Back 4 Blood Best Deck for Every Characters

Walker starts with a Glock 23 pistol, but this build focuses on a sniper/assault rifle hybrid that is all about chasing damage.

Use the following cards in your Walker deck:

• Two Is One And One Is None
• Ridden Slayer
• Reckless Strategy
• Hyper-Focused
• Patient Hunter
• Overwatch
• Stock Pouch
• Line ‘Em Up
• Shredder
• Tactical Vest
• Widemouth Magwell
• Reload Drills
• Silver Bullets
• Large Caliber Rounds
• Broadside

The most important card in this build is Two Is One And One Is None, so it goes at the top of the deck. This card lets you use two primary weapons, so you can wave goodbye to Walker’s Glock.

Ridden Slayer, Hyper-Focused, and Reckless Strategy combine to double your weakspot damage. That might not seem important against your regular old Ridden, but when you’re fighting Special Ridden like the ogre, that extra damage really is significant. Patient Hunter boosts your damage even further whilst aiming down sights, which is perfect for those quiet sniping moments.
The Ogre in Back 4 Blood

Overwatch is a card for your whole team, as it heals nearby allies if you get kills from more than 15 metres away. You’ll probably want your sniper rifle for those long distance kills, which is where Stock Pouch comes in with an increase to sniper rifle ammo capacity and damage. This card only works for long-distance fighters, so it is important that you give it to Walker rather than melee-focused characters like Evangelo and Holly.

Line ‘Em Up and Tactical Vest shift the focus firmly onto your assault rifle by increasing AR ammo capacity, damage, and bullet penetration. Shredder also helps here, as it increases the damage taken by an enemy every time one of your bullets makes contact, up to a total of 15% extra. Silver Bullets and Large Caliber Rounds both increase your damage even further, which should help you later in the campaign as more corruption cards get dealt.

Broadside is another card that boosts your damage, but it does so in a very different way. When you have Broadside active, there is a 20% chance that precision kills will turn corpses into bombs, so you can sit back and watch the fireworks whilst the Ridden take care of themselves.

Assault rifles and sniper rifles pack a punch, but they also pack a pretty long reload time, which no one likes. If you want to stop staring at your character changing magazine clips and start shooting, then Widemouth Magwell and Reload Drills are essential. They combine to increase your reload speed by 50%, getting you back into the fight much quicker.

Evangelo is light on his feet and strong with his sword. He gets boosts to stamina regen and team movement speed, along with the ability to break out of grabs once every 60 seconds.

Whilst you don’t need to stick with the machete, it’s certainly worth holding on to. The blade will quickly slice down any zombies in front of you, and lets you reap the rewards of some of the melee cards in Back 4 Blood. Oh, and it’s one of the best weapons in Back 4 Blood.

Use the following cards in your Evangelo deck:

• Meth Head
• Slugger
• Brazen
• Run And Gun
• Speed Demon
• Hellfire
• Quick Kill
• Batter Up
• Berserker
• Sunder
• Face Your Fears
• Scar Tissue
• Battle Lust
• Ignore The Pain
• Heavy Hitter

The card at the top of a deck is the first active card that you will get in a run, so it is important to select it carefully. We recommend putting Meth Head at the top, as it has the most impact on your playstyle by disabling aim down sights entirely. That might seem drastic, but you shouldn’t really need to aim with this build, as it focuses on powerful melee attacks with a light sprinkle of running and gunning with an SMG.

Fortunately, Meth Head comes with some great benefits, giving you a 40% increase to both melee attack speed and melee stamina efficiency. Slugger and Brazen significantly increase the same stats, meaning Evangelo can swing his machete almost twice as fast. If you want another character that specialises in melee, check out our Holly build.

The next few cards on the list, from Run and Gun to Quick Kill, serve to bolster Evangelo’s skill with SMGs, so you can give that itchy trigger finger a workout. Run and Gun allows you to shoot whilst sprinting, so you can keep up the pace and stay on the offensive when your machete just won’t cut it. Speed Demon and Hellfire both increase your movement speed whilst using an SMG, and Speed Demon also gives you a 35% boost to reload speed. Quick Kill increases your accuracy by 50%, and it’s only drawback is disabling ADS again, which will have no effect on your Evangelo.

The second half of the deck consists of a variety of useful melee cards that combine to drastically improve your melee attack damage, whilst also allowing you to take less damage, regenerate some health, and even make Ridden that you hit take more damage from your teammates. That’s especially useful for dealing with any pesky Special Ridden that try to ruin your run.

Mom has a lot of possible playstyles, but she is very clearly geared towards a support role. She doesn’t have any bonuses with a particular kind of gun, so you should take a look at our list of the best weapons in Back 4 Blood to decide on your personal killing machine of preference.

Here are the cards you need for our Mom build:

• Inspiring Sacrifice
• Avenge The Fallen
• Amped Up
• Charitable Soul
• Rousing Speech
• Pep Talk
• Smelling Salts
• Combat Medic
• EMT Bag
• Antibiotic Ointment
• Poultice
• Group Therapy
• Experienced EMT
• Support Scavenger
• Chemical Courage

Inspiring Sacrifice earns the top spot, because it lets you benefit from what should be a very bad situation. Each time you or a teammate go down, everyone else heals 25 health. Back 4 Blood is brutally difficult, so any chance to claw back some HP should be taken. There’s a reason Inspiring Sacrifice made it onto our list of the best cards in Back 4 Blood – it’s really that good. In a similar vein, Avenge The Fallen increases everyone’s damage, reload speed, and gives your team unlimited ammo for 10 seconds whenever someone is downed. That’s plenty of time to push back against the hordes and revive your fallen ally. You can grow even stronger by activating Chemical Courage and using pain meds to boost your damage by an additional 25%.
Back 4 Blood Mom build, highlighting the Inspiring Sacrifice card

Amped Up is another card for the whole team (we weren’t lying when we said Mom is geared towards helping others). With Amped Up active, your team gains 50 temporary health when you exit a safe room, giving you a significant boost at the start of every level. With Support Scavenger active, you can be on the lookout for more bandages and painkillers straight away too, so you don’t need to worry about dying when that temporary health boost goes.

Okay, so most of the cards in our Mom build help the whole team, but there’s nothing wrong with being a little bit selfish. Charitable Soul lets you look out for number 1 by giving you health back every time you heal a teammate. That’s definitely a win-win, especially when you count the extra healing effect granted by Combat Medic, Poultice, Group Therapy, and Experienced EMT.

Rousing Speech, Pep Talk, and Smelling Salts all focus on your revive speed. Actually, they basically eliminate the need for a revive bar at all, because you’ll get a 475% revive speed increase with them all active. That can be really useful, especially for your melee teammates, like Holly and Evangelo, who might go down more often. There’s a pretty significant drawback here, though. Rousing Speech disables offensive accessories for Mom, so you won’t be able to use grenades and molotovs anymore.

There’s a lot of extra healing already from this Mom build, but EMT Bag and Antibiotic Ointment take it to the extreme. These cards increase your healing efficiency by a total of 60%, which means you’ll heal a lot more health back when using a medical accessory on yourself or your teammates. This might not seem necessary, but the extra health is crucial if you want to survive on Nightmare mode.

If you like melee weapons, then Holly is your gal. She starts with a baseball bat, which is one of the better melee options, but if you really want to excel, you should try to grab a Machete. The Machete is undoubtedly one of the best weapons in Back 4 Blood, so it’s worth tracking one down as fast as possible.

Use the following cards in your Holly deck:

• Adrenaline Fueled
• Battle Lust
• Meth Head
• Mean Drunk
• Batter Up
• Spiky Bits
• Berserker
• Ignore The Pain
• Vanguard
• Face Your Fears
• Mugger
• Dash
• Fleet Of Foot
• Run Like Hell
• Evasive Action

As mentioned above, Holly gets stamina back for every kill. Adrenaline Fuelled bolsters this significantly, doubling the amount of stamina that Holly has whilst also allowing you to recover another 20 stamina per kill. With this card active, Holly basically never runs out of stamina, so pop it at the top of your deck to become an unstoppable killing machine right from Act 1.

Battle Lust is a crucial card, so definitely put it in the second slot and activate it straight away. Trust me, you’ll be grateful. Getting up close and personal with hungry corpses can be a dangerous job, and Holly loses HP fast. Battle Lust helps avoid some of that pain so that you don’t have to hog all of the bandages (which your teammates will certainly appreciate). Further into the deck, Vanguard and Face Your Fears increase your healing capabilities substantially, so you’ll never need to think about healing again. Oh, and your teammates will like you more, because they’ll get some temporary health too!

For the third slot, we’ve chosen the Meth Head card. It isn’t quite as high on the list, but that extra attack speed and stamina efficiency is just as important. It does disable your ability to aim down sights, but Holly doesn’t need guns when she’s clearing hordes with a single blade.

The next 5 cards, from Mean Drunk to Ignore The Pain, are all about damage. Sweet, sweet damage. Melee attacks are already pretty strong in Back 4 Blood, but with these cards you can increase your melee damage by over 150%. That’s a lot of one hit kills, even on some Special Ridden. Mean Drunk does disable sprint, which might sound a little outlandish. However, the damage boost is huge, and there are plenty of cards later in the deck to help boost your movement speed.

Whilst you’ve been swinging and slashing without a care in the world, your teammates have probably been struggling to even keep their ammo stocked. Holly should be ridiculously powerful by now, so use your final card slot to give a much-needed boost to your teammates. Mugger makes all melee kills have a 2% chance to spawn ammo, which might not seem like much, but it really does add up when you’re cleaving through hordes with ease.

The real heroes are the players who stay out of the fray and choose to heal teammates instead. Well, Doc can keep everyone in good condition whilst dealing a fair bit of damage to the undead, making her one of the best characters in Back 4 Blood.

Use the following cards in your Doc build:

• Rousing Speech
• Combat Medic
• Amped Up
• EMT Bag
• Antibiotic Ointment
• Medical Expert
• Ammo Stash
• Mag Coupler
• Reload Drills
• Widemouth Magwell
• Charitable Soul
• Shoulder Bag
• Fanny Pack
• Saferoom Recovery
• Medical Professional

If there’s a card with a significant drawback, I like to put it at the top of the deck. If you’re going to lose something during your run, it’s best to get rid of it straight away, and there’s usually a significant bonus to make up for the loss. With that in mind, Rousing Speech takes the top spot for this Doc build. It gives a massive 225% boost to revive speed, but disables access to offensive accessories, like grenades and molotovs. Combat Medic makes up for that a little bit though, by healing teammates for an additional 20 health when you revive them.

Amped Up is another very important card, as it gives your team 50 temporary health points each time you exit a saferoom. This card only comes third on the list because you shouldn’t really need it for your very first mission, as you’ll have full health anyway.

The next few cards bolster Doc’s healing efficiency (the amount you heal when using medical accessories). This is already increased by 20% over other characters by default, but EMT Bag, Antibiotic Ointment, and Medical Expert combine to improve your healing efficiency by another 75%. That means in total, your healing efficiency is almost doubled. It’s definitely fair if you hog all of the bandages, by the way.

Healing and helping others is great, but you also need to look out for yourself. After all, there is a zombie apocalypse to survive. There are over 30 weapons in Back 4 Blood, and automatic pistols certainly aren’t on our list of the best weapons you should use. However, when paired with Ammo Stash, they work really well. Ammo Stash gives your secondary weapon unlimited ammo, so you can shoot without a care in the world. However, it does slow your reload speed by 20%. Fortunately, Mag Coupler, Reload Drills, and Widemouth Magwell all increase reload speed and outweigh the negative, so they come next in the deck.

Whilst thinking about looking after yourself, Charitable Soul deserves a spot in every healer’s deck. It gives a 50% chance to gain health when healing a teammate, so you can reap the rewards of being a good doctor and waste less bandages on yourself. It’s one of the best cards in Back 4 Blood for a reason. You’ll probably still run out at some point though, so use Shoulder Bag and Fanny Pack to increase your support accessory inventory, allowing you to hold more medical items.

Trauma damage is a key part of Back 4 Blood. As you take damage, some of it will be permanently added to your health bar, reducing your maximum health. This can be devastating in later rounds, so our Doc build has a few cards to help fix the problem. Saferoom Recovery heals 5 trauma damage at the start of every level, whilst Medical Professional heals trauma when you use a first aid kit or defibrillator.

Hoffman can store extra ammo and grenades, so our Hoffman build is all about putting that firepower to good use. If you like your zombies to be ripped apart and scattered by explosives, then Hoffman is your guy.

Use the following cards in your Hoffman build:

• Two Is One And One Is None
• Offensive Scavenger
• Admin Reload
• Cocky
• Guns Out
• Silver Bullets
• Large Caliber Rounds
• Combat Training
• Ammo Mule
• Double Grenade Pouch
• Grenade Pouch
• Bomb Squad
• Improvised Explosives
• Demolitions Expert
• Grenade Training

Two Is One And One Is None allows Hoffman to carry two primary weapons, making it an essential card that needs to go at the top of your Hoffman build deck. In these slots, we recommend using an assault rifle and shotgun. This card does lower your weapon swap speed, which we need to fix since you’ll swap weapons to reload with the Admin Reload card. Fortunately, we can use both Cocky and Guns Out to drastically improve your swap speed, so you can forget about any negatives in this area.

However, before you start worrying about swap speed, take Offensive Scavenger as your second active card. This allows you to find more offensive accessories, so you can throw grenades at your leisure – that sure does sound relaxing.

The problem with having two big guns is that one is probably bigger and better. Silver Bullets, Large Caliber Rounds, and Combat Training increase your bullet damage for everything, so that you can flip between both weapons and still slay zombies with maximum efficiency. Of course, you’ll want plenty of ammo to burn through, so take the Ammo Mule card to increase your ammo capacity by 75%. This does disable support accessories, so you’ll need to rely on an ally to heal you from this point.

Ammo Mule increases your bullet ammo capacity, but we want more grenades too. Grenade Pouch and the appropriately-named Double Grenade Pouch will help you out here, increasing your offensive accessories capacity by 3. With all those extra grenades in tow, it’s time to make your explosions bigger and better. The final four cards in this deck combine to increase your grenade damage by 250%, so you can chuck one into a horde and walk away without needing to worry. The mega explosion will take care of those pesky Ridden.

Jim starts with a Magnum, which is very powerful and worth using over most other pistols. However, we recommend grabbing a Desert Eagle if you find one. The Desert Eagle is one of the best weapons in Back 4 Blood, and it’ll help you quickly pull off precision kills. Pair that with an assault rifle to make light work of even the most brutal enemies.

Use these cards in your Jim build:

• Broadside
• Hyper-Focused
• Reckless Strategy
• Ridden Slayer
• Sadistic
• Shredder
• Silver Bullets
• Steady Aim
• Pep In Your Step
• Evasive Action
• Ammo Scavenger
• Ammo Stash
• Widemouth Magwell
• Reload Drills
• Hunker Down

Broadside starts this build off with a bang, as it has a 20% chance to cause Ridden corpses to explode and damage surrounding enemies. With this card, a few well-placed shots have the potential to wipe out hordes by turning your zombie foes into particularly gory grenades.

Jim already grants the whole team an extra 10% weakspot damage, but we can do better than that. Use Hyper-Focused, Reckless Strategy, and Ridden Slayer to increase your weakspot damage by an additional 100%. When Special Ridden like the Ogre and Tallboy appear, you’ll be able to take them down with ease. Sadistic increases your weakspot damage even further, granting you a 5% bonus for each precision kill in the last 10 seconds. Of course, you’ll be dealing with a lot of regular Ridden too, so you’ll want to increase your normal damage. Use the Shredder and Silver Bullets cards to make every shot count against the undead by increasing your bullet damage with all guns. Shredder is one of the best cards in Back 4 Blood, so consider giving it a spot in every deck you make.

Jim is all about dealing damage, which means you need to be able to quickly snap to enemies when firing. Steady Aim increases Aim Speed by 80%, so you don’t need to wait to start shooting. Whether an Ogre rises from the ground or a horde of Ridden runs from a nearby building, you’ll be able to swiftly turn, aim, and fire. Unfortunately, this does slow your movement whilst aiming down sights, so take Pep In Your Step and Evasive Action to get some much-needed speed boosts.

With this Jim build, you’ll burn through ammo pretty quick. No one likes to be caught short without spare bullets in the middle of a ravenous horde, so use Ammo Scavenger and Ammo Stash to remedy your ammo troubles. With Ammo Scavenger, you’ll find more ammo for your primary weapon, which also helps your teammates if they run out, giving Jim a support role like Doc and Mom. Ammo Stash gives you unlimited ammo for your secondary, but this does slow down your secondary weapon reload speed, so we’ve put Widemouth Magwell and Reload Drills in the deck to balance it out.

Reckless Strategy and Widemouth Magwell both improve this Jim build a lot, but they also decrease Jim’s damage resistance by a total of 10%. Hunker Down fixes this problem, taking damage resistance back to your normal levels when crouching, whilst also giving you an extra 40% accuracy, which is perfect for hitting those weakspots.

There are a lot of ways we could take Karlee, as she isn’t beholden to one specific playstyle. For this build, replace Karlee’s Tec 9 with a machete, which is one of the best weapons in Back 4 Blood. For your primary, take an SMG so that you can turn Back 4 Blood into a fast-paced looter shooter.

Use the following cards in your Karlee build:

• Run And Gun
• Adrenaline Fueled
• Battle Lust
• Motorcycle Helmet
• Marked For Death
• Knowledge Is Power
• Support Scavenger
• Weapon Scavenger
• Ammo Scavenger
• Utility Scavenger
• Offensive Scavenger
• Copper Scavenger
• Hazard Pay
• Share The Wealth
• Lucky Pennies

For the top card, we’ve used Run And Gun. This card, allows you to shoot whilst sprinting, so that you don’t need to slow down and lose your flow to kill zombies. Adrenaline Fueled gives you 20 stamina back for each kill, which is much better than the standard stamina regeneration in Back 4 Blood.

Likewise, Battle Lust heals you for 2 health with each kill, turning hordes of Ridden into giant, rotten bandages. Since you’ll be getting nice and close to some zombies, we’ve also put Motorcycle Helmet into our Karlee build so that you have some extra health and damage resistance. This does disable ADS, but that’s not too troublesome for this run and gun build.

Karlee’s passive ability makes her the resident scout on the team, so we’ve used Marked For Death and Knowledge Is Power to bolster this particular playstyle. Marked For Death highlights any Special Ridden that you ping, whilst increasing your team’s damage by 10% against them. Knowledge Is Power increases damage further, and allows your team to see damage numbers and health bars when attacking enemies.

So, we mentioned that this is a looter shooter build. Well, we weren’t lying. The rest of this Karlee build is stacked with scavenging cards that will help the whole team, regardless of what you’re looking for. With these cards, you will find more weapons, support items, offensive accessories, quick accessories, ammo, and copper. Whether you need a bandage, some grenades, a new gun, or some more cash to buy another team upgrade in the next safe room, Karlee should be able to find it.