PD2 – Practical Uses for the Hitman Perk Deck

Before August 2015 there were a lot of perk decks that sucked in Payday 2, but none of them sucked as much as Hitman. The only perk deck in the game with negative consequences for equipping it, and providing only meager armor regeneration bonuses and the ability to dual-wield pistols (but not as well as the Akimbo skill in the Fugitive deck), it’s underwhelming and only used by complete noobs like this guy.

Then the Perk Deck rebalance came and Overkill buffed a bunch of weaker decks into truly awesome stuff. The only one they missed was Hitman, meaning there’s now even less reason to use it. Are there any reasons to use it?

Well, the first use would be some hypothetical armor regen build, and the game does give you options for that. The Technician tree gives some armor boosts to counteract the decrease from Hitman, and Die Hard is a low-tier Enforcer skill that further increases your regen rate by 15%. Wow! You can even regenerate armor from headshots using Bullseye, but considering it’s one of three most expensive Fugitive Skills, you’re probably just going to grab Akimbo pistols from there and ignore the only actual benefit to going hitman. And before you ask, no, the akimbo skills from Hitman don’t stack with the ones from the Fugitive tree.

But what if you just went infamous? Void of skills, armors, and weapons, Hitman can unlock dual pistols for your level zero self, and at that level, your only other option is the loathsome AMCAR assault rifle (assuming you don’t have some DLC guns). This is probably the best use I can think of for this perk deck; take high-concealment dual pistols with you on your first DW Jewelry Store, earn lodsemone and never touch it again.

But sadly this is an incredibly restrictive niche, and hardly matters in the long run. So here’s what I actually consider the best use of the Hitman perk deck, but first a short discussion on how perk deck points work.

Every time you go on a heist and you have unfilled Perk Decks, you get points at a ratio dependent on your level. You can only earn enough points to fill out your remaining perk decks; once they’re all full you’ll stop getting points. This means that if you don’t fill a deck out, you’ll permanently have 13,700 unspent perk points. This means as soon as Overkill adds a new heister to the 13 we’ve already got (say, an Australian woman), you’ll be prepared to instantly fill out her perk deck and go to town without having to grind new points out forever.

So there you have it; the best use of Hitman is to not fill the deck out and always save the points to instantly unlock future currently-nonexistent decks. Thanks John Wick!