Dead Island 2 has six Slayers for players to choose from, including the tough and feisty Carla. Dead Island 2's Carla possesses some great and often funny dialogue alongside powerful and handy abilities, making her a great starting choice for those looking for a straight-talking, strong character that doesn't sacrifice too much on health. As players level up, they can work towards creating the ultimate Carla build while finding what works best for individual players.
The best build for each of Dead Island 2's slayers depends upon play style and individual preferences. Some players may prefer abilities like sliding and kicking over defensive strategies like blocking and dodging. However, Carla does have some unique skill cards that only she and Slayer Ryan possess. Players can use these to guide them towards particular play styles according to Carla's strengths and weaknesses.
Carla's Innate Abilities in Dead Island 2
Carla is a new Dead Island 2 character with tank-like stats. Players can view these in the character selection screens. Her primary strengths include resilience and toughness, but she is weaker regarding critical hits and agility. Carla's health recovery, peak health, and stamina are average. Her innate skills include Mosh Pit, giving her a minor damage boost when close to multiple zombies; and Dig Deep, which rewards a moderate toughness boost when health is critical.
When choosing skills cards, players may prefer to focus on boosting Carla's damage to increase her ability to perform critical hits, which are essential for beating strong enemies like Crushers. It's also worth playing to her strengths of toughness, so she can take more damage while not neglecting opportunities to boost health. One of the best builds for Carla is a block-based build focusing on increasing damage, toughness, and health regeneration.
Carla's Best Ability Skills Card Build
As a tank-style character, Carla can hit hard and take big hits, making early ability skills cards like Block essential. Blocking enables Carla to perform a well-timed block that regains stamina while stunning zombies, providing a window of opportunity to counterattack. This technique is invaluable during boss encounters against foes like Crushers, such as during the Becki the Bride boss fight. Players can adopt this fighting strategy across the whole game.
Other powerful Carla abilities handy for swarms of the undead include Drop-kick, Overhead Smash, and Ground Pound, which can help zombie stability. For a 5th slot, players who want to focus on building Fury without any payoffs could choose Served Cold or Blood Rush.
Carla's Best Survivor Skill Cards Build
There are several survivor skills cards that link to Carla's blocking or dodging ability, which allow Carla to regain health, such as Safety First skills card. The Invigorating survivor skills card enables Carla to regain health after performing a successful counter-attack against zombies, so it's a great card to pair with blocking in Dead Island 2.
Blocking or dodging an attack with the Pain Threshold skills card equipped gives a minor boost to damage, so it's a decent choice to increase damage capabilities without sacrificing any stats. One valuable card unique to Ryan and Carla is Steadfast, which creates multiple stacking opportunities for players to boost toughness and force through blocking.
With Warhead, dropkicks create a forceful explosion that drains nearby zombie stability. This is similar to the Blockbuster card, which accomplishes the same with blocking.
Carla'd Best Slayer Skill Cards Build
Far From Done is an ideal slayer skill card to pair with Carla's blocking ability for a block-style build as another stacking card that boosts damage. It's also another skills card that's unique to Carla and Ryan.
Pummel is another of Dead Island 2's Autophage perks that's a handy choice for Carla as another multiple-stacking card that majorly boosts force, with the only limitation being a less forceful first hit. Some players may also want to choose Juggernaut paired with the Overhead Smash, as it significantly boosts damage and force while building Fury. It helps increase Carla's Autophage and overall toughness.
If players experiment with combining these different Slayer cards, they can increase Carla's overall toughness to a whopping 150 points. Alternatively, some players may want to focus on boosting Carla's abilities while in Dead Island 2's Fury mode, so cards like Janus Rage could be beneficial to increase toughness or damage.
Carla's Best Numen Skills Cards Build
Born Survivor is a Numen Skills card that players first get when playing as Ryan or Carla after unlocking the Numen cards. It's a game-changing Autophage skills card that triggers a powerful explosion when the player's character is about to die. This gives them a window of opportunity to regain health by killing zombies, albeit draining Fury.
Some players may prefer the advantages of the other Numen cards, such as Corpse Blossom, which generates an explosion under different circumstances. However, Born Survivor is an invaluable card for players to keep in their back pockets, especially as a backup buffer against Carla's peak health and health recovery weaknesses.
Dead Island 2 is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.