Deep Rock Galactic – Perk Tier List (Update 1.0)

A tier list for perks ranked by general usefulness and with reasons for each one.

List of Perk Tiers in Deep Rock Galactic

Perk Tier List and Reasons

S Tier (Must Have)

• Dash: best perk in the game. All the classes benefit from it, even scout. Can be used in every situation with a 25 sec cooldown, this will save you way more times than any other perk and lets you easily kite things with classes with less mobility.

A Tier (Really Good Perks)

• See you in hell: underrated perk, it’s iron will and field medic on steroids. You can use it 3 times instead of 1 (iw, fm), the explosion is disgusting, I killed 2 oppressor at 70% hp the other day. Leaves a 10 sec fear and damage field that kills small stuff and doesn’t let any melee bugs enter, it’s a 10 sec free revive but 3 times in each mission. It’s probably S tier on salvage operations. Oh it also has a passive that goes well with vampire (less useful passive on higher difficulties because enemies hit hard but the active is way too good).
• Vampire: +5 hp doesn’t seem to be a lot but if you use your pick to kill the bugs that barely survived some other weapon, and you get used to power attack stuff and kite stuff so more enemies die from your power attack, this will give you so much hp in a mission. Without hp you die and this is basically free hp if you use it right. It’s S tier for driller with cryo gun and barbed drills, melee god.

B Tier (Good Perks, Useful in Every Situation)

• Hoverboots: underrated perk. Fall damage is probably one of the main causes of death or hp loss. Driller and gunner really benefit from it, a bit useless on engi and scout doesn’t need platforms if you master hoverboots, power attacking walls and grapple.
• Sweet Tooth: not as good as vampire because there’s more enemies than red sugar. Still really good perk that always has an use because there’s always red sugar in the caves, speed is nice for kiting.
• Friendly: not that useful in lower difficulties because lower friendly fire but in haz4 and 5 you can’t go wrong with it. Get it if you are gunner user a high damage build, if you use fat boy or plasma burster, r if you are driller because you will always be in the frontline.
• Elemental Shield: 30% resistance vs a lot of stuff and enemies that you will always find in caves, awesome.
• Berserker: 4 min cd seems like a lot but it’s up for every wave. Go power attack damage with this, it’s disgusting vs big enemies and you top your hp with vampire in waves. The bad thing about this perk is that you can’t bind it to a key so you can missclick and waste it.
• Revive: unless you team is godlike, there’ll be deaths. This is always useful for last man standing or for higher hazards where you need to revive fast. The instant revive can save a game. Bit useless on gunner because of the shield.
• Born Ready: this is probably my favorite perk because I’m too lazy to reload. Can reload 3 guns on engi and scout, and it’s really useful for autocannon on gunner. Bit useless on driller. It will save you for those times when you forget to reload the platform gun and will increase your dps because you can be alternating between weapons that are always full. Probably A tier on engi or a scout with a high dps build

C Tier (Situational Perks)

• Unstoppable: you’ll love this on fungus or glacial, I had the worst cave the other day with all the floor covered in goo, it was a nightmare. Situational because some biomes don’t have slows, and you can always destroy them or go around with all he traversal tools. Would be A tier if it worked for webspitters or slashers, and the pickaxe slowdown.
• Thorns: really good on lower difficulties because you do 24 damage and the enemies do basically nothing. Not really useful on haz 4 or 5, you need to run from hard hitting enemies not tank them. For swarmers and jellies just stay close to your driller or engi.
• Resupplier: awesome perk for tense moments in point extraction or salvage but it’s really situational… most times there are no enemies when you resupply or gunner will shield the resupply and you will find sugar or use vampire to get that 25% hp.
• Iron Will: the old king of perks got a deserved rework. Can still save a game but I put it on C tier because it only has 1 use and no passive. See you in hell is better trust me, go try it. Also get dash and you won’t die. Probably B tier on deep dives because you get more uses but if you wan’t to get good don’t use it on more than 1 player in the team.

D Tier (Needs Tweaks)

• Shield Link: passive is good but has a really short range and doesn’t stack. The active is useless most of the time because there’s no hud for teammates shield and I always see people missclicking it because we can’t still rebind perks for some reason.
• Heightened Senses: can be nice for solo runs without bosco and really rare last man standing situations with a the bugged grabbers but outside that… why would you need this? Useless if your team stays together, scout flares, team pings enemies, uses chat… maybe it’s B tier for greenbeards because they don’t do those things.
• Beastmaster: fun perk but wasted slot. Normal steeve is useless and slasher can do damage but dies fast. Guard is ok to distract enemies but you know maybe use your turrets or stay with the team, steeve can’t revive you and doesn’t have aoe (and 5 min cooldown oof, if you want a long cooldown use berserker, at least it’s strong and useful). Also he got nerfed multiple times (enemies doing damage to him, holding E to tame..) Can be really good for slashers on a regenerative bugs mission I guess? You can pet them but bugs stink anyways.
• Deep Pockets: only class that can make use of this is scout for point extraction where you need to find stuff fast. Even scout doesn’t really need it because he can just grapple to molly in a few seconds. Why would you use this on the rest of the missions when you have a portable robot to deposit stuff?

E Tier (Needs Tweaks or Rework)

• Strong Arm: could be ok if scout didn’t exist or if there was a sticky flare upgrade. Would pick on driller if it worked on axes and engi for those sweet long range mine throws. Unfornutanely none of these 3 are a thing.
• Veteran Depositor: useful for speedrunning for fast depositing but that’s it, no need to deposit faster outside of that situation. Range got buffed but, why would you stay still near molly or minehead to take 30% less damage when you could run and take 0 damage? So both passives are almost useless when you think about it.
• Second Wind: got nerfed and default movement speed got buffed (or enemy speed got nerfed? one of those, I don’t remember). A bit useless because the move speed buff and you always stop sprinting for some reason and lose the buff (please add a setting for default sprint devs, I use a macro with W but other people would like to save their pinky). Can be ok in long tunnels.

F Tier (Useless)

It’s a bug thing: the feel when they rework all the perks in the perk update but this perk is still untouched with no use other than memes.