What is the best perk deck in Payday 2? Well, it depends. Payday 2 has a lot of playstyles and difficulties — both of which play a part in what can be considered “the best” perk deck. All the same, there’s one that stands out above the rest as being straight-up overpowered, regardless of how you use it, or what difficulty you use it on.
I’m going to break down the best perk deck in Payday 2 in detail. I’ll go over what makes it so strong, as well as the individual perks that make up the deck as a whole.
What is the Best Perk Deck in Payday 2
The best perk deck in Payday 2 for high difficulties is Leech. Leech was Overkill’s attempt to make up for Payday 2’s strongest perk deck on lower difficulties — Kingpin. Kingpin is no longer available for purchase since the Scar Face pack was removed from the store. In response, Overkill developed the Leech perk deck and released it for free for all players.
Leech functions like Kingpin, except better. The perk deck comes with a consumable that replaces your throwable — the Leech Ampule. When you use the Ampule, your health is split up into ten segments, and each time you take damage, you lose a segment. This effect is buffed as you upgrade the deck.
This is powerful on high difficulties because it generally only takes one or two shots to your health to kill you, so being able to take ten hits increases your survivability 10-fold.
The fact that Leech interacts with your health, and not armor, is important. It means that the perk deck runs remarkably well with low-armor builds like dodge and crit. These are also two effective high-difficulty playstyles, further increasing the power of Leech.
Payday 2 Leech Perk Deck
Along with the four universal perks, the Leech perk deck consists of the following:
- Momentum — Unlocks the Leech Ampule. Using the Ampule disables your armor for its duration and restores 40% of your total health. While active, the Ampule divides your health into five segments. Taking damage removes one segment. Killing two enemies while the Ampule is active will block damage for one second and restore one segment of your health. If you take damage while Leech is active, you will heal your teammates for 5% of their total HP. The effect of the Leech Ampule lasts for six seconds and has a 30-second cooldown timer.
- Indomitable — Your max HP is increased by 20%. While Leech is active, you can no longer go down. However, you lose 80% of your movement speed during Leech while you have no HP.
- Stalwart — The duration of Leech is increased to 10 seconds. Killing an enemy reduces the cooldown of your Leech Ampule by one second. Taking damage while Leech is active now heals teammates for 10% of their total HP.
- Built Different — Your max HP is increased by a further 20%.
- Symbiosis — Your max HP is increased by a further 60%. Leech Ampule now divides your health into 10 segments rather than five. If you use your Ampule while downed, you will self-revive for the duration of the Ampule. If you revive a teammate or use a Doctor’s Bag during this duration, you will stay up – provided you end Leech above 0 HP.
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