Payday 3 skills list and what they do

Here’s our Payday 3 skills list, which we’ve gathered through playing the game’s different betas.

While you’re going to get pretty familiar with Payday 3 weapons and heists fairly early on, getting to grips with the different skills in the game is a little more to figure out. With 12 different skill trees available, each one has a variety of different perks that contribute to a specific class of playstyle. We’re going to do a deep dive into what each one does, and we’re going to have a quick look at what we think are the best skill trees to invest in early on.

Payday 3 skills list

So far, through the beta, it seems as though there are 17 different skill trees that you can invest in. They are the following:

Skill Line	Brief Description	Unlockable skills
Medic	Reviving teammates and securing medic bags is this skill line’s forte.	Steady Hands, Extra Charge, Combat Medic, Code Blue, Triage, Field Surgery
Ammo	Supplying ammunition for comrades.	Scrounger, Fully Loaded, Plate Up, High Grain, Mag Throw, Top Up
Mower	What more can be said aside from mowing down enemies.	Recoil Handling, Suppressive Fire, Ammo Funnel, Replenish, Sprint Loaded
Infiltrator	Your resident lockpicker who’s also handy with a throwing knife.	Quick Fingers, Retriever, Bagger, Blade Bouncer, Frugal Thrower
Tank	This skill line prioritises armour and damage absorption.	Hardy, Extra Plates, Armor Up, Last Man Standing, Disengage
Sharpshooter	Your sniper.	Collateral Control, Long Shot, Precision Shot, Cutting Shot, Speed Aim
Escapist	Agility and movement thrive in this skill line.	Balanced, Move and Cover, Slide Tackle, Battering Ram, Swift
Demolitionist	Blows things up.	Cooker, Shell Shock, Blowback, Blast Shield, Overcooked, Extra Munitions
Enforcer	Close quarters combat executioner.	Quick Reload, Face To Face, Solid, Combat Reload, Shock and Awe
Manipulator	Using hostages is easy with this class.	Overbearing, Silver Tongue, Negotiator, Menacing, Stockholm Syndrome, Master Trader
Engineer	Turrets and repairs.	AP Turret, Cooling System, Detonation, Spin Cycle, Dual Sentries, Targeted Fire
Gunslinger	Hipfiring secondary weapons was made for this skill line.	From The Hip, Heavy Hipfire, Finisher, Quick Draw
Grifter	Casing mode skills.	Walk The Walk, Social Engineering, Open Mic, Slippery
Hacker	Will be able to hack systems easier.	Secure Loop, Appliance Breach, Routed Ping, Signal Catch
Tactician	Your crowd controller will have handy grenades and flashbangs at their disposal.	Crowd Control, Coup De Grace, Discombobulate, Expose, Scramble
Strategist	Will track your enemies.	Combat Marking, Threat Assessment, Misdirect, Marked For Death
CQC	Your shield and takedown expert.	Soft Assets, Groundskeeper, Pin Puller, Savage Takedown, Pressure Points, Cover-Up

Payday 2’s skill system worked fairly differently to how it’s going to function in Payday 3. Rather than having individual lines, there were a few different classes which had different sub-classes branching from beneath. More like a tree than a linear line, it did make things slightly more complicated in the previous game.

Now, with the linear skill line structure in Payday 3, it’s a little easier to grasp the direction that each ‘class’ and playstyle is suited to.

Each skill line also has a Master Node which is slightly weaker than the others, though can be added to any build without equipping the base node. This means when you have a varied amount of Master Nodes unlocked, you can create incredibly balanced builds that, say, invest in lockpicking and hacking, while also considering damage and combat.

There’s 105 individual skills and 17 master nodes, giving your builds a level of complexity and variation.

We’re going to be keeping an eye out for the latest updates on Payday 3 skills and similar, so make sure to check back in with us periodically. In the meantime, you might be interested in the Payday 3 campaign, or whether or not the game is crossplay.