What is the most optimal difficulty to play loud heists on?

[HunterFromAbove]

Title.

[david_landa_oficialni]

depends on your skill level

[Thermal Lance]

I think Deathwish is the best difficulty. Death Sentence is just a complete mess depending on which map you play. Don't read that as unbeatable, I really just mean that the balance is whack and favors the meta to an obscene level.

[Wandering Flare]

Depends on your experience but I would say Mayhem is your best bet - isn't piss easy like OVERKILL but is still absolutely flexible so you can use any sort of build you want without having to strain yourself to make it work.

[Seal]

This greatly depends on the heist (that is, the amount of cover available), although I'd say it goes something like this:

• Newbies: Normal, Hard
  
• More experienced newbies: Very Hard
  
• Casual: Overkill, Mayhem
  
• Experienced player: Death Wish
  
• That one elitist with 10,000 hours played who mains either one of the original four heisters (most notably, Chains), Sydney, Rust or Clover, wears a heavily modified One Down mask, has beat Lab Rats, Henry's Rock, The Bomb: Forest and Goat Simulator on DSOD 200 times each, owns every DLC (including the limited-time ones like the Completely Overkill Pack) and criticises those who don't use the meta: Death Sentence One Down

Overall, I'd say Death Wish is the true highest difficulty, as DS/DSOD is just simply unfun.

Edit: Added a closing note.
Edit 2: Clarification.

[Wandering Flare]

Originally posted by Seal:

Overall, I'd say Death Wish is the true highest difficulty, as DS/DSOD is just simply unfun.

It is the difficulty that the game was balanced around, after all.

[Lanxcapo]

mayhem and dw, are the ones that provide the best rewards for the ammount of effort it takes, ds isn't really worth it if you only want the rewards, the difference in difficulty between dw and ds is massive and the reward change is less than 10%, you can still play on overkill, but the difference in difficulty is rather low and you get about 15% more rewards, so it's usually worth going for mayhem if you can take it

[Folid]

Depends, on how good you are obviously but overall overkill is generally easy after you get used to the game
Mayhem is generally most fun for me because it's not as braindead easy as overkill but not difficult enough that you have to really try
Death wish is as far as you should go unless getting 2 tapped by cops across the map who sponge so much damage it put tanks to shame your thing

[Hesienburger]

Originally posted by Seal:

Overall, I'd say Death Wish is the true highest difficulty, as DS/DSOD is just simply unfun.

DSOD is not unfun.

[ivan]

Overkill If you dont like a challenge, even though you want high xp/money
Mayhem if you want death wish without lmg dozers and minigun dozers
Death wish if you want a fair challenge, the game was balanced around death wish, id say for a bit more experienced players, dearh wish is ideal

Death sentence can be fun and challenging, or just unfun depending on the heist

[M0D]

Overkill, Mayhem and Death Wish are certainly the better ones, they could be considered more like [Overkill = Normal], [Mayhem = Hard] and [Death Wish = Really Hard], Very Hard and below are too easy and Death Sentence is a joke that is just not funny (high damage and no damage falloff is a pain, along with the bonkers Special Dozers).

[RandomTurtle]

Overkill is still very forgiving of a difficulty and is a good one to play on to get used to the game.

Mayhem takes the mechanics from the high difficulties and introduces them. (Low health on revive, Dozers with automatic weapons, slightly stronger enemies)

Death Wish is what a lot of players approach as the difficulty they like to play on. As although it can present challenges it has lenience.

Death Sentence is a difficulty designed to be a challenge mode. It has many nw layers of difficulty, all of them rather brutal. There are player who prefer this difficulty but it's fair to say most players wouldn't enjoy playing this regularly.

In terms of optimisation depends on how much the difficulty increase slows you down. If you can complete jobs much faster on Overkill than Mayhem then Mayhem would be less XP over time.

[Weaselly]

Originally posted by The Ultimate Sandvich:

Originally posted by Seal:

Overall, I'd say Death Wish is the true highest difficulty, as DS/DSOD is just simply unfun.

DSOD is not unfun.

Perhaps to some people, it's fun, but it's a difficulty that was designed to be unfair, and unless you really, really know what you're doing, only the meta can survive on it.

I find Death Wish to be the best, personally.

[BlackRibbon]

Originally posted by Martin Vol:

Originally posted by Seal:

Overall, I'd say Death Wish is the true highest difficulty, as DS/DSOD is just simply unfun.

It is the difficulty that the game was balanced around, after all.

I miss when the game was balanced around Very Hard and Overkill.

[Wandering Flare]

Originally posted by BlackRibbon:

Originally posted by Martin Vol:

It is the difficulty that the game was balanced around, after all.

I miss when the game was balanced around Very Hard and Overkill.

I miss release Death Wish.

[BlackRibbon]

Originally posted by Martin Vol:

Originally posted by BlackRibbon:

I miss when the game was balanced around Very Hard and Overkill.

I miss release Death Wish.

Same.