Weapon mods sit on your gun. Armor mods sit on your class. Both of those make exactly one player stronger, and the three people standing next to you get nothing out of either. Perks are the exception, and they are the only one.
What a Squad Perk is
The game’s own description is one sentence and it carries most of the rules:
In the game’s words
“Squad Perks provide your Squad with bonuses that can be upgraded with Energy by any member of the Squad. Earn Squad Perks by completing Secondary Objectives and Invasions.”
Three things follow. A perk is a squad effect, not a personal one. You earn it from a side job or an Invasion and upgrade it with Energy afterwards. Two separate acts, and the second is the one people skip. And the upgrade is open to anyone, so the teammate with a full wallet can pay for a perk the rest of you run on. Most perks run Lv.1 to Lv.3. Three are a single level with no upgrade path.
Energy does three jobs and only one of them lasts
The Supply Cache is where Energy goes: “Use energy at the Supply Cache to buy Weapons, Equipment, or upgrade Squad Perks.” Perks can be upgraded at any Cache, so you are not tied to the one you started at. How much Energy each objective pays is on Siege rewards.
Two of those three purchases are consumable. A weapon can be lost. Equipment is spent the moment you use it. A perk level is neither. Once bought it is on for the rest of the mission, for four people. That is the argument for walking into a Cache with something left in the bank rather than emptying it on a gun every time.
All 27 perks
Names and effects are the game’s own. A dash means the game gives no number for that perk, usually because it is a mutator (it changes a rule, not a number).
| Perk | Lv.1 | Lv.2 | Lv.3 | Energy to next |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Increased Damage | +10% | +20% | +30% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Increased Health | +20% | +50% | +100% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Enhanced Equipment | +20% | +30% | +40% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Cache Discount | −10% | −20% | −30% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| More Juice! | +11.5% | +22.7% | +31.3% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Express Revive | ×4 tag range | ×8 tag range | Instant, ×10 range | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Perfect Ammo Plus | +10% | +20% | +35% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Critical Damage | +10% | +20% | +30% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Power Pistol | +15% | +30% | +60% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Tactical Cooldown | −10% | −15% | −25% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Recoil Reduction | −15% | −35% | −35% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| DBNO Survival† | +50% | +100% | +150% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Quick Revive | +20% | +50% | Instant | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Fortification Health & Damage† | +10% | +20% | +30% | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Squad Pulse† | Every 5 min | Every 3 min | Every 2 min | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Stimergy | — | — | — | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Ammergy | — | — | — | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Generous Grubs | — | — | — | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Explosive Equipment | — | — | — | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Adrenaline on Kill | — | — | — | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Critical Healing | — | — | — | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Perfect Healing | — | — | — | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Second Chance | — | — | — | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Leech | — | — | — | 3,500 / 7,000 |
| Fortifications Start at Level 2 | Single level | — | — | — |
| Reinforcement | Single level | — | — | — |
| Static Resonator† | Reflects 25% damage | — | — | — |
Enhanced Equipment raises damage by the figures shown and health by +20%, +50% and +100%.
† The game never gives these four a short name the way it names “Increased Damage” or “Power Pistol.” What is shown is the game’s own repeated wording (“Squad Buff: +50% DBNO Survival,” “Squad Buff: Resonator Reflects 25% of Damage,” and so on), trimmed to fit a column heading, not a name this site invented. Quick Revive is not one of them: the game does give it a name, and that is the name printed above.
Twenty of these 27 were already publicly known by name. The other seven are new: DBNO Survival, Quick Revive, Fortification Health & Damage, Squad Pulse, Fortifications Start at Level 2, Reinforcement and Static Resonator. One long-standing gap closes here too: Express Revive’s effect was previously unpublished. It increases pickup range for COG tags, ×4 and then ×8 on a figure the game gives no unit for, and at Lv.3 makes the return instant.
Numbers now exist for most of them
The table above states each level as the percentage or figure. In the game itself these still show only as plus signs in front of a description, not as a number. The table shows what those plus signs are worth. Twelve of the 27 have no per-level number, for two different reasons. Nine of them are mutators: Stimergy, Ammergy, Generous Grubs, Explosive Equipment, Adrenaline on Kill, Critical Healing, Perfect Healing, Second Chance and Leech all change what happens, like giving equipment a chance to explode, rather than a number that scales, and the game has no strength value for a mutator the way it does for a straight percentage. The other three are single-level perks with no Lv.2 or Lv.3 to dash out an upgrade path for, and one of those three still publishes a number at Lv.1: Static Resonator reflects a flat 25% of incoming damage. Only Fortifications Start at Level 2 and Reinforcement carry no figure at all.
One value is worth flagging rather than trusting outright: Recoil Reduction reads −15% / −35% / −35%, with Lv.2 and Lv.3 identical. A parallel version of the same buff elsewhere in the game runs −15% / −25% / −35% instead, which is the shape every other three-level perk on this page follows. This may be exactly what the game uses, or it may be a mistake by the developers that only The Coalition can confirm.
Every ranking on this site is computed from one figure that every entry shares. Squad Perks do not share one: a percentage more damage, a faster Tactical Gear cooldown and a chance to drop a Stim Grenade are not the same kind of number, so there is nothing to sort them by. Values now exist for 15 of the 27, which closes the “no numbers at all” gap, not the “these do different jobs” one.
Perk Caches are public
The other way a perk arrives is a Perk Cache, graded Rare, Epic and Legendary. There is an Empty one too. They drop mid-mission, they are called in over the radio, and they are on a clock: “Just sent you a time sensitive Perk Cache. Better find it fast.”
They are also public. When one is claimed the game announces which squad earned it and what grade it was. Three squads share the map, and this is one of the few places that structure has teeth: the Cache is not shared, everybody hears it land, and everybody hears who took it.
What to put the Energy into
With numbers now attached to 15 of the 27, the way to sort the rest is still by how often the effect fires and how many people it touches. A mutator with no published strength is not automatically weaker than a perk with one.
The two energy perks pay every time anyone picks anything up. Stimergy makes energy pickups heal, Ammergy makes them resupply, and in a mode built around collecting Energy that is the effect that triggers most often on the list. More Juice! raises what a pickup is worth by 11.5% / 22.7% / 31.3%, which compounds with both.
Cache Discount pays into everything else. It is the only perk that touches a price, at a flat 10% / 20% / 30% off. Every purchase your squad makes for the rest of the mission costs less because somebody bought this one.
The conditional ones need a squad that plays that way. Power Pistol is dead weight unless somebody is leaning on a sidearm, but +15% / +30% / +60% when they are. Perfect Healing and Perfect Ammo Plus want players who hit the Perfect Reload. Explosive Equipment and Enhanced Equipment want a squad that puts sentries and barriers down rather than carrying them about. None is a bad perk. Each has a precondition, and the precondition is your teammates.