I Didn't Expect This To Be OP… Physical Skills Analysis & Tier List | Starfield Handbook

with 82 skills to choose from in Starfield it can be difficult to decide where your hard-earned skill points should be allocated and whether it's worth coughing up four whole skill points into a single skill just for that Rank 4 perk thankfully for you I've tested every rank of every skill to give you a complete breakdown of what's hot and what's not I think you'll be quite surprised by some of the Hidden Powers built into certain skills and that some don't function exactly as you'd expect them to both in good and bad ways today we'll be covering everything in the physical tree so for you bare knuckle Brawlers sneaky snakes and beefy boys this tree has some great stuff to offer while my rankings are of course subjective to a degree I've done my best to look at each skill objectively and have considered its overall usefulness along with Niche use cases in those rankings if you have different thoughts on any of the rankings I'd love to hear your reasons for why you'd rate them differently in the comments let's dive in alright we've got 16 skills to cover today and first on our list is boxing this is a skill that most people will probably not be expecting into unless they're specifically looking to run an unarmed melee build and I doubt that's very many of you each rank provides 25 damage to your unarmed attacks and most of the the time against enemies with little to no armor your base damage starts at 8 so going up to Rank 4 this would scale up to about 16 damage per hit with ranks one and two you also expend less O2 when using power attacks while Rank 3 also makes you consume less O2 while running in combat at Rank 4 you unlock the ability to knock down opponents with unarmed attacks and you can imagine this is pretty essential for anybody who's running an unarmed build considering how often you're putting yourself directly in the line of fire to deal damage another nice benefit for anybody running a generic melee build is that those first two ranks of boxing also reduce the cost of power attacks on any melee weapon not just your unarmed attacks that being said if we're thinking about this skills utility in a general sense for gameplay I'd still put this in the F tier just because most people aren't utilizing melee builds and almost nobody is ever utilizing unarmed attack however for melee builds specifically unarmed builds this is pretty much a must-have because your build is almost completely inviable without it next up is Fitness which is overall a pretty decent skill you get increased O2 with every rank that you purchase and then on the final rank you have a decreased cost to your power attacks as well as a dramatically decreased depletion rate of your O2 while sprinting I've got a side by side playing right now of rank 0 versus Rank 4 and you get double the Sprint time on Rank 4 which is absolutely insane the Power Attack cost difference is also super noticeable and is about two times as efficient so imagine comboing that with boxing and you can just Power Attack non-stop overall I'd say this is a pretty decent skill you can never go wrong with having more O2 and the rank 4 perk is actually pretty powerful especially again for melee build I'd say the first three ranks are beat here with the rank 4 perk being eight here uh stealth the favorite of many it goes without saying that this is one of the best skills in the game as it opens up a whole new play style for you to sneak around your enemies and take them out from the Shadows without raising any alarms what's less known however is just how much does each rank of stealth really impact things I have some examples here that perfectly showcase exactly how good it is to have Rank 4 stealth in our first test we try to open a door while a nearby enemy is in line of sight and of course they're quickly alerted the ability to open doors undetected is a giant perk you get from rank for stealth but seriously op for stealtham let's see how the same scenario plays out at each rank of stealth now all right so this is rank one stealth we're gonna wait for that same enemy to walk away out of our line of sight but there's another guy just down that staircase who is easily able to detect us while we slowly walk through these Halls all right rank two we're gonna try the same thing again and let's see if they're able to catch our scent this time they were able to make it further than last time but they still able to detect us regardless moving on to rank 3 we are now 75 percent more difficult to detect and you'll see we're still just detering the line of hidden to caution and this time they are not able to detect us which is great and of course rank four this is the game changer we can open that door they're none the wiser we can walk right by that guy who's only a couple feet away from us and we are just inches away from being in this guy's line of sight and we're still hidden so definitely a big improvement from having rank 1 to rank 4. additional benefits to ranking up stealth include more damage with suppressed weapons and then of course getting rank 1 is what unlocks the stealth meter to begin with allowing you to perform sneak attacks which do enhance damage easily one of the best skills in the game at a minimum I think everybody should be getting this to rank one and Rank 4 is where you truly unlock the potential of the skill becoming nearly undetectable in many scenarios and then obviously being able to open those doors though s tier all around weightlifting is another amazing skill that is absolutely essential for anybody who's a loot vacuum like me early ranks are nothing too special with rank 1 only providing 10 kilos 15 more for Rank 2 and then 25 more for rank 3. but going up to Rank 4 you get 100 extra kilos which is more than 60 extra carrying capacity compared to Baseline having this at Rank 4 reduces so much headache and I honestly can't imagine playing without it maxed anymore it gives you the ability to run heavier suits and weapons without having to compromise on your ability to actually carry the things you want to pick up in your travels on top of the obvious quality be of life improvements that this provides one of the additional Rank 4 perks is that you're actually 50 percent less likely to be staggered when attacked if you're somebody who gets up close and personal during combat you've definitely felt the effects of being staggered it's pretty annoying so having this at Rank 4 actually is a game changer because the earlier ranks of Fitness don't provide too much of an increase to carrying capacity I'd say that overall I would rank this skill in a but the Dual benefits of the rank 4 perk giving you 100 extra kilos and the reduced stagger chance definitely makes it an S tier Wellness is next on our list and there's really not much to say here all it is is a Pure Boost to your max HP and nothing more there's nothing special for rank 4. the only reason you would ever consider investing points into this is simply because you are dying on repeat may be playing on very hard difficulty or you just have skill points that you need to spend and don't know where else to put them it's not a completely useless skill but it's extremely boring and is only useful if you're really struggling to survive I'll put it in DET here energy weapon dissipation is another pretty boring skill the first thing ranks simply reduce the amount of energy damage you take but the rank 4 perk that you get is actually kind of interesting and it's pretty funny to see in action sometimes when you're below 50 a fee of a 25 chance to actually reflect back any energy damage that you take this is actually remarkably effective against targets with low HP pools as they typically can kill themselves within three to four reflected shots the caveat being of course that you need to keep yourself perpetually below 50 HP interestingly enough it also seems that some enemies that would appear to be doing energy damage are in fact not and you will not be able to reflect damage back at them such as these laser turrets overall though this skill still kind of sucks especially from ranks one to three but the rank 4 perk is kind of funny so I'd say the rank 4 perk itself is a c tier but the skill overall is still deep here you're probably starting to see a theme here with some of the more defensive type skills and most of them are just very lackluster environmental conditioning here is no different you get 10 resistance for every skill point you invest and at its final ranking have a reduced chance to gain afflictions from environmental damage sources this is a giant skill point investment to reach the only legitimately worthwhile bonus of having Affliction reduction chance if you've been playing the game for any extended period of time you know how little of an impact these status effects have on your character and most of the time you're able to mitigate it reasonably with the right equipment unless you're on a planet with very extreme environments or you get yourself into trouble by stuffing your face into a vent and racking up some corrosive damage you can also maintain a steady supply of meds either by crafting or purchasing from vendors so this is a pretty bad investment of skill points this is an FDR across the board I'd say so gymnastics looked like a cool skill on paper Until you realize how god-awful the combat slide is in this game your character moves about two feet then stops sprinting requiring you to input a fresh command to run which you'll more than likely not time optimally the only place this is actually useful is for a slick transition into stealth I guess you'll also get reduced fall damage which is nice and all but anybody with a jet pack should be avoiding fall damage 99 of the time with the one percent being purely accidental damage further ranks do provide unique benefits which is nice as most freeze don't do that but there's still nothing remarkable you can move faster in zero g but that's actually quite rare as no planets will be zero g and only the odd space encounter will be zero g Rank 3 makes you more stable in zero gravity which we've discussed is already quite rare making this borderline useless but you do get some mo2 from mantling and it's actually a pretty substantial amount so it's not useless the final rank is actually very interesting and depending on how you look at it you could call it a net positive or a net negative you temporarily run faster after combat sliding and manteling it does just about make up for the loss of Mobility when you combat slide assuming you time things perfectly to run right after but you also get increased jump height and when we say increase jump height it literally doubles your base jump height making it remarkably high this is kind of useful for more vertically challenging content but typically a balanced boost pack will cover that base having this extra jump high on low G planets can actually be more of a curse than a blessing though you'll end up bonking your head on the top of ceilings often when you're indoors and when you have to jump over even the tiniest obstacle when outdoors in low G planets it'll take forever for you to hit back onto the ground again and if you weren't running you lose a ton of momentum and time see it's kind of a weird skill to rank the combat slide is very lackluster and the zero-g perks are very rarely used and are not that remarkable anyways and then the final perk is again a bit of a double-edged sword I feel like this is also a d to your skill across the board and depending on how you look at that fourth perk you could also consider it a seat here if you value that jump height if you enjoy videos like this where I dive deep do the research and present the findings then consider subscribing and dropping a like I think anybody who's played Starfield for an extended period of time should know that eating food is a terrible means for actually restoring HP however lots of food items are great for providing temporary Buffs at a glance nutrition doesn't seem like a skill that would be worth investing multiple skill points in until you realize that the effectiveness that it talks about also applies to those temporary Buffs that are on food and drink items well I'd say it's a tough sell for the average player to justify four whole skill points invested into nutrition if you're somebody who wants to go all the way and max out all 82 skills to rank four this is actually one of the best skills in the game to start maxing first assuming that throughout your playthrough you're constantly consuming items that boost your XP gain any of the Tranquility teas shepherd's pie or Grandma's meatloaf all provide XP boosts that go up a full percentage point when you have nutrition at rank 4. assuming you have the means to continuously Supply yourself with these XP boosting items this will translate to three percent additional XP which scales down to 2.5 percent assuming you're running all other XP Buffs and would earn you a hundred thousand extra XP on your way to maxing all stats which takes about 4 million XP to do I get that this is a very nice use case and requires you to have the items to make it viable but if you're somebody who's doing Outpost power farming to reach max level as fast as possible most of your XP gains are condensed into very short bursts where doing this would actually be very fruitful obviously the benefits of nutrition extend to any food and drink Buffs so there's additional utility to this Beyond just providing extra XP so there's certainly some value to it but I wouldn't say this is worth investing sale points into unless you're explicitly planning to use it to power level yourself to max level for a general player who does take advantage of using consumable items to buff their character I would say this is a c tier skill and if you're using this for XP power leveling it is an S tier skill that you should Max literally as soon as you possibly can pain tolerance is another defensive skill that is a horrible use of skill points unless you are dying on repeat physical damage gets reduced by five percent for every rank up to three and then the fourth rank perk is actually terrible you have a five percent chance to ignore physical damage when your health is low and my understanding of flow is anytime your HP bar goes red which is around 20 to 25 but obviously a five percent chance to ignore damage is extremely low and you have to have your health upload for that to even be possible possible this is easily one of the worst Rank 4 perks in the entire game and it's definitely an F tier there's nothing inherently wrong with the skill it's just super boring and damage reduction is not particularly useful so we'll throw this in DET here cellular regeneration is another defense type ability that improves your ability to regenerate from injuries naturally hovering 4 you get a 20 chance of not gaining an injury when you otherwise would which is kind of nice in case you take a lot of ball damage or you get hit by weapons that would normally bleed you but otherwise this is a very high skill point investment for a very lackluster reward that you can easily again gear by using eight items because it's so easy to constantly maintain eight items to cure injuries this is definitely an F tier skill as well and I would never waste skill points on it until very very late into the game when I have nothing better to use it on decontamination is the exact same thing but for infection so I'm not going to waste any time here this is another F tier skill and I really don't recommend using skill points here unless you have nothing better to spend them on alright finally we're back to skills that have some actual utility and some interest features martial arts is a skill that provides different benefits for every rank which is a nice change from some of the more bland skills we've been looking at at rank 1 you have increased crit chance with melee or unarmed attacks at Rank 2 you have a 15 chance to disarm opponents with melee or unarmed power attacks specifically you can't just be attacking them normally and honestly it's more of a nice to have than anything it really does not happen very frequently at Rank 3 while unarmed four-wielding a melee weapon you take 10 less damage so this is great if you are running a melee build but obviously useless if you are not using a melee weapon or unarmed and Rank 4 is actually pretty neat you reflect 50 damage when blocking a melee or unarmed attack and this works especially well against most alien type creatures but almost always deal melee damage normally when fighting high level terra morph they do peanut damage with melee or unarmed attack but if you instead opt to soak up the damage from their attack and reflect it back to them you end up doing way more damage to them than if you're just bashing them on repeat the usefulness of almost the entirety of this skill is tied to melee builds so obviously for any player that's not dabbling in this type of content this is a pretty useless F tier skill but if you are using a melee build I'd say this is an eighth year skill we have finally made it to the Master's tier skills in the physical tree concealment being our first one this is one of the best skills in the game bar none this skill is a direct Improvement to the already op stealth skill and you gain a unique perk with every single purchase of a new rank in the skill along with a decent increase to damage dealt by sneak attacks at all ranks at rank 1 you no longer set off enemy mines which is convenient but doesn't happen too often at Rank 2 running while sneaking doesn't affect stealth so in case you didn't realize what you typically think of as your normal walk is actually you running and when you accidentally hit that button that makes your character move extremely slow that is when you're actually walking at rank 3 you gain the chameleon ability where while you're completely still and in sneak you are fully invisible which is excellent for avoiding detection from passing patrols Rank 4 is great for if you've been caught by enemies and want them to lose your scent as long as you're far enough away and engage stealth those enemies will lose you allowing you to resume your stealthy actions undetected this is a great skill for just about any player even if you don't necessarily use stealth as your primary means of dealing damage it never hurts being able to deal four times more damage with a stealth attack when you open up a fight ranks 2 and 3 does make any sort of self-related task more simple and Rank 4 is great for just de-egrowing enemies allowing you to fast travel again this is definitely an S tier skill all around and I think most players regardless of build will get some decent benefit out of this skill our second last skill is neuro strikes and this skill was super hyped up during the Starfield direct and seemed like a skill that would unlock the ability to run viable unarmed builds in the game unfortunately this skill is a little lackluster for what I would expect from a master tier skill you'll notice that none of the Rings from this skill actually deal additional damage now Rank 2 says unarmed attacks deal additional em damage but that just fills up the blue em stun bar it's not actual raw damage numbers rank one you have a 10 chance to stun NPCs which obviously opens up more windows deal damage but the fact that you're unarmed attack are still fairly weak doesn't really help your case for making this build viable the ability to deal Em damage though is actually quite useful and I'll show you exactly why in a minute Rank 3 you double that chance to stun NPCs with unarmed attacks and then Rank 4 you have a chance that after stunning an enemy you'll knock down any enemies within close range I've tried this out with a bunch of enemies piled up close together and it feels very hit and miss and if anything it just knocks people down for a couple seconds and it's very very rare to have a situation where you have enough enemies in close proximity to each other to make this Rank 4 perk even useful at all so here's the interesting thing about neurostrikes and more importantly em damage and how you can properly utilize it to make it semi-viable to do an unarmed build so if you've ever used any weapons that deal Em damage when you max out that blue stun bar most enemies are stunned for an exceptionally long period of time we're talking minutes at a time where they're fully incapacitated and they can't respond to you you can utilize this to your advantage when running something like neurostrikes where you punch people until their embar fills up leave them for later and clean sweep a full area knocking everybody out progressively as you go and then go to clean up and kill each person one at a time what you can do on top of this is anytime an enemy is stunned you can actually Crouch behind them and initiate stealth attacks on them so you can give them the old one-two punch you can grab a melee weapon and start power attacking them and most of the time if you're doing unarmed attacks you have a chance to actually recycle their embar and put them back on the ground again putting them in an endless loop of stun locking obviously this can be quite difficult to do in an area with lots of enemies but this is probably the only way that you can make this playstyle viable assuming you can soak up enough damage in passing while you try to knock everybody out so that you can finish cleaning them up after everybody's on the ground that being said it's still really difficult to find a practical use for this skill for generic builds that don't use melee but obviously again with the other melee skills like boxing and martial arts it's pretty much a requirement to have these skills if you want to have any chance of of this build surviving combat given how inconvenient it is to switch yourself to unarmed for the average player this is again going to be an F tier skill but it's an S tier skill for anybody running a melee build as I'm pretty sure it's almost impossible to successfully run a fist only melee build without using neural strikes unless you have thousands of Med Packs to Go our final skill in the physical tree is Rejuvenation and this is one of the most mysterious skills in the tree to be honest the ranks one to four descriptors are extremely vague and you'd have no idea how useful it actually is without running the numbers and so I did exactly that by going into your character menu while you have missing HP I just did a quick test to see how much my HP restored over the course of around five seconds and you'll find that at rank 1 you restore 10 HP per second at Rank 2 you restore 15 HD per second at rank 3 it's 20 and then at Rank 4 it goes all the way up to 35 per second which is quite a lot honestly the one thing that is very interesting however is that I was never once able to make ranks 3 and 4. regenerate my HP while in combat I've tried spawning different enemies I've tried making sure they melee me I've tried making sure they're shooting at me and no matter what I've tried I've never been able to make it work if you do have the Rejuvenation perk and you have actually seen it work in combat let me know but as far as I know there might actually be a bug with this skill currently my assumption would be that for ranks three and four being slowly regenerate while in combat and quickly regenerate in combat will be the same as ranks one and two's healing rates so in combat you would likely be healing 10 and 15 HP respectively per second for the purposes of ranking we're gonna pretend that Rejuvenation actually works as intended I definitely called an eight-year skill across the board I wouldn't go so far as to call it an S gear skill but there's no doubt it's convenient to have some form of HP regen that helps reduce how often you have to dip into your supply of Med packs alright we have made it to the end of the physical Tree on screen are the rankings for the 16 skills we covered in general you'll notice there are quite a few that I've labeled as F or D tier and I honestly think most of them are Justified most of the skills in this tree are very terrible uses of skill points at least early on compared to a lot of the other skill trees in the games which I'll cover in future videos of course there are certain Rank 4 perks which are much better than their ranks one to three counterparts which does make them more desirable but it's obviously a lot to commit four skill points just into a single skill if I were to recommend investing in any skills specifically I would put at least one rank into stealth I would max out weightlifting I would consider investing enough points to unlock concealment as well as at least one rank of Rejuvenation and if you are somebody who favors stealth of course max out all of stealth and all of concealment if you're running a melee build you really don't have a ton of options obviously survivability is very important so you may actually favor some of the skills that I ranked in d and f that were more defensive a little bit higher since survival is really the name of the game on a melee build and then of course you're going to have to run boxing and neurostrikes if you're doing a fists only build and martial arts is an extremely important skill for anybody using melee weapons as their primary source of damage Fitness is also a very important skill as it reduces Power Attack oxygen costs and nutrition is very important for anybody looking to power level all the way to max level and Max ranks of all skills aside from that most of the other skills are pretty lackluster and I probably prioritize other skill trees over this let me know in the comments what your favorite skills have been so far in Starfield and if you haven't changed the setting on your Boost pack which fully unlocks its potential make sure to check this video out next to see how I'll see you in the next one peace

Channel: UncleMumble

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Keywords: Starfield, Starfield news, Starfield rumors, Starfield weapons, Starfield Outposts, Starfield Crafting, Starfield Story, Starfield Lore, Starfield Quests, Starfield Spaceships, Starfield Traits, Starfield Skills, Starfield Backgrounds, Starfield Economy, Starfield Research, Starfield Planets, Starfield Factions, Starfield Crew, starfield direct, bethesda, todd howard, skyrim, fallout, goty, star, field, premium, settled systems, handbook, constellation, bgs, starfield handbook

Id: -bMnj-yF9Ls

Length: 22min 0sec (1320 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 24 2023