The ULTIMATE Perk Tier List for Deep Rock Galactic 

As a driller main, and an avid Vampire user, it’s false that vampire triggers on swarmers of any kind… it says in the perk description medium or larger, which the smallest bug of medium size is the Glyphid grunt. So yeah vampire’s still a great perk, but would be way too busted if it triggered on swarmers.

I really wish hover boots was activated by double tapping jump or something. The current button to activate it is such a weird choice

I can agree with everything on the list, except resupplier, that should be on S, other than that, great list

The thing here is, that you only have 2 active and 3 passive perk slots, which means, that even the perks, that are beneficial are almost always outclassed by the S tier ones. This essentially means, that it feels like trash running anything else than iron will + dash or not having resuplier or born ready. I really wish the perks would be more balanced all around.

One thing to note about Unstoppable is that it also applies to enemy attacks like slashers, shockers, web spitters, and goo bombers. That alone makes Unstoppable a really powerful perk for any class that isn't scout.

Hover boots has a relatively unknown appliance for Scouts (and useful when there aren't engineers around). Basically if there's an ore deposit you can't just grapple on top to, you can activate hover boots next to the wall to give you enough time to dig a small hole for mining. That strat alone saved me so much time and made me a more efficient scout.

I like deep pockets even on haz 5. If youre a gatherer you can supply a whole team multiple resupplies in just 3-4 trips and then just be done with it and fight

Berserk with Vampire is my build for Driller. It's a very nice "oh crap I need healing fast" card.

It's a bug thing should probably include in increase to loot bug drops, or some similar buff. Still a lot of fun to run on scout for the memes. Great list!

Hover boots is one of my go to perks on every build. The mobility it gives you is is great. The ability to jump off huge cliffs instead of wasting ammo to get down or digging saves a lot of time and resources. Plus when you fuck up or get thrown off a cliff, it can save your life. I probably use it at least 4-5 times every mission

Good list, but seeing sweet tooth on C tier and UNDER strong arm is just foul haha

As someone whom is both a Driller main, and has friends that like to walk in front of my flamethrower/cryo cannon, Friendly is kinda a requirement. The problem with his opinion on Friendly heavily relied on THE USER to not hit his teammates, but NOT the teammates walking in front of you.

The point of 'See you in Hell' is to become easily revivable in the middle of a clutch situation. The damage blast clears out smaller enemies, and the lingering electrical effect repels larger enemies for 10 seconds, making it very safe to stand on your body and revive you in the middle of a dense enemy swarm. Ranged attacks can still mess you up, but you are 100% safe from melee during the revive. It's extremely powerful... if your team understands how the perk works, and communicates.

Taking It's a Bug Thing AND Deep Pockets on Liquid Morkite missions nets you massive amounts of quick resources as there's usually high concentrations of bugs in this mission type for some reason. Not game-breaking but can be a fun combo.

I like Friendly on my driller because then I can support my allies by hitting them with a Sludge Pump charge shot if they are getting wailed on by a swarm without worrying about actually hurting them. Like on escorts and you got that one guy trailing behind who has all of the enemies spawn around them.

Thanks for this overview. While I don’t agree with some of your choices, you have inspired me to go back and try some of the perks that never use. Keep up the good work.

I would put Heightened senses at 'B' tier It doesn't have a whole lot of uses outside of saving yourself, and only if grabbed by certain enemies. It is too conditional. The reasons for taking heightened senses are very few and far between. If playing on a team, your teammates can help, and if playing solo, Bosco can help. Even when I do have it and have it equipped, I rarely use the active part as my allies typically save me before I need to.

As a driller main, I must say that berserker is ridiculous with cryo canon and vampire. Oppressors become jokes with berserker. It also scales ridiculously with the damage upgrade with the pickaxe power attack, since it doubles the damage. It’s basically 240 damage hits to an enemy that is weak to pickaxes, and you get healed afterwards.

Heres my experience with "See You in Hell" while i was trying it out. I walked into a room with really low health and accidentally triggered a Bet-C boss fight. The first few shots immediately knocked me down. The Bet-C came close to me so i triggered the perk, instantly killing it. Idk how much damage it deals, but I wonder if it could be used to kill other bosses quickly. Example, in a 2 man Dreadnaught fight, break the armor, sacrifice a player which has See You in Hell, the other player kites the boss to the downed player and trigger the perk when its in range. If it can one shot, thatd be hilarious.

heightened senses is like high b max it’s only useful on scout and if you’re using scout you should be using your flares to look for leeches and stuff

Wow....I never knew people felt that way about Hover boots, I use it on almost every class all the time once they're Promoted. I use Hover boots multiple times a mission basically every mission, it makes kiting swarms so much easier.

Friendly is S tier for a newbie who's friends are all triple-promoted killing machines going on hard missions, and F tier for everyone else.

For deep pockets i agree that on higher hazard its a really bad pick except for scout . Im a scout main and i see it as molly should stay near the less mobile teammate to not stop the progression in the cave when they got a reachable nitra vein. On higher hazard you have to get the nitra on the ceiling but having to get back to mine the rest of a vein can put you at risk from being separated from the team. (Also i might need to clarify , i can afford to use deep pocket , because i dont use born ready since my secondary is the zhukov with , get in ,get out, and using born ready with that actively hinder my use of the mod)

Iron Will has an issue where it's useless 90% of the time and provides no value. It's only ever used when your team gets wiped. I wish it had a passive like field medic has. The opportunity cost of this perk is any other active perk you can run. (If this perk is enabled it takes up a slot which could bring another perk.) I run it all the time regardless but I'm always wishing I more freedom to bring something else useful.

I put Deep pockets, Thorns, Dash, and Beastmaster on every loadout for every class. I love the QoL perks that just make the game a little easier

Note: this is no longer a viable use since they buffed both the em discharge and turret ark to not do friendly Friendly has one single use case for me, which is the very niche area denial engineer build that I run on drilldozer and salvage missions. It includes spinning death, proximity mines and turret arc/turret em discharge. With friendly my team can use all of theses damage sources as safe spots without worrying about their health. And also don’t take too much damage if they accidentally get too close to my turrets. Plus they can also hide with me in my spinning death (built with stun of course) which acts as a pseudo gunner shield. As an added bonus it lets me take much less damage from my turret arc if I try to reload a turret while it’s active. Besides this niche build though… yea it’s really bad

I can only wish: It's a bug thing - Also works on Hooli Hoarders. Now that would be legendary

This is a great video to get newer players to understand what perks to run in DRG, however... I find second wind to legit be useful when there is downtime. Which tends to happen mostly on escorts or long hallways. It's not any higher than c on my list, but I also use a S-A-B-C-D-E system. Also sweet tooth gang rise up!!!

With hoover boots you can also burn down enemy if you are close enough and this can be really useful to scout. So if you are a scout player don't think this perl is bad

I like see you in hell for a vampire driller build with cryo cannon. The dmg increase from see you in hell allows you to conserve more ammo to reach the melee kill threshold with your pickaxe. Its super niche but i find it useful as a driller main.

For me personally I like the Berzerker Vampire combo, allows any pack of grunts to be free health once every 4 mins.

unstoppable is also quite good since it allows you to move fast enough not to stop running if you step on snow also the speed increase when carrying a heavy thing is quite pleasant and amusingly enough, if you also get backbreaker stout the speed increase from both of those totals out to higher speed than normal walk speed that note...is nothing particularly useful but I just find it funny

A strange use but a use, the sugar perk (at least used to) give a lot of movement speed on eating red sugar. I loved running it on my speedy scout with Zhukov's for insane speed all around. Definitely still C but a funny C tier. Always funny to run past my friends mach 3 style with that + dash

ye i would put vamp in A and resupplier into S and vet depositer lower since deposit spam is a thing

Nice video: :) liked the teir list

As scout. See you in hell and vampire are an easy way to get back health. Get bitten once, power attack some grunts and zip away.

Scout user here and I use hover boots constantly haha. Yea it's a long cd but if you mess up with your grappling hook then you can use the boots and it gives you enough time to recharge hook

I wonder if they ever rework the perk system. Mb additing one more active slot, maybe combining some less valuable perks into one, or reworking them fully.

I think something that may make some of the weaker perks like See You In Hell, Hover Boots or Friendly better is the fact you unlock them very early in the skill tree while you are still learning the game. Friendly in particular only taking 2 points total to unlock is good for new Drillers or Gunners who may need some training in avoiding friendly fire. Ive once accidentally killed a scout who zipped through my minigun when i was new. Obviously keeping them when you get better at the game isnt the idea here, but they are nice training wheels for getting started. Ive got no excuse for Second Wind though, its just too little even at that early stage.

Genuinely helpful guide as a newer player, thank you.

I run vampire on at least one load out for every class. It’s just become a part of my play style to finish off grunts with a pickaxe swing when breathing room allows. Because of it I rarely ever have to use red sugar. Any load out that you have iron will you should have vampire. Alas it does not stack with thorns or it would be way too busted. Iron will plus berserk plus vampire and thorns is just a fun combo as scout if you’re any good at grapple kiting.

Idk that i agree with Born Ready being S tier. Maybe its because I am pretty good about keeping my weapons loaded. Resupplier I might have put as S tier instead. That instant reload when youre low/out of ammo can be crucial in addition to saving time and increased healing. I also like Beast Master quite a bit. Its one of the few perks that gets you more damage in a fight, even if just deleting an enemy, let alone it turning to fight for you at quadruple damage and being a distraction. Its always useful and with all classes. Long Live Steeve.

Unironically bug thing is better than a lot of the other passives. The main issue is the range is really low, they should boost it to 10m+

12:28 - It can be good if you time it to use as your ally comes to raise you, as otherwise they must use resources to clear the enemies away from you. It kills enemies and provides a fear radius of protection allowing them time to get you up without being attacked, other than certain raged attackers. See you in Hell can be used 3 times as opposed to Iron Will, so it has some advantage to choosing.

i usually run iron will+field medic for the fact that in the 12 seconds you can reliably revive yourself and 1-2 teammates

Why do I use "It's a bug thing"? Because it is one of my favourite perks as a scout and saves me a lot of time. I can pop a whole group of bugs and collect the mats in a matter of seconds or save teammates vital ammo and time. I like to stay in front of the group, pop any bugs I see on the way to the next room and let my team pick up the goodies, then when I get to rooms I'll pop as many as I can while fighting the grunts and don't need to stop fighting to collect nitra. But yeah... When I'm playing higher tier games I take it off for something less fun and more practical.

Born Ready on engineer with the breach cutter is great as it reloads both the breach cutter and the platform gun while your using your primary so you can switch to the Breach cutter fire off a few shots and the switch back to the shotgun and the BC will have reloaded faster than if you had actually hit reload(at least that's how it feels). Also Born Ready will trigger for all weapons if you holding a cleaning tool or carrying a large item as all your weapons count as holstered.

1:39 "Beast Master is a very interesting perk." 4:14 "Now, Dash is an interesting one." 5:21 "Field Medic is an interesting one. 8:36 "Now we have... Hover Boots. And... Oh boy, this is gonna be- this is gonna be an interesting one." 10:29 "Next up is Iron Will. Now, this is- this is an interesting one." 21:22 "Now we have Friendly. So... Oh boy, this is... This is a perk that is kind of interesting." 33:06 "So next up is Vampire. Now this is a very interesting perk."

Don’t forget hover boots is extra good for scout since if he has no platform it can extremely easily let him get the ceiling materials. There’s an extreme amount it’s useful for that

Consider this: most veins have more ore in them than your maximum carry without deep pockets, 45 or so, effectively halving the time it takes to go back and get that extra 5 ore

If the "see you in hell" passive worked with the driller's drills it could redime itself a little bit. Even with this change it becomes a perk usefull only for one class, witch is strange.

I use Deep Pockets and play Haz5 exclusively. Dash should be on its own S+++ because it can save your life similar to Iron Will, without getting downed to begin with. Plus it's infinite. Iron Will also might not get used in 20 matches if you play well, so even though it's there if you ever need it, it's essentially a wasted slot most of the time. I don't use It's a Bug Thing, but I often wish I had it. Could switch Deep Pockets for it, but I haven't. Resupplier should be S tier as well. I've played with the Randoweisser beer a decent amount of times which gives you a random person's loadout, and it's frankly quite alarming how few people use perks like Dash and Resupplier. It's really very noticeable how gimped you are without them.

from what iv experienced thus far, vampire often gets paired up with berserker because you can just go ham during a swarm on low HP and just regain chunks of health with a single power attack... that coupled with iron will is a great way to get yourself alot of free health while invincible as well as give you an opening to attack with fully recharged/reloaded weaponry the moment you get yourself enough distance or enough HP to last abit longer to continue chugging along and helping team mates up...

I guess Thorns would be particularly helpful if you're Gunner or Driller and your weapon has a long ramp-up time, so then you don't have to always be taking that time to spin up and aim at the baby bugs

Just unlocked every perk slot on every class so this is very helpful

I know there are better perks than deep pockets, but IMO it is not C tier, definitely better than strong arm.. As a scout main it makes a tangible difference in how quickly I can bring in nitra for the team, especially on On-site refining or point extraction missions where the deposit point is often far from where you are. Makes it much easier to get a resupply in two trips rather than 3 and can often help save an entire trip when a vein would put you at just over 40 nitra

8:50 accessibility fun tool 19:40 reckless speedrun strat 21:24 this one if you want to troll your friends 23:00 I think this is D tier instead, it's cool if you don't feel like using any other perks because you don't feel like you want them or need them. I do that with that one black ops ps5 game that has a zombies gamemode and a bunch of operatives for multiplayer/battle royale

I run hoverboots on my Scout to allow me to grapple above something I want to mine on the wall, especially when there's no engineer nearby, or when they aren't platforming everything. Grapple > Hover > Power attack to create a hole and keep chopping > look up and re-grapple into the hole when the boots cut out. For the scout, it's an A-tier perk, IMO. I've mined so much nitra that was generally inaccessible otherwise using it!

I played around as engineer and my option to spare ammo was using a combination of sharpen pickaxe for melee with vampire, see you in Hell, and if I really want to go nuts I might add Thorns and all it takes is one hit for me to hit a bug ones and I heal and the bug dies; still the combination of berserker with vampire is what I add to my gunner as a backup to heal and take big guys out so I can spare ammo for the swarm.

Hover Boots as a Gunner feel like a must have.

This list is just wrong lol. I know it's your list but if you solo haz 5 this list looks completely different. Resupplier is the best perk in the game behind iron will and dash. It's 3 perks in one. No way is beast master in the same category as it 😅. And there is no reason shield link field medic should be in the same category. You have to play very close to use it which never happens and of your teammates are smart they're running invulnerability for 6 seconds on their armor.

do the shield link perk only make the shield regenerate faster, or it also reduce the delay for the shield to start regenerating? sweet tooth perk? some applications, yes in shield failed missions may be good

Two things: 1.) On driller Vampire is S tier (drills + throwing axe) I agree, but on every other class, Vampire is A tier, since EVERY class runs Iron Will anyways. Iron Will makes you immune to damage for the entire duration, so even if you get back some health you don't cancel the immunity or suddenly cut iron will short. You can power swing and kill something near you first, THEN focus on running away and making sure you don't die. Even then, power swing is an AOE attack, and you can still nab a nice little +10 HP with 2 glyphids near you, or just pick off the weakened glyphids with a swing to help keep yourself healthy. It provides you so much health in the long run it would be criminal to rate it anything less than S or A. 2.) Veteran Depositer is Trash tier unless you're playing with the Low Oxygen modifier. Depositing faster is like bigger mining bags (inconsequential) and the actually useful part (30% resistance) is also completely worthless. Would you rather get a 30% dmg reduction by sticking near Molly, or get a 100% dmg resistance by actually MOVING around and avoiding getting hit in the first place? Veteran Depositer is similar to "See You In Hell" in that it's good on paper, but actually pretty useless in practice.

the see you in hell is quite strong as it adds *50 damage* to your melee after you get hit (or more specifically the melee is broken down into 2 parts, the dirrect hit of 11 damage which gets boosts from crits or frozen targets but also can be reduced by armor, and the splash part of 11 damage but...for some reason multiplied by 1.5 which ignores crits and frozen enemies but also ignores armor, and see you in hell adds 20 damage to both of those parts, resulting in +50 total, and due to adding to both parts skull crusher ale is meant to add 10 but due to beers applying twice it adds 20...to each part so also a +50 damage) so yea see you in hell is nothing to scoff at, if you get bitten a crit hit oneshots a grunt

So there is a use case for it’s a bug thing. If you are on a salvage mission or mobile refinery and can’t afford to use ammo to pop lootbugs or use your power attack on them this can be a good way to quickly pop multiple lootbugs.

surprised you didn't mention this, but using vampire + iron will so you can get the vampire proc during an iron will can be a pretty good combo, you don't have to care about finding red sugar to stay up

Second wind is available from the start, where as dash isn't. Some abilities have a degree of usefulness until you get to a higher tier or perks.

Personal opinion, from someone who loves min-max building but has yet (as of this post) to play DRG: I think Dash, Second Wind, and Unstoppable would synergize nicely for a retreat heavy character. Whether escaping to the drop pod or simply getting away from the front-line, I can see how these traits would be effective in the right hands.

Yes, I know I don’t need Deep Pocket on all of my builds, even on my Engi defense build. No, I will not get it out of my builds, I AM NOT ADDICTED I SWEAR

I hope they change the perks, cause ive been using the same perks for hundreds of hours now. Not that the others ones are useless, but at higher experience of the game, most of the perks becomes obsolete. Resupplier, thorns and Vetaran Deposit are the most valuable. Born ready is only for my gunner using autocannon, longest reload in the game, even with animation cancelling. And for activate perks, Field medic only scout, Iron will everyone except scout, and beastmaster for everyone cause Steeve is the best bug in the galaxy and he will always be with me.

The one use case I have for friendly is rj250 jumping. Since it lowers friendly fire damage it should lower self damage from it. Not something I use above haz 4 but it’s pretty fun to mess around with.

I wish some perks had synergy with each other. the main two combos I feel like should work together is dash + second wind and vampire + thorns. I really feel like if you activate dash it should instantly activate second wind, instead of where it is now where if you have second wind active you have to loose it in order to activate dash. as for vampire + thorns, It might be a little powerful, but the amount of times I've gone for a pickaxe hit to a low health grunt to get some health back just for them to bite me and die is infuriating and because a haz 5 grunt can't break shield if you have full shield is an ok way to get some vampire health, but so many times they just kill themselves and loose you your 5 health

javarak gaming here are my views on this, starting from your lowest rank: 1. friendly is a perk i take always on defensive oriented missions with driller. when playing escort or salvage, it is extremely easy to lose a lot of health from friendly fire, especially on higher hazards where one bug can down my character. i have lost elite deep dives back to back, because of my failure to take it. also, i have over 1000 hrs in the game, so it doesn't apply to just newcomers. 2. i always take deep pockets with scout. the minerals in this game can be in locations that are difficult for other players to reach without spending resources. a scout with better capacity will speed up mining, regardless of how new a player is to the game. 3. hover boots are not a fall protection tool, but they can be used for this. having them make moving around large maps easier for everyone other than scout, due to it not requiring resources for vertical movement, and during hordes, when driller needs to jump off of the upper sections of the point extraction map. 4. i have been taking berzerker with gunner, since the shield already makes reviving easy. when i take it, i take the area of effect trait for the pickaxe, since dmg becomes less important with the power attack, vampire also works with this. 5. see you in hell, is a strongly defensive oriented perk. because of how it creates a temporary safe zone, it is useful for salvage and escort missions where staying in a given area is of strong importance, and Doretta needs extra shielding. 6. vampire will always be higher than B. supplies and red sugar are in sparse locations most of the time, and where one is downed will very often be in an area that is hard to reach either of the health regeneration methods, unless it is in a defensive mission where the supplies are pre-dropped. 7. shield link is of greater value to me over field medic. field medic does not give protection to the player being revived. this makes the one time use revive pointless if there is no other source for protection, and they do not have the temporary invulnerability active with their armor. shield link gives shield boost, and it can be reused which is more valuable to me. 8. iron will is great, but it is pointless on haz levels lower than haz 4, and is only valuable if one is in a location to revive or get health which can be impossible depending on where the player is.

Meanwhile I'm running hover boots and deep pockets on my h5 scout and I swear by it

As a reckless scout player, I rely on hover boots sometimes. Great list btw.

Did u reupload this? I recall putting this into watch later earlier already

I challenge you to use berserker, iron will, and vampire, if you run out of revives or you and your teammates go down, you can use iron will and use berserker to kill enemies and vampire to collect health, this has come in clutch and is a definite s teir

Iron Will has pretty much got my teams asses out of the fire real quickly also, deep pockets is really good for when you have the gold rush mutation on the mission or pots of gold buff on you

My perks are: Ironwill, Field Medic, Elemental insulation, Vampire and sweet tooth. Getting more healing per pop and taking less elemental damage is nice. Also the 5hp from vamp is mostly for ironwill. I tried the shield one but I cant tell what my ally shields are and is it 50% faster delay or 50% rate once the delay is up? I also used thorns....though I switched out ..getting hit is meh.

I think See You in Hell should be seen as reverse Field Medic: Instead of saving someone else for free once, someone else can save you (and others next to you) for free 4 times. If you expect a mission to be hard, swallow your ego and try it out with this in mind!

Didn't use Dash much, probably will now. Though for any H5 multiplayer Iron Will and Field medic is best combo 100% of the time. -Deep Pockets is useful on Refining and Extraction missions, sometimes not having to return to deposit makes a good difference. But kinda useless on scout for sure :D -Elemental Insulation... I never ever used this one. I can't say it's bad but when you have 3 slots for perks it just kinda not as good as some other. -Friendly works great when you use Lead Storm overclock on a minigun or Face Melter on flamethrower. Your damage is significantly higher and you can accidentally deal a lot of damage to your teamates. So I use it on a Lead Storm and Face Melter presets. Other than that I agree, kinda weird to sacrifice one slot to this. -Strong Arm has a use. Extraction mission with Gunk Seed secondary :D -Sweet Tooth I'd put into low A or high B, saves a lot of nerves, increaces overall healing during missions, gives you a bit of extra speed that can make a difference in some situations. Deffinitely a good one to pick, I use it a lot. But thinking of it now I'd rather pick Vampire to keep me healthy. -Thorns deffinitely make life a lot easier, once I realized how good it is I started using it almost every time.

Half the perks I use on scout are below A tier... I just want to make him self-reliant

hover boots are also nice as scout in the case there is no engenier you can activate it next to some ore make a small hole in the wall and stand in the hole so you can mine the ore whitout a platform

as a driller when we started playing I took this perk for very few first misions untill I realised I don't care how much dmg I am doing to them

There are use cases for Friendly. I only pick it when playing with randoms from *certain* region because they just don't give a damn about friendly fire and might even shoot you on purpose.

The 30% DR from veteran depositer stacks multiplicitavely with the damage resistance at full ROF on the autocannon for 85% DR

Half the random drillers I get into a match with are trying to team kill right out the gate. Friendly is for when you come across them

Deep pockets would only appeal to me with Scout and it was close to double my normal amount. Instead of 40, i can carry 70-80.

Friendly is because we all have high explosives and people are running around very fast in a panic.

deep pockets is S tier qol especially on extration and refine missions also it is always beneficial no matter your class or mission also resuppler is S tier, in difficult sitations when you are low on life durring swarm or fighting big enemy being able to do resupply quicer and receiving more healt is invaluable

I would say the Beast Master perk is getting inherently better overtime due to the increasing number of ranged and grapple enemies. Although, I wish Steve also drew the aggro of the cave leeches giving you a heads-up. :3

I get the vibe that the friendly fire perk is for parents playing with their kids.

You can use hover boots as scout to dig a hole into the wall to grapple into. You could also power attack and grapple again/do the tech thingy but it's still an okay use case

In my experience, Thorns + Vampire + See You in Hell + Berserker make for a very fun melee experience

I would argue that the usefulness of Field Medic in relation to team size (going by vanilla group sizes) can be expressed on a bell curve. 0 utility when you're alone, great utility in 2-3 player lobbies, less useful in a full lobby due to the abundance of available healers.

I actually use friendly when I play scout. Spared me a few times now lmao

IABT should make it so all lootbugs give more 25% stuff when they pop, and it stacks 4 times.

The intro song is "A Hero Theme"

I know not to shoot my team mates, but the driller seems to think that scouts are the error cube or something that is why i run friendly not for them, for me.

Deep Pockets is great on Scouts who are regularly the only one getting high up veins. on basic tier Pockets you may not be able to collect a full vein of nitra in one go so you get your basic 30 and then have to go to molly and then have to go back to the vein to finish mining. I isn't useful for any other class though.