Top 10 Best Skill Cards in Dead Island 2

Discover the top 10 best Skill Cards for your Maim Fury build in Dead Island 2. Enhance your combat effectiveness with these essential skills and strategies.

If you deal enough damage to an enemy’s limbs, those appendages may end up destroyed, either mangled by blunt weapons or severed by sharp weapons. Either way, a destroyed limb is considered “MAIMED”, a gameplay keyword that can proc a variety of buffs, depending on the weapons and Skill Cards you have equipped. If you have a Maiming Profile weapon equipped, you’ll recover Stamina whenever you maim an enemy and the Skill Cards The Limb Reaper, Hack and Dash and Surgical Precision can cause you to regain Health, boost your Attack Speed, and fill your Fury gauge when you maim enemies.

All good stuff, to be sure - there’s almost a combo there. What really ties this all together, however, are the weapons you use. Some weapons have the Maiming profile, which, as mentioned earlier, will cause you to regain Stamina when you maim an enemy, but also all limb strikes with Maiming weapons will count as critical hits. A fine boon in itself, critical damage increases the odds you’ll maim an enemy when you attack their limbs… but if you use Maiming profile weapons that have certain weapon stats, like Critical Multiplier (the amount of critical hit damage you deal) and Limb Damage (the amount of limb damage you deal), your damage output with these weapons can significantly increase… especially if you upgrade weapons to further boost these stats.

For example, a katana with the “ Honed” and “ Slaughter” upgrades will have a 1.9x Critical Multiplier and a 1.6x Limb Damage multiplier, and since all limb strikes are critical hits, the damage can add up quickly. This, in combination with the aforementioned Skill Cards can make for a very powerful combo, indeed. With these thoughts in mind, here are our top 10 favorite Skill Cards:

Block

Press / to defend against incoming attacks. Well-timed blocks regain your STAMINA and STUN zombies, leaving them open to a devastating COUNTER attack. One of the game’s two defensive skills, Block allows you to negate incoming damage from enemies. If you block an attack just before it lands, the enemy will be stunned and left vulnerable to Counter Attacks. With the addition of other Skill Cards, like Safety First and Invigorating you’ll recover Health every time you perform a well-timed block and counter attack, respectively. It’s a good way to keep your health up, early-game, and it’s far easier to perform well-timed blocks than well-timed dodges, making the Block Skill Card useful offensively as well as defensively. That said, blocking has some limitations - many apex variants will power through it, as will most AoEs, ranged attacks and elemental damage. Block is useful in conjunction with the two aforementioned Skill Cards, which will allow you to block-and-counter lesser zombies all will to recover health.

Deadeye

Quickfire! Hit a zombie with a CURVEBALL item to trigger a RECHARGE boost that can stack multiple times. Curveballs are incredibly useful special weapons, traps and lures (mostly weapons), like meat bait, shurikens, molotov cocktails and pipe bombs. They work on a cooldown timer, so you don’t need to fuss over replenishing your stock, but they might not be ready as often as you need them. This Skill Card helps mitigate this issue by giving your Curveballs a cooldown boost - just equip two Curveballs you like and alternate between them.

Dodge

Press / with a direction to evade incoming attacks. Well-timed dodges regain your STAMINA and STUN zombies, leaving them open to a devastating COUNTER attack. The second of the game’s two Defense Skills, Dodge doesn’t negate damage, instead it causes you to dash in a chosen direction. There are no invulnerability frames attached to this ability, but it covers enough ground that you may well find yourself out of harm’s way, and if you dodge just before an attack lands, the enemy will be left stunned and susceptible to Counter Attacks. Just like Block, Dodge synergizes with the Skill Cards Safety First and Invigorating, turning Dodge into an offensive maneuver as well as defensive one. The timing window for a well-timed dodge is tighter than with blocking, but dodging helps you avoid enemy attacks more reliably than blocking, assuming your timing is up to snuff. Both are good Skill Cards, just for different situations - Dodge is arguably a better general-use defensive skill, but you can’t go wrong either way.

Glass Cannon

Maiming profile weapons deal critical hits any time you strike an enemy’s limbs, hence you should always be targeting limbs. This Skill Card boosts critical hit damage at the expense of Toughness (you sustain more physical damage) - a worthwhile tradeoff.

Hack and Dash

Exclusive to Dani and Jacob, this Skill Card boosts your Attack Speed every time you maim an enemy.