(DD/MM/YY)
03/12/2021 - Release
05/12/2021 - Simplified target priority section
24/08/2022 - Added content related to sneaky bastard and removed note about u215 in crime spree
09/02/2023 - Corrected an error with card 9's regen effect trigger
07/03/2025 - Rewrote the section on duck and cover aced to more accurately represent its value

Burglar is a stealth only deck that clearly has no applications in loud an often overlooked and perfectly viable deck for loud, both in high CS and in DSOD. Due to it often being mistaken as a terrible loud deck which only has a realistic use in stealth, I decided to make this guide to display how, despite being one of the weakest decks relative to others, it is still strong and can hold its own quite well when played properly.

In total, Burglar provides a few bonuses. However I will only cover what has an actual use in loud gameplay.
+30% dodge
Straightforward effect. Gets 35% dodge total with suit.
While standing still and crouching, gain a *0.8 multiplier on target priority.
Simply put, when not moving and while crouched enemies are less likely to target you. (Target priority explained more in depth below).
20% faster lockpick speed.
Can save you a small amount of time on many lockpicks. For example, the door right before the diamond puzzle room goes from a 20->16 second lockpick. (Does not work on safes, but who takes nimble ace and lockpicks safes in loud?)
When standing still (checked whenever you get shot or suppressed), gain 20% armour recovery rate.
Rarely an impactful effect as usually you are moving while getting shot, but can on occasion be useful in saving time and helps a bit due to how enemies can suppress you when taking cover.
10% increased movement speed while crouched.
Free movement speed, simple as.

The 20% lockpick speed increase isn't the most revolutionary effect. A 20 second lockpick to 16 seconds may not seem like much when described in text, so I have included a video comparison of default (left) vs Burglar (right) lockpick speed.

Target priority is one of the notable strengths of Burglar, however it is not a mechanic that is covered frequently so I will go over a brief summary of how it works. (Understanding how targeting works is NOT mandatory but is still recommended to understand the effects of the deck better). Should you be interested in reading more afterwards, I will link the long guide at the bottom of this guide for further reading.

Target priority is a hidden mechanic in pd2 which influences how likely you will be targeted by the swat. It has a value of 1 for players and 0.50 for jokers and bots. Skills such as optical illusions, or the effects of the Burglar perk deck modify this base value for players, with the value going to 0.52 when both effects are combined, making it quite close to joker level. Other factors that further affect target priority are distance, noise, line of sight, and damage done. Distance makes enemies more likely to have you as their priority target the closer you are, noise from shouting or unsuppressed weapons make enemies more likely to target you, if enemies can't see you their ability to target you is hindered, and doing damage to an enemy makes them more likely to target you.

Due to these factors, target priority is best used by having another target take it first. as shown in these examples:
While this example may not be Burglar, nor playing as safely as I would recommend for Burglar, it does exemplify of how to use targeting. Jenny sees that most enemies have already chosen a target and are actively in combat with them. Because of this, when Jenny runs out into their smoke, most enemies don't target them, and the few that do likely swapped due to the distance between them and Jenny lowering significantly. Jenny also has a suppressed weapon and doesn't fire it at many people, further lowering the chances they get targeted.

A more Burglar focused example is this:
As can be seen in the video, because the shields and heavy were engaged in combat with jokers, they ignored me during the interaction with the c4, due to me not making noise, not damaging them, being at a decent distance, and standing still while crouching. Using this time where I was not targeted, I was able to finish the interaction and prepare shots on the heavy, after firing and moving the shields turned their attention to me but were mid retreat so they chose not to engage.

Typically, sneaky bastard has been written off as a skill that is too expensive for the returns. However because of this, people often lose sight of how powerful the skill can be. In order to properly understand the effects of sneaky bastard, first the effects of dodge on your survivability must be explored. To determine the value of dodge I calculated the average amount of shots it would take to be damaged 3 times. The value of 3 shots was chosen because it is both the required amount of hits to take health damage after a bullseye, or to down if you didn't get a bullseye off.


The table above demonstrates that as your dodge increases, the value of any additional dodge increases dramatically. As such, not only does sneaky bastard increase your general survivability overall, but it also enhances the power of duck and cover ace, giving you 1.2 extra shots on average over just duck and cover.

Burglar is one of the weaker decks for DSOD loud. It may lack the higher dodge values, extra shots, or strong healing of its compatriots, but it is still a solid deck in its own right. It provides various miscellaneous boosts. One of these boosts are towards lockpicking, which saves a few seconds on many objectives and interactions (4 seconds on 20 second lockpick doors), without requiring sacrifices in equipment or point investment; unlike tripmines, nimble aced, or a saw.

Don't play too aggressively:
Burglar isn't the most durable deck. It has 35% dodge and 2 shot health with no built in form of healing. As such it should be played more carefully than other decks. A more cautious playstyle also plays into one of the main strengths of Burglar, being the ability to avoid being shot. However do not mistake a cautious approach for a passive playstyle, you do not contribute to the team by sitting back and not clearing space or doing objectives.
Do not rely on target priority reductions:
Reducing target priority may be one of Burglar's strengths, but this is not to be relied on. Standing still and crouching does indeed reduce your target priority, but it does not prevent you from being targeted. Making noise and doing damage can very easily sway targeting back onto you, let alone if all other targets leave line of sight, leaving you as the only target regardless of priority.

There are many recommended and near necessary skills for Burglar if you want to use it to its greatest effect. Note this is more of a guideline for skills to look for or a foundation, not gospel or a complete build to copy 1:1.

Being a deck with 1 shot armour and no built in healing, Burglar is best played with faks. This does not mean you can't use medic bags, but it is considerably harder to play with meds. If you are going for inspire aced, taking painkillers aced is highly recommended for ease of use as it will give extra shots on every non suit armour and any health boosted deck with a convert, making an inspire somewhat less risky. For inspire basic however a quick fix aced setup is more optimal as it is cheaper and the space should be mostly clear anyways if you can pull off a manual rez.

Converts are extremely strong in every deck, and Burglar is no exception. Outside of the usual strength of jokers for absorbing bullets, providing a trigger for hostage taker, and increasing your base health, jokers feed into Burglar even more through adding even more potential targets to take shots away from you. Despite the 50% reduction to be targeted inherent to jokers, they will generally be closer to enemies and actively doing damage to them, causing their threat to be extremely competitive with yours and letting them draw enemy fire easily, especially if you use suppressors. Hostage taker aced is also extremely valuable as Burglar has no natural healing, and the skill allows Burglar to have sustain without needing to use a first aid kit every health shot in order to have a chance of getting 2 shot health again.

Bullseye is the only really required skill in this tree, the ability to gate every 2 seconds off a headshot for only 3 points is too powerful to skip over. Die hard gives an extra shot to health when interacting when you are at full health, before joker health increases. Resilience aced is as always, a preference choice, it is a skill which is helpful, but has its usefulness significantly mitigated by the fact in most circumstances you can just destroy or avoid the flashbang, making the effect redundant beyond extra insurance.

While scavenger basic may not be a skill inherent to Burglar, it is an incredibly strong skill that has no reason to be on just about every build ever made. 50% increased pickup range may not seem like much, but the ability to get ammo from way more places or much more quickly is absurdly valuable for the cost of 1 point.

Hardware expert basic holds a similar place to scavenger basic. They are both strong skills with 1 point costs that fit into just about every build. Hardware expert allows you to repair drills 2.5 seconds faster, which synergizes well with Burglar's target priority reductions. However, hardware expert is not as much of a priority as scavenger, since repairing drills faster is not as valuable as the increased ammo scavenger basic gives you.

Duck and cover basic is highly recommended on just about every build. It provides extreme amounts of extra mobility for 1 point. Duck and cover aced is extremely valuable for Burglar. While +10% dodge while sprinting might not seem like much, in reality most of the time you are under threat, you are sprinting anyways and that extra 10% greatly improves your averages. There is realistically no Burglar build that has a real reason to put those points in other places beyond wanting to do armoured Burglar. Dire need is a rather underrated skill and is probably one of the best in the artful dodger tree. However if you are using a headshot based weapon, you should probably use shockproof to try and keep the head in one place.

Optical illusions basic is a very valuable skill for DS Burglar. Not only do most people run optical illusions, making your target priority notably higher than the rest of your team without it, but it also stacks with Burglar target priority reductions, which helps a lot with keeping enemies off of you and on your jokers or team when doing objectives. Second wind is a valuable skill for escaping some dangerous situations.

Burglar is a lesser played deck not only in DS, but also in CS. Compared to other decks such as Anarchist or Sicario, it is much slower and has more struggle surviving moving through swat controlled space, however this doesn't mean Burglar does not have its place to shine. Due to the target priority reduction, as well as the minor lockpick speed and dodge makes it a solid choice for doing objectives, as is displayed in this example where the door is picked without taking a single shot.

Do not move or play too aggressively:
You are not Anarchist or Sicario, your only form of gating is bullseye and your dodge is almost always the lowest of all dodge decks. Burglar is best played slowly which feeds into the target priority advantage Burglar has by letting other targets such as your many jokers or more durable decks such as Anarchist take priority.
Do not overly rely on target priority reductions:
The target priority reduction may be valuable, but it is far from guaranteed. Don't expect to be able to push yourself into any situation and not get shot just by crouching or standing still, it will help but it is not absolute.

High crime spree is an underplayed difficulty so I will include general ways to build for it as Burglar does not have much radically different about it.


Due to the nature of high crime spree, not only is the damage too high for painkillers to matter, but with the inclusion of zeal snipers as well as the inability to kill enemies, manual revives are much more inconsistent compared to DS, so this is the best setup possible for high crime spree.

While jokers aren't needed for crime spree, they are still extremely useful and highly recommended if you have the points, even more so for Burglar. Now as most people don't play high CS you may ask why to take jokers without PiC? Well, because of how pd2 math works, all damage is rounded to the nearest 512th, and in crime spree enemy health has outscaled damage so much that almost all damage will be below 1/512th of enemy health, so regardless of damage reduction their ability to soak damage will be the same. As for the bonuses of PiC to the player, the increased health is too minor to save you, the only boost of note is the 10% movement speed increase, so if you have 3 points to spare then it might potentially be worth grabbing PiC basic if you especially desire the increased speed.

The only mandatory skill in tank is bullseye for its amazing armour gating power, resilience aced is still a preference choice, as flashbangs having an even bigger delay before going off relative to DS. Die hard is a skill to avoid compared to transporter as the 50% reduction won't save you from the spiked damage of high crime spree enemies.

JOAT (Jack of all trades) is highly recommended for crime spree as it lets you bring many useful deployables such as trip mines, ammo bags, or ECMs along with your medic bag, as well as increasing your deploy speed which is extremely helpful when enemies will kill you or break your armour in one shot and you can't kill anything to force space to be cleared.

Duck and cover aced is really all you need in this tree. However Sneaky Bastard can save your life provided you have the points for it. It is not a priority over your other core skills, but if you have the points, this is the best way of getting Sneaky Bastard. To those unfamiliar with crime spree, the reason why this is the best setup is for a few reasons. The first reason being that enemies on high crime spree are immune to dire need, making it a useless skill. The second reason is that crime spree has forced concealment penalty modifiers, which means rather than building for 23, you are actually building for 14, which becomes 23 after penalties and because of that, inner pockets is extremely valuable, even if only the basic effect grants bonus concealment. The third reason is that reload cancelling is much less valuable in crime spree, due to the generally large magazines or single shot reloading of most strong weapons, as well as the high amounts of crowd control so parkour aced is not a notable detriment.

Optical illusions is a near mandatory skill for crime spree. Not only does this allow you to take advantage of the Burglar target priority more by reducing your chance to be targeted even more, but also doesn't shackle you to standing still in order to get reduced targeting, which greatly compensates for Burglar's relatively weak survivability when moving. Second wind basic is another valuable skill for giving extra movement speed in emergencies when your armour breaks.

Unlike in DS, swan song is an important skill for high crime spree. In high crime spree, the ability to reasonably kill enemies is gone, which combined with the addition of the zeal sniper makes the game much more prone to randomly kill you. Add on top of that the fact space is rarely ever clear and enemies will break your armour or fully deplete your health in one shot makes the extra few seconds to be able to move, cc some enemies, or complete an objective extremely valuable.

If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments, I will answer to the best of my ability. I will leave some links to relevant things below:

Collection of Burglar builds that I feel like uploading (will be updated somewhat often)
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2666970060
The Long Guide for those who wanted to read more on targeting or just want an encyclopedia on pd2
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=267214370
List of every notable lockpick in terms of significance or if it just takes a long period of time (will be added eventually)
Guide for High Crime Spree (if matt ever finishes it)

For those wondering how the dodge math was calculated, the formula used was 3/(1-p) where p is your dodge as a decimal (i.e. 50% dodge is 0.5)