Nioh: Best Samurai Passive Skills
Passive abilities in Nioh deserve extra attention. These don’t require any button presses. Instead, they work in the background, boosting your abilities in order to make you a more formidable Samurai. They’re spread fairly evenly across all of the weapon trees, but we’re focusing on the best ones which also happen to be the ones everyone can take advantage of. Do note that not all skills are available right away.
You’ll have to complete a few Dojo missions and progress through the story, but keep an eye out for these and make sure to invest. They’ll ensure that you’re one of the most powerful Samurai walking Nioh’s world.
Next to each skill’s name, you’ll find the tree its under in parentheses:
Relentless (Sword): You’ll unlock this skill after completing the first Way of the Warrior mission in the Dojo (upgrades will unlock after completing that mission on higher difficulties). It increases your Ki, which is never a bad thing in Nioh.
Tachi (Dual Swords): Completing that same training mission also grants you access to this Samurai skill. It increases close combat damage against enemies with full health.
Cornered Tiger (Spear): Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a tight spot taking lots of damage. This ability makes it so damage increases when your health is below 30%.
Defense Arts (Dual Swords): This is an absolute must have for players who like to play it close. It increases your Ki recovery speed while guarding, allowing you to block for longer and focus on making parries.
Momentum (Dual Swords): Landing attacks reduces Ki for subsequent attacks in chain, stacks with each attack. This allows for longer combos, which in turn means easier kills and mass depletion of enemy stamina.
Firm Resolve (Dual Swords): This mystic art has attacks reduce damage taken, and the effect stacks. It doesn’t make you invincible, but it does help you play more aggressively.
Fortitude (Axe): The axe is a tanky weapon, so it’s no surprise that its tree has a Samurai skill that boosts your life. The first one adds 100 points, while each upgrade adds another 50.
Cornered Board (Axe): Incoming damage reduced by 10% when health is at 30% or less. This is pretty straight forward, and goes well with the Cornered Tiger ability we already mentioned.
Intensity (Axe): Draining an enemy’s Ki staggers them, but you can add some more oomph with this skill as it greatly increases the damage of attacks that drop enemy Ki to zero.
Inner Light (Axe): Greatly increased damage in Yokai Realms.
Full Moon Kata (Kusarigama): Increased close combat damage when you’re at max health.
Shadow Strike (Kusarigama): Increases damage dealt to enemies from behind. This should be one of the first Samurai abilities you unlock as it helps deal with sneaking up on Yokai and those pesky dwellers.
Armor Piercer (Kusarigama): Attacks like the grapple, or taking advantage of a downed enemy are called final blows. They do massive damage but don’t always kill. This ability increases damage of final blows, raising the chance of the attacks truly being final.
For more on Nioh, make sure to check out our wiki.
