Flintlock Siege of Dawn Skills Tier List

There's a bunch of skills to play around with in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, and most of them aren't simple stat boosts either. Here we'll be breaking them down into a tier list to help you whittle down which ones are the best, and which ones could be better.

Best Skills Tier List - Flintlock Siege of Dawn

Tier	Skill
S	Poised Shot, Counter Shot, Momentum
A	Shadow Partner, Curse Siphon, Taunt, Armored Poise, Withering Cuts, Dodge Attack
B	Curse Chain, Unleashing, Restrain, Shadow Charge, Sapper's Punch, Charged Attack
C	Powder Handling, Extra Shot, Curse Shot, Destructive Descent, Knockdown, Shadow Strike, Rend Spirit, Shadow Slam, Deflection
D	Chaos Vortex, Explosives Expert, Piercing Shot, Improved Reload, Charged Shot, Chain of Misfortune, Shadow Self, Arcane Cleave, Rending Strike, Hearty Fortitude

Everything from ground slam attacks, suspending enemies in the air, and even the ability to better mix and match armor bonuses is on the table here, but which of them are the best? With so many to cover (34 in total!), we'll only be discussing a few of the more notable ones from each tier. Also please bear in mind that this list is subjective, and you might not find the skills that worked well for me match your playstyle, so be sure to experiment!

S-Tier Skills

These skills are absolute game changers in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, and when used in tandem with one another will completely change the face of the game as you know it. (Especially in boss fights!)

Poised Shot

Poised Shot is so good I'd edge ever so slightly towards saying it's outright busted. During the tutorial, you're introduced to two simple concepts. There are attacks you can parry, and attacks you can't. Now of course, the attacks you can't parry can be instead 'interrupted' by using your firearm, but Poised Shot says otherwise. Poised Shot allows you to use your firearm to actively parry the attacks you'd normally only be able to interrupt, which means you can riposte them as you would on a normal parry. In boss fights, this skill is an absolute must.

Counter Shot

Counter Shot allows you to use your firearm to punish a successful parry instead of just your melee weapon, which brings with it a flat 100% damage increase over a regular riposte. Used in tandem with Poised Shot, you'll be seeing the animation for this one a lot. (You can see this for yourself in our Rammuha Boss Guide.)

Momentum

Momentum isn't a very flashy skill, but it's a damn good one. Momentum allows you follow up your melee attacks significantly faster if you hit the attack button right as your first hit lands, and this can be chained near infinitely. This can lead to absolutely massive damage over a short period if you get the timing down (which does admittedly take some time to learn) and can be used to stack massive amounts of curse on your enemies if used alongside Enki properly.

A-Tier Skills

These skills are some of the best there is, but are not as game changing as the S-Tier ones.

Shadow Partner & Curse Siphon

These two are getting lumped together because Curse Siphon is effectively an 'upgrade' to Shadow Partner. Shadow Partner allows you to time your attacks in combination with Enki's to massively increase the amount of 'Curse' you build on your target. Curse Siphon adds to this by also granting a percentage of health back (based on the amount of curse build up on the target) on a successful activation of this ability.

Taunt

This one is massively important, as it allows Enki to pull the aggro of enemies when you're out in the open areas. Enemies will rush to attack him instead of you, and as you don't need to worry about Enki dying on you (being a God and all), it'll free you up some breathing room if you've found yourself outnumbered.

Dodge Attack

This is one of the very first skills you'll pick up, and it's a great one for the sole reason that it gives you just one more avenue of damaging your targets. Time spent not attacking in Flintlock is time spent trying not to get hit, so it's better to always be on the offensive, and Dodge Attack lets you keep fighting whilst also not getting hit. Win win.

B-Tier Skills

Some strong skills in this tier, just maybe ones you won't find yourself using all that much.

Curse Chain

A very simple skill that is carried by its usefulness in preserving one of your resources. Curse Chain allows Enki to curse two targets instead of one whenever you activate him, so long as they're close to one another. Great in fights with plenty of targets.

Restrain

Sort of an upgrade to 'Taunt', but unique enough to get a different ranking. Restrain makes Enki attack certain targets on his own volition, and he'll attack more depending on the amount of enemies nearby. His attack won't do any damage, but it will apply more curse build up, which considering how high up the skill tree this skill is (and how you won't struggle to do that yourself), makes it perhaps a little less useful than Taunt.

Charged Attack

You might expect something so simple to be higher up the list, especially consider how common a 'heavy attack' is in most Soulslike games. However in Flintlock, it simply doesn't have all that much use outside of bosses or enemies with long stagger or cooldown periods. However, when it works, it works very well for big damage.

C-Tier Skills

Skills that hedge towards the weaker side of things, whilst still having a good few redeeming qualities.

Destructive Descent

I really wanted this skill to be more useful than I found it to be, but sadly, it just didn't come in handy all that often. Being able to do a big ol' ground pound might sound super handy, but outside of fringe circumstances in which you're confronted by a large group of unarmored/small targets (which does happen from time to time), it simply doesn't do much asides from waste a Powder Charge.

Rend Spirit

Rend Spirit is a strange one, because it can be extremely useful... this issue is sort of forgetting it's even there to begin with. It effectively acts as 'Restrain' does, but costs you two Enki charges and requires active input. Sadly you'll need this one to work your way up the tree to Taunt or Restrain, and provides you an earlier way of (sort of) using those skills whilst having a drawback in a hit to a resource.

Knockdown

Knockdown is similar to Restrain... just not as good. Which is bizarre considering it sits higher up the skill tree, and therefore costs more Renown to unlock. Enki will knock enemies to the ground instead of holding them still, and it provides no curse buildup, but redeems some points with the fact that it can operate independently of Restrain, meaning taking this one alongside it will increase the amount of crowd control Enki can perform.

D-Tier Skills

These are skills that perhaps don't perform as well as they should, cost too much compared to their strength, or are simply forgettable.

Improved Reload

Improved Reload increases the timing window for getting a 'perfect reload' when using a long arm. I didn't find myself using long arms all that much in Flintlock, but when I did, hitting the already very generous timing window wasn't an issue.

Shadow Self

Shadow Self allows you to be saved by Enki from fatal damage once per rest, which might sound great, but as the final skill in the Magic tree I expected a little more. In addition to this, the Irregular's armor set (pictured throughout this article) has the same effect, with a minor drawback (it only restores you to 1HP), but also costs no renown to unlock.

Hearty Fortitude

Hearty Fortitude is a skill that increases the amount of healing you get from your flasks, which might sound important, but frankly you get plenty of healing flasks pretty early on, so it seems sort of useless, especially if you're fighting well. I believe this could've been done another way, perhaps by trading in conscript tokens (resources that grant renown) at the Coffee Shops, which would provide an interesting tradeoff that the resource just doesn't have otherwise.

If you've enjoyed this piece, check out some of our other Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn content here at Pro Game Guides, like our Review, or our guide on Where to get some of the best early game armor!

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