I know, I know, I know.... Survivalist threads are done waaaaay too much, and I've already contributed to that overabundance in the past. However, I just came up with an idea that might make the perk work much better AS IS, no new skills required! Rather than receiving a massive core rework to their skills (which would be a lot of work and could mess up the perk in other ways), you could consider giving the Survivalist more flexibility in picking the skills that are already available to them.
What we currently have for every perk is a simple choice between two skills that is given every 5 levels. The Survivalist would instead be given a skill point every 5 levels which could be spent on ANY of their skills! (To keep progression equal to other perks you would still lock skills behind tiered levelling milestones; the Zed Time skills would still be locked until level 25, for example.) You could even keep roughly the same UI, but you could click and un-click perk skills on both sides if desired. All you'd need to add is a little point counter to the side.
I feel like this would give the Survivalist an interesting flexibility that could also fix some of the core complaints without needing to rework the abilities themselves. If you wanted to have improved reload speed with every weapon (a universal suggestion in every single Survivalist rework thread), all you'd have to do is pick both of the level 5 skills! Like the default grenade better than the ones you get at level 15? Don't pick a level 15 skill! (Or if you pick both, perhaps you get the freeze grenade instead.) I'm not sure this idea is as good as a larger overhaul of the skills, but I've been liking the recent improvements to the perk and this could be a way to make the Survivalist feel less limited.
What we currently have for every perk is a simple choice between two skills that is given every 5 levels. The Survivalist would instead be given a skill point every 5 levels which could be spent on ANY of their skills! (To keep progression equal to other perks you would still lock skills behind tiered levelling milestones; the Zed Time skills would still be locked until level 25, for example.) You could even keep roughly the same UI, but you could click and un-click perk skills on both sides if desired. All you'd need to add is a little point counter to the side.
I feel like this would give the Survivalist an interesting flexibility that could also fix some of the core complaints without needing to rework the abilities themselves. If you wanted to have improved reload speed with every weapon (a universal suggestion in every single Survivalist rework thread), all you'd have to do is pick both of the level 5 skills! Like the default grenade better than the ones you get at level 15? Don't pick a level 15 skill! (Or if you pick both, perhaps you get the freeze grenade instead.) I'm not sure this idea is as good as a larger overhaul of the skills, but I've been liking the recent improvements to the perk and this could be a way to make the Survivalist feel less limited.