ecms?

[DrwHem]

im new to the game and was wondering if its worth it bringing the pocket ECM AND the deployable. im not sure the difference between the two.

[ivan]

are you planning on playing loud or stealth?

[ivan]

the ecm jammer takes about 2 seconds to deploy and the effect lasts for 20 seconds, once you use them you cant get them back, they block guard pagers, cameras, some heist objectives, most ways of sounding the alarm (like civilians calling phones), to open atm machines and with a skill they can be used to open some doors,
they also have an option for "ecm feedback" you can activate it by pressing your interaction key on a placed ecm jammer, ecm feedback stuns enemies for an amount of time
by default you carry 1, but you can carry 2 with skills, though you need to use up a lot of skill points to carry 2

the pocket ecm's deploy instantly, they last for 6 seconds, you can carry 2 of them with no skills, and they regenerate after 120 seconds,
they have the effect of stunning enemies and blocking alarms at the same time

i prefer the pocket ecm's
i wouldnt say its worth it to bring both on a loud mission, but to stealth, you could, pocket ecm's can save a heist since they can be activated instantly, block cameras and can help in sticky situations
while you can use regular ecm's to open atm machines and doors

[Promises]

Ecms are stealth only outside of a few scenarios. Their loud uses are novelty 99% of the time you’re better off bringing more ammo or medical supplies. The only time you’ll ecm loud is probably doing extremely high rank crime sprees, I never really cared about crime spree or why I’d bother banking rewards from multiple heists to unbox em all at once when I already have everything I want, so maybe they’re not even used in the scenario I described, but that’s the only loud scenario I could see em being useful

[Lanxcapo]

basic ecms are one use only deployables that you can't pick up, they last 20s by default and block phonecalls and disable cameras on stealth and they turn all the swat turrets in the map friendly for it's duration, attacking cops instead

once that you place them you can also use the feedback option by interaction with them, it will stun all the cops in their line of sight, including bulldozers for the same amount of time as the normal jammer function, this function does recharge once every 4 min, but do keep in mind that if you use it in stealth it will alert all the guards and civs on the map, so don't use it on stealth

in the shinobi subtree from the ghost skill tree you can upgrade your ecms, once fully upgraded their effects last up to 30s, they can now delay pagers from going off when you kill a guard until the ecm runs out, and can be used to open security doors (the metal ones with the keycard reader right next to them that you would normaly have to drill otherwise)

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hacker's pocket ecm deployable acts like a fully upgraded ecm in stealth, blocking phonecalls, turning off camers and delaying pagers, also as you might expect, since you can't place them you can't use them to open doors or atms, but it can be used instantly when you press the button, as opposed to normal ecms having to be deployed, and can be used even while you are interacting with something, but they only last for 6s and can be recharged overtime

in loud the pecm serves like the ecm's feedback function, stunning cops within line of sight, but they can't use the jamming function, so you can mess with turrets, and once that you complete the perk deck it will also heal you and your teammates when you/them for every enemy you kill while the pecm is active(only the killer gets healed) and it will grant you 20% extra dodge for 30s when you kill an enemy with it activated

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in practice, in stealth the pecm is the one you would use for in the moment stuff, say that you got detected and there is a cam seeing this, you can pecm to get the situation under control, either by killing the one that saw you out of sight or looping the cam, or you want to do a play/interaction within view of a cam, so you turn them off for 6s, or even if two guards get alerted, you can kill one, let the pager go off, kill the other one and use the pecm to delay their pager enough so you can answer the first one; since it recharges after a bit over a min and a half you can use them relatively freely and on reflex if something happens

the normal ecms in stealth are normaly used to open doors, or do some rush, for example in the harvest&trustee banks 30s can be enough to control all the civilians in the map, or it can be used as a borrowed time of sorts, if you get detected by a guard when you are out of pagers, or simply too many people got alerted for you to deal with, you can chain your ecms to have up to 60s to complete the objectives before the alarm goes off and hopefully finish the heist when that happens, once they are fully upgraded you are free to kill guards and ignore anyone trying to call the cops, so the only way the alarm can go off when a fully upgraded ecm is active is by you tripping a laser or breaking an alarmed glass, you can even combine them with the pecms to get 72s of time instead

in loud, hacker is a dodge perk deck and probably the best one, the combat utility of the pecm combined with how much dodge it gives makes a strong tool, normal ecms are a tricky story, more often than not the feedback function alone isn't enough to justify bringing them, the fact that you can't move them and take so long to recharge makes not be worth it, however there are some heists in which you can use their other function in which it might be worth bringing them, in some heists like biker heist day 2, the escape section in henry's rock, or meltdown, being able to turn the turrets friendly can be enough for you to get the objectives done whereas normaly they can be a mayor problem, or in something like hoxton breakout day 2 you can use them to open the doors where the objectives are without needing to use keycards