The ULTIMATE OCCUPATION Tier List in Project Zomboid

Repairman is the best class to main spears. Spears are great. So repairman is great :D

the burger flipper is worser then the chef as buger flipper only has +2 cooking while chef has a +3 cokking bonus

firefighter is the best imo

I feel like unemployed is overated if not very overated. It doesn't allow you to maximise your starting stats and has no ability the likes of axe man or desensitized which are huge for long playthough imo ( as their unobtainable)

Do you not get XP boosts with these as well? Those should be brought up as well.

Every occupation gives something special to foraging

Police Officer S-tier what. It only helps you when you’re so established it’s not that hard to survive anymore. It does absolutely nothing to help you get there. Just very surprised.

i always go as unemployed

lumberjack is easy the best occupation, for example, you can easily take 20 around point from easy to manage negative trait, wich can give you handy for maintnance, hunter for knife and shooting, and organized wich is strong
repairman is even better in a way, less powerful with axe but you can with the same negative trait have 1 pt in every weapon category, exept spear and long blade, wich is insanely good as it make it so you can nearly have twice the exp.
Unemployed is just garbage, most of very good trait are costly enough so the 8 point are used immediatly or not even enough, so the profession that cost nothing or next to nothing are much better and give you more starting skill insanely overrated.
Also a exemple of a very good coop build, a metalworker with the mecanic trait , insanely good to repair car take handy with that and you wil be abble to take care of much of the building and repair needed in the base

me, A welder who wanted to pick Metal worker as my first game...

I tend to go with lumberjack, brawler, and fast learner for easy axe leveling. I can usually get to axe 10 in the first or 2nd month (because I play far too aggressive).

Only one thing: Burger Flipper should be higher for sure because of really cheap cost for such bonuses.
It's S tier for players who want to main Short Blades.

I must be an army of one, because I think the burglar is criminally (pun intended) overrated. Its entire draw comes down to a trait that is VERY easily obtainable by every other character in the game by swapping some bulbs and dismantling watches. Stealth skills are useless, I said what I said, and the nimble is fantastic, and really the biggest redeeming quality of the profession to me. That's a LOT of points to invest. I'll just take gymnast and a different profession every single time. If I REALLY need a vehicle early (rarely the), I can scrounge for one with a key, otherwise I'll know how to hotwire within the first week anyway.

😂😂😂 are you from Joburg. I can just tell ur South African

If you can tweak Fire Officer with Strength + Fitness you become a melee killing machine.

"Short blades... Meh"
Dude, you don't understand knives. On large zombie pop them are the only (yes, the only!) weapon in the game that allows you to cut down hordes almost indefinitely without stamina issues. This is endgame of course, you need nimble at 4+, decent maintainance, a space to backpedal to, and the short blade skill itself at high enough level. And woah, you are an absolute killing machine that sneezes at axe vs crowbar debates

Burger Flippers and Construction Workers are B Tier at least in my opinion

As strong as Axes, Long Blades, and Long Blunt weapons are out of the box, short weapons are numerous and have less strain on stamina and for anyone that wants to go full loot goblin but still be lethal there's an open hand to hold a second bag with. Also if we're speaking strictly vanilla, they also have the advantage of being able to hold a flashlight if they're caught out at night or in a dark building.

I'm not a fan of seeing Chef in D tier tbh... Cooking is not as useless as you think and Short Blade builds are a lot better in Melee when it comes to stamina usage and attack speed. It's less safe but you can fight far more Zombies without getting exhausted than you can with larger weapons.

Lumberjack s+ tier

you still cant get desensitized perk by killing zombies, only with a mod

I love and hate the professions that have unique traits.
Pros being that you get those cool unique skills and cons being you cannot unlock them by any means other than modding.
Having actual stats for surviving is cool but crafting your own p**e bombs as the Engineer is also really cool but I nearly always take Lumberjack cause I build a lot and getting all the wood is super annoying and slow otherwise.

the music just gave me serious nostalgia

Burger Flipper is my top 1 🥰

Repairman is s tier for me. Burger flipper high A tier. Burgler could be useful for nimble buts its fairly easy to grind to hotwiring and get gymnast perk. Any trade with uniques such as lumberjack, fitness instructor, security guard or park ranger make interesting builds. Firefighter/Rosewood is s tier for noobs. Almost guaranteed to start in the firestation with a bunch of axes. It really depends on game mode, experience and play style.

The thing about Engineer. You can easily craft bombs if you are in storage areas. And since bombs efficienty is not limited by aim you can escape/raid players with high aim in city areas.(When you throw pipe bomb everyone prefers to retreat to not get hit than to shot you down) Also you can combine pipebombs with zombies hordes against group of players.

Creator of this list is definitely huge combat lover and does not consider much survival and crafting elements. Regarding combat, for the most part it's melee anyway. police officer is B at best thanks to aiming only. You can unload and reload one 9mm magazine a few times and have reloading leveled up easily. Veteran may waste a bit more ammo on the start but in the end thrives in combat.
Easiest for beginners are Firefighter, Carpenter, Construction worker and Unemployed.
My personal faves are Engineer , Mechanic and Electrician since it's too easy to learn hotwiring to be a burglar and tune vehicles which is so in depth that it's almost like a separate minigame on its own. On the combat perspective creating bombs is definitely useful and even it is not usually recommended you can use cars as weapons too if you know what you're doing and it is easy for you to repair them.

I actually put Construction Worker on A tier mainly because it's a good choice for combat focus as someone who loves short blunt weapons. I just find melee more fun than shooting, unless of course you're playing against players.

I play as unemployed most of the time in single player, but in multiplayer, I'm having a lot of fun roleplaying as a doctor/scientist/team medic. Took the Doctor class and all the perks I could to boost my first aid (we play with at least one traits mod, so there's a few solid ones) and I started with 8 in First Aid, lol. I take care of medical supplies for the team, I always carry my doctor's bag on supplies/exploration runs, and I'm always there when one of my friends has to play with fire for whatever reason.

D tier, sure. But it's a fun D tier if you do it right, lol.

electrician should be B tier cus you can still use generators even when taking the illiterate trait, which would normally prevent you from using generators once power cuts out. especially when illiterate grants 10 points. and alot of players hate sitting around and reading, even though it speeds up the process of grinding skills.

Just saying the lumberjack trait actually doesn't increase your swing speed. It actually increases the swinging animation of chomping down trees. Unless the trait has been changed then it's true but from what i know it only increases the speed animation of chomping down trees

I think Carpenter has fallen off as a profession with the increased rate of garbage bag spawns. In early builds of the game you really didn't want to waste them on the smaller rain barrels since they were in such short supply. Also the stairs could be built to a couple of the completely impenetrable fenced in areas before those areas were updated and they added the ability to climb over them.

Am i the only one in love with carpenter traits? I just LOVE building base, and not worring about shelter or water, because you can build them almost frome the start. Like kust watching TV can easily get you 8th level pf carpentery, that is more then enough for everything you want to build.

how do you spawn in firestatiion in rosewood as a firefighter? never happened for me

lumberjack only gets A tier?? thats a solid S tier brother

Security guard can be higher if you are playing single player. The single fact on sleeping less. Allow you do more stuff that you couldn't in normal playthrough. Required a little to none sleep with some energy food like vitamin and coffee.
Allow players you scavenge longer without worrying need to sleep too often.

Chef/burguer fliper on top!! X33

The disrespect on Carpenter

I think Chef should be at the very least B tier, after reaching the 7th level, you can cook with any igredient, even if it is rotten, so if you survive long enough, you can reuse all those rotten foods you find in the houses, which may be really good if you want to save some of your canned food stored

W for putting unemployed in S Tier

Dont know what's wrong with my game, cuz burglar doesnt allow me to hotwire cars from the start

I often choose burger flipper occupation for role playing purposes.
Imagine, everything went to sht when the Knox virus occur and you're just a freaking burger flipper. Then you survive and become a unstoppable killing machine.

Fitness is the more better trait because it has so much utility + is slow to level up. You can keep fighting even after you escape the horde, keep running to escape for areas like Louisville or high density areas, etc. The extra strength makes Fire officer arguably one of the best because of how cheap and good it is out the gate.

Guns are very easy to level up. You just find a shotgun... that's it. You just herd them and stand still, you can hit a lot and level up super quick.
Basically unless you really really want to use guns, it is really not as useful as people say it is to go for Police officer or Veteran

Hotwiring cars is funny. Car keys are everywhere. The only issue is gas, but it is super easy to find keys in or around car parks in areas and you wouldn't have to hotwire at all. Stealth is nice, although it is not as good as people say it is as it is pretty inconsistent with sound, but it also is not the be all end all as often you will attract a horde or will be blocked in a lot of areas if you only stealth.

At least bring up every single counter to every skill instead of just sprinting lmao. At least the extra sprinting cuts down on mindless grinding.

Funny enough, you can just use a molotov cocktail instead of explosives. It has pushback and damage, just that if the objective is to kill a horde, you have a cheap solution that any occupation can do.

A repairman is at least A or even S, because it is thanks to this profession that an ordinary spear can become a formidable weapon in the fight against zombies and stands on a par with a machete.

Something interesting to consider, a single point in a skill in character creation will make it so that you gain that skill at a permanent 4x faster rate, from what I see in the wiki. Maintenance is such a ridiculously important but tedious skill that i think you really need to make sure grab at least one point either in profession or traits.

Repairman is the spear build more or less since you want to get to carpentry 3 for max health spears and you want as much and as fast leveling maintenance as possible due to spears being pretty flimsy.

Great list overall, the professions i typically choose most are repairman, lumberjack, and veteran, in no particular order. It really comes down to whether i feel like trying a spear, ax, or gun build respectively.

That said, there is a certain magic in beinga burglar to hotwire a vehicle and doing reverse donuts to wipe out a whole horde

one thing to keep in mind the list changes drastically in MP. With a group, focused occupations tend to be better than jack of all trades occupations since you will have teammates to cover things for you, and you cover things for them.

Nice one man! Good video. Keep them coming. It's good stuff.

Park Range incredibly increases your survival chance in CDDA mode. Engineer is useless, the bomb thing is just a more fancy way to burn things up.
I would pick burglar just for the nimble bonus.

If you take handy with repairmen you can grind a single level of carpentry and instantly be able to craft max condition crafted spears with +3 maintenance, that way you can become a zombie killing machine day 1.

"Your Phd means nothing in the apocalypse" nice one 😂