PAYDAY 3: Payday 3, 2 fun grenade builds (Year 1)

This build focuses on marking enemies with a smoke grenade. The smoke grenade gives really good debuffs to enemies and the assassin mastery skill, Death knell, gives you see through the smoke against enemies.

We use FSA-12G & Tribune32 because they have high fire rate and good damage up close. This is preferable since smoke grenades are hard to deploy far away (you can replace these weapons with any weapons that have suppressors available). Also currently close quarter skills are much better than sniper skills.

As a tool we use Trip laser, since it gives free marks and has unlimited uses.

Both builds use adaptive armor, since these builds do not use armor bags and these builds do not have trade skills we cannot risk taking permanent damage all the time.

Both builds use HET-5 Red Fox since Bulldozers are very lethal against both builds. Although smoke debuff can weaken dozers quite a lot, but shotguns are anyways pretty weak against dozers.

Both builds also use Ammo Bag since ammo specialist skills make it possible to immediately replenish all throwables.

The most important weapon attachment for this build is any suppressor. This is required for Killer Kinesthetics skill to work (after killing marked target it will mark another enemy)
Otherwise you can use any weapon that does good damage at close range.
My weapon choices have the following attachments:
FSA-12G:
>Ranged barrel (for extra damage and better spread)
>Extended Mag (Quick-pull might be a more intriguing choice, but with FSA the reload speed difference isn’t that big and more bullets per mag is better, given the good fire rate)
>HQ stock (This build doesn’t really care about specializing in 1 area, so other stocks for FSA are definitely options, but I wanted to create more general build)
>Projection RDS (Very good recoil reduction and penalty isn’t that bad)
>12G Obellisk Silencer (Only available silencer)
>TAC Grip (It just gives the most buffs)
>Flat-side STAB Grip (With grips it is the same with stock, didn’t want to specialize, chose the most generic)

Tribune32:
>Obelisk silencer (Better buffs than snub)
>Quick pull mag (You want to use this gun to refresh Edge & Grit with combat reload)
>Underline stock (This weapon wants to be picked out of pocket, sprayed, reloaded and the put back, this is better stock for it)
>Box RDS (This weapon doesn’t really care about targeting speed, but you can use others if they fit better your style)

The ammo specialist mastery allows you to replenish all throwables + plate up allows you to replenish Adaptive armor every 2 seconds (even while taking damage) instead of 4.5 seconds when combined with Mower. And plate up is THE way to replenish lost armor chunks (techies, dozers, map and trades). (Fully loaded and scrounger aren’t needed for this build to work)

The extra munitions skill is optional (the demolitionist mastery), but it helps you to create larger smoke area and gets you more guaranteed grenades per heist. Enforcer is great for this build since most of the fighting happens inside smoke grenades and is the main way to get Edge & Grit. YOU CAN optionally play Demolitionist + Cooker instead of Enforcer tree to get yourself another good way to gain Grit, but it costs 2 skill points and will change the playstyle of the build quite a lot.

Now we get to the fun part: -75% damage if the enemy is marked by smoke grenade. (-5% from armor, -10% from Grit and -60% from Threat assessment + Discombobulate). (I AM NOT SURE if percentages work this way in game, but hey, it is still quite the damage reduction for a smoked enemy) Also you do +20% damage to marked enemies (Combat marking) and have 20% change to “dodge” a bullet (Misdirect). All these effects given, you have all: Rush, Edge and Grit, which is easily done with Assassin + Enforcer.
The tactician tree is pretty invisible if you don’t measure every hit you take and therefore entirely optional.

Finally we have transporter + Assassin skill lines. Transporter is just really really good investment, ALWAYS. Assasin gives you the possibility of marking smoked enemies, easy way to rush and way to chain kills with Kinesthetics. Also stockpile for extra ammo bag uses. Transporter is optional, BUT not recommended to be removed. Deep pockets (from transporter) might be worth changing, if you don’t have Stockpile + Fully loaded in use. Stockpile is otherwise optional

This build is very volatile and unfriendly build towards civilians, so be prepared to pay some cleaning costs after heists. Compared to smoke build, we rely much more on hipfire with this one, since you cannot throw grenades while ADS and this build has to get the grenades out much faster. Grenades become pretty much your secondary weapon. Definitely recommend this build to less populated heists, like Syntax error or Cook off

This build really prefers weapons that can kill around 10-20m away with hipfire, so SMGs and ARs are really good options here. In this picture I use SMG to level it up, but it works very well anyways.

Both builds use adaptive armor, since these builds do not use armor bags and these builds do not have trade skills we cannot risk taking permanent damage all the time.

Both builds use HET-5 Red Fox since Bulldozers are very lethal against both builds.

Both builds also use Ammo Bag since ammo specialist skills make it possible to immediately replenish all throwables.

As a tool you can use anything you prefer.

Any good mid-range hipfire weapon does well in this build as long as it has attachments that buff hipfiring.

>TQ stock (or stocks with similar effects for some specific weapons)
>Any barrel extension that weakens targeting speed since we don’t need it (depends on a weapon which is the best)
>Quick pull mag (if available) this build is going to use combat reload here to refresh Edge and Grit
>Any vertical grip that reduces spread (be aware that Cylinder Grip lowers weapon swap speed quite a lot while giving a little of other good buffs so it might not be the best choice)
>Any grip that doesn’t weaken weapon spread or instead gives really good buffs
>Projection RDS (best for any hipfire build)

Any revolver with Box RDS and you should do just fine, you aren’t going to use your secondary a lot anyways (only to give you edge and maybe shoot enemies that have taken a hit from grenade).

The ammo specialist mastery allows you to replenish all throwables + plate up allows you to replenish Adaptive armor every 2 seconds when killing (even while taking damage) instead of 4.5 seconds when combined with Mower. And plate up is THE way to replenish lost armor chunks (techies, dozers, map and trades). The difference to smoke build is that we have Frugal thrower to give us even more grenades since we use these grenades to kill the enemies immediately. Scrounger, Frugal thrower and Fully loaded are optional, but removing all of these makes the build much more tedious and harder to play.

Demolitionist is the primary way of getting Grit and Rush. This build uses Cooker to get Grit going, Overcooked to make grenades become impact grenades and Blowback to make any mid-range weapon viable (since the secret armor piercing status won’t matter if a grenade hits an enemy). Enforcer gives you staggering protection from your own grenades (and shields) and combat reload keeps up the Edge and Grit so you don’t have to be wasting the grenades to keep them up. If you have strong enough weapon you CAN remove Demolitionist ACED + Blowback. This makes most of the SMGs and Rifles + J&M Castigo 44 a lot weaker. Also Solid can be removed if you never hit yourself with explosions.

With gunslinger this build makes hipfire viable and gains edge when needed.

Transporter is the best general skill line in the game and Stockpile gives your ammo bags more charges.
These are optional, but VERY critical in many scenarios.

Now you should be able to use these explosives very effectively and violently.

Remember to deploy Ammo bag(s) ONLY when you need them. Otherwise random geniuses will go on and take literally all the ammo for themselves without any hesitation.

Also one should remember that bulldozer takes 2 shots to body and 3 shots to head from Red Fox (I see people shooting dozers head with Red Fox waay too many times)

These builds will not survive very well in solo mode because these builds lacks all the recovery skills and bags (Health and armor). Especially frag grenade build will suffer alone since killing civilians is just so easy. In solo mode snipers, Bulldozers and really dumb AIs will make for really hard runs if you are a hardcore player.