(updated for 3.6!) How Does Armor Work

to properly understand how armor interacts with you, you'd need to understand what the swat are doing to you and how your armor interacts with the damage that you take.

throughout this whole guide, i will be talking in the context of the OVERKILL difficulty and using their damage values when talking about how much damage your plates can take.

the amount of damage Overkill swat can deal at point blank without any damage resistance negating damage, they're subjected to damage fall off based on how far you are from the swat unit.





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and here's the amount of damage they deal with only native damage resistance from your plates:








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now we know how much the average unit you'd be coming across can deal, you now need to know that a single plate has 65 HP no matter the plate type, now, lets see what the 3 armor types do by themselves (aka 1 plate)

(DR = Damage Resistance to help condence the paragrahs)

Starting off with:

whilst impact plates are basically Payday 2's armor as they can fully regenerate no matter how damaged it is, the downside to the armor type is that it takes 3 seconds to regenerate, taking a single down away, and having no native DR

Due to impact plates having no native DR, they are very fragile with them getting shredded by dozers and shotgun swats, whilst it not being able to handle much gun fire from assault rifle and SMG swats, some skills can help with getting DR, and the use minigun's Overskill DR reaching up to 90%

BUT, due to Impact Plates being very renewable and disposable, they make the Perfect plate to compliment other plates like resistant and adaptive plates

Adaptive Plates are a mix of Resistant plates and Impact plates, as they can regen the whole plate just as long it doesn't break or else you'd need a armor bag to replace the plate.

With them having 25% DR, with a 1.5 second regen time and them taking away 1 down, they can take more damage and since they're not impact plates, you'll need to be careful on not getting it destroyed as they can be just as fragile as impact plates if you're playing too aggressive or just standing out in the open.


With Resistant Plates being the most tanky plate in the bunch, with 40% DR and with a regen time of 1.2 second, but the downside of resistant plates as everyone that was around during launch knows, is that they take trauma damage, so they'll break at some point.

They are used best with a slow and careful playstyle that isn't so run and gun, but if you're using the brand new Vanguard Frame, you can be MUCH more aggressive with resistant plates, tho you still have to be careful around dozers as they can still shred resistant plates if you're not careful

1 Plate

4 Downs

Whilst masked:

Walking: 3.5 m/s
Sprinting: 6.5 m/s
Crouching: 2.3 m/s
aiming+standing: 3 m/s

Whilst unmasked:

Walking: 3 m/s
Sprinting: 6 m/s
Crouching: 2.53 m/s

-20% ammo capacity

4 Consumable slots
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2 Plate

Specalist Frame

4 Downs

Whilst masked:

Walking: 3.25 m/s
Sprinting: 6 m/s
Crouching: 2.15 m/s
aiming+standing: 2.75 m/s

Whilst unmasked:

Walking: 2.75 m/s
Sprinting: 5.5 m/s
Crouching: 2.25 m/s

Standard ammo capacity

3 Consumable slots

Vanguard Frame (NEW)

3 Downs

Whilst masked:

Walking: 3.5 m/s
Sprinting: 6.5 m/s
Crouching: 2.3 m/s
aiming+standing: 3 m/s

Whilst unmasked:

Walking: 3 m/s
Sprinting: 6 m/s
Crouching: 2.53 m/s

+20% Ammo Capacity

2 Consumable Slots
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Saboteur Frame

4 Downs

Whilst masked:

Walking: 3 m/s
Sprinting: 5.5 m/s
Crouching: 2 m/s
aiming+standing: 2.5 m/s

Whilst unmasked:

Walking: 2.5 m/s
Sprinting: 5 m/s
Crouching: 2 m/s

+20% Ammo Capacity

3 Consumable Slots

Survivalist Frame (NEW)

5 Downs

Whilst masked:

Walking: 3 m/s
Sprinting: 5.5 m/s
Crouching: 2 m/s
aiming+standing: 2.5 m/s

Whilst unmasked:

Walking: 2.5 m/s
Sprinting: 5 m/s
Crouching: 2 m/s

Standard Ammo Capacity

3 Consumable Slots
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4 Plate

4 Downs

Walking: 2.75 m/s
Sprinting: 5 m/s
Crouching: 1.85 m/s
aiming+standing: 2.25 m/s

Whilst unmasked:

Walking: 2.25 m/s
Sprinting: 4.5 m/s
Crouching:1.85 m/s

+40% Ammo Capcity

2 Consumbable slots
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the last plate in your frame (gonna be using plate number 4 from the mercenary frame example) will be the first one to be damaged.

so in the menu's the 4th plate would be the first to be damaged, and the last plate that would be damaged is the 1st one, so take that into consideration when making your frame.

now we understand how the base stats are for the frames, lets see what their passives are and their general purpose are.

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1 Plate Frames

MedTech doesn't really provide much for your armor, but it's great for HP or medic builds with it's passive of giving you 40 more HP per first aid kit.

Not much to say about it, just refer to the Armour type Chapter to know how your armor interacts with the MedTech Frame.

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2 Plate Frames

a pretty good frame for builds that use tools quite a bit for either stealth builds using ECM's, Trip lasers, motion sensors, etc or loud builds that are using trip lasers, infrasonic mines, etc.

Vanguard Frame

This frame gives Mercenary frame's old passive of trauma repair on kill, but it only repairs 1 point of trauma, great for tanking a bunch of damage and keeping the cops on you, and off your teammates

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3 Plate Frames

i guess it can be a good frame if you can't afford extra throwables in your build, be good to always be sure you'd have a throwable with it's 15 second regen time in your back pocket for when you need it.

Survivalist Frame

whilst i haven't played with this frame, it can really help new players stay in the fight and out of custody for longer, and it can also compliment Medic builds just as well as the Medtech Frame, with it's additional down and 40 extra hp from first aid kits
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4 Plate frames

with the Mercenary Frame you get a passive of 2 seconds of invulnerability when a plate breaks and a additional secret passive of being able to give you 3 seconds of invulnerability apon usage of an Armor repair kit.

In general, you should be putting Impact plates infront of Resistant or Adaptive plates to act as a buffer so your Resistant plates for example won't be taking chip damage from some random swat from the distance same goes for adaptive plates, but you can also put adaptive plates infront of Resistant plates to also act as a buffer for your resistant plates, but it won't be as disposable as impact plates


so basically, your frames should always (in my personal opinion) be like this:

(R = Resistant)
(A = Adaptive)
(I = Impact)

R/R/R/I
R/R/A/I
R/A/A/I
R/A/I/I
R/A/I
R/A
R/I
A/I

and so on.

Since this is my first ever guide, please give me feedback on any kind of information i should change/add or things i need to change with the formatting (as i feel it might be hard to read but idrk lol).

i hope this guide is helpful and provide a good enough information so i'll hopefully stop seeing people have impact plates at the back of their armor frames.