Palworld: Best Combat Passive Skills [Top 9]

After spending more than 35 hours farming for the best possible Pals, these are my top picks for the best Combat Passive Skills to keep an eye out for.

Passive Skills are an extremely important component when describing the value of a Pal. You must opt for the best combat Passive Skills in Palworld for your Pal for an optimized combat experience. If you ignore these traits, your Pals can weigh you down by giving you debuffs or may even be more expensive regarding food consumption in the long run.

Key Takeaways
  • Passive Combat Skills are the skills that your Pal spawns with in Palworld.
  • They offer certain bonuses or penalties with their associated Pals.
  • The Passive Skills in Palword come in three tiers, the third tier being the highest.
  • Legendary and the Pal-Elemental Passive skills are some of the best combat passive skills in Palworld.

Best Combat Passive Skills Summarized

You can find a quick summary of the Best Combat Skills In Palworld:

Passive SkillSkill BonusesBest For
Pal ElementalIncreases Respective Elemental damage by 20%The Best Elemental Damage Passive Skill
Legend+20% Attack
+20% Defense
+15% Movement Speed
The Best All Rounder Passive Skill
Musclehead+30% Attack Damage
-50% Work Speed
The Best Attack Power Passive Skill
Burly Body+20% DefenseThe Best Solo Defense Passive Skill
Ferocious+20% AttackThe Best Solo Damage Passive Skill
Lucky/Rare+15% Player Attack
+15% Work Speed
The Best Utility And Attack Passive Skill
Stronghold Strategist+10% player defenseThe Second Best Defense Passive Skill
Vanguard +10% player attackThe Second Best Attack Passive Skill
Brave +10% Attack The Best Tier 1 Attack Skill

Pal Elemental Passive Skills

The Best Elemental Damage Passive Skill.
Best Elemental Combat Passive Skill
A low-tier Pal Elemental Passive Skill (Image Credit: eXputer)

The best possible buff you can have on your Pal is its own Pal Elemental Damage Bonus. This buff comes in two important flavors: the Divine Dragon and the Lord of Lightning. While there are other Element-based damage buffs like Power of Gaia and Pyromaniac, they do not have a tier three buff, making them suboptimal at best.

The key skills are explained in more detail below:

  • Divine Dragon: Increases respective dragon skill by 20%.
  • Lord of Lightning: Increases lightning attack damage by 20%.

It is important to note that both of these are tier three passive skills, making them powerful in combat and raising the gold value of their respective Pal.

Why I Chose This: Elemental Damage is an important trait in Palworld, and these Pal Elemental Passive Skills complement their respective type of damage very well.

Legend

The Best All Rounder Passive Skill.
Best Passive Skill
The Legend Combat Passive Skill (Image Credit Copyright: eXputer)

From my experience, the Legend passive skill is one of the hardest to farm on a good Pal in Palworld. It offers many nice buffs but comes at the price of a horrible natural spawn rate.

The Legend Trait has the following buffs:

  • It raises your attack by 20%.
  • Your defense will also increase by 20%.
  • You gain a 15% increased movement speed bonus.
Why I Chose This: The Legend Passive Skill increases all important aspects of combat, boosting attack, defense, and speed from just one skill.

Musclehead

The Best Attack Power Passive Skill.
Musclehead Passive Skill
A Musclehead Pal (Image Captured by eXputer)

Some seasoned players may be surprised by this Passive Skill being this high in the rankings despite being a tier 2 skill. It is important to note that these are the best combat passive skills in Palworld, and Musclehead has one of the best attack scaling out of any skill in Palworld yet. In the worst case, you can switch this Pal out at your base to remove the adverse effects.

The Musclehead Passive Skill has the following effects:

  • You gain a 30% bonus attack power.
  • The work speed is reduced by 50%, significantly penalizing your building and crafting.
Why I Chose This: The Musclehead Passive Skill helps you in combat if you’re willing to switch the respective Pal whenever you know you will not be fighting.

Burly Body

The Best Solo Defense Passive Skill.
Burly Body Skill Palworld
The Burly Body Passive Skill (Image Credit: eXputer)

The Burly Body Passive Trait is relatively common on land mounts or Pals with a rather sturdy body. Although not the greatest in attack, this passive skill ensures that you and your Pal can tank a decent chunk of damage by a mighty 20% increase in your defensive capabilities.

Why I Chose This: The Burly Body Passive skill gives you a decent bonus to your defensive maneuvers, which are crucial against Boss Pals that have honing damage abilities.

Ferocious

The Best Solo Damage Passive Skill.
A very ferocious Pal
The Ferocious Passive Skill for Combat (Image Credit Copyright: eXputer)

The Ferocious Passive Skill is quite similar to the Burly Body Passive Skill. The critical difference is that this Passive skill is more common on swifter Pals and is better suited to use the Attack Buff. The Ferocious Passive Skill will give a 20% Bonus Attack buff, strengthening you and your Pal hit.

Why I Chose This: The Burly Body Passive skill gives you a decent bonus to your defensive maneuvers, which are crucial against Boss Pals that have honing damage abilities.

Lucky/Rare

The Best Utility And Attack Passive Skill.
Lucky Combat Passive Skill
A very Lucky Pal (Image Captured by eXputer)

There are the occasional raids on your base, which makes you wonder if there is a skill that is good for both working and combat. The Lucky Passive Skill is perfect for such an event. Not only does it give you a 15% bonus on your attack, but it also gives you a 15% work speed increase buff as well.

The Lucky trait shares its stats with another passive skill named Rare. These skills have the same bonuses but appear on different types of Pals.

Why I Chose This: Although not the best, Lucky and Rare passive skills boost your offense until you can get better combat passive skills.

Stronghold Strategist

The Second Best Defense Passive Skill.
Defensive Combat Passive SKill
The Best Stronghold Strategist of my Party (Image Credit: eXputer)

In my opinion, the Stronghold Strategist sounds the coolest out of any passive skill in Palwold, but it doesn’t give the buffs that reciprocate that. Despite being a tier 3 passive skill, it only gives you a 10% bonus defense to help you become a little more tanky.

Why I Chose This: The Stronghold Strategist Passive Skill is one of the most common tier 3 passive skills, making it a nice passive skill for defense until you can farm for a better one.

Vanguard

The Second Best Attack Passive Skill.
Vanguard Passive Trait in Palworld
The Fastest Vanguard Rushoar (Image Credit: eXputer)

Like the Stronghold Strategist Passive skill, the Vanguard passive skill is also quite underwhelming regarding the bonus effects. Granted, it is better than nothing, but I do not recommend settling for the 10% bonus attack damage from Vanguard. I advise you to keep farming for a better passive skill.

Why I Chose This: The Vanguard passive skill is more common on aggressive Pals, making it suitable for unmountable Pals in combat.

Brave

The Best Tier 1 Attack Skill.
Brave Skill Image
A Brave Pal (Image Credit Copyright: eXputer)

The final passive skill that qualifies for the best combat passive skills in Palworld is the Brave skill. Like the Vanguard passive skill, Brave also gives you a 10% bonus attack. However, it is far easier to farm for Brave than Vanguard because it is a tier 1 skill. The tier difference between the skills makes Brave a common trait but, at the same time, diminishes the gold value of the respective Pal.

Why I Chose This: The tier 1 Brave passive skill boosts your offensive maneuvers on par with some tier 3 passive skills.

My Tips For Passive Skills

Selling to Black Marketeer
Selling off the bad passive skills (Image Credit: eXputer)

The combat systems in Palworld are very basic for now. My only tip is to ensure you have a well-rounded team and a team suited for the region. Bringing Leaf Pals may not be the greatest idea when traveling on Obsidian Mountain; having bad perks on them would be even worse. Farming for good passives is also an excellent way to earn money by selling the ones you don’t like.

That does it for the Best Combat Passive Skills guide. I did not account for many tier one or two combat skills as they are more or less similar. The only difference is the Pals that they can be found on.

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Ibrahim Akhtar is a guides & features writer at eXputer. He uses his passion for gaming to provide insightful takes in his articles. Ibrahim spends most of his time defending Baldur's Gate from the forces of the Absolute. He has accumulated more than 15 years of gaming experience, having 1000 hours in The Witcher 3 and twice as much on Skyrim V. Ibrahim has previously worked at TopTierList. You can keep up with his Steam account to stay up to date on his latest explorations.

Experience: 1+ Years || Previously Worked for TopTierList || Education: Bachelors in Data Science.

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