TL;DR: Full breakdown of all perks, with grades and proposed balance changes. Also new perk suggestions
Today I will be making my own perk balance megathread, as I was unsatisfied with all the existing perk megathreads. I will be catagorizing all perks (although I might have missed some more perks, so it will be updated over time) in catagory and cost, as well as giving them a rating based on their cost in comparison to other perks in that catagory.
So to clarify things, each soldiers gets a random ammount of perk slots, divided into three catagories:
- Feet/Boot, or mobility
- Heart, or vitality
- Fist, or firepower
Higher rank/star soldiers get more total slots and each catagory has its own limit as to how much perk slots it has, shown as followed:
This soldier has 6 mobility slots available with 0 used, 8 vitality slots with 8 used, and 8 firepower slots with 7 used. This means this soldier can no longer obtain any perks that cost vitality, or that cost more than 1 firepower. This affects your final perk choices, even though those choices are RNG based. Furthermore, it is possible to retrain soldiers that are already maxed out using retraining points:
Using a retraining perk allows you to re-roll a perk. You get the option to either keep the current perk, or take one of two new random perks. Note that you do still need the required ammount of perk slots!
The ratings will be done as followed:
S - should be used on every soldier it fits on, only reserved for godlike perks
A - only S should be picked over A, extremely potent perks
B - good, but there are better picks
C - not good, not bad
D - should be avoided if you can
F - if you use these, you are probably meming
So lets start with universal perks, or perks with no costs:
- Stamina regeneration:
This perk affects the rate at which your stamina bar goes back up. It is a very underwhelming perk as the ammount of cases where you need it is very low. Generally, more stamina gets the job done much better. Grade: D
- Pose changing:
This perk affects the speed at which the soldier goes from one pose to another. For example, from sprinting, to being ready to fire. While this is a somewhat decent effect, it gets drastically outperformed by other perks as the 150% isn’t super noticable. Grade: D
- Weapon changing:
This perk affects the speed at which you can swap between weapons and equipment. This does include knifes and grenades, which makes it a solid pick if you enjoy running with knifes (as that is much faster than running with normal weapons out) or using grenade spam Grade: C
On to the mobility perks:
- Crawl/Crouch speed:
This perk increases your movement speed while not standing or running by 60%. While the mobility increase is definitely noticable, it generally can’t be used to gain an advantage in combat directly. Rather, it is used to increase your movement speed when downed, allowing you to get into cover faster to patch yourself up. Snipers and Gunners do also like this perk as they prefer to crouch or go prone when shooting Grade: C
- Jump height:
This perk increases your maximum jump height by 40%. Sadly, I have been unable to confirm whether it allows you to climb up buildings. If it does, this would be a solid B as sniping from rooftops is pretty powerful (but not better than B because of your entire squad needing it). Otherwise, it is a straight up F.
- Climb speed:
This perk affects climb speed. It costs a whopping 4 mobility points and its effect is rarely used in combat. Its only saving grace is that the other mobility perks are about as bad as this one. Grade: D
Next up is vitality:
- Max stamina:
A simple, cheap, yet extremely effective perk, that allows you to run for twice as long as normal. Note that soldiers with this perk do not spawn with their stamina bar maxed out, instead they spawn with the normal ammount of stamina (bug? probably feature). It is always a good pick as it allows you to run to capture points much quicker than normal. Grade: A
- Health regeneration:
An extremely underwhelming perk. Health regeneration gives you double the health regeneration out of battle. The issue is that you need 30+ seconds before the regeneration kicks in, after which you will most likely have used a medkit as you were still in combat and you needed the health, meaning the perk will practically never kick in. Of course, there is a point to be made about risking your soldier’s life by waiting for the health regen to save a medkit. Depending on your playstyle, this might go from a B to a F
- Medpack effectiveness:
This perk changes all normal medkits into advanced medkits, meaning that if you have progressed enough to have a bunch of advanced medkits, this perk becomes useless. Furthermore, because of its perk cost, it is very poorly situated in the end-game, where there are much better vitality perks (see further down). Because its effectiveness early in your progress, it is good for low star soldiers, but you will never want it on high level soldiers, meaning it needs 2 grades: Early grade: A. Late grade: F
- Vitality:
This perk gives 35% more vitality. I am still in the process of testing this perk, but it seems to give you a 35% damage resistance, as the health bar size does not increase, unlike with +100% stamina. It costs a grand total of 8 vitality, meaning you will never see it on soldiers with less than 4 stars. It is a must have if you are lucky enough to get the option for it. Grade: S
Lastly, there is firepower:
- Maximum ammo:
Another cheap, core perk that every soldier wants. Ammo reserves can be low sometimes and this perk makes sure you can kill dozens of enemies before running dry. Grade: A
- Shot spread:
This perk is a bit weird as very few weapons actually have a sizable ammount of shot spread. Most gun inaccuracy is because of recoil, not because of spread, meaning this perk is next to useless. Grade: F
- Bolt action firing rate:
A good perk if you are using it on a soldier that uses bolt action rifles for sniping. Annoyingly, it can also show up on soldiers that do not have the ability to carry bolt action rifles. Furthermore, it is not enough to allow bolt action users to move into closer ranges where automatic weapons reign supreme. Note that anti-tank rifles such as the PzB38 are not considered bolt action and are unaffected by this perk (tested and confirmed). This again requires a buildaround grade: B if you plan on sniping, F for anything else.
- Weapon reload:
This perk is very good for weapons with long reload times, such as the LMGs and SG (shotgun). However, it does not affect weapons that have to cycle a bolt or action between firing, such as with bolt actions and anti-tank rifles. Furthermore, it costs a whopping 5 firepower perk points, meaning it is a real investment and will probably prevent you from using other firepower perks. Because of this, I must grade this at an D for anything other than LMG and SG users, for who it is a B.
- Vertical recoil:
This perk effectively eliminates any vertical recoil while standing, which makes it extremely potent for automatic weapon users. Note that this perk might result in you having more vertical recoil when crouched than when standing and it does not affect horizontal recoil. A perk cost of 7 means you can not use any other firepower perk unless you got a 5 star or veteran soldier that has 9 firepower perk slots, which makes it only desirable for weapons like the PPDs, MG13 and DP-27, where it gets the grade of S. In other situations, it is a C at best.
- Horizontal recoil:
This perk effectively eliminates any horizontal recoil while standing, however, vertical recoil will always be heavier than horizontal recoil and due to the perk costs, you can not have both the horizontal and vertical recoil perks at the same time. Only consider this if you are really good at managing vertical recoil. Grade: D.
For perk changes, I suggest the following:
Universal:
- Stamina regen: increase effect to 150-200%
- Pose change: increase effect to 200-400%, so it becomes more noticable, but not make it unnatural.
- Weapon changing: increase effect to 75%-100% or make it so the swap animation starts earlier, but that would tie into the pose change issue. Alternatively, this perk’s effect could be changed to allow weapon swapping at any time, including when crawling or sprinting.
This would make the universal perks desirable and not a last ditch choice because you used all perk slots.
Mobility:
- Movement speed while crawling or crouching should also affect the rate at which you get in/out of those poses. Not sure what else to change
- Jump height: Simply make sure it is enough for a soldier to jump while looking up, then grab the ledge of a building to climb on top of it. Maybe allow soldiers to pull other soldiers up on buildings so not the entire squad needs it? Perk cost should get increased to 4+ if this goes through
- Faster climbing: should get its perk cost reduced to 3
Vitality:
- Stamina is perfect, stay as is
- Health regen needs a 100% faster cooldown (so 50% less time) until regeneration kicks in, around 10-15 seconds should be good. Maybe have a perk indicator on the soldier to remind the user not to use medpacks? Alternatively could increase the bleedout timer
- Medpack effectiveness should speed up the revive speed when downed
- Vitality needs more testing, stay as is for now
Firepower:
- Max ammo is perfect, stay as is. Maybe increase base ammo for all soldiers for 1 magazine and thus increase the extra ammo by another magazine as well?
- Shot spread should reduce weapon sway when shell shocked (but not completely nullify it), after quick turning of the weapon and when zoomed
- BA firing rate should affect fire rate of any weapon that isn’t semi or fully automatic, including the revolvers, anti-tank rifles, etc, as well as see an increase to maybe 30%
- Reload speed should see an increase to 30-35% as 24% isnt quite enough for what it asks of you, as well as affecting vehicle/engineer building weaponry
- Recoil should affect recoil in every position, including crouching and crawling, as well as reducing horizontal recoil by 20% or so, to make it desirable for more weapon types. Might make it too powerful though.
In addition to this, here are some community proposed perks (updated the more people react to this thread):
-
Repair speed:
100% faster repair of vehicles
Cost: Universal/None
Details: To make this work, you should be able to repair allied vehicles that arent your own by equipping repair kits on normal soldiers. Planes also need to be able to get repaired. This perk will affect the speed at which repair and extuingishing of fires happen. -
Sprint speed:
15% faster sprint speed
Cost: 2 mobility
Details: increases movement speed when sprinting.
I hope this thread will also lead to the creation to some new stratigies by combining certain perks.
Happy discussing! 
