5 Versatile Perk Decks in Payday 2

João Carriço and MisterCaaaarl have both asked for a video covering the Top 5 perk decks, and while it’s hard to call any the “best” since they all bring their own playstyles to the table, there are certainly several perk decks that are extremely versatile and considered solid choices no matter the difficulty or type of heists you play. When choosing your first perk decks, it’s hard to go wrong with these! Here are 5 Versatile Perk Decks Every Player Should Try:

Starting with #1, Yakuza and Burglar share this spot because they’re the only two perk decks that give meaningful benefits for stealth. Burglar lets you bag bodies and answer pagers quicker, Yakuza paired with the Frenzy skill gives you a constant speed boost that helps you quickly exit detection ranges or reach dead guards before their pagers go off. The rest of this list is concerned with loud.

2) Whenever I get somebody into Payday for the first time, I usually recommend they unlock Muscle as their first deck since it’s easy to understand while still being effective. It gives you a lot of extra health, reduces incoming fire through triggering the panic animations, and at the max level lets you regenerate health at a steady rate. While you’re learning the ropes of Payday 2, Muscle will sit in your back pocket keeping you alive until you’re ready to graduate to more complicated decks. Or, if you enjoy the health-regeneration playstyle, go for broke with

3) Grinder is Muscle’s high-risk, high-reward cousin. It gives up a lot of that extra health for bonus dodge, and causes you to regenerate health via dealing damage rather than on a timer. Grinder players will have to take cover a lot more frequently than users of other decks, especially since you need to use the 2-piece suit or light ballistic vest but your constant health regeneration more than makes up for it. If you’d rather try a similar concept but with armor, check out:

4) Anarchist is deservedly considered the most powerful perk deck in the game. It converts half of your health into 120% extra armor and lets you regenerate that armor through both time and dealing damage. Since weaker armors regenerate faster and heavier armors regenerate larger amounts, it’s usable with practically any build and its primary weakness is high-burst enemies, especially snipers since they can bypass armor. If you’d rather counter snipers…

5) Stoic is my personal favorite perk deck, which I’ve already devoted a video to it. It causes any damage to take to be dealt over the course of 12 seconds, and replaces your throwable with a hip flask that you can drink from to negate any remaining damage ticks and even get half of that health back. It’s…kinda hard to explain, which is the primary reason a lot of people don’t use it, but you’re missing out if you don’t try it. Not only is it the tankiest perk deck imaginable, it’s also the only one that counters Snipers or any sort of massive burst damage. Just make sure you bring some sort of minor health regen to replenish the slivers of health you’ll constantly be losing, I recommend Hostage Taker.

Sadly, not even Stoic is strong enough to survive server hiccups

Bonus 6) Nobody but Switch players have gotten to try it, but once Joy’s perk deck Hacker reaches PC, I think it’s going to redefine the Stealth meta. Like Stoic, it comes with a unique throwable, a rechargeable “pocket ECM” that rewards you health and dodge for any kills while one is active. Even in loud, the ability to constantly cripple entire rooms of cops with feedback and then go on a health-regen spree sounds very powerful, especially when the final tier heals your teammates for any kills they get while an ECM is down.

Thanks for listening, as always this is aabicus with The SPUF of Legend, keep those helmets flying!