The Best Skills to Unlock in Middle-earth: Shadow of War
Shadow of War has a ton of skills for Talion to unlock in his quest to destroy Sauron. Some of them are excellent abilities that will enable you to dispatch your foes with ease, while others are just a waste of perfectly good skill points.
Keep in mind that even though each skill has two or three upgrades you can acquire, you can only use one upgrade at a time. You get a lot of skill points for leveling your character and completing certain tasks. However, with the massive amount of abilities in Shadow of War, it’s easy to accidentally overlook a skill that might be of significant use to you.
Below, we’ve picked the best skills in Shadow of War. You should concentrate on unlocking these as soon as possible.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War – Best Combat Skills
Perfect Counter + Fatal Counter
Perfect Counter is one of the best skills for crowd control. If you hit the counter button when the indicator flashes blue, you knock the attacking enemy down. Not only does this take them out of the fight for a moment, but it also sets them up for ground executions.
Fatal Counter is by far the best upgrade of the three available. Instead of knocking down grunts when you perform a Perfect Counter, you outright kill them. It’s ineffective against Captains and beasts, but devastating against regular enemies.
Ground Finisher + Wraith Shield
Ground Executions are an excellent way to dispatch Orc grunts quickly. The one drawback it has when the game starts is that Talion performs the move so slowly that other enemies have time to interrupt it before you can actually kill your target.
The Ground Finisher skill speeds up the time it takes to perform Ground Executions. When you pair it with the Wraith Shield, which can parry enemy blows while you’re performing Ground Executions, it becomes one of the best tactics in the game.
Retaliation + Adamant
The Last Chance ability allows you to cheat death as long as you can complete a small quick-time event. When you unlock Retaliation, if the enemy is a regular grunt, you can execute them during Last Chance by a precision button press. The Adamant upgrade gives you an extra life by increasing your Last Chance count from two to three.