Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Best Naoe Mastery Skills

If you want to make the best of Naoe and her abilities in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you’ll need to learn the right Mastery Skills.

While it’s possible to reset your Mastery Skills at any time to change your playstyle and whatnot, trying to learn what to prioritize early on can be rough. After all, both characters have dozens of Mastery Skills you can unlock!

In this guide, we’ll tell you the best Mastery Skills to learn when playing as Naoe.

Best Naoe Mastery Skills | Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Before we begin, we want to let you know the format we’ll be using in this guide. Naoe has 6 different Mastery Skills trees in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Which ones you decide to focus on will depend in big part on your playstyle, such as weapon preferences and whatnot!

Due to that, we’ll split this guide into sections focused on each Mastery individually. Nonetheless, we’ll rank the Mastery trees themselves from best to worst in our opinion. We’ll also rank the individual Mastery Skills from best to worst, so the ones at the top in each section are the ones we consider strongest.

With all that said, let’s go over what we consider the best Mastery Skills for Naoe to learn in Assassin’s Creed Shadows!

Assassin

• Assassination Damage – Unless you’re playing with the Guaranteed Assassinations setting on, this is a must-have. Each rank of this skill will increase the damage of your assassination attempts by 1 extra Health Segment.
• Improved Ground Assassination – Same as the previous skill, this increases the damage your Ground Assassinations do by 1 extra Health Segment.
• Reinforced Blade – Allows you to attempt assassinations with the Hidden Blade on large enemies. Their size will no longer save them!
• Hand of the Creed – Prevents enemies from denying your assassination attempts if they see Naoe coming.
• Double Assassinate – Allows Naoe to assassinate two targets at once by combining her Tanto and Hidden Blade. Extremely useful as soon as you get your first Tanto.

Tools

• Kunai Assassination Damage – Similar to our selection of Assassin Mastery Skills, this is ideal if you plan to use Kunai for assassinations. Increases the damage Kunai do by 1 extra Health Segment when you headshot unsuspecting enemies.
• Everlast – Allows you to indefinitely retrieve your Kunai. They’ll also no longer break on hard impacts.
• Large Tool Bag – Each rank of this skill allows you to carry more of every tool type. Who can say no to having more toys, right?
• Smoke Bomb – A useful tool for when things get dicey in combat. Throw it to make enemies lose sight of Naoe. Works extra well if you also get the Quick Throw skill.

Shinobi

• Vault – Allows you to vault over enemies after a successful Deflect, leaving them Vulnerable.
• Prodigy – Fairly basic, but this passive increases all of your damage by up to 9% at Rank 3. It’s not a huge amount, but it adds up in the long run!
• Lightning Kicks – Naoe kicks the two nearest enemies and knocks them down, dealing damage to them. It can come in handy if you find yourself surrounded, although we would recommend using Smoke Bombs instead, if possible.
• Shallow Water Breathing – Very situational, but worth getting if you plan to focus on stealth. This allows Naoe to breathe through a reed while in shallow ponds, giving her more ways to hide.

Katana

• Guard Breaker – A powerful attack where Naoe does 9 quick slashes with her katana, breaking the enemy’s armor. It’s particularly strong when paired with weapons that can apply Afflictions, such as the Bloodshade Legendary Katana.
• Counter Attack – Allows Naoe to unleash a powerful counterattack whenever you successfully Deflect an attack with proper timing.
• Dodge Attack + Generator + No Mercy – This is a bit of a cheat since we’re effectively combining all these 3 Mastery Skills together. Nonetheless, this is a powerful combo. Max out all 3 skills and your Dodge Attacks will deal a lot more damage, recover Adrenaline Chunks, and even make enemies Vulnerable!
• Eviscerate – Deal 75% Ability Damage to an enemy and push them away from Naoe. Great for creating space. Mainly great for pushing enemies to their deaths if you’re fighting near cliffs and the like.
• Melee Expert – A pretty decent passive, it increases the damage of all your Melee Weapons by up to 9% at Rank 3.

Tanto

• Hidden Hand – Allows Naoe to use her Hidden Blade to perform assassinations in the middle of combat. Pair it with the Broken Spirit skill to make it both unblockable and unparriable, although that’s a very late-game unlock.
• Leap Strike + Escape Strike – We’re pairing both of these together as they’re functionally similar. They both allow you to perform quick attacks while moving in certain directions, making them great for repositioning.
• Shadow Piercer – Throw Naoe’s Tanto at an enemy and then dash toward them for a stabbing attack, leaving them Vulnerable.
• Backstab – Hitting an enemy in the back with a light Posture attacks will trigger a Weak Point attack. It’s situational but goes hand-in-hand with the Vault Mastery Skill from the Shinobi tree.

Kusarigama

• Cyclone Blast – Naoe swings the Kusarigama in circles around her, dealing damage to nearby enemies and pushing them back. A must-have for dealing with larger groups of enemies!
• Snake Bite – Wrap the Kusarigama around an enemy’s foot and pull them, knocking them down and dealing damage in the process.
• Quick Strike – Pause after an attack then press the attack button again to launch 2 quick extra strikes. This is ideal if you’re using a Kusarigama that can apply Afflictions, which is usually ideal!
• Multi-Target Expert – Makes the Kusarigama better at dealing with larger groups of enemies. Hitting multiple enemies at once will increase damage by up to 15% at Rank 3.

That’s the end of our list, so you now know the best Mastery Skills for Naoe in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It’s a good idea to also get the best weapons for Naoe while you’re at it. The best skills and the best weapons will make her a truly deadly assassin!