Perks define your soldier’s abilities on the battlefield. Perks enhance you, making you faster, tougher, stealthier, better equipped, and more dangerous. They are also entirely optional. If you prefer, you can take the points out of your Perks and invest them elsewhere in your build. But Perks are quite powerful, and most builds rely on a mutually supportive combination of Perks as the backbone of a build. Use the advice in this chapter to choose Perk setups. Take full advantage of them in combat, and you can thrive in Multiplayer.
Perk Categories
Perks are divided into three categories, though there’s no difference in power; they’re simply divided up to force you to make tough choices. You can take one Perk from each category, or if you’re willing to spend points on Perk Wildcards, you can take up to two Perks from each category, for a maximum of six.
Perk 1
Lightweight
Move faster.
Simple and effective, Lightweight is very useful for CQC builds and objective builds for offensive classes. Lightweight gives you a mobility advantage, letting you reach key vantage points faster. It also helps very slightly in direct engagements, particularly when you are hipfiring at close range while moving and dodging.
Lightweight gives less of a benefit for weapons that are already slow. It’s better to emphasize the speed of lightweight weapons than to try to boost a sluggish heavy weapon.
Low Profile
Invisible to UAVs, tracking rounds, and Exo Ping.
A powerful stealth Perk, Low Profile’s immunity to UAVs is the primary reason to take it. However, Exo Ping is a close second, and the invisibility to tracking rounds is a nice bonus.
Low Profile alone won’t hide you from everything, but staying off radar is a strong benefit. If you prefer to operate alone, you need to be hard to find. Even when playing on defense (or playing defensively, period), concealing your position from attackers can give you a decisive edge in combat, especially if you constantly change your position after each engagement.
Flak Jacket
Take less explosive damage. Cancel frag cooking with weapon switch. Reset fuse when throwing back frags.
A critical Perk for an objective-focused class, or any time you expect to face heavy explosive builds, Flak Jacket can keep you alive through a torrential barrage of enemy ordnance. Flak Jacket won’t save you from multiple direct hits or powerful Scorestreak barrages, but it can absolutely save your life from a single thrown grenade on an objective. Even a few extra seconds is enough to claim an objective or win a match.
The frag-related benefits are fairly minor, as they’re specific to one explosive in the game.
One last note about avoiding explosives: remember that the Lethal Grenades from the Exo Launcher cannot be manually detonated. The safest place to be when a grenade is nearby is in the air. Use your Exo movement to avoid explosives as much as possible, and let Flak Jacket save you from the ones you cannot avoid or must absorb to secure an objective.
Overcharged
Increase Exo Ability battery life. Concuss nearby enemies with boost slams.
Most useful in builds with two Exo abilities taken, Overcharged gets you more mileage from your abilities. This is particularly useful for offensive builds where you rely on Overclock, Stim, or Ping, or defensive builds for Cloak, Shield, or Trophy System. Overcharged also has the secondary benefit of giving you a wider concussive effect to your aerial ground slams, staggering nearby enemies momentarily.
Danger Close
Do more explosive and Scorestreak damage.
This is a very powerful Perk for builds running three grenades, Exo Launchers, and offensive Scorestreaks. This is most effective in objective modes that tend to cause players to clump up in small areas, such as Momentum or Domination. Danger Close adds reliability to your explosives, almost always ensuring a kill against any player not using the Flak Jacket Perk.
Perk 2
Peripherals
Increase mini-map coverage. Take out enemies without displaying their death location.
Peripherals grants a massive increase in mini-map size, covering nearly the entire level on some maps. This can give you superior situational awareness, and it is especially helpful if you warn teammates of enemy positions with your enhanced range. One quirk: because Peripherals causes your mini-map to essentially “zoom out,” you do lose some close-range fidelity on enemy positions. Still, this is rarely enough of a hindrance to give you cause to avoid this Perk.
Peripherals also has the side benefit of enhancing your stealth play slightly: it eliminates the death marker when you kill an adversary. On a completely stealthy build, this can help prevent the enemy team from detecting you. Just be aware that if you are playing against an organized team, they can still communicate their death over voice chat quite easily!
Blind Eye
Undetectable by Tracking Drones, Explosive Drones, and all Scorestreaks except the UAV.
Here’s another stealth Perk, but of a different variety. Rather than offering invisibility to most player-specific forms of detection, Blind Eye offers protection from autonomous AI detection. Roaming Tracking Drones, hidden Explosive Drones, and all hostile (and lethal) Scorestreaks become a minor problem.
You aren’t entirely immune to them, though. An Explosive Drone can still detonate and kill you if you’re nearby, even if you didn’t trigger it. And the 105mm cannon on the Paladin doesn’t care if you’re invisible or not if you happen to be in its blast radius. But most of the time, Blind Eye serves you well to protect you from errant missiles, sentry guns, Warbirds, and drones of all shapes and sizes.
It’s a good idea to have a build around with Blind Eye and an secondary launcher equipped specifically to destroy dangerous AI-controlled streaks.
Cold-Blooded
Immune to Thermal, Target Enhancer, Threat Grenade, and enemy callouts. No name displayed or reticle color change when targeted.
A very strong stealth Perk, Cold-Blooded shields you from all manner of improved detection gear, prevents your position from being called out automatically by enemy soldiers, and hides your name from your opponents’ crosshairs. All of these effects serve to make you more difficult to spot. While the overall impact of Cold-Blooded can be hard to feel, rest assured that it is saving your life more often than you might guess.
The split-second hesitation of an opponent when they spot you and don’t see a red name can be enough time for you to win a firefight, and that ignores the other benefits of avoiding detection from gear or callouts.
Gung-Ho
Fire while sprinting and sliding.
An amazing Perk for CQC builds, shotguns and SMGs with Gung-Ho are extremely dangerous. Combined with aggressive Exo movement and some accuracy attachments, you can gain a decisive edge in short-range firefights. If you can start firing during a sprint while your opponent is still bringing their weapon to bear, you’re going to win the shootout. Likewise, being able to fire while sliding is very nasty with shotguns.
Exo dodges and dashes are already powerful for evasion and gap closing. Being able to fire while sprinting adds more offensive punch to your loadout.
Fast Hands
Reload while sprinting. Swap weapons, use Exo Abilities, and use Exo Launcher faster.
A very important Perk for equipment-focused builds, using Exo abilities and grenades becomes much safer and more effective with Fast Hands. The ability to switch weapons nearly instantly and reload while sprinting is also quite nice, and the two combined make Fast Hands a versatile Perk that can fit in several different builds.
Fast weapon switching is very useful if you like to scavenge weapons from fallen enemies or if you’re using the Overkill Wildcard. It can also save your life if you run dry on primary ammo or if you’re using a sluggish primary and need to quickly switch to a CQC secondary.
Fast Hands’ ability to reload while sprinting can save you time, but it also removes the ability to perform reload cancels by sprinting. You can still perform speed reloads by tossing your mags, but this burns ammo more quickly. If you have ammo problems frequently, consider using Scavenger.
Perk 3
Hard Wired
Immune to System Hack, EMP, Nano Swarms, Stun Grenades, and Scramblers. Scorestreaks remain vulnerable.
Hard Wired is an unusual Perk. It provides strong protection from several very dangerous and debilitating streaks and pieces of equipment, but it can also be a complete dud if your opponents aren’t using that gear. If you play part of a match and find yourself getting smacked with EMP and Stun Grenades constantly, if Scrambler-equipped UAVs are always in the air, or if System Hack and Nano Swarm missiles are being used regularly, break out a build with Hard Wired.
Toughness
Flinch less when shot.
A vital Perk for mid-range firefights, Toughness reduces the visible flinch you suffer when you take damage. At mid to long range, having your view jerked by hits can cause you to lose a fight, and Toughness can keep your aim on target to score a win if your opponent does not have it, as well. Toughness has less of an impact on CQC combat, where flinch isn’t nearly as much of a factor. If you prefer to fight at mid to long range frequently, take Toughness; it can help you win battles.
Blast Suppressor
Invisible on mini-map when performing Exo moves.
The last of the major stealth Perks, Blast Suppressor hides your mini-map “ping” when you make use of Exo movement. It also suppresses the jump jets on your Exo armor, changing them to a barely visible exhaust. Given the frequency of Exo movement usage, Blast Suppressor can keep you off the mini-map very often. If you’re running any sort of stealth build or you prefer to fight near enemy lines, take this Perk.
While Exo movement is so quick that you can often be far from your mini-map ping by the time an enemy comes to investigate, the ping can still get you into trouble if you’re performing a lot of quick dodges and dashes during combat. Opponents coming to investigate the pings may stumble across you recovering from a fight with another adversary.
Scavenger
Start with extra magazines and resupply bullet ammo from fallen enemies.
Scavenger both awards you more bonus ammo to begin with and lets you loot ammo from any foes’ bodies. Scavenger is a very important Perk for builds that make heavy use of speed reloads and for weapons with very high rates of fire or that are highly customized.
Scavenger is especially important if you are using a favorite customized weapon. If you run dry on ammo, you normally must swap out your weapon for whatever you can find on the battlefield, but Scavenger lets you use your preferred weapon with your chosen mods indefinitely.
The combat benefit of using speed reloads nearly as often as you like should not be overlooked, either. This can help you survive encounters with multiple enemies more frequently, again without being forced to switch to a looted weapon.
Hardline
Decrease Scorestreak cost by 100.
A seemingly minor Perk, Hardline is actually incredibly useful if you use it with cheap Scorestreaks. While knocking 100 points off a 1400-point Paladin doesn’t improve your odds much, taking 100 points off a 400-point UAV absolutely does. The trick to Hardline is running it with a set of cheap, useful, carefully upgraded streaks. Do so, and you can earn them more consistently, benefitting yourself and your team significantly.