I think that's an inevitable part of any game, if there isn't any bad skill then there isn't any good skill either. The better option imo is having more niche skills that specialized in a specific play style, or only actually good when combined with others.
i mean you can run basically anything on death wish and below and can make it work somehow, a lot of this variation i think is fun and needed, and death sentence is bs anyways that can seldom be played with anything but meta
4:15 I feel that I should add here that saws are even worse than that for bulldozers, IIRC saws should do 500 damage to bulldozers but due to how the code hasn't been updated for this in years medic/minigun dozers do not count for this damage boost. I got this info from RedFlame's Fixed Saw Damage Scaling mod.
You missed what I see as Second Wind's best use. For any stealth heist that turns into a rush, having that constant stream of +30% speed is incredible, paired with some teammates with Yakuza. I generally use an HE Judge to proc the skill, and use it on Diamond Store rushes, but wouldn't be surprised to see it used on Shadow Raid either.
Some gripes with a couple choices. Saw massacre aced is surprisingly good because it's one of those misleading skill descriptions. The panic actually works on any kill while you have a saw out, meaning melee, throwables, and DOT will proc this panic. This panic isn't weak either, it's a pretty high chance for a high radius. If you want to see that go to work, try socio with knives and just have a saw out. You'll end up causing quite a ruckus among the enemies. Dire need is a great lifesaving skill too, especially aced. I don't think I can count how many times I've lived just because I shot every enemy of a crowd instead of focusing on killing each one. Dire need is super helpful on more fragile builds.
Dire need is great for grinder builds. Almost all of your time will be spent either with your armor down or in the 6 second window. It's ideal for bullet hoses like miniguns and smgs and the best part about it is you no longer have to fear cloakers or tasers. Obviously, they can be staggered before they attack, but it can also interrupt charges and tases.
Must confess, I wasn't aware of the additional panic effect. This is exactly why I like to make videos like these to learn those little techs and share them community-wide. I almost feel like my overuse of snipers has clouded my opinion on Dire Need, I can definitely see some value in it with other weapons. Thanks as ever Carrot!
@@stevie8271 that wasn't intended to be me suggesting how you should build for sentries. You're absolutely right in pointing out the power of the shield!
Dire Need is actually pretty powerful, especially when used with automatic weapon, as your shots wont instantly kill enemies, and DN allows you to survive encounters when your amor is down
10:40 I do want to point out that I once ran an almost "Melee Exclusive" build that revolved around going fucking apeshit and because I didnt have time to constantly keep watch, having it constantly charged for the next enemy only for it to be used on a Cloaker who decided to be sneaky is a ton of help.
Even in other builds, you can save yourself by holding melee as soon as you hear the WULULULULULU. Even if you start a milisecond earlier, it still works
My suggestion for combat medic aced is: *"reviving a teammate heals them up to max hp, 60 seconds cooldown. (Does not apply to players with berserk skill unlocked)"* This might be very powerful for lower difficulties but anything good is powerful for them anyways. But it will be really decent for DSOD gameplay if the max health pool is enough to tank at least a single bullet. It's not that expensive as well, would synergize great with inspire.
@@Mi_tala The game is kinda old for skill overhauls like this so i hope payday 3 has a skill tree with at least situationally useful skills at the worst. Some of the current skills in pd2 are both bad in functionality and also values with low percentages. Also the skills are WAY different depending on difficulty, maybe some skills can scale up with difficulty to stay somewhat useful, just an idea.
Combat Medic and Up You Go should give 30% and 40% of your total healthbar when revived. This will be very handy on health-based builds as reviving with 10% health is currently their biggest weakness on higher difficulties. On the other hand, a Muscle player can spring back into action with 80% health without having to waste an extra medkit.
counterpoint imo, most, if not all health tanking perkdeck, has jokers skills that make their lives easier, sure bringing hostage taker aced for Kingpin isnt necessary, but it sure as hell helps. Combat medic, again, ruins berzerker breakpoints, meaning its pretty much exclusively only viable if the entire team runs kingpin muscle crewchief ect
Ehh not really. First Aid Kits are plentiful. Even if you don't bring them, Health decks have ways to quickly regen their health. Only thing you need to do is be more patient for the small time being.
For Counterstrike Aced, personally, I've gotten a lot of use out of it. Sure, when a Cloaker is *right in front of you* and you're staring at him, sure, it's like 'Just kill him, he's right there.' But for those moments when I'm focused on the 300 other cops trying to kill me, and I just suddenly hear their noise out of nowhere, well, just quickly hold the melee button and boom. Vulnerable. And personally, I never know when the Cloakers are actually going to jump and kick, so I prefer to have it as a back up.
*look around* *shoot cloaker* problem solved! either way, i understand using Counterstrike, quite fun when you beat the shit out of the cloaker that tried to dropkick you
If the health revive skills scaled off your max hp, I could actually see them being fairly useful on DW or mayhem, since they could Massively increase your survivability after getting picked up, depending on the numbers.
Dire need actually not that bad. The aced version actually mean when your armor break all shot will make enemy stagger and effect will last for 6 second more when armor recovered. It help me a few times from cloaker or rushing enemies assuming you cant kill all of them in time and i find it to be abit useful on 168 sniper build that cant hit 255 breakpoint with Overkill aced or Berserker so you can literally stop a group of enemies rushing with graze shot or smg volley. But it still isnt that good because as you said "just make them dead quickly" but for me i do not think it deserve spot on this video since it still have redeeming quality. Overall still a great video keep it up!
Dire need is a really good skill to combine with dodge as it will allow you to stagger enemies while your armor regens, since with dodge your armor is 1 shot
Second Wind Aced is especially useful when a Sicario is running it. Since Sicario is build around taking damage, you can activate Second Wind a lot of the time. I'd say it's most useful on Mayhem, where you don't get punished as hard for playing clumsily and not focussing on your armour. Plus I very much appreciate others running it on dodge builds as if they're playing badly I still get something out of it :)
I definitely get what you mean. I think an argument can be made that as long as you have a perk deck, skills are entirely optional for Overkill and down so I prefer to focus the discussion at the higher difficulty levels. It's also worth mentioning that my goal isn't to tell people to not use any of these skills, more so to discuss, find uses and potentially point Overkill towards the skills that need slight adjustments.
As a more casual player, I honestly think Biker is a somewhat slept-on perk deck. Though its not DW viable to my knowledge and it encourages a more selfish playstyle, it rewards a more aggressive playstyle, similar to Leech, Stoic, Grinder, or other active regenerator perk decks. Its also possible to armor gate with Biker since kills reward both health and armor. Even then, Biker allows you to play more objective based when you have three other teammates running around on a mass murder spree.
biker is the kind of perk deck that could be buffed with mods to make it DW viable, maybe some youtuber should make a mod pack of perk decks buffed to dw
Honestly the tier 2 revenant skills could really use some reworking, being revived with a little more health is nice, until you consider that most perk decks have some form of health regeneration already. Maybe making one of the skills increase the amount of health you're revived with based on how many enemies you killed while downed would be something neat to play around with
I think you're underestimating some health-centered builds like stoic or supportive builds like crew chief when it comes to more health. If you have stoic and more health on revive it'll be much difficult to get instadowned immediately. As for crew chief, idk if a good dsod crew chief build exists but if it does then it can be very good because it pretty much multiplies all crew skills, especially if you are in loud with many hostages and arrested cops. For the dodge skill, I typically use it to try to get the most amount of dodge (and often crit) with the highest damaging weapons. On unaced I can get to probably 6 detection and still have +10 dodge, but acing the skill allows me to get more like 10-15 detection and pretty much still have a dodge loadout. What about the skill that automatically turns in a hostage when you get arrested? I think that skill isn't very viable because ideally you wouldn't want to go downed, and when hostages exchange it's at a point in the heist that combat has died down anyways so usually it's not difficult for a teammate to grab them.
HP-based deck usually uses FAKs and/or Hostage taker so a little extra HP on revive didn't do that much (it'll probably work for OVK difficulty but on DS? you *probably* still got 1 shotted by Heavy with or without the extra HP on revive) the dodge skill is a bit hard to justify... cuz on one hand you get 10% extra dodge, but on the other hand it's ONLY 10% with hacker you can get 55% without any dodge skills and without concerning your detection I do agree on Stockholm Syndrome being bad tho, 9 total point for a skill that didn't do much the basic version is good for stealth tho
crew chief is actually unironically amazing, beats out a good chunk of perk decks, it helps everyone on the team, gives free 2 shot ictv breakpoint, more health, more tankiness, its great, sucks for zerk users but its fine imo. as for dodge, its a bit of a mess to explain but essentially 10% doesnt matter as much as to decks with already high dodge (hacker gives 55 with no skills) *and additionally* relying on dodge is considered bad anyway, bad in a way where the game becomes a lot more unpredictable compared to decks that give 100% risk return
sneaky bastard aced is actually kinda useful, if you get the basic version you can only have a max of 3 DR (Detection rating) BUT if you get the aced version you can go all the way up to 23 DR! same goes with the crit skill also SB aced is useful when you're doing grinder, those extra few points of dodge help quite a bit imo
Yeah its weird to call it a noob trap since he gives passes to things like turrets or the skills in the shotgunner tree for enabling playstyles. SB Aced enables some very strong weapon choices for dodge builds even on higher levels, like the stupid fun DMR dodge builds you can get away with. And for PD2 ive always felt you kinda have to use DW as the one difficulty to check if the build/playstyle is actually good, since ever since it came out, DS has always had between 1-3 builds that are viable for that difficulty
You might be the first person I have heard say sneaky bastard isn't worth. While I agree that if you need to ace it, your just better off without it, you can VERY easily make effective weapons while still remaining beneath 5 concealment. Also, the point about its tree being bad just doesn't make much sense to me: You have Duck & cover, a skill I literally never play the game without, and when aced makes running objectives that much easier. Then, parkour, an all around nice boost to mobility, inner pockets, which is 2 free concealment to help get that legendary 3 detection risk, and then shockproof, one of the most powerful perks IMO, due to it hard countering tazers when aced, effectively turning them into SWATs with a bit more health. Combine sneaky bastard with duck and cover, you get 20% dodge when sprinting, which, when playing dodge, is effectively always when you need it. Combined with rogue's 50 dodge, or the 55 you can get when playing hacker, as well as the 5 from the bot bonus (assuming your playing with at least one bot) and the five from suit, you can boost your dodge up to 80 with rogue or 85 with hacker. That makes it 1 in 5 shots as opposed to 1 in 2. WAY better odds for 7 skill points.
The issue is that Sneaky Bastard is often prioritised when you could instead invest in actual useful skills like damage, jokers and deployables. Even on builds that never need dodge in the first place, which is pretty bad. The tree has quite a few bad skills. Duck n cover basic is the best skill. Aced only benefits dodge builds. 10% is nice for the builds, but most decks do not need to use it at all. Your point about objectives can only really apply to dodge decks and nothing else. Even then, if you wanted to do objectives easier. Jokers exist. Damage exists. They can let you do objectives so much easier. Being able to let a bot tank the hits for you or kill a lot easier. Parkour basic, it is only really useful for Flak Jacket and heavier armours. Other than that, the speed is not noticeable and it saves points taking it off. Aced is even worse. You cannot sprint cancel out of reloads. This is terrible as if you are reloading and a guy is in front of you. You are dead. Even if you argue that melee and deployable cancelling exist, they are both too slow and situational to use all the time. Even on lower difficulties, you can just save the points and reload patiently in cover instead. Congrats on saving 6 points. Inner pockets is pretty nice for a lot of builds. Not every build needs it, but it does benefit the majority. 3 detection isn't necessarily needed, 4 does the job so you can add a bit more stats to your guns. Shockproof is just useless. Thing is, as annoying as they seem. You can just kill them or just have a teammate bail you out. It's similar to swan song where, it is basically a crutch for inexperienced players when the reality of it is, you are better off not taking it and instead just investing in other things to deal with your problems a lot easier. Dire need can be a nice skill. Basically its a panic option where once your armour breaks you can just sporadically shoot the swats and just run. As nice as it is, quite expensive and you can often use bullseye basic fine as well. Forgot to mention. 4 detection heavily limits weapon choices. You can still do well with the weapons, but often you miss out of things like grenade launchers, powerful akimbo smgs/shotguns, etc.
To give heavy impact some credit, microgun + heavy impact is a great way to crowd control and makes shields a joke without needing a special weapon to deal with them
heavy impact actually sounds like it would have synergy with the grimm 12g + dragonbreath combo. The initial damage is super low, it's playstyle is all about spray & pray and dragonbreath also has an innate stun chance.
I think the Counterstrike knockdown effect should deal damage, both basic and aced, to give it something for melee builds. As for Trigger Happy, maybe the damage boost could stack on the Aced version, to really pack a bigger punch, or work like Overkill Aced.
I personally believe it's a bit unfair to lump Sneaky Bastard in the same category as some of these other skills. Sneaky Bastard at the very least has its place in a build were the other skills shouldn't be ran at all, plus Sneaky Bastard can actually bring a Hacker (one kill with Pocket ECM) with Duck And Cover Aced up to 75 dodge which is mental. Though yes, Sneaky Bastard isn't really needed, it's still nice to have to make sure that you aren't going to get hit.
I honestly really like heavy impact: i use an LMG with the world renowned tactic of "spray and pray until everything's dead", and with the particular weapon i use, headshots are difficult at best once you've been firing for more than like 4 rounds, when i often go for over 100 consecutively, so the stagger does actually come in very useful. Having the enemies dead IS better than having them on the floor but alive, but by that same logic, having a lot of enemies incapacitated (whether it's from being knocked to the ground, supressed from the sheer volume of high-threat fire, or, yes, dead) is better than them all being on their feet and firing at you. Although, i'm an infamy 1 scrub who never plays above mayhem, so obviously my opinion doesn't matter /lh
i will add, i am currently working my way back up to a high enough level to use Body Expertise, so it's kinda just a stopgap, but it's likely going to be a part of my build until level 80 at least, just because of how effective its been i know that nobody cares but this has been in the back of my mind since i posted it
7:47 sneaky bastard aced is more for builds that use guns that don’t reach perfect 3 detection as the threshold to reach max dodge such as using a weapon with a higher mag size than spend points on skills, which makes sneaky bastard aced more situational, base is there if you are going for 3 detection anyways to top of rouge or sicario
For me Bullseye is one of the weirdest skills in terms of usefulness from a DSOD perspective. The base skill of getting armour on a headshot is amazing and borderline necessary, however aced it's functionality useless since it just gives you more armour per headshot, which similar to other skills in the video practically isn't a factor on higher difficulties. When you're taking hundreds of damage per shot, armour-gating is armour-gating regardless of the amount of armour you have, making Bullseye simultaneously one of the best and worst skills for high difficulties. It's saving grace imo is that on lower difficulties the amount of armour gained is actually a useful thing.
Bullseye aced useful on anarchist. It help you rebuild armor to max since anarchist dont fully recover all at once. Other perk deck not much but on anarchist its Goated
@@c3lest1na45 oh yeah true, I run Anarchist myself and usually ace it since it is useful, but on DS one shot can take out your armour from max anyways, so building it up quicker isn't much use. This is obviously a DS specific thing and doesn't affect most players, but I find it interesting how the aced version of the skill goes from useful to useless in a DS context.
@@connorfoxton6167 not really, if you go hybrid it really shines. In DS with a archist and suit. Snipers oneshot you without counterplay, but running ana with some armor, allows you to do maps that you cant really reliably do in OD, sience at the end of the day, most of the surv on ana is the invul, and the headshots, suit clutch is really good but gives you bad habits that you feel in OD.
I actually really love Far Away it is. To save points, a decent amount of my shotgun builds only have shotguns unless I take Overkill aced. But without some semi iss accurate weapons, shotguns are extremely bad against Snipers. But with 3 to 9 nine skill points and some modding, most shotguns can now actually hit snipers from very long distance away which makes life infinitely easier imo.
Personally, I run kickstarter aced with the golden spoon because fuck stealth, I didn’t cue up “I will give you my all” to play quiet. Restarting the drill with a spoon is hilarious
*I find Heavy Impact aced to be pretty useful* I use it on my lmg builds to take care of shields without having to switch weapons, I just shoot at them a couple of times and execute them when they hit the floor
Then just take Shock n awe aced. Not only can it be more effective, but it actually won't hinder your build as much. It is awkward trying to fit Heavy Impact when you are going for Body expertise, when you can just get surefire and lock n load instead. At least Shock n awe is a lot easier to fit in and also helps with armour regen.
Cloaker knockdown is rather useful. Say you're in a chaotic gunfight and hear a cloaker charging. Hold E, and you'll be fine. It's good for when you know a cloaker is there, but not exactly where. I use it as a last second counter
If knockdown was buffed so it affect all enemies that your target falls into get knocked over by them it could be interesting and turn Payday 3 into a bowling sim
The fact that cloakers turn you before downing you is the reason counterstrike aced is useful. If you start turning, hold melee and you will counter it
You should do a video on the worst original 2013 skills, like the one that slightly reduced the cost of crafting masks and the one that slightly increased the chance of getting an infamous mask.
Far Away tends to be best if you need to deal with snipers. Though it still is situational, it can be good on heists like Big Bank and Transport: Crossroads if you're running a Shotgun/Saw build. Even then, having that ability to get some extra range out of your shotgun if needed is nice to have as a "just in case" sort of thing.
The thing about dodge is that it gets better the more of it you have. 10% dodge chance isn't going to do much by itself, but going from 50% dodge to 60% dodge is a lot more impactful; it's effectively an extra 20% damage mitigation instead of just 10%.
Here's my ideas for perk replacements... if I didn't mention them, I think they're okay. Combat Medic Aced - additional damage reduction when reviving Forced Friendship Aced - Multiple hostages can follow you at once Far Away Aced - Shotgun damage scales up with range while using slugs Transporter Aced - Carry multiple bags Saw Massacre Aced - Present benefits + no ammo consumption on unarmored enemies Hardware Expert Aced - 20% instead of 10% Heavy Hitter Aced - Bulldozers can be staggered Dire Need Aced - 30% crit chance when armor is broken Sneaky Bastard - 20% additional dodge maximum Trigger Happy Aced - Bonus applies to primary weapon Up You Go Aced - Revive with full health Martial Arts Aced - Knockdown applies to all specials except shield Counter Strike Aced - Enemies about to melee you visibly flash, Cloakers knocked down die instantly
ur transporter aced idea should be 2 bags max, if it were to be ingame. not many places to put full duffel bags on ur body while also having ur guns out lol. or maybe u can put ur guns away to be able to carry 2 (maaaybe 3) bags or smth so it's more a specialist thing instead, cuz i think ur current idea would be so busted it'd trivalise big bank & shadow raid with a full crew i like the rest tho ur far away aced wouldnt be necessary had OVK just never done fuckin damage range multipliers lol
I don't entirely blame them for the damage multipliers as it helps to specialize the weapons a bit. I'd argue ballistics would be good to help balance weapons-although, really, it'd need to be really exaggerated for it to make a real difference. Unless they do some kinda street escapes like the movie Heat, we'd rarely engage beyond 50 meters, which anything worth being called a "gun" would be lethal, and likely be zeroed for quite easily... so it's a null point.
Personally, I like the stagger effect with Vulcan Minigun. For when you just can't kill that one enemy fast enough, you can just stagger. Because if they aren't shooting, they're not killing you. [also i 100% wish 'nade launchers could crit]
underdog aced in higher difficulties can actually be a detriment - if it expires while you're being shot at by a heavy swat, you'll take 202.5 damage from one shot and then get immediately graced by the same cop dealing 225 damage. in some cases this is just a death sentence and you will die from it, eg zerk anarchists
I really enjoyed this video, Kknowley! I agree on the skill selection completely and wish they would get buffed, as for how I would buff them... 1. Honestly Combat Medic Aced and Up You Go Aced should have the percentages based on max HP but be disabled on Berserker Users. 2. For Trigger-Happy, I would make it so that Base is 120% damage for 3 seconds and Aced is 240% for 1 seconds. If you have the fire-rate to maintain that damage boost you can eat bulldozers even faster with auto-pistols. 3. For Sneaky Bastard I would just make it so that acing it gives a 20% dodge-boost but remove the "1% for every 1 DR beneath 35" shtick. 4. Forced Friendship should just be translated into damage reduction or heavily increase the damage absorption to 10 points. It's very rare you'll be able to find 8 hostages to get the _4 damage absorption_. 5. Counter-Strike Base should deal double of the melee damage on parry while Aced should insta-kill Cloakers, like you suggested. 6. Finally for Saw Massacre the skill would be even better with one change: remove the "Can't pick up ammo" trait from all the weapons that have it (save crossbows and bows). This trait is completely useless and ruins weapons that don't deserve it; besides, OVERKILL can easily make the ammo pick-up atrocious, which would still be better than what we have now. Thanks for the video again! Stay frosty and keep those helmets flying!
I haven’t seen anyone else mentioning it, but Counterstrike Aced has a very niche use that I consider valuable. It makes doing White House True Ending solo very easy. If you bring AI, you just gotta be patient, but otherwise you’re pretty much invincible. Incredibly niche, but if you mainly play solo like me, it can make that section far less frustrating (if still just as tedious)
You talking about an instant kill on cloakers with counterstrike made me think. For payday 3, what if you didn't have to answer pagers, but you had to stealth takedown enemies? And the takedowns took about as much time as the pagers? What if you could ace a high level skill that let you takedown enemies even when you're not in stealth? Maybe different characters have different methods? I for one want to see wolf stab somebody with a drill, wait impatiently for a few seconds then remove it and watch the body fall.
I'm late, but I feel like I should expand on Combat Medic Aced being arse here: The way you presented it, it seems as if you might be under the impression it's +30% *maximum* health. I mean, the skill reads like that right? But oh no, it's not +30% maximum health. It's not even +30% extra health when revived. It's +30% *of the health you would otherwise receive when being revived.* Which means you get +30% of 10% of your Max Health on Mayhem and above, which works out to a whole 3% of your max health. For your average 230 health heister, that's a whopping *_6.9_* (nice) health. Even for the best case scenario, that being a Muscle user (Not Stoic in ICTV, it's 45-odd vs. 460) they gain only 13.8 extra health. The only people who care about that much health on Deathwish, never mind Death Sentence, is the berserker you just accidentally pushed to a lower breakpoint when you revived them. It's complete pants.
I was really surprised by sneaky bastard, but looking into it critically I kinda found I agree. I think you undersell how much 10% dodge adds on some builds(going from 55->65 dodge for example means you get shot almost 30% less), but it really is an insane number of points to invest, where at most you might want parkour aced and inner pockets basic, meaning you need to spend a further 11-19 points to get to it which would probably be better taking even a basic amount of joker skills if you need survivability.
I don't know if you know this. But with normal buckshot or 000 buckshot shotguns start getting damage falloff after 20m up to 50m where they stop doing any damage at all. The far away skill increases this to 30m - 75m. Giving you a significant increase in damage over distance. Sure, it isn't the most usefull skill in all situations, but I quite like it. It also makes sniping snipers with shotguns more reliable.
I find that the stagger mechanic is actually detrimental. Like you said, a dead enemy can't fight at all while a staggered enemy recovers. Yet it throws off your aim by making enemy movement less predictable.
I’ve found that sneaky bastard works pretty well with a hacker dodge setup. Having passive dodge is nice to fall back on while you wait for your mini ecm to recharge
Far Away isn't there to "enable a playstyle", it's there to allow shotguns to handle snipers. Without it you get picked apart by them, with it you have at least a reasonable chance at being able to pick them off. Ditto for the SWATs fucking your ally at medium to long range from you. You're completely off-base on this one. Hardware Expert Aced is supposed to be paired with Kickstarter Aced for your crew's designated technician or "drill guy". It's not really "situational" just because it's not something everyone should take. But it's absolutely a useful skill to have if you're investing in drill skills. Once again, you're completely off-base. Your Heavy Impact take is...whoof, where to even start. "Have you ever even fired four bullets into an enemy in Payday 2", yes it's called Assault Rifles and LMGs, two entire classes of weapon that you seem to be deliberately ignoring which are massively buffed by this skill. Being able to spray down a room and stunlock a bunch of enemies makes LMGs with this skill second only to flamethrowers for sheer crowd control. Being able to regularly interrupt Cloakers, knock back shields to make them easier to flank...the list goes on. Heavy Impact is far from useless, it's almost a necessity if you're running ARs or LMGs and it gives you great crowd control options. "Just shoot to kill" is honestly a pretty mediocre take. Sounds fine on paper, but I'd rather be able to lock down a room and then start working my way down the priority list than try to focus on clean kills when I'm taking fire from three different directions. Just because a skill doesn't fit in *your* playstyle doesn't mean it does not have a use. You talk about Sneaky Bastard being bad...and then point out the one and only time you're really supposed to use it (high-concealment dodge builds). Also, your appraisal of Dodge in general is pretty trash. It's fun and it's viable, so what if it isn't perfect. For Martial Arts Aced you once again take a skill that is meant to be paired with another...and complain that it sucks because it isn't viable on its own. Yeah, no shit Sherlock. Overall, 5/10, better luck next time.
With far away. Usually you'd have something else in tandem with a shotgun like an automatic weapon in either your primary or secondary. Usually you'd just use them for Snipers/Bulldozers, even with the likes of an lmg or (akimbo) smg, they can deal with snipers quite well. And even excluding them, you'd have something like a HE/AP Judge, you have a shotgun with the Flechette rounds, etc. Snipers really aren't that bad at all to deal with if you know what you are doing. For hardware expert aced. It is situational. Not everyone should take it. While it can feel nice, Kickstarter aced exists. Drill Sawgeant aced is really nice as is. As nice as the extra stat is, it's preferable to use those points for something else. Even under those circumstances. Dire need exists. The stagger is quite useful, but it really outclasses Heavy impact since it can trigger a lot more consistently. Also cloakers really aren't a threat. The skill while I agree can be really useful, you can understandably run without it. What's more necessary would be damage skill. If you are taking damage from all sides, you are doing something wrong. You should be using cover to minimise the damage taken or be killing quick enough to do the same. Dodge is pretty overrated. The 10%+ extra dodge can be nice, but you can also just take other better skills for survival like Jokers and Hostage Taker aced. You get shot much much less often and can make your health a lot more consistent to use. That is a lot better than more dodge is and is often what people skip over. For Martial arts aced. Even in a vacuum, it just isn't really useful. Mainly in that, unlike Automatic weapons where you probably won't kill them in one hit. With melees you should, or if not at least use them for bulldozers/taze them. I can agree with some things, but some of the useful things often can be countered gameplay wise or another skill exists that can outperform the skill.
@@emberz3778 "With far away. Usually you'd have something else in tandem with a shotgun like an automatic weapon in either your primary or secondary." Be as that may, Far Away gives you far more flexibility in being able to deal with threats at multiple ranges. The notion that it is "useless" is absurd and counterfactual. "For hardware expert aced. It is situational. Not everyone should take it. While it can feel nice, Kickstarter aced exists. Drill Sawgeant aced is really nice as is. As nice as the extra stat is, it's preferable to use those points for something else." Hard disagree from substantial personal experience. But it's your build, it doesn't have to be optimal. "If you are taking damage from all sides, you are doing something wrong. You should be using cover to minimise the damage taken or be killing quick enough to do the same." Yeah, not always possible with Payday's map design. And again, being able to stunlock most of a room full of enemies is a big benefit, regardless of what you or the OP says.
@@halfpasteight For your first point, that's why an smg is more preferred. It deals with threats from snipers to bulldozers better and cheaper than far away. It can be nice, but pretty expensive for situations you can easily do regardless of the skill. For the second point. Again, if you like it then ok. But generally still not that great considering you can just use those points to invest in other better skills. No, you definitely can prevent taking multiple hits. It's why dsod solo's are possible, it's why Death Sentence in general is easier than a lot of people give credit for. Even for some of the more open maps like Goat Simulator. They do give you multiple areas to use cover in like the sides of the town offer flowerbeds, cars, pillars, etc. Just have to learn the cover spots and strategies. I agree that stunlocking swats in general can be quite useful, issue is that it isn't Heavy Impact and more so Dire need is the good skill.
tbf, on builds with a very slow firing primary weapon, like the 500 damage tier of snipers, i think counterstrike aced makes more sense because of how slow those weapons can cycle, shooting a cloaker in the face is less reliable when you have over a second between shots and you get surprised
About heavy impact though, it's not a case of shoot an enemy 4 times and they will stagger, but 1 in 4 bullets will cause a stagger, i.e if you hit 4 enemies with 4 bullets 1 (or more or less) will be staggered. It's really useful for spraying into crowds with smgs and lmgs, and useful for turning any automatic weapon into anti shield
dire need is great when building up to sneaky bastard. It works with graze and each pellet from a shotgun. And dire need has great uptime since it lasts 5 seconds after your armor came back. I'd say don't force yourself to go after sneaky bastard unless you are going for basic. Which hacker you can usually do since hacker doesnt need jokers/hostage taker because pecm, and the dodge increase is quite nutty. 75 while sprinting and 65 while not. The builds I mentioned earlier was a contractor with swedish k. It has inspire aced with faks, sneaky bastard basic, nine livesand low blow basic with aced unseen strike. Since contractor doesn't always one shot it can save your skin by stunning a whole group and graze goes through walls. The second is hacker with valkyrie and uzi. Uzi is just a pocket battle rifle and valkyrie is great for holding positions for a while. It has inspire aced with faks, sneaky bastard basic, low blow basic, nine lives and shocke n awe for shields. These are 2 examples that show sneaky bastard is not bad in a case of, "I have extra points where do I put them" as those 2 builds mentioned before I use often in death sentance when I have teammates that are really bad. I use a dodge tracker and on them I never see myself dodging less than 50% of the shots during a heist.
I have an interesting idea for a challenge run. Whatever skills and perk deck you choose, you are stuck with, and every heist, your guns, your melee and your throwable are all randomized. You have to make a build that can work with anything
I get that you had to pick a selection of skills and you were focused on death sentence, but I do think you undervalue a lot of these skills. Especially since you can very easily make a much worse build in terms of wasting skillpoints (convert skills without jokers, sentry skills without sentries etc). I think this is probably the video of yours I agree the least with overall as there are various worthwhile things to say about the skills mentioned: 1.(combat medic) The "revive with more health" skill is obviously bad on higher difficulties, but actually makes for a very convincing skill to pick up when you're playing lower difficulties and especially for newer players. It's obviously nothing too impressive but it's far from useless. This also goes for "up you go". 2.(Forced Friendship) I'll agree that this skill is pretty underwhelming, although it's worth pointing out that this skill has some niche uses. The most important one being that fully utilizing this skill on a crew chief build on Death Sentence will allow you to make teammates with a 0% health boost survive 2 shots without dying. Not only is this one of the best possible zerk values you can get, but that's obviously a big deal on this difficulty. There aren't too many use-cases for it but I do still sometimes pick this skill up as a result. 3.(Ammo Efficiency) Many good snipers will swear that this skill is amazing and I at the very least don't think it's worth bashing on. If anything I think the zoom effect of the skill below it (which doesn't scale with your sensitivity properly) makes a much better argument for a worse skill. 4.(Far Away) I actually agree with this one, though if I remember correctly it used to not have the requirement to ADS which made it a really good skill back in the day. 5.(Transporter) You're admitting yourself that it's just straight up a good skill to have in stealth. You're also not utilitzing its effect at all in your example as you're carrying money, do the same thing with an artifact and you'll see the effect. 7.(Hardware Expert) I think you're very much undervalueing this skill (by possibly not realising the way auto-restart drills work in this game?). Especially if you stack this up with kickstarter you can have a 30% chance for an auto-restart drill total which is huge for some heists. Auto-restart drills in this game are rolled only once per drill. A drill is either an auto restarter or it isn't. An auto restart drill will automatically fix itself when it is broken and will require NO player interaction to finish (unless broken through other means than jamming). Especially for heists like Safe House Nightmare, this is an invaluable skill that can make the heist go from really hard to insanely easy. Any extra chance for it is not a bad deal if you think you're going to have a rough time defending drills. 8.(Dire Need) Many DSOD players will immediately tell you that Dire Need is one of the better skills in the game and something to pick up if you have the points to spare. Your footage doesn't really show it since you're using anarchist, but on any other perk deck than anarchist and armorer the effect of dire need WILL save your life. Having the guaranteed stagger means that if you quickly spray around, you can stun every enemy shooting at you so you don't die. Especially considering this effect is guaranteed to stun and health builds will often not one-shot enemies, this is an amazing skill to bring for a suit/lbv build. 9.(Sneaky Bastard) I personally think dodge is just a big meme and a good way to halt your improvement at the game, but if you are going to play dodge, having more dodge is still a good thing and this effect will definitely be noticable if you were to keep track of your dodges. I will attest to the fact that acing this skill is simply not worth it in 99% of builds, but it definitely has its uses and is far from useless. Furthermore this skill really shouldn't be compared to low blow(which is one of the best skills in the game), as the effects are completely different. 10.(Second Wind) It's honestly just a useful skill, if not for the fact that the boost is often unexpected and thus unwelcomed by your teammates. It does obviously have its uses though, especially in speedruns and ecm rushes. 11.(Trigger Happy) This time increase might seem negligible, but if you're using a pistol build and constantly switching targets this is a VERY useful skill. Having a bigger window for switching targets means you'll be able to keep your boost up longer, which means you have more damage output and thus potential to keep one-tapping every enemy you come across. 13.(Counterstrike) You've already seen me mention Safe House Nightmare at this point, which once again obviously makes for a very good use-case here. Other than that I don't think it's that useful, although you actually showed me a use-case here I didn't really ever think about. Using counter-strike on say, an anarchist bloodthirst set, would mean that you can walk right up to the dozer and bash away at him without having to risk him shooting back at you or punching you in the face. This could also be used on weaker perk decks that have a hard time dealing with dozers to get some free shots in and is something I might actually consider using on Crew Chief now. That's pretty much all I have to say. Overall I guess that means I agreed with about 2 out of 13 of your chosen skills. (Being Saw Massacre and Heavy Impact)
@@dr.3998 I'm honestly not entirely sure, but if I had to pick any that weren't in this list I'd probably pick among the following: - RifleMan and Marskman (Both of these effects are either not useful or have too big of a downside) - Resilience aced (you can shoot or avoid flashbangs now) - Scavenger aced (the 6th box won't fix any major ammo economy issues) - Eco Sentry aced (health doesn't really protect the sentry, primarily the shield does) - Combat Engineering basic (the radius isn't relevant unless you use fire trap, and I don't know if it even increases it) - Parkour Aced (It removes the ability to reload cancel for a minimalistic niche use-case) There are some others that aren't that useful, but I wouldn't consider them to just straight up be a bad thing to take.
Wouldn't you also say you agree with the ones where he said they are actually good and undervalued and you argued that they're actually good and undervalued? (Transporter, Second Wind)
Heavy impact does have good impact on LMG builds, since with how many bullets that are fired acing it is never a neccesity, more just for excess points. Problem is when you factor in BE in the same tree, effectively turning every bullet into a headshot... yeah....
My friend LOVED setrries because "they are just so much BRRRRR cops can't do anything" ... I showed him a LMG, told him to sit in a corner with a bipod. Trice the effect, hundred times more fun, fifty times easier to move for objectives.
as a sociopath main that very often has a katana out, it’s surprising how much value i’ve gotten from counterstrike aced it’s saved me on dozens of occasions from being downed by that one cloaker that you’re too distracted to actually notice is charging you and not someone else still a meme but i don’t regret the 9 points i spent
Damage absorb isn't completely a loss. I have used that hostage perk stacked with infiltrator and maxed frenzy or whatever it is called for another 25% res and you can get the damage reduction from using a doctor's bag. It all adds up to something like 80% dmg reduction and the additional flat 4 at that point is good for it's cost. You can convert infantry to hostages as long as you don't joker them on maps without civs.
I usually use Counterstrike for the "oh shit panic time" moments. Sometimes my mind goes to just panic and run and not murder. Good for life, but bad for the game.
I’ve always loved second wind for my grinder build. When you don’t have much armor and are still pretty spongy getting a huge boost in speed after getting clapped by a sniper or punched by a dozer can get you out of a lot of bad spots.
Ironically, Dire Need is a really good perk on hybrid armor builds (which, I know don't really prop up often, but it's abusable as high hell alongside second wind, often aced for my allies)
I have not really used Heavy Impact, but I don’t know if what you said about it was fair. You don’t have to shoot an enemy 4 times to get value out of a 25% chance, even if the maths did work like that, that would mean that every forth enemy you shoot gets staggered. Yes, it would be great if you could simply kill your enemies every time you shoot them, but for the many times that you need to deal with a lot of enemies who don’t die in a single bullet, incapacitated could make a big difference:
i mean the anarchist transporter trick works in loud too if you have a heist with lots of gold (eg brooklyn bank/big bank). when you have a joker and lbv or hbv, you move faster than walking speed when carrying gold. which is...suprisingly helpful.
I could see a pretty interesting challenge in the worst skills challenge, although I’d be even more interested in seeing a general ‘The Worst Challenge’. Basically only the worst skills, bottom tier perk decks, the worst weapons in each class (Amcar, Gruber Kurtz etc.) and playing as the worst characters. While pretty painful on the surface, it would at a minimum have a variety of tools to deal with challenges like Panic Room snipers. Some unique lifelines could be swapping perk decks for a heist, or changing skill build for a heist. Could be interesting to see you suffer through that kappa.
heavy impact was pretty fun to use on release, I used to make bulldozers and captain winters go breakdancing with my MGs, sadly the patch inevitably came
Slight issue about Forced Friendship Aced.... Dominated Cops also counts as a hostage, but, not a Jokered one..... it is still far too low to be properly invested into
i think whats important to consider in this, is that payday is also a very memey game if that makes sense. Sure, charging your melee after seeing a cloaked might not be the most practical solution, but damn does it feel good to just deny them f***ers their dropkick
I'll be honest. I've never understood the point of Dodge, isn't it just an inherently worse Crit? Why dodge bullets when you can stop them from being fired.
thing is, old dodge was basically godmode if there were a constant stream of bullets hitting you since it resetted grace time, imo was still risky but it had some use now its worthless when you have to bite the bullet
I may can give insight, insurance. Similar to armor and health, dodge can give insurance to the one having dodge so the person take no damage, giving the person time to react to such danger and kill the one whse trying to shoot you. Note that this mindset xan be seen on players with good expirience on this game.
@@Ghstkng123 you mean like the 1 sec invulnerability anarchist and armorer have? if thats the case, thats a neat idea since those two can shine a lot in dsod because that one second of invulnerability, preventing bs like getting "graced" in literal 2 frames
@@mementocity 2 second of invurnebility, but no. Dodge is still dodge so don't rely on it too much and not having some form of insurance i.e. converts with Partner in Crime and Hostage Taker ace, etc.
I thought "Kickstarter" skill didn't work by itself , without aced "Hardware Expert" skill . It also writes on Kickstarter - gives an ADDITIONAL 20% restart effect . Key word "additional" here , meaning , adding to the already equiped Hardware expert - which you must have . Am i wrong ? I tested it a few times in the past and Kickstarter didn't came in effect in without Hardware Expert Aced ... did they change the mechanics or was i just out of luck ?
I really, really hope Payday 3 has a new, more refined skill system that doesn't feature so many underwhealming skills that nobody really uses.
I think that's an inevitable part of any game, if there isn't any bad skill then there isn't any good skill either. The better option imo is having more niche skills that specialized in a specific play style, or only actually good when combined with others.
I want specialized killing back 😭
i mean you can run basically anything on death wish and below and can make it work somehow, a lot of this variation i think is fun and needed, and death sentence is bs anyways that can seldom be played with anything but meta
what i hope is there are many different op builds, rather than 3 op builds
+5 to melee damage when?
4:15 I feel that I should add here that saws are even worse than that for bulldozers, IIRC saws should do 500 damage to bulldozers but due to how the code hasn't been updated for this in years medic/minigun dozers do not count for this damage boost.
I got this info from RedFlame's Fixed Saw Damage Scaling mod.
You missed what I see as Second Wind's best use. For any stealth heist that turns into a rush, having that constant stream of +30% speed is incredible, paired with some teammates with Yakuza. I generally use an HE Judge to proc the skill, and use it on Diamond Store rushes, but wouldn't be surprised to see it used on Shadow Raid either.
Yeah, second wind aced is top tier for ECM rushing from what I've seen.
search for marcmb
@@thy422 but ecm rushing is Just stupid
@@ABYTE64 diamond store emc rush: am i a joke to you?
@@ABYTE64 nah ecm rushes is the fastest way if you want to level up and infamy grind, so its not stupid as you may seem.
Some gripes with a couple choices. Saw massacre aced is surprisingly good because it's one of those misleading skill descriptions. The panic actually works on any kill while you have a saw out, meaning melee, throwables, and DOT will proc this panic. This panic isn't weak either, it's a pretty high chance for a high radius. If you want to see that go to work, try socio with knives and just have a saw out. You'll end up causing quite a ruckus among the enemies.
Dire need is a great lifesaving skill too, especially aced. I don't think I can count how many times I've lived just because I shot every enemy of a crowd instead of focusing on killing each one. Dire need is super helpful on more fragile builds.
Dire need is great for grinder builds. Almost all of your time will be spent either with your armor down or in the 6 second window. It's ideal for bullet hoses like miniguns and smgs and the best part about it is you no longer have to fear cloakers or tasers. Obviously, they can be staggered before they attack, but it can also interrupt charges and tases.
@@jimass13 It's also great for sicario and anarchist since your armor is always going up and down
also he didnt take the sentry T1 aced (protective shield) when showing his sentry tree to get to t4
Must confess, I wasn't aware of the additional panic effect. This is exactly why I like to make videos like these to learn those little techs and share them community-wide. I almost feel like my overuse of snipers has clouded my opinion on Dire Need, I can definitely see some value in it with other weapons. Thanks as ever Carrot!
@@stevie8271 that wasn't intended to be me suggesting how you should build for sentries. You're absolutely right in pointing out the power of the shield!
I genuinely enjoy melee builds, running as Jiro and screaming as i slash my enemies
There will be bloodshed
Melee is fun just unviable for harder heists
@@Brent-jj6qi I have my Hells Island DSOD done thanks to infiltrator flamethrower melee build, so it isn't completely unviable on harder heist
@@Kyee124 Smart! Close quarters is definitely good for Infiltrator.
@@yeatard Memories broken, the truth goes unspoken
Dire Need is actually pretty powerful, especially when used with automatic weapon, as your shots wont instantly kill enemies, and DN allows you to survive encounters when your amor is down
10:40 I do want to point out that I once ran an almost "Melee Exclusive" build that revolved around going fucking apeshit and because I didnt have time to constantly keep watch, having it constantly charged for the next enemy only for it to be used on a Cloaker who decided to be sneaky is a ton of help.
Cloaker: SNEAK ATTACK BITCH
Meme melee build user: *countered* i dont hear ya laughing now
Even in other builds, you can save yourself by holding melee as soon as you hear the WULULULULULU.
Even if you start a milisecond earlier, it still works
My suggestion for combat medic aced is:
*"reviving a teammate heals them up to max hp, 60 seconds cooldown. (Does not apply to players with berserk skill unlocked)"*
This might be very powerful for lower difficulties but anything good is powerful for them anyways. But it will be really decent for DSOD gameplay if the max health pool is enough to tank at least a single bullet. It's not that expensive as well, would synergize great with inspire.
Actually that pretty cool idea
@@Mi_tala The game is kinda old for skill overhauls like this so i hope payday 3 has a skill tree with at least situationally useful skills at the worst. Some of the current skills in pd2 are both bad in functionality and also values with low percentages. Also the skills are WAY different depending on difficulty, maybe some skills can scale up with difficulty to stay somewhat useful, just an idea.
@@celestialcolosseum and also i want to make in pd3 skill hard to get,so it can make more rewarding like the old pd2 skill but in unique way
@@celestialcolosseum Game had a skill tree overhaul not that long ago... 3-4 years ago or so
@@migueeeelet 3 to 4 years ago is a long time mate especially for a videos game
Combat Medic and Up You Go should give 30% and 40% of your total healthbar when revived. This will be very handy on health-based builds as reviving with 10% health is currently their biggest weakness on higher difficulties. On the other hand, a Muscle player can spring back into action with 80% health without having to waste an extra medkit.
Yeah
counterpoint imo, most, if not all health tanking perkdeck, has jokers skills that make their lives easier, sure bringing hostage taker aced for Kingpin isnt necessary, but it sure as hell helps. Combat medic, again, ruins berzerker breakpoints, meaning its pretty much exclusively only viable if the entire team runs kingpin muscle crewchief ect
Ehh not really. First Aid Kits are plentiful. Even if you don't bring them, Health decks have ways to quickly regen their health. Only thing you need to do is be more patient for the small time being.
@@emberz3778 muscle has a innate regen that heals them over the course of 3 business days, hostages take it down to 2 but sure
@@SakuyalzayoiTheMaid Alright, well I see you ignored the last sentence of needing patience XD
For Counterstrike Aced, personally, I've gotten a lot of use out of it. Sure, when a Cloaker is *right in front of you* and you're staring at him, sure, it's like 'Just kill him, he's right there.' But for those moments when I'm focused on the 300 other cops trying to kill me, and I just suddenly hear their noise out of nowhere, well, just quickly hold the melee button and boom. Vulnerable. And personally, I never know when the Cloakers are actually going to jump and kick, so I prefer to have it as a back up.
*look around*
*shoot cloaker*
problem solved!
either way, i understand using Counterstrike, quite fun when you beat the shit out of the cloaker that tried to dropkick you
@@perhapsYoYo Yeah, I just dont always even see the cloaker, specially since they like to hide in places I dont notice before running at me.
@@perhapsYoYo look around
See a taser
**WolooOLOLOOOLOO**
THAT WASN'T A TAS-
@@EpicWinNoob don't know about y'all, but for my last few games Tasers really came in clutch with them tasing me while Cloaker is trying to kick me
If the health revive skills scaled off your max hp, I could actually see them being fairly useful on DW or mayhem, since they could Massively increase your survivability after getting picked up, depending on the numbers.
Dire need actually not that bad. The aced version actually mean when your armor break all shot will make enemy stagger and effect will last for 6 second more when armor recovered. It help me a few times from cloaker or rushing enemies assuming you cant kill all of them in time and i find it to be abit useful on 168 sniper build that cant hit 255 breakpoint with Overkill aced or Berserker so you can literally stop a group of enemies rushing with graze shot or smg volley. But it still isnt that good because as you said "just make them dead quickly" but for me i do not think it deserve spot on this video since it still have redeeming quality.
Overall still a great video keep it up!
Dire need is a really good skill to combine with dodge as it will allow you to stagger enemies while your armor regens, since with dodge your armor is 1 shot
I have no experience with really high crime sprees but i feel like the staggering might also be useful there
@@MadWatcher that's not just thinking. that's the fact. Overkill always write the most obsecure description possible
Can you beat Payday 2 with the worst skills and only using the AMCAR?
No
Still, having the worst skills is still better than no skills.
I'm pretty sure he already did that but just the amcar and chimano
@@BadModder he had good skills and still struggled. it would definitely fail without revenant tree alone.
@@sydssolanumsamsys yup
Second Wind Aced is especially useful when a Sicario is running it. Since Sicario is build around taking damage, you can activate Second Wind a lot of the time. I'd say it's most useful on Mayhem, where you don't get punished as hard for playing clumsily and not focussing on your armour. Plus I very much appreciate others running it on dodge builds as if they're playing badly I still get something out of it :)
It is only really good for speedrunning. That is about it.
@@Bay1k Still, going fast is fun.
@@NorthEevee depends. But I get it.
@@Bay1k its saved my dodge ass before when a sniper dinks me
@@thefirstjim Couldn't you have just killed the sniper first? XD
Second Wind aced is fun on a Grinder buildup up to DW. Pretty consistent speed boost with armor gating abuse.
Do you think videos like these would benefit from more discussion around different difficulty levels, say Overkill in additional to DSOD?
I definitely get what you mean. I think an argument can be made that as long as you have a perk deck, skills are entirely optional for Overkill and down so I prefer to focus the discussion at the higher difficulty levels. It's also worth mentioning that my goal isn't to tell people to not use any of these skills, more so to discuss, find uses and potentially point Overkill towards the skills that need slight adjustments.
As a more casual player, I honestly think Biker is a somewhat slept-on perk deck. Though its not DW viable to my knowledge and it encourages a more selfish playstyle, it rewards a more aggressive playstyle, similar to Leech, Stoic, Grinder, or other active regenerator perk decks. Its also possible to armor gate with Biker since kills reward both health and armor. Even then, Biker allows you to play more objective based when you have three other teammates running around on a mass murder spree.
biker is the kind of perk deck that could be buffed with mods to make it DW viable, maybe some youtuber should make a mod pack of perk decks buffed to dw
Honestly the tier 2 revenant skills could really use some reworking, being revived with a little more health is nice, until you consider that most perk decks have some form of health regeneration already. Maybe making one of the skills increase the amount of health you're revived with based on how many enemies you killed while downed would be something neat to play around with
It's old but remember that skill that reduced gangster damage? Lmmfao like wtf?
old skill tree was crazy
I think you're underestimating some health-centered builds like stoic or supportive builds like crew chief when it comes to more health. If you have stoic and more health on revive it'll be much difficult to get instadowned immediately. As for crew chief, idk if a good dsod crew chief build exists but if it does then it can be very good because it pretty much multiplies all crew skills, especially if you are in loud with many hostages and arrested cops. For the dodge skill, I typically use it to try to get the most amount of dodge (and often crit) with the highest damaging weapons. On unaced I can get to probably 6 detection and still have +10 dodge, but acing the skill allows me to get more like 10-15 detection and pretty much still have a dodge loadout.
What about the skill that automatically turns in a hostage when you get arrested? I think that skill isn't very viable because ideally you wouldn't want to go downed, and when hostages exchange it's at a point in the heist that combat has died down anyways so usually it's not difficult for a teammate to grab them.
HP-based deck usually uses FAKs and/or Hostage taker so a little extra HP on revive didn't do that much (it'll probably work for OVK difficulty but on DS? you *probably* still got 1 shotted by Heavy with or without the extra HP on revive)
the dodge skill is a bit hard to justify... cuz on one hand you get 10% extra dodge, but on the other hand it's ONLY 10%
with hacker you can get 55% without any dodge skills and without concerning your detection
I do agree on Stockholm Syndrome being bad tho, 9 total point for a skill that didn't do much
the basic version is good for stealth tho
crew chief is actually unironically amazing, beats out a good chunk of perk decks, it helps everyone on the team, gives free 2 shot ictv breakpoint, more health, more tankiness, its great, sucks for zerk users but its fine imo. as for dodge, its a bit of a mess to explain but essentially 10% doesnt matter as much as to decks with already high dodge (hacker gives 55 with no skills) *and additionally* relying on dodge is considered bad anyway, bad in a way where the game becomes a lot more unpredictable compared to decks that give 100% risk return
sneaky bastard aced is actually kinda useful, if you get the basic version you can only have a max of 3 DR (Detection rating) BUT if you get the aced version you can go all the way up to 23 DR! same goes with the crit skill
also SB aced is useful when you're doing grinder, those extra few points of dodge help quite a bit imo
Yeah its weird to call it a noob trap since he gives passes to things like turrets or the skills in the shotgunner tree for enabling playstyles.
SB Aced enables some very strong weapon choices for dodge builds even on higher levels, like the stupid fun DMR dodge builds you can get away with.
And for PD2 ive always felt you kinda have to use DW as the one difficulty to check if the build/playstyle is actually good, since ever since it came out, DS has always had between 1-3 builds that are viable for that difficulty
Keep shittalking dodge and you may not dodge these hands, Knowley
- Sincerely,
Gray-screen 5 mins into the loud heist
You might be the first person I have heard say sneaky bastard isn't worth. While I agree that if you need to ace it, your just better off without it, you can VERY easily make effective weapons while still remaining beneath 5 concealment. Also, the point about its tree being bad just doesn't make much sense to me: You have Duck & cover, a skill I literally never play the game without, and when aced makes running objectives that much easier. Then, parkour, an all around nice boost to mobility, inner pockets, which is 2 free concealment to help get that legendary 3 detection risk, and then shockproof, one of the most powerful perks IMO, due to it hard countering tazers when aced, effectively turning them into SWATs with a bit more health. Combine sneaky bastard with duck and cover, you get 20% dodge when sprinting, which, when playing dodge, is effectively always when you need it. Combined with rogue's 50 dodge, or the 55 you can get when playing hacker, as well as the 5 from the bot bonus (assuming your playing with at least one bot) and the five from suit, you can boost your dodge up to 80 with rogue or 85 with hacker. That makes it 1 in 5 shots as opposed to 1 in 2. WAY better odds for 7 skill points.
The issue is that Sneaky Bastard is often prioritised when you could instead invest in actual useful skills like damage, jokers and deployables.
Even on builds that never need dodge in the first place, which is pretty bad.
The tree has quite a few bad skills.
Duck n cover basic is the best skill.
Aced only benefits dodge builds. 10% is nice for the builds, but most decks do not need to use it at all.
Your point about objectives can only really apply to dodge decks and nothing else. Even then, if you wanted to do objectives easier. Jokers exist. Damage exists. They can let you do objectives so much easier. Being able to let a bot tank the hits for you or kill a lot easier.
Parkour basic, it is only really useful for Flak Jacket and heavier armours. Other than that, the speed is not noticeable and it saves points taking it off.
Aced is even worse. You cannot sprint cancel out of reloads. This is terrible as if you are reloading and a guy is in front of you. You are dead. Even if you argue that melee and deployable cancelling exist, they are both too slow and situational to use all the time.
Even on lower difficulties, you can just save the points and reload patiently in cover instead. Congrats on saving 6 points.
Inner pockets is pretty nice for a lot of builds. Not every build needs it, but it does benefit the majority. 3 detection isn't necessarily needed, 4 does the job so you can add a bit more stats to your guns.
Shockproof is just useless. Thing is, as annoying as they seem. You can just kill them or just have a teammate bail you out.
It's similar to swan song where, it is basically a crutch for inexperienced players when the reality of it is, you are better off not taking it and instead just investing in other things to deal with your problems a lot easier.
Dire need can be a nice skill. Basically its a panic option where once your armour breaks you can just sporadically shoot the swats and just run. As nice as it is, quite expensive and you can often use bullseye basic fine as well.
Forgot to mention. 4 detection heavily limits weapon choices. You can still do well with the weapons, but often you miss out of things like grenade launchers, powerful akimbo smgs/shotguns, etc.
To add onto heavy impact, when you shoot at an enemy in the head they usually end up flailing around anyway
To give heavy impact some credit, microgun + heavy impact is a great way to crowd control and makes shields a joke without needing a special weapon to deal with them
heavy impact actually sounds like it would have synergy with the grimm 12g + dragonbreath combo. The initial damage is super low, it's playstyle is all about spray & pray and dragonbreath also has an innate stun chance.
I mean you can
But it's a waste of points since Grimm can already stun pretty well
I think the Counterstrike knockdown effect should deal damage, both basic and aced, to give it something for melee builds.
As for Trigger Happy, maybe the damage boost could stack on the Aced version, to really pack a bigger punch, or work like Overkill Aced.
I personally believe it's a bit unfair to lump Sneaky Bastard in the same category as some of these other skills. Sneaky Bastard at the very least has its place in a build were the other skills shouldn't be ran at all, plus Sneaky Bastard can actually bring a Hacker (one kill with Pocket ECM) with Duck And Cover Aced up to 75 dodge which is mental. Though yes, Sneaky Bastard isn't really needed, it's still nice to have to make sure that you aren't going to get hit.
I honestly really like heavy impact: i use an LMG with the world renowned tactic of "spray and pray until everything's dead", and with the particular weapon i use, headshots are difficult at best once you've been firing for more than like 4 rounds, when i often go for over 100 consecutively, so the stagger does actually come in very useful. Having the enemies dead IS better than having them on the floor but alive, but by that same logic, having a lot of enemies incapacitated (whether it's from being knocked to the ground, supressed from the sheer volume of high-threat fire, or, yes, dead) is better than them all being on their feet and firing at you.
Although, i'm an infamy 1 scrub who never plays above mayhem, so obviously my opinion doesn't matter /lh
i will add, i am currently working my way back up to a high enough level to use Body Expertise, so it's kinda just a stopgap, but it's likely going to be a part of my build until level 80 at least, just because of how effective its been
i know that nobody cares but this has been in the back of my mind since i posted it
7:47 sneaky bastard aced is more for builds that use guns that don’t reach perfect 3 detection as the threshold to reach max dodge such as using a weapon with a higher mag size than spend points on skills, which makes sneaky bastard aced more situational, base is there if you are going for 3 detection anyways to top of rouge or sicario
Counter-Strike aced is actually not as bad as you'd think. The faster charging/swinging melees are pretty decent with it.
Dire Need with shotgun leech is pretty good. You break your armor on command and anything in the general direction you’re facing gets staggered
For me Bullseye is one of the weirdest skills in terms of usefulness from a DSOD perspective. The base skill of getting armour on a headshot is amazing and borderline necessary, however aced it's functionality useless since it just gives you more armour per headshot, which similar to other skills in the video practically isn't a factor on higher difficulties.
When you're taking hundreds of damage per shot, armour-gating is armour-gating regardless of the amount of armour you have, making Bullseye simultaneously one of the best and worst skills for high difficulties.
It's saving grace imo is that on lower difficulties the amount of armour gained is actually a useful thing.
Bullseye aced useful on anarchist. It help you rebuild armor to max since anarchist dont fully recover all at once. Other perk deck not much but on anarchist its Goated
@@c3lest1na45 oh yeah true, I run Anarchist myself and usually ace it since it is useful, but on DS one shot can take out your armour from max anyways, so building it up quicker isn't much use.
This is obviously a DS specific thing and doesn't affect most players, but I find it interesting how the aced version of the skill goes from useful to useless in a DS context.
Its useful on sociopath where the gained armor + socios armorgate ability can make you take another light/shield hit
@@connorfoxton6167 not really, if you go hybrid it really shines. In DS with a archist and suit. Snipers oneshot you without counterplay, but running ana with some armor, allows you to do maps that you cant really reliably do in OD, sience at the end of the day, most of the surv on ana is the invul, and the headshots, suit clutch is really good but gives you bad habits that you feel in OD.
I actually run Second Wind aced with grinder and the team speed boost can be really appreciated at times
That Shrek bodypillow mod triggered my fight or flight instincts.
Thanks Kknowley.
I fucking hate it.
I actually really love Far Away it is. To save points, a decent amount of my shotgun builds only have shotguns unless I take Overkill aced. But without some semi iss accurate weapons, shotguns are extremely bad against Snipers. But with 3 to 9 nine skill points and some modding, most shotguns can now actually hit snipers from very long distance away which makes life infinitely easier imo.
Personally, I run kickstarter aced with the golden spoon because fuck stealth, I didn’t cue up “I will give you my all” to play quiet. Restarting the drill with a spoon is hilarious
Far away is nice for dealing with snipers when your friends are all in custody because they haven't dedicated their lives to PAYDAY 2
*I find Heavy Impact aced to be pretty useful*
I use it on my lmg builds to take care of shields without having to switch weapons, I just shoot at them a couple of times and execute them when they hit the floor
Then just take Shock n awe aced. Not only can it be more effective, but it actually won't hinder your build as much. It is awkward trying to fit Heavy Impact when you are going for Body expertise, when you can just get surefire and lock n load instead.
At least Shock n awe is a lot easier to fit in and also helps with armour regen.
Cloaker knockdown is rather useful. Say you're in a chaotic gunfight and hear a cloaker charging. Hold E, and you'll be fine. It's good for when you know a cloaker is there, but not exactly where. I use it as a last second counter
If knockdown was buffed so it affect all enemies that your target falls into get knocked over by them it could be interesting and turn Payday 3 into a bowling sim
The fact that cloakers turn you before downing you is the reason counterstrike aced is useful. If you start turning, hold melee and you will counter it
You should do a video on the worst original 2013 skills, like the one that slightly reduced the cost of crafting masks and the one that slightly increased the chance of getting an infamous mask.
Far Away tends to be best if you need to deal with snipers. Though it still is situational, it can be good on heists like Big Bank and Transport: Crossroads if you're running a Shotgun/Saw build. Even then, having that ability to get some extra range out of your shotgun if needed is nice to have as a "just in case" sort of thing.
I like the miniature, as if you could have the ultimate diarrhea overtime in the game to absolutely shit on your enemies, pun intended
The thing about dodge is that it gets better the more of it you have. 10% dodge chance isn't going to do much by itself, but going from 50% dodge to 60% dodge is a lot more impactful; it's effectively an extra 20% damage mitigation instead of just 10%.
Here's my ideas for perk replacements... if I didn't mention them, I think they're okay.
Combat Medic Aced - additional damage reduction when reviving
Forced Friendship Aced - Multiple hostages can follow you at once
Far Away Aced - Shotgun damage scales up with range while using slugs
Transporter Aced - Carry multiple bags
Saw Massacre Aced - Present benefits + no ammo consumption on unarmored enemies
Hardware Expert Aced - 20% instead of 10%
Heavy Hitter Aced - Bulldozers can be staggered
Dire Need Aced - 30% crit chance when armor is broken
Sneaky Bastard - 20% additional dodge maximum
Trigger Happy Aced - Bonus applies to primary weapon
Up You Go Aced - Revive with full health
Martial Arts Aced - Knockdown applies to all specials except shield
Counter Strike Aced - Enemies about to melee you visibly flash, Cloakers knocked down die instantly
ur transporter aced idea should be 2 bags max, if it were to be ingame. not many places to put full duffel bags on ur body while also having ur guns out lol. or maybe u can put ur guns away to be able to carry 2 (maaaybe 3) bags or smth so it's more a specialist thing instead, cuz i think ur current idea would be so busted it'd trivalise big bank & shadow raid with a full crew
i like the rest tho ur far away aced wouldnt be necessary had OVK just never done fuckin damage range multipliers lol
I don't entirely blame them for the damage multipliers as it helps to specialize the weapons a bit. I'd argue ballistics would be good to help balance weapons-although, really, it'd need to be really exaggerated for it to make a real difference.
Unless they do some kinda street escapes like the movie Heat, we'd rarely engage beyond 50 meters, which anything worth being called a "gun" would be lethal, and likely be zeroed for quite easily... so it's a null point.
trigger happy was greatly useful with 3 revolvers, the 120% damage increase lets you kill dozers with a fucking peacekeeper
trigger happy *is* good, he said that. but ACING it is useless.
Personally, I like the stagger effect with Vulcan Minigun. For when you just can't kill that one enemy fast enough, you can just stagger. Because if they aren't shooting, they're not killing you.
[also i 100% wish 'nade launchers could crit]
game : forced friendship
kknowley : combat medic
ddumbley
I feel like underdog aced is a little underrated at times, I really like combining it with die hard basic for those really clutch objective confirms
underdog aced in higher difficulties can actually be a detriment - if it expires while you're being shot at by a heavy swat, you'll take 202.5 damage from one shot and then get immediately graced by the same cop dealing 225 damage. in some cases this is just a death sentence and you will die from it, eg zerk anarchists
I really enjoyed this video, Kknowley! I agree on the skill selection completely and wish they would get buffed, as for how I would buff them...
1. Honestly Combat Medic Aced and Up You Go Aced should have the percentages based on max HP but be disabled on Berserker Users.
2. For Trigger-Happy, I would make it so that Base is 120% damage for 3 seconds and Aced is 240% for 1 seconds. If you have the fire-rate to maintain that damage boost you can eat bulldozers even faster with auto-pistols.
3. For Sneaky Bastard I would just make it so that acing it gives a 20% dodge-boost but remove the "1% for every 1 DR beneath 35" shtick.
4. Forced Friendship should just be translated into damage reduction or heavily increase the damage absorption to 10 points. It's very rare you'll be able to find 8 hostages to get the _4 damage absorption_.
5. Counter-Strike Base should deal double of the melee damage on parry while Aced should insta-kill Cloakers, like you suggested.
6. Finally for Saw Massacre the skill would be even better with one change: remove the "Can't pick up ammo" trait from all the weapons that have it (save crossbows and bows). This trait is completely useless and ruins weapons that don't deserve it; besides, OVERKILL can easily make the ammo pick-up atrocious, which would still be better than what we have now.
Thanks for the video again! Stay frosty and keep those helmets flying!
there is one thing i'll super praise the shit out of with the skill system in payday 2: you can respec your skills as much as you want with no penalty
There is one thing good about aced Martial Arts, using leather sap makes you a knockout machine
I haven’t seen anyone else mentioning it, but Counterstrike Aced has a very niche use that I consider valuable. It makes doing White House True Ending solo very easy. If you bring AI, you just gotta be patient, but otherwise you’re pretty much invincible. Incredibly niche, but if you mainly play solo like me, it can make that section far less frustrating (if still just as tedious)
You talking about an instant kill on cloakers with counterstrike made me think. For payday 3, what if you didn't have to answer pagers, but you had to stealth takedown enemies? And the takedowns took about as much time as the pagers? What if you could ace a high level skill that let you takedown enemies even when you're not in stealth? Maybe different characters have different methods? I for one want to see wolf stab somebody with a drill, wait impatiently for a few seconds then remove it and watch the body fall.
Trigger happy ace is really good when you want to shit on minigun dozers
I don't know why but I love sentry's it's just nice to have one to watch your back or hold an area or entire building
I'm late, but I feel like I should expand on Combat Medic Aced being arse here: The way you presented it, it seems as if you might be under the impression it's +30% *maximum* health. I mean, the skill reads like that right? But oh no, it's not +30% maximum health. It's not even +30% extra health when revived. It's +30% *of the health you would otherwise receive when being revived.*
Which means you get +30% of 10% of your Max Health on Mayhem and above, which works out to a whole 3% of your max health. For your average 230 health heister, that's a whopping *_6.9_* (nice) health. Even for the best case scenario, that being a Muscle user (Not Stoic in ICTV, it's 45-odd vs. 460) they gain only 13.8 extra health. The only people who care about that much health on Deathwish, never mind Death Sentence, is the berserker you just accidentally pushed to a lower breakpoint when you revived them. It's complete pants.
1:48 ah yes combat medic
I was really surprised by sneaky bastard, but looking into it critically I kinda found I agree. I think you undersell how much 10% dodge adds on some builds(going from 55->65 dodge for example means you get shot almost 30% less), but it really is an insane number of points to invest, where at most you might want parkour aced and inner pockets basic, meaning you need to spend a further 11-19 points to get to it which would probably be better taking even a basic amount of joker skills if you need survivability.
I don't know if you know this. But with normal buckshot or 000 buckshot shotguns start getting damage falloff after 20m up to 50m where they stop doing any damage at all. The far away skill increases this to 30m - 75m. Giving you a significant increase in damage over distance. Sure, it isn't the most usefull skill in all situations, but I quite like it. It also makes sniping snipers with shotguns more reliable.
If you do a challenge run with all these skills, I think overkill difficulty for all heists would be fair game
Mayhem imo
i'm not the best player but i could do any heist in overkill with no skills
I find that the stagger mechanic is actually detrimental. Like you said, a dead enemy can't fight at all while a staggered enemy recovers. Yet it throws off your aim by making enemy movement less predictable.
I’ve found that sneaky bastard works pretty well with a hacker dodge setup. Having passive dodge is nice to fall back on while you wait for your mini ecm to recharge
Far Away isn't there to "enable a playstyle", it's there to allow shotguns to handle snipers. Without it you get picked apart by them, with it you have at least a reasonable chance at being able to pick them off. Ditto for the SWATs fucking your ally at medium to long range from you. You're completely off-base on this one.
Hardware Expert Aced is supposed to be paired with Kickstarter Aced for your crew's designated technician or "drill guy". It's not really "situational" just because it's not something everyone should take. But it's absolutely a useful skill to have if you're investing in drill skills. Once again, you're completely off-base.
Your Heavy Impact take is...whoof, where to even start. "Have you ever even fired four bullets into an enemy in Payday 2", yes it's called Assault Rifles and LMGs, two entire classes of weapon that you seem to be deliberately ignoring which are massively buffed by this skill. Being able to spray down a room and stunlock a bunch of enemies makes LMGs with this skill second only to flamethrowers for sheer crowd control. Being able to regularly interrupt Cloakers, knock back shields to make them easier to flank...the list goes on. Heavy Impact is far from useless, it's almost a necessity if you're running ARs or LMGs and it gives you great crowd control options.
"Just shoot to kill" is honestly a pretty mediocre take. Sounds fine on paper, but I'd rather be able to lock down a room and then start working my way down the priority list than try to focus on clean kills when I'm taking fire from three different directions. Just because a skill doesn't fit in *your* playstyle doesn't mean it does not have a use.
You talk about Sneaky Bastard being bad...and then point out the one and only time you're really supposed to use it (high-concealment dodge builds). Also, your appraisal of Dodge in general is pretty trash. It's fun and it's viable, so what if it isn't perfect.
For Martial Arts Aced you once again take a skill that is meant to be paired with another...and complain that it sucks because it isn't viable on its own. Yeah, no shit Sherlock.
Overall, 5/10, better luck next time.
With far away. Usually you'd have something else in tandem with a shotgun like an automatic weapon in either your primary or secondary. Usually you'd just use them for Snipers/Bulldozers, even with the likes of an lmg or (akimbo) smg, they can deal with snipers quite well. And even excluding them, you'd have something like a HE/AP Judge, you have a shotgun with the Flechette rounds, etc. Snipers really aren't that bad at all to deal with if you know what you are doing.
For hardware expert aced. It is situational. Not everyone should take it. While it can feel nice, Kickstarter aced exists. Drill Sawgeant aced is really nice as is. As nice as the extra stat is, it's preferable to use those points for something else.
Even under those circumstances. Dire need exists. The stagger is quite useful, but it really outclasses Heavy impact since it can trigger a lot more consistently. Also cloakers really aren't a threat. The skill while I agree can be really useful, you can understandably run without it. What's more necessary would be damage skill.
If you are taking damage from all sides, you are doing something wrong. You should be using cover to minimise the damage taken or be killing quick enough to do the same.
Dodge is pretty overrated. The 10%+ extra dodge can be nice, but you can also just take other better skills for survival like Jokers and Hostage Taker aced. You get shot much much less often and can make your health a lot more consistent to use. That is a lot better than more dodge is and is often what people skip over.
For Martial arts aced. Even in a vacuum, it just isn't really useful. Mainly in that, unlike Automatic weapons where you probably won't kill them in one hit. With melees you should, or if not at least use them for bulldozers/taze them.
I can agree with some things, but some of the useful things often can be countered gameplay wise or another skill exists that can outperform the skill.
@@emberz3778
"With far away. Usually you'd have something else in tandem with a shotgun like an automatic weapon in either your primary or secondary."
Be as that may, Far Away gives you far more flexibility in being able to deal with threats at multiple ranges. The notion that it is "useless" is absurd and counterfactual.
"For hardware expert aced. It is situational. Not everyone should take it. While it can feel nice, Kickstarter aced exists. Drill Sawgeant aced is really nice as is. As nice as the extra stat is, it's preferable to use those points for something else."
Hard disagree from substantial personal experience. But it's your build, it doesn't have to be optimal.
"If you are taking damage from all sides, you are doing something wrong. You should be using cover to minimise the damage taken or be killing quick enough to do the same."
Yeah, not always possible with Payday's map design. And again, being able to stunlock most of a room full of enemies is a big benefit, regardless of what you or the OP says.
@@halfpasteight For your first point, that's why an smg is more preferred. It deals with threats from snipers to bulldozers better and cheaper than far away. It can be nice, but pretty expensive for situations you can easily do regardless of the skill.
For the second point. Again, if you like it then ok. But generally still not that great considering you can just use those points to invest in other better skills.
No, you definitely can prevent taking multiple hits. It's why dsod solo's are possible, it's why Death Sentence in general is easier than a lot of people give credit for. Even for some of the more open maps like Goat Simulator. They do give you multiple areas to use cover in like the sides of the town offer flowerbeds, cars, pillars, etc. Just have to learn the cover spots and strategies.
I agree that stunlocking swats in general can be quite useful, issue is that it isn't Heavy Impact and more so Dire need is the good skill.
@@halfpasteight so can I get a response?
tbf, on builds with a very slow firing primary weapon, like the 500 damage tier of snipers, i think counterstrike aced makes more sense because of how slow those weapons can cycle, shooting a cloaker in the face is less reliable when you have over a second between shots and you get surprised
About heavy impact though, it's not a case of shoot an enemy 4 times and they will stagger, but 1 in 4 bullets will cause a stagger, i.e if you hit 4 enemies with 4 bullets 1 (or more or less) will be staggered. It's really useful for spraying into crowds with smgs and lmgs, and useful for turning any automatic weapon into anti shield
dire need is great when building up to sneaky bastard. It works with graze and each pellet from a shotgun. And dire need has great uptime since it lasts 5 seconds after your armor came back. I'd say don't force yourself to go after sneaky bastard unless you are going for basic. Which hacker you can usually do since hacker doesnt need jokers/hostage taker because pecm, and the dodge increase is quite nutty. 75 while sprinting and 65 while not. The builds I mentioned earlier was a contractor with swedish k. It has inspire aced with faks, sneaky bastard basic, nine livesand low blow basic with aced unseen strike. Since contractor doesn't always one shot it can save your skin by stunning a whole group and graze goes through walls. The second is hacker with valkyrie and uzi. Uzi is just a pocket battle rifle and valkyrie is great for holding positions for a while. It has inspire aced with faks, sneaky bastard basic, low blow basic, nine lives and shocke n awe for shields. These are 2 examples that show sneaky bastard is not bad in a case of, "I have extra points where do I put them" as those 2 builds mentioned before I use often in death sentance when I have teammates that are really bad. I use a dodge tracker and on them I never see myself dodging less than 50% of the shots during a heist.
I have an interesting idea for a challenge run. Whatever skills and perk deck you choose, you are stuck with, and every heist, your guns, your melee and your throwable are all randomized. You have to make a build that can work with anything
I don't agree with Martial Arts being in this list. Because of training.
I get that you had to pick a selection of skills and you were focused on death sentence, but I do think you undervalue a lot of these skills. Especially since you can very easily make a much worse build in terms of wasting skillpoints (convert skills without jokers, sentry skills without sentries etc). I think this is probably the video of yours I agree the least with overall as there are various worthwhile things to say about the skills mentioned:
1.(combat medic) The "revive with more health" skill is obviously bad on higher difficulties, but actually makes for a very convincing skill to pick up when you're playing lower difficulties and especially for newer players. It's obviously nothing too impressive but it's far from useless. This also goes for "up you go".
2.(Forced Friendship) I'll agree that this skill is pretty underwhelming, although it's worth pointing out that this skill has some niche uses. The most important one being that fully utilizing this skill on a crew chief build on Death Sentence will allow you to make teammates with a 0% health boost survive 2 shots without dying. Not only is this one of the best possible zerk values you can get, but that's obviously a big deal on this difficulty. There aren't too many use-cases for it but I do still sometimes pick this skill up as a result.
3.(Ammo Efficiency) Many good snipers will swear that this skill is amazing and I at the very least don't think it's worth bashing on. If anything I think the zoom effect of the skill below it (which doesn't scale with your sensitivity properly) makes a much better argument for a worse skill.
4.(Far Away) I actually agree with this one, though if I remember correctly it used to not have the requirement to ADS which made it a really good skill back in the day.
5.(Transporter) You're admitting yourself that it's just straight up a good skill to have in stealth. You're also not utilitzing its effect at all in your example as you're carrying money, do the same thing with an artifact and you'll see the effect.
7.(Hardware Expert) I think you're very much undervalueing this skill (by possibly not realising the way auto-restart drills work in this game?). Especially if you stack this up with kickstarter you can have a 30% chance for an auto-restart drill total which is huge for some heists.
Auto-restart drills in this game are rolled only once per drill. A drill is either an auto restarter or it isn't. An auto restart drill will automatically fix itself when it is broken and will require NO player interaction to finish (unless broken through other means than jamming). Especially for heists like Safe House Nightmare, this is an invaluable skill that can make the heist go from really hard to insanely easy. Any extra chance for it is not a bad deal if you think you're going to have a rough time defending drills.
8.(Dire Need) Many DSOD players will immediately tell you that Dire Need is one of the better skills in the game and something to pick up if you have the points to spare. Your footage doesn't really show it since you're using anarchist, but on any other perk deck than anarchist and armorer the effect of dire need WILL save your life. Having the guaranteed stagger means that if you quickly spray around, you can stun every enemy shooting at you so you don't die. Especially considering this effect is guaranteed to stun and health builds will often not one-shot enemies, this is an amazing skill to bring for a suit/lbv build.
9.(Sneaky Bastard) I personally think dodge is just a big meme and a good way to halt your improvement at the game, but if you are going to play dodge, having more dodge is still a good thing and this effect will definitely be noticable if you were to keep track of your dodges. I will attest to the fact that acing this skill is simply not worth it in 99% of builds, but it definitely has its uses and is far from useless. Furthermore this skill really shouldn't be compared to low blow(which is one of the best skills in the game), as the effects are completely different.
10.(Second Wind) It's honestly just a useful skill, if not for the fact that the boost is often unexpected and thus unwelcomed by your teammates. It does obviously have its uses though, especially in speedruns and ecm rushes.
11.(Trigger Happy) This time increase might seem negligible, but if you're using a pistol build and constantly switching targets this is a VERY useful skill. Having a bigger window for switching targets means you'll be able to keep your boost up longer, which means you have more damage output and thus potential to keep one-tapping every enemy you come across.
13.(Counterstrike) You've already seen me mention Safe House Nightmare at this point, which once again obviously makes for a very good use-case here. Other than that I don't think it's that useful, although you actually showed me a use-case here I didn't really ever think about. Using counter-strike on say, an anarchist bloodthirst set, would mean that you can walk right up to the dozer and bash away at him without having to risk him shooting back at you or punching you in the face. This could also be used on weaker perk decks that have a hard time dealing with dozers to get some free shots in and is something I might actually consider using on Crew Chief now.
That's pretty much all I have to say. Overall I guess that means I agreed with about 2 out of 13 of your chosen skills. (Being Saw Massacre and Heavy Impact)
Very well thought out response. Out of curiosity what perks would you say are poor choices to get?
@@dr.3998 I'm honestly not entirely sure, but if I had to pick any that weren't in this list I'd probably pick among the following:
- RifleMan and Marskman (Both of these effects are either not useful or have too big of a downside)
- Resilience aced (you can shoot or avoid flashbangs now)
- Scavenger aced (the 6th box won't fix any major ammo economy issues)
- Eco Sentry aced (health doesn't really protect the sentry, primarily the shield does)
- Combat Engineering basic (the radius isn't relevant unless you use fire trap, and I don't know if it even increases it)
- Parkour Aced (It removes the ability to reload cancel for a minimalistic niche use-case)
There are some others that aren't that useful, but I wouldn't consider them to just straight up be a bad thing to take.
Wouldn't you also say you agree with the ones where he said they are actually good and undervalued and you argued that they're actually good and undervalued? (Transporter, Second Wind)
Wouldn’t Heavy Impact have some application for a hostage-accumulating build? 20 cops cuffing themselves after staggering?
You’re not wrong. But there’s a hard cap at about 4-6 officer hostages.
Heavy impact does have good impact on LMG builds, since with how many bullets that are fired acing it is never a neccesity, more just for excess points. Problem is when you factor in BE in the same tree, effectively turning every bullet into a headshot... yeah....
My friend LOVED setrries because "they are just so much BRRRRR cops can't do anything" ... I showed him a LMG, told him to sit in a corner with a bipod. Trice the effect, hundred times more fun, fifty times easier to move for objectives.
as a sociopath main that very often has a katana out, it’s surprising how much value i’ve gotten from counterstrike aced
it’s saved me on dozens of occasions from being downed by that one cloaker that you’re too distracted to actually notice is charging you and not someone else
still a meme but i don’t regret the 9 points i spent
I imagine this video is going through normally but knowley names each perk "combat medic" instead of their actual names
Damage absorb isn't completely a loss. I have used that hostage perk stacked with infiltrator and maxed frenzy or whatever it is called for another 25% res and you can get the damage reduction from using a doctor's bag. It all adds up to something like 80% dmg reduction and the additional flat 4 at that point is good for it's cost. You can convert infantry to hostages as long as you don't joker them on maps without civs.
Shinobu wasn't even mentioned. That's because the Shinobu skill tree is without flaw
...
Except Extra body bags, we don't really need those
I usually use Counterstrike for the "oh shit panic time" moments. Sometimes my mind goes to just panic and run and not murder. Good for life, but bad for the game.
Knowley: Counter strike aced bad. Cloaker shoot head good.
Me: But where's the fun in that? Might as well just build my 40.th grinder or dodge build.
you phrase this as if grinder and dodge are the only builds that can use guns
every build can and should. even melee builds should.
I’ve always loved second wind for my grinder build. When you don’t have much armor and are still pretty spongy getting a huge boost in speed after getting clapped by a sniper or punched by a dozer can get you out of a lot of bad spots.
Ironically, Dire Need is a really good perk on hybrid armor builds (which, I know don't really prop up often, but it's abusable as high hell alongside second wind, often aced for my allies)
I have not really used Heavy Impact, but I don’t know if what you said about it was fair.
You don’t have to shoot an enemy 4 times to get value out of a 25% chance, even if the maths did work like that, that would mean that every forth enemy you shoot gets staggered. Yes, it would be great if you could simply kill your enemies every time you shoot them, but for the many times that you need to deal with a lot of enemies who don’t die in a single bullet, incapacitated could make a big difference:
Sentries are by far the most underrated. Ive been using them for a long time now. They always kick ass!
i like using a silenced mp5. It has pretty poor dmg, but looks cool and the staggering can help with specials like tasers.
It's actually alright at the moment, given the multiple buffs it has been through.
I do also remember that april fool's BAD build Connor Shaw made way back
yeah that dude doesent even make payday stuff anymore
i mean the anarchist transporter trick works in loud too if you have a heist with lots of gold (eg brooklyn bank/big bank). when you have a joker and lbv or hbv, you move faster than walking speed when carrying gold. which is...suprisingly helpful.
And you can't forget about how the increase in bag throw was necessary for counterfeit stealth before it was patched out
I didn't know that Trigger Happy aced didn't apply the buff when switching to a primary so thanks for saving me 8 points in my build! Great video
babe wake up, thekknowley uploaded another payday 2 video
I tend to use Max Turret skills with Grinder perk deck, considering that the shots made by your turrets counts towards your HP regen activation.
I could see a pretty interesting challenge in the worst skills challenge, although I’d be even more interested in seeing a general ‘The Worst Challenge’. Basically only the worst skills, bottom tier perk decks, the worst weapons in each class (Amcar, Gruber Kurtz etc.) and playing as the worst characters. While pretty painful on the surface, it would at a minimum have a variety of tools to deal with challenges like Panic Room snipers. Some unique lifelines could be swapping perk decks for a heist, or changing skill build for a heist. Could be interesting to see you suffer through that kappa.
heavy impact was pretty fun to use on release, I used to make bulldozers and captain winters go breakdancing with my MGs, sadly the patch inevitably came
That one person: CaN YoU BeaT PaYDAy WiTH OnlY thEse SkILLs
Slight issue about Forced Friendship Aced.... Dominated Cops also counts as a hostage, but, not a Jokered one..... it is still far too low to be properly invested into
i think whats important to consider in this, is that payday is also a very memey game if that makes sense. Sure, charging your melee after seeing a cloaked might not be the most practical solution, but damn does it feel good to just deny them f***ers their dropkick
many of the best playstyles don't rely on HP, except the absolute best being stoic.
I'd imagine counterstrike aced could be usable in a secret ending-specific build.
nah just use a stable LMG.
I'll be honest. I've never understood the point of Dodge, isn't it just an inherently worse Crit? Why dodge bullets when you can stop them from being fired.
It's to keep you safe while you crit through a horde to prevent you from taking damage
thing is, old dodge was basically godmode if there were a constant stream of bullets hitting you since it resetted grace time, imo was still risky but it had some use
now its worthless when you have to bite the bullet
I may can give insight, insurance. Similar to armor and health, dodge can give insurance to the one having dodge so the person take no damage, giving the person time to react to such danger and kill the one whse trying to shoot you. Note that this mindset xan be seen on players with good expirience on this game.
@@Ghstkng123 you mean like the 1 sec invulnerability anarchist and armorer have?
if thats the case, thats a neat idea since those two can shine a lot in dsod because that one second of invulnerability, preventing bs like getting "graced" in literal 2 frames
@@mementocity 2 second of invurnebility, but no. Dodge is still dodge so don't rely on it too much and not having some form of insurance i.e. converts with Partner in Crime and Hostage Taker ace, etc.
I thought "Kickstarter" skill didn't work by itself , without aced "Hardware Expert" skill .
It also writes on Kickstarter - gives an ADDITIONAL 20% restart effect .
Key word "additional" here , meaning , adding to the already equiped Hardware expert - which you must have .
Am i wrong ?
I tested it a few times in the past and Kickstarter didn't came in effect in without Hardware Expert Aced ... did they change the mechanics or was i just out of luck ?