We've all experienced it. Someone drops in to your Shadow Raid heist and casually tosses a grenade, forcing you to start all over again. But then you kick him, or he leaves, and you're free to go at things anew, knowing that he can't stop you again.

But then we've also all played with that one guy. That one guy that just seems criminally unlucky. He's not doing anything explicitly wrong, really, but for some reason everything falls apart when he's around. Still, you can tell he's trying, and he follows orders, so you don't really hold it against him, and you certainly don't kick him.

Here's the thing, though: which of those guys causes more wasted time? Which of them causes more frustration? The former, obvious troll? Or the latter, sophisticated troll?

That's right. I'm here to tell you about a new, better form of trolling. Forget the old-fashioned way of doing things that makes people start over again once. I'm going to show you how to force people to start over again... and again... and again.

That said, given Payday 2's team-based nature, it's generally pretty difficult for one player to ruin everything - and when it's not, you'll be easily noticed and kicked. Therefore, most of the time you'll find it less effective to outright ruin a heist, and more effective to simply increase the odds of everything going to hell - and waiting.

Even if you're going to ignore the rest of the guide, the Five Golden Don'ts is enough to put you in a higher tier of trolling. Even if you are going to read the rest of the guide, it's these that you should really take to heart.

This is the most golden of the Golden Don'ts, and overrides everything else if necessary. The longer a heist goes on, the more chances there are for something to go wrong. While legitimate players will often have reasons to make a heist longer (for example, cooking all of the meth on Rats to make more money), true trolls will never have a reason to make a heist go quicker.

Somebody's trying to strategize? Ignore them. You're being asked a question? Don't respond. And for goodness' sake, don't ever voluntarily tell anybody what you're thinking, or planning for a situation. If you think it's a good time to run, don't tell them, just run! If somebody is lagging behind the group, let them! They probably have no idea, and if you say anything, they might start trying to catch up.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. The sooner objectives are completed, the sooner the mission is over, and the less chance there is for something to go wrong. If there is a right time to go for objectives, though, it's when the rest of the team is hunkered down somewhere else, giving you a good excuse to lone wolf (see below).

This is kind of a sub-rule to Don't Complete Objectives, but bags are so often optional that it deserves its own rule. Whenever you can possibly avoid it, force your teammates to do all of the bag-carrying. Again, the longer they're working on carrying bags, the longer the mission goes on for.

The main exception here, obviously, is if carrying a bag will lengthen the mission. For example, the escape van is here, and you could just run for it? Go ahead and carry that bag of gold.

Tagging specials will not only highlight the enemy so that your entire team can see exactly where they are, but your character will shout a vocal warning, letting even unaware teammates know that there's something dangerous nearby and they should be careful.

In stealth, tagging enemies (and cameras) is even more important to the team, so it's even more important that you don't do it. Remember, just because you're aware of a guard doesn't mean your team is; letting him sneak up on a teammate could be the thing that blows the whole heist, and they'll think it's all their fault!

Stealth is a tricky thing to ruin properly. Obviously, any loafbox can toss a grenade and blow stealth, but those loafboxes tend to get kicked immediately.

No, a sophisticated troll isn't going to actually be the one to blow stealth. They're just going to force all of their teammates to be absolutely flawless. And when they aren't, they'll be the ones to blow stealth.

How can we do this? Well...

A great way to hamper everyone when in stealth is to kill as many people as possible. You get the most bang for your buck with guards - by killing guards, you use up a pager and a body bag - but don't undervalue how disruptive killing a civilian can be. Get them down in the right place, and you'll force someone to use a body bag that they could've used somewhere more useful.

Sure, you're making it easier to sneak through an area. But whenever you shoot a camera, a guard somewhere on the map will stop what he's doing and go check it out. That means that, as long as nobody kills the guard, shooting a camera is basically a time bomb for blowing stealth. This is especially useful if you shoot a camera somewhere in an open, visible area, making it difficult for your teammates to kill anyone that notices it.

It's a reasonably common practice on Pro jobs for someone to go heavy, and then wait around by the van just in case things get loud. Not everyone does it, but everyone is familiar with the concept. Most of the time, though, it doesn't happen on non-Pro jobs; after all, if things get screwed up, you can just restart, right?

Use that to your advantage! Go heavy anyway, "just in case." You're not likely to get too much flak for it, and you simultaneously force your team to play man-down, as well as encouraging them to fight rather than restart if stealth is blown. If you're lucky, they'll fail after twenty minutes rather than after ten, doubling the amount of frustration in the group per failed attempt.

Unless you're doing Shadow Raid, even once stealth is blown, the heist isn't over, and there's always the possibility of things being salvaged. Luckily, there's still plenty that you can do during Plan B to help ensure a full wipe.

It won't always wipe your entire heist, but a sure way to hinder your team is to put as much distance between you and them as possible - for example, by running off to do objectives alone, or by staying behind when they move on. Hopefully, when you get downed, they'll charge into the breach to save you, heedless of any dangers between them and you - which will lead to them getting downed, too.

Even if they do manage to get you back up, don't worry! It's still possible for everything to go wrong, now that you've brought everyone out from their defensive position and into a dangerous situation. The best thing you can do then is to run off alone again, leaving them to get back to safety on their own.

Most special enemies are more effective the closer they are to the group, and all of them benefit tremendously from being undetected. Therefore, you should do your best to make sure they get as close to the group as possible without being noticed. This goes beyond simply not tagging them. Don't shoot them. Don't even get near them - if they start attacking you, your teammates are more likely to notice them.

Everybody hates snipers. One sniper, used correctly, can take drop an entire team. So why would you stop that by killing them?

Snipers are especially deadly when you lone wolf, as described above; if you get sniped out in the open, your teammates will have to expose themselves in order to save you. But even if you're with the group, you can at least give the snipers a fighting chance by finding some cover for yourself and then ignoring them. After all, if you're not getting downed, nobody's going to blame you for doing anything wrong, and maybe the sniper will down a teammate or two before they're taken out.

Dallas is in custody, Chains is down, and Houston is making a run for the escape? That sounds like an excellent time to wait another 90 seconds for the drill to finish. Or maybe things are getting hairy on day one of Rats, and everybody makes a break for the van - while you stick around to finish making one last bag of meth.

Admittedly, this is a little risky; if there are three guys in the escape zone, you run a high risk of getting kicked so they can make a clean getaway. Try to fight the kick by assuring them that you're coming, or that the drill is almost done. While it's okay if it's true, it's even better if you're lying through your teeth when you say it.

Someone started repairing the drill? You should start repairing the drill, too. Someone helping a downed teammate up? You should start helping them up, too. You'll be making the team play with an additional man down, if only for an extra couple of seconds. Plus, you have a chance at getting whoever was doing the task to stop working on it, assuming you'll handle it. That's the best time for you, too, to stop, forcing everyone to start all over again.

Almost everybody knows that using a doctor bag doesn't just heal you, it resets how many times you can be downed. Almost. Be the one who doesn't. Use doctor bags when you're low on health, regardless of how many times you've been downed. Well, not regardless - if you're black and white, try to avoid using a doctor bag if you can. Going into custody makes things harder on everyone else.

On that note, try to only use first aid kits when you're above 50% health. This is especially effective if there's somebody nearby at 10%.

While the above tips will get you far enough most of the time, there are also some extra ways you can screw things up on specific heists, as well as some ways that things just change completely. For example, given that day one of Firestarter is all about carrying bags, the general advice of "Never carry anything" is much more likely to get you kicked, or at least blamed.

If a heist isn't listed here, assume that there's nothing noteworthy about it in regards to screwing things up.

This should be obvious, but don't be the one to break the glass on the display cases while the alarm is still active. Remember, you don't want to be the one to break stealth - you want stealth to break on its own.

In that vein, try to kill/pacify people near windows or alley entrances, increasing the chance that they'll be seen from the street. Even if people know you did it, you're not likely to get called out for it - it'll just be viewed as an unfortunate accident.

Not carrying bags here is a good way to get people mad at you - and in fact, is actually less effective at screwing things up than carrying bags can be. The trick is to carry bags one at a time, rather than bucket-brigading all of them at once. By carrying bags one at a time, not only are you going lone wolf and slowing down the whole bag-moving process, you're doing it while (technically) helping, so it's hard for people to get mad at you.

The main trick here is the evidence room. If you run the loot to the van immediately, you can generally get there and back before things get hairy. But if you wait until you're bringing the server back, you'll have the full force of your team covering everyone. Therefore, the best time to move the evidence is juuuust before the assault happens - just as or right after the first cops show up. With luck, you'll get stranded at the van or downed in the middle of the street, and you'll take the rest of the team down as they come to rescue you.

A common tactic here is placing a loud drill on the roof, and then taking out guards as they come to investigate. If you have silent drills or ECM overdrive, use those on the upstairs door to stop that from working.

If you don't have either, at least wait in the stairwell for guards, rather than up on the roof; if you're lucky, when you shoot the guard, they'll land somewhere they can still be seen.

This is a great place to completely ignore objectives - especially if you're the closest one to them. Everyone will assume you've got it handled, and every little bit of time still on the street is another bit of time where something can go wrong.

Lone wolfing is a great way to screw things up, too, especially in the parking garage. With the three floors of the parking garage, and how difficult it is to find cover and advance, it's fabulously easy to get the entire group separated into two or even three groups that are incapable of crossing the divides between them without getting downed.

Unlike day one, you should run after objectives with furor - unless the rest of your team is, too, in which case you should stick behind in the operations room. You can also run around looking for keycards, though if you're going to do that, it's most effective to wait until the cops have started showing up in force - you don't want to find all the keycards before the cops even show up.

Speaking of keycards, try to waste them if you can. The simplest way is to open the Armory when your team already has three or four ammo bags (or the infirmary if they have medkits), but you can also waste them on opening doors that have almost been drilled open, or closing doors near blown bridges.

Whatever you do, don't be at the escape truck when it arrives. Even if somebody sprang for the armored escape truck, it's still very possible for it to get shot to pieces if you give the cops enough time. You'll be told when the truck is coming, so make sure to be as far away from there as possible when it does.

If you can't be on the other side of the map, at least try to linger outside the escape zone as long as possible. Duck for cover in an alley or something. After all, if you get downed in the escape zone, your team can still get out; if you get downed outside of the escape zone, your team will be forced to leave the zone to try to get you back up.

Also worth knowing is that grenades can damage the getaway van; one grenade, properly thrown, can blow even the armored escape van practically on its own.

The two most popular places to store the bags are either in the bed of the pickup truck in the warehouse, or up on the second floor of the warehouse. You should try to get everyone to throw the bags in the pickup truck; there, the cops can approach from all sides, and grab the bags easily. Upstairs, there's usually only one direction of attack, and even if they grab a bag, they have further to run.

When the boat comes, throw as many bags as possible out towards it; it can only carry four, so any extras that you throw out near the pier are bags that the team is going to have to put effort into carrying back.

Try not to open any doors downstairs; the more doors that are open, the more the interior guards will walk outside, reducing the chances of them stumbling across voting machines or teammates.

Keep in mind that the two cops that start outside are not guards, and don't have pagers - try to avoid killing them if you can. If you're lucky, they'll wander inside, increasing the odds of stealth getting blown.

Meth ingredients have a number of potential spawn points:

• The bathroom inside the house
  
• The shed in front of the house
  
• The basement
  
• The shed behind the house
  
• The pickup truck past the rear shed

Grab the ingredients from the easiest spawn points first (the bathroom and the front shed), forcing your teammates to expose themselves later if they want to finish cooking.

Most people don't realize all of the different ways that you can anger the gangsters into attacking you. Shooting will obviously turn them aggressive, but you can also anger them "accidentally" by:

• Pushing past a gangster
  
• Sprinting near a gangster
  
• Jumping near a gangster

Do it right, and nobody will realize you were to blame - after all, everybody knows that sometimes the gangsters will double-cross you!

If you're going to blow the bus by not disarming the C4 under the money bags - and you shouldn't, because everyone will know you did it, but if you are - do it only after there are more bags than there are people to carry them. That way, you'll encourage everyone to wait for the loot drop, when they're barely getting any benefit from it.

Yes, this is satire. No, I don't want you to do these things.

I'll repeat: Please don't do these things.

I made this guide to point out behaviors that aren't blatantly harmful enough to stop themselves naturally. I'm not saying that they're all always harmful; I'm just saying that, unless you really know what you're doing, you're probably screwing things up when you lone wolf, or avoid carrying bags, or ignore objectives.

So, you know. Don't.

- Teddy

Anything I missed? Weird tpyoes I ignored? Advice I gave that's just plain wrong? Please let me know!

I won't ask you to leave a thumbs-up, but I will request that if you're leaving a thumbs-down, please leave a comment and let me know why. I can't get better if you don't tell me how!