THIS GUIDE WAS MADE FOR VERSION: 1.1.8.1

There are 11 team skills in Shardpunk, of which a new rank can be gained after each mission or certain special encounters. The power of each varies wildly. Team skills have a notable impact, albeit less than that of characters. As the title suggests, this tier list is designed with Very Hard difficulty in mind.

As an overview, here's the tier list. Note that this does not constitute an order of which to get skills; some teams benefit far more from certain skills than others.

Rank: A-
Grenade Mastery is a middling team skill. The first rank is hot garbage, +1 max damage is effectively worthless. The second rank is where things get interesting, as stuns can be quite useful if you don't have a team with good multi-target damage. Just be wary of Hardened Enemies. The third rank also lets you guaranteed kill grunts, and guaranteed kill shooters and shotgunners with a character that has guaranteed crits (note that Gunter with Loner active does this regardless of crits or grenade mastery). Grenades are already pretty useful. There are better team skills, and a better team will benefit less from it, but it's not bad.

Rank: C
When given the choice of "messing up is less bad" and "messing up is less common", the latter is generally the preferred option. In fact, you'll notice that every D-tier upgrade is one that makes the game more forgiving rather than making your team more powerful. Furthermore, this just isn't a good solution to stress. Now that dread exists, stress is solely what happens if you make a number of mistakes in a short period of time. Meanwhile, Face the Danger provides a gradual stress reduction. If you're killing enough enemies to proc it often, you don't need it as dead enemies can't give you stress. Technically if you max your stress from an stim or overwatch shot and end up next to cover, ranks 2 and 3 can be useful, but that's a rare situation. Anyway, Wait It Out exists.

Rank: S+
More actions is more damage, or more speed, or an extra reload, or an extra ability activation, or... you get the idea. This is very flexible and very good. In most turn-based games, action economy is king. Although I put this at the top of S-tier, I don't really believe this is the true strongest one. Instead, they're ranked in order of how quickly they can make an impact. As soon as you get a point in Extra Effort, you're making one fight per level way smoother.

Rank: B-
Bunker breaching is probably the easiest part of a level. If you're in a good position, you just sit there and shred rats with 8-9 overwatch shots as they come in. If you're in a bad position, it can be skipped with a core. I take this one often in the lategame so that I have to press the "overwatch all" button a few fewer times.

Rank: C+
Again, better make your team stronger than make the game more forgiving. Dead enemies can't deal damage to you. At the top of C-tier because getting your HP bursted down is what actually kills you, so it's the best of the four.

Rank: S
While Extra Effort gives a big burst of anything, Run! sticks to its job and does it really, really well. You increase your movement speed by 50-75%, which scales with how much you move. Even if you are only moving once, that extra speed can pass breakpoints, especially for melee characters that might have to dash to get to the nearest target otherwise. Although it has less burst power compared to Extra Effort, you get a combined 6-12 uses compared to Extra Effort's 1-2. That's pretty good value.

Rank: S-
+16% crit chance per action is rather crazy. At the cost of 5 shelter actions and 3 weapon parts (for aim 2), you can give a character a guaranteed +3 damage per hit with the chance of decreasing stress or, better yet, refunding actions. This is especially useful on anyone who shoots a lot. Alternatively, you can use the full 7 actions to additionally give your grenades guaranteed crits. If you also have No Time to Rest, you'll easily have the actions for anything else you want to do. If you have Hector with Propaganda Talk 3, things will get crazy. Honestly, this one is probably the most powerful, but it effectively needs 4 team skills to get that far (you need No Time to Rest to use other shelter actions).

Rank: A+
No Time to Rest is unique in that it's the only team skill with a single rank. This means that you can get it whenever you feel like. It'll solve pretty much any shelter AP issues you may have. This also translates into damage via crit chance from resting. Not quite S-tier as it doesn't do anything on its own. I'd recommend getting it when you reach a military shelter or if you otherwise really need the shelter AP.

Rank: B+
Fusion cores are not great weapons. They're scarce, deal low base damage, and are good against close, tight groups when grenades exist at a fraction of the price and the enemies that kill you will be either far away or spread out. This team skill makes them at all viable by giving them the ability to 1-shot gunners and shotgunners, but even then by the time you've got any number of fusion cores worth mentioning, you're moving on to tougher enemies. Above the convenience skill and the skills that effectively do nothing, but it's the worst skill that improves your team's striking power.

Rank: C
The one thing worse than a skill that doesn't help you kill things is a skill that you have to spend resources to use that doesn't help you kill things. The HP per medical supplies you save from getting this is probably less than the HP you got from guaranteed crits, extra actions, or better positioning.

Rank: C-
You want to repair your automaton? We've got a tool for that. It's called recharge stations. Want to do it more often? We've got a tool for that too. It's called Tilly.

The four skills you should focus on are Extra Effort, Run!, No Time to Rest, and Calm and Collected. I tend to get the first two, get the third when I reach a military shelter, then get the latter. However, if you can get through the first four levels with minimal help from your team skills, you'll be in a pretty good position from there. Happy hunting, survivors.