Valor Mortis Best Skills Tier List
Valor Mortis gives you enough skill points to specialize heavily, but the tree has a major trap: the upgrades that sound strongest on paper are not always the ones that make combat noticeably easier. The best skills are generally the ones that improve resources you use in every encounter, while weapon-specific damage bonuses and several later hybrid upgrades are better left until your core build is already established.
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Best Skills in Valor Mortis
Valor Mortis Skills Tier List
Best Skills to Unlock First
Best Melee Skills
Best Firearm Skills
Best Transmutation Skills
Skills to Avoid Early
How to Respec Skills
Best Skills in Valor Mortis
The best overall skills in Valor Mortis are Maximum Endurance, Maximum Health, Ammo Restock, Blocking or Parrying Impact depending on your melee weapon, and Nephtoglobin Sufferance for Transmutation-heavy builds.
Maximum Endurance is my first pick for almost every build because attacking, dodging, and blocking all compete for the same resource. Maximum Health follows closely behind because it gives you more room to survive mistakes without forcing you into any particular weapon or playstyle.
After those two, the tree becomes much more build-dependent. Saber users get excellent value from Blocking, Rapier users should favor Parrying Impact, firearm builds eventually want Ammo Restock, and Transmutation builds benefit more from increasing their Nephtoglobin economy before chasing additional spell damage.
Best overall: Maximum Endurance
Best survivability: Maximum Health
Best Saber skill: Blocking
Best Rapier skill: Parrying Impact
Best firearm skill: Ammo Restock
Best Transmutation foundation: Nephtoglobin Sufferance
Valor Mortis Skills Tier List
This tier list ranks skills around how much they actually improve a normal playthrough rather than simply how attractive their description looks. S Tier skills provide broad value across multiple builds, while A Tier contains excellent upgrades that become stronger when paired with the right weapon or combat style.
S Tier: Maximum Endurance, Maximum Health, Ammo Restock
A Tier: Blocking, Parrying Impact, Nephtoglobin Sufferance, Melee Endurance Cost, Transmutation Damage
B Tier: Ammunition Drop Chance, Nephtoglobin Extraction, Nephtoglobin Remnants, Healing Effectiveness, Ferrofluid Flask Refill, Physical Resistance
C Tier: Headshot Damage, Airborne Aiming, Endurance Regeneration, Maximum Health & Melee Damage, Nephtoglobin Sufferance & Transmutation Damage
Low Priority / Unreliable: Melee Damage, Status Buildup, Critical Damage, Maximum Endurance & Firearm Damage
The lower rankings do not necessarily mean every one of those skills is completely useless. Some are simply too narrow or provide too little improvement compared with spending the same points on Health, Endurance, ammunition, or a skill that directly supports your weapon's defensive mechanics.
Melee Damage is the biggest example. It looks like an obvious early investment, and some builds recommend it heavily, but its current performance is inconsistent enough that I would not spend valuable early points on it. The same applies to Status Buildup and several of the hybrid damage upgrades, where the expected improvement does not consistently justify the cost.
Best Skills to Unlock First
For a new character, I would build the first part of the tree around survivability and combat uptime rather than raw damage.
Early skill priority:
1. Maximum Endurance
2. Maximum Health
3. Blocking for Saber or Parrying Impact for Rapier
4. Melee Endurance Cost or your first build-specific resource skill
5. Begin specializing into firearms or Transmutations
Maximum Endurance comes first because it affects virtually everything you do in combat. More Endurance means another attack before backing off, more room to block a combo, or enough left in the bar to dodge when an enemy changes its pattern.
Maximum Health is the better second investment than an early damage skill. Valor Mortis bosses can punish one missed defensive read extremely hard, and surviving another hit gives you an opportunity to heal instead of immediately repeating the encounter.
Your third major investment should reflect your melee weapon. The Saber can block and benefits directly from improving that style, while the Rapier is built much more heavily around Parries and posture pressure.
Best Melee Skills in Valor Mortis
There is no single best melee branch because the Saber and Rapier want different defensive upgrades.
For the Saber, Blocking is one of the strongest skills in the entire tree. Improving your block economy lets you absorb more pressure without draining Endurance as quickly, which leaves more of the resource available for counterattacks and emergency dodges.
The Rapier should go in the opposite direction with Parrying Impact. Its strength comes from successful Parries rather than simply holding a defensive position, and additional posture damage helps create critical opportunities faster.
Melee Endurance Cost is valuable for both once it becomes available. Rather than adding a small amount of damage to individual swings, it lets you perform more attacks with the same resource pool, which is particularly useful with longer strings and heavier weapons.
I would not prioritize standalone Melee Damage ahead of those options right now. The skill's current results are inconsistent, while Maximum Endurance, Blocking, Parrying Impact, and Melee Endurance Cost all have clear effects you can actually build around.
Weapon levels are a separate system from the skill tree. Our Valor Mortis weapon upgrade guide explains how to increase melee and firearm strength at James's Iron Bench.
Best Firearm Skills in Valor Mortis
Ammo Restock is the best firearm skill because it solves the biggest limitation guns have: how long you can continue using them before your ammunition runs dry.
Increasing your reserve makes firearms far more practical during long boss attempts and extended exploration, particularly once the individual ammo-capacity upgrades on your guns begin stacking with it.
Ammunition Drop Chance is a useful secondary choice for firearm-heavy builds, but it comes after Ammo Restock. Increasing the amount you can reliably carry is more valuable than depending on additional drops from enemies.
Headshot Damage is much farther down my priority list. Headshots and Weak Point hits are already worth going for, but the skill's improvement is too modest to justify sacrificing the broader value of Endurance, Health, ammunition capacity, or another core utility upgrade early in the game.
Airborne Aiming is even more specialized. It can support a movement-heavy firearm style and helps with certain combat challenges, but it is difficult to justify over skills that matter during almost every fight.
Best Transmutation Skills in Valor Mortis
For a Transmutation build, resource uptime matters more than immediately maximizing damage. Nephtoglobin Sufferance should come before most offensive Transmutation upgrades because a larger usable resource pool means more opportunities to actually cast your abilities.
Nephtoglobin Extraction and Nephtoglobin Remnants then become useful support skills by helping replenish that resource during combat. Neither is as important on its own, but the combination becomes much stronger once your build is already centered around frequent Transmutation use.
Transmutation Damage is worth investing in after the resource side of the build is stable. The benefit is more noticeable with some Transmutations than others, so I would treat it as a specialization skill rather than an automatic early purchase.
This is particularly important with expensive options such as Stasis. Increasing damage means little if you cannot afford to cast the ability often enough for it to define your build.
Valor Mortis Skills to Avoid Early
The weakest early investments are generally skills with unreliable effects or bonuses that only matter in a very narrow situation.
Melee Damage: Currently too inconsistent to prioritize over reliable melee utility.
Status Buildup: Poor return compared with stronger universal upgrades.
Critical Damage: Depends on creating critical opportunities first and is not worth building around early.
Maximum Endurance & Firearm Damage: The Endurance portion sounds attractive, but the firearm component has shown unreliable results.
Headshot Damage: Functional, but the improvement is too small to beat stronger early options.
Endurance Regeneration: Increasing the size of the Endurance bar has a much greater immediate impact.
This is also why I would avoid building solely around what looks like a damage increase on the skill screen. Valor Mortis combat is limited just as much by Endurance, ammunition, Nephtoglobin, and defensive openings as it is by the number attached to an individual hit.
How to Respec Skills in Valor Mortis
You can respec your skills through the level-up menu at a Lantern for a small fee, so a poor early choice does not permanently damage your character.
That makes it worth experimenting once you have a better sense of which weapons you actually prefer. A player who begins with the Saber can later shift points toward Parrying Impact for the Rapier, while a melee-heavy character can move into Ammo Restock or Nephtoglobin skills after deciding to build more heavily around firearms or Transmutations.
The safest overall approach is to establish Maximum Endurance and Maximum Health first, invest in the defensive mechanic that matches your preferred melee weapon, and only then start committing heavily to firearm or Transmutation specialization. That gives you a strong base while keeping enough flexibility to change direction later.
