The Worst Perk Decks in Payday 2

[@TheKknowley]

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[@dragonlord4898]

Promotion Skip Button: 2:04

[@HexonDevelopment]

It kinda feels weird not having an apex gaming sponsorship in this video.

[@macthewolf5363]

I used to play this game a lot but it has gotten too Lagg to even be fun anymore so now I play codm also knowledge keep up the awesome vids man I am always hyped when you release a new one! (Edit: the game I'm talking about is pubg mobile)

[@ethant2582]

bro got sponsored by pubg movile 💀

[@sanddebil]

babagee

[@beefjerky007]

My biggest wish before Overkill fully commits to Payday 3 development and stops Payday 2 development, is to do a final, complete rebalance of the perk decks. I often see newer players be completely overwhelmed by how many choices there are, and they have no easy way of knowing which ones are actually good and which are trash.

[@flamedramon68]

Yes, stuff like Gambler need a serious buff

[@heyday1233]

Would it not be best to use payday 2 to test the buffs as a form of beta testing though I'm down for being used a guinea pig if it improves payday3 right from the gate

[@LeaveMeAloneFBI]

I hope payday 3 removes perk decks entirely. I miss back when heist difficulty didnt boil down to "is your perk deck maxed or not"

[@emberz3778]

@@LeaveMeAloneFBI Ehh just more unique going for more varieties of playstyles than just using the heaviest armours for the highest difficulty prior to perk decks.

[@ThatTonnatoTenrec]

@@afinnishfishnet7366 I wouldn't, the main appeal which id like to have in Payday 3 again is the feeling of Robbery, having assets, pre planning, various skills like ECM's, things going haywire, partial bag carrying. Its the best feeling in some sort of hybrid builds. Unfortunately you can't really do hybrids without sacrificng ability to play on Death sentence or hell Death wish. Some of these things don't exist on PDTH and you can't ussualy on PD2 anymore, which is a shame since random stuff going wrong is honestly the most fun. It should all just be toned down, by how much? Well id still like to have a Minigun, but perhaps not run 40 mhp with it.

[@Jaxos050]

i honestly think it's hilarious that you mentioned a downside of Gambler being that people are annoyed at their ammo boxes being taken, when, without fail, EVERY gambler game on dw/ds i've played, people are just like "oh shit you're running gambler? you're a hero" and don't care at all

[@EternalFireseal]

Gambler was my first perk deck. When I finally switched off of it, the very first thing that happened was my crew dropped dead. They'd just gotten used to having a mystical force constantly giving them health and ammo, and it took a while for them to get into the habit of healing themselves.

[@connorbranscombe6819]

@@EternalFireseal You can switch to Crew Chief if you wanna run a support build that isnt annoying to use.

[@pestilentsleeper9152]

@@connorbranscombe6819gambler isn’t annoying

[@Gmodder-vz4ht]

​@@connorbranscombe6819Gambler, saves life. Gamble with your life today! Seriously tho, my crew just drops dead whenever I don't run gambler. It gurantees free health and always have your health bar on full with your team having health and ammunition. But i recommend bringing 14 first aid kits cause you literally risk your life to help your team, thats why its called Gambler.

[@charafr2461]

Yeah, as a CC and Gambler player, goooood i hate those ammo eater

[@electronsympathy]

Maybe Gambler should get a special ammo bag deployable. Pick up enough ammo to recharge it, and you can put down an ammo bag for your allies to make up for your greedy ammo-snagging, as well as establishing a playstyle of going balls to the walls with Bulletstorm and less ammo-efficient weaponry.

[@men4cer468]

You could also with the deploymable make it to where if you are low on ammo or health you can interact with it faster

[@Bjorn308]

I'd be down for that, sounds fun.

[@yurikovRUKR762]

Damn this Idea at first just made gambler a viable option

[@nylonzero9048]

Nah nah nah, you get a throwable which lets you throw the ammo pickups to your teammates.

[@thejuggercat]

@@nylonzero9048 chains: im low on ammo! Dallas: here you Go! (Chains gets fucking domed by the ammo) Bain: chains is in a pickle!

[@MothWhiskers]

Just a reminder people: Just because a perk deck, weapon or anything else is the "worst" or "not the best" doesnt mean you can't use it. Everything in this game works on dsod, even biker, you just need to learn and know how to use it.

[@mementocity]

time to hop in random dsod heists with suit/zerker yakuza build for learning how to use it

[@stormstudios1]

yea except for solo stealth crew cheif

[@mementocity]

@Zeltec 1 its actually playable, you have so many points to spare when you dont need hostage taker and first aid kits and dump it all in damage, also the extra health helps in tanking an extra meatshot Yakuza on the other hand is awful without the 2hit frenzy basic+ictv setup on my end, too much skillpoint investment for little

[@Circ00mspice]

Well until you get two shot'd

[@shaynehughes6645]

🤨

[@CarrotIsBad]

Biker can be defended given it can occasionally armor gate better than anarchist and socio combined, even. Additionally, in botless solo, it's a pretty consistent deck for armor gating since no one else interferes with the timers. As for the other decks, I've got nothin lol

[@creeper4599]

gambler has better armor gating imo

[@notyouravstalin8802]

@@creeper4599 gambler literally doesn't have gating aside from what every perk has anyways

[@qarblins_4288]

@@creeper4599 "it can occasionally"

[@RonaldMcJuicy]

@@creeper4599 what

[@creeper4599]

@@notyouravstalin8802 ...that's the joke

[@5persondude]

Overkill should categorize the decks in terms of difficulty of use, I.e. simple/straightforward decks with mostly passive buffs like Muscle & Armorer should be in the “Easy/Basic” category, whereas ones that require slightly more thought & input from the player (but still easy to understand) like Grinder & Kingpin belong to the “Medium”-tier list, and so on. Having them all lumped in chronological order of release date makes it so confusing for a new player who just started out EDIT: Thought about a different way to categorize skills, check my reply in comments but TLDR categories would be “Passive”, “Skill/Playstyle”, and “Active/Ability”

[@frozenheartedgiant8330]

I don't really think that kingpin is easy to understand, considering that the in game description of it is completely incorrect.

[@5persondude]

@@frozenheartedgiant8330 Oh, I guess I understand what you mean. Maybe the categories could be something like “Passive” (purely passive buffs like Muscle or Armorer), “Skill” (no throwable but requires kills/damage or a certain play style to make effective like Grinder), or “Active” (activate-able skill like Kingpin or Stoic)

[@emberz3778]

@@frozenheartedgiant8330 Just press the grenade button to do whatever you want, then get back into cover XD Like I get what you mean, but it is honestly a very easy deck just by understanding how to use it.

[@deltasquad7]

I've been running Maniac for a while now and can say that the damage absorption can come in handy as long you do ungodly amounts of damage, also it goes good with the Viper Grenades, it can keep up the Hysteria Stacks.

[@gelidus2224]

pairs nice with dragons breath grimms too from my experience

[@simonrettberg4631]

I play maniac a lot with ictv you can take a lot of hits on dw just keep shooting

[@hagonk]

@@gelidus2224 litterally any perk deck that can use crits is good with db grimms

[@oncet0ldme1aint]

It works with turrets. >turret gaming

[@traxorbomber3046]

I run Maniac with my support sniper build. ICTV build with silenced weapons and optical illusion means i can mostly just sit back and clear large groups and key targets with Graze, building up and keeping everyones stacks pretty consistently.

[@officeridiot4806]

Gambler has always held a special place in my heart, as it was my first perk deck. When playing Overkill its my favorite perk deck to turn my brain off with. Hope it’ll be buffed someday.

[@5persondude]

It’s also useful for a Sentry Gun build, considering that deploying Sentries takes up ammo. Of course, it’s better for Solo lobbies as to not steal ammo boxes from other players

[@FlyWire2]

It was my first perk deck too, and well, before Leech and Stoic, it was pretty much the only Perk Deck with health regen as a mechanic, and a for a new player, being able to not mind health as a resource to manage is fantastic.

[@AdeptusCaeiusIII]

@@FlyWire2 I thought Grinder came out before Gambler? I remember when Grinder was 'the only good deck'. Was right before Death Wish was nerfed just after FWB came out. I was running it with a Deagle and Brenner, with Mollies as my throwable, and my friends and I would do Overdrills to close out our days. Gambler is maybe my least-used deck. Armorer and Muscle were 'alright' back before they got buffed (when Muscle gained its health regen due to the popularity of Grinder), but I dropped both of those for Kingpin after Grinder got nerfed.

[@typikkal5327]

Same. As a beginner I thought this deck is very meta until I tried it on death wish.

[@Ze_N00B]

@@5persondude my only complaint is the fact that there‘s a waiting period before the effect can be used again, meaning that large fields of ammo have to be collected very slowly if you want to make most of the health. I‘d personally have the health restored by the kits be reduced, but get rid of the time limit, letting you and your team get health from every single one quickly and efficiently.

[@5AMACE]

I personally love burglar in stealth. The page answer increase in itself is enough for me, as I tend to play solo. It allows me to kill 2 guards, answer 1 pager, run across the room and answer the other one. It could be better, but I think it's good. As for loud, I kinda understand it not being very powerful, because I think it's meant to be for situations where you get caught and just need to escape, but still it needs a buff.

[@dallasneedsamedicbag8208]

Just use hacker

[@Pixelhurricane]

@@dallasneedsamedicbag8208 wow, truly insightful

[@aegis027]

@@dallasneedsamedicbag8208 I'll tell you why I don't. Hacker is geared around letting me fix a mistake I made, while Burgler help prevent me from making those mistakes in the first place. Burgler has two main perks that are what keep me using it over hacker. 10% faster pager answering, and 20% extra body bagging speed. As a solo stealth heister, the most dangerous part of any heist is answering a pager. You're stuck in an animation, unable to react for an extended period of time. Shaving 10% off that time isn't nothing, and makes the window for answering two pagers much more managable. The other dangerous point is moving multiple bodies quickly. Being able to quickly clean up a hot area where I had to kill multiple people is a godsend when you're alone. Don't get me wrong, Hacker is powerful. The ability to answer 3 pagers at once can be very useful, and being able to ignore cameras on a whim is also nice. But ultimately, Hacker is most useful if you've made a mistake. Being able to kill 3 guards at once is nice, but never required. There are very few heists where cameras are a problem where step 1 isn't to take out the camera operator. Basically, if you play well, you'll never need that extra ECM. Which means the small QoL buffs from Burgler are giving you way more value than Hacker does.

[@calebbraun9505]

I do like the idea of each perk deck getting a "One Down" only upgrade

[@gibasgibny5271]

Yeah, balancing seems to be a pain in the ass If you buff weaker perk deck to be good on dsod, it trivializes lower difficulties

[@frozenheartedgiant8330]

@@gibasgibny5271 Personally, I'd like to see the game go in a direction that leach is in. The decks get better the higher the difficulty. After all, lower difficulties will not really suffer, been as you can realistically play on them with no perk deck, but higher difficulties will be made more accessible and varied.

[@emberz3778]

Ehh like the perks themselves aren't an issue. More so it's just a matter of learning how Death Sentence in general should be played. All you need to know is, you kill a lot and use cover. That's it. You minimise the damage taken and even if it's only an extra shot, you give yourself more time to do whatever you need to. Because of this, everything is viable. And you can see that every perk still gives you a really good bonus, like with Maniac, it can be super tanky when built correctly with ICTV and is the most consistent one to take advantage of that ability or Gambler not needing any healing skills since the health regen you get can be nice. It just makes it boring just making everything op. You picked the hardest difficulty, sorry not everything is easy, but at the same time it still needs effort on your part.

[@Lagbeard]

For Gambler to buff it, I would just push further on the ammo pick up usage. Let it pick up ammo for specials and bows, also grenades in the style of Aced Fully Loaded. And as suggested, making the heal happen over time, as a weaker teamwide Grinder

[@bencenagy5459]

Okay, that non replenishable ammo being able to be picked up would be insane and make gambler exist

[@TheGamingKiller242]

With Yakuza, I think a good change would be its dodge being tied to your health. The less health you have, the more dodge. So if you're at a sliver of health, you may have like a 75% or more chance of dodging bullets.

[@Swat_Dennis]

I feel damage absorbsion can also be done in % figures. I mean, that would rebalance every perkdeck at the same time, but also make higher difficulties still... More difficult

[@uberd3323]

Honestly pleasantly surprised that you didnt bring up Crew Chief. Me and a friend had a real bastard of a time trying to do DSOD Hells Island, and my Crew Chief/Jokers/Frenzy/Thanatos/Graze build got me through it way better than my Sicario/Rogue build did. My friend was running a crit LMG build and we kept getting bodied by shields on the stairway to the roof, so I made that build out of spite and it served me well.

[@lavandereisly4194]

In my opinion, as someone who has played around with Tagteam a lot on lower difficulties, one of the BEST buffs Overkill could give Tagteam is a freaking indicator for the player tagged. It's surprising how little is told to players in vanilla in this game and just, letting them know "Hey, go kill some cops to heal us both" would go a long way towards making it better outside of a voice call.

[@kcmadhatter_4235]

Changing gamblers healing to be like the reverse of stoics damage reduction where the more ammo you pick up the more you heal per second and probably keep a flat armor increase while just resetting its duration might actually make it almost as busted as stoic but hey if everything's broken everything's balanced

[@KaneTheDile]

About 5 minutes in and I agree with everything about Tag Team, I've been using it and surprisingly having fun with it, I've been brainstorming ways of making it more powerful or effective, it just requires aggression which is also the downside of it. Tagging up with a Grinder, Kingpin or Leech who is aggressive could heal both parties up to max and push to objectives. Deciding for a more armour or dodge build is up to the tag team player, Armour means more survivability but getting to teammates for healing or boosting will be limited while dodge is movement and getting down easier. Personally both could work but more open maps will showcase the downfalls of it as Tag Team requires the team to work together and that the signal that a player has been tagged is quite unnoticeable (as I was told by a friend). Just wanted to share my thoughts about a deck I thought was getting dunked on by too many peeps, as it has been enjoyable becoming an unstoppable mess with friends on lower difficulties.

[@emberz3778]

When you say armour, do you mean the ballistic vests or the ICTV? Either way neither seem to affect getting to teammates, healing nor damage as much as you are making it out to be. Even on open maps, Tag Team can still thrive by killing a lot. In general it doesn't feel like Tag Team needs to be changed since being aggressive can be achieved quite easily, but more so dependent on if you can do it yourself.

[@CalzaTheFox]

Maybe, for Maniac, have the damage absorption scale with difficulty. 12/24/36/48/60/72/84 to give an example. You can have it scale harder at the high end to compensate for shots that deplete armor in one or two hits and encourage being more risky.

[@555Soupy555]

i've always thought like.just make it a percent of damage + a flat number and bam works better on lower but does stuff on higher

[@EternalFireseal]

As someone who regularly uses some of these decks, here are my thoughts on them: Burglar: I have had a lot of runs saved by the faster pager, bagging, and lockpicking speed. Hacker being able to turn off cameras at a moment's notice is helpful, but getting out of sight from the other guards and civilians is more intuitively useful. Remember, how effective a tool is depends heavily on your playstyle; for a lot of people,. all a PECM will usually do is make a failure take six seconds longer to register. I do agree that it's main issue is that it's essentially a stealth-only deck, potentially making it a costly trap for new players. Biker: You seem to be treating the health.armor gain as something you need to actively pursue. Your crew is constantly killing things, so Biker essentially a passive inflow of health and armor, and you can get some decent armor gating with Bullseye. It won't hold up under sustained damage as well as some other decks will, but having your health and armor refill while you're dealing with objectives is pretty handy. Gambler: I agree that the actual effect of the deck is very underwhelming compared to what it seems like it should do, but it's far from useless. The fact that you're effectively trading health for health does mean you need a very particular kind of player to keep up the crew's momentum, (and, I admit, I'm not really that player), but it can keep you going for a while if you can handle it. And, why would players be annoyed at pickups "disappearing"? Gambler is a pickup multiplier. Unless you're desperate for a throwable, having one magical madman constantly shoving fresh health and ammo into the entire crew for free is pretty helpful.

[@bunnythehutt2148]

My wish is that infiltrator and sociopath are changed so one can be offense orientated and one is defense orientated, that way they don’t compete with each other and can both be used effectively in their own way without competing with each other.

[@shiori00]

I wouldn't say they compete with each other. Both decks are different, with the only similarities being the melee buffs on em

[@gaabrrable]

I'm DW player primarily and i dont have much experience with DS/DSOD but i have a an idea for buffing Inflitrator. From my experience using infiltrator WITHOUT frenzy was always way more effective so first i'd like to just slighty bump up the damage resistance (no more than 10%) to be on par with its current frenzy stats. The absolute worst skill in the deck is definetly the last one. I believe the idea of making damage translate into health is neat. Instead of having fixed health regen, you'd get more health the more melee damage you deal, and the more damage you dealt the longer the cooldown of the effect (capped at 10 seconds or above). Unlike its counterpart (Sociopath), Infiltrator excels at one hit melee kills due to overdogs 7 second duration (being able to combo overdog with a fully charged melee strike on top of bloodthirst can easily one shot even the tankiest enemy types). This skill would be able to fully heal you if you manage to do enough damage. This i believe would also fit Dragan as a character. Perk decks are supposed to be representations of the character that came with them. Dragan is notorious for being extremely violent up close, so the idea of more damage being more rewarding fits this trait imo. Its a simple change, but i think it would make infiltrator more fun and fitting of the character its supposed to represent.

[@ItsPansy]

the most underrated deck in this game is ex-president. It literally has everything. You can even use an ICTV on it and have that hitman feeling with the armor recovery on kill. This deck deserves more light

[@pvewaste]

Good video! Generally I agree with the overall balance opinions and definitely would love to see some buffs to these underwhelming decks. However, I have a couple points: first, tag team's damage absorption is absolutely not negligible! Paired with quick fix/underdog aced, it grants 3 shot health and 2 shot ICTV. Infiltrator, I think, is also underrated, since it gets, once again, innate 3 shot health which is supplemented by its pretty darn good healing. You also unfairly rate maniac, which has a niche 3 shot ICTV (Koldat has a guide somewhere if you dig), whereas Kev's build that you showcased lacked that. It's also batshit busted below DS if you run a max damage resistance setup.

[@anadorablestraycat5255]

i love using Burglar on rare occasions in loud because of that lowered detection rate from enemies, because you need to crouch to get benefits often. Say for instance your weapon has average accuracy. Well, standing and firing gives that base accuracy, but aiming and firing while standing gives extra accuracy and lowered recoil. when combining ADS with crouching, you get a max aim benefit, which works really well for precision builds that use snipers and/or pistols.

[@mitrion301]

Maniac was my first Perk Deck and honestly, i love it. The Damage absorbtion can come in Handy very good in clutch situations, there are so many moments, where i would have gone down but my Maniac kept me Alive lomg enough to survive

[@thedukeofslimes6420]

The best loud way I've found Burglar felt kinda obvious to me, but the idea of having a semi-decent dodge and crouching still to remain less targeted REALLY helps when you decide to pick up a sniper and pick away at armored units and graze kill crowds while one of your more tanky buddies (preferably ones with Muscle or Kingpin enemy attraction) gets shot at works pretty well from experience.

[@Cooler7328]

I remember when rogue was the hottest perk around when deathwish came out. All the infamous players in lobby would be in suits. Getting up to 90% dodge back then before the nerf made rogue perk the absolute best! Good times!

[@aidreinhorn1534]

I feel like hitman could have been about taking out high value targets. Like special enemies and bosses. killing the regular swat and police could temporarily add a 50% damage bonus to all enemies and a 100% to special enemies. Then every special enemy killed adds a permanent stackable 0.5% health regen per second. Then every special enemy killed will spread panic to all nearby enemies, and all enemies panicked by killing special enemies will boost the health regen temporarily. Then killing special enemies will give 20 armor and every non special enemy you kill will add a stackable 10 armor boost to the total amount you get back from killing special enemies, killing a special enemy will reset the armor gain back to 20 and not getting any kills for a certain amount of time will reset the bonus armor gain as well. the bonus armor can only be stacked up to 250 armor. This is probably horrible balanced so let me know just how badly balanced this idea is.

[@FluffyFox559]

So, here s an idea. Your hitman deck is basically grinder, sociopath and armorer. But on higher difficulties it will suffer from no dodge. So maybe at least +25 dodge. And with the right skills it' should be good 👍

[@BR1SK33]

Infiltrator isn’t too bad and actually doesn’t need too much except maybe a speed boost on hit, the idea is to get into crowds get as many kills as possible as you escape, melee with heavy armor isn’t too good with hit and run strategy so a speed boost would make a hit and run melee build much better

[@j0hnn13K]

Burglar is actually my favorite perk deck for my stealth build (i mainly stealth) and i do not see it as a perk deck that is trying to be a combination of loud and stealth. It's completely geared towards stealth play, and dodge is meant for avoiding situations, not gunfire, the quicker pager, bagging and lock picking are invaluable for pure stealthing. 10% on a pager doesnt sound like much, but it often is the difference in being spotted while bagging (which is also 20% faster) or not being spotted. And 20% quicker lock picking, well.. as i see it, the name of the deck "Burglar" means you steal everything you can get your hands on, so lets say at the bank.. those locked boxes? suddenly are not that annoying anymore, but.. it's pure stealth only, not meant for rushing through a mission. Obviously to make best use of this deck, you have to set your skills to a full stealth build as well.

[@Ang3lUki]

I love playing morbius maniacs. It's such a terrible deck, but on lower difficulties, you become everyone's best friend as that absorption pretty much makes everyone on your team unkillable

[@Bay1k]

Tag team isn't that bad tbh. However it is very punishing if you can't kill effectively with it. Health is actually the best thing to build for in terms of dsod especially combined with the armour gating. The reason why armor gating and berserker builds are soo popular is because of not the armour gating aspect, it is because of the berserker skill being borderline overpowered. Maniac is just underrated on dsod. It has ton of ways to build for it and it is a support deck on top. Hell you can build it to not take damage for light swats if you really want. But yeah I agree with the rest. Also thanks for the shout-out. Appreciate it.

[@Cooler7328]

I have been rocking gambler for years now. It pairs well with my turret build. Its dangerous to run out and grab ammo sure, but thats the "gamble". But with a good killzone, usually a pile of ammo are all in one place. Paired with 4 turrets, mastermind heals from hostages, 2 jokers and extra ammo skills and i have a build that makes even Overdrill a literal breeze. Literally my best build to date and now with the new copycat perk i have a badass stealth build!

[@nylonzero9048]

I once jumped straight to Crook after falling into the "dodge gud" mindset. My brother told me 60 dodge is better than 45 dodge 195 armor. Needless to say, my main perk deck is now Anarchist to spite him.

[@horseshoeanimates2045]

I remember picking Crook because I knew it was a dodge perk deck and didn't think to do any research about it. It wasn't until I was one away from completing the entire deck did I realize that it wasn't very good.

[@r2doucebag595]

I was under the impression that the maniac perk deck stacked with other crew members. I saw it as a holdout deck more than anything else.

[@daz211]

Maniac is my go-to deck for my "Tower Defense" turret build on Holdout because the turrets contribute to Maniac stacks and keeps it well topped off, so long as you keep em fed.

[@mrbabyman4049]

I reccomend a shotgun loadout for manic, when its maxed out you can play cook off on death sentence and just chill out side as long as your shooting someone.

[@pedroeurico1162]

Something my friend used to do with gambler, was using snipers with the ammo regen in headshots, being kinda of a support back line support It's super nieche but fun

[@DnLZin375]

Beautiful video bro, you explain very well and even finding a "bad" deck you show the positive points of the deck. too nice Ps: Could you put some subtitles in Portuguese in your videos? my english is very bad and the subtitles of youtube sometimes don't put anything

[@albertlofling7310]

My personal buff to tag team would be to make the dmg negate a % that can stack to 50 or more aswell as not heal frenzy players. This would make it usable for all parties and make for a solid supportive playstyle where you could perhaps be the one to do objectives, brushing off potential damage while your duo/tagged player becomes a one man army drawing the attention. now this would not be unfair I think as you would need to keep up the massacre to keep the buff. I believe that it goes up by 0.5 per kill and if you manage to keep a tag team going for 100 kills it should be rewarded. It would also make for the only deck (that I know off) that would run a full ICTV as you could potentially bring it to a three hit break on DSOD with the right build

[@Kona_chibi]

Hitman is actually great for akimbo pistols or SMGs due to how small of an ammo pool those weapons generally get. Getting 50% increased ammo capacity makes dual pistol builds actually work in long loud heists without the player constantly running dry of bullets, and it was the deck I used the most until I started branching to Mayhem difficulty and beyond. Since then, I've been using Anarchist, but I've also had to move away from akimbo pistols simply due to them now having poor ammo economy without the bonus from Hitman. The most major thing I could think of doing with it is actually moving the 50% ammo capacity to the Gunslinger skill tree instead of the Hitman perk deck (could replace that terrible skill that increases pistol firing rates, 'cos they fire fast enough without it!), making akimbo pistols more usable in general instead of requiring the use of a perk deck with low survivability, and then change it's bonus so that, when equipped, the player could bring along akimbo pistols as a secondary, as well as a primary, maximising the use of it's bonuses and offsetting the low ammo economy of akimbo pistols by doubling the usable weaponry. To add to survivability, make it so that when armour breaks, the player receives 50% less damage for 'x' seconds, giving the player time to move to cover to make use of the faster armour recovery. It would still somewhat be a glass cannon, but at least with this it would be a glass cannon that doesn't run out of ammo or drop dead the moment a dozer looks in their direction.

[@Ssean_TV]

One change I'd give to infiltrator is to swap the middle card for something that goes like: after killing an enemy with a melee attack, the next enemy you land a melee attack on will become "tagged" . Tagged enemies revive a 20% damage over time effect for 5 seconds. When a tagged enemy dies to this effect your armour will instantly regenerate fully, this effect can only occur every 10 seconds and you will not be able to tag an enemy again until getting another melee kill. *I would also add 4% damage reduction to the middle cards to make up the difference from swapping the middle one

[@TogTeg]

NGL I'm glad you gave some love to those of us that run Hybrid builds (HBV w/ decent enough dodge). I've got a DSOD viable hybrid build with Sicario and it's so much fun. I didn't even know Crook was another option for this!

[@hihowareyou6510]

I love how this video is about the worst perk decks but he starts off with a couple good decks.

[@henrysheridan9571]

Biker used to be super good because of a glitch where if you killed multiple enemies with one shot it only counted as one kill, I used to pair it with explosives and get huge chunks of health and armor back (granted I’ve never gone above mayhem but that’s besides the point) That got me thinking that it biker was something like “every 10 seconds gain a charge, (max of 1) upon getting a kill for the next 5 seconds all kills are converted into health, armor and ammo, but that’s my “I think the best melee is the one that looks the funniest” view

[@lordskyline9766]

About gambler: I would just remove the cooldown on the ammo sharing all together and change the healing to refund its cooldown partially if picking up ammo while its on cooldown. Then just change the "more self healing when lower health then your team" to something like "1% increased self healing for every 1% health missing" to break the anti synergy with teammates running berserker and we should be good to go That way you could give the three support decks each their own flavor: Gambler as the ammo refill perk deck, Master Mind as a perkdeck that buffs your entire team passively and Tag Team for on demand Burst healing.

[@PurplePhury3412]

For anyone that prefers deathwish over death sentence, Maniac is actually a really good perk deck. Because damage resistance applies before damage absorption, stacking Maniac with skills that give damage resistance can turn you invulnerable easily on deathwish. A shot from a heavy swat deals 75 damage, that can be lowered by 25% through frenzy then by another 15% through underdog. This lowers the damage either to 47.8. This is lower than the 48 absorption from maniac, so at max hysteria stacks you will be invulnerable to almost all incoming fire. The 24 absorption for your teammates is a great bonus too, and I've had multiple occasions where one of my mates exclaims "your maniac just saved me" when he escapes from somewhere with a sliver of health. Another hidden benefit of Maniac is that it makes inspire unnecessary, as even a small number of hysteria stacks will keep you alive combined with the above semi-passive damage resistances, plus 30% from combat medic and a whopping 50% from die hard. This can save you from going down any of the medic tree apart from the first skill, freeing up skillpoints to use for other things (i.e. turrets, that build up your hysteria stacks for you). I have very little death sentence experience so I can't speak for Maniac's balance on that, but the only thing I would change for deathwish is lowering the amount your hysteria decays. Losing a minimum of 66% of your stacks every time it ticks is brutal, and means that even with constant infinite damage output it's impossible to keep hysteria at max forever. I'd tweak it so that you lose roughly 40% hysteria at max stacks, have a higher hysteria gain cap, increase the rate of hysteria gain/loss ticks slightly, and decrease the amount of hysteria lost during interactions. These tweaks should buff active and aggressive playstyles that are dealing a consistent amount of damage over time while giving you a chance to let go of the trigger and semi-safely open a door that takes a 20s interaction for no good reason.

[@emberz3778]

Even on Death sentence it is still pretty nice. It can make the LBV/ICTV tanky on dsod, as in tank another hit, which is important for that difficulty to give yourself more time to kill or to get into cover. Just comes down to learning how to use it is all.

[@RunicSSB]

Crook is actually pretty good in DSOD Solo. Through crew boosts and more points to spend from not taking Inspire, you can make a build with 40% dodge and enough armor to tank two hits from a Heavy ZEAL.

[@0lafe]

I've been playing a lot of biker recently on DS and it's pretty fun. It almost reminds me of rogue a bit, with a somewhat random chance to armor gate. The healing is nice too, and reminds me a bit of playing grinder. Burglar is also a deck I like for loud. The lock pick, crouch and targeting can all be pretty nice, and the dodge helps a bit. I wouldn't say it's a strong deck, but I have more fun playing it than most stoic or hacker setups The more I get into DS the more I appreciate having some more underpowered decks. Just playing anarchist/stoic/KP can get kind of boring, and having those less powerful decks can be a nice break.

[@contevoncheeseburger8854]

for Burglar in loud, I love to use it one heists with objectives that need you to stand still (drill repair, hox breakout day 1 doors). With OI, your target chance while standing still is super low and lets you do objectives without worrying much.

[@famulanrevengeance3044]

Could also use the skill that halves damage while interacting

[@onji5213]

Ah yes the infamous heavy Crossbow gambler build

[@Legorunner]

I wish that they would somehow put kingpin back to payday 2 for people who didn't buy him

[@sydssolanumsamsys]

there is a 90% chance he says my favorite, grinder

[@ethanmorgan2554]

Can I just say it's refreshing to see you willing to learn from others in your comment section. I've met players and seen other KZbinrs who refuse to learn from others and it's obnoxious. Also much love as a crook simp who loves playing hbv frenzy crook for you spotlighting that playstyle

[@bobbyhinner3225]

I remember using hitman back in the day because if you wanted akimbo weapons, you needed a skill. So you either had to spend the skill points to get the skill, or you'd use hitman and get to use the skill points elsewhere, which was great when you were low level and didn't have many skill points to spend.

[@commandervex1626]

I think that Biker is a good deck for lower levels. It's a mini grinder, but you can use it with any armor. I personally love it for singleplayer as well as It is very useful for xp grinding and staying in the fight as you can tank shots from cops as armor and health regenerates, and if you keep killing you keep regenerating. It's great with LMG's imo. I get that it's not very DSOD viable, at least I assume.

[@Kyee124]

my suggestion for gambler buff is probably: 1. make the heal based on the amount of ammo that added to your weapon, maybe something like if you pick up 1 ammo box and it add 5 bullet to your gun, it would heal around 25, if it added 1, it would heal 5 instead 2. Make the heal works even if you use the ammo bag, like maybe if you use the ammo bag when one of your weapon running dry, it would be a full team FAK 3. Maybe, just maybe, make Gambler can replenish ammo for weapons like rocket launcher or saw when picking up normal ammo box

[@men4cer468]

A great way i think to buff burglar is to make it a targeting deck. As in to provide a less chanche to be taregted like elusive in rouge or in optical illusions skill. It would be unique to not just be another dodge deck but not overly broken because there is a much lower chance to dodge when you are targeted. Maniac could work in a fashion where it is a separate bar of health, similar to armor and shares some of the mechanics as armor. While still having the flat damage reduction, it could also have a the armor mechanic that allows for armor gating, “absorption gating”. To balance this you could make absorption stack deplete much faster to not allow for essentially immortality.

[@emberz3778]

The targeting chance is mainly more affected by Suppressors than by perk/skills.

[@ciphergacha9100]

The best thing about infiltrator is charged 10x attacks turning dozers to ash

[@ciphergacha9100]

And the 20% health gain when you melee someone

[@sssawfish]

I feel like Infiltrator shouldn’t be on here as if you don’t have hotline miami 2, it is the best option for a purely melee build.

[@DapperCommander]

dlc unlocker?

[@sssawfish]

@@DapperCommander I don’t know of any safe and reliable dlc unlockers currently (although I’m sure one exists), and don’t wish to pirate it as I rarely use melee builds anyway.

[@scarymeunster9095]

I think that a cool idea for Biker would be that having a second person running it in the same crew increases returns by 50%. Essentially, you go from being able to activate the main skill 4 times per 4 seconds to 6 every 4 seconds with a second Biker on the team (which applies to *both* Bikers). With a full crew of Bikers, you get a potential _10 times per 4 seconds._ That’s *_50 health AND armor_* every 4 seconds if the whole crew runs the perk deck at once. It sacrifices huge boons like Stoic, Leech, or Hacker, but gives boosts not only to you, but everyone else using the same deck. You now have 4 heisters who are gaining 5 health and armor ten times every four seconds along with an additional 4 points (one per Biker) for each 10% missing from health or armor. I figured the timer reduction should only give a 0.05 second timer decrease bonus, but even then you still have 4 Bikers who get 0.25 seconds reduced from the timer every 10% health missing. That’s less than half the timer if you have 10% health and 4 Bikers. Maybe this would be monstrously overpowered, I dunno. I figured enemies like Skulldozers and SWAT Turrets would really counter the regen along with Snipers hitting through the armor, but the sheer volume of health and armor being restored could very well destroy anything below DSOD. It gives more emphasis on the crew aspect of the Biker. Rust was even a part of an MC himself, so why not encourage players to start a Biker gang?

[@CJ-of6wo]

Something i've been wanting to see as a perk deck is something that buffs existing throwables, not adding a new unique one limited to the perk deck but instead letting you use stronger grenades more often. Possible bonuses could include: doubling your held capacity, increasing blast radius (concussion enjoyers rejoice), increasing throw velocity, Health on throwable kill (lifesteal knives for consistent healing, or massive full heal with explosive aoe), and finally... We already have a method to get grenades back via fully loaded aced on ammo pick up, and stockpiler ai skill on cop kills, so how about in respective perk fashion, throwables automatically regenerate overtime, shortening with every kill. Where do the throwables come from? lets say they make it through your intestines after movin your body for a while. Hillarious thought but could work. In any case, i want a better reason to use dynamite and HE grenades and all that, because the alternatives are just so much better at doing the same job and more.

[@n3vermore771]

I don't think the loud buffs from Burglar were quite meant to make it a hybrid perk deck, more so they are there in the eventuality that your stealth goes wrong at the last minute (or is forced into loud by the nature of the heist (screw you big oil)) and you might want to try to endure through the last few stages of the heist in loud to avoid restarting, hence why its so focused on dodge and sneaking around, its less of a viable loud option and more of a last ditch effort to maybe clutch it when all goes south.

[@unwithering5313]

How cool would it be if there was a Perk Deck that replicated the effects of certain legacy skills; powering up suppressed weapons and getting extra help from civilians and all that

[@mugoftoothpaste1507]

This is just making me realize how broken DS is too, seeing as its just making the damage so insane that most of these arent an option

[@emberz3778]

Nah the issue isn't Death Sentence. It's unforgiving but not unfair. Knowing the strategy of kill a lot and use cover. Anything is viable. Issue is inexperienced players understandably don't know that. When it comes to perks though, would be nice to give them a better purpose. Like Maniac can at least be built to tank 3 Heavy shots on DS, which when going back to the strategy of using cover and that 2 heavy shot armour is incredibly valuable as is, that is massive. On top of doing more damage and supporting your team, albeit that last one is more difficult to do, it is still a really nice bonus. But on something like Gambler. Other perks like Grinder are faster and are at least easier to grasp and Tag Team/Hacker can heal a lot more for you are your team.

[@mugoftoothpaste1507]

@@emberz3778 you make some really fair points and while I still find DS as a kinda badly designed difficulty (this isnt just me malding I have beaten heists on ds) I do see your points and can respect and mostly agree with them.

[@emberz3778]

@@mugoftoothpaste1507 Oh I agree there is some shit to DS like I would want fades more apparent, like more time/make it feel more consistent for solos or fix the ai to not feel like they can phase through objects. But the difficulty itself is honestly fine.

[@robro2214]

Yakuza only really needs a way to force a full armor gain some how or maybe a thing that divides the into slices like how health is divided in leach, maybe every 30 armor = 1 slice

[@HazyHolo]

As a gambler main, I fully agree with the pick up range and healing over time buff. The main downside of all those ammo boxes is having to slowly wait for the healing cooldown to recharge so I am able to heal my teammates again. As I run a sentry gun build myself, Inshallah don’t have a problem being a more supportive role for my team but DAMN would it feel good to be more active with healing

[@soop1984]

i really enjoy playing tag team and crook on dsod as some variety from the decks that overshadow them. i find it amusing how you can also ruin other players zerk by tagging them, and as the deck is hardly used on dsod, i have seen some players have no clue why they are healing

[@thebiolibrary5572]

Latching onto the Burglar Objective Push idea, what if it gave extra boosts to drills, saws and hacks alongside the lines of the drill skills so long as the alarm has been tripped? Extra speed, tripping up enemies that get near it, faster restart speed, that sort of stuff. Another concept, for every player running Burglar after a certain level (maybe level 9), helicopters and escape vans will arrive faster when you have to wait for those sorts of things. Get things done fast and efficiently, stealth or loud. Here're my ideas. Sneaky: Your chance to dodge is increased by 20%. Drills, Saws and Hacks complete 10% faster once the alarm goes off. Bag of Tricks: Your Drills, Saws and Hacks are rigged to blast enemies when they break, clearing out the area around them. This will only occur if the alarm has been tripped. You bag corpses 20% faster. Luck of the Irish: Your chance to dodge is increased by an additional 5%. You pick locks 20% faster. Your intuition as a thief will make it more likely your first choice is the correct choice. (For instance, on No Mercy whichever ward you saw has a chance to become the infected patient's ward if it wasn't already the infected patient's ward.) Dutch Coverage: Your chance to dodge is increased by an additional 5%. You take 20% less damage when interacting with objects and you can interact with them 10% faster. Breath of Fresh Air: Once the heist goes loud, the getaway drivers will be primed and ready to go, and will thus arrive on the scene 20% faster. You gain 10% crouching movement speed.

[@TheMrbigtires]

I'm a casual player and Crook has become my default. I don't like the slowness from heavy armor, but I also don't like being one-shot because I wore a suit to a heist. Crook is just really skill intensive, needing a lot from both Tank (to increase armor) and Artful Dodger (to increase dodge chance). I think the best buffs for Crook would be 5% more dodge chance/ reduce dodge penalties on armor by 5%, an extra 20 to 30 armor through the tree, and increasing the concealment values for armors. This would allow the Lightweight Vest to get up to 50% total dodge, further incentivize the regular Ballistic Vest, and wield heavier weapons to really make it the midpoint to a heavy armor and dodge build.

[@Thatoneguezzt]

Biker is amazing. It is anarchist that survives snipers and regens health for 2 shot, but sacrifices the 1.5 invulnerability (which is op), which is an interesting play, also it lets you survive better than anarchist when you use snipers or when you are out of ammo in your mag or completely, which happens sometimes in pubs, and you can rely on your teammates getting some kills so you could survive a dangerous situation. Ofcourse it isn't op as it was before the "rework" (nerf), but it's still viable option with a little bit different playstyle

[@bobertcheeseboy3111]

I personally love Rouge. It’s a nice simple dodge deck that doesn’t require micromanagement.

[@analbull1424]

Why do you prefer rouge and not rogue?

[@deskslam4232]

I think Yakuza’s rage should be in the throwable slot, and maybe the characters can make an angry yell in loud, and a quiet curse in stealth.

[@timoburghardt3337]

Man, I love your vids

[@jayalriik7421]

I know im 9 month late to the party, but i could see Maniac playing into that crazy nature even more than it does. The main way ive invisioned this is with adding elements when taking damage or at low health. This could be achieved in two main ways in my eyes. The first would be hysteria benefits when your armor breaks such as a double or even triple to all the numbers when your armor has broken, thus creating a more low armor tank (possibly high armor if the effect persisted for a bit after being broken) with a sicario like balance of it only working every x seconds with kills or damage absorbed reducing it. The second idea would be to apply similar benefits while on low health, which could give it a berserker tie in build with extreme damage reduction. But then i feel its stepping on Yakuza territory.

[@blkguy3rd]

i think Gambler could work similar to the scout in tf2s man vs machine mode. his job is to run around and grab the money and since hes directly in the action money heals him past full health to an overshield. Gambler could get this in the form of armor regen on pick up as well as a bit of a passive speed boost to help get in and out. as for the ammo make it so that if he gets the ammo everyone gets a reduced amount of ammo from it but when totaled up its slightly more than normal ammo for one person, that way you want him to be the one getting ammo boxes. another thing i thought of would be a throwable with a cooldown that could give off all the effects that picking up an ammo box would but that you could use from safety or behind cover if its needed.

[@TheSpawacz]

The problem is that theres a lot of perks trying to fill the same niche but theres always the best one. Also the dodge mechanic is a lot better on the higher diffculties because of how armor works. That makes pool of good perks for dsod smaller.

[@emberz3778]

Armour is still amazing on dsod

[@destroyer-cq2lm]

As a Hitman main. The quick armor regen is incredible. I tried running Muscle and I despised not having my armor come back instantaneously.

[@OGSumo]

What if gambler was actually more like it’s name: *Gambling* As you pick up ammo, for every pickup you gain 2% (or more if testing shows that’s too weak) chance to ignore incoming damage which stacks up to 99%. These stacks could either decay over time, or decrease by a set percent with every instance of damage ignored. To still make this a support deck (and to have it be fun for your teammates who know that you’re playing a risky deck) they get 50% of the ammo pickup (and maybe a bit of health, but I feel like that might push this to be over powered). You get no direct ammo from pickups, instead ammo is added to your equipment, which is a refillable ammo bag that takes longer than normal to interact with (this forced you to eventually disengage as you’ll run out of ammo. So you can’t just be a one man army). Basically, you support everyone with ammo and buff yourself by running around collecting ammo pickups. But this can’t last forever, and you’ll eventually need to disengage to refill ammo yourself. Every time you go out their to run around and pick up ammo is a run to get as much ammo as possible while also praying that rng doesn’t fuck you and have you go down way out of position. But you can influence your chances by maintaining high gambling odds. Your team likes it because they get ammo via both the pickups and maybe your ammo bags without risk to themselves. The player likes it because it allows them to tank damage and run around while also having that rush knowing that their luck might run out if they roll the dice too many times or don’t maintain a steady supply of pickups.

[@shadedergu9921]

Hitman is really good with the Improved Combined Tactical Vest with Akimbo Shotguns and the quick Full Armor Regen. Of course it runs a regen build via Jokers which is weird to run on Death Sentence, but it is a really strong combo In all honesty the Armor Recovery Rate bonuses for Hitman before Tooth and Claw should just be swapped with either increased Armor values or with Akimbo Weapon Damage Increases. Cause the super quick 1.5 Seconds for Hitman is really good at absorbing hits on the Improved Combined Tactical Vest if you are good at keeping your head down. It really just is buff armor value more or buff akimbo damage more

[@mattiatorX]

So I use Biker as a bootleg Anarchist on a full sentry/utility build. Having turrets down and constantly proccing armor gate and healing allows me to handle objectives without focusing on killing enemies myself (because Anarchist doesn’t work on turrets oddly enough). The constant stream of health and armor helps with long interacts. Well, that and the shaped charges I throw on with Jack of all Trades. Still pretty sure Copycat with the Biker perk is still way better for the health/armor boost.

[@Ze_N00B]

The only change Infiltraitor needs is to have the fact that the 10x melee damage multiplayer lasts 5 seconds and not 1 be stated in the perk deck.

[@thetimewornspire3742]

The absorption on tag team is actually good enough to help it get to the 225 armor breakpoint and survive 1 hit from a heavy zeal with the ictv.

[@slmbenkayra]

Has anyone told you how good your diction is? Like fr you're good at voice acting

[@hrznn]

I'm running Burglar for hundreds of hours by now (I only play stealth). The body bag speed can save a heist, if I accidentally knock a guard too far and it gets spotted, I can bag it before it'd alert them. Quicker lockpicking is also nice. So, other than Hacker, can someone recommend a good stealth deck? (ECM rushing is good for sweating, but I hate it.)

[@brekabarnflikeherodoomshor2894]

New challenge: beat payday 2 with the most useless weapons, useless perks and useless skill tree

[@zacube4366]

More or less on the same page with Maniac. I will say though, Payday 2 is a typical go-to game for my family's gaming days and we like to play on mayhem for that. Running maniac on a turret build on mayhem or below is insanely good, since well-placed turrets basically negate the need for you to make sure you're dealing enough damage to keep the stacks up yourself. It just makes the entire experience more relaxing when you're not trying to push yourself that much imo.

[@imdadirtydan]

having only really used hitman for loud, the switch being nearly immortal at lower difficulty to instantly decimated at higher difficulty is very disappointing, also the fact that it does nothing for stealth whilst being called hitman, theoretically the most important occupation to be stealthy. It mostly served me as a way to make dual judges feasible ammo wise lol.

[@SMG-vx3mu]

7:30 i had this idea for a melee focused perk deck that gives you speed and dodge the more kills you get with melee weapons (maybe it can give some sort of melee damage bonus through some means at a similar rate) similar to how demoknight works. should this be a reworked yakuza deck (where the OG's speed mechanics stay the same and only dodge chance increases on melee kills), it might work decently well with berserker to turn you into a glass cannon that can kill most enemies while taking little damage thanks to the dodge and can possibly let you go with hit and run tactics on most enemies and lets you circle strafe dozers till they die. maybe it can work in a similar way to heat in the yakuza games? it would be cool if a speed/dodge oriented melee perk deck was in the game instead of the bulky armor/health based perk decks we already have

[@Wow21Jacob]

For gambler, im thinking that instead of using a simple base value, they should use percentages for healing. For example: in "more healing" it gives 8 health, in "more healing 2" it gives an additional 8 health, while i do see that giving 16% of health back for each ammo pickup could be a bit overkill, thats why adjusting the values could be beneficial for this deck. I used to play it and found it great for support but quickly dropped off as the difficulty went up.

[@_Cujo_]

I really enjoy biker as a chill perk deck to put on when I'm playing Overkill. It's just nice to have a constant stream of healing and armor. Sure, it's not ultra competitive, but I still think it's fine as is. Gambler, I really wish had increased ammo pickup to offset the fact that you're taking other people's ammo. That way if you rolled high on your ammo pickup, you would compensate them more like 75% of the ammo box instead of only 50%. Might make people less annoyed with the theft of "their" ammo. Also, it might be nice if you could still pick up ammo boxes at full ammo, which would split the ammo between the rest of the team and trigger the healing effect. If you just need the healing it provides while at full ammo, you gotta fire off a round and steal an ammo box to replenish 1 bullet.

[@beanpole_brando]

I can't believe every single deck I have ever invested points in are in this video

[@tvheadd]

For me, maniac is "use taser or poison grenades while spamming the yell button to fill the room with hostages" And gambler is "sit in my nest running around picking up ammo, while my two pet cops and four armor piercing turrets do all the work for me" I think they're hilarious and fun decks.

[@Primslim101]

Grinder with a sentry gun build is great! Your almost invisible as long as you make sure the sentrys are shootin something lol

[@Tabby3456]

Crew Cheif needs a buff, and it should add health regen for every civilian hostage you have

[@Thatoneguezzt]

Crew Chief is the best perk deck you can pick with not low skill players. Buffs, if you add some buffs from your skills, are actually huge, and shouting distance allows you to use inspire to speed up movement and reload so much easier. Crew chiefs allows many builds to achieve cool breakpoints, like for crook to pick lighter armor or for armorer to take ctv instead of ictv, saving skill points, or even for muscle health to take 3 hits from ZEAL swat. It's the best support perk

[@Mushroom-Stew]

Burglar is a nice perk deck for a casual relaxing stealth heist when you're going slow and steady

[@ashtonmccloud1161]

The only one of those decks I'll say anything about Is burglar because while useless in loud heists. It's still probably the best for stealth or second best. Looking at bagging corpses faster might mean a guard doesn't see a body. The 20% lockpick speed for lockpicking in general or on bank heists with deposit boxes or any other heist with a lot of things like deposit boxes. You could pair it and I do with nimble and insta pick stuff almost. The only other highlight is answering pagers faster to tell the guy all's well and then bag that corpse. Just faster makes stealth safer. The final note would be 10% crouching speed. Nothing extremely important but it's there. Good for if there's not enough room for the sprint jump crouch.

[@nuke_hazard18_23]

17:11 based

[@nado1908]

Hitman is a relic of it's time where to dual wield you needed a skill.