Payday 3: Best Loud Build At Launch
All right I've left all the hyperbole in the title. From here on, we're going to take a look at what I believe to be give or take a few skill points and attachments, depending on your preference. The all-around best build in the game for Payday 3 at launch Now, before I go any further, a few caveats: Payday 3 is not as demanding a game as Payday 2 was in terms of build and meta-obedience.
You can succeed on Overkill difficulty with no build, never mind the best build, so don't stress this too much. Also, there are plenty of very team-oriented skills you might want to consider if you are playing in a full squad of heisers who each know their role. The manipulator, engineer, and tactician lines are all excellent, although best run by one member of the team.
Finally, I promise I'm getting into the build in just a second. Please give me your honest feedback on this setup, including areas and heists where it struggled, preferences you've found, or just a genuine critique. It's the best way for all of us to learn this early into the game's life cycle, especially when certain heights in Payday 3 actually cater to specific play styles and skills better than others.
That said, let's get directly into the build, starting with its almighty weapon. This is the VF 7s, the SCAR or Eagle heavy rifle for those of you in the know, and ever since I purchased its preset variant, the feather light. I knew I was on to something special despite a good 80% of the primary Arsenal in the game being viable on Overkill difficulty.
The VF 7s is A Cut Above if you can handle its recoil and kick; it is such an uncomparable fully automatic powerhouse even at weapon level one, and it only gets better from there. Within the skill build I'm about to showcase, and as you'll soon find out from these skill choices, my version of the scar is designed specifically to target its hipfire capabilities.
Allow me to build in a very uniquely powerful way for attachments. First, I go for the sheath RDS site, which is my favorite red dot when occasionally advertising. The hybrid muzzle brake, which reduces both vertical and horizontal recoil at the cost of targeting speed; we don't even care about the range barrel, which buffs our damage over range again, impacting less important stats; the biofit grip provides improved vertical recoil control at the cost of a little Nerf to horizontal recoil.
The extended mag bringing us up to 30 rounds instead of 20, the TQ stock for even more weapon control without needing to ads, and the cylinder grip, which trades useful stats like hip fire spread for less useful ones like targeting speed, all leave us with a weapon that excels in all categories bar handling and fire rate, both of which are hugely unimportant for this build as we don't plan to switch it out or go fully auto very often.
I've gone back and forth on this build secondary quite a bit in testing. I think the castigo and bison revolvers are good choices, retaining their one-shot capabilities in this build too, but sing as payday 3 rewards, hybrid stealth play style slightly more, allowing you to cut corners by initially stealthing.
I wanted something in the secondary slot that could be silenced, so I've chosen to go with the Strike 7, a high-capacity and high-fire rate pistol. I don't think this is the best secondary in the game, but I think it augments this build better than the revolvers, so that's why it made the cut. We run this thing with the extended Mega attachment, bringing up to a massive 31-round mag, the Obelis silencer, which sacrifices damage distance, a stat we don't really care much for our pistol, the Box RDS for free recoil stats, and the grain grip for the same reason.
This weapon is surprisingly effective at close range and sets itself apart from the VF7 S by being a more spammy secondary option, whereas the revolvers do much the same thing. Our overkill weapon is, of course, the mighty HT5. Red Fox and our armor lining are heavy ballistic, as four plates are well worth reducing movement speed and down chances.
Our deployable is, of course the armor bag the best in the game right now, with how the armor is balanced at the moment alongside the smoke grenade to assist in certain objectives and escapes, as well as the infrared mine or motion sensor depending on the heist. The mine is a useful and stunning tool for defensive objectives, while the motion sensor effectively gives you brief wall hacks for a much-needed heads-up against cloakers.
Finally, we're on to skills, and this build is generally a grit and Edge Focus setup designed around buffing the scar as much as possible we grab combat medic tree though aiming for one of the most underrated skills in the game after picking up medic a for a slightly faster revive time and to gain automatic grit upon Reviving, we grab combat medic a skill that grants you and the teammate you revived, five entire seconds of full damage immunity, this is swans song all over again and well worth taking as a clutch skill to save most situations.
Moving on to Mowa, this skill is our first provider of edge, although it's predominantly a bridge to get you up to recoil handling and, most importantly, funnel and replenish. Now not only will you have even less kick on your weapon for every kill you pick up, you'll automatically grab their ammo box and add it directly to your active magazine.
This is insanely powerful in so many different builds and is quickly becoming a skill combo I can't do without, but sadly, it won't activate the very powerful plate-up skill, meaning I do choose to miss out on that regeneration for this specific build, which stings a bit moving down to tank, probably the best skill line in the game right now.
We basiced it out before grabbing extra plates for the armor bag and armor up to increase its effectiveness. I think this is the most necessary skill in the game, and on harder difficulties, if you're not running it, you're just making your team's life harder. Unfortunately, we are forced into Sharpshooter NE, which counteracts the Gunslinger play style I'm going for later, but that's just to ensure we can pick up the cutting shot skill, nullifying those pesky heavy SWAT spawns that come later into the assault, allowing you to still one shot headshot them with just the scar.
I put a spare point into Swift for a little movement speed. I'm still split on if you're better going for Swift or Infiltrator here, but Swift has one out in this build as I don't plan to do much stealth moving down to enforcer. We grab the first skill as another way to activate grit with close range skills playing into the hipfire style, and with both grit and Edge now available.
