Overview
PAYDAY 2 is more than a FPS, those wishing to distinguish themselves from the average gamer require intricate knowledge of maps, enemies, and builds to perform at the highest level. Here we focus on enemies health to help you as the player make sure your skills and item builds are optimized to be most effective against your foes.
Every enemy in PAYDAY 2 has a different amount of health they take before dying, this differs whether you target the body or the head. On average headshots require 3x less damage before a kill (closer to 2x in Deathwish), but often times it’s not necessary to aim for the head given your loadout.
Normal, Hard, Very Hard, Overkill
The below chart lists health for non Deathwish difficulties. (Ordered from lowest to highest headshot health)
| Enemy | Body | Head |
|---|---|---|
| Security Guard | 30 | 10 |
| Cop | 30 | 10 |
| Gangster | 40 | 10 |
| FBI | 50 | 10 |
| Gensec | 60 | 10 |
| Sniper | 40 | 20 |
| SWAT | 80 | 20 |
| Heavy SWAT | 80 | 20 |
| FBI SWAT | 130 | 40 |
| GenSec Elite Murkywater | 130 | 40 |
| Shield | 100 | 60 |
| Heavy FBI SWAT (Tan) | 200 | 100 |
| Cloaker | 600 | 140 |
| Taser | 360 | 200 |
| Bulldozer | 5500 | 240 |
Some important takeaways are that a majority of the enemies have 40 or less headshot health while the Tan SWAT have 100.
Example With 50 Damage Weaopn
If you were to equip a weapon dealing 50 damage the below chart would be the quantity of shots required for a kill.
| Enemy | Body Shots Required (Assuming 50 dmg weapon) | Head Shots Required (Assuming 50 dmg weapon) |
|---|---|---|
| Security Guard | 1 | 1 |
| Cop | 1 | 1 |
| Gangster | 1 | 1 |
| FBI | 1 | 1 |
| Gensec | 2 | 1 |
| Sniper | 1 | 1 |
| SWAT | 2 | 1 |
| Heavy SWAT | 2 | 1 |
| FBI SWAT | 3 | 1 |
| GenSec Elite Murkywater | 3 | 1 |
| Shield | 2 | 2 |
| Heavy FBI SWAT (Tan) | 4 | 2 |
| Cloaker | 12 | 3 |
| Taser | 8 | 4 |
| Bulldozer | 110 | 5 |
Death Wish
The below chart lists health for Deathwish difficulties. (Ordered from lowest to highest headshot health)
| Enemy | Body | Head |
|---|---|---|
| Gensec | 60 | 10 |
| Security Guard | 51 | 23 |
| Cop | 51 | 23 |
| Gangster | 68 | 23 |
| FBI | 85 | 23 |
| FBI SWAT | 130 | 40 |
| Sniper | 68 | 46 |
| SWAT | 136 | 46 |
| Heavy SWAT | 136 | 46 |
| Shield | 160 | 136 |
| GenSec Elite Murkywater | 240 | 148 |
| Heavy FBI SWAT (Tan) | 340 | 227 |
| Cloaker | 1020 | 318 |
| Taser | 612 | 454 |
| Bulldozer | 9350 | 544 |
Conclusion
Hopefully these charts give you insight into weapon damage values you want to aim for. After all having a weapon dealing more damage than required may be as innefective as having a weapon too weak if you could have instead modded towards accuracy, ammo capacity, or stability.
Would you make use of a weapon calculator? If so let me know in the comments below.