any list of perks to always take? always avoid?

[nvmvoidrays]

title.

some are obvious, such as the XP Bonus, but some other ones seem like they could b egood, but are actually huge traps. any updated tier lists of what perks are great/good/bad would also be neat.

[Eden]

Never Takes |
Mark - I just don't see the point of this especially when there are plenty of undodgeables
Crippling Punch - Obviously
Quick Reload - You have two sets of items for a reason, and I don't think wasting a perk point on reloading your equipment is all that good
Third Eye - If you're going for a dps ranged build, they should be in a watch tower 9/10 so they get true vision anyways
Field Study - Takes a little too long to be useful, and most "long range" builds can already see half of the map anyways
Bully - Kind of pointless, because it nukes your crit damage

Always Takes |
Coagulation - Really good early armor that scales with you, can satisfy all your defensive needs if you take this with organic armor
Relentless - Completes any melee build really it negates the weakness of melee with movement
Sadist - Required for debuff builds, your centipedes and axe swing will do little damage without this perk, but once you get it, you'll go to the moon
Toxic Leech - Makes every tank that much tankier, especially if you have a druid staff or orb user
Energized - Good for everyone, everyone cast spells
Mana Growth - Same thing as the former, mana is good to have
Human Ballista - It makes any unit a power house, especially archers and tome mages
Explosive Essence Mana is used a lot, especially with tome and orb mages
Nimbleness Perfect perk for early game, gives mobility, defense, it's just really good
Lone Wolf Perfect for watch tower archers if you position properly, but can also allow you to use a spearman or really anyone to solo clear a side as long as they have any sort of aoe and defense

Of course all of the rank V perks are must takes, but the 3 I see myself drawn to the most are BOOM! , Night Owlc, and Sheer Power, Dont Panic is fine as well

[Samseng Yik]

For me slightly different

Strong take
1) Combo of Blood magic + physical kill recover life
2) +2 MP and 15% dodge when no harmed.
3) Human ballista
4) Recover MP on melee damage or momentum
5) +2 multi-strike (dagger, wand)
6) Diagonal Propaganda (poison druid)
7) Most poison related perk (of course for poison build)
8) big game hunter (very important as bosses and late game elite has massive HP pool)
9) +1 trinket slot (extra gear slot, more bonus, more mana)

Situational Take
1) Mark (especially remarkable you don't choose accuracy omen)
2) Mana discount per 8 AP spend (if don't have blood magic + leech HP perk)
3) 15% crit but -60 HP (If HP is high or attack from far distance)
4) Mana recovery per kill (if don't have blood magic + leech HP perk)
5) Bonus armor based on HP regen
6) Dodge recover AP (if the hero got good dodge %)
7) Bonus crit vs full HP enemy (Useful for crit build, and high armor enemy)
8) Potion throw (useful for someone carrying few potion to save other hero)
9) Bonus crit based on mana emptiness (Very useful if mana regen high)
10) Bypass resist (Important for later map and certain enemies , range/physical)
11) Overkill explosion (Useful if this is big hitter)

No take
1) Experience bonus ( I consider only for late comer, or if really nothing worth to pick)
2) Defense kill count for this hero kill (Same as previous)
3) Bonus armor when near obstacle (Can't see much value of this)

[TripSin]

Originally posted by Red:

Never Takes |
Mark - I just don't see the point of this especially when there are plenty of undodgeables
Quick Reload - You have two sets of items for a reason, and I don't think wasting a perk point on reloading your equipment is all that good

Most weapons don't have an undodgeable skill and mark can be a free way to enable opportunism. Can save you from wasting AP against high dodge enemies like crawlers, especially if you're accuracy stat is not good.

Quick reload can get value with off-hand weapons for more 0-AP attacks.

[Bumc]

Alright, I have a different take.
Every perk is playable, some are just very situational.

For experience bonuses keep in mind that your tavern selection is based on your _highest level_ hero, so having someone go high level even with bad perks is better once you start buying more heroes.

For vision its a good counter to mist and guards on precise medium range weaponry (1h xbows, shortbows etc). Keep in mind that you can get more than one stack from multihit attacks, so pretty much every other hit lets you ignore the obstacles.

Mark is a bit outdated because accuracy is so easy to get now, but its still a reasonable debuff proc for bully and counter for crawlers.

Field study turns everything into long range, which is good for stuff that kill enemies too quickly and have too many targets per hit, so again, xbow. The only problem is that +range is capped at +8 so often taking blink is more value in ground covered anyway.

Bonus armor near obstacle is just bonus armor, you can always navigate to end your turn near obstacle if you don't forget about this perk. It is a good perk, probably the best T1 still, being able to eat a hit is often very useful to slow down the enemy wave or block a chokepoint with a hero. Meat regenerates, buildings do not.

Bully provides most stats per perk, but you have to jump through some hoops to make it useful. Contamination + debuff + poison is +75% crit chance -60% crit multiplier and you can spread this butter all over the enemy packs. The catch is that you also have to have something to apply it cheaply and something to stack crit multi back up (so crit tree). But then you can put zero points in crit and focus on opportunism and still get ~100% crit chance with first blood + bully.

And yeah, crippling blow is just a meme, I don't see a world where its worth a perk point.

[hilfazer]

Why to never take Crippling Punch?

[Nonoche]

Obviously it depends on the exact build you intent to do. There's few completely useless one or completely broken one.

Gonna expand on what people already said that i disagree on.

Never take :

Coagulation : Daily health regen is a bad stats you should never take when you see it, just get health potions and count on your base healing, eventually make a temple if something bad happened and you need big healing. Back protection for better early tankiness is much better, and it's based on level so you get more as you exp without investing on anything else.

Toxic leech ; only usefull when you get hit, which you obviously should avoid above everything, and even then, it's only +2 hp for each poisoned enemies, It's nothing compare to the damage enemy can inflict. Even if you take blood magic just use health potions or vampire if you melee.

Spikes : Again something that you need to get hit to use, and even then the damage aren't that crazy, i think the spikes damage can be dodge by the enemy, and the block stats requires too much investment to be worth it. Most problematic enemies will hit harder than whatever block stats you can get, or straight up ignore it.

Don't panic : it's the worse of the tier V perk imo, i never take it, If something is in your base most of the times it's because you did something wrong before, and if you got tier V that means you are high level and you have options to deal with that, 30% damage is gonna be overkill most of the times. Balista should do this job.

Situational :

Quick reload : It can be really good, some weapons have devastating spells but with only one use. It's free, it doesn't cost anything to use, but got only 3 use per night. It's top tier if you go for a specialist build (only one weapon).

Bully : Akward perk, but stil decent, having some critical on everyone is good, lots of build can benefit from critical damage. I pick that when i got low crit chance on my hero, or if i'm being unlucky on my crit build stats find.

Volatile reaction : Must take on propagation build like Tome or Staff and one hand crossbow. you don't need to have clear line of enemies, it's great.

Must take :

Human ballista : most likely the best perk in the game, you basically deletes the two closest thing every turn, it's based on your damage, and it's hitting before the real balista in your base so it won't waste those hits.

Edit : Forgot Exp gains, it's obviously top tier, you got them early so you'll benefit a lot from it. Both, the flat exp and the defense exp one are very good to pick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goEELwlSndQ&ab_channel=Aldenpotamus

The video is a bit long, and outdated, but most of the point still stands, and he explains the reasoning behind each one.

[Sleepy]

I find most of my perk picks are dependent on what weapon I want the guy using, and what random options they rolled.

Quick Reload, for instance, If I see it on a starter: I'm going to make that starter into something that can make use of it. Especially if they have Specialist.

I think there's only two that are 100% always take no matter what:

Human Ballista, and the extra trinket slot.
And probably XP gains. I find I take both of those most of the time. If only because most of the other perks in that row aren't very good.

The rest kind of depend on what your comp is.

[Bumc]

I'd say Coagulation still situational.
There is a trait that gives like 60 health regen on its own, plus then any "useless" life regen mods suddenly become a good addition to your defences.

Don't panic and spikes alright, also hard pass.
Block builds aren't bad on their own, especially with mana shield in the mix, but actually doing damage with spikes is mega awkward.
And block is capped at 100 so you cannot even kill elites with it.

And don't panic is alright for what it does, but in any build you can find 3 better T5 perks.

Originally posted by hilfazer:

Why to never take Crippling Punch?

You don't want to actually use it on anyone!
The only ones that can are either
* Broken AP refund builds (energizer, legendary assassin etc) that don't run out of AP
* Builds that want to apply -MS
First ones can afford it, but cannot really use it as they run out of enemies in melee range. And second ones don't have AP to spare so are better off with other options like a druid staff as a swap-weapon.

[just.dont.do.it]

Perk value depends heavily on the map. E.g. in the 1st map, +25% XP perk actually means that you can reach the last perk line as opposed to not reaching it. On any other map, it's very close to worthless, applicable maybe only to some late-comers in a pinch.

The only perk that I'd avoid in pretty much all the possible situations and all the builds is Crippling Punch. Yes, it's way too meme.

Rest have uses. Even Don't Panic.

E.g. spikes synergize very well with full tanks that have Berserk and wade through enemy waves without any care in the world. Sure, you won't be killing much with spikes alone, but it works well together.

[Drakilian]

What perks are good to take are extremely dependent on the combinations of perks that you roll. When you roll a new character look through what they ended up getting and pin perks that seem synergistic to you.

Many of the lists here are, frankly, very bad. I say this as someone who plays the game on the highest apocalypse difficulties.

The only perks I would say always deserve an extreme amount of consideration (this does not make them must takes, but it means they are extremely good and usually worth taking if there isn't a synergistic build that has higher priority) would be the perks that give extra gear slots. Potion throw and Overload are two of the best perks in the game, because there is no perk that will contribute more to character power than a +5 movement or +5 AP potion would, outside of something like Vampirism+Blood Magic+Coagulation+Organic Armor+Bodybuilder.

Coincidentally, those two perks can be taken with omens and should basically always be taken to guarantee 4 bag slots on every character, while also reducing the pool of available level 1 perks to guarantee specific options, allowing you more foreknowledge in planning character options.

The perk that gives an extra trinket slot is similarly extremely good, because it just provides a large amount of flexible raw stats and possibly an additional ability. You do have to be able to fill the slot however, so it should usually wait until you have the ability to do so without sacrificing another hero's power.

Also, for reference, the xp bonus perk is very bad and the only reason to take it would be if you had no perks worth taking in the first two rows and needed a character to get to higher rows as fast as possible.

[Magnus075]

Originally posted by hilfazer:

Why to never take Crippling Punch?

Crippling Punch is fun to take if or when you want to get yourself some amusing challenges.

Like... Try to win maps only by punching monsters.
Has been tried succesfully (by some, not me, not yet).

[Jotun]

Originally posted by Bumc:

Bully provides most stats per perk, but you have to jump through some hoops to make it useful. Contamination + debuff + poison is +75% crit chance -60% crit multiplier and you can spread this butter all over the enemy packs. The catch is that you also have to have something to apply it cheaply and something to stack crit multi back up (so crit tree). But then you can put zero points in crit and focus on opportunism and still get ~100% crit chance with first blood + bully.

I have built a tome mage that way and it rocks. Debuff enemies, contaminate a few and then just lightning bolt with lots of propagation and everything dies, even boomers. That mage has also a large mana pool and mana regen and gets more crit with less mana. It works really well.

[CanuckBear]

It's also about the Apoc level.

The last 2 maps, apoc 5+, only a few builds can make life easier. Unfortunately, these builds also require certain weapon types. I haven't retested this yet, but Bully with multihit, Crit with multihit, and Poison with propagation, used to be the most reliable.

I like to have fun with Poisonous, but on high apoc, last 2 maps, it's too weak.

[Bumc]

Poisonous actually absolutely shreks with some poison damage with targeted contamination and 2h hammer. You get to move all that aoe small poison with stuns attached back through formation. And you don't even need to tank that much because you can always just use stunned mobs to block the way.
Apoc-6, but not last 2 maps alright, might be too weak to mass hunters just sniping the guy.

[Galenwolf]

Defensive Training is broken. 100% XP from Ballista kills - this is NOT split, each hero gets the full exp.

Roll all your heroes until they have that and then add in the perk that increases Ballista power when a hero is near and you can literally sit behind a wall of Ballista and have each hero get 3 level ups per night.

I'm watching a streamer right now with level 15 heroes on night 4 on the last level.