The Division 2: The Best Skills You'll Want To Unlock First

In The Division 2, you’ll be able to equip two special skills. Generally, there are two types of skills — offensive and support. Offensive skills are all about attacking enemies and doing lots of damage, while support skills will heal you (or allies), protect you from damage, or boost combat skills. There are eight ‘main’ skills to select, and multiple different versions of each skill. Choosing the best possible skills is important, and it all depends on how you want to play.

Here, I’m going to break down some of the best skills and skill combos you’ll want to grab ASAP. While completing the story, I highly recommend unlocking a healing skill and a combat skill. You can grab literally anything you want, it’s all about experimentation, but the list below features (what I believe) are the most powerful skills. Give them a try and see what works for you.

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The Best Skills You’ll Want To Unlock First | Beginner’s Guide

There are 8 ‘main’ skills in The Division 2. After unlocking a main skill, you’ll be able to spend SHD tech points on alternate versions of that skill — each skill has 3/4 variants to choose from. There are lots of SHD tech caches and missions, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to experiment. By the end of the game, you’ll be able to unlock all 8 skills. These are just the skills (I think) you might want to pick first.

For this beginner’s guide, we’re focusing on the PVE side of the game. These builds are not optimized for Dark Zones or PVP.

The Best Defense

Turret + Healing HIVE

In my experience, this is the safest and most reliable combo for solo players. It works great for teams, too. If you like taking things slow and steady, this is the skillset for you. The machine gun turret is surprisingly powerful — tossing it into an area basically gives you an extra gun. Save it for big battles.

The turret shreds standard enemies, suppresses, and distracts enemies who would be shooting at you otherwise. The HIVE healing grenade is a great counterpart. Place the turret on your cover, drop a healing HIVE, and your turret will be repaired with your armor. Extremely useful for turtling or defending against superior numbers.

NOTE: Elite enemies can instantly destroy turrets. Place turrets on waist-high cover by tapping [L1 / R1] when in cover, and bosses / elites won’t be able to stomp the turret.

A Good Offense

Assault Shield + Healing Drone

If you’re planning on being a little more reckless, you can grab the assault shield skill. This skill gives you a smaller shield, but you can use Assault Rifles and SMGs. You can even reload while the shield is equipped. If you’re using the Assault Shield, make sure to grab the Healing Drone too — it will follow you around, constantly healing you for a short duration. Unlike other heals, it follows you. Perfect for the shield.

NOTE: You can heal other players with the Healing Drone, too! Tip [R1 / L1] to send it to another player, and recall it by double-tapping.

Working With A Team

Healing Chem Launcher
- OR
Riot Foam Launcher

If you’re playing with a team, you might want to skip the HIVE heal, and use the Chem Launcher heal instead. Tap the skill button to fire at your feet for a quick heal, or target your allies. You get 3 shots that recharge quickly, so you can provide constant healing support. Very useful for healing multiple agents — especially ones that don’t want to turtle up or wait for the long recharge timer on the HIVE.

The Riot Foam Launcher also has 3 shots, and it’s completely hilarious to use. You’ll trap any enemies caught in the form, and knock enemies behind cover OUT of cover. They’ll be forced to stand when they get stuck in the gunk, making them much easier targets for your team.

A Self-Reviving Solution

Revive HIVE

The revival HIVE grenade is actually more useful than it looks. It’s handy for both solo and team play. Why? Because if you die with a revive HIVE skill available, the grenade will automatically drop when you’re downed and revive you. Pretty handy for literally any situation.

NOTE: The Revival HIVE has the longest cooldown timer. It’s about 3+ minutes long. Take that into consideration before selecting it.

Skills To Avoid (For Now)

Firefly Destroyer
Seekers

There are lots of insanely cool skills in The Division 2, but some of the skills aren’t handy when you’re in the early game. Right now, most players agree that Seekers aren’t that useful in PVE. There are better offensive options, like the damaging Chem Launcher, Drones, and Turrets.

The Firefly Destroyer is also slightly bugged at the time of writing. It won’t target explosives in the area, and doesn’t seem to set off weak points on enemies like it should. What sounds like a powerful skill choice is (for now) kind of useless.

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