 Hey there lads and ladies it is Petrifying Pumpkins here and I am back yet again with a firewall zero hour video. Now this time I want to talk to you all about the skills in firewall. So firewall launched with 22 available skills and with the addition of Nash, Jag and Node that's brought the total up to 25 skills but not all skills are created equal. Some of these skills are much more useful than others while some are almost completely useless. So in this video what I want to do is talk about each skill then give each skill a rank and a rating similar to how I did it for my contractor video and not only that but I'd also like to talk about what first contact entertainment could do to some of these skills to maybe make them more appealing or more useful and enhance the tactical depth of firewall even more so. So I'll be grading each skill with an S A B C I think maybe we'll even see a D or two who knows let's jump right in. Okay so light speed is the first skill on our list and it happens to be the embedded skill of the Chinese contractor Fang. Now what it does is it simply allows you to reload your weapon faster. This skill is not that popular outside of the first few levels when you start playing the game. I wouldn't go as far as to call us a useless skill because if you have a weapon with a low magazine capacity or very high rate of fire you may find yourself wanting this skill. However I feel like 90% of the time the standard reload speed does the job well enough as it's quite quick. I'll give light speed a B rank in. Now what could we do to make this skill a bit more attractive? Well this might sound a bit radical but what if we slowed down the standard reload speed. Nothing crazy slow because that would frustrate people I'm sure but slow enough to the point where we'll start taking reload speed into consideration when we're in combat situations. This could have the knock-on effect of making people a little less trigger happy in general too and a bit more thoughtful about when and how they take their shots. Overload is the next skill on this list and this lets you carry an additional flashbang. Overload isn't an embedded skill so you'll have to buy an equipus if you want to use us but why would you ever want to use us? Don't get me wrong I love the flashbangs in this game getting flashbanged in firewall is super cool because of how VR adds to the experience but it's got to be one of the least useful skills in the game. I'd be surprised if anyone ever equips this skill for any reason other than to troll their teammates at the start of a round by blinding them. I'll have to rank this skill with a C so what could be done to make overload more appealing? Well I think the only thing that might do that is to increase the amount further instead of one extra flashbang go crazy you know make it five extra or ten extra or something like that that way you could maybe carpet bomb a room with flashbangs ensuring that your enemy's eyes are on fire. So next up we have the scout skill now this skill allows you to see enemy players on your map as long as they are moving within a certain range of you it also increases your ability to hear their footsteps it increases the audio a little bit so this skill is maybe the very best skill in the entire game especially if you are on defense it's the embedded skill of Raha who I consider to be an S rank contractor because of this skill so if you're running C4 then scout is almost obligatory as well the scout might not be quite as effective on the larger maps than it is on the smaller maps but it's still a skill I think everyone should consider running while defending so I'll give scout an S rank. Next up we've got the investor skill the skill that allows you to earn more crypto which is of course the name of the in-game currency investor is only going to be useful if you're really stuck for crypto and you need to unlock something and you need to unlock it as soon as possible because you're a busy person if you got you've got places to be apparently it's not an embedded skill so you actually have to spend crypto to earn crypto in this situation but even though I can see the benefits of having this skill I don't think it can actually outweigh the cons of not equipping a more useful skill for within an actual match so I'd have to give the investor skill a B rank so how could we improve the skill well I think adding more ways to earn crypto rather than just increasing the amount you already earned might be cool for example if you finish the match as the MVP on your team or something boom the investor skill awards you with a bonus payout if you get an ace maybe boom more cash if you win three matches in a row something like this boom here's a multiplier thanks to the investor skill just something to make it more appealing so next up is double time which is Diaz's embedded skill now double time will increase your movement speed and can be a very useful skill if you're someone who likes to rush the enemy or if you're on a smaller map where you can get to cover faster double time is a good skill as it is I don't think there is anything about it that needs to be changed but at the same time it's also not one of the vital skills unless your entire game plan revolves around Russian so I'd have to give it an A rank it's a very solid skill I wouldn't be surprised if some people consider as an S rank for their style of play up next is the conditioned skill now this allows you to extend your bleed out timer essentially giving you a better chance of being revived by teammates it's also not an embedded skill so you got to buy this with crypto this skill is pretty useless I would say the reason I say that is because when I'm down 99% of the time I didn't die because the timer ran out and I bled out I die because an enemy continued to shoot me after being downed and this skill isn't going to help you in that scenario other than increase maybe the amount of bullets it takes to down you so I'm gonna go ahead and give this a D rank because I feel like a single flashbang is probably more useful than this but what could be done to improve this skill how about if this skill extended your bleed out timer and also allowed you to maybe slowly crawl while you're down that could be a game changer right there and I think that might bump it up to an a rank for me maybe it would certainly give you pause for toss when you're picking what skills you want to have in your loadout next up we have ghost which is Nala's embedded skill of course this allows you to safely walk around without fear of setting off explosive mines and this is a very useful skill to have when on attack or when up against an enemy who has the instant karma skill equipped which we will cover later on ghost is a skill I find myself relying on a loss anytime I'm on attack because you just don't know when a mine will catch you off guard and it allows me to go and hack the computer with the peace of mind of knowing that I'm not going to explode because the laptop room is usually the most heavily booby trapped room in the entire map ghost isn't always useful though because there are occasions where you simply won't be up against a team using mines of any kind and in those situations it can feel like a waste of a skill still not equipness is somewhat of a gamble but it's a gamble that has paid off enough for me to put ghost up there as an S rank skill it has probably saved my life more times than I'll ever know overcast is next now this is very similar to the overload skill that we already talked about except instead of adding an extra flash grenade you get an extra smoke grenade and while smoke grenades have been buffed to be more dense they still don't last very long and overall I'd consider them less useful than a flash grenade and I'll rank overcast as a D rank what could make this skill more useful well for one like overload I think increase in the quantity could give it a little boost but unlike overload I think smoke grenades themselves could do with being tweaked if they could be met even more dense and if they could last for about five to ten seconds longer it could go a long way in making this skill at least somewhat attractive next up is hacker this non-embedded skill allows you to hack the laptop quicker and there's not much else to say about us with that in mind it's one of the more useless skills and I have to give it a D rank but this is a skill that could be improved in a number of clever ways if first contact entertainment wanted to improve us it could be used to perhaps hack CC TV cameras and temporarily take them offline crippling the support that the enemy team is able to give you could give it the ability to remotely hack the laptop as long as you were in the same room as us or you could maybe override the effects of single jammers if you're an attacker there's a lot of potential things that could be done to the skill to make it seriously tempting but as it stands right now it's a bit of a dud heavy juicy is next now this is the skill of okoro this allows you to take extra punishment from explosives and was recently buffed to be extra effective against grenade launchers in particular now as a result grenade launchers are not used as often but despite that it's still worth considering equipping the heavy juicy skill when you combine heavy juicy and scouts together with C4 you can set traps and survive your own explosions it's very effective heavy juicy will also let you ease a grenade or a C4 and let you live to tell the tale it is a very useful skill either on attack or defense and I'd give it an S rank easily wired is Tariq skill and it highlights enemy traps at a greater distance with a red outline it's a skill that's best suited for attacking but overall it's not very useful and I couldn't really recommend it to anyone with that in mind it gets put in the D rank pile there's a couple of things that could make it more appealing however if it made signal jammers easier to detect for example or if enemy traps would appear on your wrist tablets stuff like that might give you a better reason to pick us because right now it's not even up for consideration for me loaded is next now this is the embedded skill of the Australian skip loaded lets you carry extra ammo for your primary and secondary weapons this skill is useful in a few circumstances for one it's useful when playing against the AI as there are so many enemies there that ammo can be a concern another situation where loaded could be a good choice is when you're using a weapon that has a high rate of fire and just you're eating through your ammo supply super quickly but outside of those scenarios loaded isn't too useful there are ammo pickups on the map after all and you can even bring an ammo bag with you further reducing the usefulness of this skill for these reasons I'd have to give loaded a B rank now how could that be improved well maybe instead of just extra ammo loaded gives you an extended magazine for whatever weapon you're carrying now extended magazines are already an attachment that you can equip to your weapons but let's say this would go beyond the capacity of that attachment to make it really attractive so after loaded we've got bullet sponge the embedded skill of Texas bullet sponge lets you take increased damage from bullets to your body it's a really great skill for beginners to help them survive a little bit longer and inner firefights it can give you the edge you need to come out on top now it doesn't absorb a huge number of shots only two or three depending on the weapon and the range and whatnot so it's not a safety shield that you can hide behind and if you get shot in the head it's not gonna help you at all but bullet sponge is still a solid choice I'd give it an a rank Iceman is next which is Odin skill this one reduces weapon recoil and you really can feel the benefit to equip in this especially as you engage some longer range firefights in the maps that allow this some weapons have a bigger cake than others so Iceman is ideal for handling those more efficiently however Iceman isn't gonna make much difference in close range encounters nor will it be as effective with single shot weapons overall it's still quite a good choice though despite its effectiveness being very situational so I'll give Iceman an a rank next up we've got bang bang which is reds embedded skill that allows you to carry one extra frag grenade I personally like to pick red when I'm attacking on the shoot house map because shoot house is the perfect map for grenades as an attacker you can climb up to that catwalk and you can get an idea of where the defenders are and you can just rain down three grenades and usually you'll get a kill or at least take out some enemy equipment or something like that it's a lot of fun but it's very situational of course and it could be better so I'll give it a B but how could it be better well why limit it to frag grenades why not include impact and sticky grenades too that would bump that up to an A for me the ninja skill is next so this is embedded with Mako ninja allows you to make less noise while moving and is ideal for the player who wants to move stealthily and maybe get some knife kills in on unsuspecting enemy players I recommend this skill for the more experienced players rather than newcomers though as you'd really need a good map knowledge as well as spawn location knowledge to really make good use of this so while ninja is a solid skill it has one huge glaring omission in my opinion that makes it a b-rank instead of an s-rank what is that omission well it does not offset the scout skill so even with the ninja on you'll show up on the map of someone who has scouts equipped because of this I almost feel obligated to use scouts when I'm on defense and I never really considered ninja as an attacker because I know there's a good chance the enemy will have scouts thus kind of making a null and void next up is handyman now handyman allows you to take down door blockers quicker and yeah it's not a great skill now to be fair it does take quite a long time to dismantle a door blocker without handyman but that's still not nearly enough to sway me to actually using this skill so I'd have to give it a C how could this skill be improved for me it needs more functionality instead of letting you dismantle a door blocker quicker how about letting you choose a door blocker from a distance and dismantle it that way making it much safer also maybe let you place reinforced door blockers that take longer for enemies to dismantle something like this and I think to make this a bit more attractive instant karma is next and this one is fun it also massively drops a mine on your body when you've been killed it is incredibly satisfying to get a kill with the karma mine but when you're equipping us you're also rolling the dice first of all it's only going to be useful if you actually die and secondly if the enemy has ghost equipped then it's not going to detonate but this risk reward factor kind of plays nicely into the skill and as such I actually wouldn't change anything about us and I'd reward us in a rank just for the fun factor alone quick fix is next this allows you to revive a teammate faster but thanks to revive pistols and the fact that standard reviving doesn't actually take that long I'd consider this skill to be a fairly useless one and give it a C rank what would make quick fix better I think maybe allowing someone who has quick fix to place a first aid case on the map similar to what we see in the training mode could be a great addition to the skill could work very much like the ammo bag currently works but instead of equipping it to your load house it's attached to the skill next up is rhino skin this skill will let you take more damage from nice it's probably only really useful for when you're messing around in private knife only custom matches but even then most people will say no rhino skin allowed so I'll give rhino skin at D rank and I don't even have any suggestions to improve this one I think it's just a bit of a lost cause unless one day the mess I evolves to somehow favor in my fun but until then we'll leave it there I think triple dose lets you carry one extra dirt for the revive pistol and considering how vital the revive pistol always seems to be in firewall this skill is actually really good despite the fact that I never used it myself because I kind of feel like if I need to use three darts instead of making do with two darts and manual reviving then is a good chance that her dirt won't help too much but still there are definitely occasions where I can see a third dirt being a lifesaver you'd have to be a real team player to pick this skill instead of one that benefits yourself and I have to respect the people who use this skill so I'd give triple dose and a rank next up we've got binary the first skill that was ever added to this game as DLC as it came attached to Nash the first ever DLC contractor so binary allows you to carry an extra C4 but you must use them sequentially rather than simultaneously which somewhat reduces the appeal ever so slightly still binary is a dangerous tool in the right hands and especially so when combined with the scout skill and the afterlife skill so I'd have to give it an a-ranking psycho is next this allows you to deal more damage when you're using a knife and I'd place this slightly higher than rhino skin on this list with the C rank because knife in is fun and knife in harder is more fun if I were to improve this I think I would maybe increase the race at which you can slash your knife or stab your knife that could bring it up to a B for me maybe but as it stands I don't think many people are running psycho it's just kind of one of those four fun skills I think now these last two skills were added to the game while I was in the middle of making this video so I'm a little less confident in ranking them as they're so new but I feel like it's been long enough now that we at least have an idea even if that does evolve over the coming weeks so first up is ambush now this belongs to the new contractor Jag and it simply allows you to carry an extra proximity mine of course this skill is useless against a team running ghost and heavy juicy to a degree but for those occasions where they aren't having an extra mine can make things very interesting combine this with the instant karma and you're talking about having four mines in play even after you died however proximity mines do give off that short warning before they explode usually giving enemies enough time to get out of the way I just find C4 in general to be superior to mines so with that in mind I'd have to rank ambush as B for now at least our final skill then is afterlife and it belongs to the new contractor node afterlife will allow you to detonate a C4 even after you died there was a lot of fear about this ability being too cheap when it was revealed at first but I've been playing node a lot since he was released and I've only managed to score two afterlife C4 kills in that time now of course a more skilled player can do better than me but what I found was that many of my attempts were foiled thanks to the enemies having heavy juicy equipped not to mention the fact that you need to hide your C4 in such a way that not only will the enemy not immediately see us and shoot us at a safe distance but you also want to have it in view of a security camera so that you will know exactly when you need to detonate us and that is not easy to do at all so with that in mind along with the fact that heavy juicy kind of negates us I'm also going to give it a B rank I'd probably give it a C rank if it weren't for the fact that the two kills I did manage to guess were incredibly satisfying and made me absolutely moist and so there you have us all 25 skills in firewall is zero hour ranked bus I cannot stress enough that this is just how I see them some of you guys out there play on a higher level than me and so you might see more or less value in these skills than I have and maybe some of you out there have stories of how Rhino skin saved your life multiple times I'd love to hear all these opinions in the comments because my own opinions are by no means the final word so that's it for this video lads and ladies but before I go I have to give a massive thank you to my patreon supporters who are on the screen right now thank you very much for helping this channel out if you'd like to help me out on patreon 2 the link will be in the description but if you don't want to do all that nonsense then you can still help me out the old-fashioned way by doing all that usual shites the likes the comments the shares all those are appreciated very much that's it for this video lads and ladies I'll see you in the next one bye for now