Skills in Shadow Of War provide a big change in gameplay whenever you unlock a new one. By the time you finish the game, you should have unlocked all of them. If you’re here to see which skills are good and which ones you should get first, beware of spoilers, but your questions will be answered.
Since there are so many skills in the game, you might not have used all of them effectively. Most skills are really useful, but you’ll easily forget about some, here you’ll see skills that can really help you in specific situations and give you the upper edge in your fights.
15.Elven Agility
It’s not exactly useful in combat per-se, but it makes a giant difference in how tedious traversing the open world is. It’s not the only option you have for fast movement, but it’s extremely easy to use it since you’ll always be running over rocks and such rubble.
14.Shadow Strider
Shadow Strider lets you press the jump button once again when leaping the enemy to double jump. It lets you travel a larger distance with your jump or switch directions mid jump.
You can also get the Hammer Of Eregion upgrade which lets you freeze enemies when you vault over them. It’s an insanely useful ability in combat and can save your hide if your opponent doesn’t have the Vault Breaker attribute.
13.Bird Of Prey
Bird Of Prey is an upgrade in the Ranged skill tree that gives you the ability to slow down time and let you aim better while using your ranged weapon.
It’s useful to be able to aim at your enemies while in the air properly, but the actual way to use this skill is to vault over an enemy with the Eagle Eyrie upgrade for Shadow Strider, and be able to quickly take out a few enemies from a vantage point in air.
12.Detonate
Detonate is another skill that’s part of the Ranged skill tree. It allows you to explode a fire pit by Shadow Striking into it. Depending on which upgrade you choose you can either increase the effectiveness of Detonate, causing ghouls or spiders to swarm the area, or make it easier to activate Detonate, by only shooting at the fire pit instead of having to Shadow Strike into it.
It’s always useful to damage from long range. If you opt for the ghouls upgrade, you can easily engage the fight from long range and cause mayhem in the orc ranks at the cost of 2 Elf-shots.
11. Elven Light
Elven Light is an ability that causes a powerful blinding blast in an area around Talion when your might is full. It’s a useful way to create a little crowd control when you’re getting swarmed.
It’s also notable to mention that the upgrades for Elven Light let it also apply Fire, Poison or Ice depending on which upgrade you take. If you have enough skill points to get all three upgrades, you can swap them depending on the weakness of the Captain you’re hunting to easily apply an effect if they have a weakness.
10.Ice Storm
Ice Storm is a skill that lets you stun an enemy with a press of the button and unleash a flurry of attacks by tapping the attack button.
While it doesn’t sound like too much, it’s a great way to stun your enemy, build your might and do a lot of damage to an enemy Captain. It’s a really good way to interrupt the opposing Captain’s attack and if you pair it with Hammer Of Eregion upgrade, you can stunlock an enemy easily by alternating between those two moves.
9.Raise Dead
The Raise Dead skill lets you revive dead grunts around you, which is a great way to keep the strength in numbers while in combat. You will not be able to use this skill until you finish the third act of the story.
You can also get an upgrade that lets you revive your fallen Captains. You can revive them in combat with the Raise Dead ability, or if you’re too late you can revive them from the army screen making sure you’re never out of Captains that will fight for you.
8.Wraith Chain
Wraith Chain lets you target additional enemies when you execute a stealth kill. It’s probably my favorite stealth skill, since you don’t have to do much to get the best of it.
Whenever you want to quickly eliminate a few enemies before combat starts, you just ambush one of them, and kill 2,3 or 4 as well depending on how much focus you have. Focus recharges quickly, so you’re really not losing anything, and it’s extremely satisfying to quickly eliminate enemies from stealth.
7.Shadow Mount
Shadow Mount is an ability in the Mounte skill tree that lets you mount broken Caragors, Graugs and Drakes. It’s obviously a key skill for you to use, since mounting beasts can be very useful in a lot of situations.
You could also grab the Pack Master upgrade that will dominate all nearby Caragors when you use the Shadow Mount skill on a Caragor. You can practically dominate all nearby Caragors with a single Shadow Mount, even if all the Caragors are already ridden by enemies.
6.Perfect Counter
Perfect Counter is a skill that you can easily unlock early in the game since it’s the second upgrade in the Combat tree. It allows you to knock down enemies every time you perfectly time the counter. You’ll know that the timing is right when the counter prompt shines blue.
There are 3 upgrades for this skill, but in my opinion, the best one is the Fatal Counter which lets you instantly kill the grunts that you counter. If you master the use of this skill, you can practically always fight the Captain 1v1 while you make quick work of the grunts that attack you.
5.Execution
There’s not much to say about this skill since you unlock it very early in the game and you’ll be constantly using it from that point on. This skill allows you to quickly execute a grunt when your might is filled up.
Execution is also a great way to dish out damage to Captains when you’re fighting them in melee. It’s one of the best ways to use your might, and probably the best way to deal a lot of damage to a single target.
4.Consume
Consume is a skill that lets you spend might to quickly Drain an enemy in the middle of combat. It’s pretty hard to drain an enemy in the middle of combat, and whether you need to heal up, or quickly eliminate another grunt, Consume will help you with that.
Being able to easily heal up or get another grunt to help you out in combat is always useful. It’s better to heal up, and remove an enemy rather than just killing them with execute.
3.Shadow Strike
Shadow Strike is an EXTREMELY useful skill. It lets you teleport to an enemy and either kill them or stun them depending on what you need to do at that moment.
It’s obviously useful to be able to quickly move to archers in the midst of combat to recollect yourself and heal-up. But the main reason why this skill is so high up on the list is because of the Shadow Strike Pull upgrade which can be used to single out a Captain (unless he has Arrow-Proof) and fight him one on one in an isolated space.
2.Elven Rage
Elven Rage is an ability that you can use when you;ve built up enough Wrath. It slows time, makes every melee attack lethal (except on Captains) and lets you perform infinite executions.
Since it’s one of your two ultimate moves that consume Wrath, you can expect a lot from it. You’ll be a killing machine for a limited time and you can remove any Captain that’s not immune to executions easily. Even if they are, you’ll still be able to do a lot of damage to them and every orc around you.
1.Ringwraith
After completing the 3rd act of the game, Elven Rage will be swapped with Ringwraith, which will instead give a boost to your damage and speed and resurrect fallen grunts around you.
It’s a tad bit better than Elven Rage in my opinion, since it will give a big boost to the damage that you can do and it increases the number of grunts you have around you in combat. Also, it looks way cooler and more ominous than Elven Rage, which goes a lot better with our main protagonist Talion.
