Hunt: Showdown – The Definitive Perk and Traits Tier List

This Tier List is my personal preference for Perks in Hunt Showdown. No BS or soft talk. I’ve been playing this game for sometime now, watching streams, reading and watching guides and after much testing these are my ranks.

Introduction

This Tier List is my personal preference for Perks in Hunt Showdown. No BS or soft talk. I’ve been playing this game for sometime now, watching streams, reading and watching guides and after much testing these are my ranks.

I will try to keep it always up to date. If Crytech adds or modifies a perk, I will come here and update the listing if necessary.

One thing that is important to mention is that this tier list assumes that you are using the proper weapons for each perk. For instance, if you are not using crossbows, bolt thrower is obviously D Tier.

Tier Meaning

  • S Tier – The best of the best. You should always try to grab these perks first. The exception are the weapon related ones. These you should only grab if you are using the proper gun.
  • A Tier – Extremely good perks that for one reason or another fall just short from being S tier.
  • B Tier – Good perks that should always be considered. Some are very situational, but still useful.
  • C Tier – Underwhelming perks that can be useless in many situations and can be a big waste of perk points. Should only be picked if you have points to spare or if you are trying to go for a very specific tactic.
  • D Tier – Pure Trash, Never pick these perks.

S Tier

Bolt Thrower: A direct upgrade to your crossbows and a must if you are playing with one.

Doctor: Arguably the best perk in the game. It costs 8 points, but makes your medkit charges fully heal you, which can be compared with vitality shots if you also have physician.

Greyhound: One of the best perks in the game. It allows you to run for a very long distance without having to stop. This will grant you a big advantage when running away, repositioning, rotating or chasing. The fact that you can move faster for longer can be a game changer. It is the first perk that I buy on all my hunters.

Hundred Hands: A direct upgrade to your bow. If you are using a bow, this is a must.

Kiteskin: For 1 point this perk will allow you to jump and survive almost any fall in cliffs, chasms or towers in this game, opening a new venue to rotate, escape or pursue other players. For such a good trait, 1 point makes it instant S tier.

Levering: A direct upgrade to your Winfield. Makes it a great close combat gun, much more reliable than fanning, since it can accurately hit targets 10m away.

A Tier

Bloodless: So much stuff in this game can make you bleed and the most used custom ammos have bleeding effect, making this perk very useful. Bleeding generally puts a lot of pressure on you to make a decision, so being able to not bleed out fast and also heal the bleeding effect fast can sometimes be a game changer.

Lightfoot: VERY useful in certain situations. Now those ladders are finally something to consider during combat. It can help you a great deal rotating and moving. Highly recommended. The only reason this is not S Tier, is because it costs 5 points.

Necromancer: A game changer. But remember, everyone expects a necro revive nowadays, so people will tend to stick around your body. Reviving a team mate is one of the most dangerous things to do in this game, and being able to do it behind cover is just too good. It can even be used on players who are on fire, extinguishing it automatically upon revival.

Packmule: Great utility perk that give you twice the consumables or tool/medkit charges when looting corpses or toolboxes. If you like to use traps and grenades very often, this can even be considered S Tier.

Physician: Extremely good upgrade, making healing less of a chore. Can turn your medkit charges into vitality shots if you also have Doctor.

Pitcher: Being able to throw your grenades further is excellent. Can be the difference between hitting your target or not, and depending on the distance can make that your enemy doesn’t hear the sounds of the fuse until it is too late.

Quartermaster: Excellent skill. Being able to grab a riffle plus a short shotgun or the other way around is very powerful, giving an excellent option to fight in pretty much any distance.

B Tier

Ambidextrous: Good skill. I personally don’t play dual wielding very often, but it can greatly speed your reload time if you do.

Bulletgrubber: For 4 points, this is a little expensive and in general you will have better talents to put in its place. The gun that benefits the most from this is the Dolch, since it ejects special ammo, which is hard to find on the map.

Bulwark: Dynamites are deadly, making Bulwark a good skill. The problem is, most people use frag grenades, which do not have the dmg reduced by Bulwark. So, this talent continues to be underwhelming. Still can be a life saver. Pick if you have space.

Determination: Good perk. Helps you recover stamina faster. Not much to say about it.

Fanning: Some people love, some people hate. I personally find it very unreliable. If you think you are getting to close and personal very often, and likes to play with rifles, this can save you very often. Just remember that sometimes the best use of this skill is to fire without pressing the button, so you can shoot faster but also controlling where your bullets go.

Frontiersman: Excellent perk, but for 8 points it is hard to justify it being higher in the rank. If used together with Packmule and traps, it can give you a lot of value.

Gator Legs: Good perk. Helps you move faster around the map. If used together with Greyhound and adrenaline, will be impossible to run away or catch up with you. As you learn to move around the map this perk gets less useful, but it is always a good utility to have.

Ghouls: Good skill. But medkits are widely available in the world map, so this is very rarely useful. Some people advocate that this is a S Tier perk, and I really don’t see this being anything close to that.

Resilience: Good skill for 3 points. Can put you back into the fight instantly after being revived. If you already have all perks that you want, this can be a good addition.

Serpent: Do you intend to snatch the clue and run for your life instead of storming the compound? If not, this is useless. If yes, this is pretty good. It can also help you get the clues from difficult positions, but in general the perk is very underwhelming.

Silent Assassin: Does make you silent when you melee, but remember that grunts will scream when dying. The best thing about this perk is the capacity to charge your melee weapon silently and ambush other players. That is the main way that it should be used.

Steady Aim: Good perks that can really help you lining those scope/pistol head shots. If you have the points to spare, this is a good choice.

Whispersmith: Good skill. After some time playing, it is possible to recognize what weapon/item the other player has based on the sound that it makes when they change weapons. It is also possible to pinpoint a player inside a compound if they change weapons, so this perk negates that.

C Tier

Beastface: Very good for new players who struggle with animals. On the other hand, learning to keep proper distance from animals is a skill that you will have to learn sooner or later, so I recommend skipping it.

Scopesmith: I think this is more useful than the Iron variant, but you shouldn’t be a stationary target and should be moving around, so I don’t think this talent does much.

Dauntless: Extremely useful to put out choke bombs before they explode and this is the only reason that this is not D Tier. The problem is, this is the only talent that can actually kill you. If you hear that someone is about to throw a dynamite on you, just run or rush the player. You have no business waiting for it to land on your feet to try to put it out. Besides, good players will cook it enough that if you try anything besides running, you will die.

Iron Eye: Not really necessary. If you have nothing else to buy with your points, there is no harm in getting it.

Poison Sense: If your build has a lot poison, this can be really useful, but not really a must. Otherwise just skip it.

Salveskin: Its main use it to let you burn slower when people burn your body. Other than that, pretty useless. I don’t think this perk is worth 5 or even 3 points, there are many other better options.

Vulture: If you have a group with 2 other friends, one of you should always have Vulture. It is good because it allows you all to loot corpses, no matter if it has been looted twice before. Another use is if you are playing a scavenger (stay out of the fights, go in to loot and make money). Besides that, no real reason to pick this one.

D Tier

Adrenaline: Useless. Even though it costs 1 point, being at low stamina is a problem, but during a gun fight this rarely happens. If you are running away and are in critical health, this will not save you 99% of the time.

Assailant: Meme perk. Only used for the lulz. The dmg increase on knives and throwing axes is not worth it.

Blade Seer: Useless. Even if you are running throwing knives and crossbows, you shouldn’t need any help finding your own stuff.

Conduit: Trash. You don’t need the boost that it provides, especially for 5 points.

Decoy Supply: The only good decoy in this game is the decoy fuse and it is very rarely used. You probably will never need this perk.

Hornskin: Can save you from a Duster head punch instant kill, other than that, this is pretty useless and pathetic.

Magpie: Too situations to be really useful. I would not bother.

Mithridatist: Poison generally is used to kill AI and is hardly effective against players. On very few occasions this will be useful. Don’t waste your points.

Poacher: Sad that all trap related perks are trash. Being able to hear other players laying traps can sometimes be useful, but you should always be careful around barrels and when invading a compound, so it is not really useful. The only moment that I think this can be really good is if you are trying to out maneuver your opponent and laying traps around rocks can actually catch them by surprise.

Vigilant: Useless. You should be able to see traps without dark vision. Just pay attention when entering compounds.

Vigor: I don’t see a single reason to pick this talent for 3 points and using one slot. It is really not worth it.

Burn Traits

All of them are extremely valuable. If you can get one, good for it.

Death Cheat: Nothing to say. It prevents your hunter from permanently dying.

Relentless: Losing a life chunck makes you extremely vunerable. Now most weapons in the game will be able to kill you with a chest shot. You don’t wanna go fighting in this situation and this perk preserves your life chunck if you get downed.

Shadow: The least valuable of them all, but stil pretty strong, specially with you like to run shotgun special tactics. Fun talent.

Conclusion

Perks are one of the most important things in this game and you should pick them carefully.

They can make your life much easier and sometimes surprise your opponents.

So always try to think about how useful the perks really are and how often they will come into play.

Helena Stamatina
About Helena Stamatina 1782 Articles
My first game was Naughty Dog’s Crash Bandicoot (PlayStation) back in 1996. And since then gaming has been my main hobby. I turned my passion for gaming into a job by starting my first geek blog in 2009. When I’m not working on the site, I play mostly on my PlayStation. But I also love outdoor activities and especially skiing.

12 Comments

  1. S tier refers to serpents. If nothing else, a huge game-changer for solo players seeking elevation. Nowadays, roughly one-third of the clues in my solo matches are on a high, exposed ledge. The most vexing aspect of the game is having to attack a boss lair that is underground and has been besieged by defenders, most likely armed with shotguns.

  2. Additionally, Frontiersman works well with doctors because it allows for more healing, which is always pleasant. You will have 400 hp in total, up from the standard 150 or 300 with a doctor.

  3. The ranking and list are excellent. I’m grateful for this. I believe that the biggest issue with the ranking is the distinction between solo and team gameplay. Necromancer, for instance, is useless for a lone player.

  4. For me as a lone player, serpent is a godsend because it not only lets you yank the bounty out from under people who delay getting it, but it also lets you take down bounty carriers at a distance and then serpent the bounty off their body without having to approach the other members of the team and then GTFO.

  5. PART 2
    Fortunately, most players do not use hellfire bombs, so salveskin is more situational than bloodless. The only other thing that could cause an instant bar loss for a player is a direct flare gun hit.

    You should also mention, in my opinion, that Mithridatist can be rendered ineffective by administering an antidote shot that lasts the entire game.

  6. PART 1 Serpent is situational, but in one of the most frequent scenarios I have encountered, 80% of the time people camp the boss without banishing or picking up a bounty to bait them into pushing with a shotgun. This happens every time I am unable to kill the boss first (I play OCE, so players play extremely meta). There isn’t another feature in the game that I’m aware of that could make opponents push you rather than stay in their own positions.

    I’m not sure how much you utilize your iron/scopesmith traits, but the flat firerate increase during ADSing is incredibly potent, particularly when combined with centennial and vetterli.

  7. You fail to mention Salveskin’s ability to prevent you from unintentionally losing 25 people in an immolator explosion, hellfire bomb, or fire barrel.

  8. S/A tier: Iron repeater/Sharpshooter + all scopesmith perks; these directly boost your firerate, which is insane on compact winfields and centennials. You can quickly take down opponents with the vetterli. Belebel Marksman/Mosin Sniper allows for rapid team wipes.

  9. S tier – Serpent: You forget to mention that it lets you take bounty tokens without pushing the boss room and breaks stalemate situations where players are camping a dead boss without banishing.

    Nothing opposes shotguns and camping quite like a serpent.

  10. Leverage <3 Purchase Centennial and Vandal or Terminus handcannon after obtaining quartermaster and levering.

  11. Levering, as opposed to simply having faster fire, makes a winnie marksman capable of close quarters combat. Additionally, it is simpler and more reliable to hit targets with winnies due to their superior handling over pistols.

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