Loud Death Sentence Guide

A guide for playing loud heists on the Death Sentence difficulty.

Introduction

This is a gameplay guide for loud team play (as opposed to stealth and/or solo play) on the Death Sentence difficulty. The One Down modifier may optionally be active.

This guide is written mainly for players who can clear Death Wish comfortably and are looking to add Death Sentence to their repertoire. Experienced Death Sentence players may also find some new techniques worth using, starting from the "Sprint jumping" section.

This guide will be fairly general; no particular heist or loadout will be assumed, though I will mention specific examples if I need them to make a point, or if it's only applicable to those. No game modifications are assumed either. One exception to loadout is that I assume you and everyone else on your team has Inspire, Nine Lives and Swan Song, all aced.

This guide will not cover self-imposed challenges like no downs, no perk deck X/weapon Y/skill Z, etc. Neither will it cover exploits like unreachable areas or sentry spots; those are map-specific anyway.

This guide is relatively unstructured. I start with fundamentals (what you should/should not do) and move on to technicals (dexterity/execution tricks) later. Fundamentals are more important as they turn losing games into winning ones. Technicals only help you play more efficiently. If you have poor fundamentals, you lose the game; if you have poor fundamentals but good technicals, well, you still lose the game, but, uh, you look cooler while at it? Focus on your fundamentals before training for execution of advanced techniques.

Pre-game Preparation

Play the heist on a lower difficulty first to get familiar with it. You should know the sequence of objectives to be done, and where to go to do them. The locations of objectives may be randomized; it's a good idea to do multiple playthroughs so you can figure them out then, instead of during your Death Sentence run.

Other good things to know would be:

• camping spots
  
• sniper/Captain Winters locations
  
• whether you need the OVE9000 saw

Captain Winters only spawns in online mode, on Very Hard or above, so your lower-difficulty test runs should be under those conditions. Though since I presume you're able to do Death Wish, you might as well test on that difficulty.

Get a good build. This is kind of obvious, but don't jump into Death Sentence with 0 skill points spent and a 0/9 perk deck or anything like that. This isn't a build guide so I'm not going to go into how to build here, but I have written a separate guide that does exactly that.

Main differences between DW and DS

Heavies spawn more frequently. On DS, the most common enemy spawn group consists of 1 light and 3 heavies, as opposed to 2 lights and 2 heavies on DW.

Heavies do a lot more damage, and the damage is not reduced with distance, though accuracy is. On DS, heavies do 225 damage at all distances, while on DW, they do 60 damage at 5m range, and it only decreases from there.

Bulldozers have twice the amount on health on DS as they do on DW. The spawn limit for Bulldozers is 3 on DS (2 on DW), and medic Bulldozers can spawn.

In terms of what this means for you... First, the good news: since most enemies have the same amount of health and headshot multipliers on DS as they do on DW, the breakpoints are the same. You can play DS builds on DW without worrying about skill points being wasted on damage-boosting skills that are only required on DS. If you want to test your build's ammo efficiency, doing so on DW suffices.

The exception is Bulldozers, which have twice their DW health. You may find yourself able to kill Bulldozers in 1 magazine on DW while not being able to do so on DS, which can lead to trouble if the Bulldozer decides to charge at you while you're reloading. So, gang up on the Bulldozers with your teammates. If a Bulldozer takes 2 mags to kill, that can be split into 1 mag from you and 1 from your teammate. Even if the Bulldozer isn't going for you, even if you can't kill it in time, at least damage it so your teammates can finish it off more easily.

The prevalence of heavies and their high damage means you can't stay exposed very long. By extension, the distance you can cover is reduced as well. When defending an area, stay close to cover, and always be ready to hide when your armor takes damage. When moving between areas, do not rush through open spaces, thinking you can tank damage with your armor and health. Split your route into short sprints between adequately covered checkpoints - this is where knowing the map comes in handy. At each checkpoint, wait for your armor to regenerate if necessary.

Use cover

The number one tip for playing on Death Sentence: use cover. Everyone needs to know this, regardless of which perk deck they are using. If you stay exposed for too long, you die, simple as that.

The proper way to avoid dying is to always have a convenient piece of cover to hide behind. Look for walls, pillars, tables, counters, boxes, etc that can protect you from bullets.

You do NOT avoid dying by:

• picking a dodge deck with Duck and Cover aced, and sprinting everywhere hoping your high dodge saves you. Hiding behind cover is 100% protection from bullets from one or more directions. Even a maxed Hacker with crew boosts only reaches 80% dodge, and is open to attacks from all angles while sprinting. No contest there.
  
• trying to kill every single enemy before they can damage you. It takes time to aim and shoot at enemies, during which other enemies can attack you. Bulldozers also take fairly long to kill. It doesn't matter how quickly or accurately you can aim, or whether you're using a shotgun to reduce the accuracy required and hit multiple enemies at once; the game will spawn enough enemies to overwhelm your physical limitations.

Some cover may require you to crouch behind it in order to be protected. Don't remap the crouch key to something inconvenient. Shift or Ctrl is fine, with your thumb on the spacebar for jumping, three fingers on WASD for movement, and pinky on Shift/Ctrl for sprinting or crouching.

The simplest kind of cover is a doorway: you stand in the doorway (1) when you need to attack enemies (E), and slide to the side (2) when you need to take cover.


The bends in an S-shaped passage can also provide cover.


If you're hiding in a room connected to a hallway, try to look through the doorway at an oblique angle in order to take out enemies further down the hall before they get too close.


You may also stand parallel to the hallway and sidestep into the room when you need to take cover, but be aware that you can be attacked from behind.


Pillars and other props that are not next to walls may provide more than one direction for enemies to approach you, so check them all regularly.

Sidestep, don't uncrouch

When crouching behind cover, it's better to sidestep out of it than to stand up in order to engage enemies. The reason being, if you sidestep, you have more control over how many enemies you're exposed to at once.

These pictures should explain the idea (don't mind the low texture quality). Suppose you're crouching behind cover, and in front of you is a bunch of enemies (not pictured):

If you stand up, all the enemies can attack you at once, and you'll probably be damaged quickly:

If you sidestep instead, you can keep some enemies out of the picture, literally. Notice how the left enemy is unable to hit you from this position:

This principle is also applicable to other forms of cover that don't need to be crouched behind, like doorways, and the only way to engage is to sidestep. You'll want to sidestep just enough that you're only exposed to a few enemies at a time, not the entire horde. The other advantage of sidestepping just a bit is that you're closer to cover, even if only by a tiny amount, so it takes less time to return to cover if you get damaged.

Spread out

It's not a good idea to literally have everyone bunch up together in the same spot and defend from there. Why not?

• Players can obscure each other's view with their bodies as they peek out from cover. This limits their ability to aim.
  
• Bulldozer rushes become extremely deadly as there is nowhere to escape. A medic + Bulldozer or double Bulldozer combo almost always results in at least one player getting downed. Similarly, smoke grenades force the team to fight blind.
  
• Inspiring (for instant, instead of 3s manual revives) becomes difficult due to how close the players are to each other.
  
• Running out to pick up ammo drops without dying becomes nearly impossible due to how little space the players control.

What's the solution? It's right there in the title of this section: spread out. Imagine four players, each covering a different hallway or entry point. They will have control over much more of the map than four players huddling in the same room with their guns pointed at the same entrance. This means that they have more room to move around in, if anyone needs to retreat, transport bags, or get to the objective.

Don't take this to the extreme and run to the opposite end of the map from your team, though. "Too close" is when everyone is defending from the same closet; "too far" is when your teammates can't reach you with their Inspires should you go down.

Here is an example, from an actual map. On The Diamond, suppose all the players camp in the maintenance room marked with an X:
The green region shows how much of the map they control. It's very small, and no fuse boxes are covered unless one happens to spawn in the maintenance room itself. Frequent interruptions when hacking the computer will be the norm.

It's much better if the players spread out, like so:
P2 and P4 cover the access corridor on the right, ensuring that P1 can retreat into it when he needs to take cover. P4 can cover P3 if P3 is facing to the right and enemies attack from the left region of the corridor, near the Roman room. If P3 and P4 are facing each other, enemies coming out of the Mongolian room can be killed by one of them without fear of reprisal, depending on which direction they turn (enemies turning to face P3 are free food for P4, and vice versa). Depending on the spawns, P2 and P3 could each be covering one fuse box.

Note that this formation does not have to be permanent: it may be broken if a fuse box needs fixing elsewhere, for example, or if two Bulldozers spawn in the Egyptian room and P2/P4 needs to help P1 out, or if any one player has cleared out the regions they're supposed to be covering and wants to move elsewhere to hunt enemies down. The important thing is to ensure that your team is actively controlling large portions of the map, not simply hiding in an enclosed room, waiting for enemies to come to you.

How aggressive should you be?

Let's consider two hypothetical extremes of how aggressive a player can be:

One extreme is all-out aggression. The player has no regard for cover, and is always shooting at enemies or getting closer to them. Even if he gets damaged, he continues shooting instead of returning to cover; if he gets hit into Swan Song, he continues shooting anyway because of infinite ammo.

This level of aggression puts a tremendous strain on the team's resources, namely, their Inspires and doctor bags. Inspires are a renewable resource, but each player's Inspire has a 20s cooldown. If too many players go down in a short span of time, the team can find itself out of Inspires and unable to rescue downed teammates safely.

Doctor bags are a non-renewable resource. Each player can bring 2 doctor bags with 4 charges each. Assuming they only use their own doctor bags when they are on their last down, and the One Down modifier is active, the doctor bags are worth a total of 16 extra downs. Adding that on to the player's initial stock of 2 downs, we see that the player has 18 downs to last the entire heist before entering custody. (After entering custody, the player can return to the game by consuming another renewable resource, i.e. hostages, although the opportunities to do so are limited to trades between assaults and Stockholm Syndrome aced.)

The other extreme is zero aggression. The player is always in cover, never shooting at enemies unless they intrude into his safe space and force his hand. If he is in an unreachable spot, he may not even have to shoot at all.

At this level of aggression, while the player isn't dying, he isn't making any progress either, due to the enemies piling up outside his camping spot, ready to kill him if he ever tries to leave. It is also actively detrimental to his teammates if they are playing at any level of aggression above zero, as they have to take on nearly 4 players' worth of enemy spawns with a 3-man force. In fact, it would be better if the passive player entered custody instead of doing nothing, as then the other 3 players would only have to deal with 3 players' worth of spawns.

So, now that we've established neither 100% nor 0% aggression are desirable, the question is: how aggressive should you be?

My rule of thumb is to be out attacking enemies as long as your armor and weapon magazine are both full. If your armor is not full, return to cover and wait for it to regenerate. If your magazine is low enough that it can't last one more enemy encounter, return to cover and reload; don't stay in the open while reloading. If you need to do an objective and can't use your weapons, sure, you can't attack enemies at that time. Otherwise, do your part in pushing back the enemy advance.

(Of course, this rule doesn't hold with Anarchist, since it recovers armor in small chunks instead of all at once, and Stoic, since it has no armor. My rule for Anarchist would be to attack as long as you have more than 0 armor, and my rule for Stoic would be to attack as long as your flask is roughly 3s or less from cooldown: you should be able to tank damage for ~2s and kill at least 1 enemy for a 1s reduction, allowing you to use the flask if you get hit.)

This is still fairly aggressive, though not to the 100% extent. In particular, I believe that if you're using a 2-hit ICTV or Crook HBV and have taken 1 hit worth of armor damage, it's fine to return to cover, even though you can continue attacking with only 1 hit of armor to protect you. Also, if you've been hit into Swan Song, your priority should be getting back to cover instead of continuing to attack with infinite ammo. More on that in the next section.

There aren't any enemies near me. What do I do then?
Move somewhere else where there are enemies and engage them. The enemies could be trying to get in from elsewhere, so check those areas. Enemies could be inside a room or hallway that one of your damaged teammates is going to retreat into in the near future, and if you clear it out in advance, it could save your teammate a down.

Also, if you're not engaging enemies, use the interact key to shout at nearby teammates for Inspire basic. This grants them a movement and reload speed boost for 10s.

If the enemies are retreating (i.e. the assault is ending), save your ammo and don't chase them.

Use Swan Song to get back to cover

When you're hit into Swan Song, it's a great idea to use the 6s to get back to cover (instead of staying out in the open, trying to kill as many enemies as possible with infinite ammo) for a couple of reasons:

• Your teammates can manually revive you, conserving their Inspire charges.
  
• You won't just immediately be set upon by all the other enemies after you're revived, knocking you back down again.

Note that you don't actually have to be fully behind cover, only your would-be rescuer needs to be. So you can stand exposed, but next to a wall, blasting the enemies with infinite ammo, as long as you're close enough to the wall that when Swan Song expires and you collapse, there is a spot for a teammate to hide behind that wall while reviving you.

You want to be here (1) or here (2), not here (3):

If you're at position 1, you can shoot enemies while in Swan, and when you go down, your teammate can revive you manually from position 2. Or, if you don't need to shoot enemies, you can be at position 2 instead, with your teammate reviving you from the same spot.

Stay near doctor bags on your penultimate down

Most players would recognize the final down before custody as the most dangerous, for obvious reasons. However, what they probably don't expect is that they need to start paying attention on their second-to-last down.

Why? Consider this seemingly innocuous sequence of events when a player is on their penultimate down:

1. Take lethal damage, get knocked into Swan Song.
   
2. Realize that you're gray, and need to use a doctor bag.
   
3. Get revived.
   
4. Plant doctor bag or move towards nearest doctor bag.
   
5. Use doctor bag.

What could go wrong? Well, step 4 is done while the player is on their last down. In this state, they are susceptible to taking lethal damage again and entering custody as a result; Swan Song will not save them as they cannot use doctor bags while in Swan. And yes, it can happen even if the player has played sensibly, due to enemies rushing or flanking them, or an untimely flashbang blinding them.

How can this be avoided? The answer is to anticipate this potential complication and plant the doctor bag or stay close to one before you're gray ("close" being defined as "reachable during Swan Song", not, like, right next to it). So the sequence of events would look like this instead:

1. Realize that you're going to be gray, and stay near doctor bag.
   
2. Take lethal damage, get knocked into Swan Song.
   
3. Use Swan time to move towards doctor bag.
   
4. Get revived.
   
5. Use doctor bag.

The only action done while on your last down is using the doctor bag. Very safe.

Keep in mind the doctor bag that you're eyeing may be used up by a teammate. If that happens and you notice it in time, you'll have to plant your own doctor bag. You can also anticipate this, of course: if the doctor bag has more than 1 charge left, it'll probably still be there when you need it.

You can also plant the doctor bag during Swan in a pinch. Planting a doctor bag takes 2s, so that leaves 4s of Swan time to get to cover. If you have Quick Fix or Jack of all Trades basic, planting a doctor bag takes 1s instead. This gives you more time to get to cover with Swan, and leaves you vulnerable for a shorter period if you have to plant while gray.

Managing Inspires based on # of players downed

Inspire is an invaluable skill for its ability to instantly revive downed players, a 3s save over reviving them manually. It works at a distance, so it can revive players who did not use Swan time to get to cover, as I mentioned earlier, and got downed in the open.

(Sometimes it's not their fault, as they might have been cloaked. The telltale signs of a cloaking, other than the sight or sound of the Cloaker, are 1) a smoke cloud obscuring the downed player and 2) the presence of a non-empty health bar despite that player being downed.)

If only one player is downed, there isn't much of a problem: any of the other three players can Inspire him. With three possible rescuers, it's quite unlikely that all of them happen to have their Inspires on cooldown at the same time.

If two players are downed, start paying attention. If the other two still-standing players have their Inspires ready, they can each Inspire one downed player. Or, one player can Inspire a downed player, and the newly-revived player can Inspire the final downed player. By extension, always prioritize Inspiring a downed player who has Inspire ready over one who does not, or one who does not even possess the skill. The game doesn't tell you whose Inspires are ready, but if you have a good memory, you can deduce who's used their Inspires in the last 20s from the messages "X has been helped up by Y!". You can also deduce who doesn't have Inspire if they've revived you before; they will take 6s instead of 3s.

(I don't want to sound like an elitist tryhard when saying this, but if you don't have Inspire, you're going to be revived last. Not because other players want to make life difficult for you, but because it's the better option for the team. If player A has Inspire, and Inspires downed player B who also has Inspire, player B can then Inspire you. If player A Inspires you first instead, then since his Inspire is on cooldown and you don't have Inspire, player B has to be manually revived.)

If three players are downed, obviously, the last player has to play extremely cautiously, as the game is over if he is downed too. If the last player finds someone he can manually revive, he should do so and conserve his Inspire. Inspire revives instantly, at a distance, and Swan Song lowers movement speed, so it is preferable to manually revive someone, get hit into Swan, and Inspire someone else (saving two other players), rather than Inspire someone, get hit into Swan, and now that "someone else" is screwed because you either can't reach him in time, or don't have 3s of Swan time to perform a manual revive.

If someone is in custody, then only the first and last cases apply, replacing "three" with "two". Notice how, with three players, the game state can suddenly change from "no big deal" (2 standing + 1 downed) to "very dangerous" (1 standing + 2 downed) off just one more player getting downed.

If that someone is you, and you have Stockholm Syndrome, then, knowing the danger of all but one player being downed, you should use the skill when that position is reached, turning it into a more manageable 2 standing + 2 downed. Do not wait for the last moment when the final player is downed as well, as it'll become 1 standing + 3 downed, and there is a real risk that you won't be able to accomplish anything.

Forcing objectives

Suppose an objective needs to be done - say, a drill needs fixing, or C4 needs to be planted. The safest way to do these would be to have the team clear the area around the objective first, making sure there are no enemies that can attack the person doing the objective. However, sometimes this isn't possible as the area is too exposed: enemies can attack from too many angles, or they spawn too close to the objective. What can be done, then?

• A Stoic can simply interact with the objective, tanking hits with the deck's massive damage reduction, Die Hard basic's further DR, and the ability to use the flask while interacting.
  
• A Kingpin can use his injector, which will render him unkillable by most or all enemies.
  
• A Sicario can throw a smoke bomb at the objective to protect himself while interacting with it.
  
• Anyone can simply interact with the objective, using the extra 6s granted from Swan Song to complete the interaction should they take lethal damage partway through.
  
• Anyone with concussion grenades can throw them to stun all non-Bulldozer, non-boss enemies in the area. Concussion grenades stun enemies in a 15m radius for 3s, and halve their accuracy for 5s thereafter.

Tasers can interrupt your interaction, so some degree of area clearing might still need to be done. This is quite a common occurrence on the roof of Panic Room.

Most interactions take 5s or less without the Quick crew ability, so they can be fully covered by an injector or Swan Song (6s each), but not a concussion grenade (3s) or Anarchist/Armorer invulnerability (2s). However, you can stack them, so, for example, an Armorer with Swan Song and a concussion grenade has 11s of objective-doing time, during which he could even do two objectives.

In practice, concussion grenades protect you for slightly longer than simply their 3s stun duration. With Resilience basic and someone with Shock and Awe aced on the team, armor recovers in under 3s. So any armor damage sustained before the grenade goes off is a freeroll, as it would be recovered during the 3s that the enemies are stunned, assuming there aren't any stun-immune Bulldozers in that group. This means you can leave cover slightly before the grenade goes off, even if you would take one hit in the process.

Additionally, concussion grenades will fully suppress regular enemies when they explode. This may cause them to roll, sidestep, or dive for cover, during which they are not shooting at you. If they shoot at you instead, but are still suppressed, they suffer from halved accuracy, which stacks with the unrelated post-concussion halved accuracy. An enemy that is both suppressed and recovering from concussion will have its accuracy quartered. Suppression lasts a minimum of 5s, or 2s after the stun wears off.

Fixing drills or saws takes 10s (7.5s with Hardware Expert basic), so you need to stay alive for 4s (or 1.5s) to guarantee completion with Swan Song. Picking the locks before The Diamond or in the garage of Hoxton Breakout D1 takes 20s (10s with Nimble aced, but you probably don't have that), so you'd just want to keep the area clear instead of trying to force the interaction.

Objectives that involve multiple interaction points (e.g. planting C4 on the roof of Panic Room or Stealing Xmas, attaching the money/tree to the helicopter on Birth of Sky or Stealing Xmas) can be sped up by having multiple players interact with each point simultaneously. One concussion grenade can cover multiple interactions from separate players.

Players using health regeneration perk decks (e.g. Muscle, Grinder) should only sacrifice themselves for the objective as a last resort, as they will have 10% health after being revived.

Finally, note that if the assault is ending, you have a free pass at doing the objective uninterrupted. This is more of something to take advantage of if it happens at the right time, rather than something to actively plan towards. One player sacrificing themself for the objective costs 1 down. In order for camping until the assault ends to outperform that, your whole team (not just yourself) has to make it through the assault with 0 downs.

Picking up ammo

Suppose you've been diligently killing off enemies, and in front of you is a pile of ammo drops. How do you pick them up safely? The answer is similar to doing objectives: make sure the area is clear before doing so.

Unlike objectives, which you have no control over where they will be, you have some influence over where enemy drops will be, i.e. where you kill those enemies, and where you camp. If the enemies are too far away for you to reach their ammo drops, try to wait for them to come closer before killing them if possible. For example, on the roof of Panic Room, wait for enemies to jump over to the building that you're on, instead of killing them while they're on the adjacent buildings.

Like with objectives, some perk decks can pick up ammo safely while under heavy fire (though note that allowing an area to be under heavy fire may be a symptom that the team is not being aggressive enough in pushing enemies back):

• A Stoic can simply run through the pile of ammo drops, using his flask to recover any damage taken.
  
• A Kingpin can use his injector to become invulnerable, then run through the pile of ammo drops.
  
• An Anarchist/Armorer can wait for their invulnerability to come off cooldown, then run through the pile of ammo drops.
  
• A Sicario can throw his smoke grenade to create artificial cover, then rush from actual cover to the smoke and back to actual cover again, picking up ammo drops along the route. Note that the Sicario can still go down if he loses two (admittedly favorable) luck rolls in a row.
  
• A Hacker can activate her pocket ECM to stun enemies and run through the pile of ammo drops, relying on 75% dodge to survive attacks from enemies that aren't stunned.

Swan Song and concussion grenades can also be used, though this is not recommended as they consume non-renewable resources, and you have to pick up ammo pretty frequently. Save them for objectives.

Tasers can cut your ammo run short by immobilizing you with their special ability.

If you have no choice but to YOLO through the pile of ammo drops without proper protection, all is not lost. Remember that you can use your weapons while moving (while sprinting, even, with Close By or Lock N' Load basic). Keep your guns pointed in the direction that you're expecting enemies to attack from. If you're attacked by one enemy, you can kill him in return. If you're attacked by a group of enemies while holding a grenade launcher, you can kill them all or send the survivors flying. Finally, if you have Bullseye and proc it when your armor is at 0, you can take one additional hit.

Dodge decks generally have an advantage when attempting this, as they have naturally high movement speeds, boosted by Second Wind if they take a hit. They also get +10 dodge from Duck and Cover aced, and the fact that they have dodge at all means a greater-than-zero amount of protection in the Second Wind state (i.e. no armor). Health regen decks also have some amount of protection while Second Wind is active, in the form of their regenerating health, though it will take a substantial amount of time to recover if consumed.

Sprint jumping

This movement technique is exactly what it implies: while sprinting, press the jump button. While airborne, you maintain your momentum from the sprint, so you continue travelling at your sprinting speed. You can also shoot and reload while airborne, even without Parkour aced or Close By/Lock N' Load basic.

To explain the benefit of being able to reload while airborne, consider the following scenario:


Suppose you are at position 1, and need to get to cover (4) and reload. You can sprint all the way from 1 to 4, and reload only when you have reached 4. However, if you sprint jump and reload from 2 to 3, then sidestep from 3 to 4 (without sprinting, to avoid cancelling the reload), your reload would complete sooner, as you had started it earlier (somewhere between 2 and 3, instead of at 4).

Note that the shoot-while-sprinting skills still confer some benefit, even though it would seem like sprint jumping allows you to move at sprinting speed while retaining the ability to shoot anyway. Ordinarily, during a sprint, your character holds their weapon sideways, and when jumping midway through the sprint, raises their weapon again. You cannot shoot during the weapon raising animation. This is especially noticeable with weapons that have long equip times, such as LMGs and flamethrowers. With shoot-while-sprinting skills, your character's weapon is always up; they never hold their weapon sideways while sprinting, so you can shoot any time you want.

Sprint jumps can be chained. If you jump within 0.4s of touching the ground, you avoid losing more stamina. You can hold the sprint button (if hold to run is on) throughout the entire series of jumps; if performed properly, the stamina loss is no different from only holding sprint just before landing and releasing while airborne.

Stealth players may habitually crouch after the jump, as it makes them harder to be detected in stealth. In loud, this is counterproductive if you want to chain sprint jumps, as you have to stand up again to perform a jump. However, if your destination is behind a waist-high piece of cover, crouching in midair keeps you safe as soon as you land.

Reload cancelling

You can cancel a reload by:

• Sprinting, provided you don't have Parkour aced
  
• Using your melee weapon
  
• Using a throwable weapon: usually knives or javelins, never grenades
  
• Tapping the deploy key, provided you still have a deployable and are not carrying a bag. To be precise, pressing deploy cancels the reload by starting a deploy, then releasing deploy cancels the deploy and brings up your weapon again. Tapping is simply pressing and releasing very quickly.
  If you're carrying a bag, tapping deploy just causes you to throw it. You can still cancel if you hold deploy long enough, but since it takes more time for the input to be registered, it is slower than the other methods of cancelling, possibly even slower than simply waiting out the reload.
  
• Switching weapons

The main uses for this technique are in these scenarios:

• You're reloading in cover, but an enemy rushes you. You can then cancel the reload with a melee/throwable to immediately counterattack. If you still have some ammo in your magazine, you can also cancel with a sprint/deploy and fire the remaining rounds at the enemy.
  
• You're reloading in cover with at least 1 bullet in your magazine, but unexpectedly get hit into Swan Song. You can then cancel the reload with a sprint/deploy and lay waste to the enemies with infinite ammo. This is preferable to waiting for the reload to complete before shooting, as it consumes precious Swan time. Using a melee/throwable to cancel instead also takes up more Swan time than sprinting/deploying.
  If your weapons have short equip/unequip times, switching to the other weapon can also be faster than waiting for the reload to complete, as gameplay hint #37[i.imgur.com] helpfully tells you.

Note that cancelling a reload with any method other than switching weapons minimally incurs a delay equal to the equip time of your weapon, as it needs to be raised again. The exception is if you have Close By/Lock 'N Load basic, and cancel with a sprint.

Cancelling a reload by switching weapons incurs a delay equal to the unequip time of the current weapon, plus the equip time of the other weapon. Weapon swap speed bonuses (e.g. Rogue's Killer Instinct card, OVERKILL aced) affect this time, but not the equip times after sprinting, meleeing, etc. And of course, you end up with the other weapon equipped after switching weapons.

It's possible to cancel a reload by tapping the interact key while there is a prompt to "Hold [interact] to ..." on the screen, e.g. opening cash registers. This works much in the same way as deploying. In practice, this is quite useless, as there needs to be an object within interaction range, and you need to be facing it, so there's a very limited area in which you can perform it. However, it does mean that if someone goes down near you while you're reloading, you can cancel the reload into a manual revive (holding down interact instead of tapping it). You cannot cancel with "Press [interact] to ..." interactions, e.g. picking up loose loot.

There are two (questionable) tricks for weapons with shot-by-shot reloads (e.g. Reinfeld, China Puff):

• Pressing fire while reloading will have your character stop loading rounds after the current one is loaded. This is not actually a reload cancel, as the reload is not stopped immediately; it's just a way to control how many rounds you want to load.
  
• If your magazine hits 0 and you reload, depending on the weapon, your character may pump it after the last round has been loaded, even if you've loaded less than the maximum capacity using the technique above. However, if you cancel the reload (not with the fire button, but by sprinting, meleeing, etc), the pumping is skipped and you can continue reloading or firing without having to pump.
  Ironically, this may not end up saving time at all. Take the Reinfeld for example: the pump takes 0.4s. On the other hand, its equip time is 0.85s - this delay is incurred if you cancel the reload and have to raise the weapon again. So waiting for the pump is actually faster than reload cancelling, even without reload speed boosting skills! You need Close By/Lock 'N Load basic AND to cancel the reload with a sprint in order for reload cancelling to win out.

Audio cues

Some events that happen to the player produce distinct noises when they occur, and remembering what they sound like can save you glances at your HUD. The important ones are:

• Armor taking damage, but not breaking
  
• Armor breaking
  
• Perk deck throwable coming off cooldown

The first two can be used to know when to get back behind cover during combat. This is actually incredibly useful, as you can focus your sense of sight purely on aiming. If you find yourself constantly getting to cover too late, try reacting to the sound of armor damage instead of checking the damage indicator or your HUD.

(I suspect many players don't even realize how much they depend on sound while they play. As an experiment, try playing with sound effects off and see how much worse you perform.)

Other uses:

• If you're using an ICTV with Underdog aced to get it to the 2-hit breakpoint, hearing your armor break in 1 hit after leaving cover means Underdog isn't active.
  
• If you have 70 < x < 225 max armor (e.g. LBV Crook), you can identify the type of enemy that hit you based on whether your armor broke in 1 hit or not. If your armor broke in 1 hit after leaving cover, it's probably a heavy (225 damage), otherwise, it's probably a shield/light/medic (70/67.5/60-30 damage).
  
• If you're using a weapon that generally goes for body shots (e.g. Body Expertise AR/LMG, Dragon's Breath shotgun, flamethrower), hearing your armor break tells you to switch to headshots so that you can armor gate with Bullseye.

Taking health damage also has its own sound, but this is not too important to know as:

• your screen will also flash red
  
• you're usually either already dead, or one more hit would kill you
  
• if you're Stoic, everything is health damage anyway

Dodging does not produce any sound, so you need to pay attention to the visual indicator to know you're being attacked.

Dominating enemies

There are two main reasons for dominating enemies:

1. To convert them with the Joker skill.
   
2. As an alternative means of neutralizing them, instead of killing them outright.

If using Crew Chief, hostages are also required for several of its bonuses. Having more hostages is preferable, not only because the bonus health and stamina stacks with multiple hostages, but also because having one hostage freed or killed (out of several) would not cause the damage reduction bonus to be lost immediately.

To take enemies hostage, first damage them (or wait for them to reload, though obviously that is much less viable), then spam the interact key to shout at them. The enemy will first raise his hands, then drop his weapon, and finally kneel down, after which you can go up to them and hold the interact key to convert them. Special enemies and gangsters can't be dominated.

Shouting has a 1.5s cooldown (if you shout, you can't shout again for 1.5s). However, the progression from one state of surrender to the next does not, so multiple players shouting at one damaged enemy will cause that enemy to kneel quicker than if only one player was shouting.

Enemies may have their helmets knocked off after getting shot or caught in explosions, so if you see a helmetless enemy, you can deduce that he's already taken damage and skip straight to spamming the interact key.

Dominating an enemy opens up several options, even if you're not planning to covert him. Suppose you hit an enemy and shout at him, making him raise his hands. That enemy is now neutralized, temporarily at least. You can continue shouting at him until he kneels to neutralize him indefinitely, saving ammo. You can do this while keeping an eye out for other enemies who might appear in your field of view, using shouts to take out the surrendering enemy and guns for the rest. Or you can go ahead and finish off that enemy with your guns, taking your time to line up headshots since he won't move or attack. You can do this while the enemy is simply in the hands-up state, instead of shouting two more times to bring him to the kneeling state.

The maximum number of enemies that can be dominated is 4+(number of players who are not in custody). Converts count towards this number. The more your team uses domination all the way to force enemies into the kneeling state, the faster you're forced off that tactic: you either have to kill some of the dominated enemies to free up slots, or kill non-dominated enemies because you've hit the cap and dominating won't work any more.

Enemies may resist domination. If you spam interact but the enemy doesn't raise his hands and the hostage counter doesn't increase, just kill him and find another one. The hostage counter can also be used to determine if an enemy recovering from another animation (e.g. electric shock, flying from explosion) will be dominated after that animation has completed: if he will, then the hostage counter will go up by 1, even though he hasn't actually raised his hands yet.

If you see an enemy rushing towards you while you're peeking out from cover, you can dominate that enemy pretty safely. Just duck back into cover and wait for the enemy to move to where you previously were. Hit him with a nonlethal attack and spam interact while you are still in cover.

2 players in Swan saving each other

When 2 players are simultaneously in Swan Song, they can still rescue each other without help from anyone else, but the timing is stricter.

While still in Swan, both players should check the amount of Swan time they have remaining and know their roles. The player with more Swan time remaining should be ready to Inspire when the other player's Swan time runs out. The other player should then Inspire the first player in return.

The player with less Swan time remaining should avoid staying too close, as this can inadvertently cause his rescuer to initiate a manual revive instead of an Inspire. If he doesn't know this, the rescuer can salvage the situation by jumping just before Inspiring, in order to put additional distance between them.

Remember that shouting has a 1.5s cooldown, so keep your fingers off the interact key until you actually need to Inspire.

Conclusion

That's all the tips I can offer for playing on Death Sentence. Hopefully you found them useful and can apply them to your games.

Thanks for reading and good luck getting the Death Sentence/One Down masks.

[[☃] Fish]

damn, your right, i'll stealth henrys rock next time

[Steagull]

or you could just... stick to stealth

[Amirreza.ARL83]

nice

[ごみ]

Thanks for the tips.

[w1tchunt]

pretty good guide

[Milo]

Good guide. Maybe I'll get out of my comfort zone and start playing DS a bit more.