Best Slayers in Dead Island 2, Ranked

When starting a game in Dead Island 2, your first choice is to choose your Slayer. This is who you will play as throughout the campaign, solo or co-op. This is an important choice, as you cannot change your selection later, meaning you are locked into this choice. With six Slayers to choose from in Dead Island 2, this may leave you wondering what the best characters in Dead Island 2 are.

Which Slayer should I pick in Dead Island 2?

The best slayer you should choose in Dead Island 2 is ultimately up to you and what your preferred playstyle is. Each character has different stats, having a high and lower ability score. They also have different innate skills that provide further bonuses. We recommend Ryan or Jacob as the best tanks or Bruno if you prefer a more agile playstyle. Carla and Dani both support a mix of the two styles, whereas Amy is incredibly fragile. Here are all characters in Dead Island 2 ranked.

All Slayers Ranked in Dead Island 2

1 - Ryan

We give Ryan the title of best slayer due to his stat spread and innate skills, making him an excellent tank. His highest stat is toughness, but he also has great resilience, stamina, healthy recovery, and peak health scores. His weakest attribute is agility, but you will focus on blocking attacks and making heavy blows to knock zombies down, which is fairly irrelevant.

Ryan's innate skills are Retaliation and Seesaw. The Retaliation skill gives him a boost to force when he successfully blocks or dodges an attack. When Ryan does get injured, the Seesaw skill allows him to regain health when he knocks a zombie down. This pairs well with the drop kick or ground pound skill, making Ryan almost unstoppable.

Related: All Keys locations in Bel-Air in Dead Island 2 and how to get them

2 - Jacob

Jacob is a close second to Ryan, with skills and stats that favor a more agile tank. Jacob is built to last, with his highest stats being peak health and stamina. He also has decent stats in everything but health recovery and resilience, the latter being his worst. Fortunately, you can negate the low resilience by avoiding elemental damage or healing with a medkit.

His two innate skills are Feral and Critical Gains. Feral increases his damage when attacking in quick succession, meaning you will want to use fast weapons with Jacob. Lastly, Critical Gains can increase critical damage and restore stamina, which is extremely helpful when facing swarms. Jacob is best played in the face of zombies so he can strike them down quickly.

3 - Carla

Carla sits comfortably in the middle but is still a good character to pick. Her best stats are resilience and toughness, making her more of a tank like Jacob and Ryan. Her other stats are fairly decent, except for critical damage and agility, meaning she won't be getting any lucky strikes off and can be somewhat slow. But Carla's build doesn't support an agile build, so her stat spread is fine.

Her innate skills provide boosts to toughness and damage. The Most Pit skill is great because it boosts damage when near multiple zombies, making her perfect for dealing with swarms. Her other skill, Dig Deep, gives her a second wind by increasing her toughness when her health is low. Carla is a powerful Slayer that can survive even when near death.

4 - Dani

Dani is a fun character that suffers due to her low health recovery. She has great stamina and peak health with middling toughness and agility, but she requires a bit of finesse to play properly. Because of her low health recovery, taking damage is more dangerous despite her good health stats. You'll need to play carefully with her and avoid taking too much damage at once.

Her innate skills offer support both offensively and defensively. The Thunderstruck skill causes an explosion after performing a heavy attack, but these are slow and can leave you open to attacks making it a risk. Her other skill, Bloodlust, allows Dani to regain health when killing multiple zombies in succession. This is a good way to offset her low health recovery, but you'll need to engage swarms or kite zombies together more often to take advantage of it fully.

Related: How to complete Missing Laura in Dead Island 2

5 - Bruno

Bruno can put out the best damage in Dead Island 2, but he does not have great survivability. His high critical damage and agility suit him for a get-in-and-get-out strategy where you dive into zombies and then quickly retreat. But his low health and decent defensive stats mean any hit he takes hurts a lot more than it would on other Slayers.

His innate skills could be better, too. The Backstab ability gives him a damage boost when attacking zombies from behind, but you get one good hit in before it turns around. You can dodge or move back behind it, but this is tedious and more difficult when facing swarms. The Rapid Reprisal skill boosts his agility and heavy attack charges when successfully blocking or dodging attacks, but this is a so-so perk at best.

6 - Amy

Amy is the worst character due to her stats and skills. She has the lowest toughness out of all the characters, meaning she takes the most damage. Her best stats are agility followed by critical damage, meaning she is an agile combatant. But this means you must master the dodge mechanic and fight with a hit-and-run tactic, which can be difficult when swarmed.

Her innate skills left more to be desired. Relief Pitcher allows her to regain stamina when throwing a weapon, but there is rarely a time when throwing your weapon is worth this boost. This is joined with Divide and Conquer, giving Amy a boost to damage against single zombies. But this is not needed as you rarely face single zombies, and these are easy to dispatch without the damage boost.

For more information on Dead Island 2, check out How to complete My Mailman Was A Zombie in Dead Island 2 and How to complete The Clean and Snatch in Dead Island 2 in Dead Island 2 on Pro Game Guides.