Changes: Skills

Revision as of 10:10, 21 May 2017

Passive Skills, or just Skills, are perks that enchance soldiers' perfomance, in one way or another, offensively or defensively. For example, they can give a slight boost in damage dealt, at cost of slight decrease in health, or give some resistance to status effects. Each soldier has 4 skills to choose from (not counting the None "skill"), but only one skill can be chosen at a time for a soldier.

Engineer: None, Iron Grip, Adrenaline, Repair Bots, Efficiency
Mercenary: None, No Sweat, Sacrifice, Scavenger, Ammo Feed
General: None, Fast Hands, Full Auto, Transfusion, Gun Play
Sniper: None, Kill Steal, Armor Piercing, Extreme Focus, Overkill
Juggernaut: None, Immovable Object, Reflective Plating, Booby Trap, Resistance

To gain a skill, you must first unlock it by levelling up enough times. The first skill is always unlocked at level 2, the second one at level 6, the third one at level 10 and the fourth one at level 14. By default, all soldiers only have the None skill unlocked (and equipped), which mean you have no skill chosen. After you've unlocked a skill, navigate to the Soldiers menu (which can be accessed from Main Menu by clicking on the highlighted Soldiers button, or from Campaign/Challenges/Custom Game menus, by clicking on Soldiers button in bottom-left corner), and then to the Abilities screen (accessed by clicking on 3rd icon in top-left corner of Soldiers menu). From there, you can manage both skills and killstreaks, with skills being colored blue and placed in the top row and killstreaks being colored red and placed in the bottom row. Now simply click on any unlocked skill, and bah, you've equipped it. Unlike killstreaks, skills are activated automatically and last for the whole match.

The nature of skills make them similar to weapon attachments, but while Attachments are locked down to a specific weapon type, skills are unique for each class/soldier, so a skill intended for Mercenary cannot be used by a Sniper, with a few exceptions seen mostly in Challenges.

Below is a list of all skills available, sorted by soldier classes and unlock order.

Skills list

Engineer

Iron Grip: A strong grip on your weapon ensures best accuracy at all times.; (Aim is not decreased by Firing or Movement)

Also nullifies recoil given by Hearbeat Sensor attachment.
Crouching still increases accuracy.

Adrenaline

Increase your fire rate while being damaged.

(+15% Fire Rate when being hit)

Gives you a short-lasting fire rate boost after getting hurt.
Fire and acid can trigger this skill too, and the bonus won't go away until fire/acid expire.
Is signalized by red "Adrenaline!" text.

Repair Bots: When injured, Nano Repair Bots repair your wounds, speeding up recovery.; (4x Health Regeneration)

Combine with Superalloy Vest armor for maximum health and health regeneration.

Efficiency: All gadgets are created with greater efficiency, allowing them to be deployed quicker.; (Killstreaks require 1 less kill)

For impatient ones.
Combine with Combat Drone killstreak for a swarm of drones.

Mercenary

No Sweat: Be one with Explosives and take significantly less Damage from them.; (30% Damage from Explosives and Fire; can no longer damage yourself)

All self-damage is effectively nullified (including self-inflicted fire and acid damage), or rather, set to zero. Since 0 damage is still considered as damage, it'll distrupt health (and armor) regeneration anyway.
Combine with Blast Plate armor for even more explosives and fire resistance.
This skill allows you to abuse the double damage bug without damaging yourself.
As an unintended side effect, its anti-suicide function also cancels out many forms of environmental suicide, such as the Disposal Beam at the Isolation map. See this article for more information.

Sacrifice: Deal more Damage at the cost of reducing your max Health.; (15% Damage, but -15% Health)

Good for those who care about damage output and don't care much about survivability. After all, a dead enemy won't strike back.

Scavenger

Steal the Ammo from fallen enemies. Kill forever, shoot forever.

(Killing an enemy recovers +15% ammo)

Gained ammunition is placed in reserve clips and not in current clip, so you'd have to reload in order to access any ammo this bonus gave.
Due to previous point, this skill is best used with either single clip weapons (the two belt-fed machine guns, namely Minigun & Cerberus), in whose case ammo bonus has no choice but to go into their current clip, and rocket launchers, which must be reloaded after each shot anyway.
Is signalized by white "+Ammo" text.

Ammo Feed: All ammo is fed directly to your machine gun, making it very hot!; (Never reload with Machine Guns; +5% chance to set enemy on fire)

Both single clip and ignition chance apply to machine guns only.

General

Fast Hands: Master the art of weaponry with lightning fast reloads.; (Reload Magnums and Shotguns 3x faster)

Who doesn't like fast reloads?

Full Auto: With custom triggers, all weapons become fully automatic and have an increase in Fire Rate.; (+5% Fire Rate, All weapons are Full-Auto)

Extremely useful for high rate of fire magnums, so you don't need to click like 8 times per second.
A fire rate boost is a friend of everything and everyone.

Transfusion: Killing an enemy within 5 feet transfers some of his life to you.; (Heal for 25% when killing enemies in very close range)

Heals you for killing enemies in melee range, plain and simple.

Gun Play

Swap your guns after every kill to keep a steady stream of bullets, forever.

(Killing an enemy instantly reloads your other gun)

To clear any possible confusion: this is not related to the fact that Magnums always come in pairs; it simply reloads your secondary weapon when you score a kill with your primary weapon, or vice versa. Magnums are considered as a single primary weapon in this case.
To make maximum use of this skill, you may want to find a secondary that can kill enemies on its own.
- Or get the enemy low on health with one gun and then switch to another gun and finish him off, for minimal ammo spent on 2nd weapon and a reload of first weapon.
Is signalized by gray "Gun Play!" text.

Sniper

Kill Steal

Killing is easier when you're not being fired at.

(+15% Damage to enemies not targetting you)

Simply adds minor extra damage when firing at those who don't see you or/and are busy shooting a different person.
As you might have guessed, the longer the distance between you and the target is, the higher are chances of not being spotted, so this skill works best with long range SMGs and Sniper Rifles.
This skill is greatly outclassed by Sniper's other skills. If you have access to any other skill, forget Kill Steal and choose something else.
Is signalized by gray "Kill Steal" text.

Armor Piercing: Your bullets pierce through some of the enemy's armor, damaging his health as well.; (Pierce 80% of enemy's armor)

This one is a little tricky. With this skill equipped, only 20% of your damage dealt damages enemy armor, and 80% of it goes directly to their health, ignoring armor. And in case the enemy does not have any armor, it just deals normal (100%) damage.
This skill is utterly awesome against heavier armors such as Titanium Plate, and is nice even against light armors.
Is good with any weapons, be it a light SMG or a heavy sniper rifle.

Extreme Focus

Extreme Focus text — Extreme Focus' text

Taking your time for precise shots will heavily increase your damage.

(+30% Damage after not shooting for 1 second)

Is best used with bolt action sniper rifles, especially Intervention, because their naturally low rate of fire makes it easier to score this damage bonus more often without having to delay the firing in the middle of a gunfight.
Is signalized by dark gray "FOCUSED" text.

Overkill

Killing an enemy with huge damage adds the excess damage to your next shot.

(Add excess kill damage to your next shot)

There's a deep explanation on how does it work: Let's say you have a 150 damage sniper rifle and a 100 health enemy. You kill the enemy using 100 out of 150 damage, so you get +50 damage for your next shot, meaning it'll do 200 damage instead of 150. If you kill another 100 health enemy after that, you'll have 100 unused damage, which, adding up to standard 150 damage, gives you a whole 250 damage next shot. If you kill a 250 HP enemy with that shot, you'd have no excess damage, and therefore no Overkill bonus, so your next shot does its normal damage, 150.
- The only values that matter is your current damage (which can be increased by scoring headshots and critical hits; the Overkill bonus you have accumulated also counts) and enemy's current health. If you shoot him down to 10 HP with a secondary and then strike him with a 100 damage sniper rifle, you'll have 90 additional damage next shot. If you had 100 extra damage from Overkill (leading to 200 damage total), killing a 10 HP enemy would give you +190 damage for next shot.
- Long story short, this skill promotes killing low health enemies with brutal damage, like its name suggests.
Overkill's extra damage applies for both Primary and Secondary. You can first stack up insane damage with a sniper rifle and, when you run out of ammo, pull off a pistol and one-shot a few more enemies with it, until you use up all extra damage you had.
If you miss, your Overkill bonus does NOT change or reset, and next shot would have as much power as the missed one could have, if it'd hit someone.
It's pretty much Sniper's ultimate skill. Although it's practically limited to semi-auto and bolt action sniper rifles, it allows you to deal HUGE damage and easily one-shot fully armored Juggernauts, as long as you have enough weak enemies around to stack damage up.
Is signalized by red "OVERKILL" text on the target.

Juggernaut

Immovable Object: You can never have too much Armor.; (+30% Armor)

Works well with any type of armor, but has best effect when paired with heaviest armors.
Since this value is percentage, you'll have to spend time levelling up and finding a strong armor, to reveal the true potential of this skill.

Reflective Plating: Extra plating gives a chance to completely reflect bullets back at attackers.; (+8% Chance to reflect bullets)

Doesn't even work. Choose something else and hope it'd be fixed at some point.

Booby Trap

Losing your Armor triggers an explosion, damaging all nearby enemies. [Once per life]

(Damage nearby enemies when losing Armor)

Damage done is ranged from 45 (at your soldier's level 1) to 90 (at soldier level 50). The range of explosion itself is just a bit smaller than of Rocket Launchers' projectiles.
It does not damage yourself, but it does damage any allies and enemies close to you.
This low damage and melee range makes this skill unwarranted. Plus, if armor was depleted by someone from long or medium range, the explosion wouldn't even reach the enemy.
Is signalized by white "SURPRISE" text, like an explosion isn't enough.

Resistance: Juggernaut cannot be set on Fire/covered in Acid/Frozen/Electrified.; (Immune to status effects)

Includes self-inflicted statuses. Is a must have if you ever choose an Elemental weapon.
Does NOT protect you against Dooty Launcher's special status effect, but since said effect is only visual and doesn't affect any stats, it doesn't really matter.

No class

These are skills that the player can never choose for any of his soldiers. Their purpose is to be used in specific missions of Campaign and Challenges, to give an unique power-up for the player or the enemies.

Auto Streak 0: Auto gain 1 killstreak point every 3 seconds

Used in Mission 15 by all enemies.

Auto Streak 1: Auto gain 1 killstreak point every 1.5 seconds

Used in Challenge 6 by all enemies, and in Challenge 15, also by all enemies.

Auto Streak 2: Auto gain 1 killstreak point every 0.5 seconds

This one appears to be unused.

Auto Streak 3: Auto gain 1 killstreak point every 0.1 seconds

Used in Challenge 2 by everyone.

Invisibility: Always invisible

Basically a permanent version of True Stealth killstreak. Unlike True Stealth, getting shot doesn't reveal the user; like True Stealth, firing/attacking does briefly reveal the user.
Used in Challenge 10 by all enemies.

Full Radar: Always full radar

Is basically like a Hearbeat Sensor, except with no recoil nightmare.
Used in Challenge 10 by the player.

Tips & Trivia

In general, it's advised to try out all skills and choose which one fits your character build the best.
If a skill doesn't directly state it's limited to one sort of weapons, you should expect it to work with absolutely all weapons, incuding those given by a specific challenge, or Fiesta mod, and even status effects. For an example, Sniper's Armor Piercing works even with melee weapons, and also with fire and acid.
In Campaign, all Strike Force Heroes squad members have Efficiency as their skill, besides the player.
Some challenges can be simplified significantly using a specific skill. If there's a lot of status effects around, choose status immunity. If there's a lot of explosions around, go for explosives resistance. It's nothing difficult or complicated, and yet is often not realized by many.

@@ Line 122: / Line 122: @@
 : Killing an enemy with huge damage adds the excess damage to your next shot.
 : ''(Add excess kill damage to your next shot)''
-* There's a deep explanation on how does it work: Let's say you have a 150 damage sniper rifle and a 100 health enemy. You kill the enemy using 100 out of 150 damage, so you get +50 damage for your next shot, meaning it'll do 200 damage instead of 150. If you kill another 100 health enemy after that, you'll have 100 unused damage, which, adding up to standart 150 damage, gives you a whole 250 damage next shot. If you kill a 250 HP enemy with that shot, you'd have no excess damage, and therefore no Overkill bonus, so your next shot does its normal damage, 150.
+* There's a deep explanation on how does it work: Let's say you have a 150 damage sniper rifle and a 100 health enemy. You kill the enemy using 100 out of 150 damage, so you get +50 damage for your next shot, meaning it'll do 200 damage instead of 150. If you kill another 100 health enemy after that, you'll have 100 unused damage, which, adding up to standard 150 damage, gives you a whole 250 damage next shot. If you kill a 250 HP enemy with that shot, you'd have no excess damage, and therefore no Overkill bonus, so your next shot does its normal damage, 150.
 ** The only values that matter is your current damage (which can be increased by scoring headshots and critical hits; the Overkill bonus you have accumulated also counts) and enemy's current health. If you shoot him down to 10 HP with a secondary and then strike him with a 100 damage sniper rifle, you'll have 90 additional damage next shot. If you had 100 extra damage from Overkill (leading to 200 damage total), killing a 10 HP enemy would give you +190 damage for next shot.
 ** Long story short, this skill promotes killing low health enemies with brutal damage, like its name suggests.