The 5 Best Combat Skills in Starfield

The Combat Skill tree in Starfield offers some incredibly powerful bonuses, but which skills are best? We’re about to uncover all the best and most broken Combat skills so you can blow away your enemies.

1. Ballistics

The Ballistics skill in Starfield increases your damage done with Ballistic weapons by 10 percent, 20 percent, and 30 percent respectively for the first three ranks. The fourth and final rank of this skill increases the range of Ballistics weapons by 30 percent.

Ballistics is by far one of the best early skills to pick up in Starfield because most of the early weapons you’ll get in Starfield qualify as the ballistic type. This includes pistols, rifles, shotguns, and more. Each of those weapon types also has its own skill which you can level separately, but with skill points being relatively hard to come by early on it makes more sense to invest in just one skill that will improve them all at the same time and that’s what ballistics does.

2. Sniper Certification

Not every weapon in Starfield has a scope, but for those that do, the Sniper Certification skill offers one of the biggest damage bonuses in the game. For this, you will need to rank up this skill all the way to Rank 4, but the extra skill points here are entirely worth it as this will increase your weapon damage by 50% while aiming with a scope. This extra damage is incredibly noticeable, especially on weapons with high rates of fire such as the Beowolf rifle. Don’t worry though, if your favorite weapon does not use a scope there are some other powerful options on this list as well.

3. Rapid Reloading

The Rapid Reloading skill for Starfield does exactly what you might expect from the name. This skill simply lets you reload weapons faster. Each rank applies to a different type of weapon, so those players who primarily use Ballistics need only put in one skill point here to get the most bang for their buck.

Rank 2 of Rapid Reloading causes Energy and EM weapons to reload 30% faster, while Rank 3 applies the same 30% bonus to Particle Beam Weapons AND reduces your overall chance of being interrupted while reloading.

The Rank 4 bonus on Rapid Reloading is interesting and may be suitable for a gunslinger-style build that delivers high DPS. This rank provides a chance on hitting enemies to increase reload speed for all weapons by 50% for 15 seconds.

4. Armor Penetration

Armor Penetration is another combat skill you don’t want to skip in Starfield, allowing you to ignore up to 50% of a target’s armor at rank 3. The extra armor penetration provided by this skill becomes especially useful at later levels and higher difficulties where enemies have more armor and are more difficult to take down, plus this skill works great when combined with other combat skills like Sniper Certification mentioned above.

For more information on Armor Penetration as well as other powerful combat skills be sure to check out the video below:

5. Marksmanship

The Marksmanship skill in Starfield applies primarily to non-automatic weapons. Typically this includes pistols and shotguns but can also include rifles and more exotic weapons such as Particle Beam or EM depending on their configuration and mods. Regardless, if you prefer a more precise style of combat or want to build into Critical Chance, this will be a great skill line for you to invest in.

Ranks 1 through 3 of this skill are simple enough, increasing your Critical Chance with non-automatic weapons by 3%, 8%, and 15% respectively. Rank 4 however makes this skill even more interesting causing Critical hits using a non-automatic ranged weapon without a scope to do double damage and those with scopes knock down enemies on the next shot.

The Final Word

In this guide for the best Combat Skills in Starfield, we covered five skills that can have a huge impact on your overall gameplay experience. These skills will make the biggest overall difference in your DPS but they are by no means the only skills you should invest in. Be sure to explore more Starfield Combat skills as you play the game to determine which skills work best for you and your Starfield Build.

More Skill Guides For Starfield