In Tom Clancy’s The Division, skills determine what role your character will play in a group. You gain skills as you level up, becoming more powerful and able to take on tougher challenges as you do. Depending on the situation and what roles your squad picks, you may want to rethink what skills you plan to go with. To prepare you for that choice, we’ve put together a short guide looking at the different skills in The Division and how they change the way your character plays.

There are three different skill trees: Medical, Tech, and Security. Focusing points into the medical tree will give you healing/ reviving powers, the tech tree increases the damage output of you and your team, and the security tree focuses on protection (you can think of them as the tanks of the group).

You don’t have to stick to one tree once you’ve put a point into it, you can select skills from other trees to get a variety of skills in your arsenal. New skills are made available by upgrading wings in your command base. For example if you unlock a new unit in the medical wing, you’ll gain a point in the Medical tree.

There are also modifications for each skill that can be unlocked and selected. Unlike the skills themselves, the modifications can be swapped on the fly which makes it easy to tailor your skills to the current situation. You can only have one modification active (with the exception of the master) on each skill at one time.

Master modifications are marked in italics.

Tech Skills

Sticky Bomb – Launches a sticky bomb that can then be remotely detonated.

Modifications: Increased blast radius, proximity detonation, flashbang, increased bomb stealth.

Turret – Deploys a turret that will fire on enemies until it is destroyed.

Modifications: Proximity sensor, flamethrower turret, taser turret, self-destruct when destroyed.

Seeker Mine – A mine that will chase nearby targets before exploding.

Modifications: Cluster bomb (many bombs from detonation), gas grenade, airburst (jumps up before detonation), ability to travel over objects and cover.

Tactical Link – Provides a buff to the damage output and the critical hit chance for the player and their squad.

Medical Skills

Pulse – Sends out a pulse that detects and marks all enemy units it hits within a medium range.

Modifications: Increased range, jamming of other pulses, increased damage on pulsed enemies, warning when you are pulsed.

First Aid – Heals your squad within the small area it is deployed in. Can be launched to a remote location or placed at the user.

Modifications: Ability to revive downed teammates, increased healing speed, increased damage output for those within the area, longer duration for first aid.

Support Station– A deployable pack that heals and revives any allies that come within its area of effect.

Modifications: Revives fallen squad mates, removes de-buffs, replenishes ammo and skill bar, heals all allies when destroyed/ removed.

Recovery Link – Heals all of your squad mates in the immediate vicinity and revives fallen ones. It’s heal can also “over-heal” you, giving you a temporary amount of bonus health on top of your normal health pool.

Security Skills

Ballistic Shield – Gives your character a hand held ballistic shield that will stop enemy bullets. Can only use your sidearm while equipped.

Modifications: Increased shield armor that also pulses any enemies who shoot it, increased sidearm damage, damage taken heals the shield user, shield regains durability when not being shot.

Smart Cover – Increases the strength of whatever cover you’re hiding behind, increasing the durability of it.

Modifications: Bad guys using smart cover do less damage and take more, recovers health while under smart cover, protects from enemy pulses and causes enemies to be pulsed when shot, increases the smart cover’s duration.

Mobile Cover – Drops a temporary wall that provides cover for one person.

Modifications: Cover will protect two players, cover has explosives on the front that can be remotely detonated, increased damage while in cover, increased resistance to covered players when cover is destroyed.

Survivor Link – Provides a buff to the speed and the resistances of all players in the squad for its duration.