Hello, heisters. I am an average Payday 2 user just like you. I am enjoying making builds and trying them out these days. Once I read that Dragon's Breath round goes well with the anarchist perk deck from a community post in my country, so I decided to make a build. This guide is my result. I find that this build goes pretty well in One Down difficulty too. This build is actually a revision of my former guide below.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=906678666
Though the differences are quite subtle, I decided to write a new guide in English instead of changing the pictures and sentences in the original one to let more people to read and get some information & inspiration. This is my first guide in English. I am asking you to be generous to my writing level of English.

I would like to let you know which DLCs you need, Pros and Cons, ETC here.


1. The Butcher's BBQ Pack (Key DLC 1/4)
http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/358150/

2. Gage Shotgun (Key DLC 2/4)
http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/311050

3. Sydney Character Pack (Key DLC 3/4)
http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/468410

4. Gage Chivalry Pack (Key DLC 4/4, Can be substituted with other DLC, the Biker Heist or John Wick Weapon Pack, Must own one of them)
http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/401650

5. Gage SpecOps (Can be substituted, but recommended to own)
http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/548420

6. Gage Mod Courier (Can be substituted, but recommended to own)
http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/259381

7. Gage Weapon Pack #1 (Can be substituted, and Optional)
http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/267380



Pros
1. Can deal with almost every kind of enemy with Dragon's Breath round (except dozers, turrets)
2. Decent synergy of Dragon's Breath round's DOT and Anarchist perk deck
3. Easy to use (doesn't require high precision aims or management of bullets)


Cons
1. Not effective against turrets
2. Need at least 4 DLCs for the best performance
3. Need to practice how to use Javelin(or other throwable) well

Version 1 is the original one I made with this guide. With feedback and inspiration from others, I've made variations of this build. To add them, I've edited original format and sections.

Version 1 is an anarchist build with lightweight vest. This build is so stable to use.


1. Infamy III required (Basic, Mastermind, Enforcer)

2. 120 skill points required for the best performance





Inspire is an awesome skill for saving teammates quickly and maintaining the team alive. To ace Inspire, I picked Quick Fix Ace and Combat Doctor Ace. Quick Fix can reduces the time to deploy doctor bags. Combat doctor is for the 8 times of removing down limits.


By acing those three, you can get 2 meat shields and (almost) infinite buffs of 10% movement speed and 30% health. Converted cops attract enemies' attacks very well too. They can even face dozers and fight. 'Heavy units' are the best choice for the converted, since their armor is not penetrable and so they can survive longer.

Dominated cops have been quite massively nerfed in recent update (update 146), however, they are still viable in One Down difficulty. Yes, they can be killed easier than before, but with Partners In Crime aced, converted cops are still pretty persistent in One Down. They can still face dozers with braveness and attract enemies' attacks very well. If you doubt the performance of the dominated cops, I would recommend you to ace Messiah or something else you prefer.




Or



Overkill is the key skill for the shotguns. 75% damage buff is insane. With Underdog basic, it can reach 101% damage buff. I aced three skills for the Overkill basic. Those are for the reloading speed, damage increase, and a little bit of damage reduction.

Like the second Enforcer set, you can choose basic Close By instead of aced Underdog. Then you can shoot while running, down to your preference. (Thank you, Srbindy)

Aced Underdog also got nerfed in this update (update 146). The reduction % value is lower, but there was also a change in the mechanism of damage taken. With this change, players take less "number" of damage by enemies (simply put, after you get damaged once, you are immune to damage for an extremely short period of time). I feel the actual performance of Aced Underdog got buffed in game. However, this is just my opinion, and if you doubt the value of Aced Underdog, you can basic Close By instead as listed above.


Anarchist perk deck is a specialized perk deck for defense. It compensates health for armor. This perk deck allows you to get armor while fighting. Basic Iron man increases the total armor value by 30%, and I think it goes really well with the anarchist.

To basic Iron Man, I aced Die Hard and Bullseye, as there are so many objectives to complete heists. Die Hard can reduce the damage taken while you are interacting, and Bullseye can let you regenerate armor more with synergy of the perk deck's original armor recovery.

Scavenger is for the smooth ammo pickup.





Hardware Expert is for fixing drills quickly. As you already know, drills always jam itself at least once (mostly twice) or get jammed by enemies.






Heisters always need to run fast. I personally like to ace Parkour for the "Run and Reload", but sadly, there are no more points left to spare.


Flame DOT + Critical Damage = Awesome

This build has two main skills for damage buff : Overkill and Low Blow. From many other guides, it seems that taking three main skills for damage buff is common such as [High Value Target, Specialized Killing, Frenzy] for DMR, [Low Blow, Specialized Killing, Overkill] for Critical Shotgun, or [Overkill, Specialized Killing, Frenzy] for Shotgun.

By selecting Dragon's Breath round, Overkill and Low Blow is enough for killing. Of course, using crossbows & bows and GLs, RPG, Commando Rocket launcher doesn't require any skills for their best performance. But I think using crossbows & bows are quite tough.






Aced Nine Lives is for the one more down limit, crucial to all OD builds.

Swan Song is a decent skill for killing enemies, completing objectives, making converted cops, facing dozers, or moving closer to my teammates when downed.

Weapon Set #1 is a combination that uses primary weapon with Dragon's Breath round, and secondary weapon with HE round.

IZHMA 12G Shotgun

• Ammunition : Dragon's Breath Round (The Butcher's BBQ Pack)
  
• Barrel : Short Barrel (Gage SpecOps Pack)
  
• Barrel Exit : Donald's Horizontal Leveller (Gage SpecOps Pack)
  
• Boost : -4 Accuracy (Optional)
  
• Custom : Auto Fire (Gage Weapon Pack #1) (Optional)
  
• Foregrip : Hollow Handle (Gage SpecOps Pack)
  
• Gadget : Compact laser Module (Gage Mod Courier)
  
• Grip : AK Rubber Grip (Gage Mod Courier)
  
• Stock : Skeletal Stock

I tried Raven a few times for this build. I found that Raven is not suitable due to its desperately low ammo pickup rate. This is just my opinion. If you can manage your ammo very well, you can benefit from using the Raven shotgun instead, as the damage of the Raven is obviously higher than the IZHMA 12G. If you seek a way to increase the damage of this build, Raven could be an answer.

Without Close By aced, the default IZHMA has 7 rounds in magazine. By selecting Dragon's Breath round, 7 rounds are enough. Light them up and sit, reload. Enemies will be stunned by the fire. If you need to reload urgently, you should use electrical melee weapons wisely to earn time and reload in safety.

The Judge Shotgun

• Ammunition : HE Round (Gage Shotgun Pack)
  
• Barrel Exit : King's Crown Compensator (Gage Mod Courier)
  
• Boost : +4 Stability (Optional)
  
• Gadget : Compact laser Module (Gage Mod Courier)
  
• Sight : Any sight with -1 Concealment

Judgement coming. HE Judge is for breaking dozers' visors, and dealing with snipers.




Weapon Set #2 introduces some combinations of primary weapons with HE round/grenade and secondary weapons with Dragon's Breath round.

For those who want a more powerful weapon set, or don't own many DLCs, I found another combination. Try these out for yourself!

GL40 (Gage Assault Pack)

• Barrel : Pirate Barrel (Gage Assault Pack)
  
• Boost : Concealment (Optional)
  
• Stock : Sawed-off Stock (Gage Assault Pack)

Powerful choice. Wonderful at mass control. Beautiful in Swan Song. But it's hard to counter snipers, and you should consider the range of the explosion for you and your teammates, especially in front of dozers.

Mosconi 12G Shotgun

• Ammunition : HE Round (Gage Shotgun Pack)
  
• Barrel : Road Warrior
  
• Boost : Stability (Optional)
  
• Stock : Gangsta Special Stock

Mosconi would be another powerful choice too. This weapon will only require the Gage Shotgun Pack DLC for the HE round. It's safer to use this in close quarters combat than the GL40. It has a faster fire rate during Swan Song than GL40 too.

If you don't own many DLCs, I think you could use this build with Mosconi and Loco as a secondary.

Breaker 12G (Biker Character Pack)

I've tried Breaker 12G as well as a primary weapon with Dragon's Breath Round and HE Round. I think Breaker 12G is a little bit hard to use. Its damage is high, but the fire rate is too slow. Reload speed is fast, but the total ammo count is too small. But this is just my opinion. You may love to use it.

This is how I modified it to test. If this seems interesting, try it!

• Ammunition : Dragon's Breath Round (The Butcher's BBQ Pack) / HE Round (Gage Shotgun Pack)
  
• Barrel Exit : Donald's Horizontal Leveller (Gage SpecOps Pack)
  
• Boost : Concealment (Optional)
  
• Gadget : Compact Laser Module (Gage Mod Courier)
  
• Lower Receiver : Treated Body (Biker Character Pack)

Locomotive 12G Shotgun

• Ammunition : Dragon's Breath Round (The Butcher's BBQ Pack)
  
• Barrel Exit : Donald's Horizontal Leveller (Gage SpecOps Pack)
  
• Boost : Concealment (Optional)
  
• Gadget : Compact Laser Module (Gage Mod Courier)
  
• Grip : Straight Grip (Gage Weapon Pack #1)
  
• Magazine : Extended Magazine
  
• Sight : Any sight with -1 Concealment
  
• Stock : Tactical Shorty Stock
  
• Upper Receiver : Shell Rack

The Locomotive 12G is more powerful than the IZHMA 12G. It can increase magazine size with modifications. But you should check your reserve ammo carefully.

If you can reach detection risk under 25 for the Low Blow benefit, any other modifiers are welcome. If you don't have many DLCs listed above, you can try this build with Mosconi 12G as your primary.

Here is one example. This requires only one DLC, BBQ, for the Dragon's Breath round.

• Ammunition : Dragon's Breath Round (The Butcher's BBQ Pack)
  
• Barrel Exit : Shark Teeth Nozzle
  
• Boost : Concealment
  
• Gadget : Tactical Laser Module
  
• Grip : Ergo Grip
  
• Magazine : Extended Magazine
  
• Sight : The Professional's Choice Sight
  
• Stock : Tactical Shorty Stock
  
• Upper Receiver : Shell Rack

GSPS 12G Shotgun (The Goat Simulator Heist)

• Ammunition : Dragon's Breath Round (The Butcher's BBQ Pack)
  
• Barrel : Riot Barrel (The Goat Simulator Heist)
  
• Barrel Exit : Donald's Horizontal Leveller (Gage SpecOps Pack)
  
• Boost : Stability (Optional)
  
• Gadget : Compact Laser Module (Gage Mod Courier)

I've been trying to figure out which shotgun can increase the damage of this build. And I found another choice, the GSPS 12G. It has a moderate fire rate, higher damage than the Locomotive, but requires more careful management of reserve ammo.

Thanks to Jxen, I've got some new ideas to modify this build to include dodge.

As Dragon's Breath rounds don't benefit from any damage buff skills but critical hit, I've removed some and tried to get some dodge skills.

Version 2 is an anarchist build with suit and some dodge %.


1. Infamy III required (Basic, Mastermind, Ghost)

2. 120 skill points required for the best performance





Skills of Mastermind are the same as Version 1. Aced Inspire, and dominated cops.





As I said above, Dragon's Breath rounds don't benefit from damage buff skills. I've left some efficient skills on shotgun tree.

To maximize dodge %, I would go with suit in this build. Iron Man is not so effective with suit, so I removed it.

You are now surviving with anarchist's armor recovery with time, anarchist's armor recovery with hits, and Bullseye skill. The lighter your armor is, the sooner your armor starts to recover. Thanks to this, you can still be resilient without Iron Man or Frenzy.





There's no point for technician skills.





By acing Sneaky B*stard, you now have 15% dodge chance. While running, you get extra 15% dodge.

With basic Close By on the Enforcer tree and Aced Parkour on the Ghost tree, you can actually shoot and reload while running. Invigorator and Distractor on crew management would go well with this build.





Mandatory skills for One Down difficulty as usual.

Version 3 is an anarchist build with Messiah. Like version 2, this also uses suit instead of light ballistic vest. This requires less Infamy than others, so you can try this at lower Infamy levels.

Although this version uses suit, this build is NOT for dodge.

If you don't like to have Messiah aced, you can choose other ways to spend skill points as well. Pretty elastic.


1. Infamy II required (Basic, Mastermind)

2. 120 skill points required for the best performance





Aced Inspire, and aced dominated cops.





Similar to Version 2. You can now benefit from aced Close By.





No technician skills.





You can shoot and reload while running. Fantastic.





You can revive yourself if you kill someone while you are downed. Critical GL would help.
However beware as you can only revive yourself before you bleed out (the state when you are shot by enemies while downed and can't shoot anymore), and on higher difficulties it may happen that you manage to kill someone but fully bleed out instantly before you can activate Messiah, which can be frustrating. When you decide to use Messiah, keep your thumb and spam the space bar as you kill an enemy.

If you don't want to ace Messiah, you can remove it and instead ace Feign Death, increasing your insta-revive chance to 45%, with 2 reserve skill points for your leisure. Or you could remove both Messiah and Feign Death skills, having 15 points in reserve, with which you can upgrade other heist-related skills like the drill skills, etc.

IZHMA 12G




Same as above. Concealment first modification


Arbiter





China Puff 40mm




As we remove Overkill from the Enforcer tree, we don't have to arm the Judge for using that buff. We now have more powerful choice of weapons and equipping the suit reduces detection risk as well.

Profit!

Buzzer (The Golden Grin Casino Heist)




Electrical Brass Knuckles



The buzzer and EBK work exactly the same way, and they are very useful when dominating cops or stunning enemies and specials (except dozers and shields) to buy time to reload or kill them. A funny fact is that you can still gain armor recovery, when you hit your converted cops with these melee weapons.

Javelin (Gage Chivalry Pack)




Throwing Axe (The Biker Heist)



Javelin and Thowing Axe have the same statistics, and is the only effective method against dozers for this build. It comes down to your preferences, I personally think that the javelin flies straighter and is easier to recover due to its length.


Throwing Knife (John Wick Weapon Pack)



I've tested other throwables that would be suitable to kill dozers quickly, and I found out that the Throwing Knife is also very effective. The speed of throwing is so fast that it can be useful to deal with other specials such as medics, tasers, and cloakers. For me, the Throwing Knife is much smaller than Javelin that I can hardly find it and pick it back up, especially in wide and open maps. You just need to be careful not to miss this precious wild card, and turn on your ''show throwables contours'' in the settings.

Doctor bags (×2)




Lightweight Ballistic Vest (Version 1)



Enough armor value for withstanding 2 shots from One Down heavy units, while still moving relatively fast.

In the Anarchist's armor recovery system, lighter armor guarantees faster armor regeneration than heavier armor. Fast auto armor regeneration would give you more chance to block enemies' attacks.


Two-piece Suit (Version 2 & 3)



The lighter your armor is, the sooner armor recovery starts. This anarchist's original armor recovery system still makes you resilient even with suit.


Anarchist (Sydney Character Pack)

With update 146, you can now play with henchmen. After the update, I've been trying to figure out an awesome setting for solo play. I just would like to introduce my preference.

• Primary weapon : Breaker 12G
  
• Crew abilities : Piercing, Inspiring, Quick
  
• Crew boosts : Invigorator, Healer, Accelerator

I've tested with AMR-16 DMR, Contractor .308, Thanatos .50 cal and so on. I found the answer is Breaker 12G with Piercing ability. The damage of bots' Breaker 12Gs is almost insane.

It is pretty hard to write in English. I hope you guys could understand what I was trying to say.

I usually played heists on Overkill difficulty. But when I tried to beat difficulties higher than Overkill, I faced a big virtual wall. I read many guides and followed them, but to my demise I found myself struggling to maintain ammunition. Crossbows / bows are powerful weapons but the penalty that comes after missing a shot is too large.

After making and trying out builds myself, I finally made this build. I think this build is really easy for people trying out DW/OD coming from lower difficulties. I hope this guide can help and inspire other heisters having troubles in DW/OD.

Thank you for reading my guide. If this helps, upvotes are welcome. Questions are welcome too. Enjoy!

At first, thank you all of you reading this guide and enjoying this build.



NinjaTurt1e666 for sharing the experiment of Dragon's Breath round's DOT in various ways.
Satan's Fetus-Legs for giving me a suggestion of acing Stockholm Syndrome instead of acing Partners In Crime.
Srbindy for letting me know about a different set of skills to choose on the Enforcer tree.
Uberon X for suggesting me other throwables than the javelin / throwing axe.
Jxen for giving me inspiration of using different skills and different secondary weapons as variations of this build.


SulfurRingROKer for arranging this guide easier and clearer to read. I'd like to add him as a contributor of this guide. Thank you so much for your precious effort!