Operation Medic Bag: Blog Update #14 – Assassin Skill Line

Hello, heisters! This is Miodrag “Mio” Kovačević, game director on PAYDAY 3, and today I’d like to talk to you about the upcoming Assassin skill line.

The Assassin skill line is a hybrid skill line that has use in both loud and stealth. The main focus of it are suppressed weapons and marking targets, all the while leveraging the RUSH buff. 

The skills are powerful complements to both playstyles, focusing heavily on silencers, RUSH and marking. The Assassin skill line lets you gain RUSH more reliably and empowers silencers while playing loud. In addition we thought Assassin was a good fit to add some additional ways of marking enemies that pairs up with the skills that make use of it.

Without further ado, here’s the entire skill line:

• Assassin Base: Whenever you kill an enemy with a suppressed weapon, gain RUSH.
  • The base skill is the standard buff generator you’ve seen in other weapon-based skill lines. We wanted a way for you to build up RUSH more easily in combat without relying exclusively on Escapist or Transporter.
• Assassin Aced: Whenever you manually mark a guard or law enforcement, refresh RUSH.
  • The Aced skill lets you keep up RUSH in stealth and loud, if you are having trouble maintaining it. We feel this pairs well with Grifter, as you’ll likely be exposed to and marking guards a lot.
• Skimming the Ground (Upgrade 1): As long as you are wielding a suppressed weapon, your crouching movement speed is increased by 20%. This can't let you move faster than your current armor speed penalty allows.
  • This skill is primarily there to help players with masked-on stealth. As we are trying to be mindful with guard and camera detection times, the bonus isn’t too big, but still enough to give security the slip when you don’t want to be seen.
• Drop Cloth (Upgrade 2): Whenever you kill a guard with a suppressed weapon, their body can't be detected during the first 10 seconds. Any radios from guards you kill this way won't activate until the 10 seconds have passed.
  • The goal of Drop Cloth is to allow you to eliminate pesky guards that you just can’t isolate. You’re also guaranteed that during the time they can’t be detected, you’re not wasting time answering a radio, so you can move the body to a safe spot.
• Duck and Weave (Upgrade 3): As long as you have RUSH, you deal 25% more damage to enemies from behind. This bonus is reduced by 5% for each armor chunk you currently have beyond the first.
  • The way our AI works means you can get the drop on them even during loud combat. If you’re a fan of flanking and fighting lightly-armored, you will get a significant damage boost from this skill, as long as you’re not fully armored up.
• Killer Kinesthetics (Upgrade 4): Whenever you kill a marked enemy with a suppressed weapon, the nearest unmarked enemy within 10 meters of the target will become marked.
  • Previously, the only way to mark regular SWAT were motion sensors and Marked for Death (Strategist). With this skill, you can mark a special, kill them, and then be guaranteed another marked target. It’s useful for pairing up with skills from the Strategist line, but it also lets you know if there are more enemies coming in around the corner. 
• Assassin's Mettle (Upgrade 5): If you have no armor, killing a marked enemy with a suppressed weapon will heal you for 10 health. If you are at maximum health, this health will give you adrenaline instead.
  • The final upgrade is also the payoff for all the marking you’re doing. As long as you have no armor, all marked kills with a suppressed weapon will heal you. Pairing this with Killer Kinesthetics, motion sensors, and other skills will help you make a comeback when you’re getting overwhelmed. Combine it with some of the Fortitude skills and you can lean into even more adrenaline options.
• Death Knell (Mastery): Any enemy affected by your throwables becomes marked.
  • In the spirit of other skill lines, we wanted the Assassin’s mastery to be something that works well with it, but also has a universal use. This works with all throwables in the game. In the case of grenades, flashbangs and shock grenades, it’s pretty straightforward. For smoke grenades, any enemy that comes in contact with the smoke becomes marked. Even throwing knives work, although the only enemy that won’t die to it is a Dozer, so if you really want to, you can point him out to your team with a blade.

While Upgrades 1 and 2 have very specific uses, we feel the rest of the line has some strong potential synergies with other lines. Please keep in mind the marking effects from the Strategist line all also apply to marking effects of the Assassin skill line. 

We hope you enjoy the new skills, whether it’s to improve your existing builds, or to brew completely new ones.