Guide to all Hero Perks (GhostDragon)

Purpose

The purpose of this guide is to provide the optimal perks for all heroes for Hellwalker and Oldschool games as of Version 13.1 of Crap Patrol 2.

There are 4 categories of games:

Slow casual games (1H45+ Oldschool games or 2H15+ Hellwalker games).
Normal speed games (1H15 Oldschool games or 1H45+ Hellwalker games).
Speedrun games (45min Oldschool games or 1H00 Hellwalker games).
Solo games

This guide applies to every type of game, except solo games. In solo games, there are usually some significant changes to be made in perks and mastery order.

Therefore, this guide applies to the vast majority of games that you will play, especially public lobby games which almost always fall into the ‘Slow casual games’ or ‘Normal speed games’ category.

Perks Overview

Perks can be considered as special attributes for your hero. Perks are selected before you start using your hero. Selecting the optimal perks is the very first and most critical step to playing your hero properly. Why is that so?

Without the proper perks, your hero is far less effective. Not all perks are created equal, and not all heroes benefit equally from all perks. Therefore, proper selection of perks is necessary.
Miss out on 2 or more essential perks and your hero is effectively crippled. The only way to catch up, if possible, is to get those hourly free masteries if there is no death. Most of the times, it is not possible to catch up. For example, not picking Onslaught with Tychus, or not picking Leadership with Swann. There is no equivalent mastery to replace those perks.
A crippled hero is very delayed in reaching his 2500 score. No surprise there. ALL heroes with proper perks and masteries can unlock between levels 30 to 35, except Predator, on both Oldschool and Hellwalker, with Hellwalker unlocks being even faster.
With a team of crippled heroes, you must delay all bosses. On Oldschool, a so-called ‘early’ Brutalisk between level 30-35 very often ends games. The root cause of this problem is poor perk and mastery order selection. Unfortunately, some players, rather than fixing the problem, use duck-tape strategies such as “No brutalisk before level 40”, “No Exiles/Jotunbanes/Iron Legion”, “No pushing east”. Those simple disputes can easily be resolved by picking the right perks and right masteries for your hero.
There are no "different styles" for each hero. There is 1 optimal "style" and 10 terrible "styles". This is not Diablo. You do not have hero skill trees which create 3 or 4 hero “styles”. You have a static hero that is good at some things at less effective at other things. So, just pick the right perks to strengthen your hero's strengths. There is no "different style" or "different preference" or a variation of such pretexts to not pick the optimal perks. The ONLY exception is Dune with 2 different paths as masteries for his 2500 Ultimate Mastery.
To be respectful of other players. If you cripple your hero, your teammates usually carry you without noticing, because they usually pick their favorite heroes which they play well, but don't know your hero properly to notice that you screwed it up badly. They end up carrying you for the majority of the game.
To avoid the creation of bad habits which are harder to eradicate. If you keep picking the less effective perks for your hero, you condition yourself into patterns which in turn, create habits. We all know the common wisdom that it is better to learn the right habits rather than making a lot of effort unlearning bad habits.
The exception to deviating from this guide is when you play Solo games. Speedrun solo place different requirements on the hero, and therefore your perks and mastery order should change.
The other very obvious exception is when you play Prestige or upcoming Season 2 Nemesis Games. While your hero strengths and weaknesses remain the same, you should also adapt to the map requirements.

List of Perks

There are 14 perks:

Onslaught (O)
Compartment (C)
Weaponsmith (W)
Tenacity (T)
Absorbtion (E)
Leadership (L)
Air Support (A)
Bug Zapper (B)
Toxic Waste (X)
Doomsday (D)
Mercenary (M)
Helldivers (H)
Archeology (Y)
Guidance (G)

The alphabets in the list above are the shortcuts for each perk. Intermediate players and above are encouraged to use the 'perk' command to quickly select their hero's perk. For example, typing -perk OCE before the perk selection screen automatically picks the Onslaught, Compartment and Absorbtion for your hero.

Rules

As a strict rule for multiplayer (non-solo) games:

NEVER pick Tenacity for Oldschool difficulty and below (Exception = Beginners)
NEVER pick Guidance (Exception = Prestige)
NEVER pick Doomsday (No Exceptions)
NEVER pick Bug Zapper. (Exception = Solo Tychus/Fury Hellwalker)
NEVER pick Toxic Waste (Exception = Predator. Second Exception = Nova in Prestige Season)
NEVER pick Mercenary (Exception = Speedrun)
NEVER pick Archeology (Exception = Dune Hellwalker)

Rule 1: Never pick Tenacity for Oldschool and below

Tenacity has 3 main benefits:

No xp or mineral loss upon death
Periodic increase to HP over 30 minutes
After 30 minutes, almost complete immunity to slowing effects of enemies

The only time tenacity is useful on Oldschool and below is for players who just started playing the game, where its extremely good benefit is to not lose xp because of deaths.

The HP increase after the full 30 minutes is about 20% (Varies from hero to hero). In the hands of even an intermediate level player, an HP increase for back-line heroes such as Nova is insignificant. And an HP increase of about 20% for a front-line hero is also insignificant because you still will comfortably tank what you can tank without +20% HP and you still will not be able to tank what you cannot tank, for example toxic brutalisks.

Suggesting that the HP increase is good because you can take 1 or 2 extra hits from the deadly brutalisks is just playing poorly. Your HP pool is lenient enough that you can already take 4-5 auto-attack hits from them if you are a frontline hero.

The most dreaded slowing effects of the game exist in Hellwalker. They are nightmare drops and Toxic Brutalisks. By comparison, the Toxic Brutalisks of Oldschool do not have bile spell attacks, have a fixed patrol route, and do not attack with bile shots, making them much less deadly. Therefore, if you die on Oldschool because you get slowed by slow roaches and/or you get inside the slowing aura of patrolling toxic brutalisks, you are simply playing the game poorly. The biggest slowing dangers in Oldschool can easily be avoided.

The only time it is OK to pick tenacity is if you are the frontline hero, also known as the kiting hero in a Hellwalker game that you expect to have many deaths. Then yes, you might get double or triple slowed by slow roaches, nightmares and toxic bosses, and die and spawn even more toxic bosses. Exceptionally, in those cases, your 4th perk will be substituted for Tenacity, while your core 3 Perks remain the same, whether its Oldschool or Hellwalker.

In summary, if you are making a private lobby with players you trust, you can skip Tenacity for all games. If you are making a public Hellwalker lobby with unknown players, you can then consider Tenacity as a “late-game salvation” perk.

Rule 2: NEVER pick Guidance for Hellwalker

Guidance, when fully maxed, after 118 minutes (approx 2H), gives +50% damage to all damage dealt (auto-attacks, spell damage, nuke damage), +30% maximum life, +20 shield armor and +1.0 energy regeneration.

For slow Hellwalker games with 15 deaths that last for 2.5 hours or more, there are still better perks than Guidance to pick for any hero. The only change is for FRONTLINE heroes to pick Tenacity in their 4th perk slot only. Heroes such as Nova, which are backline heroes, pick the same perks, regardless of how many deaths you expect in the hellwalker game.

A context is important here. Public lobby Hellwalker games with little deaths complete less than 2H. This means that in 99% of the cases where a HW game is dragging over 2H is because there were many deaths and the team needs to deal with toxic hordes of brutalisks.

Counterpoints to frequently used pretexts to use Guidance on Hellwalker:

1. It boosts Nuke Damage by 50%!!! This is immense and allows us to save minerals!

This is factually correct. However, for 2H Hellwalker games, minerals are NEVER an issue. You can request minerals from your allies and you can nuke the shit out of everything and still have so much money left that your hero can have 10 kids and send them all to university.

2. You get more Shield Armor, Maximum Life and Energy Regeneration!!

No Terran hero depends on shield armor for survival. They depend on normal armor. Normal armor for Terran heroes, and well as their HP pool is much, much higher than shield armor and total shields.

Tassadar, Messiah and Aquilla have insane shield armor towards the end-game and, if played correctly, can only die if they get slowed against strong enemies such as a pack of blue ultralisks, hive guardians, etc. Or Toxic Brutalisks. And a meagre +20 shield armor against those enemies will not change to fact that you still need to keep them at distance and not tank them.

I would even advocate picking Tenacity over Guidance for front-line heroes as it provides almost complete immunity to slows, allowing any hero to move unhindered by slow drops such as roaches and nightmares. Most importantly, also prevents front-line heroes from getting stuck inside the Toxic Brutalisks slowing auras.

Even if Guidance would provide heroes with more than 30% HP, it is the slowing effects of toxic Brutalisks, nightmares, slow roaches that are most lethal to heroes in the late game, not the amount of HP that your hero has. Being able to take 2-3 extra hits is insignificant, if you are constantly slowed without tenacity and will subsequently take 50 extra hits until you die because you cannot get away. So, even if Guidance provides +300% HP, you would still be picking Tenacity for the slow immunity that grants much, much better survival.

After 2 hours in the game, there is no hero that can reasonably benefit from additional energy regeneration. You will already have all talents and all required masteries in the game. In extreme circumstances, Nova and Tychus for his expensive Escalate skill could benefit. And that is about it.

3. Well, if extra Nuke Damage, extra Shield Armor, extra life and extra energy regen are marginally effective, then you have +50% to auto-attacks and +50% to other spell damage (aside nukes), which is surely very significant, right?

Conditionally Correct. Always think about why a Hellwalker game takes 2 hours to complete. In 99% of the cases, it is because of numerous deaths and the inevitable Toxic Brutalisks that come as a punishment for deaths. So, against Toxic Brutalisks, ONLY Tychus, Tassadar, Nova, Anvil, Fury, Pyro benefit. This is 6 out of 12 heroes.

When killing toxic Brutalisks, only those 6 heroes mentioned can make a difference with Guidance to bring them down with spell damage and auto-attacks. Not even Dune can hit them to get rage and overload, since he will die, and therefore has to run like a little bitch just to kite them for teammates to bring down. (Sorry Dune, but you know you were my favorite hero)

If a Hellwalker game takes 2 hours with 0 deaths, it also means you are doing something terribly wrong, such as camping in base and doing nothing. You still would not need Guidance in your 4-perk slot. Tenacity would still be better for front-line heroes for players who are relatively new.

Those 6 heroes that benefit from Guidance are almost always with highest scores, meaning their Guidance only stacks fully after 2 hours.

4. I still do not believe you because my gut-feeling tells me Guidance can still fit a 4-perk slot for Hellwalker.

Sorry to hear that. The best explanation I can offer is that the Prestige Season, which lasted for 6 months, conditioned people into picking Guidance for Hellwalker games, thinking that the benefits carry forward. But I hope that the facts that I presented are clear-cut, well formed and structured for all readers.

Guidance would have been a decent perk for Hellwalker if, and only if the following conditions are satisfied:

It was effective for all 12 heroes, instead of just 6 heroes towards the late-game. The late-game of Hellwalker games which last for 2H+ is about facing toxic Brutalisks in 99% of cases.
People who join all-guidance lobbies understand that there are only 6 heroes to pick from. Guidance is best in a team consisting exclusively of (Tychus, Tassadar, Nova, Anvil, Fury, Pyro).
People who join all-guidance lobbies understand that they are wasting stacks of guidance on the other 6 heroes that benefit marginally to not at all from guidance. Guidance is almost completely wasted on (Swann, Predator, Aquilla, Messiah, Atlas, Dune).
People who join all-guidance lobbies understand that everybody must pick guidance or none at all, for guidance to effectively boost heroes. Remember that Guidance can only provide a limited number of stacks and that limit is also the maximum number of stacks that a hero can obtain.
You make a private lobby to make people cooperate in hero and perk selection for Guidance to work. Public lobbies are a terrible place to do that.

It requires very good coordination in hero picking and perk picking to be effective. And if such coordination exists in the first place, it’s extremely unlikely that the game will have 10 deaths and last for longer than 1H45.

With such cooperation in the first place, they are more likely to finish a game successfully before guidance actually maxes out, and with little deaths. With such cooperation, you can expect much less uncoordinated things and nasty surprises like boss triggers.

This means that, in Hellwalker, the same conditions which make Guidance effective as a perk are also the exact same conditions that make it less effective than 4 other good perks that any hero can pick.

Let that sink it for a moment.

Rule 3: Never pick Doomsday

Doomsday nukes obtain the Massive Blast talent at the 40th minute.
Doomsday nukes are upgraded to Electrostatic Fallout Nukes at the 80th minute mark. This is extremely useful against weak Heroic units such as Hybrids.
Doomsday nukes upgrade Radical Restructuring every 4 minutes until the 120th minute mark.

Please note that exact timings might be incorrect. I did try to ask the developers and moderators on the Discord server, but nobody felt it was necessary to clarify this about their own game. Feel free to correct any mistakes above.

This perk maxes out at the 120th minute mark. Needless to say, that by this point in Hellwalker games, only the general base would remain, and the team will have much more minerals than needed to nuke all spine crawlers and enemies inside to death. Doomsday, therefore, for speedruns and long casual games alike is a pointless mastery to take. Its minor benefit of refunding minerals for the nuke damage is completely outweigh by the fact that there are plentiful minerals by the end game.

The other major disadvantage to Doomsday is that it would nuke a random structure after the original nuke. If you need to nuke an influx of enemy mobs whereby there is no enemy structure, then Doomsday would not kick in to nuke the rest of the incoming mobs because it requires a nearby enemy structure to trigger.

Yet another disadvantage to Doomsday would be that it requires no friendly fire to launch. This is against the purpose of nuke resistant heroes such as Dune, Nova and Predator who can be nuked while deep inside enemy bases surrounded by hordes of enemies.

Given how overwhelmingly disadvantageous Doomsday is, there is no reason and circumstance to pick it, whether it is solo speedruns, multiplayer speedruns, or the slowest casual of Hellwalker games. If a solo speedrun does have Doomsday, it is a wrong perk. I am categorical on this. Earlier speedruns also had Toxic Waste for Dune, which was considered “essential”, until I proved it wrong. So, eliminate Doomsday from the perk selection for absolutely all games.

Rule 4: Never pick Bug Zapper

For 4-player games, if there were 6 perks to pick from:

For Anvil, it would have been the 6th best perk after Onslaught, Leadership, Air Support, Weaponsmith, Helldivers.
For Tychus, it would have been the 6th best perk after Onslaught, Helldivers, Weaponsmith, Air Support, Leadership. The synergy that would exist between the first 5 perks for Tychus would still outweigh the modest +10% increase in attack speed.
For Nova, it would have been the 6th best perk after Onslaught, Leadership, Weaponsmith, Compartment, Absorption.

The only exception to this would be when Tychus or Fury solo speedruns a Hellwalker game. He severely lacks point damage against high HP targets such as Hives, Brain Bug, General, Omegalisk, etc. As such, exceptionally for solo games, bug zapper adds a +10% attack speed and also deals some significant point damage with empower shots. For multiplayer games, because enemies have much higher HP and the role of dealing heavy point damage is another hero's responsibility, there is no benefit to taking Bug Zapper.

Bug Zapper needs much more than a 10% increase in attack speed to be considered over other extremely useful perks in multiplayer games. Bug Zapper is not a bad perk. But it just cannot compete with the top 4 perks for each hero.

Rule 5: Never pick Toxic Waste, unless using Predator

Predator is the only hero that is played optimally with toxic waste. Enemy broodlings, roaches, zerglings, etc can easily surround and block him at all points in the game. And because he lacks AoE damage, auto-attack damage and escape mechanisms aside from Blink, he is pigeonholed into picking Toxic Waste. His only escape mechanism is blink, which has a huge cooldown and also energy cost relative to Dune’s Rush for example.

"But, Nova with toxic waste reaches 2500 score faster on Hellwalker, avoids getting immobilized by Zerglings and gets her 2000 kill streak faster!!"

There was a Prestige difficulty level where the most important perk for Nova was Toxic Waste.

However, on Hellwalker, Nova usually unlocks by level 35 without toxic waste if played properly. With leadership and drones, she can melt any surrounding zerglings with ease, even faster than toxic waste.

All so-called benefits of Toxic Waste for Nova for non-prestige games have rebutted.

Yes, her 2000 skill streak will indeed be delayed. However, I have already established that toxic waste is a waste on Nova. Therefore, wasting a perk slot only to gain a mastery later on is not a logical trade-off. You will obtain the 2000 skill streak by between the 40th to 50th minute or so without toxic waste in a hellwalker game.

"But, Tychus/Pyro/etc needs toxic waste for the AoE damage and life regeneration!"

You do not need a negligible source of AoE damage, nor life regeneration if you know how to play Tychus or Pyro or any other hero properly.

Besides the life regeneration is either too negligible to notice or has been eliminated entirely.

Rule 6: Never Pick Mercenary

Mercenary

Starts your hero with 5000 minerals
Provides 5000 minerals for each boss and hive kill
It also provides the hero with +2 vision range.
Last, but not least, it boosts nuke damage by a slight amount.

Yes, perks like Compartment will take a couple more minutes to max out, but you will not have the energy regeneration to fully utilize low cooldowns on your abilities in the 5^th minute of the game, unless when playing Dune.

Your only usage of minerals (after Lightweight Equipment mastery and some masteries such as Block) is to make nukes. Normal Hellwalker games and slow casual Hellwalker games at 1H45+ have double or triple the amount of minerals needed to nuke the required targets in the game.

And because we have at least double the amount of minerals required for nukes, a slight nuke damage increase per nuke is also insignificant in those types of games.

As far as Dune is concerned, he is an extremely overpowered hero. He is unique because he does not have any traditional energy regeneration. Therefore, the faster his Compartment/Lightweight Equipment mastery completes, the better. Additionally, he needs 5000 minerals to pick his Conservator Mastery. Hence Mercenary is a core Perk for Dune in any type of game, whether its slow casual games or speedruns or solo games.

Rule 7: Never pick Archeology

Archeology’s main benefit is to provide a power cube at the base when an artifact is picked. It also provides +3 talent points. Other benefits include free Parity Checks talents.

A very special conditional scenario for picking Archelogy would be:

with Dune,
as his 4^th perk,
on a Hellwalker speedrun,
with at least an artifact in two particular places on his way to trigger the General.

In this way, a cube spawns in base and allows for a head-start in the big fight that begins. However, condition number 4 is random, and therefore could be a complete waste of a perk if no artifacts can be picked up in a timely manner. Additionally, future artifacts still spawn the cube at base, and in speedruns, once heroes leave the base at the 20th minute, they do not come back to base in an ideal speedrun.

Therefore, there is no place for Archeology in any types of games, whether its slow casual games, normal speed games or speedrun games. If heroes had 7 or 8 perks, then it would definitely have been picked since its benefits are not completely negligible.

Summary

After the removal of 7 perks, there are 7 perks left to pick from in normal speed and slow casual hellwalker games. Remember that we excluded Mercenary, which is only essential in Speedrun Hellwalker games. The pool of perks we pick for all heroes in non-speedrun and non solo games are:

Onslaught
Compartment
Weaponsmith
Absorption
Leadership
Air Support
Helldivers

Hero Perk Table (Final Version)

As of Version 11.3, this is the table of optimal perks for all heroes for Oldschool (First 3 columns) and Hellwalker (4th column).

What is an optimal perk for a hero?

GENERALLY, It allows the hero to reach his 2500 the fastest
The major exception would be Predator, who can unlock faster with Helldivers and Air Support. However not picking his essential Compartment and Weaponsmith perks would place a severe handicap later on in his game. This is especially important for expert-level players. And Predator's 2500 unlock big benefit is spell damage reduction, which can wait until the later stages in normal speed games.
Another major exception would be Toxic Waste with Nova, which allows Nova to unlock slightly early (by 2-3 minutes). A nova with Leadership, Onslaught, Weaponsmith for Oldschool surpasses a Nova with Toxic Waste, Onslaught and Weaponsmith very easily by mid game itself.
A tiny exception would be Anvil on Oldschool. Picking Air Support over Weaponsmith means a small delay in reaching his 2500 score (usually 1-2 minutes). However, the trade-off is the ability to skip his Mobile Command Post until late game, and being able to surpass an Anvil who picked Weaponsmith by end-game. So picking either Air Support or Weaponsmith as 3rd Perk is acceptable for Anvil on Oldschool. On Hellwalker, this issue does not exist since Anvil can pick both.

Every hero and every reasonable combination of perks has been tested. The table has been modified several times over the course of tests and experiments and consultations with players. Special note:

This table DOES NOT apply to speedruns or solo games.
This applies to Version 11.3.
For beginners playing Oldschool, swap Mandatory Perk 3 for Tenacity.
For players who want to improve and get good, stick to the table exactly. Do not deviate from Mandatory Perks 1, 2 and 3. Deviate from the Hellwalker Perk 4 only if picking Tenacity.
For Hellwalker games with many anticipated deaths, swap Hellwalker Perk 4 for Tenacity.

You can skip the testing and fire up your hero with its optimal perks. Feel free to experiment with other perks in solo games.

I suggest you read the section named "Perks Overview" once again.

This is the final version of the optimal perks for each hero.

Special thanks to Palmis, one of the best Tychus I have seen

Special thanks to Onyxut and Blackcud for Feedback on Swann. Made Compartment the 3rd Perk over Absorbtion. [Initially it was Absorption as 3rd Perk]

Special thanks to Mipam, one of the best Predators I have seen

Special thanks to Harmonica, who showed me that Absorbtion Perk, is not required for Atlas.

Special thanks to Jerry, the best Messiah I have seen. Completely removed Onslaught as a Perk for Messiah.