The Best Skills Payday 3
Well, since actually playing a heist is off the table whilst the servers are on fire and outside of speedrunning tutorial I haven't had a whole lot to do with in Payday 3 for the past 12 or so hours I've been looking into the most powerful skills in the game that I think many people are missing out on so when you start leveling up your infy you know exactly where to invest your skill points first.
I don't think there's necessarily a best build at the moment, although that might be just around the corner. But until then, I recommend you have at least a few of these skills in your build to enhance both your loud and stealthy playing experience. First up, we all know that armor is the best build template in Payday 3; medic bags don't do enough; health disappears in a flash, and I'm struggling to see a reason not to run the four-plate heaviest option unless you're aiming to complete the heist in stealth, specifically.
Not only is this a natural pickup when most builds will run armor bags anyway, but even if you're not actually packing that deployable specifically, it's amazing to have just because you'll be less of a drain on your team's resources when they play. Place armor down, meaning more armor bag charges to go around.
The only builds you're going to specifically want to avoid this skill in are standard-lining ones tailored for stealth or speed, as the second plate is completely wasted on them. Next up, we have to touch on the skills related to the trifecta system of edge grit and rush. Not only do these Grant nice 10% buffs to your base stats, they synergize with many of the other skills in the game to create powerful combinations that I don't think people are fully utilizing.
In fact, I'd even argue that skills that consume these charges should generally be avoided, as the passive skills that activate with them are just too valuable to drop. The Three Edge is by far the one with the most powerful applications, in my opinion, so you want to find a way to ensure almost constant uptime on it, and fortunately there are several skills that can assist you in exactly that.
This is best utilized on medium- to long-range weapons like the VF-7s and the SA-A144, which deal excellent damage over range and appreciate a scoped approach. On the other side of the allowed play styles, we have gunsling erased, maybe the best skill in the entire game for builds that want to make the most of it whilst also being a poison chalice for others.
Essentially, this one will always activate Edge whenever you switch weapons, making it the easiest way to get the ball rolling as far as this essential stat is concerned. The reason for the hipfire stipulation, though, is why the skill can simply be slapped into any building. If you aim down sights at any time with this skill equipped, you will immediately lose your stack of edge, even if it wasn't gained as a result of the Gunslinger skill itself.
This means that you're going to want a completely hip-fire Centric build to make this skill lend itself well to shotgun revolvers and some SMG play styles, but generally not ARS or marksman rifles. Even so, this skill is immensely powerful when used to its full potential. Finally if you're after a skill that grants you both Edge and grit look no further than enforcer, a this one is designed as a close-range skill but with the tip map design of payday 3 can work for most weapons in the game by picking up double kills at close range you can gain grit which then combos into a stack of edge with your next Close Quarter kill, this skill might not immediately seem like it but it's enabler of one of the most broken combos in the game that allows you to have virtually endless up time on both of these passives if you play them correctly this is achieved by the combat reload skill which will reset the timer on both Edge and grit whenever you reload a weapon with bullets left in the mag perfect fre compulsive reloader such as myself, but even if you don't reload constantly you can adapt your play style to ensure that you never fire your final bullet or just combo it with the powerful reinfeld a80 shotgun which is a pump action with a large ammo pull perfect for constantly resetting combat reload.
So now that you have some brilliant methods of maintaining grit and edge, how about we put them into use with some of the most game-changing loud skills in Payday 3? This is almost essential to how I like to go about playing payday. Instead of carrying in fear of taking armor damage, you can take on the world knowing you actually have some consistent armor regeneration.
So long as you have grit, which you can maintain easily thanks to enforcer and combat reload, when this is active, picking up any ammo drops will instantly refill the rechargeable portion of your armor plate, giving you the equivalent of Bloodborne's rally system within payday 3 with the right sort of aggressive play.
This is a massive enabler for overly aggressive players such as myself, so give this one a go as soon as possible. On the edge front, the skill combo I'm about to share is one of the most insane and enjoyable synergies in the entire game. Ammo funnel and replenish in the Mowry are simply amazing and throw all that payday 3 realism straight out of the window.
Essentially, so long as you have a stack of edge, any ammo you pick up will be loaded directly into your active magazine thanks to the ammo funnel, and then replenish will allow you to pick up ammo directly from enemies you kill with without running over their Dropbox, creating a potentially endless loop of killing.
This works incredibly well with shotguns, for example, the Moscone, which easily turns into a triple- or quad-barrel shotgun thanks to this, as well as SMGs and, believe it or not, sniper rifles. To me, the very best way to run the Reinfeld sniper, the r700, is with the endless Sharpshooter headshot setup that never costs any ammo, meaning you don't have to reload and you needn't worry about grabbing ammo boxes from those longrange kills you're getting.
This is such an enjoyable synergy, probably my favorite in the entire game, touching on the Moscone and Reinfield shotgun play styles. Though I have to mention the hip skill in Gunslinger, if you're committed to its hipfire play style, this one is essential for massively tightening the hipfire spread, and as shotguns do damage, propel it in this game, unlike Payday 2, where you hit all those one-shot kill thresholds that make the replenished skill work at its very best.
