Middle-earth Shadow of War: Best Skills to Unlock

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.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War – Best Predator Skills

Wraith Chain + Shadow Blade

You can wreak a lot of havoc without the enemy even knowing you’re there in Shadow of War. During quests especially, stealth is your friend and the Wraith Chain skill ups the ante on just how deadly you can be from the shadows.

With Wraith Chain, upon performing a silent kill, you can aim towards another enemy grunt and press the indicator to chain together additional stealth kills, each of them consuming a bit of Focus. Shadow Blade makes you even more deadly by making the first chained stealth kill consume no Focus, effectively giving you an extra strike or two.

Deadly Spectre + Spirit Drain

Deadly Spectre lets you leave behind a Wraith to kill your target if you hold down the button (Triangle or Y) while using the attract skill. Spirit Drain makes the ability even more useful by having the Wraith drain your victim instead of killing them. This way you get a new follower and a nice boost to your health.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War: Best Predator Skills

Shadow Strike + Chain of Shadows

There’s a reason why Shadow Strike is the last skill on the Predator tree. This powerful ability allows you to aim at foes with your bow and transport to them instantaneously to kill or stun them for the price of two Elf-shots. Chain of Shadows allows you to target another enemy after the first and chain Shadow Strikes together by consuming Focus. This combo makes you a long-range, death-dealing, machine.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War – Best Wraith Skills

Consume + Olog Lord

If you’re in the middle of a fight and you need a quick pick-me-up, Consume is the skill of choice. When your might gauge is full, you can use Consume to drain an enemy in combat instantly.

The Olog Lord upgrade trumps Chain of Souls because it allows you to drain from a wider variety of targets. There are more effective chain skills, and it’s convenient to instantly get an Olog ally in combat in addition to the health gain.

Treasure Hunter + Mind Breaker

I’m not sure why they placed Mind Breaker as an upgrade to Treasure Hunter, since they don’t have anything in common except for being immensely useful. Treasure Hunter will automatically pick up loot as you get near it, which is amazing considering how many times I accidentally killed my mount because I held down the pickup button too long.

Mind Breaker makes dominating Orc Captains so much easier. Usually, Captains have so many Orc grunts around that it’s impossible to fill up the drain meter before you get interrupted by an enemy attack. With Mind Breaker the meter for Orcs that are a lower level than you fills almost instantaneously and is much quicker even when dominating those at a higher level.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War: Best Mounted Skills

The Mounted Skill Tree is unique in that all its skills are useful in one way or another. Early on Graug Rider is helpful since you can dominate them and then dismount to have a powerful ally alongside you. As time goes on, you’ll want to unlock the Call Graug skill and Shadow Mount. Drakes are the best form of transportation in the game besides fast travel so you’ll want to get the Dragon Rider skill quickly and make the Carnan quests a priority.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War: Best Story Skills

As the name of the Story Skill Tree suggests, most of these skills are unlocked during the campaign, so you don’t have much of a choice on when you get them. Some upgrades can help you a lot, though. The Hammer of Eregion upgrade to Shadow Strider is immensely useful for freezing enemies. You can get the Iron Guard upgrade to Call Followers to make your summoned warriors tougher and to prevent them, as well as your Orc Captains, from dying you can get the Lifeblood upgrade to Dominate Captain to exchange some of your health for healing your followers.

For more on Shadow of War, be sure to check out our wiki.