I'm only answering to this bit, because it riles me everytime I see it.
Firebug is a thinking mans perk. It is most definately NOT useless on bigger foes and its damage in most certainly NOT insignificant. You only run out of ammo if you're crap at using the perk.
Its may not suit everyone's style, alot of people remain adamant that the Commando is far better than the Firebug. I however can't use the Commando at all, I rarely survive a round as 1, but I can survive pretty much every wave (or be the sole survivor) as a Firebug quite easily. Furthermore I rest near the top of the scoreboard pretty much every game.
The reason is I know how the Firebug plays, there are alot of tricks that the FIrebug can employ to help himself and his team. I admit its not a perk for everyone, but it really grates my nerves when people say it is useless or underpowered. The fact is I will be extremely angry if there is even the slightest change to how the Firebug works, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let him be ruined by people who don't understand how to apply the perk properly. He is perfectly balanced and in the right hands serves his role extremely well.
If you're doing good at Firebug, you'd likely do even better at Demoman or Commando if you learned how to play them. I'm not saying the Firebug is bad by itself. I'm just saying that once it hits Suicidal/HoE, you have to expend so much ammo to do decent damage that you'll usually have trouble lasting through half of a later wave.
It's not a terrible perk and it can do quite a bit of damage, but when you hit HoE, you become more of a liability to the team than much else. On Hard and below, the Firebug is amazing if you can play it well, but above those...it doesn't do much but burn Crawlers, Clots, and Stalkers...which is something the Commando can do just as well without the fire obscuring Sharpshooters.
My biggest issue is that you're almost completely stuck to the Flamethrower and that takes up 11 Blocks. And the natural second gun is the MAC-10, which fills your loadout. Not a lot of variety or choices to make.
In fact now the machete is for other perks to fill the 1kg unused weight.
Meleeing as any class but Berserker is pretty much a death sentence on harder levels, so it's still worthless in my book.
And axe one-shot husks and sirens on 6-man HoE (and suicidal) while katane cannot.
The Katana CAN 1-shot Husks and Sirens with a head hit if you alt-fire. And it has a faster attack speed than the Axe by a good bit.
No.
The damage resistance buff was not needed. If you "take a few hits" every time you engage, you're doing it wrong; my guess is that you don't dodge enough. All the damage resistance buff really did was make the Berserker more forgiving. Considering what it can accomplish when played well, it needn't allow itself to be played poorly.
With Sirens, Husks, and the ever-present crawlers, you're going to take damage and on the higher levels, any damage is significant. Without the damage resistance buff, Zerkers would be dead almost all the time on HoE.
That you would seriously call the Fire Axe "useless" in today's KF casts serious doubt on your claim of "Hard and up". If you really did play on difficulties above Hard, you'd already know why. And the Machete is not a primary weapon - its weight was reduced to make it more viable as a Knife upgrade off-perk, and it worked. Berserkers would only want to use it either when they're too low-levelled to afford a Katana, or to afford them some semblance of mobility with the unwieldy Chainsaw + Fire Axe combo.
No class but Berserker should really be melee'ing. Point blank 9mm headshots are more effective. The Fire Axe is great at stunning Scrakes, yeah, but when you could be a Sharpshooter and 1 or 2-shot them with a Crossbow, it's pretty useless in comparison.
And "useless vs FPs" is a joke. How do you suppose people got the "Crack the Nutcracker" achievement? There's a technique for killing Flesh Pounds without taking a hit, and it isn't very hard to do. Go and learn it.
Most people that I asked got "Crack the Nutcracker" by playing on Beginner and knifing an FP to death... But yeah, I'm aware of the insta-decap trick. It's been around forever and ANY class can do it. In fact, I'd say it's almost easier to do with the Commando's Bullpup. However, it's very situational. The Fleshpound has to be focused on you, has to do the right animation, and it's tricky to pull of with Sirens screaming and Husks shaking the ground.
All in all, it is a challenging class to play, but you don't yet know how to overcome that challenge. Once you master it, you'll realise just how rewarding it really is.
The "Challenge" of it still doesn't offset what it can do. In most cases, a Berserker would still be more of an asset to the team as a Sharpshooter or Commando. Having to be up close and STILL not doing comparable damage to other classes just doesn't work.
In other news, many players using the Baddest Santa skin are getting shot on Friendly Fire servers because he looks disturbingly like a Gorefast and gets a twitch reaction. Dr. Gary Glover feels his pain and would like to remind you that he isn't a Bloat.