, and Balance.

The Ascent Best Builds Terminator Tank Build

At earlier levels, you’ll have to manage the points you’ll be investing in each of these Skills as it differs every now and then based on the Weapons you equip. For instance, you won’t immediately gain access to Heavy Weapons so while you’re trying out other guns, it’s best to start out with Weapon Handling, Tactical Sense, and Critical Hit Rate, before allocating points into Balance. What I prefer to begin with is Weapon Handling. By investing at least 10 points into it, I immediately gain the advantage of quickly reloading and swapping Weapons. This greatly reduces wait time so I can frequently shoot enemies.

Terminator Tank Character Creation (Skills and Attributes) Weapon Handling

Next, you’re going to want to alternate between Tactical Sense and Critical Hit Rate. Tactical Sense determines how fast your Tactical Gear recharges based on the amount of damage your grenades, bots or turrets inflict whereas Critical Hit Rate ascertains the frequency of critical damage you deal. Critical Hit Rate goes very well with Excessive Weapons like Miniguns since it’s an Automatic Weapon with huge clip sizes.

Lastly, there’s Balance, which you ought to put points into the moment you get your hands on Heavy Weapons. Balance not only provides you with added resistance against the effects of stuns and knockbacks, but it also greatly reduces the movement penalty imposed on you as you shoot with Miniguns. This is important in cases when you’re facing an overwhelming number of enemies because you’ll want to protect yourself by moving reasonably agile to crouch behind covers.

Terminator Tank Character Creation (Skills and Attributes) Balance

Overall, it’s best to maximize points at 20 for Weapon Handling, Tactical Sense, and Balance while allocating 10-15 points for Critical Hit Rate. These are sufficient to deal a staggering amount of damage while holding your ground as you blast away with Heavy Weapons.

For extra points, you’ll want to boost Vital Signs at 5-10 points to raise your max HP. 5 points is enough to improve this Tank Build unless you feel more comfortable having extra HP. Alternatively, you can invest 5 points into Body Battery to increase your max Energy. Energy is the charge of your Augmentations so the higher it is, the more often you can activate these special abilities. In total, Cybernetics should be your highest Attribute followed by Motorics, Frame, and then Biometrics.

The Ascent Build Guide | Augmentations and Modules

Augmentations

When it comes to special abilities, you’ll want to focus on Augmentations that utilize and considerably develop the performances of your Cybernetics and Frame Attributes, while taking your Build’s massive damage and tank playstyle into account. As such, it’s best to obtain the Spiderbots and Stasis Stomp Augmentations.

Spiderbots lets you summon hordes of spiders, which then explode once they’ve seeked and followed their targets. This is a powerful Augmentation that’ll almost always decimates multiple enemies in a few seconds while you stand idly by to watch. What makes Spiderbots much more effective is its affiliation with Cybernetics. The higher your Cybernetics, the larger the number of spiderbots deployed upon the special ability’s activation. This lets you focus on others that have not been reached by them.

The Ascent Build Guide Augmentations (Spiderbots in Combat)

Another impressive Augmentation is Stasis Stomp, which destabilizes your targets. This allows you to stomp on the ground to briefly suspend them in the air and to consequently inflict them with stasis. As a result, they’re stunned in place, thereby giving you ample time to eliminate them. Because of your durability, you can easily lure other unaffected enemies into this area and then shoot those in stasis to trigger large explosions. They’ll take similar amounts of damage. Stasis Stomp’s duration relies on the Frame Attribute so its effect is longer than the average since your Balance Skill is at its maximum level.

The Ascent Build Guide Augmentations (Stasis Stomp in Combat)

To effectively execute this Augmentation, remember to face and to be near your enemies. This shouldn’t be an issue HP-wise given your notable resilience.

Modules

Unlike Augmentations, Modules are meant to enhance your passive abilities. For this Terminator Tank Build since you’re going to obliterate enemies into pieces with or without your mechanical suit, you’ll have to enhance Tactical Charge and Vitasigns Booster Mods.

The Ascent Build Guide Modules Tactical Charge

Tactical Charge boosts the recharge rate of your Tactical Gear, making it readily available most of the time whereas Vitasigns Booster increases your max HP. This is also the reason why it’s enough to allot 5 points in your Vital Signs Skill since you’ll be getting a 16% boost with this mod.

The Ascent Build Guide | Weapon Selection

Because of your loadout, you can choose two types of Weapons to swap in between Combat. For both your Primary and Secondary Weapons, selecting two Miniguns that deal massive Physical and Energy Damage are sufficient.

This Terminator Tank Build progresses differently in terms of Weapons since you won’t gain access to these Miniguns until midway into the game. As such, you can temporarily wield Burst Rifles like the EBR Enforcer to deal tremendous Energy Damage and Assault Rifles like Dread to deal Physical Damage.

The Ascent Build Guide Weapon Selection (EBR Enforcer in Combat)

You can easily get both Rifles from killing enemies. Alternatively, you can go with the Overwhelmer Machine Gun, which is an Automatic Weapon that deals Physical and Fire Damage per shot. All of these have low reload times so you’ll still be able to shoot enemies and reload in quick succession. I prefer the EBR Enforcer the most because it has homing bullets, which means that you don’t have to directly aim at targets to shoot them since they’ll get damaged regardless.

Once you’ve completed a couple of main missions, visit the Weapon Vendor to purchase the Strobos and MG1000 Strikebreaker Miniguns, which serve as your Primary and Secondary Weapons. Both Heavy Weapons have mostly the same stats except for their damage and damage types. MG1000 Strikebreaker is more powerful than the Strobos and it deals Physical Damage while the latter inflicts Energy Damage.

The Ascent Build Guide Weapon Selection Strobos Minigun in Combat

It’s vital to have two Weapons that inflict different damage types since you’ll be switching between either of them depending on the enemy you face. Physical Damage is used against Ferals, Joggers and Rojins whereas Energy Damage works well versus mechs and bots.

The Ascent Build Guide | Tactical Gear Selection

Similar to Augmentations, Tactical Gear provides you with a special ability, which can be in the form of grenades, robots or turrets, that aid you in fights. Since Tactical Sense is a top priority, you’ll want to select the best Tactical Gear regardless of its charge rate.

Like Weapons however, you won’t immediately gain access to this Build’s Tactical Gear, which is Pocket Mech. As such, you can equip Stasis Drone in the meantime. Stasis Drone lets you deploy a drone that inflicts stasis to its target. Once immobilized, and similar to how your Stasis Stomp Augmentation functions, you’re able to shoot the same target until it explodes, thereby killing it while dealing massive damage to nearby enemies. As long as the drone remains active, it’ll continue to latch onto its next victim. Pretty cool, right?

The Ascent Stasis Drone Tactical Gear in Combat

Once you get your hands on the Pocket Mech after several hours, you’ll be able to take on enemies without receiving damage. The Pocket Mech deploys a mechanical suit, which you can wear, to protect yourself from incoming attacks. This is largely the reason behind your Tank Build. Note that it has a high charge rate of 1,200, which isn’t a problem given your maximum Tactical Sense Skill and Tactical Charge Mod.

There are a couple of drawbacks once you’ve equipped the suit though. Your reload time is much longer and you can’t use any of your Augmentations, nor can you evade and crouch. There’s also no way to cancel this Tactical Gear in case no enemies are around anymore so you’ll just have to wait for it to deactivate. Moreover, you’ll have to stay away from big explosions and enemies like Hammerhands because their massive hammer swings will disable your Pocket Mech.

The Ascent Build Guide Tactical Gear (Pocket Mech in Combat)

Despite these limitations, the pros outweigh the cons since you’ll be able to defend yourself against most enemies. Just remember to activate your Augmentations first before donning on this huge suit of Armor.

The Ascent Build Guide | Armor Selection

When it comes to Armor, you’ll be focusing on acquiring the best head, torso and legs Equipment that’ll defend you from Physical, Energy, Digital and Fire Damage. At earlier levels, you’ll mostly encounter enemies like Ferals and Turbo Thugs that deal Physical Damage but as you continue to explore sections of each tier, you’ll have to protect yourself from the remaining damage types as well. On top of these defenses, the following gear also provides you with Skill and Attribute boosts to further enhance your Augmentations so choose wisely.

For your headgear, make sure to equip the ED-60 Whisper Heavy Rig Helmet as this provides you with the best defenses for each of the damage types. For your torso, the Custom Flatliner Rig also protects you better against multiple damage while boosting Cybernetics as well as your Balance Skill. Because of the improved Cybernetics, you’re able to summon more spiderbots.

The Ascent Build Guide Armor Selection (ED-60 Whisper Heavy Rig Helmet)

Lastly, for the legs, consider wearing the D-50 Netslinger Pants to slightly raise Balance and Body Energy so that your movement is a bit faster and you have more Energy to use your Augmentations.

Note that you’ll continue to find better Armor as you complete more and more missions. The purple ones, followed by gold gear, are the most rare and powerful types of Armor you can equip. With this Build, you’ll always want to improve Cybernetics, which influences the number of spiderbots deployed, together with the Body Battery Skill to be able to activate Augmentations more often.

The Ascent Build Guide Armor Selection (Custom Flatliner Rig)

Final Tips

Unlike Armor, Weapons require Basic, Advanced and Superior Components to improve overall damage. These components are obtained from chasing after loot, the locations of which can be found in the map. Be sure to visit the Gunsmith to upgrade your Heavy Weapons to make them more effective in combat.

If you feel like boosting your max Energy to be able to frequently use your Augmentations, you can swap the ED-60 Whisper Heavy Rig Helmet for the F-50 Sledgehead Helmet. Although your defenses will slightly be lowered, it’s not going to pose a problem since you can immediately trigger Pocket Mech when you’re in danger, which rarely happens. This helmet enhances both your Body Energy and Critical Hit Rate. You can also go the extra mile by dumping extra points into Body Battery.

Lastly, you can swap either of your Miniguns for the Astrosmasher Automatic Rocket Launcher if you like since not only do you have access to this Heavy Weapon early on in the game, but you also get to knock back enemies to stagger them.

Final Tips (Astrosmasher Rocket Launcher in Combat)


Be sure to check out our official The Ascent Wiki if you have questions about the game! What did you think of this Terminator Tank Build Guide? What Build will you try out first? Let us know in the comments below!

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