This guide analyzes the various perk deck effects in loud. Are damage reduction effects worth anything at all against the huge amounts of damage on Death Sentence? How much is dodge worth? What about healing effects? How do they stack up against each other? This guide will answer all these questions, and more.

This guide was written as an extension to the Perk Decks sections of my build guide. It assumes you have all decks at 9/9 cards unlocked.

This guide is written for the Death Sentence difficulty, where the most common enemy, the ZEAL heavy, does 225 damage at all ranges. This will form the basis for all scenarios analyzed. Including other enemies' damage numbers would make this guide far longer than it already is, and if you understand the concepts presented in this guide, you can extend the analyses to other damage numbers yourself, including those on lower difficulties.

This guide is best viewed on desktop, as the short width of mobile devices may cause some diagrams to appear incorrectly.

Perk decks mostly modify your defensive stats. All perk decks confer benefits in one or more of the categories listed below:

• Armor/damage reduction (DR)
  
• Dodge
  
• Health/Health regeneration
  
• Invulnerability
  
• Armor gating
  
• Armor regeneration speed

What's the difference between armor gating and armor regen speed?
Armor gating refers to the mechanic where, if you have even a single point of armor, non-sniper attacks will at worst break that armor, but leave your health untouched. In the context of this guide, I take it to mean regenerating small amounts of armor immediately upon fulfilling certain conditions. If there's a delay, that falls under armor regen speed instead.

Let's start with a hypothetical baseline for comparison: a perk deck with blank cards everywhere except on even-numbered cards, which are shared among all decks. This perk deck provides no bonuses to any defensive category, so we only have base stats to work with.

The empty perk deck is useful as a reference if you're taking skills in one of the defensive categories when your deck provides no bonuses in it (e.g. getting an ICTV on Muscle).

What does the empty perk deck have to offer?

A suit (20 armor) breaks in 1 heavy hit (225 damage - due to armor gating, the remaining 205 doesn't break through).

An ICTV (221 armor - Iron Man basic is a prerequisite, so +30% armor is automatically assumed) breaks in 2 heavy hits, provided a *0.9 damage received bonus from Underdog aced, Quick Fix aced (collectively referred to as UD/QF aced), or Frenzy basic is active, reducing the heavy's damage to 202.5.

A suit has 5 dodge. Anything heavier has 0. (Technically negative, which matters if there is a Sicario smoke bomb, but effectively 0.)

Your base health is 230, and does not regenerate. Thus, you die in 2 hits once your armor is gone. If you've just been revived, you are at 23 health, so you die in 1 hit instead.

In the absence of health regeneration or first aid kits, it is reasonable to assume that you will spend most of your time at 10% health or under:
This diagram shows how your health and downs can fluctuate during gameplay. Starting with 100% health and 2 downs, assuming you have a 2-hit ICTV, taking 0 or 1 or 2 hits in a row before finding cover would loop back to 100% health (you don't take any health damage, and any armor damage you might have taken recovers after you're safely in cover). Taking 3 hits in a row (2 to armor, 1 to health) before finding cover would send you to 2% health.

Most of the time, you should be following the "take 0/1/2 hits, find cover" loops. On the rare occasion you slip up and take 3 hits in a row, you drop to a lower level. There are 4 levels in the diagram, and the lowest level (10% health, 0 downs left) is usually short-lived, since you'll want to use a med bag as soon as possible when at 0 downs. For the other 3 levels, since the "take 0/1/2 hits, find cover" loops are so common, it's reasonable to estimate that you should spend an equal amount of time in each of them, i.e. 2/3 of your time at <=10% health.

Note that the diagram above assumes OD is on and you have Nine Lives aced. If OD is not on, you start with 3 or 4 downs, meaning you will get stuck at <=10% health even longer (3/4 or 4/5 of your time). On the plus side, you don't have to use med bags that quickly.

Finally, if you're deliberately damaging yourself for Berserker, it should be obvious even without a diagram that you will spend most of your time at <=10% health.

With Partners in Crime aced and Hostage Taker aced (collectively referred to as PiC+HT aced), you have 299 health, and regenerate 13.455 health every 5 seconds. Assuming you also have Underdog/Quick Fix aced to reduce damage to 202.5, you regenerate 1 heavy hit worth of health in 80 seconds, rounded up to the nearest 5s.

The only invulnerability you have comes from the grace period: a mechanic where, if you take damage, you can't take damage again for 0.35s, provided the new damage is less than or equal to the damage that started the 0.35s grace period.

Assuming you have the 2-hit ICTV, are at 10% health, and a bunch of heavies are shooting at you continuously, you go down 0.7s from the moment the first shot lands (damaged at t = 0, 0.35, 0.7s). The heavies shooting at other times, like t = 0.1s, don't damage you because of the grace period.

You have no armor gating, unless you take the Bullseye skill. If you do, you can gate 1 hit every 1.5s. You need to proc Bullseye at 0 armor for it to be worth one more hit; proccing it at 221 or 18.5 armor does effectively nothing.

The default armor regeneration time in online mode is 3s, but the game also takes 1 additional second to check that your armor regeneration is not being suppressed by enemy fire. This suppression check timer is not affected by armor regen bonuses.

In practice, Resilience basic is taken on almost every build, since it leads up to Bullseye or Iron Man. Shock and Awe basic may also be present on one or more players, which affects the whole team. So the armor regen time is 3.55s from the last enemy shot, or 2.9125s if someone has Shock and Awe basic.

The big question to ask is, "how many more hits does this allow me to take?" Most perk deck bonuses can be viewed through this lens. Between two similar effects, we can also ask, "how much longer/shorter is the cooldown?" We will be asking and answering these two questions constantly throughout this guide.

Armor and damage reduction skills are the most straightforward way of increasing the number of hits you can take. If the enemies do X damage, and you can get your armor to X+a little bit, then it breaks in 2 hits. Some decks are capable of getting it to 2X+a little bit, meaning it breaks in 3 hits.

1-hit armor:

• Suit empty perk deck

2-hit armor:

• ICTV empty perk deck, UD/QF aced/Frenzy basic (221 armor, heavies do 202.5)
  
• ICTV Armorer (280.5 armor)
  
• ICTV Copycat, 1 armor boost (229.5 armor)
  
• ICTV Crew Chief, no situational DR bonuses (238 armor, heavies do 207)
  
• ICTV Sociopath, no situational DR bonuses (255 armor)
  
• HBV Crook, Die Hard aced, Iron Man basic, Frenzy aced (175.5 armor, heavies do 168.75)
  
• ICTV Maniac, with more than 50 hysteria stacks (221 armor, heavies do <221)
  
• ICTV Infiltrator, being targeted by 1 enemy in 18m range (221 armor, heavies do 171)

3-hit armor:

• ICTV Crew Chief, UD/QF aced, Frenzy aced, all DR bonuses (238 armor, heavies do 107.98)
  
• ICTV Sociopath, UD/QF aced, Frenzy aced, all DR bonuses (255 armor, heavies do 122.96)
  
• ICTV Infiltrator, UD/QF aced, Frenzy aced, all DR bonuses (221 armor, heavies do 101.57)

Out of the 3-hit armor decks, Sociopath is the best since it has extra armor gating from Tension, followed by Crew Chief, then Infiltrator. Infiltrator's melee healing can mess with Berserker, so if you don't want that to happen, you have to avoid using your melee completely. Sociopath can still use its melee as long as it doesn't kill with it.

Some other impractical setups, and why they're impractical:

• ICTV Anarchist, Partners in Crime aced, Frenzy aced has 4-hit armor (508.04 armor, heavies do 168.75). Impractical because Anarchist is meant to armor gate, and ICTV has the longest armor regen time on it.
  
• ICTV Maniac, UD/QF aced, Frenzy aced, with at least 518 hysteria stacks has 3-hit armor (221 armor, heavies do <110.435). Impractical because the way the stack updates leaves you at <518 hysteria at least half the time.
  
• CTV Armorer, Iron Man basic, Frenzy aced has 2-hit armor (181.5 armor, heavies do 168.75). Impractical because you can take the points used for acing Frenzy to ace Iron Man for the ICTV instead and still have 2-hit armor, even dropping Frenzy basic entirely. It does let you hit 23 detection for Low Blow aced if you have highly concealed weapons, though.

Believe it or not, dodge can actually be compared fairly to armor, despite the randomness. We do this by calculating the expected number of shots fired before the enemy lands a hit.

Example: suppose the enemy has 100% accuracy, but you have 60 dodge. How many shots must the enemy fire, on average, before it lands a hit on you?

• 40% of the time, you lose the first dodge roll, and the enemy lands a hit in 1 shot.
  
• 60%*40% of the time, you dodge the first shot and get hit by the second.
  
• 60%*60%*40% of the time, you dodge the first two shots and get hit by the third.

and so on.


What you do now is multiply every possible number of shots by their corresponding probabilities, then add everything together: 1*0.4 + 2*0.6*0.4 + 3*0.6*0.6*0.4 + ... . Keep in mind this is an infinite sum - you don't just stop at 3, you need to count 4, 5, 6, and so on - so there's actually an infinite number of terms you have to add, which will require some mathematical mastery. Or, you can just calculate the sum up to 20 terms or so in a spreadsheet, which will get you a figure that's close enough. The exact answer is 2.5, the 20-term approximation is 2.499. So if you have 60 dodge, on average, every 2.5th shot fired by an enemy, aimed at you, will hit you.

What if you have a different amount of dodge? How many shots would be needed then? I'll save you the trouble and give you the formula: it's 1/(1-d), where d is your dodge expressed as a fraction. Putting in d=0.6 gives 2.5 as calculated.

Note that this formula applies to 0 dodge too, though the result is obvious. If you have 0 dodge, then the 1st shot will always hit you. You can also take the limit as d -> 1, and get an infinite value. This also makes sense: if you have 100 dodge, the enemy will never hit you.

Let's apply this to an actual scenario. Suppose your armor breaks in 1 hit, and you die in 1 hit to your health. The enemy is 100% accurate, and you have 60 dodge. Assume you don't have any opportunities for your armor to regenerate naturally, or through Bullseye. How many shots, on average, does the enemy need to down you?

Using the formula, the enemy hits you every 2.5 shots. Since you have 1 hit worth of armor and 1 hit worth of health, you go down in 5 shots.

How does this compare to armor? With 1-hit armor, 1-hit health, and 60 dodge, you go down in 5 shots on average. With 4-hit armor, 1-hit health, and 0 dodge, you also go down in 5 shots. So 60 dodge on a suit is worth 4 hits of armor.

You can extend this to any armor or dodge value. What about HBV Crook, which has 2-hit armor, 1-hit health, and 25 dodge? It gets hit every 1/(1-0.25) = 1.33 shots, and dies in 3 hits, so it takes 4 shots to down, and thus is worth 3 hits of armor.

You can also use this to calculate how many more hits Sneaky Bastard or Duck and Cover aced buys you. Assuming 1-hit armor and 1-hit health, going from 50 to 60 dodge is an improvement of 2/0.4 - 2/0.5 = 1 hit. On the other hand, going from 5 to 15 dodge is an improvement of just 2/0.85 - 2/0.95 = 0.25 hits. That's why you don't take Sneaky Bastard on Anarchist.

Sicario is a lot more complicated to model. Some simplifying assumptions have to be made, and calculating the result (even an approximation) cannot be done as easily in a spreadsheet.

The number we're looking for is the same: how many shots, on average, does the enemy need to down you? Suppose you have 1-hit armor, 1-hit health, with the abilities from the Sicario perk deck, and a total of 30 dodge (5 from suit, 15 from deck, 10 from Sneaky Bastard).

What complicates the analysis is that your dodge can increase due to Twitch, and you can recover armor with Agility Shield. To solve the problem, we're going to use something called a Markov chain.
The ASCII art diagram above has 5 boxes, describing the state you're in. You begin at box A, where you have 1 hit of armor, 30 dodge, and Twitch is inactive and available.

An enemy shoots you. What happens? With probability 0.3, nothing - you dodge the shot, and remain at box A, hence the arrow marked 0.3 leading back to box A. With probability 0.7, you get hit, losing your armor, and you move on to box B. In either case, your step counter goes up by 1. Increment this every time an enemy shoots you, i.e. every time you follow an arrow on the diagram, even if it leads back to the same box.

You may dodge a few shots in a row, taking the A -> A loop a few times, but eventually you'll land up on box B. Since you just took a hit, you have no armor, and Twitch triggers, raising your dodge to 50. An enemy shoots you. What happens? With probability 0.5, you lose the dodge roll and go down like a chump (box E). With probability 0.5, you win the roll, moving on to box C, resetting your armor to 1 hit with Agility Shield.

Box C is nearly identical to box A, with the sole difference being Twitch: it is inactive (since you just dodged) and unavailable (less than 4s since last hit). Like with box A, when the enemy shoots you, you stay on the same box with probability 0.3, and move on to the next box (D) with probability 0.7.

Again, you'll eventually land on box D. Here, when the enemy shoots you, you lose the roll and go down with probability 0.7, but win the roll and reset your armor to 1 hit with probability 0.3. The former sends you to box E, but the latter sends you back to box C.

You may ping-pong between boxes C and D for a while, but eventually you'll lose two rolls in a row and go down, landing on box E. Or you might have lost the roll at box B and died an early death. Anyway, you're at box E, so what's left to do? You look at the step counter (you didn't forget to increment it, did you?), and that's how many shots it took to down you.

Note that the above assumes that Twitch is only allowed to proc once - otherwise, you would need even more boxes because the Twitch states wouldn't be limited to yes/no, they would be yes/no with X seconds remaining until cooldown, for a whole load of possible values for X. This is a simplifying assumption, but a reasonable one to make - the entire journey from A to E is not expected to last more than 4s in real time.

So, that's the theory behind the diagram, but how do you use it to get the effective armor of Sicario? You have a few options:

• Grab a 10- or 20-sided die and play through this game, recording how many steps it takes to reach box E. Repeat this many, many times, then calculate the average steps per run.
  
• Same as above, but write a program to do all the die-rolling, step counting, and box moving electronically.
  
• Read up on the theory behind Markov chains, convert the diagram into a transition matrix, then the number of steps to reach B/C/D/E from A can be gotten from (I-T)^-1.

I chose the 3rd option. Skipping the details, the average number of steps to reach E from A is 4.163. Meaning 30 dodge Sicario is worth 3.163 hits of armor.

You can also use this to analyze Sicario in smoke; the only thing that changes is the probabilities attached to each arrow. The result is that suit Sicario with Sneaky Bastard in smoke has an effective 19.231 hits armor.

If you really want to know, the formula for shots to down on Sicario is 1 + (1+t)/(1-d) + t/(1-d)^2, where d is dodge without Twitch and t is dodge with Twitch.

So, to summarize the effective number of hits of armor dodge decks (and the empty perk deck) have:

In terms of hitting breakpoints, health is exactly the same as armor: if enemies do X damage and you raise your health to 2X+a little bit, then you die in 3 shots to your health, after your armor is depleted. Outside of hitting breakpoints, there are a few important differences:

• You can't use Frenzy to reduce enemy damage, as that would eat into the health pool that you're trying to tank damage with. So your only options are Underdog aced and Quick Fix aced. If either of them are active, heavies do 202.5 damage instead of their usual 225.
  
• Hostage Taker will wait for your health to go below 100% before activating. So if you're burst down by heavies, the amount of health you have available to tank their hits is 104.5% of your max health, not 100%.
  
• When revived, you have 10% health. You are not tanking anything with your health right after a revive, whereas a DR deck still has its 3-hit ICTV, and Armorer has its invulnerability.

1-hit health:

• Anarchist (115 health)
  
• Empty perk deck, Frenzy (69 health)
  
• Empty perk deck after revive (23 health)

2-hit health:

• Empty perk deck (230 health)

3-hit health:

• Muscle (460 health)
  
• Kingpin/Leech/Copycat with 4 health boosts, Partners in Crime aced (483 health)
  
• Copycat with 3 health boosts, Partners in Crime aced, Hostage Taker aced (456.665 health with HT)
  
• Gambler/Grinder/Ex-President/Tag Team, UD/QF aced, Partners in Crime aced, Hostage Taker aced (408.595 health with HT, heavies do 202.5)
  
• Crew Chief, UD/QF aced, Partners in Crime aced, 1 hostage, all DR bonuses active (358.8 health, heavies do 157.684)
  
• Infiltrator, UD/QF aced, Partners in Crime aced, all DR bonuses active (299 health, heavies do 135.432)

Note that Sociopath, Biker, and Hacker are unable to reach 3-hit health, even though they have health regen abilities.

4-hit health:

• Copycat Infiltrator with 4 health boosts, UD/QF aced, Partners in Crime aced, DR bonus active (483 health, heavies do 153.9)

5-hit health:

• Leech with the ampule active

Without the ampule, a 225 damage heavy hit takes out over 40% of a Leech's 483 health (with Partners in Crime aced). With the ampule, this is reduced to 20%.

Health regen decreases the time required to recover health lost to enemy attacks. Take Muscle for example: without PiC+HT aced, it has 460 health, and recovers 13.8 every 5 seconds. Thus it takes 75 seconds to recover 202.5 damage from a heavy. With PiC+HT aced, it has 529 health, and recovers 39.675 every 5 seconds. In this case, it would take just 30 seconds to recover 202.5 damage.

With that said, how long does it take the health decks to recover 1 heavy hit worth of health? Assume UD/QF aced (so heavies do 202.5 damage, unless there's even more DR) and PiC+HT aced (+30% health, +4.5% health regen every 5 seconds).

For the results below, I am going to be strict and dictate that the amount of health gained must be greater than or equal to the heavy damage. Some of them are really close - for example, Muscle heals 198.375 in 25s (5 HT cycles), just shy of 202.5, but I count it as 30s (6 cycles). All healing abilities, including HT, must also be completely cooled down.

All times are expressed as a multiple of 5s (1 HT cycle = 5s). Most decks also require you to jump through some hoops (damage, kill, pick up ammo boxes) to regenerate health. I make some reasonable assumptions on how quickly these tasks can be completed.


Some observations:

• Grinder has the fastest health regen. To compensate for that, it has to use the suit/LBV, which provides the least armor.
  
• If you were to treat Gambler's ammo pickups as equivalent to kills (since enemies drop ammo boxes when they die; Gambler just adds on the step of having to walk over them), Gambler requires fewer kills compared to other decks that heal on kill, i.e. Tag Team/Ex-President/Biker.
  
• Infiltrator is better than Sociopath as a deck that regenerates health from melee. Infiltrator heals more and triggers on hit, not kill.
  
• Muscle is better than Crew Chief as a deck that regenerates health passively.
  

Hacker is special because you get +20 dodge for 30 seconds if you kill an enemy while the pocket ECM is active. Ideally, you would want to use the pocket ECM every 30 seconds in order to maintain the +20 dodge bonus. How hard do you have to work to keep up that once every 30s activation? If you happen to take 1 heavy hit to your health, how hard do you have to work to recover the damage?

I will be assuming no UD/QF aced, since 1) they don't let Hacker reach 3-hit health and 2) if you care about the dodge bonus, you're in a suit, and suit breaks in 1 hit regardless of whether UD/QF are active.

• The pocket ECM cooldown is 100s, -6s for every kill (even when it's not active). You're going to wait 30s between activations, so that leaves 70s to be reduced from kills. Thus you need a total of 12 kills for each ECM cooldown.
  
• If you took a 225 damage hit and have PiC+HT aced, you'll heal 93.15 from HT in 30s. Kills while the pocket ECM is active heal you for 20 each, so you need 7 kills during ECM to make up for the shortfall.
  
• If you don't have PiC/HT aced, all your healing must come from kills while the pocket ECM is active, and that comes out to 12 kills, coincidentally the same as the number you need for the cooldown. Admittedly, that can be hard to accomplish in 6s, so you can space that out over 2 activations instead, conceding that you're going to heal in 60s instead of 30s. But then the total number of kills you would need is 24: 12 kills during ECM, 12 kills outside, over 60s. You can halve everything for the 30s rate: 6 kills during ECM, 6 kills outside.

Thus, to summarize:

• If you have PiC+HT aced, and kill 7 enemies during ECM + 5 outside ECM every 30s, you can retain a steady once-per-30s ECM activation rate, while healing 1 heavy hit worth of health every 30s.
  
• If you don't have any health skills, and kill 6 enemies during ECM + 6 outside ECM every 30s, you can retain a steady once-per-30s ECM activation rate, while healing 1 heavy hit worth of health every 60s.

Stoic's health bar functions like the armor bar for a conventional deck, with a few differences:

• Stoic's health drops much slower than any armor. ICTV Stoic with PiC+HT aced has 520 health, and can take up to 7 heavy hits before it has to use its flask. In comparison, max DR decks only have 3 hits of armor.
  This should not come as a surprise, as Stoic's description says "damage is now reduced by 75%". In that sense, Stoic has a very high damage reduction.
  
• With a conventional deck, after losing all your armor, you have one more hit of health before going down. With Stoic, after losing all your "armor", you go down immediately.
  
• You can't gate with Bullseye on Stoic, but instead regenerate "armor" automatically with Hostage Taker.
  
• A down as Stoic costs you 1 first aid kit to get back to full "armor" immediately.

Stoic stops its DOT and gets back health after a while with its Calm card, much like any other non-Anarchist deck's natural armor regeneration, though Stoic is slightly slower (4s vs 2.91s). Stoic's flask acts like a manual, immediate armor recovery; like Hitman's Tooth and Claw without the delay, or Sicario's Agility Shield without having to win a luck roll.

Time for possibly the hottest take you will ever hear: playing Stoic on DS is like playing ICTV empty perk deck without a throwable on DW. You lose health on DS with Stoic about as fast as you lose armor on DW with an empty perk deck, and Stoic's flask takes up the throwable slot so you don't have knives or grenades. Nevertheless, the effective drop in difficulty outweighs you having to play without a perk deck (and throwables), and that's what makes Stoic so strong.

Given the appropriate deck, Hostage Taker, Iron Man, Sneaky Bastard, and Frenzy all increase the number of hits you can take by 1:

• On a deck with at least +40% health, PiC+HT aced increases your health from 2-hit to 3-hit (+1 hit).
  
• On the empty perk deck, Iron Man aced + UD/QF aced lets you switch from a 1-hit suit to a 2-hit ICTV (+1 hit, or +0.89 if you count the suit's 5 dodge).
  
• On Rogue/Hacker, Sneaky Bastard's +10 dodge increases your effective armor by +1/+1.27 hits.
  
• On DR decks, Frenzy aced + UD/QF aced turn a 2-hit ICTV into 3-hit (+1 hit).

These four skills cost varying numbers of points to build up to, and pick up different things on the way to tier 4. Nevertheless, they are fairly equal in terms of how many extra hits they buy you. None of them are a "waste", unless you're using them on a completely inappropriate deck, like taking Sneaky Bastard on Anarchist.

Armorer and Anarchist have 2s of invulnerability on armor break. How many hits is this worth? Assuming only heavies are shooting at you, and they're shooting continuously, and your armor breaks at t=0s. If you did not have invulnerability, you would take damage five times within the next 2s: at t=0.35, 0.7, 1.05, 1.4, 1.75s. (The grace period protects you everywhere else.) So you can think of 2s invulnerability as 5 hits worth of protection.

(The same applies to Copycat's 2s invulnerability after dropping under 50% health.)

Kingpin's injector is technically health regen, but functionally invulnerability (you heal the same amount of damage that you take). It lasts 6s, and if you do the calculation, you'll find it's 17 hits worth of protection.

Leech during ampule time gains 1 segment of health and 1s of invulnerability every 2 kills. The invulnerability is worth 2 hits, and heavies take out 2 segments of health per hit, unless both Quick Fix aced and Underdog aced are active. So it effectively gains 2.5 hits worth of health every 2 kills.

In order to armor gate, you need to hit 0 armor, then gain some armor somehow, before the next hit lands. The timing required (you must gain the armor after hitting 0, but before the next hit) makes it difficult to conclusively say how many hits you should be able to gate, but if you assume perfect play, you can get a theoretical maximum number of hits you are able to gate in a short amount of time:

(Assume Bullseye is always present.)

• Empty perk deck can gate once (Bullseye).
  
• Sociopath can gate twice (Bullseye, Tension). Note that although Tension and Overdose are on separate cards, they run on the same cooldown.
  
• Anarchist can gate thrice (Bullseye, Blitzkrieg Bop's continuous regen, Lust for Life).
  
• Biker can gate five times (Bullseye, 4x Prospect).

Of course, nobody plays perfectly, let alone an entire team, which is why nobody thinks Biker is the best deck, even though it can gate the greatest number of times. Also keep in mind that 2s of invulnerability from Armorer or Anarchist is already worth 5 hits.

Sicario can technically gate with Agility Shield, but this is completely luck-based, since it triggers on dodging. The effect of this gating is already accounted for in its analysis.

Consider the typical loud gameplay loop:

1. You're in cover
   
2. You leave cover to shoot at enemies
   
3. The enemies shoot back
   
4. You return to cover and wait for armor to regenerate
   
5. Go to step 2

In theory, armor regen speed bonuses speed up step 4, allowing you to leave cover to shoot at enemies again faster. In practice, they make little difference to your performance. Why?

• Depending on the deck, the reduction in armor regen time may only be a few milliseconds, at most a few seconds.
  
• You are not rewarded greatly for being able to leave cover slightly earlier. Let's say you are able to leave cover 0.2s earlier than normal because you have an armor regen speed bonus, and manage to finish off the remaining enemies. What now? The next group of enemies could spawn a long distance away, and you're going to have to wait for them to come towards you anyway, completely wiping out the 0.2s that you saved.
  
• You also have to wait for your weapons to reload before leaving cover. If your weapon reload time is longer than your armor regen time, lowering the armor regen time isn't going to make a difference.
  Suppose your armor takes 2.9s to regenerate and your weapons take 3s to reload. If you get to cover and start a reload at the same time that your armor begins counting down its regeneration, you're only going to leave cover after 3s, when both your armor and magazines are back at full. This doesn't change if you have an armor regen speed bonus and your armor regenerates in 2.7s instead - you still have to wait for the slower 3s reload.

Nobody thinks Hitman or Yakuza are the best perk decks, and you would be hard-pressed to find someone thinking those are even good decks with a straight face. On the other hand, Stoic is among the best, despite taking 4s for the DOT to stop, longer than the empty perk deck's 2.91s armor regeneration time. That's how little armor regen speed matters.

Armor regen times, assuming Resilience+Shock and Awe basic are always present:

Several decks (Muscle, Rogue, Burglar) have priority multipliers. In theory, these multipliers make enemies prefer shooting at you instead of your teammates, or vice versa. In practice, these multipliers do virtually nothing.

In order to understand why, you should first familiarize yourself with the target priority system. I have written a whole guide about it here. If that's too long, the only thing you need to know is that enemies will choose to target visible targets over targets that they can't see. If an enemy can't see a Muscle player, but can see a Rogue, it will choose to target the Rogue, even though Rogue has a low priority multiplier and Muscle has a high one.

In regular gameplay, teams will often split up to cover different hallways and rooms. They do not necessarily have to be physically far away from each other, but there will be walls in the way (otherwise it could scarcely be considered "different hallways and rooms"; it would just be one big room). These walls, as already explained, supersede the effect of priority multipliers, because they block enemy vision. If an enemy can see you, but can't see your teammate, it will target you, regardless of what deck either player is using.

Suppose we're in a scenario where two players have equal visibility to the enemy, and one of them has a higher priority multiplier than the other due to their perk decks. The enemy chooses to shoot at the player with a higher priority multiplier. What next? That player, sensibly, would retreat to cover to allow his armor to regenerate. Now the enemy can't see him, because he is in cover, so it chooses to target the other exposed player instead.

Having a lower priority multiplier doesn't cause your teammate to be targeted more - it causes your teammate to be targeted first. After your teammate gets shot and subsequently goes back to cover, it's your turn to get shot. At the end of it, everyone gets their fair share of being shot at.

Converts and bots have priority multipliers lower than anything humanly achievable. However, unlike humans, they are incapable of using cover. They have a tendency (or, for bots, can be ordered) to stand out in the open, exposed to enemy view, instead of hiding behind nearby walls. Additionally, converts can get stunlocked in place. This is why they make such great meat shields, even though they have low priority multipliers.

Kingpin has a ridiculously high priority multiplier when the injector is active. This actually matters... to some degree. Assisting the injector in its ability to draw attention to the Kingpin is its functional invulnerability, allowing the Kingpin to stay in the open, exposed to enemy view. Unlike the scenario presented in Not Splitting Up, the Kingpin doesn't need to duck back into cover immediately after losing his armor, so the high priority multiplier can actually do what it's meant to do.

Note that visibility is still paramount - when the injector is active, not every single enemy on the map is going to be drawn to you, only those that can see you. If you activate the injector but stay in cover, the enemies will continue shooting at whoever else they can see. If you activate the injector when there's an enemy stuck in a room somewhere with one of your teammates, that enemy isn't going to ignore your teammate and try to path out of the room, or shoot you through solid walls.

There's one scenario in which the team is in extremely close proximity to each other: when they're traveling together in a vehicle. Surely such conditions are as good as they're going to get, and we'll finally be able to see priority take effect?

Well...have a look for yourself. I was using Rogue, in the driver's seat (front left), approaching a group of enemies who were on the left side of the car. The enemies chose to shoot me instead of my Anarchist teammates. So much for priority.

It's also interesting to note that, about a minute earlier, a sniper shot my teammate, who was in the back left passenger seat, as we were driving away from the farm. You can see the sniper's laser for a brief moment and deduce that the sniper was behind and to the left of us. Detractors would say that I caused my teammate to be shot because I was Rogue, but this explanation completely falls apart a minute later, when I'm the one to get shot instead. The explanation which is consistent, however, is that priority simply doesn't matter, and whoever's physically closest to the enemy (disregarding the priority multiplier) gets shot.

Suppose you don't believe what I've said, and you still think that priority matters a lick. In that case you have two choices:

• Continue to whine like a ♥♥♥♥♥ when there's a Rogue on your team because "he's getting you targeted more".
  
• Exploit the hell out of the priority mechanic. Assemble a team of 3 Muscles and 1 Rogue. In theory the Rogue should be virtually invisible to enemies, so you should be able to get heists done very easily by sending the Rogue to complete objectives, even in the middle of an assault, when enemies are swarming the place.

Good luck with that. Nobody even has a proof of concept for this type of strategy working, because it doesn't.

Consider two scenarios:

1. You have 0 dodge, are at 0 armor, and Bullseye is off cooldown
   
2. Same as 1), but you have 60 dodge instead

If you proc Bullseye there and then, you gain 1 more hit worth of armor. But as we saw in the Dodge section, dodge extends each hit of armor you have to effectively 1/(1-d) hits. So that 1 hit of armor is worth more when you have 60 dodge instead of 0 dodge: 1.5 hits more, to be precise (1/0.4 - 1/1).

We saw that, ignoring Bullseye, a dodge deck with 1-hit armor, 1-hit health, and 60 dodge takes an average of 5 shots to down. DR decks with 3-hit armor, 1-hit health, and 0 dodge take 4 shots to down (-1). This gap only grows when you add Bullseye to the mix - now the dodge deck takes 7.5 shots to down, while the DR deck takes 5 shots (-2.5).

Suppose you're using a DR deck with 3-hit armor and 1-hit health. Normally you go down in 4 hits, but with Bullseye, you can survive 4 hits. The tricky bit is the timing: you must proc Bullseye after the third hit, but before the fourth. So it would look like:

• 3 hits armor, take 1st hit, down to 2 armor.
  
• Take 2nd hit, down to 1 armor.
  
• Take 3rd hit, down to 0 armor.
  
• -> Proc Bullseye, go up to 1 armor. <-
  
• Take 4th hit, down to 0 armor.

No other Bullseye proc timing lets you survive 4 hits. If you proc it earlier, your armor value goes up, but the number of hits of armor you have doesn't change - if you have 10 armor (the actual value, not the number of hits it can take) after 2 hits, for example, and you proc Bullseye, you would have 15 armor, but that still gets blown off in one heavy hit. If you proc it later, the enemy has already taken out your 1 hit of health and downed you.

Now suppose you're using a health deck with 2-hit armor and 3-hit health. You can't avoid health damage if you take 4 hits, but you can restrict the damage to only 1 hit of your health by using Bullseye to soak up one hit. With health decks, the window for proccing Bullseye is wider: you can proc it any time after the second hit, but before the fourth. So it's either going to look like:

• 2 armor + 3 health, take 1st hit, down to 1 armor + 3 health.
  
• Take 2nd hit, down to 0 armor + 3 health.
  
• -> Proc Bullseye, go up to 1 armor + 3 health. <-
  
• Take 3rd hit, down to 0 armor + 3 health.
  
• Take 4th hit, down to 0 armor + 2 health.

Or:

• 2 armor + 3 health, take 1st hit, down to 1 armor + 3 health.
  
• Take 2nd hit, down to 0 armor + 3 health.
  
• Take 3rd hit, down to 0 armor + 2 health.
  
• -> Proc Bullseye, go up to 1 armor + 2 health. <-
  
• Take 4th hit, down to 0 armor + 2 health.

Also note that since the health deck spends more time at 0 armor than the DR deck, it gets to enjoy the speed boost from the Second Wind skill a little longer too.

Invulnerability from Armorer functions very similar to regenerating health: it kicks in after you've lost your all armor, and protects you from losing your last hit of health. The two main differences are:

• Invulnerability is time-based: it stops all enemy damage for 2s. Health is hit-based: it soaks up 1 or 2 hits (the 3rd would down you). Though as we've seen in the Invulnerability section, 2s of invulnerability is roughly equivalent to 5 hits.
  
• Cooldown time. Invulnerability has a flat 15s cooldown. Health's "cooldown" is simply how long it takes to regenerate the health you lost. Using Muscle as the health deck, if you take 0/1/2 hits to your health, you recover the lost health in 0/30/55s.

For the most part, Armorer is better than the health decks: it has a guaranteed 2-hit ICTV, and does not need to spec into PiC+HT aced; its invulnerability protects from more hits than regenerating health, has a shorter cooldown, and is available even after getting revived at 10% health.

The one scenario in which health is better is if you take 2 hits (to your armor), hide & regen armor, then take 3 hits when you leave cover again. If you're using Armorer and are at 10% health, you go down, because your invulnerability was wasted on the first 2 hits and wasn't available later, when you actually needed it. If you're using health instead and are at 100% health, you survive.

So far we've seen a few DR decks that are capable of reaching 3-hit armor, 1-hit health (Sociopath, Crew Chief, Infiltrator), as well as a few health decks that can reach 2-hit armor, 3-hit regenerating health (Muscle, Gambler, Tag Team, etc). How do they compare?

We're going to look at what happens if you take a certain number of hits, from 1-5, before getting to cover, and how the result differs between the two decks.

• If you take 1 or 2 hits before getting to cover, both DR and health decks perform the same. You only lose armor, not health, and after waiting 2.91s, your armor regenerates back to full.
  
• If you take 3 hits before getting to cover and are using a DR deck, you lose all your armor, and get it all back after 2.91s. If you take 3 hits before getting to cover and are using a health deck, you lose all your armor and 1 hit of health. You get the armor back after 2.91s, but the health will take 20-30s to recover (refer to the Health Regen section).
  
• If you take 4 hits before getting to cover and are using a DR deck, you are dead. If you take 4 hits before getting to cover and are using a health deck, you are alive, but just barely, and it will take 40-55s to recover.
  
• If you take 5 or more hits before getting to cover, you are dead, regardless of whether you're using a DR or health deck.

Thus, DR decks have an advantage if you take 3 hits (they recover faster), but health decks have an advantage if you take 4 hits (saving a down), though you will be left in a severely weakened state. Note that this is not much of an advantage if you frequently take 4 hits: with DR you die, sure, but with health you survive the first encounter, only to take 4 hits again on the second and die anyway. Taking 4 hits should be the exception, not the norm.

These two decks end up being pretty similar, assuming armor+DR skills on Crook and health regen+dodge skills on Ex-President:

• Crook has 2-hit armor, 1-hit health, 25 dodge.
  
• Ex-President has 1-hit armor, 3-hit regenerating health, 30 dodge.

Thus, the same thing that's been said of DR and health decks apply, but at 1 hit less. Crook has an advantage if you take 2 hits, Ex-President has an advantage if you take 3 hits.

This comparison is also like DR vs health at 1 hit less:

• Empty perk deck (with UD/QF aced/Frenzy basic) has 2-hit armor, 1-hit health.
  
• Grinder has 1-hit armor, 3-hit regenerating health.

Grinder does have much better movement speed than an ICTV deck, and a relatively fast regen time of 10s per hit though. However, 10s to recover 1 hit armor + 1 hit health is still slower than 2.91s to recover 2 hits armor.

If you play in a manner that leaves you frequently taking 0-2 hits from enemies when you leave cover, and infrequently (less than once every 30s) taking 3 hits, then DR/health decks with the ICTV or HBV Crook are all decent choices, neither too weak nor too overpowered. Such a play style is not sustainable with Ex-President or Grinder though; you're in big trouble if you frequently take 2 hits (1 armor + 1 health) between natural armor recoveries.

Suppose you've got 30-odd points to dump on survivability skills on Hacker. Should you get Hostage Taker or Sneaky Bastard?

With Sneaky Bastard, you gain 1.27 hits effective armor (2/0.35 - 2/0.45). With Hostage Taker, you cut the recovery time after taking 1 hit to your health from 60s to 30s. This is pretty much the same question as DR vs health, that we've already discussed: get 1 more hit of armor, or get 1 hit of health that regenerates in 30s?

I personally have a slight preference towards the (effective) armor, but it's close. If you find out later while building that you can't actually spare the full 30 points for Hostage Taker, you can switch to the cheaper Sneaky Bastard instead.

Crew Chief is better than Maniac in almost every aspect, which is why the latter doesn't see a lot of play. We'll examine what both decks do for yourself and your teammates.

Both Crew Chief and Maniac can have a 3-hit ICTV. The skill point expenditure is the same: both need UD/QF aced, Iron Man aced, and Frenzy aced. The conditions required for their DR bonuses are different though.

Crew Chief needs:

• UD/QF aced active
  
• To be currently targeted by 1+ enemies within 18m range
  
• 1+ hostages

Maniac needs:

• UD/QF aced active
  
• At least 518 hysteria stacks

The UD/QF condition is shared between both decks - if you're thinking "what if it isn't, wouldn't Crew Chief only have a 2-hit ICTV?" - if that were the case, so would Maniac. So we'll assume it's active, to be fair to both decks.

To understand how unreliable hysteria stacks are, first we need to understand how they work. Maniac has a buffer (max capacity 240), and stacks (max capacity 600). When it deals damage, an equal amount is added to the buffer. Every 4 seconds, the amount in the buffer is transferred to the stacks. Every 8 seconds, the amount in the stacks is multiplied by 0.4, then 40 is subtracted from it.

Maniacs get -2*stacks/25 damage received (the largest stack value out of all players is used), and non-Maniac teammates get -stacks/25. Maniac has a 221 armor ICTV, so it needs to reduce damage to under 110.5 for the 3-hit ICTV. This is accomplished with max DR skills and at least 518 hysteria stacks: 225*0.9*0.75-2*518/25 = 110.435.

Suppose you're at max buffer and stacks. Under such conditions, you would have a 3-hit ICTV. When the next stack reduction hits, you have 600*0.4-40 = 200 stacks. This is not sufficient for the 3-hit ICTV, and it is not sufficient even if a buffer addition happens immediately after, putting you at 200+240 = 440 stacks. You would need a second buffer addition in order to get back to 600 stacks.
As you can see, even under perfect conditions (always 240 damage in buffer, buffer additions happening immediately after stack reductions), Maniac has a 3-hit ICTV less than half the time.

What about Crew Chief? Crew Chief requires itself to be targeted by 1 enemy within 18m range. If the enemy that's shooting at you, i.e. the one that you're trying to tank hits from with your 3-hit ICTV, is within 18m, this is automatically fulfilled. Also, if you got UD aced fulfilled by having 3 enemies within 18m target you in the current enemy encounter, naturally, Crew Chief's condition of having 1 enemy within 18m target you would also be satisfied.

The other condition is to have a hostage, which is not hard either. The HUD even shows you how many hostages you have, making it easy to track.

Both Crew Chief and Maniac grant DR bonuses to the team. How much, though?

• With one hostage, Crew Chief reduces heavy damage for teammates to 225*0.92*0.92 = 190.44 damage. With 0 hostages, it's 207 damage - still enough for their ICTVs to break in 2 hits if UD/QF is not active for them. This isn't even counting the 5% armor bonus.
  
• With 600 hysteria stacks, Maniac reduces heavy damage for teammates to 225-600/25 = 201 damage.

What Maniac has to jump through hoops for, Crew Chief gets just by existing.

A rather unexpected comparison can be made between Crook and Yakuza.

We'll assume Crook is using the 2-hit HBV setup (Die Hard aced, Iron Man basic, Frenzy aced), while Yakuza is using a 2-hit ICTV setup (Iron Man aced, Frenzy basic) and at 0% health. We'll also assume Resilience basic, Shock and Awe basic, and Parkour basic on both decks, and no bot boosts.

In terms of skill point cost, both are equal, each requiring one basic and one aced tier 4 skill, and both have Berserker as a result of building up to Frenzy. Crook would have Die Hard, while Yakuza would have either Shock and Awe or Transporter aced instead, but these differences are minor.

Let's compare their other stats:
* The values given in the in-game inventory are a little off: they do not consider +0.25 from the skill (Shinobi, removed in Update 100) that became a default, hidden bonus, as stated in the Long Guide. Detailed calcs are as follows:
Crook inventory walk speed = 35*(0.9625+0.1) = 37.2
Crook actual walk speed = 35*(0.9625+0.1+0.25) = 45.9
Yakuza inventory walk speed = 35*(0.68125+0.1) = 27.3
0% health Yakuza actual walk speed = 35*(0.68125+0.1+0.25)*1.2 = 43.3

We can see that Yakuza is almost entirely outclassed by Crook. Yakuza's niche of being a "2-hit armor deck that doesn't have terrible movement speed" is already done marginally better by Crook, and Crook has 25 dodge on top of that. The only thing that Yakuza does better is having a shorter armor regen time, but as we've seen in the Armor Regen Speed section, this is fairly useless.

Another unexpected comparison can be made between Rogue and Crook. (Unexpected, because we're not going to be using the suit on Rogue.)

Consider Rogue with the ballistic vest and Die Hard aced (+20 armor). How does that compare to Crook with the LBV and no Die Hard?


BV Rogue and LBV Crook are practically identical in terms of defensive stats. Both of them have the same 35 dodge after perk deck boosts and armor penalties, and both can take a light/shield hit (67.5/70 damage) without armor breaking, but not a heavy one. BV Rogue is slightly behind in concealment (-3) and skill point cost (-6, due to Die Hard aced) though.

Funnily enough, this actually makes sense lore-wise: Houston (the Rogue) was Hoxton's (the Crook) replacement, before the latter's Breakout.

Suppose you're at full armor, 10% health (except for health regen decks, in which case assume 100% health), and all your perk deck abilities are cooled down and ready for use. How many shots does it take to down each deck?

• Suit Kingpin under the injector goes down in 19 shots (1 armor + 17 invuln + 1 health).
  
• ICTV Stoic goes down in 8 shots.
  
• ICTV Armorer goes down in 8 shots (2 armor + 5 invuln + 1 health).
  
• Suit Anarchist goes down in 7 shots (1 armor + 5 invuln + 1 health).

Note that I ignored armor gating (which is really selling Anarchist short), and the 5 dodge on suit decks. Despite all these concessions, these four decks come out ahead of all the rest.
(Assuming max armor/DR:)

• Sociopath/Crew Chief/Infiltrator goes down in 4 shots (3 armor + 1 health).
  
• 25 dodge HBV Crook goes down in 4 shots (2.67 armor + 1.33 health).

(As always, these are averages:)

• 65 dodge Hacker goes down in 5.71 shots (2.86 armor + 2.86 health).
  
• 60 dodge Rogue goes down in 5 shots (2.5 armor + 2.5 health).
  
• 30 dodge Sicario (with Twitch and Agility Shield) goes down in 4.16 shots.
  
• 45 dodge Burglar/LBV Crook goes down in 3.64 shots (1.82 armor + 1.82 health).

Sneaky Bastard suit Sicario in smoke goes down in 20.23 shots.
(Assuming UD/QF+PiC+HT aced for 3-hit health/2-hit armor:)

• ICTV Leech "goes down" in 8 shots (2 armor + 1 pre-ampule health + 5 health).
  
• ICTV 3-hit health decks (Muscle, Gambler, etc) go down in 5 shots (2 armor + 3 health).
  
• 30 dodge Ex-President goes down in 5.71 shots (1.43 armor + 4.29 health).
  
• 5 dodge Grinder goes down in 4.21 shots (1.05 armor + 3.16 health).

Note that the health regen time is not considered, which makes these decks appear much better than they are. None of these decks regenerates health faster than an empty perk deck regenerates armor, other than Leech, and even then only during ampule time.

This guide covers a lot of topics, so there isn't going to be a short TL;DR of it. Read the whole thing. If it's too much for you to read all at once, you can use the index at the side to jump to a section that interests you. You may experience a bit of confusion if you read them out of order though.

If you made it all the way here from the beginning, congratulations on finishing this guide, and I hope it was helpful.