• Section Ia: About Me
  
• Section Ib: Objective
  
• Section Ic: Purpose
  
• Section Id: Preview Rationale

• Section IIa: Objective
  
• Section IIb: Tutorial
  
• Section IIc: Fundamentals
  
• Section IId: Hard Difficulty
  
• Section IIe: Career
  
• Section IIf: Progress

• Section IIIa: Objective
  
• Section IIIb: How To Find Your Playstyle
  
• Section IIIc: Fundamentals of Builds
  
• Section IIId: Teamplay
  
• Section IIIe: Mayhem Difficulty
  
• Section IIIf: Progress

• Section IVa: Objective
  
• Section IVb: Optimal Anxiety
  
• Section IVc: Advanced Strategies
  
• Section IVd: DS/OD Difficulty
  
• Section IVe: Becoming a Pro Player
  
• Section IVf: Conclusion

• Section Va: Builds

Before I start, I would like to introduce myself. I have been here since the beginning, even before the beginning of time if you believe that. I have experienced all that this game has to offer in its various states of updates. I became one of the best PD2 players in history, and then I took a step back, for a variety of reasons. However, with that said, I have trained thousands of other heisters, one on one, from all skill levels throughout the game's lifespan, and I had recently gotten back into the spotlight yet again after a hiatus from the game for 2-3 years. I have not only found new enjoyment, but I also found a new purpose. I want to create a guide, one that has never been made, that not only can serve as a beacon of hope for some, but takes a fresh and unique perspective despite potential scrutiny, with a new, and more modern approach towards becoming one of the best. Speaking of best, best of all? Anyone, no matter where you are on the spectrum of skill, can use this guide to improve as a player. The bar of entry is so low that you would think you would be escaping all the time during heists, but turning big gaps in the prison cell bars into smaller and smaller gaps will keep you in check.



I'm currently in a professional jazz band(non-disclosed for obvious reasons), and I have been in a few other professional bands as well. I've been playing saxophone for roughly 15 years, from starting clarinet for 2 years before moving on to alto saxophone as my primary. Towards the end of high school when I started to get noticed in the real world, I started to play Baritone saxophone, which opened so many musical opportunities for me both in college as well as where I am today. Most of my professional experience playing music in most bands are on baritone saxophone. I have had other playing experience with soprano as well as tenor saxophones.

I also have been training calisthenics for roughly 6 years, but I also do weight training as well as it pertains to my progress in calisthenics.

The reason why I mentioned both of these fun facts, is because my background even outside of Payday 2 has affected this guide in a way, that I like to see as positive, and at the very least, a new perspective on the matter. With two other different backgrounds that require extensive learning processes, I wish to provide that same quality of approach here, alongside how that overall influences the creation of this guide.

I see myself as ...a constant manifestation of hard work in the making if you will...

The goal of this guide is a simple one, in theory. This guide is designed to build up your skill level, help you become successful, even at the highest of difficulties, whilst also going above and beyond, the call of duty. Wait, that is a different game. Anyways...

Well I'll tell you why:

I decided to conduct an experiment by sampling over 3000 DS/OD guides. What did I find? Other than about ten guides, most guides fall into one of four categories:

• 1. Build Guides
  
• 2. Long/Technical Guides
  
• 3. Old Guides
  
• 4. Plagiarized guides

All formats of guides also have their own specific issues that I hope to address with the creation of this guide.

What specific issues you might ask? Well let's talk about it:



Just to be a bit more concise, I am not saying that builds guides within it of themselves are bad, but rather they do still have their place and value, it's just a matter of going over what build guides either might not specifically do, whilst justifying why I didn't create a main guide for the game by just using a purely build guide format.

1. Build guides have a "take it or leave it" type of approach. What does this mean? This means that you are not going to learn how to create builds yourself, but rather you'll learn how to be reliant on looking up other player builds instead. This is a behavior that is non-existent with pro play, as learning to make your own builds is a particularly important skill.

2. Builds can be made for certain circumstances that might not be in relation as to what you should be doing. Is it just the build, or are there other factors at play? Chances are, it is the ladder.

3. Build guides are often inflated with too many builds that play in either an identical or near identical manner. Not only does this cause redundancy, but if you do not like the framework in terms of the builds that specific creator likes to use, then you are simply out of luck. We do not need to see two, three, four, or even five of the same builds with just a skill change or two, and a single weapon change.

4. This type of approach warps our perceptions as to the concept of "a meta." Newsflash, pretty much no one at the pro level agrees with each other as to what the "meta" is. If you simply search for "the meta" and you just so happen to not play good with quote on quote "meta builds," you'll fall into the trap of thinking that higher difficulties are just not fair and we shouldn't play them just because you hadn't gone down the path towards finding what you like and what works best for you instead.

5. Players, as requested, based on my findings, want more than just top difficulty builds. I don't agree with this personally, however if I went against this sentiment, it would go against this guide. I'm including builds for every perk deck for not only top difficulty play, but also lower difficulty play as well in the future in a separate guide linked, which serves multiple purposes for the creation of this guide. This will also allow players a route to take in terms of transitioning between lower and higher difficulty play.

6. "Copying and pasting" builds is pretty rampant, which I personally am super against.


Before going in to this section, I feel that the definition of a "long guide" needs to be a bit more accurate. I don't simply mean "a guide that is long" but rather guides that take the approach of a technical spreadsheet or document with various info-graphics, data tables, etc... These guides, also, have their place in terms of the value that they provide, but these guides are typically for players that are already quite adept at the game, when my intentions are more so towards newer and less experienced players.

1. Long guides are overly long to where although the information is insightful and useful, ninety nine percent of the information provided you will never use.

2. Memorizing everything in a long guide is incredibly unrealistic, and so you'll basically need the guide right next to you at all times. This guide, based off its design and usability, is more so a guide in which doesn't require much memorization, that you can go through at your own pace, read certain sections at a time, etc...

3. To add insult to injury, long guides are simply a chore to use. Admittedly, so is this guide in its current state, but this will improve over time, as I value providing a user friendly experience that is based on overall community feedback, especially from more inexperienced or newer players.

4. Being completely overwhelmed by the amount of information presented is common practice with a long guide to where those types of guides aren't easily approachable.

Yes, this guide is quite long and depending on the definition could or could not fit under the same umbrella. ...That comes with the territory of having a substantially long guide...


Old guides can be quite the time machine, which believe it or not, can actually be useful in some context for certain players, but not due to following or using those guides today in the traditional sense. These guides, are also in today's world, more useful in a research or historical sense, compared to a practical use.

1. Old guides are simply outdated, based on older versions of the game.

2. Misinformation could potentially be mixed in to older guides for no fault of their own.

3. Some old guides are still popular and are still used today despite having known and agreed upon issues, even to a factual extent.


1. Guides that are made in this nature make the user questionable about the credibility of the author.

2. Guides often take chunks of other guides and mix in worse or random information.

3. Most authors admit it within their own guides, and simply move on. This can cause issues with the creation of other guides in the future.

4. Cheaters are becoming more rampant in this game as time goes on, and many of them copy other guides and claim it as their own.

How will this guide differ in function?

To add some illustrations to make this easier to understand:
This first image is typically how guides are designed. Although this isn't bad for anyone who is good at DW and are prepared to go into DS, most players are not even comfortable enough on DW to make the jump, let alone all of the other players that play the game that are not even within the category. Furthermore, these types of guides are typically marketed towards "beginners" but are designed at the same time against the target core audience, and are for instead more experienced players. This doesn't make those guides "bad" but rather their intended purpose is what ends up being flawed. It would be like trying to sail in a vast ocean, but you haven't even built a canoe yet, let alone a ship that can handle the rough currents ahead, which for any inexperienced sailor is no easy task. To add to this, the Q/A, tips, tricks, advice, etc... won't be applicable to every player based on their skill level, but only a select number of players within a specific part of the spectrum of skill and experience, meaning that much of the information might not even be relevant towards the target audience.

To add insult to injury, this can cause players to lose motivation quite quickly by taking too much at once to handle in relation to their skill level when most players are not ready for that particular guide.

Now what would happen if instead of this type of approach, I did this instead?:

description: X = player(s)

Well that is exactly how this guide will differ in function. Instead of learning, for example, how to drive a car by merging straight into 5 o clock heavy traffic on an interstate highway with its many lanes while using a GPS to take a long trip across the country, this guide will track from not even being in the vehicle at all, to becoming a master of driving a car to where you'll be solving your own dilemmas while becoming the best that you can be.

Now apply all of that to Payday 2.


Why don't you just make a build guide or a heist guide, or both combined into one guide and stop there?

I feel that in doing so, I would be providing an incomplete picture as to how the player progresses their own skill level at the game. Builds, I can't gauge progress in any sort of measurement that can be used nor would be useful anyways for the sake of mapping out progression outside of what I had already mentioned, and as for heists, after careful consideration, that is not a particular focus for this guide anyways just in terms of heists outside of "do easy heists then harder one's" are not much of a "developing skill" tool beyond that unless if it really starts to become overly specific to where you might as well just go for a heist guide instead.

What about KevKild and carrot? If you knew carrot almost a decade ago, why not get input from them or try to get into contact with KevKild?

1. I am not making a "KevKild" or "carrot" "inspired" guide, this is a wholly new type of guide with its own design philosophy. Those guides, are highly respected including by myself, are helpful for many people, and have their own purpose and reasoning. Guides can be made with various methods, whilst achieving the same end goals, but with that being said, it is a different way to go about things, and with that, even if that were to happen, I would have to ask myself whether that would preserve the overall vision for this guide in terms of what makes it different in the first place.


I don't think many PD2 content creators would be interested in the guide at all. ...I hope to provide a revolutionary experience..., but with that comes less viewing.

3. I would not gain anything from KevKild or carrot that would not just be within their own guides. I am not meaning to say this in a bad way by any means.

4. Is this just a guide for the sake of criticizing other guides?

No. Pure and simple.

5. Why don't you just join the PD2 discord and spread the news of the development of the guide?

1. There are very few guides that ever get promoted on PD2's discord.

2. The last guide to get promoted was from a couple to a few years ago.

3. PD3 is a thing.

4. I am in the PD2 discord, I just don't get anything out of being in the discord. I will say that I might try to post my guide onto the discord, but I don't currently need to ask for any additional information from the PD2 discord. Chances are, this will probably happen after the guide is created, not before.

6. Why are you designing the guide in a "macro to micro" type of approach, instead of the opposite, "micro to macro" like how other guides are designed?

The reason as to why I am doing this, is because most guides fall into considering certain aspects of the game, in their opinion, as fact, when I want to avoid this. The other reason is because this allows the overall picture of the guide to be much more seamless from a user experience, in comparison to feeling like the user is just jumping around in and out within the guide. In addition, this allows me to polish the guide via passes that I otherwise would not be able to do as efficiently or as effectively. By doing it this way, I can assure that the guide's overall bigger picture stays preserved instead of losing said identity via micro management of the guide. I also wanted to do this because it streamlines the workflow in a way to where I don't accidentally double down on something within the guide that I'm forced to keep. With this approach, it's pretty easy to undo or redo certain sections without completely ruining anything within the guide in the process.

7. Why are you not doing video formats and the like? This doesn't seem that approachable without videos.

This was based on feedback from newer players, who overwhelmingly hated video format guides, or guides that are designed in a manner that mimics a video format. There was also criticism from newer players that they don't like to get to a certain section of a guide, only to be linked a video. Even though there is considerations behind the scenes, this will most likely take place after the guide is all done.

Why is Deathwish, Death Sentence, and One Down grouped together within this guide?

I grouped this section together because players overwhelmingly struggle with the gap between Deathwish and Death Sentence, and in my perspective, a major flaw with many guides is that they never address this gap in a manner that would be productive, but rather exaggerate this gap instead by keeping these difficulties separate without making a deliberate effort towards actually bridging the gap. Furthermore, with the way that this guide is organized via its format, it also made perfect sense to do it this way.

Why is there subjectivity in this guide when it comes to weapons, skills, perk decks, etc... when other guides don't do this?

For starters, other guides do in fact do this, it's just a matter of opinion, but the other reason is that I don't want to sacrifice authenticity for just lying about what I think and losing trust within the audience. Furthermore, overwhelmingly from newer players, want to here my perspective within these sections, and I have to prioritize those players. I will say that with V2, there is a good chance this will be altered and changed.

Do you use mods? Are you going to over exploits, glitches, "cheats" that are mods, etc... After all, all pro players use mods.

I do not use mods, nor have I ever use mods. This guide is not about the use of mods.

With that out of the way, now onto the actual guide.

These are the very first goals that you should work on if you had just started playing the game

For all of these sections and the way that they work, these little excerpts provide suggestions in terms of some of the goals that you might want to have to look forward too towards the end of these sections. I didn't want these sections to be hard rules that you must follow, but rather a "light push" in the direction that you might want to go down at this point of your journey. Of course, if you simply feel comfortable enough to go to other sections without completing any or all that is listed, that is perfectly fine. When developing these sections, I initially had these sections in the opposite manner, one in which was rather loose and interpretative, but that lacked a sense of direction and specificity. But, I also understand now that doing the opposite lacks nuance and flexibility, so with that said, at some point, I was going to balance these sections out to have the best of both worlds so that it gives players different ways to be able to access the progress that they have made a bit easier outside of feeling like it has to be observational or direct:

• Complete the tutorial
  
• Learn the fundamentals
  
• Achieve the hard mask
  
• Complete the career
  
• Progress towards the very hard difficulty

The very first part of the game that should be completed is the tutorial. If you cannot complete the tutorial, then you probably won't be able to complete a heist at all.

Regardless this section of the guide is an in-depth tutorial... on the tutorial!

Now, I'm not going to tell you how to start the literal game. If you really need help with that, you're in Steam already, click on library right next to the store tab, scroll down to Payday 2, and click the green play button.

Congrats, you are now in Payday 2! But what should you do now?

The very first step is accessing the tutorial, so I am going to show you that now with some images:

Once you selected the correct tutorial, you should be at this screen. Once you are at this screen, press enter or click to check mark the ready box. This is how every heist in the whole game starts:

Congrats, you are now playing the actual game, and your spawn should look like the picture below. Simply follow the indicators presented here, circled in this image:

You'll probably get to this spot at some point, and you might get confused as to what to do, so I'll provide the path you're supposed to follow via fancy editing:

Now once you get here, there is no choice but to go loud, so be prepared to take out some enemies either by walking straight up to the guard, or by holding G to put your mask on as stated on the HUD:

Once you have taken out the guards by clicking the left mouse button, you need to drill the safe:

How do you drill the safe? By pressing and holding F:

The same can be said about repairing said drill. If a drill needs to be repaired, it will create a different noise followed by highlighting the drill yellow, with the screen on the drill being red:

While you wait for the drill, there might be more enemy spawns so be careful and continue following the tutorial instructions. While you wait for the safe to open, you can find this additional loot while you wait:

Once the safe is open, you can bag the loot by the instructions indicated:

Once you have the loot, now it is time to retrace your steps, taking out enemies, while going back to the van. If you get lost, which I find is hard to imagine, but anyhow, you can simply follow the indicators that were shown earlier.

Once you get to the van, press g to throw the bag. You would be surprised how many players don't know how to throw a bag but here you go, and the escape should unlock and look like this. Simply walk inside the escape box, in order to escape, and a job well done, you might see another screen calculating certain exp and cash and so on, and then you'll advanced to the next day by doing the same as starting the heist, by clicking or pressing enter:

So now you should be on day 2, also known as an escape day. In the tutorial, you have to do this, but for certain heists, escape days are RNG. Again as usual, you know the drill, start by again clicking or pressing enter:

You'll spawn in, however one of your heisters is down, so either you or one of your heisters needs to revive that heister:

Once that is taken care of, turn around and pick up the loot:

Now you need to go into the shop by unlocking this door by the indicated button:

Once you do this, behind the counter is extra loot, as well as a civilian. Civilians can be taken as hostage for a variety of benefits, but for now this is for the sake of the tutorial, as we'll cover some more information regarding civilians later in this guide. Once you find the hostage, shout at the hostage by pressing F and then use the corresponding button to take the civilian hostage:

Once you have done that, the civilian needs to be moved to a safe location. You can do so by standing the civilian up, and shouting at the civilian to come to your direction. This might take a few tries sometimes, but once you get the hostage into the backroom, you can use the same corresponding button to allow the hostage to lay on the floor. Once the hostage lays on the floor, and the assault wave is over, which we'll cover in more detail later in terms of how waves work, we'll then be given the option after a brief period of time, to be able to trade the hostage to release the specific heister from custody:

Once that heister is released from custody, you might be injured, wounded, etc... but you have medical supplies with you. To deploy the medical supplies, throw the bag of loot on the ground first, and then hold g while facing the ground, in order to deploy medical supplies and use them by holding the indicated button:

Once you do this, you might be able to make an escape, but while you do that, you're going to have to get out of the building first. However you can't do so via the front, so you'll have to go out the back. You can do so by shooting the wooden door, and you might have to lockpick another door just like the previous door:

Once you do this, you'll be able to go outside, but wait, a cop is climbing over the fence. Turns out, you can shout at cops too in order to take them hostage! This is actually an incredibly important skill to learn and remember that will be covered in more detail later:

Once you do that, follow the indicators up to the roof. You might see a shield, as well as snipers. We'll go over specific enemy types and how to handle them later, but for now, you can flank the shield pretty easily by just walking or running around them, and as for the sniper, simply shoot at the sniper to take them out. Once you do so, all you have to do is wait for the chopper and then bag the loot by throwing the bag into the back of the helicopter, and escape:

Now you might get to this point, and have no clue as to what to do. You can simply select a card by clicking the card that you want to choose for a special piece of loot:

We now have money, and money, can solve all of our problems...

Wait a minute...

Anyways, now that you have some money, and you leveled up, which granted you skill points, now it is time to invest said money on your own well being.

Wait what are we even talking about?

What we are talking about, is with regards to your own loadout, or "build." You'll hear the term "build" pretty much everywhere, so you'll have to get used to it.

I do want to show you what you could invest in:


Before I show these skills, let me introduce you to knowing how to change skill sets within a loadout. When you reach the lobby, select the inventory, then simply click the skills. Within the skill tree, press S.

Here, you can change your skill sets based on the selected profile. The profile, is simply under your loadout screen, left and right arrows to change profiles.

Now for the actual skills that I feel are worth investing in for almost every build:

Keep in mind that this is with the infamy bonus. After you reach level 100, you can go infamous, and this will allow you to be able to get skills before normally being able too with less skill points. Also keep in mind that these are just general recommendations. There will be far more specifics later in the guide.

Starting with the enforcer set of skills, resilience aced is a worthy investment, as not only do you get faster armor recovery rate by 15%, which is a net benefit for just a single skill point, but getting this skill aced allows you to reduce the visual effect duration of flashbangs by 75%, which is pretty significant for not that many more skill points. If you don't run this skill, getting a flashbang can essentially take you out of the game for quite a decent amount of time, enough time for the difference between going down or not going down. It does not sound like a big deal to be blinded and not being able to hear anything for a brief time, but trust me, this can make all the difference and it is indeed a big deal.

The other skill, only really requires basic, unless if you are using heavier armor builds, but bullseye allows for headshots to regenerate 5 armor for basic, or 20 for the skill being aced. This might not sound like a big deal, until you realize how armor regeneration works, and how a concept known as "armor gating" can occur, which is immensely powerful. I will not go into detail quite yet in terms of why or how this works in this section, but this is one of the most powerful skills in the game for not that big of a skill points investment that really benefits every build in the game.

Going into the ghost skill tree, really all of these skills are made for the sake of increasing your movement speed, which are always good in this game, as having a higher speed means that you have a chance of dodging and or getting to cover faster, among other things. Duck and cover basic allows your stamina to start regenerating 25% earlier and 25% faster, while also being able to sprint 25% faster. Parkour allows the player to gain 10% additional movement speed and 20% increase speed while climbing ladders, and second wind allows for an increase of movement speed by 30% if your armor breaks for 5 seconds, which can be incredibly useful in a clutch especially when you have no armor. I also recommend this skill because not too many players ace this skill, even though that could be a good idea, just because these days, most players run this skill already so it's pretty pointless to use it unless if you are really making a team oriented build.

Finally, the best skill in the game, nine lives aced. Basic allows for 50% bleedout health, which is already incredibly useful regardless, but getting this skill aced allows for an extra down, which is a massive advantage, especially as you get better at the game and go towards higher difficulties, for barely any skill point allocation. I also included martial arts basic just because it reduces melee damage from enemies by 50%, which makes a big difference. There is a certain movement strategy that requires not using this, but that is a very niche use case, and definitely not for beginners.

Eventually you can create your loadout to whatever it is that you want it to be. For right now, don't focus so much on anything build specific. This is a time to simply try out what the game has to offer, as even builds that are "just bad" are still going to work on the lower difficulties. Simply, whatever appeals to you, try it and see what you think. I will say that it is a good idea to compensate for shields, whether that be with throwables, certain weapon types, or ammo types.

Now that you have completed the tutorial, and know how to start the "build" making progress, now it is time to become ready to host or join lobbies for heists.

But wait a minute, I think its important to go over overall etiquette since this is a game in which you're going to be matchmaking with other players before going into the basic fundamentals on a gameplay standpoint.

Before continuing further, as a disclaimer:

Overall etiquette is going to be subjective. What I say is not to be taken as gospel, or what you personally have to do, this is rather, a suggestion. I also feel inclined to make this a section because players often complain about how "bad" the PD2 community is or how kicking or banning players should just not be a thing, when most of the time its simply a new player trying to join lobbies and ends up getting kicked and banned out of them, or it is experienced players that are simply disliked at large. This section has absolutely nothing to do with what I think about when someone kicks or bans a player.

Being someone that people like and that you have connections with will take you places, and that includes other heist locations with other players. Behavior is important, especially within online play, as if you have too many players kick and ban you, then you will not be able to play with others eventually. Part of the joy of this game is being able to just get matched with random players, and simply have a good time. With this in mind, I feel that there needs to be some sort of guideline to reference in terms of overall player etiquette.

• You must show common courtesy to other players. Simply be polite like you would in everyday life, and you'll be a polite, crime infested heister while you're shouting at the civilians and...
  
• Do not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, equal pay/compensation, genetic information, harassment, national origin, pregnancy, race/color, religion, retaliation, sex, or sexual harassment. This includes hate speech(abusive or threatening speech speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation)
  
• Respect other player opinions... Unless... Good luck trying not to break this rule.
  
• Payday 2 should bring us world peace with a secret society of heisters, not internet drama.
  
• Develop your self awareness, as the more self aware you are, the more likely you'll know how you act among other players. A heister that is unaware of one's self is going to really not be aware of one's self in game.
  
• Put yourself in other players' shoes. Everyone starts at one point.
  
• Develop good listening skills, as the better we can listen, the more we can conduct one's self better towards another player or others.
  
• Take responsibility for your own actions. Sometimes heists don't go as planned, and it might have been on you as a result. There is no shame in admitting it, and you might even be rewarded for doing so.
  
• Players like what they like to do, so don't force them to do something that they don't want to do.

• Always greet the heisters that join.
  
• Effectively communicate what it is that you are trying to do if you are trying to do anything specific, such as achievement hunting, stealth versus loud, experimenting with builds, making a guide, etc...
  
• You can kick or ban players, but do so sparingly and only as a final resort. You should not be kicking other players just because of their level or because of their build.
  
• If a fellow heister asks a question, answer it.
  
• Adapt to what others are doing, not the other way around.
  
• Communicate whether you are doing a heist stealth or loud.
  
• If you are in the middle of some type of puzzle, kindly communicate to other players that you have it handled.
  
• If you have never played a particular heist before, communicate that. More often than not, this can be a very good thing.
  
• Just because you are the host, doesn't mean that you are the leader of the group of heisters at hand. Sometimes that might not be the case.
  
• Try not to leave in game, as that will waste everyone's time.
  
• Do not do the infamous "kick right before completing a heist, or getting money or the extra loot card."
  
• Make sure you chose the right heist beforehand, and make sure to communicate if it is going to change,
  
• Check if the difficulty of the heist is okay both asking other players as well as in relation to your observation skills
  
• Do not wait too long to start a heist, or if you have to go afk, communicate that first

• Always greet the heisters.
  
• Ask stealth or loud as needed or if you are unsure.
  
• Ask if its fine to join in if it's stealth. Simply joining in could fail the host depending on the circumstances.
  
• If you have any advantages that the host does not have, utilize those advantages.
  
• Follow the overall host plan, with a few exceptions to the rule.
  
• If the host is doing something specific, follow what they say.
  
• If you join in, and there is some type of puzzle going on, don't do anything with it.

Aiming is a fundamental skill that, with improvement, can make a pretty big impact when it comes to overall player effectiveness. Before I go into the details with regards to how you can aim better, I want to stress something important:

• All enemies, including some special enemies especially, are much more weak to headshots due to the headshot multipliers, which generally increase the higher difficulty you go.
  
• Even though you will move up in difficulty eventually, enemies might become tankier, but their headshot multipliers also increase, thus headshots become more and more important.
  
• If your aim is still struggling, you can perhaps run body expertise as well as surefire aced. This allows for 90% of headshot bonus damage to apply to hitting enemies on the body(with SMG's, LMG's, Assault rifles or special weapons in auto mode), in combination with surefire aced, allowing for ranged weapons to pierce enemy body armor.
  
• Furthermore, this allows for increased ammo allocation, meaning that, you use less amount of shots to take enemies out, which in turn means you're using less ammo overall.
  
• This can also allow you to use other weapons that you otherwise would not have due to ammo efficiency issues, at least to a degree to where it actually makes a difference.
  
• When it comes to combat, you're going to be able to take enemies down faster at longer ranges, which is essential later on in your journey to become the best that you can be.
  
• There are also certain types of skills, that require headshots to utilize them in the game, such as graze or bullseye.
  
• Players often make the claim that their reaction times are not fast enough, but with improving aim comes increasing speed with aim, and thus better reaction times.

Regardless, I think I made a pretty good case for why improving one's aim is important, but I haven't described how exactly to do that, so here are some ways to improve your aim:

• Having a good mouse setup for you. Having a good quality mouse, that is optical and that supports enough of a pulling rate, as well as the proper sensitivity settings can greatly help with making your overall mouse input more accurate. Now, I'm not saying to just rush out and buy an insanely expensive mouse, and quite frankly it isn't needed these days, but having a decent mouse that you can change the DPI, that you find comfortable when it comes to its weight, as well as what the mouse provides you is all you really need to get the job done.
  
• A proper mouse pad allows a more even and more refined mouse movement pattern. Without one(and I recommend a large one that can compensate for the space needed to move the mouse) this might cause the mouse to still move fine, but be overall less even on your surface.
  
• Customizing your mouse sensitivity settings. I will describe this a bit more in detail in a second, but this allows for what feels the most natural to you in terms of how you aim, in comparison to say too high or too low sensitivity, which can affect overall accuracy.
  
• Actual practice, with software if you have it. Optional, but some players have reported great benefit from aim trainers.

I do want to elaborate on how to actually find the right sensitivity for you.


I decided to use bank heist(I used cash but whatever, you can do this on pretty much any heist, I just chose this one as random) in order to set the right mouse sensitivity for you.

Find a door way, I used the one at the back of the bank whereby the manager sometimes walks out of.

Look at the center of the doorway, and then move your mouse left and right.

Now, try to align the center of your screen with the edges of the door frame.

If you can move your mouse over and over again, and pretty much align the center of your screen with the edges of the door frame repeatedly, then that is what the right mouse sensitivity is for you.

If your mouse sensitivity is too high, then you might go over the edge and move your mouse too far.

On the opposite end, if you find that you can't move your mouse far enough, then it means that your mouse sensitivity is too low.


Now that you have found the right sensitivity for you, now you need to practice good mouse movement technique, as well as eventually improving accuracy:

In terms of mouse movement, different players move the mouse in different ways. This can depend on the type of grip you use for your mouse, as well as how much wrist versus forearm movement that you display. This is all a spectrum, so experiment with using more wrist or forearm technique, as well as different ways to grip the mouse in order to optimize mouse movements.

Then, once you do that and get comfortable with your new aiming technique, now it is time to improve it.

Set up a loadout that has one of your weapons with 100 percent accuracy along with as high of a stability as you can. You might have to invest in certain skills to increase your accuracy and stability, such as stable shot, steady grip, professional(with silencers), equilibrium(with pistols), etc... or within certain combat factors when it comes to other skills. Then, I want you to start any heist, and practice your headshots, ideally on lower difficulties if you find this easier. Then, at the end of the match, you can select one of the end match options, crew stats first, to see your overall accuracy throughout the heist. I did this for the sake of single player, just so you can directly see your accuracy, but if that is not the case, there is also your personal stats

After your accuracy is high enough, now I will give you something else to work on:

Increase your aiming speed, reaction time, and with longer ranges, over time whilst also maintaining a good accuracy stat that was previously built up, and you are well on your way to perfecting your aim.

As a bonus tip, instead of thinking about aiming towards a cop's silhouette, think about aiming towards face plates, helmets, goggles, etc... as for shields, which might be the trickiest, you can either spot the shield by pressing f, to reveal their outline(this works for all special enemies), or eventually as you become a better player, you can, over time, memorize this specific spot so that you'll always know where to shoot through if you have any weapon that can go through the shield's defenses itself.

Movement can be... a tricky concept in this game. Most guides tend to describe movement either in its most basic form, or describe it in a way that more so pertains to how cover works, and not so much movement. I am going to combine both movement and cover into one just because there is synergy between them:


You can walk, you can run, but you can't hide...

Well actually you can.

The real question... is when to run, when to not run, when to hide, etc...

Running is good to do for the following reasons:

Better cardiovascular and heart health, reduced risk of death, lower risk of cardiovascular disease, developing cancer, neurological diseases, healthier bones, better weight management, stress reduction, improved mental health...

Wait not in real life, in terms of the game:

• Running can be faster to get to cover
  
• Running allows being able to not get hit as much in relation to the same distance walking
  
• Running can allow you to get closer or farther away from enemies
  
• Running helps push objectives
  
• Running will allow a higher chance of being able to revive teammates
  
• Running can help get to equipment faster
  
• Running can help with messing with the game's AI...

Basically, there are plenty of benefits for running around, however, that does not mean you should make this crucial mistake that is pretty common.

• Although you can get to cover faster, that might not be the best option within a particular scenario
  
• Running can also get you killed if you just run out in the open with no thought behind it
  
• Being closer or farther from enemies has its pros and cons
  
• Pushing objectives is not a surefire strategy
  
• Running has a higher chance of you going down
  
• You might not be able to make it to where you need to go fast enough anyways
  
• The game's AI, if you are too far away, simply does not care

• Walking does not require stamina to use unlike running
  
• Walking can prevent you from running into a situation
  
• Walking can allow for more specific and calculated movement
  
• Walking allows you to access your risks better compared to running in the moment
  
• Walking allows for being able to peek out of cover and back in cover
  
• Walking allows you to be able to carry any loot in the game versus only being able to run with certain types of loot
  
• Walking will help you keep close to your own AI and your teammates

• Taking cover allows for a guaranteed way to start to regenerate armor, or health
  
• Taking cover can allow you to re-access your own strategies
  
• Cover can be used in your favor
  
• Cover can be used to traverse a heist
  
• Cover can be used to break sight lines
  
• Cover can be used to flank the enemy
  
• Cover can be made... wait what? We will discuss this in a later section.
  
• If worst comes to worst, you can hold your ground

• Walking is slower
  
• You are more prone to getting hit walking
  
• Certain movement strategies require running. There is more on this later in a different section.
  
• Sometimes, inaction can fail you
  
• You might not be able to get away from danger
  
• You can get stunned more easily
  
• You restrict your overall combat output
  
• You might get stuck in a certain section of a heist

• Taking cover in certain ways might not allow for armor regeneration
  
• Taking cover might be the worst strategy in a given scenario
  
• Cover can sometimes work against you
  
• Cover can trap you in a part of a heist
  
• Cover can funnel the enemy in a direction that you otherwise would not like
  
• Cover can attract the enemy to come towards you
  
• Cover in certain setups can still be vulnerable to enemy attack
  
• Certain types of cover can be destroyed
  
• If worst comes to worst, you get overwhelmed and overran

Let's start off with this:


Based on the heist, based on you, based on your teammates, based on the enemy, based on the cover that you can use, based on what objectives you have, based on what special enemies are present and where, etc... Movement in this game is ever changing in its context as to be able to excel at great player movement.


I think most players tend to overthink the complexity of movement that this game has to offer. Do not worry, there are other various movement strategies that are going to be later in another section, but having this sense of "I'm overwhelmed" is the very reason why this "movement dilemma" exists in the first place. You have probably seen this before, as it is pretty common among beginner level players, and even intermediate skill level players, whereby they join a heist that is probably too hard for them, and within less than a minute, they end up in custody after panicking and moving around randomly to no avail. As you get better at overall movement:


Instead of thinking "Oh no what do I do? I guess I have to run down the list of every option," think to yourself "Oh no what do I do? Maybe I should run, take cover, fight" and leave the rest of the details to intuition.


When your movement fails you, don't ask yourself what, but why. Building your own intuition when it comes to movement might be the most important aspect out of all of this. At the end of the day, you're not going to learn anything from reading scenarios or random examples, only experiencing more and more situations yourself. As the difficulty rises, movement becomes ever more important, to where by the time you get to the highest difficulty, the slightest error in movement can make you lose an entire heist. Of course this requires building yourself up to such standards, but its important to understand that no matter what you can learn, if you cannot apply it, it is completely useless.


You need to understand the contexts that surround you in combat, streamline your decision making process when it comes to movement, simplify, not overly complicate, and build up your natural intuition.

• As you improve and become better at combat over time, pay close attention to when you go down and why, as well as what happens to you when you choose a way to move as the player.
  
• Try and not overly complicate movement to where it becomes impossible to understand or too specific as to not be applicable during real play
  
• At the same time, when deciding what to do within a given moment, access the situation and then try what is most simple. Chances are, it's the correct answer, followed by more specifics here and there
  
• Build your intuition over time to where you will eventually be able to make the right decisions with upmost accuracy.

This all applies.

I deliberately wrote this section to come off as confusing as possible in order to put yourself in a player's shoes to then dial it back towards the end to come back to reality, to have a breather. ...With thousands of possibilities to experiment with... this concept is pretty hard to convey into few words.

Now is time to introduce the first layer of special enemies in the game. The reason as to why I am doing this now, is so that you'll be ready to start to get used to hard difficulty, along with, its first introduction to certain specials. This is not going to refer to all specials, as that will be in their own separate sections in relation to difficulty scaling, but I wanted to highlight and recap on some of the specials that you have already encounter, along with a potential new one.

Snipers: You have already seen them in the tutorial. A sniper is typically far away from the player, although that is not always the case, taking shots from afar, taking shields away or even some health alongside it with a single shot. This makes snipers incredibly dangerous. Snipers however, have laser sights that give their location away, their rate of fire is pretty low, and with most weapons, shooting at snipers should not be that hard to pull off. Sometimes their vantage point gives them an advantage to shoot you from unexpected angles, so make sure that you are aware of that at all times. Snipers should have a lot of priority for right now to take out first before other enemies, in relation to the next two specials anyways.


Shields: you have also probably seen them. You guessed it, they are the cops that are holding... shields. These shields help block incoming fire from you both for them and their comrades. This might seem like an enemy that could cause a lot of trouble, but shields are honestly the weakest specials in the game. If you have anything remotely armor piercing, you can just shoot at them in relation to where you think their head is going to be behind the shield. If you do not have any means to be able to pierce through the actual shield itself, it's pretty easy to strafe around in a circle and take out the shield. If even that were to be too hard, you can always apply other skills that will also benefit you in terms of taking out shields, not only in terms of armor piercing, but also when it comes to stunning the cops themselves, to let them drop their guard.

The most interesting, and decently hazardous type of special, tasers. Tasers can stun the player until they go down. While they go down, your weapon is going to fire pretty uncontrollably, in which you can still fight the taser with that going on. There is a way to tell if they are going to stun you, and that is that you will hear a sound that is like the startup of a bug zapper. There are also additional skills that you can run to compensate and even negate going down due to getting tased.

There is another variant of the shield as well as the sniper, but that can wait to be covered for now.

But let's talk about something very interesting, managing health and armor.

You might think it is as simple as "just go to cover" but you will be heavily mistaken.

Let's talk about armor first:


Armor, both when it comes to its overall amount, as well as overall regenerative speed are both aspects of managing armor, in that when you have more armor, you are able to take more "hits,"(much more complicated specifics later in the guide) as well as be able to regain your armor back faster.

However that is not the end of the story.

Perk decks can also help with making armor overall stronger, mainly perk decks that boost the amount of total armor, or adjust the way that the armor regeneration actually works.

But there is one more trick here:


What everyone has been waiting for, the infamous "armor gating" term.

Well I'll tell you, but first I need to explain how armor works in this game.

The way that armor and health get calculated in this game is that, both are treated as two separate total amounts, meaning that armor is treated as its own thing, as is health. So, if you have a certain amount of armor, let's say 200 as just a theoretical example, and say you get hit with 250 damage, again theoretical. If that 250 damage is separated into chunks of say 50, you would think:

hit, hit, hit, hit, then lose health with the last hit.

This is technically true assuming that all the hits are hits, but that is not where I am going with this.

What if we took the same total again, 200, and say we got hit with 250 damage all in one shot, what would happen?

You would assume, all armor is gone and you lose 50 health, however that is 100% not true.(except for snipers).

What would happen in this scenario, is that you will lose your armor, but none of your health.


This happens because of what I have said previously, because armor total and health total are separate entities.


Man if only there was a skill that was described earlier in this guide, that would allow to gain the tiniest bit of armor with a headshot...


So if you activate bullseye by getting a headshot, and then get hit with a massive amount of damage again...


And if there is no health damage, and if you get hit again...


It creates a cycle of, getting hit and losing your armor, killing an enemy with a headshot with the bullseye skill, then gaining that tiny sliver of armor, then getting hit again, then getting another headshot kill again, rinse and repeat. It essentially creates this cycle whereby you can continually get hit over and over again without losing health.

Speaking of health:


Health, similar to armor, can be maintained with perk decks and skills, in that certain perk decks can give more health, or health regeneration, as is skills.

You can also use doctor bags or first aid kits in order to gain health back.

There are however clear distinctions between the two.

Doctor bags, have less charges, however...

Doctor bags can regenerate your downs

This is a very important distinction because although you have less charges, you can have more downs overall.


But, you can also make a case for first aid kits too in that first aid kits have more charges, so if you are not going down but want to constantly heal, that would be the superior choice.

There are also certain other skills that pertain to both that will be described later in detail, that would also change your decision as to whether to use FAKS as we like to call them, or medic bags as us old school gamers like to call them, as well as Dallas.

Managing ammo is more complicated than it may seem, but here me out.

Yes, you can certainly have a loadout in which this is not even remotely a problem, however that might limit your options, and I am all about keeping your options open... Wait uh...

Let's start with the fact that, generally speaking the lower damage your weapons do, the better ammo efficiency, and the more damage they do, the lower ammo efficiency.

This is obviously to balance the game of course, but this is the first way to manage how much ammo you have, not even being in a heist yet. If you struggle when it comes to certain weapons having really bad ammo efficiency you can either switch it out for another weapon, or you can get additional skills that increase your ammo pickup, as well as total ammo.

The second aspect, ties alongside controlling recoil, similar to the aiming section, and that is not only having good aim, which if you have gotten this far in the guide, you should have already read that section, but in addition to that, controlling recoil by tap firing. Having a sense for how many bullets it takes to take down a specific enemy, is actually a really good idea to remember, because you could be saving yourself some ammo in the process.

I do not recommend just, getting a massive weapon stat table and memorizing the exact, per box or whatever pickup. That to me, just seems way overly complicated and unnecessary.

What I would do is simply choose the weapon that you want to figure it out with, on whatever difficulty you're playing, and to run a quick experiment by using a test enemy during the heist, to be able to roughly estimate how many bullets it takes to take them down. Then, simply get used to that amount of bullets.


Then do it based on the time of the burst. It's not going to be exactly perfect, but this is another way to be able to get a quick calculation on the fly.


I do not feel that is necessary to calculate just because, for example if a player were to run "crits" for example, more on this later, that is based on chance, and not an absolute 100% guarantee. The other reason is because those skills are additive at the end of the day, and so when they do occur, it's only just a better result of a result that you already have. If this is really a concern for you, then yes go and figure out the amount of bullets or rate of fire time duration with whatever skills activated, it will just be a more complicated calculation and another variable to remember when it comes to managing your overall ammo.

The third aspect is figuring out more optimized ways to take specials down, mainly whether it is shields, dozers, medics, etc... which are going to be in other sections.

The fourth aspect, is understanding when to come out or not... from cover. Again, there is a skill that helps with this by increasing your ammo pickup range, but similar to learning about overall movement, one of the aspects of movement of course, is when to take cover, but you also have to learn, perhaps when to take a chance and not take cover, for the sake of quickly grabbing ammo.

Managing hostages is fairly easy.

Simply move the hostages into a safe area whereby you do not think cops are going to go. There are plenty of chances to get civilians, and there are even more chances of taking cops hostage as well, as previously mentioned. The only aspect that I think you do have to compensate for, is that hostages can be a bit finicky, in that sometimes the hostages will just flat out not listen to you sometimes if you try to move them into a specific location. The other aspect is of course, defending the hostages using whatever means necessary. Admittedly in Payday 2, civilians themselves are not really that great, and most players tend to gravitate towards taking cops as a hostage simply because:

• You can always do that versus not all the time
  
• You can convert a cop that not only will still act like a hostage, but fight on your side and stay close to the player when possible.

Those two reasons alone, make civilians not really that useful in terms of prioritization, at least not in Payday 2. Having another cop to aggro other cops towards it, and not you, and take them down alongside that, is a huge, gigantic, massive benefit to converts, and you can still gain the benefits of converts being counted as hostages too.

The other reason, is that you do not need additional resources at all to maintain converted cops, in comparison to civilians in which you might need to adjust your build to defend them adequately.

Once you are not having to worry about simply completing a heist, you could go for extra loot, which means even more money and exp. There are many types of extra loot in the game that you need to be able to recognize, as some loot is super easy to get and will only be worth it even more knowing what extra loot can look like.

But first things first.

As requested:

First, here is the build. This is purely a demonstration build. Yes, this might seem a bit redundant to include, but for any newer players that might want a sample build or had a request for one, here you go. This is mainly a stealth build by the way, and not so much a loud build. This guide as you'll know, is purely based in loud play, so this example of a build isn't really applicable to the guide in that sense and is again for demonstration purposes:

I know that it's redundant ...featuring builds... as requested, but at this point, I don't even know if a player knows anything about builds at all, and because it was requested, I'm keeping it in even though it is redundant.

One of the different types of loot, is safes. Safes look like this, and you can either drill them like any other bank vault, or with the right skills, such as the one in this example build, you can lockpick the safe if you really wanted too. Shape charges are also an option. With this build, I did not create the build to be able to use shape charges, but I did make it to be able to lockpick this safe. If you are wondering, those symbols on the safe mean precisely that, so if you get confused as to how to open a particular safe or any other object for extra loot, look out for the symbols that are on the object, as shown here:

After you have learned to open safes, there are ATMs. ATMs are a little tricky to open but I'll show you where exactly to saw.

If you really do not want to use the saw, with the right skills, you can actually use an ecm to open it by simply placing the ecm where the game tells you too, but you might be in a situation whereby you do not have an ecm, whether you are doing stealth or loud. Take out your saw and position it like the image here. This should be between where the door would actually open and close:

After sawing this spot, the ATM should open to expose four corners, each with a little saw symbol on them. This is where you should saw:

After you saw those four corners, the ATM should look like this, and you should be able to get the extra loot out:

After that, there might be some other loose loot items floating around, which just like the tutorial, simply pick up by pressing the corresponding button.

There are also other cash boxes under cash registers or counters, which are just pressing the corresponding button to open, and to then press the button again to get the extra cash.

Other than that, that explains most of the extra loot. There are more types of loot shown in game, but these other types of loot are easily explainable on their own due to their similarities, or they might be exclusive loot that requires certain spawns, as well as other methods for unlocking entirely. I would argue that this is almost a different type of loot entirely. These might include making the loot yourself, or some sort of secret loot. This alone covers basically all the normal loot you will come across in the game, with a few exceptions.

At this point, you should be completing normal heists as if they are a piece of cake from Portal, but now you are going onto, hard difficulty.

Honestly hard is barely any different in comparison to normal. The main difference is what we have discussed earlier already, the specials that I covered, which you should know quite a bit about at this point. Other than that, more sniper and shield spawns by a tiny amount, and weirdly enough a couple of the bosses getting a tiny bit stronger, the difference between hard and normal, besides the inclusion of the special enemies, is barely anything at all, and to top it off, you also get additional loot and exp.

The number one aspect of getting used to hard mode, is getting used to dealing with the special enemies, and you're pretty much golden the rest of the way.

Furthermore, I would recommend you start to work on your difficulty masks. If you are within this section, I would either go from lowest to highest difficulty, or start where you might consider the game "slightly too easy" and work up from there. That way, you can establish a clear goal early on while you are continually going through this guide, while also being able to have a way to track your progress.

I would also recommend you start with easier heists, to then progressively harder heists. I will have a list in three categories towards the end of the guide for this information.

The career is essentially the "story mode/campaign" of the game. The reasoning as to why I think this is a good idea to complete at this stage of the guide, is because the overall difficulty, being from normal to very hard, makes sense for it being in this section of the guide. Now, I am not going to walk you through the entirety of the career mode, that is up to you to play through, plus, this is the time in which you should really start to learn yourself when it comes to the many heists of Payday 2. I will however, show you how to actually find the career mode and play it. From the menu, there should be a tab, titled "career mode" that you should be able to click on to access this screen:

If you have done the following, then you are ready for the next portion of this guide:

• Complete the Tutorial
  
• Learn the Fundamentals
  
• Achieve the Hard Mask
  
• Complete the Career
  
• Progress towards or reached the Very Hard Difficulty

• Learn how to find your playstyle
  
• Learn the fundamentals of builds
  
• Basis of teamplay
  
• Achieve the mayhem mask
  
• Progress towards the deathwish difficulty

Before we discuss anything with regards to finding your own playstyle, we must first go over traditional methods to finding your own playstyle, as well as what works and what doesn't work, as it pertains to why the next sections are made in the way that they are. This section is currently in the works, as part of a restructuring process.

There are mainly two common approaches that are typically seen in guides in terms of how to find your playstyle:

1. Looking up Build Guides, searching or finding random builds online, etc...

2. Trial and Error, creating your own builds, but with what would be seen as complete randomness.

Although these two common approaches are not necessarily bad, let's go over both the good and bad of these typical approaches.

Looking up Build Guides and the like has been shown, or at least eluded too, getting insight as to being able to look into the process of someone else creating a build, learning aspects of optimization that you might have not realized or known, as well as giving you an option to simply try a build out, and if you like it you like and if you don't you don't.

In terms of what is bad about this approach is essentially asking "what are you really pulling information wise that would actually aid you towards creating your own builds, versus just, finding the build and simply copying the build and calling it a day." In theory, this sounds nice, but in practice, it doesn't pan this way.

Part of the process towards creating my own guide(s) is precisely describing the testing that I do for validating builds. Do most or almost all build guides do this? Nope. What about describing in detail either in another attachment or within the guide in terms of their own logic in terms of making their builds better based on what a perk deck provides, skills, weapons, etc... Guess what? Almost no build guides do this either. The vast majority of build guides, simply list the builds, and that's it, perhaps providing some information when it comes to "well you can change this for that" but that's about it. Furthermore, these builds might not be made for your current situation or might not be applicable to you in relation to where you are player skill wise.

This approach can be very "take it or leave it" but what about pure trial and error?

The major pro of trial and error, is that you're actually engaging in the learning process, you're allowing yourself to learn more about the game on a level that you simply can't by just looking up YouTube videos or guides, and you'll also feel more inclined to make tons of changes to your own builds.

The major problem with this, is that it can feel pretty aimless towards players that haven't had a lot of experience creating their own builds. This tends to lead to players gravitating towards very few builds of similar playstyles when this approach should be doing the exact opposite, and you might be just spinning your own wheels at the end of the day in an ever process of figuring out how to make a certain build(s) work.

That is why I have my own method that I believe is not only a third solution, but an even better solution that takes the pros of both approaches.

This is because towards the beginning of overall player skill development, normal and hard do not need "optimized" builds, or really any build for that matter, but in addition to this, I want you, the player, to be trying a lot when it comes to your loadout already, in order to build that behavior, since that is needed for both this section as well as the advanced portion of this guide. I also did not want to introduce this later, mainly because you can make builds for lower difficulties in comparison to the highest difficulties. By the time you are playing deathwish or death sentence, you should already be aware in terms of how to make builds, as well as what you like versus not like in relation to your own goals and objectives provided. Getting to that point, is more so about specificity and not in the general sense, which should be approached first.

When it comes to having a great foundation as a player. You cannot properly build a foundation without an understanding of the proper tools. You can't build a house without a foundation, and you can't build a foundation without the proper tools. You can't learn the nuance of how much pressure to use when using a hammer on a nail, a screw driver, a drill, etc... if you don't even know what the tools are in the first place. Although you might have the mindset of building a dream house, that is a much more complicated goal to have during this moment that requires further understanding beyond just the basics of fundamentals of building a house. Now switch all of that out with Payday 2 and builds and you get a general sense of what is happening.

Without understanding of the selections of perk decks, weapons, skills, etc... you can't put more advanced principles into building your overall skill as a player.

If you don't understand why you're using a certain perk deck over another, or a specific skill and its usage, specific use cases for choosing one weapon over another, etc... You will not be able to make a proper base of understanding that warrants personal growth later on if you fall into earlier pitfalls or have factors of your own personal development being at the forefront. This only pushes away the other nuances of higher level play in a way that artificially blocks the player from being able to utilized aspects of the advanced section. If you're barely able to even survive later on as the difficulties go up, how are you even supposed to utilize other forms of advice or tips that require great survive-ability as a given or understandings of game mechanics that otherwise the developing player would be either unaware of or simply not prepared for?

Because at the end of the day, most of these choices ultimately don't matter if at the end of the day you can make almost everything successful, at least by the time you complete this guide.

If that is the case, why is it that certain types of builds are in fact popular? Well it is precisely because it is a popularity game, which no fault to their own, by other Payday 2 creators, for the sake of "more views/subscribers = that's the best/right one" and it doesn't help that many have also collaborated with each other, which again no fault to their own, but that does affect the overall "agreed upon" consensus as an unnatural one, plagued with "everyone and everything being on the same page."

But furthermore, for the sake of optimizing overall progress in player skill, one must not be tempted towards particularly popular builds, as of yet at least, as those builds are typically also designed not towards the player during this stage, but for later, sometimes in ways that are worse for lower difficulties to some extent. You have to be smart when it comes to how you overall progress as a player as too not take too much on, without a reliable system of logic, nor with the appropriate strategies or plan. As one would say, "the meal is not the spice."

Rather than thinking of a choice as good or bad like many might push, think of it like "is it appropriate with regards to what I want in terms of my own goals, my strengths and weaknesses in terms of where I am developmentally speaking(whether to further strengthen your strengths, or to find your weak points that might be holding you back and addressing those weak points), as well as what you have tried or what experience you have."

Given that you are comfortable with the game to a point whereby you can play the game, almost to the average difficulty, you have experience playing plenty of heists, or all of them, and you are wanting to progress towards the middle of the road, or average difficulties, I feel like now is the appropriate time to introduce how to find your own playstyle.


The biggest flaw of this approach is that you, the player, do not learn how to make your own builds, but rather draw inspiration from others in terms of their methodologies, without exploring your own. This of course comes with its own issues including:

• Trying "meta" builds, only they do not work either for you, or for your own goals.
  
• Assuming that there is something wrong with the game because the "best" builds "are bad."
  
• Not understanding the inner workings of builds as to be more successful with them.
  
• Feeling like you are not playing the game the way you want too.
  
• Not potentially discovering a build that works even better.

In addition to all of this, you are going to have to save these builds, and sometimes through infamies, you can lose these builds. You can save builds and build guides, but who wants to do that?

You might also run into situations later in which you would want to run a different build but can't because you are too reliant on just one specific build for everything. This will be later addressed in the advanced portion of this guide, but generally speaking, players that rely on build guides or looking up builds tend to run into this issue of feeling like their build might only work in certain circumstances and feeling like that makes their build "bad" when in reality, it might not be bad at all, but rather you should simply make more builds in reserve that you can quickly switch out too right before a heist.

Going over the inner workings of builds is important, but that will be in the last portion of this guide, as this section is more so how you go about discovering what it is that you like to use.

Why? This will lead into, playing the way that you want and what to you is good to use, while also being able to discover whatever builds that you want to use, to be able to do anything that the game offers you.



First, is identifying what the first step is when creating a build, since this is brand new territory for anyone that is reading this.

I recommend two "first steps" when creating your build. That being:


Now, there is arguably a third option, that being "melee," but this is rather niche, but that can also be argued to be considered "building around a type of weapon." I am also creating this in a way that does not cause confusion as well as being as simple as possible.

I would recommend choosing a perk deck to build around first, and then think about weapons afterwards, but if you really want too, you can build around the weapons you're using and then try different perk decks to see what works well with what weapons are selected.

Either method is fine, but this is my guide, and I am going to be providing my own personal method that has worked for thousands of players over the years. First, we need to look at the current model that the game has to offer.


This is the current model from Payday 2 in terms of figuring out what perk deck to use.

Now, I have a lot of problems with it, so much so that I decided to make another infographic using fancy image editing:

You see this? This makes absolutely no sense.

Let me explain everything wrong with this model.

• We do not need a stealth model, at least not for this guide.
  
• Some of the categories do not make sense to begin with, such as "covert" and "versatile."
  
• Some categories are up to interpretation.
  
• To further emphasize, many of these perk decks fall into multiple categories.
  
• This does not account for any of the unique differences that the perk decks offer.

This is my own method and model, shown in this info-graphic. It's not perfect, but it gives a general idea as to what I envision:

Now, how do I use this model?

The three starting points that I recommend, are all on the top of each section, Health, Armor, and Dodge. The reason as to why is because not only are you learning more of the fundamentals of play this way (that being health, armor, and dodge) but by doing this, you can also decide what to move on too depending on what you already like, as well as what to try next. These perk decks are also very easy to understand and use, alongside having a decent amount of flexibility. You are not going to have an incredibly confusing time figuring out what works best for you this way, and best of all, everything shown in this model connects to not just another perk deck, but another playstyle(s).

Of course, after figuring this out, then comes the narrowing down, general to specific, macro to micro.

I'll use a very long example:

Let's start on the Muscle perk deck. Let's say you use it, and don't like it. If that's the case, then move on to either Armorer, or Rogue.

If you like it, and see nothing wrong with it, then stay with it and figure out more builds with that perk deck. Once you do that, or if you choose Muscle, and say you sort of like it and sort of don't like it, then you can move on to the following:

Health plus team element? Tag Team
Health but with getting ammo? Gambler
Health but faster health regeneration? Grinder
Health, but become a tank? Stoic
Health but Armor as well? Crew Chief

Then, you can branch off from there into other perk decks or stick to those choices. Every deck connected will have some sort of similarities between them, as well as differences for the purpose of being able to transition into other perk decks to specify and really pinpoint exactly what you want to use.

I am not going to go into every single example in this section, but in the V2 sections when those come to fruition. I'll provide one more example just for explanation.

Say you are on Gambler, and you like having additional health regeneration but you do not like the method of collecting ammo to do so. If that is the case, you can either try to use another teammate with Tag Team and give that a try, or you can try getting health regeneration by doing damage with Grinder.

Before discussing anything perk deck, weapon, or skill related, I want to highlight this section as this is a precursor and precaution to these next sections.

Many players, most actually, will assume that there is some secret hidden "meta" in the game. That the "meta" is this or that, or that the "meta" is required for successful play.


Truth be told, and yes I'm calling it the truth, in accordance with pro players at the top of high level play at least,
Now there might be popular or unpopular opinions when it comes to what is or isn't the "meta" however this should not be treated or equated as fact.

I see this in many guides, whereby they declare through different means, such as a tier list, opinionated sections, or are intertwined with supported evidence via facts but to come to different conclusions, as "this is the meta" but I want to make it clear that not only do I think this is bad, but this can even be misleading or result in spreading of misinformation.


At the end of the day, you don't have to agree with me, at all in fact, but guess what? Most players, don't agree with each other or have come to their own consensus' in some way shape or another.


I believe that this approach can cause many issues for the player as previously mentioned and highlighted already.

Without further of do, on to these specific sections.

As requested, many felt "why not go the extra mile and link the perk decks to the previous model" and this to me was an excellent idea. For starters, perk decks that would be compared are going to more closely relate to each other, similar to my model. Rather than a "this is better than this" type of approach like any other guide, the focus would be on differentiation instead in order to guide you towards what you like. I also think that this would be a better approach towards expressing my own perspective as well, and best of all, you can also get a much more in depth use, and demonstration, of selecting the perk deck that you want to select based on the model that I have presented.

The most important fundamental aspect of a build is the perk deck. I know that some would argue that it's skills or weapons, but this is typically the most common starting point for creating builds.

I already showed how to determine what perk deck you might like to use, but I also wanted to provide more context here in terms of what the perk decks do in practice. I am going to keep with the theme of the previous model, whilst providing my own perspective on each perk deck.

Crew Chief, despite being the default perk deck and ignored by most, is one of my personal favorites, main reasons being, you can get additional hits to your armor and your health, then further with added resistance, and to top it off the team benefits are also great.

• You gain more armor and health that is beneficial and can be added upon. This can benefit almost any armor choice.
  
• You also gain resistance to top it off, while also giving some team passive bonuses.
  
• You can utilize this deck as both an individual as well as a team-oriented approach.
  
• One of few perk decks that is good when it comes to team bonuses, both when it comes to overall resistance as well as gaining health and stamina.

A solid baseline beginner option into the health-oriented perk decks. Despite other health oriented perk decks existing, this deck still stand out on its own for its simplicity. One downside is that if wanting to use armor on higher difficulties, you have to invest in more additional skills, and be stuck within a certain range of effectiveness.

• You get more health.
  
• You get health regeneration.
  
• You also get the ability to spread panic if your threat is high.
  
• On lower difficulties you can run armor with this, but on higher difficulties it's not recommended.
  
• Health regen is slow.

Another perk deck that is a baseline beginner option. This is another personal favorite due to its high versatility.

• You gain extra armor.
  
• The most versatile option.
  
• You get 2 seconds invincibility when your armor gets depleted every 15 seconds.
  
• You still retain normal armor regen speed.

Rogue to me, is mid despite being the baseline for dodge. Despite the highest dodge stat, there are no additional benefits unlike other dodge decks.

• A versatile deck for dodge.
  
• There is armor piercing with this deck, but it's only 25%, and weapon swap speed is increased by 80%, but these bonuses are barely noticeable.
  
• What makes rogue a hard sell, is that although you get the most dodge stat, Rogue doesn't offer anything else in comparison to other dodge decks.

Crook is one of my least favorites due to the sacrifices needed to use it both when it comes to skill allocation as well as other available options that make using Crook not bad but redundant.

• You have armor plus dodge.
  
• The dodge stat is either 35% with HBV, or 45% with LBV.
  
• Using the HBV option results in trading a hit of health for a hit of armor, not an additional hit.
  
• Using an LBV is just a worse version of other deck choices with a 10% armor recovery rate, which is barely noticeable.
  
• Statistically speaking, it isn't worth either trade off, especially with the skill point expense.
  
• Other perk deck choices are more enticing, and don't require sacrifices or compromises.

Ah, I need a medic bag. I have quite the history with Crook. It's truly something. ...I might be currently working on something quite large... when it comes to the V2 revamps, but regardless to this day, I still have every once in a while conversations about nothing but my dislike of Crook.

A fun choice even if it isn't good. It does outshine Yakuza.

• The akimbo bonuses are nice.
  
• The 1.5 second armor regeneration is generally good.
  
• There are no other bonuses.
  
• You'll essentially be a glass cannon.

I actually like Burglar. It's mid, but there are interesting uses with this deck outside of stealth.

• You get 45% dodge.
  
• You get the less targeting chance while crouching standing still.
  
• Increase to your armor regeneration speed by 20% while crouching standing still.
  
• You can pick locks faster by 20%, which does come in handy for certain heists.
  
• Despite the bonuses actually being useful, there is one caveat, "while crouching standing still" being a requirement for most of its bonuses. Still this happens often enough during normal play.
  
• Great for hybrid stealth loud builds.

I prefer infiltrator to sociopath even though I think they are equally good.

• You get the extra resistance except for long ranges.
  
• You can gain 20% health with any melee attack every 10 seconds.
  
• The cooldown is not an issue given the type of playstyle.
  
• Snipers are a major threat.

The other melee option with some unique benefits.

• This deck gives you extra health and extra armor.
  
• You have the panic ability.
  
• Instead of 20% health, you get 10% along with 30 armor, but every 1 second instead.
  
• The cooldown is faster, however this requires a more aggressive playstyle, alongside another factor.
  
• You do get the option to armor gate, but with that comes its risks.
  
• It's slower to regain enough health back to take another hit.
  
• You must be aggressive with a passive play style to make this work, which some players might struggle with.
  
• You must kill the enemy and not just strike an enemy to receive the 10% health and 30 armor.

Gambler is great as a team-oriented selection, but it isn't so good when it comes to the individual.

• You gain 20% health from ammo boxes.
  
• Being able to heal teammates 10% is a bonus as well as having them pick up 50% ammo from an ammo box you picked up.
  
• There isn't any bonuses to health or armor.
  
• A big issue is the 3 second cooldown to heal.
  
• You might have to compromise cover to get ammo.

Grinder is all about health regen, and it adopts a more aggressive, but strong, playstyle in contrast to other health oriented solutions.

• 40% more health.
  
• You heal 4 life points every 0.3 seconds for 4.2 seconds.
  
• Typically, a suit is preferential here, since the LBV has no benefit, and you cannot use any other armor.
  
• This applies to any damage and can compound.
  
• You have 20% chance to pierce enemy armor.

The weakest choice in the entire game by both a general consensus as well as my own.

• When your health is below 20%, you gain 60% faster armor regen.
  
• You can also gain 20% movement speed when health is below 25%.
  
• Hitman is better in almost every circumstance.
  
• Your health has to be lower than frenzy health, which is a big problem, except for berkserker effects, in which it is 50% health instead of 25%.

When you kill enemies, you will fill a health reserve by 12 for every enemy killed. When your armor is gone, that health reserve will go straight to your health. you also gain a 30% increase to health. Most players tend to run this deck with a suit, as additional armor provides no advantage plus it coincides with killing enemies = increase armor recovery time depending on how much armor you have, meaning that lowest armor is best. This is reset after armor recovery.

Just to be funny, as a self aware joke, I am going to keep Ex-President looking like this. ...You never know what goes on behind the keyboard... when your mind thinks one way and you type in another format entirely.

A good team-oriented deck, and honestly an underrated one.

• The resistance makes quite a difference in play, not just for you the player, but your teammates as well.
  
• This deck is quite confusing to understand. 100% of damage delt turns into hysteria stacks up to 240 every 4 seconds. Max amount is 600. You gain 1 damage absorbtion for every 25 hysteria stack. Hysteria stacks decay 60% + 40 every 8 seconds. This is amplified by 100% on you.
  
• Its team bonuses are incredible and benefit all players and builds.

Everyone's favorite perk deck, with a few caveats. It's not my favorite, but I still think it's pretty good.

• Instead of fully regenerating your armor, you regen it in chunks, which has its pros and cons.
  
• 50% of health is converted to 120% armor.
  
• Dealing damage grants 10 armor every 1.5 seconds.
  
• You must play aggressively with it, which could lead to your downfall despite it being very strong. It is also the least versatile.

Biker has had a resurgence as of late, even though it's one of my least favorites.

• You essentially gain 5 health and 5 armor for each kill. This can't occur more than 4 times every 4 seconds.
  
• Although this provides an extra way to armor gate, you can't predict it.
  
• The amount you regenerate both in terms of health and armor is low.
  
• Every 10% health missing increases amount of armor and health gain by 1, and reduce cooldown by 0.2 seconds every kill.
  
• No team bonuses.

I'll simplify this for you, it's strong although not the best.

• You get the injector, which you can only use once every 30 seconds.
  
• When you use it, you will heal 75% damage or 100% when below 50% health that you would take for 6 seconds, and you'll become invincible afterwards. Then you'll eventually take damage again.
  
• For every 5 points of health gained, recharge rate gets reduced by 1 second.
  
• You gain a 60% health boost.
  
• You must be mindful when using the injector.

My favorite out of the whole game.

• You get the smoke throwable, and it can be used in a variety of instances.
  
• It gives you a 50% dodge boost while being in the smoke that affects you and your teammates.
  
• Every time the player gets shot, 20% dodge chance is gained. When dodge activates, this resets and won't occur for 4 seconds. You get a 15% dodge increase,
  dodging will replenish your armor(this is why Sicario is so strong, as not only is this a way to armor gate, but this can also be compounded, causing more dodging than what it's dodge stat might suggest),
  and while standing in the smoke yourself, 100% all perk deck effects, and teammates get a 10% additional dodge chance.
  
• Enemies in smoke have additional 50% reduced accuracy.

The most overrated deck, even though it's decent. I find that this deck is simply inconsistent and doesn't have the variety I want out of a deck.

• Stoic sucks on lower difficulties but it's better on higher difficulties.
  
• You take 75% reduced damage over 12 seconds.
  
• When you use the flask, you can negate any pending damage, and heal 50% damage.
  
• Flask has 10 second cooldown but for every kill, 1 second reduction.
  
• All armor is converted to health.
  
• If you don't take damage for 4 seconds, damage is negated.
  
• Loadout selection is limited, and when you use the flask versus not is very important.

I don't personally like this deck as much as others due to its teammate dependency alongside when using the throwable versus not using it.

• You get the gas dispenser.
  
• When you use it while looking at a teammate within 18 meters, each enemy you kill heals you 15 health extends the duration 1.3 seconds and reduces the cooldown by 2 seconds. This will last 12 seconds with a 60 second cooldown.
  
• There exists an exploit that allows the ability to stack with bullseye but this is difficult to pull off. Not using the gas dispenser makes the player incredibly weak. You can also tag enemies to reduce cooldown by 2 seconds.
  
• Health is increased by 40%.

Everyone's other favorite perk deck. It's pretty good although not one of my favorites.

• Hacker gives you 20 dodge for every enemy kill when ecms are active.
  
• You get pocket ecms that when used, stuns cops and heals you 20 health or 10 health for teammates based on each kill you get.
  
• You can use the pocket ecms for other uses.
  
• You get a 20% health boost.
  
• I think the cons of this deck revolve around getting unlucky with the pocket ecms, in that they sometimes don't work as intended.
  
• To really get the benefits of this deck, you do have to play a bit more aggressively than what you might like in situations that might result in your downfall, like Anarchist.

• Leech sucks on lower difficulties but it's better on higher difficulties similar to Stoic.
  
• When you use the throwable, your health gets converted into 5 hits while you heal 40% instantly, whereby you can either lose hits via taking damage(2 for over 200 damage at once) or gain those hits back via killing 2 enemies for 1 hit.
  
• You also heal your teammates 5% while taking damage, and if you were down, you can temporarily get yourself back up if you use it while downed.
  
• Your health is increased 20%.
  
• You can get unlucky using leech, to lose all your hits after the effects end and end up going down immediately.

A "create your own deck" type of deck. It's hard to really compare this perk deck selection.

• You can auto reload with your secondary weapon after 10 kills.
  
• When swapping weapons within 3 seconds, you can reload your weapons nearly instantly.
  
• Each headshot heals you 10 health points. This can't occur less than 2 seconds apart.
  
• If you dodge, you can ricochet bullets back onto enemies. This can't occur 0.45 seconds Overkill and below, or 0.35 seconds Mayhem or above.
  
• When your health gets below 50% you can become invulnerable for 2 seconds. This can't occur less than 15 seconds apart.
  
• The last benefit is choosing whatever you want from another perk deck.

I am going to say this right now, there is clearly a "best way" to use this deck, and it's by via increased health and armor, and going with a selection of the last card based on heavier tank builds whether for your benefit or for others. Some good options include:

• Crew Chief (gain damage reduction for players in your group)
  
• Sociopath (killing an enemy regenerates 30 armor)
  
• Gambler (a better way to run gambler)
  
• Maniac (get the perk deck ability to benefit you and your teammates)
  
• Biker (a better way to run biker)
  
• Tag Team (a better way to run tag team)

Now, the reason as to why I am dividing it up this way is because I felt that weapons compared to perk decks, is much less straight forward, but I would also argue that weapon selection requires more nuance, as weapons can help create synergy within a build.

The actual, synergy, of builds will be later in the advanced portion of this guide, as that will be an incredibly complex conversation that really delves even deeper into the tundra of build making.

For now, the foundation, the basics, the fundamentals, are what is most important during this stage, otherwise creating a build now with that in mind can become incredibly overwhelming and complicated too quickly for players to really grasp an understanding of creating builds first.

I want to start off with weapon types, mainly because this to me, is the first consideration when it comes to deciding what weapons to use.

These weapon types are:

Primary:

• Assault Rifles
  
• LMGs
  
• Shotguns
  
• Sniper Rifles
  
• Akimbo
  
• Special

Secondary:

• Pistols
  
• Shotguns
  
• Sniper Rifles
  
• SMGs
  
• Special

For the sake of simplicity, the main weapon types are:

• Pistols
  
• SMGs
  
• Assault Rifles
  
• LMGs
  
• Sniper Rifles
  
• Shotguns

Separating:

• Akimbo
  
• Special

Akimbo weapons have a lot of overlap (akimbo SMGs, Pistols, etc...), and as for special weapons, these include bows, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, and flamethrowers, while the rest of the weapons will fall under previously mentioned categories.


Well, there are many factors, some of which include:

• Total Ammo + Ammo Regeneration
  
• Rate of Fire
  
• Damage Class
  
• Accuracy
  
• Overall Threat Level
  
• Overall Range

That is just for a single weapon within a single category, but of course there is also the overall playstyle of each category, but these are usually the factors to consider when it comes to weapons specifically, that can then carry over to weapon types.



But there are also some specifications that matter too:

• What skills are you using, or wanting to use, and why?
  
• What utility are you looking for out of a specific weapon?
  
• What weapon pairs good with another weapon already selected?

At this time, figure out what perk deck that you like or want to use, and then figure out what weapons to select.

For now, treat it as two separate parts of creating a build. Later, this will change to be more interconnected, but more sophisticated.

As for anything else within a build loadout wise, simply choose whatever grenade throwable you like, or if you have chosen a perk deck, its own throwable. Choose whatever loud oriented equipment you would like to use (FAKs, Medic Bag, Ammo Bag, Sentries, Trip Mines), alongside what perk deck you have already chosen.


I'm glad you asked.

But before you go onto skills, let's continue to discuss weapons and weapon types in more specifics, whilst going over some weapons that I have found an appreciation for within each category.

As the previous section goes, this is also, in my perspective.

This section is currently in the middle of development.

There will be a standardization across the board for these particular sections, but that won't be the case during development. This is however planned in a future update as soon as this specific section is perfectly dialed in.

We will start with assault rifles by damage tiers and go from there.

I like to see assault rifles, as a jack of all trades weapon type and the default type of primary weapon. They are the only weapon type in the game that is basically the same throughout all ranges. Assault rifles cover a wide variety of damage classes, as well as cover anything from bordering on an SMG, to DMR-like weapons. Overall, assault rifles in the grand scheme, are a solid choice for a primary weapon for someone who either does not know what to use, or simply wants a primary weapon to not necessarily shine in any instance in a specific manner, but also be a well rounded choice.

Different assault rifles cater towards various playstyles whether for more precise play or for more outreach. Assault rifles can also be great for holding down the fort so to speak or for suppression. Still, assault rifles do offer variety of play alongside various damage classes that I feel is important to highlight.


Let us start with low damage tier assault rifles. There are a few weapons within this category that I do enjoy using. Before going further, I would like to describe that for this category, we are mainly looking at weapons that do less than 60 damage or so, basically similar to the starting weapon, the AMCAR. Starting with some advantages as to why you would choose this specific type include having really good ammo efficiency and having a high rate of fire. Other pros include being able to get high stability and accuracy relatively easily, and can be a great option for more passive playstyles that might not be entirely focused on combat. Furthermore, most of these choices tend to have really good concealment as well, which makes them great for primarily dodge builds or builds that utilize crits. In terms of its cons, some players might find the lack of overall damage especially on higher difficulties to be lacking for their tastes. You often have to invest skill points for these weapons to really shine, and the other, and probably most important disadvantage, is that this specific damage tier of weapon, does get overshadowed by the mid-tier damage assault rifles in a lot of other players' eyes, as those are typically referred to as being the best assault rifles in the whole game in a general sense by the community, whilst still giving similar advantages to the lower damage tier being referred to here. I will say that if you want a powerhouse of an assault rifle, not needing a high rate of fire nor concealment, chances are, you should probably go for other options. I forgot to mention that when it comes to special enemies, these weapons are not that great overall again due to their damage tier.

Some of my favorite low tier assault rifles include:

JP36:

Clarion Rifle:

Valkyria Rifle:


Mid tier damage assault rifles are similar to low damage tier ones, granted with extra damage while sacrificing some ammo pickup. Most of the time, the trade off can be very well worth it for a build if you do not struggle with ammo efficiency, hence why many players gravitate towards this damage tier. In addition to this, the higher damage also benefits in that you'll be able to handle pretty much any enemy, and they tend to be great on all difficulties. This category is described as between roughly 60-90 damage. Unlike the previous damage tier, mid tier damage assault rifles stand on their own pretty well as a primary weapon in most players' perspectives without the need for running any specific secondary weapon that might either prioritize damage or utility depending on how they create their own builds. Granted, that doesn't necessarily hurt builds using these weapons either.

Some of my favorite mid tier assault rifles include:

Union 5.56 Rifle:

AK Rifle:

Car-4 Rifle:

UAR Rifle:

Tempest-21 Rifle:


In my perspective and humble opinion, I see this specific damage tier of assault rifles as being heavily underrated. Yes, the ammo efficiency takes a hit for this tier, hence why most players do not go for this damage tier when creating builds, however I would argue that there is great utility with these types of weapons, that being the high damage per second in relation to special enemies, which despite the ammo issues, is quite the advantage if paired with the right secondary weapon with better ammo efficiency. Another con has to do with other weapon stats, in that they're generally less concealable unless if you want to sacrifice other weapon stats big time.

Some of my favorite high damage tier assault rifles include:

AMR-16 Rifle:

Falcon:


This damage tier is kind of an odd ball, just because despite its strengths, you're basically stuck, having similar damage to a sniper but without the weapon being a sniper and reaping the benefits from that classification, and the previous category. The pros of course are the high damage per shot, depending on the way you look at it, semi-auto versus auto fire, great for longer ranges with generally high accuracy and stability, better ammo efficiency in comparison to snipers, as well as being still pretty good against special enemies. These weapons are typically at roughly 168 damage.

Regardless, here are some of my favorite assault rifles that fit this category:

Cavity 9mm:

Galant Rifle:

M308 Rifle:

Shotguns are a rather interesting weapon type to discuss, because although I do think that shotguns are a good choice of weapon, I also feel that they are my least favorite type of weapon out of the entire game. Nearly all shotguns, if they are your primary choice or if you were to make a pure shotgun build, requires investment of skill points into the shotgun tree. Even for utility use cases, this might still be a requirement. Shotguns are most negatively affected by the range system, granted this can be partially worked around with either certain skills or even with using certain shotgun rounds like flechette or even AP and the like. Although there are a variety of shotgun ammunition types to choose from, some are simply superior to others or certain types of rounds have some forms of overlap with each other, which from my perspective, can feel more like an illusion of choice at some points. The only good shotgun ammo types are buckshot, dragon's breath, tombstone, and flechette with their own pros and cons. I believe that all of this combined makes shotguns as a weapon type a pretty hard sell for me at least, although shotguns are seen as being one of the best weapon types in the game in a larger general consensus. Not to mention, some weapon attachments act more like gimmicks compared to actually being used seriously, such as the duck bill just to name one. I will say that when it comes to utility, shotguns are actually a perfectly valid option and where they really shine today, but you really need to ask yourself if a shotgun is truly the right choice to use within a build that you are creating, alongside weighing the pros and cons established. That is how I general feel on the matter.

I like to describe shotguns kind of like a car engine that allows a car to go fast. There are many different engines that can make a car ultimately go faster when upgrading a vehicle, but although the additional modifications and specs do in fact matter and are apart of the decision making, those engines do blur the line between their intended purposes, at least to a certain extent, aka "I want to go fast."

To further explain this thought experiment, replace an engine from big oil as the role that shotguns fill, and it immediately becomes apparent that there are other weapons that excel at close range, other weapons with "rapid fire" capability, other weapon options that can pierce through shields, other weapons that can hit multiple targets, etc... and all the while providing either other unique benefits or simply don't have certain downsides that shotguns might have, that you may or may not find important. Perhaps when selecting a car engine, you want a faster acceleration speed, lightweight, high RPM, perhaps you want to go fast but only in certain situations versus all the time, perhaps you want to feel like you have a lot of overall reliability and sustainability in wear and tear over time, in a similar manner to perhaps wanting higher rates of fire, maybe you want more concealment for crits or dodge, perhaps you want a more precise and controlled way of handling multiple enemies in some other way, or being able to sustain constant heavy fire for longer periods of time like with using skills like Bulletstorm, Swan Song, etc...

To make this very clear, no, I am not saying that shotguns are just bad because they're bad, I'm saying that they're good when looking at them in a void, great even, but lining up other options reveals that there is a lot of overlap with this weapon type, which to me affects my overall perspective on this weapon type severely in terms of its own uniqueness as well as when weighing their pros and cons in terms of deciding to use them or not. Basically, chances are, they're certainly a great option, but there is also a lot of decision making involved in the background that comes alongside the decision for this weapon type that I feel is important to mention.

The gist: It's not that it's bad in game, far from it, it's just a matter of whether you gravitate towards using it or not, and whether to you if that should be a factor in terms of your own thoughts on this particular weapon type. Either answer is perfectly valid in their own ways.

Regardless, these are some of my favorites shotguns to use:

Primary:
Steakout 12G:

Deimos 12G:

Izhma 12G:

M1014 12G:

Mosconi 12G:

The Other Mosconi 12G:

Predator 12G:

Reinfield 88:

Secondary:
Claire 12G:

GSPS 12G:

Street Sweeper 12G:

If you see this, I have an incredibly unpopular opinion when it comes to shotguns. I mean... ...the fact of the matter is... that I'm bound to have people that disagree with me, and that is perfectly okay. We all come to different conclusions.

LMGs are one of my favorite weapon classes in the entire game. LMGs require very little, even zero skill allocation, generally do quite a hefty amount of damage, have a high rate of fire, a lot of ammo alongside generally great ammo pool. If you want my honest thoughts in a vacuum, I do honestly believe that this weapon class is a little overpowered if you ask me. The only real downside is concealment, so certain builds simply cannot use LMGs for this reason as certain skills and aspects of builds, depending on what you're going for, simply won't work with LMGs. Still, LMGs are a pretty easy sell especially if having high concealment, or low detection isn't a concern. I guess one could argue that there isn't much in terms of variety of damage class, only really being two or arguably three of them, but those damage classes are also pretty strong. Accuracy and stability are also argued, granted, the accuracy doesn't feel that important with the spray and pray approach of LMGs, but I would also argue that if this is really a concern, it isn't that hard to simply invest in accuracy and stability, as generally speaking these skills don't need a lot of skill points to get. I would prioritize stability if that is the case. You are also not able to aim down sights with most LMGs, but you are still able to zoom in with them, so I don't really see this as a big deal either, as LMGs also pair well with pretty much any secondary weapon given how self sufficient they are, alongside simply getting a bipod as another option to use to alleviate this issue, or simply going for a LMG that can in fact aim down sights.

These are some of my favorite LMGs.

Brenner-21:

Buzzsaw:

KSP58:

KSP Light:

RPK:

Snipers are quite a good option to use for a decent variety of builds, and quite interesting ones at that. Yes, one downside is that for some, particularly lower damage snipers, you do need to focus a bit more on sniper specific skills, and while this isn't really necessary for higher damage classes, it's also an option to have if you want rather than what would be a compromise. Granted, these skills are also immensely powerful and I would argue are worth the return of investment. Snipers are not the lowest concealing weapons in the world either, even for the ones that are, in relation to other weapon types, but I will say that the overall firepower could be worth it in relation to sacrificing another aspect of your build, again, depending on what you want. Rate of fire is generally low, as well as reload speeds and overall ammo pull, but incredibly good accuracy and stability to counteract, alongside overall damage. It is also not that hard to simply pair a more ammo friendly weapon alongside a sniper, especially given the ability to shoot through shields, which is a major advantage over most weapon selections, alongside, yes a generally low ammo pull, but a good enough ammo pull regardless in relation to what the weapon type is compared to some options which might suffer severely by getting ammo back or might not be able to regain ammo at all that try to fill a similar role. Snipers are also incredibly strong across all ranges, and snipers are the only weapon type that overall have a large benefit in accordance with the range system. Overall, it might seem like on the surface, that for a game of this nature, that snipers might be problematic in relation to the other "high rate of fire spray and pray" types of weapons, but that doesn't stop snipers from having a good amount of popularity among players. I also feel that when it comes to the overall limitations of snipers, comes with not a frustration, but rather creativity with a sprinkle of great options to boot.

As for why there are no images currently here, it is simply because I pretty much like all of the sniper options for one reason or another, to where I didn't think I needed to provide every sniper its own image to simply say "I like it."

Special weapons tend to be a mixed bag in my opinion, mainly because given the name, "special" weapons, are specifically tailored towards more specialized playstyles. There is certainly viability to be had here, it's more so a matter of what appeals to you in terms of choosing a special weapon that I think often gets overshadowed by more conventional, and straight forward, choices. Miniguns, flamethrowers, bows, explosives, etc... are very fun to use however, plus there is a ton of utility to be found here. I typically would recommend checking out other options before special weapons anyways, again not due to "good or bad" but rather common versus uncommon solutions, in a similar vain to how I see shotguns with some differences.

Here are some of my favorites:

Arbiter Grenade Launcher:

Basilisk V3 Grenade Launcher:

China Puff 40mm Grenade Launcher:

Commando 101 Rocket Launcher:

Compact 40mm Grenade Launcher:

English Longbow:

Flamethrower MK1:

GL40 Grenade Launcher:

Heavy Crossbow:

Light Crossbow:

MA17 Flamethrower:

Piglet Grenade Launcher:

Pistol Crossbow:

Plainsrider Bow:

Vulcan Minigun:

Pistols are typically seen as the more popular "worst weapon type" but I still think that there is value when determining to use pistols as a weapon type. Often, pistols are seen as just the secondary weapon that everyone forgets about, but I believe that this weapon type not only has its uses, but that pistols can fill specific niches that I think are often forgotten about. For starters, there are a wide variety of selections here that span a wide variety of damage classes, all of which have their uses. In addition, these damage classes can be changed via skills. Then alongside that, you also have semi-auto pistols, auto-pistols, as well as revolvers. To top that off, you also have standard, AP, or even a mix of both with a couple of the pistol options. Having plenty of options is certainly an advantage of this weapon type. I also completely forgot about the option to go akimbo as well with most pistols. That already makes for a lot of choice in the matter when it comes to utilizing pistols as well. Pistols have incredibly good concealment as well as very good ammo pull even for higher damaging pistols. There are however downsides, primarily when it comes to overall range of combat, as well as the potential for having to spend more skill points than what you would like within pistol specific skills. Reload speed is also an adamant concern with certain pistols which can affect their other downside, their overall rate of fire alongside overall firepower as a whole. I'm never really a fan of these types of skill trees personally because at the end of the day, it is an investment that you would have to weigh yourself as to whether it is worth it to do that versus spending those skill points elsewhere in your build. Still, I think pistols can be a solid option, if you need a weapon that has a great ammo pull, whilst also being able to do enough damage without really worrying about long range combat, or perhaps as a secondary towards running another weapon as more of a focus in your build.



Stryk 18c:

Czech 92:


Bernetti 9:

Crosskill Guard:


Crosskill:

Chimano Custom:

Signature 40:

Interceptor 45:

Contractor:

Leo:


Deagle:

White Streak:

Baby Deagle:

Crosskill Chunky:

Kahn 357:


Frenchman Model 87:



Broomstick:


Deagle:

Frenchman Model 87:

5/7 AP:

Baby Deagle:

Crosskill Chunky:


Matever 357:

Castigo 44:

Bronco 44:


Peacemaker 45:

RUS-12 Angry Tiger:

SMGs are a lot of players' favorite weapon type, and for good reason. SMGs typically have a high rate of fire in relation to damage, which makes them great for taking special enemies down, there are a lot of different ways to use SMGs alongside their damage classes, and on top of that, you also have the option to use a SMG as a secondary. Range wise, yes, SMGs are only really good at close ranges however this can be mitigated pretty easily depending on your selection of SMGs alongside customization, often requiring either very little or no skill allocation. The same can be said about their stability. With the higher damage comes lower rates of fire and worse ammo pull, but with really good ammo pull and higher rate of fire comes worse damage. Overall though, SMGs feel pretty solid even with that in mind. There are plenty of perfectly viable options when it comes to SMGs, and I have not even talked about the fact that akimbo SMGs also exist.

Regardless, here are some of my favorite options within this weapon type category:


Chicago Typewriter:

Compact 5:

CR805B:

Krinkov:

Kross Vertex:

Micro Uzi:

Para:

Patchett:

Swedish K:

Secondary:

AK Gen 21:

Blaster 9mm:

Chicago Typewriter:

CMP:

Cobra:

Compact 5:

Heather:

Jackal:

Jacket's Piece:

Kobus 90:

Krinkov:

Kross Vertex:

Mark 10:

Micro Uzi:

Miyaka 10 Special:

Para:

SpecOps:

Swedish K:

Tatonka:

Uzi:

Skills are going to be categorized in a number of ways.

For starters, given that there are so many skills, I wanted to provide a structure that can help with the decision making when it comes to creating your own builds, applicable to all skill levels, as well as also be able to quickly identify what each skill does. That way, not only will this be descriptive, but also evaluative.

I am going to do the following, not only based on community feedback, but as well as tailoring towards a new method altogether:

• Offensive/Defensive Combat Application
  
• Mobility/Evasion Technique
  
• Utility/Support/Team Oriented
  
• Objective Relevance
  
• Resource Efficiency
  
• Perk Deck Applicability
  
• Skill Point Efficiency
  
• Skill Tree Dependencies
  
• Cooldowns/Triggers
  
• Stat/Mathematical Boosts
  
• Heist Specific Factors
  
• Weapon Allocation
  
• Concealment Thresholds
  
• Skill Layering
  
• Passive/Active Skills
  
• Difficulty Scaling
  
• Upsides/Downsides
  
• Situational Awareness
  
• Overall Synergy Benefits
  
• Player Variables

Now that you understand not only the fundamental basics of the game, not only climbing up in difficulties, getting familiar with heists, but in addition creating your own builds and overall playstyle, I now want to talk about something important.

You can be the best solo player in the world, at least at some point, but I would argue that is intertwined with also being the best teammate.

I feel that introducing build making right before this section was the wise decision, as the question would eventually arise...


Well the catch is that I don't need a specific section for "making team versus solo builds" and the like, but rather there will be an extensive conversation about such much later in the guide, but that is not going to be the main focus anyways, because what is important here is not whether you quote on quote "have a team build therefore you are good at playing as a teammate" type of BS, but rather this is much more about "how to actually engage in teamplay in the first place.

First off, we need to define what exactly it means to be a valuable teammate.

Part of the equation can have to do with running a specific build revolved around "being a good teammate" but let me explain why this is not correct.


For starters, you can run whatever build you want, and still not do anything for your other heisters for the most part. Yes, you can choose a "team oriented" perk deck and leave it at that, but that alone isn't sufficient in being a good team player.

Furthermore, many skills require active engagement from you. Many actions in game require active engagement from you. Many of these "team buffs" require active engagement from you, and the list goes on.

Then comes the actual helping people out part, which spoiler alert, requires active engagement from you, the player.

I think you get the general idea that active engagement is incredibly important for teamplay.

Then comes the coordination of the team part, which has absolutely nothing to do with what build you're running. Having great communication skills and the like.

Finally, having that balance between being a good solo player while also being a good team player at the same time, and balancing the two together to elevate both instead of diminishing either.


I'll make a general list, and perhaps go into more specifics later in the guide in the advanced section, but for now, some examples of just, being a good teammate doing team-oriented actions include:

• Providing resources to other players, such as health, ammo, etc...
  
• Providing cover or attracting aggro for other heisters
  
• Doing certain actions in game that other players can't, or doing so because you're able to do it better
  
• Teaming up against special enemies
  
• Giving buffs to other players or vice versa, taking advantage of passive buffs from other players
  
• Reviving players
  
• Protecting players while they are doing objectives
  
• Helping players that are stunned by other enemy types
  
• Getting hostages/converts, trading hostages/converts, etc...
  
• Shouting at teammates to signal to them about something
  
• Carrying teammates through a particularly difficult section of a heist

Wait a minute, doesn't that last one not count as a "team oriented" action, but a "solo" one? And you would be right, hence why being good as a solo player does in fact carry over to being a good teammate, albeit to a certain extent of course with some nuance and context.

There is at least, keyword at least, one more aspect, the actual communication part of being a team leader or teammate. Of course, you have already went over the general section with regards to overall player etiquette, but what about coordination as a team? Well...

• Make sure your plan is clear and concise
  
• Make sure you and your team have a pretty good verdict in terms of what you and they want to do
  
• I tend to go with whatever the majority wants whether that includes me or not
  
• Don't tell people what builds to use unless necessary, massive recommendation, players really hate this
• If the plan changes, make that also clear and concise
  
• Keep track of what everyone is doing as best as possible
  
• If you get asked questions, don't simply ignore in silence, answer them, keep communication open
  
• Try to help teammates as best you can if they ask, in a nutshell, and if you can't, communicate why

Really it comes down to four aspects that make a teammate a good teammate:

• Are you a good solo player?
  
• Do you have builds that promote teamplay?
  
• Do you help your teammates?
  
• Are you a good leader/teammate communication wise?

Speaking of skill, we haven't talked about difficulty increases in a while.

In the beginner section, just to recap, chances are you should know about certain specials already, as well as already have had previous experience with up to very hard difficulty, so we will go over new special enemies for the next section.

But for now, we are going to talk about some of the game changes when it comes to going from the beginner difficulties to the intermediate level difficulties.

For starters, as we have already gone over, considerations for builds should start to become important during this stage. The good news is that we have already went over some relevant information at this stage when it comes to that.

We also went over the fundamentals of teamwork, which is also important to at least start learning during this stage.

Going from very hard to overkill, introduces new special enemies of course as previous stated.

Typically, again, increased health and increased damage for enemies is bound to happen as the obvious would state throughout overkill and mayhem, noting that the damage difference is non-existent between overkill and mayhem, just a health increase.

Other than that, there is not a lot of difference between these difficulties, especially between overkill and mayhem, but I would also argue between very hard and overkill.

Very hard feels like the first difficulty jump, and mayhem honestly is just an "overkill+" if you get my drift, which makes it one of the most liked difficulties among players.

However, I want to highlight something important about this whole discussion, as this will be brought up later in the advanced section.


Chances are, if you are pretty good at overkill, you are going to be perfectly fine playing Mayhem. But you'll probably suck at Deathwish.

Think of it this way:

The only real difference other than the damage and health boost of enemies, which still doesn't really impact balance that much at all since the game is balanced towards Deathwish, is in terms of the builds being used, however this isn't really going to change during these selected difficulties, at least not to the degree that Deathwish and up will.

What is more important, is getting used to the new special enemies, and the increased health and damage from very hard to overkill, which honestly is not that different. If you are struggling going from very hard to overkill difficulty, chances are, it is a matter of further solidifying your basics and fundamentals of play that have already been described, just more refined for the sake of overkill and mayhem. These are difficulties that I would consider to be the "normal" difficulties of the game, or the "average" difficulty that most players can handle just fine. Much the same way that these difficulties might feel more like "hard +, very hard +, overkill +" the same logic is here, fundamentals and basics of play, but "plus."

If you are really struggling with this, you could go on to the advanced section and utilize that information from those sections. Although some of that information might not apply directly, most if not nearly all of it will.

However, that sort of debunks the whole "bridging difficulty" as a concept, doesn't it? Oops...

But regardless, there is only a health boost between overkill and mayhem, and that's pretty much it. Oh, and the enemies look like the Deathwish ones but are basically the previous enemies on overkill just with more health.

My overall, "what should you do here" is the following:

• Learn the new special enemies and how to deal with them, much like the other specials previously mentioned.
  
• Further solidify your fundamentals and basics of play.
  
• Teamwork makes the dream work.
  
• Start thinking about your loadouts/builds.

I also want to mention that you should have already been working on your difficulty masks at this point. I already provided how to work on your difficulty masks, so I would describe the same here, but at a higher difficulty. Start playing the easy oriented heists and slowly go up in terms of overall heist difficulty from there. You can again track what exact heists that you need to do, but this is also a great way to track your progress in terms of developing skill, as previously mentioned, because it is specific, measurable, has a clear direction, is obtainable, you can track over time, etc...


There is going to be quite a jump in difficulty at this point, which is what we will start to cover soon, but understand that simply playing mayhem will not make you prepared for Deathwish, and the same can be said about Deathwish going into death sentence or one down. Starting with these difficulties, there are so many more specifics, more nuance, more context, etc... that is required to learn to be truly great at these difficulties, so much so that I felt it should be separated into its own advanced section. Some might disagree with me when it comes to putting Deathwish and death sentence in the same category, however you'll see that I can make a pretty good case as to why that is the case, not just for the sake of organization, although that does play a part.

Now that we have covered almost everything within the Intermediate section of this guide, I need to go over additional special enemies, as these enemy types are going to be introduced during this stage alongside very hard, overkill, and mayhem difficulties

Bulldozers:
Bulldozers are the tankiest enemies out of the entire game, and often some of the strongest as well. Now, depending on what difficulty you are playing, you might run into different types of bulldozers. This is a black dozer, but there are also green dozers, and along with higher difficulties skulldozers and so on. When it comes to specifically those "and so on" bulldozers, that will be in the advanced section, as those dozers are quite different compared to the normal bulldozer enemy types. Most bulldozers besides one type, you can approach in basically the same exact way. Although this enemy type is tanky, they have one fatal weakness, their face plates and how much damage they take when it comes to head shots, and especially through their face plates. The number one way to take bulldozers down, is by going straight for their face plates, glass visor, and eventually the face of the enemy, as this will do immense damage in comparison to the body.

Now, when it comes to Skulldozers, or LMG dozers as they are sometimes called, you might end up getting mowed down if you were to just walk straight up to them and do this much like the other dozers(and future dozers for that matter in the advanced section) and so if that is the case, you might have a different approach, either by being a bit more passive while still going for the face plate strategy, by circling around the bulldozer chipping away at its face plate, or you might have to go in, do some damage, get out, go in, do some damage, get out, etc...

Medics:
Medics look like just a normal type of enemy, with one caveat. These enemies can heal the cops around them. If you ever, see a medic, take them down first as fast as you can. If there is a situation in which they are healing a bulldozer or some other type of strong enemy, you might have to wait to have the medic separate from those enemies before taking the medic out, followed by those other enemies if your weapons aren't strong enough. Other than that, they feel the same as any other enemy.

Cloakers:
Cloakers are the bane of some players' existence. Although cloakers tend to be quite weak in comparison to other enemy types, they pose a serious threat, in that they can instantly charge you and down you from seemingly everywhere. Cloakers can also spawn in rather unorthodox spawns in relation to other enemy types, making them even more dangerous. This is another one of those enemies in which there should be priority over most enemy types. A single cloaker, although again quite weak, can easily wipe an entire team by just downing everyone. There are some helpful key pieces of information when it comes to cloakers that can make dealing with them quite easy.

Firstly, the cloaker will typically give itself away with a hissing, high pitch sound, that you will hear when the cloaker is nearby or spawns in. The louder that sound, the closer a cloaker is. Secondly, when the cloaker is of serious threat, their eyes will glow green and you will hear a loud noise, as they charge at you. Thirdly, as you learn the game, you can check on these unconventional spawn points, including shafts, under cars, behind doors, around corners, etc... Finally, if you are really struggling with cloakers, you can always get the skill that allows a charged melee strike to deflect a cloaker's attack.

Some extras:
Marksman Sniper:

The marksman sniper is a variation of the sniper, that acts more as a DMR unit. They typically give themselves away by the beam of yellow light that happens when they open fire, in comparison to the red lasers of the snipers. These units, although they can do quite a bit of damage, are one of the weakest of enemy types simply because their rate of fire is so low, and because you can get much closer to them in relation to snipers. Still, if this enemy type is a struggle to you, you can either approach them like snipers, or you can move in closer as to be able to take them down much easier. Optionally, you can also wait for them to move somewhere else whereby they are much more vulnerable.

Marksman Shield:

This type of shield is quite a bit stronger compared to a normal shield enemy, in that they are typically more tanky, but in addition to that, they can also flashbang the player. You will see this as a light on their shield, followed by a noise indicating that they are about to flashbang. When their shields break, this enemy becomes invincible for a brief time, blinking with a yellow outline, followed by then becoming a unit with a Shotgun using concussion rounds. You can flank these enemies and take them out that way, or if you do enough damage, you can just straight up shoot through the shields much like normal shields if you do enough damage to where they won't go into their second stage of combat.

If you have done the following, then you are ready for the next portion of this guide:

• Get the Mayhem mask
  
• Know how to create builds to a degree that is sufficient on a basic level
  
• Develop sufficient solo skill
  
• Develop sufficient team oriented skill
  
• Get ready to start playing Deathwish

• Understand the mindset of what makes a truly great player
  
• Advanced Fundamentals, Builds, and Strategies
  
• Achieve the Death Sentence/One Down mask
  
• Be able to use every perk deck/build imaginable on Death Sentence/One Down
  
• Going above and beyond the official maximum difficulty

The very first section here, is going to be quite a long one, and that is surrounding higher difficulty play through a philosophical lens.

Let me start by saying...


Much like positions... in football, or should I say hockey? The "fun factor" of a game in general will always have some sort of personal bias at play. You can have a game that is fun, and very easy to where it provides a more laid back, and casual experience, but doesn't really give a lot of personal fulfillment. You can also have a game that challenges you a little bit, but not too much, and have that be fun in a more engaging, but minimally frustrating way while still feeling somewhat of an award for doing so. You can even have a hard game, whereby although incredibly frustrating, can make for an incredibly rewarding experience in the end that'll be worth it.

I can say the same about "types" of difficulty too. Everyone has a "type" or "types" of difficulty that they prefer over others, which may include the way that difficulties are scaled, having only one difficulty, a few, or a bunch, perhaps solving puzzles or easter eggs, overall physical skill like reaction times or calculating specific movements, perhaps memorization or learning more and more about the inner depths of a game, etc... You might even feel differently about difficulty in relation to different genres of games, perhaps liking some games in certain genres to be more difficult or other genres in which you prefer a different experience.

Some will even say that difficulties should still make the game feel the same across the board, or the exact opposite, that difficulties should justify their existence by providing a differentiation.

The same can also be said about the perception of "gaps" within the difficulties in terms of design, or with regards to how many difficulties are within the game, which are very contested debates that have lasted for years as it pertains to Payday 2.

• Prioritize the builds that you like to use
  
• Prioritize what heists you like to play on higher difficulties
  
• Create a fun environment that inspires you to become better
  
• Consider finding players that are more experienced than you
  
• Listen to other music, watch YouTube on the side, etc... while playing
  
• Keep your mental health in check
  
• Actually achieve results

Either way, whatever opinion you might have, I want to highlight and defend Payday 2's top difficulties for what they are in hindsight. Before doing so, I want to go over a rather important variable that is never talked about.

For now, I am going to add general observations made among more experienced players.


Stop comparing yourself to other players. There will always be players that are either worse or better than you. This is an undisputed fact. It's fine to draw inspiration from players that are better than you, however you should do so out of what makes a positive impact rather than that pushes you away forever from higher difficulty play. Simply put, players that are better than you have put more time, effort, and who knows, might even be good at certain games in comparison to other types of games such as being good at FPS games versus other genres, that combines into those players simply not being a good representation of your own failures and shortcomings but rather should be seen as your own inspirations.


You should have some sort of hierarchy in terms of setting your own goals, as well as a specific method for doing so. Simply saying "I want to be the best player" "I want to complete OD" isn't a good goal because it lacks specificity, a rough time estimate, does not measure nor understand the manageability of said goal, is not realistic, and among this, doesn't divide up short term, long term, and everything in between types of goals. I also want to mention that simply focusing on the outcome isn't necessarily good either, but rather focus on the journey alongside that. Instead of focusing on "complete all heists on OD" what about one particular heist? One particular objective? One contractor? or even just one assault wave?


This can be viewed both, as objective, as well as subjective, hence why I keep saying that Objective, in terms of what is exactly measurable, while subjective in terms of your own thoughts, feelings, and overall experience when improving as a player.


This could be listening to your own music, watching YouTube on the side, or simply talking to friends while playing or typing in chat. This can allow you to enjoy more time with improving and putting more time into the game instead of potentially dreading every second simply grinding away for success only to burnout.

You can also do this via doing multiple things at the same time in game, such as trying something new in a build or a new build entirely, going for achievements, completing any side jobs, playing crime spree or holdout as a break from normal play, or the like, which can also enhance your overall experience with the game in a positive light whilst getting better at the game overall. Giving yourself proper breaks from the grind can be essential towards your success in terms of keeping your overall consistency.




You don't have to play the game 24/7/365 or play the game at the exact same time every day. You don't have to use the same weapons, perk decks, skills, equipment, etc... to be successful. You don't need to track every single thing that you do in the game day in and day out. You don't need to everything that there is to know about the game to be good at it. You don't have to make these large sacrifices in your life either.



This is due to a few reasons. Ultimately, this will cause burnout and stagnated progress if you don't give yourself the proper rests between playing sessions for starters. If you're playing the game, perhaps too much, this can result in not only developing an addiction alongside a decrease in overall mental health, but this can even carry over to physical health too such as vision problems or repetitive injuries. The second, rather large reason, is because you have to prioritize different aspects of your life in comparison to getting better at a video game. If your overall quality of life is suffering from the wrong prioritization in life, that's a problem. You have to make some sort of boundaries in terms of time management in order to not only keep or improve your quality of life, but whilst also maximizing your overall results of success both pertaining to Payday 2 and not. Finally, without giving yourself time to explore different avenues, comes not being able to explore other different solutions, or as a benefit with a benefit, improve your social health and your skill at the game by promoting communication with others.


Beliefs don't equal unquestionable truths. Yes, there are certain ways to analyze Payday 2 in objectivity, however top players tend to accept, that even a select group of people will have disagreements at the top, and that subjectivity is simply bound to happen. I am not personally a fan of guides that treat everything that they say as fact or take a concept with a lot of nuance and boil it down to just a singularity that must be followed, as they presumably go off a tangent about perk decks this, weapons that, skills, etc...Not only do I think that this is unhealthy for respectful discourse, but this can often dismiss what can potentially make you become a better player, which includes new and innovated ideas. Instead of constructive criticism comes conflict of interest, barriers of understanding and cooperation, lacking of open-mindedness and critical inquiry.

Many players simply either do not like either mode, or they see it as just "bad" for the game on a grand scale. I do however want to defend these specific modes in terms of why:

1. We should play it in the first place.
2. Why these difficulties are good for what they are, keyword for what they are.
3. What benefits came along with the development of death sentence and one down.


Without the development of One Down, turning into Death Sentence, PD2 players also would have never gotten Mayhem as a difficulty, only to have Normal, Hard, Very Hard, Overkill, and Deathwish like the older days. Mayhem is an incredibly popular difficulty by many, and some players' favorites (even though I don't understand why).

We also must keep in mind, that the same criticisms were going towards old Deathwish before this change. The only difference now, is that this criticism has shifted towards Death Sentence and One Down instead. Many players today weren't in the game back in those days, and so this factor is often forgotten about.


Which, surprise, was also brought up against Deathwish back in the day as well, due to the game being balanced towards overkill difficulty before the difficulty updates(before DW, hard/very hard, fact check needed) in which now the game is balanced towards Deathwish.

There is an element to Death Sentence and One Down that I do need to highlight, why the game is balanced in this manner:

For starters, here is a quote of Overkill's intentions with regards to these modes:


This underlined part provides additional context for what overkill was saying, particular with the act of "seeing" and not, literally the mode being that way. The mode was designed to seem as imposing and, impression-ably, impossible, when it is not.

The second aspect of this has to do with the eventual change of one down to death sentence as an official mode, with one down becoming a mutator.

The actual reasons for this change were as followed:


Notice what is underlined, the one down "mechanic". The change from 3-4 downs to 1 or 2 downs, creates an imbalance issue whereby only certain builds that use certain equipment, certain skills, and certain perk decks that revolve around doctor bags were overwhelmingly being used. Pretty much any other equipment was completely useless, and because only certain perk decks were being used at the time with regards to the old AI when it came to health and damage values, along with weapon balance because of that, this resulted in an imbalance that greatly preferred health with dodge, high damage weaponry, alongside specific skills that compliment those specific playstyle(s), and only certain perk decks that fit that way of playing the game. Obviously, this was an actual problem, at the time, however with the changes from one down to death sentence, you still have 3-4 downs, and because the values of health and damage was changed, in addition to the AI changes made at the time, made for a much better balanced mode, as you no longer only used doctor bags, only used dodge/health oriented playstyles, only used the highest damage weapons with a rebalance, or had to use very specific skills due to another rebalance of the skills. Now, you can use next to anything on Death Sentence without really any issues, and even with the one down mechanic, yes this will result in a bit of a bias towards your builds, but this is quite minimal compared to the old one down.

But what about instances in which certain builds don't work?


Granted, obviously, if a difficulty is between baby mode, and ultra hard mode, then yes that is a problem, but that is not the case here. As I have described previously, yes there are current issues with regards to the difficulties within Payday 2, but I would argue that it is the complete opposite problem, in that there are too many difficulties now to where some difficulties simply blur between one another, such as normal to hard, or overkill to mayhem. Death Sentence and One Down, despite their, now that I think about it, rather minimal differences in hindsight other than the increase in damage to 225 damage, manages to create a couple of difficulties that really stand on their own and provide an experience that no other difficulty provides within this game. Death Sentence changes in a way to where, despite nearly everything working in the game still, must be accounted for both via gameplay and overall loadouts in a way that really adds depth to the difficulties that the other difficulties simply do not offer or have. I would argue a similar story to Deathwish, just not to the extent of Death Sentence and One Down. This to me is a net positive not a net negative, that really adds to the overall game in a way that does not affect the game in a negative light.


I did some calculations and turns out if damage falloff were to be implemented to these modes given the current scaling, it would make literally no difference in game. The only other option would be to change the scaling in a way that does not align with the other difficulties, but that would go against the concept of Death Sentence and One Down as a difficulty, and I would argue, changes the mode too much to where it would now be its own completely different mode. The concept of hits is an important one, which would be altered if that were the case with different scaling to match lower difficulties. The absence of damage falloff makes practically no difference within these modes, even with regards to builds that utilize range.

In relation to either using exploits, glitches, mods, "cheats" and the like, I might agree that it would be an unfair assessment, but this is simply not true nor is that the case.





1. Immense replay value, hundreds, or even thousands of hours.
2. Creating builds differently.
3. Playing heists differently.
4. Giving you far more to do outside of Mayhem difficulty as it pertains to the game.
5. Different strategies.
6. Different aspects of play that you must account for.
7. A sense of accomplishment and satisfaction like no other.
8. Bragging rights.
9. Customizations.
10. A new playerbase.
11. Further learning opportunities.
12. Further self-fulfillment.
13. Non-repetitive gameplay
14. Additional benefits that simply wouldn't exist in other difficulties.

And the list goes on...

With that out of the way, lets discuss the overall mindset going into these difficulty modes.

This is going to be quite an interesting section that I would simply call "optimized anxiety."

Now, what does this term precisely mean? Well, it means, in a nutshell, "slightly elevated feelings of anxiety that improves performance." Now, performance in this case isn't in a sports context, but in a player's point of view.

So, let's talk about it.

If you're not feeling anything in everyday life, one would assume that you live a pretty purposeless life. Yes, you have nothing to worry about, however with that comes living a life with no meaning or substance, and ultimately, a worse quality of life. The same applies to playing a video game.

Deathwish, Death Sentence, and One Down can be fun, can be enjoyable, can be a more engaging experience, but with that comes quite the hurdles and obstacles in your way, some of which are in your own head. That is precisely what this section is for addressing.


Well, the first step is to identify what is keeping you within your comfort zones.

Simply, the answer is "what do you need to work on?" This, has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself.

So, for starters:


I see this all the time, and it is a pretty big problem. Often times, players simply give up if they cannot do what they want to do their own way. What you should be doing instead is:


Have acceptance, that no, you truly cannot do everything that you want to do, whether in a video game or in real life.


Instead of focusing on the no damage falloff, the 225 damage of the enemies, how much health or armor you have in relation to what skills you're using and within those specific difficulties, what you perceive as having to do but it's just impossible for you the player to change any of that, set yourself up for success, "what can I do to compensate for 225 damage from enemies? What can I do about no damage falloff to compensate? What can I do about how much armor or health that I have when it comes to those specific difficulties to compensate? etc..."


So back to the original question, how do you get outside of your comfort zone?


Well, how do you do that?

1. After figuring out what your own discomforts are, you need to set your own personal goals that will get you over certain hurdles that the game offers you.

2. Once this occurs, take each area of improvement, as being one step at a time.

Say that you really want to use a certain perk deck on maximum difficulty because you really like using it, but you just cannot figure out how to run it for higher difficulty play. Well? This is the time in which you either, move on out of your comfort zone by just using something else, or what I would recommend, moving out of your comfort zone by figuring out a new strategy, or a new solution, by actively, trying to solve the problem, even if it requires a lot of trial and error. You might have a result that you aren't exactly comfortable using 100 percent, at least as of yet, however, you never know what new way of playing the game that you find this way, and often times, it is probably a way of playing that you will eventually end up liking.

3. Eventually, you will find that not only are you out of your comfort zone, and not only did you go against your own fear of failure, but now you are starting to learn more about the game in ways that you otherwise wouldn't. Now it is time to capitalize on that to go from getting out of your comfort zone and having a fear of failure, to gaining learning opportunities, and then some, whether from learning from mistakes, or learning from solutions.

4. Now that this is happening, you'll be growing as a player to start to become truly the best that you can be at the game.

This is going to be quite the interesting part of the guide whereby, although a bit off topic, the overall points are in fact relevant to this discussion of the perceived, and infamous, gap within Payday 2.

I have two primary reasons as to why this gap exists for many players, and if you want to skip this section and go straight to section 2, go ahead. I will however, provide a bit of my own personal background in relation to these two core problems, and relate them back to Payday 2 in order to give some insight both when it comes to my overall thought process.


As mentioned previously towards the beginning of the guide, I have been training for 6 years seriously in calisthenics. Calisthenics, if you don't know, is training with a focus and emphasis on bodyweight exercises, whether that is a more of a classic reps and sets scheme, muscular endurance via high reps, weighted calisthenics like with weighted dips, pullups, etc..., flexibility/mobility like with yoga, pilates, etc... freestyle like at actual calisthenics competitions, and a particularly important style of training for this example that I am about to provide, statics.

You see, there is also an infamous gap within the calisthenics community when it comes to achieving a specific skill, and that has to do with the planche, specifically, a gap between a tuck and a straddle planche that for many simply feels impossible to overcome.

From my own experience, it took me a few weeks to do a tuck planche, however, it took almost an entire year straight, doing absolutely nothing but training specifically for the next step, to finally achieve and go over the dreaded gap, to obtain the straddle planche. Even with this personal achievement of mine, the form wasn't quite perfect for a while, and at that time of achieving it, I was only able to do it for a few seconds versus over 20 seconds with a tuck planche.

So why is there such a big gap between those two specific movements despite, at least on a logical level, there shouldn't be?

The biggest reason is because it is quite difficult to replicate the amount of leaning that your body requires in order to even put yourself in the right position to then be able to make yourself stronger.

The problem, is that the tuck planche, is nearly identical to simply holding a straight arm position, at say the top of a dip, essentially doing a knee raise, and then slightly leaning forward.

This will forever be a partial range of motion for the straddle planche that is getting trained. You can get as strong as you want within that position, even holding the position for even 20 seconds and no matter what, you're not going to magically all of a sudden achieve a straddle planche. This is because the difference in the amount that you lean the body is so much greater than if you were to go about training this way with the previous progression. As a result you will never train your body within the right position or build the specific strength within various parts of your body to be able to achieve this skill. In addition to this, your center of mass changes alongside overall balance and flexibility requirements. Think of how, when gravity pulls you down to earth, if you're just standing straight, and you do a squat without using your arms to hold on to anything, that is easily achievable for the average person. Now flip the script, and ask someone to try to do a pushup only using their arms without their feet or legs touching the ground in a default pushup position. It would be physically impossible to do because your center of mass is going to be far more towards your waistline, but you'll also notice that because your body is more spread out, that you're going to feel much heavier compared to simply standing straight up. You're also relying on smaller muscle groups in relation to your legs, which are a large muscle group in comparison.

The muscle activation required for the straddle planche is drastically different from a tuck planche. In a tuck planche, for some, it doesn't even really "feel" like doing any form of planche at all if done with poor form. However, there are a lot of variables of weakness when it comes to trying to achieve a straddle planche that get introduced into the mix, which may include:

• grip strength
  
• wrist flexibility and strength
  
• forearm strength
  
• bicep/bicep tendon and elbow tendon strength
  
• serratus muscle strength
  
• lat strength
  
• scapular strength
  
• shoulder strength
  
• upper back muscle strength
  
• core and lower back strength
  
• glute strength

Almost all of this, doesn't really need addressing when learning the tuck planche, in addition to introducing many potential failure points that make it difficult to pinpoint what the exact factor is holding you back.

Then to combine this, imagine then having to relearn your technique entirely, alongside having to go way outside the box to progress, that you ultimately have to figure out yourself in terms of what works best for you in terms of solutions, and you have a recipe for disaster for many.


It highlights the fact, that alongside a perceived amount of variables that players have that they didn't feel they had previously, alongside this, it's difficult to replicate the ideal environment for proper building of skill and overall growth as a player if you go from DW feeling relatively easy, to players making the jump to DS feeling like it's super hard.


As explained earlier, I have a large amount of experience playing the saxophone, so much so that it's practically my second job.

I wanted to bring up this concept because it highlights the second core issue that players can often run into, having to relearn what they originally thought was right within a lower skill level.

I'm going to bring up the concept of playing altissimo. The altissimo range refers to the higher range of the saxophone that cannot be achieved within the normal range of playing.

One of the main reasons as to why this is a surprisingly hard task, is because you have a very high chance of having to relearn mistakes of playing that you might have been making without realizing it, that you have used for years, primarily when it comes to your embouchure as well as your overall oral chamber(mouth, throat, tongue, etc...).

You can play the saxophone within the full range of the instrument, with incorrect embouchure, with incorrect voicing or just a single voice, not even knowing what that is, and you might also be changing these variables too much when going through the normal range of the instrument despite not noticing or running into issues, such as biting down or loosening your embouchure too much, incorrect tongue position, etc...

You will however find it close to impossible to play in the altissimo range because in order to ultimately build your altissimo playing up, you have to be able to seamlessly switch between normal playing and the extended range. However you can't do that if you are already doing this within the normal range because your overall control of intonation and sound production is going to have great variability and will also result in being more reserved than what you want to be when it comes to utilizing this specific range given said inconsistency. You'll have a disjointed range, being able to play certain notes but not others at random intervals in a nutshell.

In order to fix this mistake despite taking me 2-3 years, is to fix your understanding of your embouchure to be able to not change it at all despite popular advice, learn the concept of voicing to deliberately play with mistakes, and then building up to be able to play notes you're not supposed too within normal means.

With this knowledge, this relates to Payday 2 in terms of learning mistakes, and then having to re-teach yourself not to make those mistakes, in order to then set you up to be able to advance your overall skill level by building not only ability, but efficiency that was previously not required.

There are two primary reasons as to why "the gap" can be an admittedly frustrating experience for many players:

1. It's not really possible to replicate direct, linear, progressions when it comes to Payday 2's DW-DS gap.

Now, what do I mean when I say "direct, linear, progressions?"

Think of it this way. Say you're doing some form of bench press, perhaps 3 sets of 8-12 reps. When you reach 12 reps with the same weight, and presumably no other factors are affected, it's easy to just, progress by adding extra weight, and then hitting 8 reps for 3 sets again. It's a linear progression, because bio mechanically you're in the same position, doing the same pushing technique, utilizing the same muscles, etc... basically, all factors pushed away(technique, overall fatigue, time under tension, rest periods, exercise order, etc...), and you have, a harder task, but you're still doing a bench press at the end of the day in the same exact manner, just with the extra weight adding difficulty.

However, when it comes to DW and DS, many players feel that there are aspects of the game that do get near "changing the bio mechanics" comparatively speaking. This could include how you move around and take cover, what builds you run, what specific strategies there are in relation to specific heists, inclusion of a new special enemy, certain RNG factors change, etc... to where for some, DS can feel much more different in comparison to DW. Now, I am not completely agreeing with this, I am simply pointing out where players tend to come from with this assessment.

Although there are in fact solutions to these problems, understand that what might work for you in terms of the learning process might not work on someone else.

2. Sometimes, what could be seen as a mistake on lower difficulties might not be the case on higher difficulties and vice versa. Over the course of progression of difficulties, yes, if you were to compare perk decks, weapons, skills, etc... difficulty does play a large role in this, and it a determinate.

The truth about the saying "practice makes perfect" is that it's kind of BS. What if you practice bad habits? What if you keep practicing the opposite of what must be changed to achieve the success that you want on higher difficulties?

Well, that is exactly what this specific section is for.

I would like to present a classic example of this first, and provide both, the theory, and the practical:


"Think of a situation in which you have a player that uses Crook with a LBV and say that they hate it and can't be successful with it. Then they try Crook with an HBV and hate it even more. Then, they found some weird strategy about running Crook with a suit that simply next to no one uses but manages to do 1000 times better than the other options. In this scenario, Would it be fine for this player to simply keep going down the Crook with a suit route even though it doesn't make a lot of sense in relation to the other armors and their blatant benefits, or would it be better to just shut them down, and force them to go and use one of those armors even though they'll play worse?

I gave a rather controversial answer, I think the player should stick with Crook with a suit if it means that they ultimately play way better with it even though it doesn't make a lot of sense as a recommendation."

Obviously, since this is the internet, this got taken way out of context to mean "Pink recommends Crook with a suit" when that was never the statement.

The point of this statement was to show a more advanced lesson in creating builds, in that sometimes what might seem not optimal might end up being the right answer in some scenario, granted using a rather extreme example, but there are better examples of this.

I love adding in additional lore, but I love adding secrets in plain sight...

• Muscle for example, as previously mentioned, tends to suck with a lot of armor on higher difficulties, but is there a way to run armor with muscle and make it work? Yes.
  
• Armorer has the 2 second invincibility after losing armor, that can weirdly enough be adapted for a suit build of all things.
  
• Rogue, believe it or not, does not need the maximum dodge, and in fact, it can even be stronger that way for some in terms of loadout.
  
• Hitman, Gambler, Yakuza, Biker you can run full on armor if you really want too with extra hits within certain ranges, which in relation to player movement speed, you may or may not like more.
  
• You can run Burglar with completely different approaches.
  
• Anarchist has a few "less-optimal" ways to use the perk deck, which for some is better.
  
• Sicario can be used with both high dodge, as well as with armor within certain ranges if you really wanted too given its throwable.

And these are just some random examples with regards to perk decks. We haven't even touched the surface yet.

• Do pistols really have to be an afterthought?
  
• Are LMGs and Shotguns only really supposed to be for close quarters?
  
• What about snipers only being for passive builds?

The answer is no, they don't, and don't even get me started on skills.

So, the very first important lesson(s) is this:


And


The next aspect to understand is that:


Now of course, if you get completely stuck, it becomes a big deal, and you can't really address the issue via play, then yes something in your build should probably change, but often, it's not a matter of whether it works or not, but more so whether it works for you or not. Note, "for you." This is an incredibly specific reason. It is not, what anyone else thinks, because at the end of the day, you are the one that is playing the game. It is you, who is the deciding factor in terms of what works best for you personally.


Well, what I would do is the following:

If you have tried to address the problem via direct solutions, or solutions that might seem to be "the most optimal" and they don't work, then it is time to go down the deep end and experiment with trying everything that you can, even if it seems weird or if you doubt that it would be worth trying within creating your builds. You will never know if you are going to stumble upon just wasted time, or on the flip side, if you stumble into something build wise that ends up being amazing.

If you still haven't been able to really find an imperfect solution, then comes the "how do I adapt my build to where, although I can't address the problem directly or indirectly all that well, what if there are other issues within my build that need addressing? Or what if this can be compensated via actual gameplay in some way?"

And if all of that still doesn't work, then it probably means that you need to move on to a different build, because at this point, you have tried everything that you can for one build. Chances are, you simply don't vibe with that type of build.

This section is reserved for any additional resources that are made in the future that I believe will be more specific towards the previous section. The goal of this is that when all of the guide is solid to a point to where I can put my main focus on further expansion into more specific details, that I can do so whilst keeping the spirit of the original guide's vision intact. This section will mainly, in the future, look at perk decks in relations to specific weapons, skills, etc... within their own guides once they have come to fruition. This of course will take a while before appearing, and is planned much later in development, after the release of the build guide currently in development. For now, any resources that have released so far will appear here:

Join The Cold Citrus Press Cartel! Discord: https://discord.gg/vVEbK2vRp9

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3509486594
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3515887145
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3537553148

What about outside of solutions via builds specifically?

Well, you read up to the right section.

You have probably noticed how each section of this guide flows into the other, and that is by deliberate and pure design. We are now at that typical section that you might see entire guides made of.

Before I say anything, make sure that you are going from easy heists to more difficult heists. I know that this might seem trivial but trust me, this is quite possibly the single most important thing you can do to master the mode(s), as well as get more and more comfortable with it.

Now, enemies typically do 225 damage on this difficulty, most of them anyways, and honestly to a point to where you might as well memorize this number value, as this can determine whether armor will be considered useful versus not useful(for the most part, yes there are niche use cases in which this actually doesn't matter). You can also make calculations in terms of whether lower armors could work given frenzy/berserker builds.

Of course, the overall difficulty is going to require completely mastering everything within the beginner and intermediate sections, so if you haven't done that already, then you simply are not going to be good enough for these difficulties, and you should stick to Mayhem/Deathwish until you are certain that there is nothing else that you need to improve upon.


When learning and getting used to Death Sentence and One Down, take everything one step at a time. Even if you can't complete a heist, see if you can survive an assault wave, see if you can do an objective, see how long you can last on a Death Sentence or One Down heist, keep track of the number of downs that you are going down, as well as enemy kills. There are many ways, to not complete a heist, yet still get better at the game.

On a last note, understand that these modes require hundreds or even thousands of hours of dedication. There is no easy way to get around this other than putting in the effort and time dedication in.

Now for some actual advanced strategies:


Croutch jumping used to be more powerful than it is now, but now this is simply used in certain scenarios in which you want your playermodel to go into cover faster instead of simply running and then crouching, or to be used to move a certain distance, either for the full jump with full speed, or slowing down midair to make a more calculate movement, which is a bit trickier to pull off but can also be useful. This can even be used to go into interactions this way in a faster manner, granted this requires even more skill to pull off.

To execute this, run with your character, then in a quick manner, you are going to jump, crouch, while continually holding either w on your keyboard or with the controller your analog stick forward. You should be able to crouch in the air while still moving forward at great speed. This might take some time to practice. I know for me, this took a little bit to learn, but eventually you'll be able to do this like it is second nature.

2. You can technically double jump over certain obstacles depending on its geometry.

There are tons of explanations for this, like "oh you have to do this frame perfect timing..." but I'm going to be real, it's easy to just spam the jump button as much as you can to execute this often near the object in question. This can be useful in certain heists, just be careful not to soft lock yourself in certain scenarios trying to do this.

This is much more useful than it sounds. You can easily save yourself this way and determine whether trying to complete an objective is worth it to do or not. Even with some of the limitations of being able to look around, you can still force yourself by continually looking away to be able to see what is going on around you while you are doing an objective.

4. As previously mentioned, you can circle around enemies.


This next one is an odd ball, but believe it or not, cancelling your sprint might actually be better to have than not have in most scenarios. You can do this by changing movement direction of the player, getting deliberately stunned, reloading, melee, jumping, using geometry, etc...

There is a somewhat controversial statement that I am about to make. The utilization of cover is important, I don't believe that is the best approach to learn in the long term, especially when later on you might be playing on heists that are quite open with very little cover at all to use, or moving around very large maps. You should still be having a balance of both cover and not cover to be as successful as you can be, with accordance to build bias. The reality is that the best players of the game are not simply hiding in a corner every heist getting carried or waiting for every assault wave to end to even do anything, waiting hours on a heist that should take ten minutes.


6. Going for headshots, which was already described as being important, is even more vital here due to higher and higher amounts of health, but with that a higher and higher headshot multiplier.

I didn't quite explain this concept, and it sounds confusing, but I think that this important to discuss because not only does this help with cover in general, but it helps when you are trying to find cover as well or transitioning into another cover spot.

The concept of "creating your own cover" is when on higher difficulties, you have a very high chance of simply getting too many cops within your hiding spot. You run into this dilemma whereby "well if you move you die, if you stay you die" so the solution is to carve yourself a path, that allows you to move, despite not being fully in cover.

It's a little hard to explain, and maybe after this all gets published, perhaps this might be deserving of an extra section, but this skill is essential and arguably one of the most important, yet forgotten skill sets that should be mastered.

You're not going to know where every enemy is coming from, but it's important to know whether you're going to get flanked or not. It's important to be extra careful of your surroundings during play. You should be looking down every hallway, every corner, top to bottom, multiple floors, checking for certain specials, etc... This takes a long time to learn, and it only comes from extended practice. You can also learn heist specific spawn points as well this way, instead of having to simply memorize every spawn point in the game. Not only is this more streamline of a process, but you are also gaining context in terms of what to do, instead of simply "what."

This is admittedly, pretty intuition based, but knowing when to push through a crowd of enemies or an objective, is another one of those skills that is often forgotten about but can be incredibly useful to learn. Yes, you'll be more often wrong than right at first, but overtime, you will continually get better at this to where you become right more often, and with that more successful. Certain heists even require it to complete them.

As already mentioned, The One Down mechanic alters balance in a way that should be accounted for once you are ready, so that has already been covered in more detail previously.

In terms of any additional specials, there are two more special variants of bulldozers, and I haven't covered Captain Winters here at all. For now, I am going to leave Captain Winters out, as well as certain bosses in the game, but if you would like to see that let me know and I might make a separate section just dedicated to that.

These two specials are, medic and minigun dozers.

Medic dozers, within it of themselves, are of barely any threat, however, their, magic healing powers, much like standard medics, makes these red bulldozers incredibly strong with a ton of enemies around them. Much like the usual medics, these enemies take priority. The good news is that they are twice as weak as standard bulldozers, so unless if you have multiple of this enemy type, you shouldn't have too many issues taking medic dozers down in a similar fashion to other bulldozers.

Minigun dozers on the other hand, are the complete opposite. The most dangerous bulldozer, and the tankiest with double the health of other bulldozers and wielding a minigun. Not only are these bulldozers strong, but with a crazy fast rate of fire, means that you can easily get destroyed by one of these enemies. They do have one weakness though, which is that they move incredibly slow and can be easily avoidable if needed. Of course, when going after these dozers, unless if you have a crazy strong weapon, you'll probably have to go, do some damage, come back, go, do some damage, come back, etc...

And at that point, you should have everything in your arsenal to be able to tackle death sentence and one down.

Once you can complete one down heists, what about, never going down at all? With or without AI?

This might look incredibly difficult, and don't get me wrong, it requires a lot of dedicated time to do this legit. I should know because I have in fact done this before, but I would argue that it is more about, just, continual improvement over one down more than anything, along with simply slight adjustments to your build that should be fairly obvious in hindsight (like for example, no nine lives, no swan song, no inspire, etc... or when it comes to not using doctor bags and using first aid kits instead)

Really what I would recommend is the following:

1. Once you beat a heist on one down, start to record how many downs you have and where you commonly go down over time.

2. Isolate these instances of when you go down and identify a pattern. This will help you identify what problems within a certain heist that you are having, and where you are both in terms of objectives as well as in relation to the location on the heist.

3. These specific sections are what you should be practicing reducing your downs at.

4. Once you do that, you should see your downs go lower and lower this way overall.

5. Once you do this, and you feel confident that you can in fact do it or start to become close to doing it, you can do practice attempts, while also adjusting your build.

This is a rather simple one to setup.

There are many ways to do this, but I'll just give a recommendation.

In my perspective, I think that not only is this more impressive, even on just death sentence, but I think that this is much more fun too, and can really open the possibilities of different builds, as well as playing on other heists that you don't play often. There are also more flexible rules here as well, so it doesn't feel as strict as doing no down runs either.

What I would recommend is using a random number generator. You can simply go to Google or Bing for this, and then you can assign different parts of your loadout with different number values. Simply put in "between 1 and whatever the maximum of a certain value is" and then make that number randomly generate. You can do this for weapon type, primary, secondary, the perk deck, the heist, the skills, armor, equipment, throwable, melee, really anything you can think off.

This, however, might seem way too overwhelming so what I would recommend you do, is perhaps go back to how we boiled down builds to its basics, and perhaps randomize either one aspect here, or randomize say just the weapons, or the perk deck, and go from there. Ultimately it is up to you to do whatever you want, and slowly over time you can eventually find your own preferences in terms of randomizing whatever you want or don't want, as well as any special rules that you want to make yourself, such as "being able to substitute a skill, or be able to switch a weapon out, or be able to try again for one randomized selection, etc...

Then at that point, you have whatever heist you get assigned too randomly, which admittedly, can come down to luck. Some heists are easier or harder compared to others. What I would recommend is that if this is too hard, simply lower the difficulty, still have fun with it, and move up when you're ready, or do so at your own discretion.

There are even custom rules when it comes to how many times you can retry a heist and so on that players make too. This is a very loose format, but it's part of the reason why it is so approachable. That, and it isn't limited in terms of just death sentence either if you wanted it to be on lower difficulties.

Eventually you'll become so good at this, that you'll probably shock yourself at how good of a player you're becoming when you think that the randomized loadout that you were given was "totally not going to work" when you end up going through a death sentence or one down heist better than what you were expecting.

The other appeal is that this is an awesome way to discover builds that next to no one knows about, and so at this point it's a bonus.

Why do I keep deleting and re-adding this section? It's probably not important... or is it?

This is the build section. When this guide gets published, the builds are not going to be here as of yet, but they will be in the future. Builds are incredibly easy to make, and there are already a ton of builds in progress for this particular section. The real time consuming part, is the sheer scope of the 2nd guide, among other things...