XENO // BREACH weapon classes: all five explained

XENO // BREACH has five weapon classes. Ballistic Assault is accurate straight fire. Laser & Charge is hold-and-release beams that pierce lines. Heavy Ordnance is rockets, grenades, flame and turrets. Shotgun Scatter is pellets and crowd control. Plasma Blade & Lunge is melee. Every weapon belongs to one class, and each class has a five-rank skill tree. You rank trees up with skill points: one per wave cleared and one per boss, or bought with points (750 for the first, then 1,500, 2,250 and so on).

How classes work

Your operative sets your starting class. The Vanguard starts as Shotgun Scatter, the Devastator as Heavy Ordnance, the Recon Ghost, Tech-Engineer and Bio-Medic as Ballistic Assault, and the Pyro-Breacher and Psi-Adept as Laser & Charge.
Everyone starts with a starter-tier gun. On the select screen you pick one of three for your class: Shotgun Scatter gets the SG-90 Breach Shotgun, the Shrapnel Cannon or the sidearm; Ballistic Assault the PDW, the sidearm or the Grapple Tether Gun; Laser & Charge the Mag-Rail Bow, the Boltcaster or the sidearm; Heavy Ordnance the Phosphor Flare Gun, the Cluster Dart Launcher or the sidearm. The Vault's Field Armory adds a fourth. The big guns hang on the walls of each deck, and your own class pays 30% less for them.
Trees follow the weapon in your hand. A Ballistic rank adds 22% damage to ballistic guns, and only 10% to everything else. Each tree favors its own family the same way.
Ranks get dearer, and two of them fork. A rank costs as many skill points as its number, so a full tree is 15. Ranks 3 and 5 offer two choices: take one and the other is gone for the run.
You can rank any tree. Most runs pour points into the class you're holding. Buying a gun from another class mid-run is a reason to spread out.
Two more trees cover your suit. ARMOR gives +1 max armor heart per rank and a bigger heal at the end of each wave. SPEED gives +9% move speed and 12% faster dash recharge per rank.

Class	Good at	Skill tree
Ballistic Assault	Accuracy, long range, steady damage	BALLISTIC
Laser & Charge	Piercing lines of xenos, quiet shots	LASER
Heavy Ordnance	Crowds, bosses, turret builds	ORDNANCE
Shotgun Scatter	Close range, knockback	SHOTGUN
Plasma Blade & Lunge	Melee, reflecting acid, saving ammo	SPEED

Ballistic Assault

Straight-fire guns: the sidearm, the PDW, the Kestrel AR-9 rifle, the AT-56 Heavy Autogun and the Gauss Railgun. They hit where you point. The first shot is the most accurate, and the spread opens up if you hold the trigger, so short bursts beat sprays.

Gauss Railgun: 11 damage per slug, through four xenos in a line, out to 460 pixels. Five rounds, about one shot a second. It's also one of the loudest guns in the game.
AT-56 Heavy Autogun: 48 rounds at 4.5 damage, firing every 0.085 seconds. You buy it off the wall.
Grapple Tether Gun: reels a xeno in for a finisher.

Tree: each rank adds 22% damage, faster fire and one more pierce, and any rank tightens your spread by 40%. Rank II fires a twin round with every shot. Rank III forks: rounds that bleed, or drum mags with 60% more rounds. Rank IV adds 40% magazine size, and kills feed two rounds back into the mag. Rank V adds 45% fire rate and forks again: every third shot explodes, or rounds ricochet.

Laser & Charge

Beams, rails and charged shots. Most of these hold to charge and release to fire, and many pierce everything in a line. Several are nearly silent, which matters a lot (see Designing light and noise).

Helios Charge Laser: charges in 0.45 seconds, then fires a 16.5-damage beam that passes through every xeno in the corridor, out to 420 pixels.
Mag-Rail Bow: silent magnetic bolts. Hold to overcharge.
Photon Laser Beam: a continuous beam that sears chitin.
PC-21 Laser Splitter: three ion beams at once, bouncing off walls. You buy it off the wall.
Arc-Lightning Cannon: chain lightning that jumps from xeno to xeno.
Shard Slinger: silent, stuns, and regains a round every 2 seconds on its own.

Tree: each rank adds 28% damage to lasers and charged weapons, including the charged melee weapons, the Grav-Hammer and the Mono-Lance, and charges them faster. Guns in the family also gain two pierce per rank. Rank II gives uncharged lasers two extra side beams. Rank III forks: beams that set xenos alight, or Overcharge, with 40% more damage and slower fire. Rank IV refunds a round on every kill. Rank V forks: a twin hyper-beam, or beams that ricochet.

Heavy Ordnance

Rockets, grenades, flame and the strange stuff. It's the best class against crowds and bosses, and its tree is the turret tree.

Valkyrie Rocket Pod: a three-rocket straight-line salvo that detonates on impact. You buy it off the wall.
Hellfire Rocket Tube: an 18-damage warhead with a big blast radius.
Plasma Frag Launcher: hold to arc timed shells into a crowd.
Drakon Incinerator: hold to pressurize, release for a cone of fire.
Dark-Matter Launcher: fires a small black hole that pulls xenos in, then implodes.

Tree (ORDNANCE): each rank adds 30% to ordnance damage. Turrets also hit harder, get 12% cheaper and 40% tougher per rank. Rank II makes blasts bigger and lets a second turret stand. Rank III adds 50% ordnance ammo and forks: a free Plasma Grenade or Thermite Flask every wave, or turrets that recharge twice as fast. Rank IV makes your blasts leave fire. Rank V forks: a warhead added to every shot, or a third turret. If you like holding a corridor with sentries, this is your class.

Shotgun Scatter

Pellets, knockback and wide blasts. It forgives aim and controls space.

SG-90 Breach Shotgun: seven pellets, six shells. The class's first starter gun.
Shrapnel Cannon: reloads itself from the Alloy Scrap you carry.
Cryo-Nitrogen Cannon: freezes xenos so they shatter.
Grav-Shock Cannon: a 22-damage shockwave with the heaviest knockback in the game.
Stasis Web Launcher: nets a pack in place. It does no damage, so pair it with something that does.

Tree: each rank adds three pellets, three shells and 20% damage. Rank I adds 20% range. Rank II adds 60% knockback and a pierce. Rank III forks: incendiary pellets, or flechettes that make xenos bleed. Rank IV adds four more pellets, and pellets ricochet. Rank V forks: kills reload a shell, or shots leave fire behind. The bonuses apply to any weapon that fires more than one pellet.

Plasma Blade & Lunge

Melee. Every operative carries a melee weapon, so everyone uses this class some of the time. Swap to it with Q.

Mono-Lance: hold to charge, release to rocket-lunge through a swarm. One waits by the door on the first deck.
Grav-Hammer: hold to slam a shockwave.
Thermal Breach Axe: 6 damage and cleaves everything in reach.
Vibro-Blade: fast, cuts through three.
Chainblade: hold to rev, then it shreds.

Melee does two things guns can't. A swing knocks Acid Spitter shots back at the nearest xeno in front of you. And it's quiet: a swing only makes noise when it connects. Melee costs stamina, though. Each swing spends some. Run out and your swings slow down, hit at 60% and can't knock anything over.

Tree (SPEED): +9% move speed and 12% faster dash recharge per rank. Rank III forks: rolls that leave fire, or reloads 30% faster. Rank V forks: rolls that explode, or two rolls in a row. Melee lives and dies by footwork.

Make any gun stronger: the Tech-Forge

The Tech-Forge, a station in the last sector of each deck, overclocks the gun you're holding, up to tier 3. Each tier adds 65% damage, 50% more ammo and one pierce, and fires a little faster. The gun gets a new name too. The first tier costs 2,500 points, and each one after that costs 1,500 more. The Armory Crate costs 950 points and rolls a random weapon, sometimes a prototype.

Which class should you start with?

New to the game: Shotgun Scatter, with the Vanguard.
You like turrets: Heavy Ordnance, or a Tech-Engineer with a free sentry.
You aim well: Ballistic Assault, with the Recon Ghost.
You like a quiet, clever game: Laser & Charge, starting with the silent Mag-Rail Bow.

The full operative list is in your first run. To try them, play XENO // BREACH free.