Payday 2 is one of my favorite games, despite how poorly balanced it is. I have accumulated over 5k hours at this point, and this mod in particular i have started working on all the way back at ~3k hour mark.

This small rebalance is what i have come up with, to make a game that i already enjoy, even more enjoyable. At least for me.
(Payday 2 VR is not supported)

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A Payday 2 weapons/skills/perks rebalance/overhaul.
(fyi - "Gilza" is a Russian word for "Bullet casing")

What is this mod about?

As the title suggests - it changes most skills, perks and all weapons of Payday 2. All changes made by this mod are only available to the player who has it installed, without affecting gameplay for other players. It works in online lobbies regardless of if you are client or host.

How difficult is this mod?

This rebalance is not making the game easy. It was made by me and for me, and i consider myself a pretty decent FPS player. If you think of yourself as an average/casual player, you may find some (mostly weapon) tweaks too difficult for you.

Main goals of this mod:

• Make ALL weapons equally viable across all difficulties - this includes nerfing over-performing weapons.
• Update damage increasing skills to make players rely on them less.
• Provide players with more fun skill/perk combinations for improved build variety.
• Make every skill and perk useful/less situational.

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Detailed information on skill, perk and weapon changes can be found on pages dedicated to them. (Perk page includes recommended builds)
On this page you may find a short summary for some of the rebalance changes of this mod.

Stealth

99% of the rebalance changes of this mod are focused on loud gameplay, and the perk page does not provide any examples for stealth builds. If you are planning on playing in stealth, there are only a few things to note, compared to vanilla:

Spoiler!

• Basic stockholm syndrome's civilian intimidation bonus was moved to tier 2 skill confident in the same tree, making it 1 point more expensive
• Tier 1 and 2 skills in Shinobi sub tree of Ghost were shuffled around a little. Keep these changes in mind if your Shinobi sub-tree is usually not maxed out
• Consider running new Parkour aced skill on some maps, and maybe even a doctor bag along with it.
• Burglar perk deck's stealth bonuses were buffed from 10-20% to 25%
• Hacker's PECM cooldown was increased from 100 to 150 seconds (Hacker is still better than Burglar, since it can help clear up mistakes, but the choice is a little bit less one sided now)

Enemy changes

All enemies now have same amount of health on all difficulties, with values being similar to vanilla Death Wish difficulty.
Headshot multipliers are now set to 2x for most enemies, with exceptions for some special enemies.

Melee rework (important for some skills)

Melee weapons now deal % damage - if your melee has 35 damage, it will deal 35% of enemy's total health in one hit. Some enemies are exceptions to this rule.

Skills/Perks

Detailed skills info page can be found here.
Detailed perks info page can be found here. This page includes at least 1 recommended build for every perk deck for loud gameplay, in case you don't want to go through all the changes Gilza makes in one go.

Default upgrages
By default, regardless of equipeed skills, perks and weapons, all weapon swap speeds are sped up by 50%. This is done to incentivize players to use both of their weapons proactively more often, as Gilza's ammo economy is extremely harsh if played otherwise.

Global - damage resistance
All damage resistance upgrades are now additive instead of multiplicative. For more info you can go to the skills info page, under general section.

Skills
Extent of skill changes is too vast to sum up, so you should check the "Skills Legend" picture bellow, which summarizes skill rework information - if a skill was updated or not, and how significantly. Check out whatever you think might be interesting on the skills info page :)

Perks
Most perks received minor updates to improve their design (mostly for DS difficulty), with only 3 perks gaining "major" reworks. Don't forget to go over general (or "neutral") perk deck cards on the perk page, since they apply to all perks, and by extension to all builds.
Additionally, 3 new custom perks were added - "Brawler", "Speed Junkie" and "Guardian".

Weapon Changes

Detailed weapon info page can be found here.

Damage and ammo:
All guns are now categorized under a "damage class" - most weapons will have a strict base damage value without random fluctuations, and are all based around specific breakpoints (aka amount of bullets to kill certain enemy types). This makes both balancing and gun building easier to manage.
Ammo pick up is now dependent only on weapon damage class, and it is much much worse (roughly 60% of what you would have in vanilla). You HAVE to use both of your weapons, and even then you can still run out, especially on lengthy heists. Using melee and throwable weapons is somewhat mandatory, to avoid running out of ammo quickly.

For example, Galil (Gecko 7.62 in game) deals 67 damage in vanilla. If you take into account a maxed out perk deck, you will deal ~70.3 damage on a bodyshot and ~263.8 on a headshot with it in vanilla (based on Death wish difficulty health/headshot multipliers), which means this weapon will kill a light swat in 2 headshots and a heavy swat in 4 headshots, while having an average ammo pick up of ~10.04 (with any maxed out perk deck).
In Gilza a similar damage class exists - 125. With it, you will also kill a light swat in 2 headshots and a heavy swat in 4 headshots. But even with a maxed out perk deck, this damage class still has only ~5.735 ammo pick up on average, forcing you to be much more accurate, and to use both of your weapons.

Recoil:
Most guns have more recoil.
Recoil camera compensation is almost completely removed.
Weapon recoil now depends on your base stability: weapons with low base stability will have extremely high recoil, and vice versa.

Handling:
Weapon accuracy and stability are no longer affected if you: crouch, jump, walk or sprint. However, both accuracy and stability have a penalty if you are firing from the hip. Aiming down sights removes this penalty.
All weapons have an accuracy penalty if used in full-auto and burst fire modes. If you use the select fire keybind to switch weapon to single-fire mode, you weapon will gain it's full accuracy.

IMPORTANT: for your first try of the mod make a backup of your save files.
If you dislike the mod and choose to remove it, it will not have any issues, and it will not corrupt your save files, BUT you might lose some weapons from your inventory, due to updates in their attachment data.
Also your perks can get reset. Perk reset DOES NOT remove how many perk points you have (points you use to unlock perks), but it might remove your progression, and leave you with all perks at 0/9, forcing you to go through all of them while holding the + button. (use R (default keybind) while on the perks screen to max out a perk quickly).

EVEN MORE IMPORTANT: if you are going to give Gilza a try, check all mods that Gilza requires to function, under "Dependencies and Instructions". All mods that are tagged as "optional" are sorted in order of importance, from highest at the top to lowest at the bottom. I recommend getting everything before (but preferably also including) FrenchyAu's weapon attachment packs.

Last thing: don't immediately try to play this mod on whatever difficulty you usually prefer, maybe try to play it on 1 difficulty bellow that, as some aspects of Gilza could be a bit too difficult initially.

P.S Gambler rework is the most fun one in my opinion :D

Custom Weapons Support

This mod will automatically search for custom weapons and convert their damage stats to work with Gilza's health changes. Beware: some custom weapons may have attachments that change damage/ammo pick up/total max ammo, or other stats in such a way that it will not match Gilza's values well, making them either too good, or bad. I can't do anything about that, other than manually adding support for every gun individually, and that will take time. You may find a list of weapons that are currently supported on the weapon info page.

Custom "special" category weapons are not supported by the automatic stat adjustment system, but may be added later individually, check the currently supported list to see if they are already supported.

Additional QOL features

• While charging your melee weapons new melee UI will appear showing your charge amount and damage in %. This can be tweaked or disabled in Gilza's mod options.
• VanillaHud+'s buff list (infoHUD) is supported for all major skill updates that Gilza makes.
• You can reset your perk progression to re-acquire perk decks, allowing you to try new custom perk decks without grinding XP to unlock them. This option does not reset amount of perk points you have already earned.
• Vehicle FOV was changed from base 75 to 90 - you can change it in mod options in game.
• While purchasing weapons on the blackmarket, they can now be sorted by their damage classes, either in ascending or descending order. This option can be disabled.
• You can spoof Gilza's custom perks, to avoid getting auto kicked in higher difficulty public lobbies, since some players are purists and can not comprehend any rebalance mods. This option can be disabled in Gilza's mod options.

Known issue:

You can crash when entering a heist, while using Jackal SMG or one of the Chimano pistols, with certain attachment combos. This can only happen with weapons that you have modified attachments on before installing Gilza. Remove any gadgets from these weapons, or simply re-purchase them to avoid this issue.

Included mods

• Auto Fire Sound Fix - needed for rate of fire adjustments for some weapons, and for some new skills. Thanks to Offyerrocker for allowing this.
• Various WeaponLib crashes and bugs (like shotgun damage) are fixed by Gilza.
• Akron HC set sound fix - Another mod of mine that fixes sounds for this weapon if you have Auto Fire Sound Fix, and since Gilza comes with AFSF it only makes sense to add this too.

Supported languages (depends on your SuperBLT's language):

• English
• Russian - а именно описания всех навыков, перков, оружий, элементы HUD'а и меню. Некоторые элементы могут быть на английском - если найдете что-нибудь не переведенное, пишите в комменты.

Enjoy figuring out your new META and please provide feedback if something feels way too powerful.
Good luck, have fun! :D