Perks

Perks are chosen abilities at the beginning of the game that allow for further customization of your hero, before you even start. These perks show up after your hero is selected, and you are given a choice to choose exactly 3 perks in total. Each perk has it's own use and some perks have both pros and cons, while others have no negative bonuses whatsoever. All perks available are the same for each hero, except for Dune, who cannot pick Absorption.

In Hellwalker difficulty, S1 Prestige, and Season 2 Nemesis, players can choose exactly 4 perks.

Each perk has a chat command to select during the opening cinematic, listed in parenthesis next to the name of the perk. For example, using "-perk dmcy" would select Doomsday, Mercenary, Compartmentalization, and Archaeology. This chat command can't be used while in the perk screen, but will be recognized when the game is paused, and can be changed until the opening cinematic is over and a hero has been selected. To cancel the command, simply put in an invalid setting, such as "-perk cancel".

## List of Perks

### Perk 1: Onslaught (O)

* +20% to Spell, Melee, Ranged, and Splash damage.
* +20% to max shields.
* +20% to movement speed.
* Also removes the ability to take Iron Man Mastery.

The Onslaught perk does not apply to your minions or any units under your control.

### Perk 3: Absorption (E)

* +3 max energy, +0.0195 energy regeneration per spell cast (Basic Ability), max 100 stacks
* +300 max energy and +1.95 energy regeneration when complete
* Lightweight Equipment Mastery (or Compartmentalization) is highly recommended for any character who takes Absorption to use effectively. Absorption is essentially a slightly better Energy Mastery that doesn't count as a mastery and takes a little while to build up.
* The definition of a basic ability is an ability that does not require a Mastery to use. For example, Predator's blink ability is NOT a basic ability because it is only available if we pick the Blink Mastery.

### Perk 4: Compartmentalization (C)

* Removes the mastery point cost of Lightweight Equipment Mastery. Still requires manual picking of Lightweight Equipment mastery in-game and the standard minerals and time to research.
* Nova, Pyro, and Swann depend heavily on getting Lightweight researched quickly.

### Perk 5: Mercenary (M)

* +3 Sight Radius.
* +250 base nuke damage.
* +5000 minerals at start. In addition, +5000 minerals for every major boss and hive killed. There are 8 hives and 5 major bosses in the game. World event 14 also provides an additional Omegalisk to kill, which counts as a boss for mercenary. Minibosses such as the Angry and Elite Brutalisks do not provide minerals.

### Perk 6: Leadership (L)

Non-hero units that a player owns gain +15%, +20%, or +50% Spell, Melee, Ranged, and Splash damage

* +15%: Swann's turrets, Helldivers
* +20%: Flaming Betty, support drops, some protoss
* +50%: Most others

### Perk 7: Bug Zapper (B)

* Provides 10% attack speed buff
* Grants the hero with a permanent Tassadar Empower, periodic Mjolnir, and periodic Corona
* Base Empower is 70 / 1.36 = 52 DPS, but this can be boosted significantly with attack speed buffs

### Perk 8: Air Support (A)

* Grants the "Vice Admiral", "Dusk Wings", and "Call in the Fleet" perks.

* Provides a powerful battle cruiser to permanently follow you.
* The Battlecruiser also has a sight radius of 12 and has detection radius of 9, making it useful for early detection or vision.

### Perk 9: Toxic Waste (X)

* Provides 4 Life Regen
* Provides an irradiate aura debuff range 7 around the Hero, doing 20 damage in period 0.9, with +1 damage per cube picked up, up to a maximum of 50 times for 70 damage total.

### Perk 10: Weaponsmith (W)

* Provides fully researched Weapons Mastery. Is not actually "taken" as a mastery, so it will never trigger a mastery retaliation and doesn't show up as taken in the tab menu, but does count towards masteries taken in Hellwalker

### Perk 11: Tenacity (T)

* Automatically takes Iron Man Mastery at start of game, but will still take 30 minutes to complete, even if the player has taken Onslaught. Does not cause any mastery retaliation.
* All units/buildings you control also get 20% bonus health by adding 8 to the player's handicap.

### Perk 12: Doomsday (D)

* Grants the player "Surgical Strike", "Rainmaker", "Electrostatic Fallout", and "Nuclear Winter" talents automatically.
* Launches a CP nuke near the location of a nuke that does 2500 damage or more and no friendly damage. Surgical Strike also activates at the same time, providing 3\*damage^0.5 in minerals
* Doomsday nukes upgrade as following
	+ +110 structure damage every 4 minutes.
	+ Massive Blast after 40 minutes
	+ Electrostatic Fallout after 80 minutes (+1500 damage to psionic and +900 damage to heroic). This has the negative effect of reducing damage to heroic structures by averaging the bonus between the two attributes.

### Perk 13: Helldivers (H)

* Removes all support drops from the talent pool except for Pyro's Firebat drop.
* Every 160 seconds, a powerful Firebat, Goliath, Marauder, Marine, and Medic will drop on your position unless the corresponding unit is still alive.
* These units take 50% spell damage and have a 50 max damage block.
* They do significantly more damage than normal units, and can be buffed by a 15% if the Leadership perk is taken.
* They are also affected by Inspire, which means they are extremely strong and can do exceptional damage.
* Defeating bosses increases helldiver HP, armor, life regen, and damage, up to 5 times.

### Perk 14: Archaeology (Y)

* Grants the player Parity Checks and Improved Parity checks talents automatically.
* Each time an artifact is picked up, the player will receive 2 talents instead of 1, plus an additional 3 level upgrades. When the final artifact is picked up, the player will also receive 2 masteries instead of 1.

### Perk 15: Guidance (G)

* 60 seconds after selecting the guidance perk, the player with the lowest score in the game will receive a guidance stack, up to a maximum of 10. In the event of a tie, it goes to the first player in the list. This action repeats every 13 minutes. If a player already has 10 guidance stacks, it will go to the next lowest player.
* It takes 27 minutes therefore to get a single player to 10 guidance stacks, assuming all 4 players took guidance.
* Each stack of guidance provides 5% Spell, Melee, Ranged, and Splash damage, 3% Max Life, 0.1015 Energy Regen, and 2 shield armor.