Originally inspired by IREnFIST
Payday 2 is one of my favorite games, despite how poorly balanced it is. I have accumulated over 4.5k 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.
Welcome to Gilza - yet another Payday 2 rebalance!
(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. These changes are available only to you, and work when playing both as client or host.
How difficult is this mod?
As indicated by the attention grabbing color: this rebalance is not easy. It was made by me - for me, and i consider myself a pretty good FPS player. If you think of yourself as an average/casual player, you may find this mod's 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 related skills to make players rely on them less
- Provide players with more fun skill/perk choices
- Make most available skills useful in more situations
Short Description
Right bellow this part you will find almost every single change made by this mod, including reasons/ideas for most of these changes. It's incredibly long, so much so, that i have to use a separate github page with everything related to weapon adustments, because MWS has a character limit for mod descriptions. This MWS description you are currently reading only has detailed information on skills and perks.
I have tried to compress most important information about Gilza's rebalance in the summary bellow. If you would like to know additional details, you can scroll down to the full description for information on skills/perks, or go to this page for information on all weapon changes.
Gilza re-balance summary
Spoiler!
Enemy changes:
All enemies now have same amount of health on all difficulties, with values being similar to vanilla Death Wish difficulty.
Headshots now deal 2x damage, with exceptions for some special enemies.
Melee rework (important for skills):
Melee weapons now deal % damage - if your melee has 35 damage, it will deal 35% of enemy's health in one hit. Some enemies are exceptions to this rule.
Skills/Perks:
It's impossible to make a summary, since this game has so many skills, but i can tell you one thing - most skills that are considered to be good were made to be a bit worse, while skills that are considered bad, for the most part are better... or just a bit more fun. This approach is true for most things in this mod.
One of the most important balance changes is probably under the neutral (global) perk deck cards that every perk has, because you will (almost) always have them. So check them out.
Otherwise, you can check the "Skills Legend" picture on top of the skills tab bellow - it summarizes skills' information like if a skill was updated or not, if it was buffed/nerfed and so on. Check out whatever you think might be interesting :)
Also, 3 new custom perks were added - "Brawler", "Speed Junkie" and "Guardian".
Weapon Changes:
Damage and ammo:
All guns are now categorized under a "damage class" - most weapons will have a strict base damage value without random fluctuations from weapon to weapon like 66.4 vs 65.2.
Ammo pick up is now dependent only on weapon damage class, and it is much much worse. 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.
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 fire mode. If you use the select fire keybind to switch weapon to single-fire mode, it 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 loose 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.
Even more important: if you are going to give Gilza a try, check all mods that Gilza requires to function, under "Dependencies and Instructions" tab above. 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.
Main Section
Global changes
1) Enemies:
All enemies will now have same amount of health on all difficulties.
New health values are really close to vanilla Death Wish difficulty (Bulldozers on DS still have 2x health).
Headshots for most enemies will now only deal 2x damage. Exceptions: Cloakers (2.8x), Bulldozers(6x), Captain Winters and his shields(4x), and 'Crude Awakening' heist boss (1x). This is one of a few changes that make combat easier and more forgiving for players with bad aim.
2) Skills:
Damage resistance.
Damage resistance skills are now additive instead of multiplicative.
In vanilla, if you have two 40% damage resistance skills, they would give you 100 * 0.6 * 0.6 = 36, so 64% damage resistance total. This approach especially hurts if you are trying to stack multiple damage resistance skills.
With Gilza's system there's only 1 problem that needs to be solved: max resist going over 100%. In vanilla it's impossible due to endless multiplications, but with Gilza's approach it would be possible. So to compensate, maximum possible damage resistance value was added: 90%.
This change also allows you to calculate damage resistances and breakpoints easier.
Critical hits
Critical hits will now always deal 2.5x damage, instead of multiplying your damage by enemy's headshot multiplier. This change effectively buffs them, since 80% of enemies you are dealing with have 2x headshot multipliers now. This does however nerf crits against bulldozers, which was the main reason for this change.
3) Other:
Vehicle FOV was changed from base 75 to 90 - you can change it in mod options in game
Important for sections bellow: Right click on images to view them in full size by opening them in a new tab.
Perks
Global/neutral perk deck cards
Spoiler!
Common card #2 - Skill from common card #8 was moved here, headshot bonus was weird.
Common card #6 - You can now pick up throwables from ammo boxes without investing into "Fully Loaded" skill. This should increase variety in weapon and perk choices. To compensate, throwable pick ups now depend on your chosen throwable.
Common card #8 - Swapped random 5% dmg bonus for movement from Ghost's basic parkour and bag throwing bonus from Enforcer's basic transporter. Those skills were adjusted accordingly.
Vanilla Perks
Spoiler!
ROGUE
Introduction of COPYCAT perk deck, made rogue obsolete, because health regen, invulnerability and dodge ricochet are better then extra 5% dodge. Rogue now gets slightly more dodge, mobility and a more consistent AP chance to balance things out.
HITMAN
Updated the way armor recovery works with this perk to make it more unique, and slightly better.
SOCIOPATH/INFILTRATOR
Damage increase was changed due to melee rework. Hidden infiltrator duration buff was reworked, so now both decks have an increased window for follow up hits of 4 seconds.
GAMBLER
To avoid inconsistencies, caused by your teammates running berserker builds, this perk now provides extra health if at least 1 teammate has more heath. Your max possible burst healing is reduced to compensate. Ammo pick up range can stack with same skill from Ammo Specialist sub-tree.
YAKUZA
Added armor buffs to make running at low health slightly less dangerous.
SICARIO
Smoke bomb cooldown was reduced from 60 to 45 seconds. That's it.
TAG TEAM
Line of sight requirement was removed to make this perk easier to use, and the effect timer increase you get per kill was buffed, to make the effect last longer easier.
HACKER
These changes were made to Hacker to make it less spammy and annoying, and a bit harder to use, while keeping it's power at roughly the same level.
COPYCAT
Adjusted how this skill behaves with armor, to be more in line with what vanilla description implies. This made this skill too good and reliable, so cooldown was nerfed to compensate.
New Custom Perk Decks
Spoiler!
Note: you can reset your perk progression in Gilza's mod options to re-acquire perk decks, allowing you to try new custom perk decks without grinding XP to unlock them.
BRAWLER
Deck with a hard focus on melee weapons' usage. Your job is to take as much damage for your team as you can, to make their life easier.
SPEED JUNKIE
Faster you move, more bonuses you gain. This perk should feel really nice for those who like to move quickly, but beware of potential downsides if you overindulge in such high adrenaline activities.
GUARDIAN
A new defensive perk with powerful camping capabilities, that will cost you a lot of mobility and utility, and also survivability if you are not careful.
Skills
Some skills had their icons and names updated to match new functionality better.
Mastermind - Medic
Spoiler!
Tier 4
Basic version of inspire is barely used, unless you either enjoy shouting at other people to move the fuck up, or a teammate is carrying a heavy objective bag. With this change you should be incentivized to use it more often.
Tier 3
--
Tier 2
--
Tier 1
This change keeps up with "Combat medic" idea while not hurting berserker players.
Mastermind - Controller
Spoiler!
Tier 4
--
Tier 3
A decent upside with an obvious downside. This skill was added to make other adjustments within Controller sub-tree flow better.
Tier 2
Now focused more on civilian control.
Split confident skill to make sides of this tree make a bit more sense. Also, the 35% damage penalty is how it works in vanilla - description was updated to make it more clear.
Tier 1
Aced version was always extremely bad for it's cost, so now it's cheap. Converted enemies are now slightly more expensive, since they are pretty good.
Mastermind - Sharpshooter
Spoiler!
Tier 4
Damage calculations were updated to remove the need for headshots, and to make this skill's damage more consistent. Minimal trigger distance was added to incentivize sniping.
Tier 3
This skill does not need any changes, but it's cost was never justifiable to me. With new numbers it's a bit better.
Tier 2
Now has a new affect that interacts with Gilza's new weapon recoil, otherwise almost untouched.
Buffs slower playstyle, especially with bipod'able weapons.
Tier 1
Simplified.
Enforcer - Shotgunner
Spoiler!
Tier 4
This skill is not required anymore to effectively use shotguns, so it gained a reload speed bonus. Damage was updated for new weapon breakpoints. Increased duration should make aced version of the skill better.
Tier 3
Magazine increasing skill from vanilla skill "Close By", was reworked into this one, to let any shotgun get benefits from it, though bonus itself is lower.
Aced version now provides a similar effect to "Saw Massacre" while using Shotguns. Boost for killing a panicking enemy can be received with any weapon. Note that not every panicking enemy will trigger the boost, but only a specific "full panic" animation. I recommend using the pop up notification to figure out how it looks, you can disable it after.
Tier 2
ADS speed bonus was moved to "Shotgun Expert"
Increased damage is no longer needed. Now provides extra stability and ADS bonuses.
Tier 1
--
Enforcer - Tank
Spoiler!
Tier 4
--
Tier 3
--
Tier 2
Compensation for the new global perk card.
Tier 1
--
Enforcer - Ammo specialist
Spoiler!
Tier 4
Since you now can pick up grenades without this skill, nade pick up was increased compared to vanilla.
Tier 3
Bonuses swapped since aced provided much less value then basic.
Aced version now provides ammo pick up for the saw, making it more viable.
Tier 2
--
Tier 1
--
Technician - Engineer
Spoiler!
Tier 4
Running 4 sentries is now cheaper to compensate new ammo economy. Aced version is a decent alternative sentry playstyle, especially for DS.
Tier 3
--
Tier 2
--
Tier 1
--
Technician - Breacher
Spoiler!
Tier 4
Maximum total duration of firetraps is now 140 seconds longer for one full heist day. Increased range also makes them a more effective area denial tool.
Tier 3
--
Tier 2
--
Tier 1
--
Technician - Oppressor
Spoiler!
Tier 4
Basic version now provides armor piercing at a reduced damage rate, like "Surefire", but allows you to play with lazy aim. Aced version is a new DPS skill, but has only a few specific breakpoints that can actually work well. Also feels a bit weird, because bodyshots are more effective.
Tier 3
In vanilla you get more reload speed on a smaller magazine weapon, even though they already have faster reload speeds. This backwards logic never made sense to me.
Aced version now has a 50% damage penalty when dealing damage through body armor. This is a compensation for new weapon effectiveness with bodyshots. Can stack with new "Body Expertise" basic.
Tier 2
Max chances tripled, but new threat requirement was added to make this skill more synergetic with 'loud' weapons.
This skill was previously improving your hip-fire weapon handling, for some weapons, and compensating penalties for others. Now it only removes penalties that Gilza's weapon handling has.
Tier 1
Simplified.
Ghost - Shinobi
Spoiler!
Tier 4
--
Tier 3
--
Tier 2
Bodybag asset and civilian cleaner costs were moved here to make it more "logical".
Spotter and spycam assets were moved here to make it more "logical".
Tier 1
Insider assets like keycards and better getaway driver are viable for loud, not just stealth, so if you want to run it for loud builds, it's now super cheap at just 1 skill point instead of 7. This skill is the only one in this tree that is viable in loud now.
Ghost - Artful dodger
Spoiler!
Tier 4
New dodge focused skill that will help most dodge builds by providing extra safety, for moments when your armor is broken.
Tier 3
This is exactly the same skill from vanilla, but it's now cheaper at tier 3 instead of tier 4. "Dire need" functionality was moved to "Backfire".
Aced version is "Shockproof" aced combined with new electric bullets upgrade. You can now roleplay as the tazer.
Tier 2
Basic version's 10% movement speed was moved to general perk cards, so new functionality was added to compensate.
Tier 1
--
Ghost - Silent killer
Spoiler!
Tier 4
Same as Low Blow at Tier 3.
Tier 3
Effectiveness was improved thanks to new critical hit damage multiplier.
Tier 2
--
Tier 1
--
Fugitive - Gunslinger
Spoiler!
Tier 4
Now provides increased ammo capacity for small-caliber weapons, and can help both sides of the tree.
Tier 3
Now combines effects of conditional "on-hit" pistol skills into one skill, to make left side of this tree focused on pistols. Effectiveness is slightly reduced.
Now provides new bonuses to akimbo weapons, to make right side of this tree focused on akimbo weapons.
Tier 2
Magazine capacity was removed, to avoid confusion when using revolvers. Rate of fire effect is smaller, compensating for pistol ROF adjustments. Reload speed moved from skill previously known as "Desperado" to here.
Tier 1
--
Fugitive - Revenant
Spoiler!
Tier 4
This is more of a QOL update to make using this skill easier.
Tier 3
Reduced this skill's combat effectiveness by removing infinite ammo, which harms Gilza's ammo economy quite a bit. Improved perk's supportive capabilities with new movement speed penalty avoidance and increased overall duration.
Tier 2
Increased duration to improve it's worth.
In vanilla, "Up You Go" aced provides you 40% more health when revived. However, this bonus is applied to the health bonus that is set per difficulty, so to the 10% health you get on mayhem and above. Because of that, you would only receive 14% health when revived with this skill instead of the expected 50%. New version provides a flat % amount of your max health. 7 skill points for 4% extra health is dumb, thus the change.
Tier 1
--
Fugitive - Brawler
Spoiler!
Tier 4
--
Tier 3
Added damage to improve this skill's worth, especially with melee builds.
This is an overall nerf that makes this skill not as reliable. But, as an upside, you can now use healing skills to keep your health at 30% with frenzy or more without it, to avoid being killed by snipers.
Berserk visual screen flash preview: (Color, size, and how exactly it flashes, can be adjusted in Gilza mod options.) Preview link without downloading.
Tier 2
Numbers updated to match new melee damage.
New skill to make your melee's feel better.
Tier 1
This skill now reduced camera shake from melee attacks to make melee playstyles more comfortable.
Weapon changes
Due to Modworkshop's charachter limit for mod descriptions, i can't fit all the changes on this page. Gilza's weapon changes can be accessed over here.
Custom Weapons Support
Spoiler!
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 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 it, other then manually adding support for every gun individually, and that is just tedious.
Currently supported attachment mods:
All of FrenchyAU's tacticool attachments packs (250+ attachments). Check Gilza's dependencies & Instructions tab for links.
Custom "special" weapons are not supported.
Additional QOL features
Spoiler!
- 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.
- You can spoof Gilza's custom perks, to avoid being kicked in public lobbies. Can be disabled in Gilza's mod options.
- 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.
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.
Supported languages (depends on your SuperBLT's language):
- English
- Russian - а именно все навыки, перки, описания оружий и элементы меню. Всё остальное может быть на английском.
Enjoy figuring out your new META and please provide feedback if something feels way too powerful.
Good luck, have fun! :D


I must have a skill issue because I struggle on very hard now when in base game I could easily complete overkill. I consider myself a casual player though, maybe this mod isn't for me. Would be nice to see a health scaler option perhaps? Enemies are a bit tanky in my opinion
Health scaling would just make this mod too easy on lower difficulties, since it's main drawback is ammo economy if user is inaccurate. While playing on lower difficulties you generally have less enemies, so your ammo reserves should be easier to maintain. As for time to kill - its similar and actually frequently slightly faster, then base game Death Wish difficulty, but if you compare to overkill, then yes, enemies are tankier.
I can recommend using shotguns, since they are more effective then base game's version of them, but at the end of it all, this might just not be a mod for you. This rebalance is more about new skills and more flattened out weapon balance, so that you can use any gun you want on mayhem+ difficulties. If you are usually playing on overkill and bellow you probably don't feel like some guns are unusable in vanilla, since health pools are so low.
@irbizzelus
I never really liked the weapon balancing in vanilla, which is why I like this rebalance. Even though you probably could use almost any weapon you wanted to even on vanilla overkill, there were still a select variety of guns that were actually viable to use without having to unload a notable portion of your magazine just to kill one guy (which I view as a major problem in terms of gun balancing, which gilza fixes).
I do hit most of my shots (maybe I actually don't lol) and it seems I am always getting overwhelmed because I have to focus fire on one guy for too long, allowing the 6 other guys that see me to lay fire into me. Like I said, I'm a casual player, but there's a difference between being good and being sweaty; and I feel in order to succeed in this rebalance you have to be sweaty.
I have played mayhem a fair amount and it isn't anywhere close to gilza. There's just no feasible way to survive when enemies take so long to kill and ammo runs dry too fast. A glaring difference between vanilla and gilza is headshot instakills, which obviously makes vanilla way easier (and also something I view as a problem with game balance). If headshots are less effective, enemies need to have less health overall, but not so much less that it would suffer from the same problem as vanilla. -- Side clarification here, In my post I was meaning a health scaler that is lower overall for all difficulties, like mayhem default values on all difficulties, not normal has normal values, overkill has overkill values, death wish has death wish values, etc.
Not trying to argue with you, just sharing my thoughts. You've most likely thought of all these things and took them into consideration and adjusted accordingly. I'm likely not the target audience here, but gilza fixes so many problems vanilla has that I find hard to live without. I admire your clear vision on how the game should play and feel :)
@gabexx546
Headshots do deal less damage, but that actually makes this mod easier because bodyshots are more effective:
In vanilla, a weapon that deals 128 damage will 1 shot-headshot a light swat, but would need 4 bodyshots to kill them. With Gilza, similar damage profile is 250 - it one taps lights in the head, but takes only 2 bodyshots to kill.
Damage breakpoints are balanced around mayhem/death wish/death sentence, so they will feel tankier for you, if you are used to vanilla PD2 enemy health scaling, and play on overkill.
And as i said before, lower difficulties are in general are balanced by having less enemies and specials, which means you need less ammo to fight them all. Also, using melee weapons is much easier, since getting close to enemies is less risky, cause they deal less damage. And melee with this mod is also better on average, but that's probably just for higher difficulties.
If you never played on higher difficulties, i can spoil it a bit for you: 90% of players just stack damage skills like crits, berserk, overkill, body expertise, and don't use much else. If you add to that vanilla damage to ammo pick up rates, they practically never run out of ammo, and near insta-kill everything. This is the issue this mod is trying to deal with. You are not forced to use any damage skills, because your average time to kill without damage skills is faster (with any gun), but those skills are also a bit worse. I myself usually use damage skills for lower damaging weapons to make my damage to ammo pick up rate better, or i just run ammo bags. If you are playing heists that can be done <10 minutes, you usually don't need either of these things with Gilza, if your aim is good. Maybe one refill from a bough asset bag, if it's really bad.
And yes i am a sweaty player since i usually play on higher difficulties, so my perspective is probably different from yours. Maybe if you play for long enough you will understand what i was going for, or maybe you will disagree and say that vanilla is better, who knows, tho if i were you, i'd stick to whatever is fun. Higher difficulties are only fun when you are trying to intentionally break the game by abusing damage breakpoints and/or skills you get in vanilla, to get endless ammo builds and similar stuff.
Also sorry for late reply i was sorta busy :P