Skill power in The Division 2 never quite sat well with the community, despite Massive’s best efforts to reel the system in. With The Division 2: Warlords of New York and Title Update 8 comes the complete excision of skill power, which is being replaced by the infinitely more intuitive Skill Tier system. So, how exactly do Skill Tiers work?
Skill Tier is core attribute on gear, and provides a flat boost to skills.
In The Division 2: Warlords of New York agents will no longer have to fret over how much skill power they have on their equipment if they wish to lean into a skill focused build. Now they have a core attribute built with them in mind: Skill Tier. Skill Tier is one of three core attributes being added to the game, including Weapon Damage and Armor. These core attributes are similar in concept to the three core attributes from the first game: Firearms, Stamina, and Electronics.
Skill Tier can appear as a core attribute on equipment, though it tends to appear on skill oriented gear. Unlike Weapon Damage and Armor, which have a range they can roll, Skill Tier will always roll as a +1 attribute. Each skill has a total of six tiers that can be accessed, so to max out a skill build an agent will need six pieces of gear with the this new core attribute. Skill Tier can be banked in the Recalibration Library, and applied to gear.
Each skill now receives a flat boost to its stats based on the total Skill Tiers an agent has from their equipment. Previewing a skill will display what those boosts are, as can be seen in the image above. Agents now have a transparent way to preview the power they will gain with each tier they equip, allowing them to craft skill builds in a more streamlined fashion.
Skill Tier does not go beyond 6 tiers, but some talents and exotics will allow skills to reach an Overcharge state. This can work in one of two ways: either a talent provides a temporary +1 tier that allows agents at the max tier to enter Overcharge, or an exotic can trigger the Overcharge stat when its talent is proc’d (though, this will be more difficult to activate than the +1 talents). Overcharged skills will receive a massive increase in power for a short duration.
Due to the removal of skill power, mods will now function similar to weapon mods and can be installed without limitation. Skill mods are intended to tweak a skill towards an agent’s preferred build, and will have the Gear 2.0 UI to indicate how powerful the mods are. Skill Tiers will also appear on players in the world, so if someone is rocking a Tier 6 healing chem launcher you can safely assume they are the healer.
*UPDATE 03/03/2020* An exception to the rule has been found: shields. Shields will increase in power with both Skill Tier and the Armor core attribute. Not the total amount of armor added, mind you, but how many armor core attributes you have equipped. Think of each item with an Armor core attribute as a +1 to Skill Tier for your shield.
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